Toward Fair Recommendation in Two-sided Platforms

Many online platforms today (such as Amazon, Netflix, Spotify, LinkedIn, and AirBnB) can be thought of as two-sided markets with producers and customers of goods and services. Traditionally, recommendation services in these platforms have focused on maximizing customer satisfaction by tailoring the results according to the personalized preferences of individual customers. However, our investigation reinforces the fact that such customer-centric design of these services may lead to unfair distribution of exposure to the producers, which may adversely impact their well-being. However, a pure producer-centric design might become unfair to the customers. As more and more people are depending on such platforms to earn a living, it is important to ensure fairness to both producers and customers. In this work, by mapping a fair personalized recommendation problem to a constrained version of the problem of fairly allocating indivisible goods, we propose to provide fairness guarantees for both sides. Formally, our proposed FairRec algorithm guarantees Maxi-Min Share of exposure for the producers, and Envy-Free up to One Item fairness for the customers. Extensive evaluations over multiple real-world datasets show the effectiveness of FairRec in ensuring two-sided fairness while incurring a marginal loss in overall recommendation quality. Finally, we present a modification of FairRec (named as FairRecPlus ) that at the cost of additional computation time, improves the recommendation performance for the customers, while maintaining the same fairness guarantees.

TRANSFORMATION OF ECONOMIC PROCESSES ON THE BASIS OF DIGITALISATION

The main task of our study is to justify the primary directions of transformation of economic processes on the basis of digitalisation. Nowadays, the digitalisation of the economy in the global economic environment is considered a priority model of global innovation development. Institutional factors are particularly important in the conditions of transformation of economic processes on the basis of digitalisation. They form the fundamental parameters of the long-term functioning of economic systems. It is determined that the role of institutional factors in ensuring economic development is multifaceted as they affect its duration and quality. These factors can be divided into formal and informal. We have systematised the influence of formal and informal institutional factors on the transformation of economic processes. It is found that the inability of the Ukrainian institutional system to ensure effective economic development demonstrates the institutional traps. Negative manifestations of this system hinder the positive directions for the transformation of economic processes, modernisation of the economy, and competitiveness. It is justified that the transformation of management economic processes should be based on the implementation of the proposed system of principles, the use of which will identify and solve a set of problems of social development of the region, which meets the challenges of our time. To create an effective system of interaction between corporate and regional participants, it is necessary to link their goals, to harmonise them with the goals of socio-economic development of the region. This is where digitalisation can help. It is determined that in modern conditions, the problems of the digital sector affect the competitiveness of the economy, as the lag in obtaining and processing relevant data, the inability to use digital resources are accompanied by the loss of former market positions. From the standpoint of the theory of asymmetry of international trade, the digital dependence of one country on another leads to an increase in the gap in economic development between these countries. The rapid development of information and computer technologies and the active Internet penetration into all spheres of human life have led to the transformation of economic processes according to the level of digitalisation. The development and dissemination of key technologies underlying the digital economy have a decisive impact on the transformation of globalisation: they directly affect the production of goods and services, human resources, investment in human and physical capital, foreign direct investment, international technology transfer, industrial innovation. In essence, all this directly affects the efficiency of production, performance, competitiveness, and economic growth – from individual market participants to countries, regions, and the world economy as a whole.

Inequality of household consumption and PM2.5 footprint across socioeconomic groups in China

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals have highlighted the challenge posed by increasing air pollution. This study allocates PM2.5 footprint to household consumption expenditure based on multi-regional input-output model and survey data collected from 30 thousand households. The household indirect PM2.5 footprint related to spending on food, hospital, electricity, and education rank as the top four items, plus direct PM2.5 emissions, which in combination contribute more than 55% of total air pollution. Compared with the poor, the responsibilities for air pollution on the wealthy are more sensitive to changes in income, especially for high-end consumption categories, such as luxury goods and services, education and healthcare. Further, the wealthiest 20% of households cause 1.5 times PM2.5 footprint per capita than exposure to PM2.5 emissions. The high-footprint household samples are concentrated in high-exposure areas. It is recommended that mitigation policies address inequality of PM2.5 footprint by targeting the top 20% footprint groups with tags of wealthy, urban resident, well-educated, small family, and apartment living.

