Business, Economics and Management

Abstract: Geopolitical instability presents an inherent paradox for renewable energy economics, reinforcing the strategic imperative for renewable energy while acting as a cost multiplier for its deployment. This study examines how geopolitical escalation associated with the US-Israel-Iran conflict would affect renewable energy investment in Egypt, specifically utility-scale solar photovoltaic (PV), through physical supply side and financial risk transmission channels. Drawing on the theory of investment under uncertainty, a quantitative scenario-based techno-economic framework is developed using recent secondary data. Physical pressures arising from commodity, manufacturing, and logistics disruptions are measured through changes in capital expenditure (CAPEX), while changes in the weighted average cost of capital (WACC) measure financial risk. A reference solar PV system is evaluated alongside limited escalation, prolonged disruption, and severe escalation stress scenarios, followed by two-way sensitivity and robustness analyses. The reference case yields a levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) of 4.62 US cents/kWh under the baseline assumptions. Findings show that LCOE increases to 5.17 cents/kWh under limited escalation, 6.04 cents/kWh under prolonged disruption, and 7.06 cents/kWh under severe combined stress, with an increase of 52.9% relative to the reference case. Results further suggest that financing conditions exert a larger independent effect than the physical supply shock; a 20% increase in CAPEX raises LCOE by 18.4%, whereas increasing WACC by 4% raises it by 28.7%. This ranking remains stable across alternative reference specifications, while combined scenarios reveal an amplification mechanism when higher financing costs are applied to an enlarged capital requirement. Consistent with the theoretical proposition, the findings indicate that abundant renewable resources do not necessarily imply resilient investment conditions under geopolitical stress. Geopolitically exposed emerging economies like Egypt should therefore prioritize financial de-risking and supply chain resilience when formulating energy policy.

Abstract: The absence of a monetary value anchor independent of discretionary issuance remains an unresolved problem of monetary theory. This paper develops a conditional research program: granted the normative premise that civilizational survival is a lexicographically prior meta-constraint, the value anchor can migrate from scarcity to net order creation. The paper’s primary contribution is conceptual and architectural rather than mathematical. Conceptually, where the economics of entropy has treated entropy production as a cost constraint on the economy, we elevate the net increment of systemic order to the ontology of value — a normative move, stated as such, not a consequence of thermodynamics. Architecturally, we show that this ontology can be made operational as a two-layer anchor: a measurement layer of publicly recomputable order increments, and a calibration layer in which the residual conventions are democratized and audited. The value equation W_τ = k·E_τ^a·T_τ^1−a·I_τ^c is posited rather than derived from physics; its benchmark case W_τ = √(E_τ·T_τ·I_τ) combines exergy input, non-equilibrium maintenance time, and structural information gain, the last measured against a no-intervention counterfactual so that maintenance and discovery stand on one footing. Standard functional-equation arguments are used to show that the screening criteria select the power family uniquely within the twice-differentiable class — a result that organizes the choice of functional form without claiming new mathematics — and ordinal rankings are proved robust to exponent perturbations, the symmetric benchmark is shown to be the unique joint minimizer of measurement-error transmission and single-factor manipulation leverage, and the multiplicative form is defended against the incommensurate magnitudes of the physical factors. A measurement-error budget for the measurement architecture is derived. Existence and uniqueness of the incentive-compatible configuration are established under stated assumptions, including quasi-linear utility, and a second-order welfare-loss bound is derived for calibration errors in the consensus coefficients α. The incommensurability critique of ecological economics is engaged directly: the framework commensurates only the unit of account at the navigation layer, leaving plural values intact at the expression layer. Component-level cross-country evidence is consistent with the information dimension of the equation: R&D intensity alone accounts for 79% of the variance in innovation-output density in our sample, a result we report as a consistency check rather than as a test of the theory, and for which we specify a pre-registered extension protocol. A three-period overlapping-generations model, a general equilibrium with endogenous α (with scenario analysis when assumptions fail), mechanism defenses, and a four-layer measurement blueprint (the Civilization Realization Network, CRN, a forward-looking research program rather than a presently deployable system) complete the program. This paper does not address the macrostability of the anchor or the governance of its calibration layer; these are treated in the two companion papers of the series, whose results this paper flags wherever they are invoked. H1 provides executed component-level correlational evidence; H2–H5 are designed but not yet executed.

