This book presents an overview of the development of digital finance. It covers various aspects of digital

finance, including its definition, evolution, and importance in modern economics. It explores the interdisciplinary perspective of digital finance and its relationship with capitalism, and discusses the key factors influencing the development of digital finance, as well as the challenges and opportunities it faces. It also offers practical insights into digital finance, such as the innovative digital financial models and

platforms and the strategies of digital transformation in commercial banks. What is new about this approach is that the book takes a holistic view of digital finance, covering not only its economic and financial aspects but also its social and environmental impacts. It also offers a critical evaluation of the challenges and opportunities in digital finance from a global perspective. In this book, authors look into the impact of digital finance in various fields, such as monetary theory, wealth management, central bank digital currency, international monetary system, and network security and data privacy.

By adopting a practical, market-oriented approach to capital allocation, this book sheds light on the complex issue of cash flow deployment and the creation of shareholder value. In order to run a company efficiently, it is not sufficient to simply be a competent businessperson. One must also possess the skills of a knowledgeable investor. The management must determine where to invest capital given the diverse range of investment options available, such as mergers and acquisitions (M&A), dividends, share repurchase programs, and organic growth opportunities.

This book provides a useful analytical framework for corporate executives to consider when allocating capital, along with empirical findings from peer group studies and company case studies.

The book helps answer the following questions:

? What are the primary factors that drive your company's shareholder value? Are they aligned with the strategy the companyis pursuing?

? What are the key dynamics and trade-offs between return on investments (ROIC), growth, and earnings quality?

? What are the current market expectations embedded in the stock price?

? Given the capital allocation priorities, what does an "optimal" capital structure look like?

? How do you set, and in turn communicate, the capital allocation and funding priorities?

Sensory marketing is a way to differentiate businesses from their competition while influencing customers and their behaviour. At its best, sensory marketing guides or helps customers to make certain choices in a way that they are unaware of what actually influenced their choices. Although it sounds like an attractive way to "nudge" customers, it is a highly demanding practice that also involves risks and ethical concerns.

This textbook delves into the world of sensory marketing in a physical retail setting and offers a comprehensive and coherent view of various sensory cues and their capacity to drive our behaviour through stimulating our senses and creating sensory experiences. It particularly highlights the meaning of the multisensory nature of retail stores and emphasises how cues tend to affect us in combination rather than separately as single cues.

After reading this book, you will be able to:

? Identify various cues in a retailing setting

? Categorise cues into different groups

? Understand the multisensory nature of retail stores and the meaning of cue (in)congruence

? Describe how consumers are likely to respond differently to cue combinations than single cues

Ideal reading for students taking classes in consumer behaviour, shopper marketing, retail marketing and store design among others, it contains more than 30 global examples from various retail companies, self-reflective questions and decisions-based questions to aid learning.

This book offers a comprehensive overview of smartphone security, focusing on various operating systems and their associated challenges. It covers the smartphone industry's evolution, emphasizing security and privacy concerns. It explores Android, iOS, and Windows OS security vulnerabilities and mitigation measures. Additionally, it discusses alternative OSs like Symbian, Tizen, Sailfish, Ubuntu Touch, KaiOS, Sirin, and HarmonyOS.

The book also addresses mobile application security, best practices for users and developers, Mobile Device Management (MDM) in enterprise settings, mobile network security, and the significance of mobile cloud security and emerging technologies such as IoT, AI, ML, and blockchain. It discusses the importance of balancing innovation with solid security practices in the ever-evolving mobile technology landscape.

Research skills are as critical to social work practitioners as skills in individual and group counselling, policy analysis, and community development. Adopting strategies similar to those used in direct practice courses, this book integrates research with social work practice, and in so doing promotes an understanding and appreciation of the research process.

The third edition of Practising Social Work Research comprises twenty-seven case studies that illustrate different research approaches, including quantitative, qualitative, single-subject, and mixed methods. The third edition also adopts a greater equity, diversity, and inclusivity focus than the previous editions.

Through the use of applied, real-life examples, the authors demonstrate the processes of conceptualization, operationalization, sampling, data collection and processing, and implementation. Designed to help the student and practitioner become more comfortable with research procedures, Practising Social Work Research capitalizes on the strengths that social work students bring to assessment and problem solving.