Conservation Status of Forest Types Vary Greatly in Myanmar - the Most Forested Country in the Indo-burma Biodiversity Hotspot

Diverse forests with distinct forest types, harbor exceptional biodiversity and provide many ecosystem goods and services, making some forest types more economically valuable and prone to exploitation than others. The high rates of deforestation in Southeast Asia endanger the existence of such vulnerable forest types. Myanmar, the region’s largest forest frontier provides a last opportunity to conserve these vulnerable forest types. However, the exact distribution and spatial extent of Myanmar’s forest types has not been well characterized. To address this research gap, we developed a national scale Forest Type map of Myanmar at 20m resolution, using moderate resolution, multi-sensor satellite images (Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2 and ALOS-PALSAR), extensive field data, and a machine learning model (RandomForest). We mapped nine major forest types and developed a Conservation Status Score to evaluate the conservation status of the mapped forest types. Swamp, Mangrove, Dry Deciduous, Lowland Evergreen and Thorn forests were ranked as the five least conserved forest types. We also identified the largest remaining patch for each of the five least conserved forest types and determined their protection status to inform future forest conservation policy. In most cases, these patches lay outside protected areas indicating areas that may be prioritized for future conservation.

The relational impact of social rights judgments: a trust-based analysis

There is a growing body of scholarship examining the impact of courts’ social rights judgments, especially their distributive impact (ie the extent to which they deliver social rights-related goods and services to the poor and marginalised). Commentators have used this impact to evaluate the effectiveness of courts in realising citizens’ social rights. This paper contributes to the scholarship by adding a new ‘relational’ dimension to our understanding of such impact. It uses the literature on the concept of trust from philosophy, sociology and other disciplines to analyse the impact that social rights judgments have on the relationship between citizens and the political branches of government, and argues that social rights judgments can modify two elements of this relationship that determine the dynamics at play in it: citizens’ vulnerability to the political branches with respect to the relevant goods and services; and citizens’ uncertainty about the political branches’ exercise of control over the goods and services (which can promote the political branches’ trustworthiness). By broadening our understanding of these judgments’ impact, the paper offers a valuable lens through which to analyse social rights judgments and adds needed nuance to current debates about courts’ effectiveness in realising citizens’ social rights.

Perspectives on the pervasive energy-systems transformations

Energy is central for the global decarbonization and the achievement of a sustainable future for all. This calls for a fundamental energy-systems transformation that would bring multiple co-benefits for health, climate and other challenges facing humanity and especially those without access to affordable and clean energy services. Pervasive transformation toward zero-carbon electricity and electrification of energy end use are central to achieving higher efficiencies, decarbonization and net-zero emissions. This is not merely a technical and economic issue. It is about people, about societies and about values and behaviors. Technology is an integral part of the society and an expression of collective intentionality through aggregation of sundry individual choices. The next disruptive transformation toward a sustainable future may indeed be powered by the digital revolution. It poses dangers for privacy, dissemination of alternative realities and erosion of evidence-based information but it also offers a great promise of catalyzing the emergence of a sustainable future by augmenting human capabilities by new, more convenient, more efficient and decarbonized goods and services. The key question is whether humanity will have the political will to collectively achieve the energy-systems transformation toward a sustainable future and net-zero emissions in merely three decades.

The Effects of Buyers' Attitudes Toward Supplier Diversity on Their Spending with Ethnic Minority Businesses

This study examines characteristics that may influence buyers' desire to obtain goods and services from ethnic minority enterprises using data from 277 buyers employed at large buying organizations (LPOs) in the United States and the United Kingdom (EMBs). The literature on social capital is utilized to construct hypotheses about the cognitive, structural, and relational factors that may influence decisions to purchase from minority enterprises. Following that, current discrimination theory is used to deduce how buyers' views about supplier diversity affect the effects of social capital on their buying operations with EMBs. Multiple regression research indicates that in both the United States and the United Kingdom, buyers' perceived positive social capital has a direct, substantial association with their spending with EMBs. Additionally, the findings indicate that in both nations, purchasers' attitudes toward supplier diversity act as a moderator of the connection. Interestingly, despite the fact that the United States pioneered the concept of supplier variety, our study reveals that UK LPO buyers spend more with their EMBs. This research demonstrates how LPOs' strategic corporate social responsibility initiatives may be influenced by their buyers' social relationships with EMBs and their views about supplier diversity, based on these findings.

