Challenges and Trends in Home Automation

Home automation (HA) systems can be considered as an implementation of the internet of everything (IoE) where many devices are linked by intelligent connections in order to improve the quality of life at home. This chapter is dedicated to analyzing current trends and challenges in HA. Energy management, safer homes, and improved control over the house are some of the benefits of HA. However, privacy, security, social disruption, installation/maintenance issues, economic costs, market fragmentation, and low interoperability represent real problems of these IoE solutions. In this regard, the latest proposals in HA try to answer some of these needs with low-cost DIY solutions, wireless solutions, and IP-based HA systems. This chapter proposes a way to deal with the interoperability problem by means of the open-source platform openHAB. It is based on the concept of a home automation bus, an idea that enables the separation of the physical and the functional view of any device, allowing to create a technology-agnostic environment, which is perfect for addressing the interoperability problem.

Dark Market Share around Earnings Announcements and Speed of Resolution of Investor Disagreement

This study examines how the market share of dark venues changes at earnings announcements. Our analysis shows a statistically significant increase in dark market share in the weeks prior to, during, and following the earnings announcement. We also predict and find evidence that increases in dark market share around earnings announcements are higher for firms with high quality accounting information. In addition, we find a positive relation between the change in dark market share and the speed of resolution of investor disagreement-a key dimension of informational efficiency, which suggests that dark trading is associated with an improvement in market quality. How market fragmentation changes around news events, the role accounting information plays in market fragmentation, and how changes in market fragmentation relate to market quality can help provide insights to securities regulators.

Order Routing Decisions for a Fragmented Market: A Review

This paper reviews the up-to-date theoretical, empirical, and experimental literature related to the trading venue choice in the context of the fragmented equity markets. We provide a brief background on the history of trading fragmentation in the equity market and its determinants. We discuss the direct and indirect impacts of the market fragmentation on market quality in various dimensions, including liquidity, volatility, and price efficiency. Next, we identify possible determinants and channels from theoretical and empirical studies that could explain order routing decisions and present the possible directions for future research. Finally, we discuss the major regulatory reforms in the U.S. equity market on routing venue decisions. This topic is relevant in current times when phenomena such as “GameStop Frenzy” have drawn significant attention to commission-free trading venues.

Investigating the Impact of Trade Disruptions on Price Transmission in Commodity Markets: An Application of Threshold Cointegration

Threshold cointegration is introduced as an econometric technique to model the impact of trade disruptions on spatial price transmission in commodity markets so that market participants and policy makers can understand the global impact of trade disruptions on prices. The threshold cointegration technique that is employed is flexible in that it allows the number of thresholds and their location to be determined endogenously and the threshold variable to be exogenous to the system. We innovate on the threshold cointegration technique by selecting a measure of trade disruptions as the threshold variable. This innovation can be used for any commodity market that is spatially connected due to arbitrage; however, to illustrate its usefulness we apply the technique to trade disruptions for canola traded between Canada and China using weekly data between 2014 and 2019 and find that canola trade disruptions between Canada and China impacted global price transmission and resulted in market fragmentation.

Conclusion

Many people are worried about the fragmentation of labor markets, as firms replace employees with independent contractors. Another common worry is that low-skill work, and ultimately nearly all forms of work, will be replaced by robots as artificial intelligence advances. Labor market fragmentation is not a new phenomenon and can be addressed with stronger classification laws supplemented by antitrust enforcement. In fact, the gig economy has many attractive elements, and there is no reason to fear it as long as existing laws are enforced. Over the long run, artificial intelligence may replace much of the work currently performed by human beings. If it does, the appropriate response is not antitrust or employment regulation but policy that ensures the social surplus is fairly divided.

Market fragmentation and the rise of sub-national regulation

The evaluation of the Single European Market requires a better knowledge of the level of integration both between and within the EU countries. While some institutions are pushing for greater integration between EU countries, others may be introducing—purposely or collaterally—additional barriers to interaction. Several reports have reported the high levels of market fragmentation prevailing within Spain. This paper aims to determine whether regional borders influenced the patterns of intra- and interregional trade between the 18 regions of Spain (Nuts 2) over a long period of time (1995–2017). While trade is more intense within regions than between them, our results suggest the presence of spatial and temporal heterogeneity in the estimated home bias. We also investigate empirically the effect that the quantity and quality of national, regional and local regulations have on the economic performance of firms, in both the industrial and the service sectors. We use different non-spatial and spatial-gravity models, which yield robust results.

Market Fragmentation

We model a simple market setting in which fragmentation of trade of the same asset across multiple exchanges improves allocative efficiency. Fragmentation reduces the inhibiting effect of price-impact avoidance on order submission. Although fragmentation reduces market depth on each exchange, it also isolates cross-exchange price impacts, leading to more aggressive overall order submission and better rebalancing of unwanted positions across traders. Fragmentation also has implications for the extent to which prices reveal traders’ private information. While a given exchange price is less informative in more fragmented markets, all exchange prices taken together are more informative. (JEL D47, D82, G14)

THE WINE SECTOR MANAGEMENT IN PORTUGAL: AN OVERVIEW ON ITS THREE-DIMENSIONAL SUSTAINABILITY

The paper scrutinizes wine sector sustainability management in Portugal, which is a traditional wine producer. In Portugal, wine is strategic to its agri-food industry. As the wine market faced changes in consumption and an increase in the quality of the wine offered, new green products (organic, biodynamic) appeared for market niches concerned with environmental and health issues, as well as new ways of communication through the Internet and social media. First, we discuss a global wine market that affects wine market in Portugal, and then we present the internal situation and tendencies, including some examples of sustainable management of this sector in the economic, societal, and ecological dimensions. In the present work, the perspective is essentially of an entire economic sector, since in the Portuguese wine market the Old-World model prevails. This situation comprises high market fragmentation, and strong power exercised by distribution and consumers; it also means that wine production is subject to strict national and common market regulations. However, we do not abandon the micro analysis at the level of the company’s relations with its stakeholders. The methodology adopted in this review is qualitative and it consists of critical analysis of the literature from diverse disciplines, but it also uses secondary sources, such as institutional and technical reports, databases, statistics, notes and media news.

ECB monetary policy during COVID-19

This paper aims to point out the monetary policy measures that the European This paper aims to point out the monetary policy measures that the European Central Bank has taken since the outbreak of the COVID-19 crisis. In the Eurozone, at the start of the COVID-19 crisis, financial conditions deteriorated sharply, potentially threatening to worsen the economic outlook, deepen market fragmentation, jeopardize monetary policy transmission, encourage a downward inflationary trajectory, weaken prices and undermine public and private stability. Aware of the new situation of the ECB, it responded quickly and efficiently with coordinated and ambitious measures to alleviate the perceived financial and economic difficulties. To maintain a flexible monetary policy stance, the ECB adopted an interim non-standard measured COVID-19 Asset Purchase Program (PEPP) to mitigate and improve financial conditions and restart an earlier Asset Purchase Program (APP) aimed at inflation expectations. At the same time, other measures have been strengthened and expanded, such as Targeted Long-Term Refinancing Operations (LTROs, TLTRO III, and PLTRO) aimed at providing liquidity ampleness to the real sector and collateral standards. The implementation of the adopted measures has influenced the stabilization of the economic and financial system of the EU and improved lending to corporate and household banks.