The impact of financing policy on the cost of debt

The cost of debt is a key element to define the amount of the regular interest payments of a company and its business value. It is used for indicators that warn of the economic crisis, which is relevant for the countries where most companies are financially dependent on liabilities. The formalized criteria for the types of financing policy, improved procedure for the cost of debt calculation make it possible to reveal policy with the capital structure that minimizes the cost of debt.The study is based on Ukrainian food processing companies for the period 2013–2020. The studied database was distributed by the types of financing policies: 22% of the cases have a conservative policy, 15% – moderate, 26% – aggressive, 37% – super-aggressive. The results show that the highest weighted cost of debt (24.1%) belongs to the conservative policy, which replaces negative equity by the expensive long-term debts, as well as super-aggressive policy (20.8%) with trade payable that is near half of the capital, and long days payable outstanding. A company can reduce the cost of debt relying on non-interest-bearing liabilities and trade payable if its days payable outstanding are kept at the industrial level or below. Moderate and conservative financing policies, which are based on equity and avoid debts, provide the lowest weighted cost of debt: 2.1% and 1.2%.Thus, choosing the desired type of financing policy for the company, it is possible to form a capital structure that will reduce the cost of debt.

Memory and nostalgia: pre-reform Russia in the minds of the Russian nobility of the second half of the 19th century

This article is devoted to the study of the perception of the pre-reform era by the upper class in the second half of the 19th century, after several years thereof, then decades after the abolition of serfdom. Initial assessments of the peasant reform carried out among the nobility were quite contradictory. They ranged from total rejection and denial to approval of government policies. But all in all, the abolition of serfdom was a turning point in history. The post-reform period of "impoverishment" of the Russian nobility is associated with a rethinking of the place and role of the upper class in society and the state. Not all landowners managed to adapt to the conditions of the post-reform village, they left for the capital, abroad. The diminution of privileges and the loss of the exclusive status of the upper class fueled the mood of nostalgia. The article uses the concept of nostalgia, developed by Svetlana Boym, which provides for the identification of two types of nostalgia: restorative and reflective. Restorative nostalgia manifested itself not only in the collective consciousness of the upper class but became one of the motivations of the conservative policy of Alexander III. Reflective nostalgia was expressed in the growing interest in the study of the culture of noble manors, determined the identity of the upper estate. Overall, it can be argued that nostalgia has become not only an important feature of the collective consciousness of the nobility, but influenced state policy, shaped the image of the future based on the lost past.

Where next for the design, delivery and evaluation of community-based physical activity prescription? Emerging lessons from the United Kingdom.

Despite widespread use, community-based physical activity prescription is controversial. Data limitations have resulted in a lack of clarity about what works, under what circumstances, and for whom, reflected in conservative policy recommendations. In this commentary we challenge a predominantly negative discourse, using contemporary research to highlight promising findings and ‘lessons learnt’ for design, delivery, and evaluation. In doing so, we argue for the importance of a more nuanced approach to future commissioning and evaluation. Contribution: • Amalgamating learning from multiple research teams to create recommendations for advancing physical activity prescription.

Model Predictive Control for Cooperative Transportation with Feasibility-Aware Policy

The transportation of large payloads can be made possible with Multi-Robot Systems (MRS) implementing cooperative strategies. In this work, we focus on the coordinated MRS trajectory planning task exploiting a Model Predictive Control (MPC) framework addressing both the acting robots and the transported load. In this context, the main challenge is the possible occurrence of a temporary mismatch among agents’ actions with consequent formation errors that can cause severe damage to the carried load. To mitigate this risk, the coordination scheme may leverage a leader–follower approach, in which a hierarchical strategy is in place to trade-off between the task accomplishment and the dynamics and environment constraints. Nonetheless, particularly in narrow spaces or cluttered environments, the leader’s optimal choice may lead to trajectories that are infeasible for the follower and the load. To this aim, we propose a feasibility-aware leader–follower strategy, where the leader computes a reference trajectory, and the follower accounts for its own and the load constraints; moreover, the follower is able to communicate the trajectory infeasibility to the leader, which reacts by temporarily switching to a conservative policy. The consistent MRS co-design is allowed by the MPC formulation, for both the leader and the follower: here, the prediction capability of MPC is key to guarantee a correct and efficient execution of the leader–follower coordinated action. The approach is formally stated and discussed, and a numerical campaign is conducted to validate and assess the proposed scheme, with respect to different scenarios with growing complexity.