A Conceptual Forecasting Analysis of International Trade Aspects Based on Globalization Impact Issues

Global GDP is really important for trade, since the larger the global economy, the more goods and services available for trade. Global GDP grew by around two-thirds in real terms between 2000 and 2020 – or 2.6% per year on average.2020 saw some of the largest trade reductions and output volumes for both industrial production and goods trade since WWII. The year 2020 was marked by some of the largest reductions in trade and output volumes since WWII. The declines in both world industrial production and goods trade in the first half of 2020 were of similar depth to those at the trough of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). In addition, trade and production impacts across specific goods, services and trade partners were highly varied. Initial pandemic-era expectations for a double-digit decline in world merchandise trade in 2020 did not materialise. Global trade turned out to recover from the shock at an extraordinarily fast pace from around mid-2020.

The Importance of Entrepreneurship in Micro and Small Enterprises in Uncertainty and Barrier Scenarios

Economic, political, and technological uncertainties require organizations to prepare adequately for new events that occur each day. Economic crisis, changes in the policies of each country and technological developments are classic examples of these changes in organizations. Seasonality is one of the economic phenomena that occur, and different forms of management are required. The seasonality that is described as a systematic and temporal imbalance of the tourist phenomenon that does not need to be regular, caused by the climate or by the vacation periods, and is based on the consumer behavior that can be expressed in terms of the number of visitors, traffic, highways, jobs, and tickets at attractions. Therefore, through a careful analysis of seasonality, it is possible that the losses are predicted, and the negative impact is not so grotesque on the company. For this, it is good that the manager uses the cost assessment methods to assume the seasonality of sales and thus be able to guard against the negative effects of the same. The objective of this research is to understand how owners of micro and small businesses in coastal cities consider themselves entrepreneurs or not and how they deal with obstacles such as seasonality through cost management. The methodology used was based on an exploratory and bibliographic research with a qualitative approach, seeking to analyze the triad: Entrepreneurship, Seasonality and Cost Management. The field research was applied through a semi-structured questionnaire to the sample of 100 Microentrepreneurs in the trade of goods and services in Caraguatatuba and São Sebastião, central cities of the North Coast of São Paulo. The main results show that most of the interviewed entrepreneurs perceive a certain impact caused by seasonality, understand the use of Cost Management to improve their processes and are adapted to one of the main costing methods highlighted by the bibliography.

The circular economy model as a promising path towards regional ecological and economic balance

The article presents the results of an analysis of the possibilities for the transition of the region’s economy to a circular economic model. According to the aim of this article the main economic activities and tools for making such a transition in Kamchatka Territory have been identified. The principles of the circular economy and its advantages over the traditional “linear” model have been analysed. On the example of the Kamchatka Territory, the preconditions and prospects for the region’s transition to a circular economy model in terms of the existing structure of production of goods and services have been analysed. Using MS Excel tools, the structure of the gross regional product has been analysed, according to the results of which the main economic activities that are promising for the transition to a circular model have been identified. Regional indicators for waste recycling and neutralisation have been analysed, and chain coefficients have been calculated for growth in the share of recycled and neutralised waste for Russia as a whole, for the Far Eastern Federal District and Kamchatka Territory. Based on the results of the calculation, it has been concluded that the coefficient values for the Kamchatka Territory lag behind those for the whole of Russia and the Far Eastern Federal District. A number of financial and economic, technological, legal and informational tools have been identified, the use of which makes it possible to implement the transition to a circular economic model. Fisheries, energy, tourism, recycling and waste management have been identified as the most promising economic activities for such a transition. The findings conclude that it is important to continue research into the various aspects of the transition to a circular economy, as well as continued coordinated efforts are needed to implement it.