This thought-provoking book unravels the intricate interplay between human behavior and disasters, weaving a rich narrative that transcends traditional boundaries. Embark on a captivating exploration of human responses to multifaceted disasters with this book. Unveiling the human psyche and the intricate web of emotions that intertwine with disaster events, this book offers a profound understanding of human responses to multifaceted disasters.

Written with precision and meticulous research, this book captivates scholars, practitioners, and policymakers alike. Its multidimensional perspectives offer valuable insights for disaster management, urban planning, sociology, and public health, transcending disciplinary boundaries.

Despite urgent calls for global action, sustainable social work practice, and a solid "green" theoretical knowledge base, North American social work and helping professions have been slow to learn from community activists, acknowledge the international climate emergency, and act collectively to achieve climate justice.

Greening Social Work Education examines how social work educators can best incorporate sustainability content into social work curricula, integrate green teaching methods, and mobilize students and colleagues towards climate action, justice, and leadership. Drawing on Canadian content, this collection highlights Indigenous, eco-feminist, collective-action, and multi-interdisciplinary approaches to social work. The book provides a rationale for why the topic of greening is important for social work and the helping professions; discussion of current debates, tensions, and issues; useful ideas related to innovative interdisciplinary theoretical approaches, analyses, and constructs; and practical recommendations for teaching green social work education. In doing so, Greening Social Work Education strives to help social workers and educators gain the confidence and tools they need to transform their teaching and curricula.

Weaving together significant theoretical analysis and real-world empirical evidence, Antonia Kupfer presents fresh findings based on intricate sociological research. Chapters utilize accounts from supermarket clerks working in a wide variety of positions and stores, from discounters to high-end grocers. Ultimately, they suggest that political frameworks could greatly improve conditions for these workers and raise the level of professionalism within the service sector.

This engaging book will be highly illuminating for sociology scholars and policy makers seeking to understand the lived experiences of low paid workers. It will additionally be of benefit to those studying labor policy, inequality reduction and the sociology of discrimination.

This book discusses the relationship between women's labour force participation and fertility rates in developed nations. It shows a positive relationship between women's workforce participation and childbirth. It theorises a new approach to explaining this 'fertility paradox' that looks at institutional factors influencing gender equality in developed nations. The book analyses a range of institutional variables that impact the positive relationship between female employment and fertility rates, including labour market institutions, social policies and welfare state institutions (family policies, active labour market programs and public sector employment) as well as household gender dynamics. Written for both academics and policy-makers, this book has theoretical relevance for research on gender and work, and also for policies aimed at increasing women's employment and redressing low fertility, which are important issues in many developed nations.

This book examines subjective wellbeing in China in terms of life and job satisfaction from a longitudinal perspective during the last decade. Using quantitative methods, the research presented in this volume performed a longitudinal analysis of data collected by the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) from 2010 to 2018 to study the effects of social and economic transformations on life and job satisfaction among the Chinese population in this period.

Using Mplus software, the authors applied different quantitative methods of longitudinal analysis - such as latent growth models (LGM), latent growth mixture model (LGMM), parallel analysis, cross-lagged models (CL), latent change score (LCS), and multilevel longitudinal models (MLM) - to explore the trajectory of three variables on the CFPS data between 2010 and 2018: life satisfaction, job satisfaction and the interplay between job and life satisfaction. The results reveal a process of growing inequalities between life and jobsatisfaction among the Chinese population over time.

Life and Job Satisfaction in China: Exploring Longitudinal Analysis with Mplus will be of interest to sociologists, statisticians and applied researchers interested in applying quantitative methods to develop longitudinal studies of quality of life in China.

This book explores Rene Descartes's attempts to describe particular bodies, such as rocks, minerals, metals, plants, and animals, within the mechanistic interpretation of nature of his philosophical program. Despite his early rationalistic epistemology, Descartes's increasing attention to collections, histories, lists of qualities, and particular bodies results in a puzzling 'short history of all natural phenomena' contained in the Principles of philosophy (1644). The present book outlines the role of Descartes's observations and experimentation as he aimed to construct a universal science of nature, ultimately revealing the mechanization of nature in detail, and for curious bodies such as the Bologna Stone or the sensitive herb. What results is a theoretical natural history consistent with the mechanical principles of his philosophy, ultimately shedding new light on his attempt to produce a complete philosophy of nature.