Inventory Management in SMEs Operating in Polish Group Purchasing Organizations during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 virus has hit the economy around the world. In Poland, SMEs have the greatest problems with doing business. Border blockades and the quarantine for enterprises in virtually all industries throughout Poland greatly complicated the supply systems and the inventory management process. Up to now, SMEs have acted in group purchasing organizations to improve their competitive position. This form of activity also positively affects their financial security. Therefore, in this paper, the inventory management among this group of companies during the COVID-19 pandemic was analyzed. The purpose of the paper was to show how inventory management strategies changed during the COVID-19 pandemic in SMEs operating in industry GPOs. The analysis was carried out on a group of 88 Polish commercial enterprises operating in purchasing groups. The research period covered the years 2017–2019 and March–June 2020. The research showed a change in inventory management strategy in SMEs during the pandemic time of COVID-19. For the first four months, managers of enterprises tried to pursue a conservative policy and to accumulate stocks in the event of a shortage of supplies. This article also presents the form of security that was applied for SMEs operating in group purchasing organizations (GPOs) to avoid forced downtime caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Shadow Committees: On “Drug User Voice,” Representation, and Mobilization in a Norwegian Drug Policy Reform

Until recently, Norway remained immovable on its conservative policy that illegal drug use is a crime. In 2018, the Health Minister appointed an inquiry commission to design a less restrictive drug policy, which included two “drug user representatives.” But the Minister’s choices for these posts met massive dissatisfaction from some drug users who contended that the representatives “are not real drug users” and do not “speak for” nor “act on the behalf” of their experiences and opinions. They mobilized to establish an alternative organization, the Shadow Committee, to propose a drug policy reform shaped by “the user voices” and “not polluted by political compromises.” Yet, while performing a labor of difference, this committee, too, became caught in conflicting landscapes of representation with some members contesting strategic solidarity. Based on this case, and an ethnographic fieldwork among the protesters, this article investigates the concept of representation as understood, contested and applied by “drug users.” Exploring how they relate to “user voices” and question the authenticity of some of “user representatives,” I highlight how changing political landscapes affect understandings of representation and shape political, individual and collective forms of involvement. I draw on Pitkin’s political philosophy and apply the classical categorization of political representation to suggest reconsidering the governing assumptions regarding “user representatives” that increasingly inform drug and treatment policies in Norway. I ask if the concept of representation itself may be a barrier to meaningful involvement.

Policy Learning and Criminal Justice Reform in the U.S. States

This article investigates criminal justice reform in the U.S. states through a policy learning framework. A comparative case study of reform in Texas and California reveals a policy learning process conditioned by each state’s political environment. Republicans in Texas embraced reform after conservative policy entrepreneurs framed the issue in a manner that matched lawmakers’ core ideological beliefs. Republicans received no such messages in California. With few electoral incentives to support reform, Republicans in California demonstrated little interest in learning from the policy experiences of co-partisans in earlier adopting states. Overall, the analysis shows how policy learning shapes Republicans’ relative support for criminal justice reform and the dynamic ways Republican leadership on the issue helps facilitate state policy adoption.

Contemporary luxury tourism and emerging new destinations: The case of Iran

This article aims to explore the concept of contemporary luxury tourism and try to associate it with the Iranian context. More specifically, feasibility and potential study of luxury tourism in Iran in terms of rarity and uniquely by considering the cultural factors. This paper investigates, the concept of luxury has changed over time. In addition, will stress on the importance of recognizing the potential of luxury travel and its diversity in Iran and bringing these topical international issues to a wide audience. The luxury travel market raised new demands for emerging destinations like Middle Eastern and South Asian countries. Furthermore, in recent years a large number of new destinations like Iran have emerged around the world and have started to compete and generate income in the international tourism market. According to analysis data in this paper, Iran like most countries in the Middle East has a natural competitive advantage in global luxury tourism. Thanks to the current conservative policy all its aesthetic aspects have been under protection for decades. However, the potential of this competitive advantage has not been reached. The research design in this paper consists of three stages to ensure rigorous scale development. The strategies, processes, techniques utilized in the collection of data or evidence for analysis in order to uncover new information or create a better understanding of this topic is driven from materials in the field of luxury and luxury travel during the last decades. In order to reduce this limitation, the researcher tried to have a generalization review. Data for this study were obtained during the COVID-19 crisis.

The Balkans Geo-psychoanalysis

In the 1990s, Julija Kristeva and Slavoj Žižek developed a unique discourse within psychoanalysis - the psychoanalysis of the Balkans. Their cultural and political analysis represented the Balkans as a pathological region of nations suffering from the syndrome of an “archaic mother.” They propose in their different ways that the subject (nation) must radically separate from oedipal attachment to the attachment to nationalism as unemancipated Oedipus and subordinate to the authority of the symbolic father, that is, to the West. At the heart of such an approach is a conservative policy of labeling the Balkans as primitive behind Kristeva and Žižek loom self-orientalization and geopolitical de-identification with the Balkans as a precondition for their cosmopolitan and universalist identity.