📈 economics

The costs of late quality signals in scholarly publishing

This study quantifies the significant scientific and financial consequences of delayed quality signals in scholarly publishing, revealing that journal discontinuations for quality issues often occur after substantial publication and financial commitments have accumulated, with publication outputs subsequently plummeting by nearly 80% within five years and exposing institutions to tens of millions of dollars in article-processing charges.

Abdelghani Maddi2026-10-22
📈 economics

Small numbers, big bubbles: Gambler's fallacy and hot-hand traders in a heterogeneous-agent market

This paper presents a heterogeneous-agent model demonstrating how the interaction between gambler's fallacy-driven contrarian traders and hot-hand fallacy-driven momentum traders, alongside fundamentalists with limited risk capacity, generates asset price bubbles, crashes, and trading volume patterns that can be analytically characterized by a unique steady state and a stability coefficient.

Kirill Proskurin2026-10-22
📈 economics

Can We Trust Their Innovation? Industrial Policy, Takeover Incentives, and Innovation Redirection in Non-Targeted Firms

This study reveals that China's "Made in China 2025" industrial policy induces non-targeted firms to opportunistically redirect innovation toward favored sectors to attract acquisitions and secure political capital, a strategy driven by financial distress and official promotion incentives that ultimately results in lower-quality patents and reduced efficiency.

Xu Lu2026-10-22
📈 economics

Can Regulation Curb AI Adoption Narrative–Practice Decoupling?An Agent-Based Model of the A-Share Market

Using an agent-based model of the A-share market, this paper demonstrates that while market forces alone weakly penalize the gap between firms' AI narratives and actual implementation, a regulatory combination of repeat-offender escalation and targeted enforcement is most effective at curbing such decoupling, whereas mechanisms like short selling and simple disclosure labels prove ineffective.

ming sun2026-10-22
📈 economics

Impact of Proposed UPI Transaction Fees on Digital Payment Adoption and Market Dynamics in India: An Empirical Study

This empirical study analyzes the 2020–2026 impact of introducing a 0.40% Merchant Discount Rate on large UPI transactions in India, finding that while the fee alleviates infrastructure funding gaps, it creates inelastic demand among micro-merchants, drives mid-tier merchants toward cash or ticket-splitting, and consolidates market power among dominant payment providers, thereby necessitating calibrated regulatory interventions.

Alvin Jose2026-10-22
📈 economics

The Impact of ESG Performance on Financial Performance in ASEAN Firms: The Moderating Role of Slack and Regulation

This study analyzes 2,134 firm-year observations across six ASEAN countries to demonstrate that while ESG performance positively impacts financial performance, this relationship is weakened by financial slack and strengthened by regulatory compliance, highlighting the contingent nature of ESG value creation on internal resources and external institutional pressures.

Harfiahani Indah Rakhma Ningtyas, Zaenal Fanani, Zahroh Naimah, Bambang Tjahjadi2026-10-21
📈 economics

Research on the Impact of Urban Low-Carbon Pilot Policies on Employment from the Perspective of a Just Transition

This study utilizes a multiple time point double difference model on Chinese data from 2008 to 2024 to demonstrate that while low-carbon pilot policies significantly reduce carbon emissions and boost overall employment, they simultaneously create a "just transition" challenge by favoring high-skilled workers and specific sectors while negatively impacting low-skilled labor, old enterprises, and high-carbon industries.

Mingran Wu2026-10-21