The pig played a key role in the German Democratic Republic's attempts to create a modern, industrial food system built on communist principles. By the mid-1980s, East Germany produced more pork per capita than West Germany and the UK, while also suffering the unintended consequences of manure pollution, animal disease, and rolling food shortages.

The pig is a highly adaptive animal, and Thomas Fleischman uncovers three types of pig that played roles in this history: the industrial pig, remade to suit the conditions of factory farming; the wild boar, whose overpopulation was a side effect of agricultural development; and the garden pig, reflective of the regime's growing acceptance of private farming within the planned economy.

Fleischman chronicles East Germany's journey from family farms to factory farms, explaining how communist principles shaped the adoption of industrial agriculture practices. More broadly, Fleischman argues that agriculture under communism came to reflect the practices of capitalist agriculture, and that the pork industry provides a clear illustration of this convergence. His analysis sheds light on the causes of the country's environmental and political collapse in 1989 and offers a warning about the high cost of cheap food in the present and future. Communist Pigs was a finalist for the Turku Book Award, European Society for Environmental History.

This is the editio princeps of the first major scholastic commentary on Aristotle'sMetaphysics, edited with features that make the work accessible. A doctrinal index summarizes many of Rufus' principal theses. An index to all the works cited by Rufus includes his many references to Averroes, whom Rufus regarded as his principal guide to the literal meaning of the text. The index generalis lists the principal questions in which Rufus states his more original positions. The extensive footnotes include many references to Rufus' predecessors and contemporaries, which allows readers to contextualize Rufus' interpretation. Finally, the introductions discuss some technical issues and introduce the reader to a few important topics in Rufus' philosophy.

This book contributes to a better understanding of the importance of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles for corporate value in the energy industry. In particular, it analyzes how the energy industry is achieving this shift in response to government regulations and how it is addressing specific ESG issues. It discusses various economic incentives and market-based policies for ESG activities in the energy sector and highlights how energy firms are using environmental, social and governance initiatives to create value.

In turn, the book demonstrates how ESG principles can be implemented while considering various economic and corporate issues, such as financial markets, financial risks, asset pricing, value at risk, capital structure, capital budgeting, corporate (re)structuring, corporate governance, behavioral finance, financial performance, asset pricing, cost control, financial accounting, fiscal issues, institutions, governance, and legal aspects. Accordingly, it will appeal to scholars of economics, finance, and energy policy, and to anyone interested in the implementation of ESG principles in the energy industry.

This is the ninth book in a series organized by the Centre for Energy and Value Issues (CEVI). In this book, CEVI collaborates with the Hacettepe University Energy Markets Research and Application Center (Ankara, Turkey). The previous volumes in the series were: Financial Aspects in Energy (2011), Energy Economics and Financial Markets (2012), Perspectives on Energy Risk (2014), Energy Technology and Valuation Issues (2015), Energy and Finance (2016), Energy Economy, Finance and Geostrategy (2018), Financial Implications of Regulations in the Energy Industry (2020) and Applied Operations Research and Financial Modelling in Energy (2021).

This book provides an accurate evaluation of re-integration of Eurasia in the context of India's energy security and diplomacy which requires a normative shift as in the current Eurasian geopolitical and geo-economic matrix, the growing role of transit countries and their proximity with the Energy Complex Zone negates the fact that great powers or strong states control the Eurasian Heartland. Authors believe that wrecking this norm is fundamental here to deconstruct the undercurrents of energy geopolitics prevailing in Eurasia over the emerging phenomenon, as it discourages the re-integration of the Eurasian region. It explores how the geopolitical struggle between major powers for energy resources has been engendering mutual interdependencies between energy producers and transit countries.

It makes an attempt to provide a transcontinental study of Eurasian energy and connectivity as a thrust area for the present work positioning Eurasia in Indian foreign policy, determiningthe contours of energy diplomacy in connection with the Eurasian energy policy. It defines Eurasia broadly as the region that encompasses Central Asia and the Caucasus including Russia and transit countries. It addresses the geopolitical and geo-economic aspects of Eurasian re-integration in the context of India's energy security. The objective of this book is to combine theoretical, contemporary, and policy-oriented issues that deserve scholarly attention and would both complement and supplement the academic contributions.