Journal of Public Affairs最新文献

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has brought a significant transformation in the labor market, sparking mixed sentiments among individuals regarding their employment prospects. To determine a broader emotional response, individual comments posted on 26 YouTube videos discussing the impact of AI on employment within the Indian labor market were scraped and analyzed using pre-trained VADER and ROBERTA for sentiment analysis; NRCLex for emotion analysis; and topic modeling using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). Findings indicate an increasing negative sentiment among individuals toward AI and employment from 2017 to 2023, with three dominant emotions being anticipation, trust, and fear. Further, the temporal analysis showcases the trend followed by sentiment and emotion from 2017 to 2023. Using LDA, three major focal points of discussion, namely AI Awareness, AI at workplace and AI and future employment, were identified. Based on our results, relevant managerial and policy implications are offered.

In the era of the digital world, the revitalization of poor households' responses to the availability and usage of financial services is essential. Deprived individuals who possess financial literacy are able to make better financial decisions by learning about and comprehending the different financial services that are offered in the market. This research is an attempt to investigate the mediating effect of online banking and the moderating effect of income while mapping linkages between financial literacy and financial inclusion in the context of PMJDY which is a national mission of financial inclusion in India. The primary data acquired from marginalized people having bank accounts under PMJDY via structured questionnaires in Himachal Pradesh (India) were analyzed using a structural equation model combined with bootstrap. The results of the current study shed valuable light on the crucial mediating role of online banking as a driver for financial inclusion through financial literacy for the beneficiaries of PMJDY. Additionally, this study emphasizes understanding the significance of household income in encouraging financial inclusion for marginalized groups. This study identifies crucial predictors of financial inclusion, especially through PMJDY and provides practical implications to assist policymakers in increasing financial services among marginalized populations by leveraging financial literacy and online banking, thereby contributing to broader financial inclusion in India.

We study the impact of state political settings on competition among state-chartered banks in mortgage lending. We consider three cases for state political settings in the United States: (1) Unified Republican, where both the state legislature and governorship are controlled by the Republican Party; (2) Unified Democratic, where both are controlled by the Democratic Party; and (3) Divided, where control is split between the two parties. It is often argued that deregulation creates more competition in many sectors of the economy, and while Republican control is associated with increases in deregulation, Democratic control is associated with reductions in deregulation. Using two measures of market competition including Concentration Ratio (CR) and the Herfindahl index (HHI), our empirical findings from staggered difference-in-differences suggest that competition among state-chartered banks in mortgage lending is stronger in unified Republican states than in unified Democratic states. Further cross-sectional analyses show that risky banks, defined as those with lower equity capital ratios and z-scores, are more sensitive to political settings in terms of their market shares. Our study contributes to the growing literature on the influence of politics on financial markets.

E-participation has been regarded by e-government practitioners and researchers around the world as an ultimate strategic goal of many innovative public service delivery models. However, one of the objective obstacles in advancing the concept in such political reforms was the fact that the public sector has always resorted to centralization of information management workflows in advancing related e-government policies and platforms, rendering all related transactions top-down by nature. Thus, the public sector has always been a conceptual initiator, decision maker, and implementer of these innovations in quite a directive manner. In this regard, this article aims to understand how blockchain technology changes the status quo in promoting adoption models for e-participation services, elaborating on new democratic opportunities that make digital governance more participative and collaborative in an intrinsically decentralized and distributed way, as well as discussing new affordances and risks that can actually undermine digital participation and paradoxically enhance existing political inequalities in modern society.

A highly relevant policy debate in developing countries concerns whether limited public funds should be allocated to productive infrastructure or social transfers. Following recent developments in mathematical economics (e.g., Brandl 2022), we contribute to this debate by presenting a mechanism for selecting optimal public development projects. The incentive path compatibility axiom allows identifying an acceptable project (the one that increases the agent's utility for each money spent) using the notion of dominant strategies in game theory. Funding an infrastructure investment project is preferable to directly transferring resources to households. We construct a top-down dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model and apply it to the Guinea-Bissau economy from 2014 to 2031. Evidence suggests that optimal public projects spur growth and social welfare. These results have significant policy implications for developing countries.

This study investigates how social audit (SA) influences sustainable corporate social responsibility (SCSR), with particular emphasis on the mediating roles of inclusive growth (IG) and creating shared value (CSV). A cross-sectional survey design was adopted, and primary data were collected from 409 beneficiaries of CSR programs in Odisha, India, using convenience sampling and a structured questionnaire. Factor analysis and linear regression techniques were applied to validate the constructs and explore preliminary associations, while Structural Equation Modeling was used to test the hypothesized framework. The results demonstrate that SA positively contributes to SCSR, both directly and indirectly through IG and CSV. These findings underscore the importance of transparent auditing mechanisms in strengthening accountability, promoting equitable development, and aligning business objectives with societal needs. The study advances CSR scholarship by integrating governance (SA), developmental (IG), and strategic (CSV) perspectives into a unified model of SCSR. Practically, the results provide actionable insights for managers and policymakers seeking to design credible, impactful, and sustainable CSR strategies, particularly in emerging economies where regulatory mandates and developmental challenges intersect.

This study empirically examines the relationship existing among Global Value Chain (GVC) participation, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), and sustainable development within sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) from 2000 to 2023, leveraging data from 39 countries. Employing a Panel Vector Autoregression (PVAR) approach, the study analyzes the dynamic and bidirectional relationships among these variables, addressing critical issues such as endogeneity, heterogeneity, and cross-sectional dependence. Empirical results reveal that increased participation in GVC participation positively contributes to sustainable development, although the impact is limited and short-lived. Similarly, FDI was found to significantly enhance sustainable development, underlining its catalytic role in SSA economies. Conversely, the regulatory framework demonstrates mixed results; stricter regulations, unexpectedly, exhibit a negative direct impact on sustainable development, but positively respond to increased sustainable development performance, highlighting potential delays, or indirect pathways through which regulations affect sustainability. Variance decomposition analysis underscores the importance of GVCs, FDI, and regulatory intensity as drivers influencing sustainable development outcomes, while impulse response functions further explain the temporal effects of shocks across these variables. The study recommends policies fostering technological innovation, targeted green investments, and robust regulatory frameworks to maximize the sustainable development benefits derived from GVC integration and FDI inflows.