Abstract: This study develops a nonlinear, state-dependent framework for measuring and forecasting shock transmission across global grain markets. Monthly World Bank Pink Sheet prices for maize, U.S. hard red winter wheat, Thai 5% rice, soybeans, and soybean meal are combined with crude-oil returns, a fertilizer-price index, and the Oceanic Niño Index from January 1990 to December 2025. The proposed state-conditioned Bayesian additive regression-tree time-varying vector autoregression (SC-BART–TVP-VAR) treats energy, fertilizer, and climate conditions as lagged effect modifiers of a nonlinear grain-return system. Local posterior Jacobians translate the BART response surface into time-varying propagation matrices; generalized forecast-error variance decompositions then yield total, directional, and net connectedness without recursive ordering. A complementary linear VAR, rolling VAR, regime summaries, and chronologically separated out-of-sample forecasts provide transparent benchmarks. The linear full-sample total connectedness index is 33.44%, whereas the nonlinear local index averages 35.46% and ranges from 31.21% to 57.72%. Rice remains the most segmented market in the linear system, while soybean-related markets form the strongest bilateral transmission channel. High climate states are associated with greater rolling connectedness, but energy and fertilizer regimes do not generate uniformly larger spillovers. Out-of-sample BART forecasts yield lower RMSE than the linear VAR for all five commodities in the common holdout, although RF is slightly better for maize and none of the BART–VAR or BART–RF Diebold–Mariano comparisons are significant at the 5% level. The findings therefore support a state-dependent early-warning interpretation and competitive nonlinear forecasting rather than a claim of universal statistically significant superiority. The framework contributes a reproducible bridge between flexible Bayesian prediction, dynamic connectedness, and food-price surveillance, while retaining explicit safeguards against look-ahead bias and causal overstatement.

Abstract: Tax enforcement can separate the party bearing liability from the system selecting the tax position. We study a firm that delegates reporting to an optimizer whose executable objective only partially incorporates expected sanctions. The owner bears all monetary liability and can correct the objective, but correction consumes resources. A quadratic benchmark delivers explicit reporting, specification and adoption rules. Greater capability can first increase and then eliminate concealment even when sanction pass-through is unchanged: stronger responses to a corrective mandate make endogenous correction more effective. Strict liability implements compliance above a calculable enforcement threshold, but the threshold can exceed that required for direct human choice and need not be feasible under bounded sanctions. Executable certification caps provide an alternative instrument. A cap can lower the default action yet increase concealment relative to an optimally corrected unrestricted system because the owner stops investing in correction. We characterize voluntary compliance certification and a welfare-maximizing cap within the binding-cap regime, accounting separately for lawful service losses, transfers and real costs. Private gates can remove the incremental value of certification. A shared-mandate extension identifies the highest-default contexts that govern complete compliance, while alternative control costs and action curvature show that the capability reversal and finite exact-compliance threshold are not general. The results describe a delegated-optimization friction rather than an intrinsic preference of AI systems, and they do not establish a universal advantage of certification. Numerical illustrations and curvature checks use normalized parameters, not empirical estimates.

Abstract: This paper applies the systematic literature review (SLR) method to examine the effects of energy shocks on financial markets in the academic literature. Following the PRISMA 2020 guidelines, the study uses the Scopus database to identify relevant articles published between 2022 and 2026. From 710 initial records, 109 articles were selected after applying predefined eligibility and screening criteria. The literature covers stock, foreign exchange, bond and green financial markets, as well as multi-market and broader macro-financial effects. The findings show that energy shocks affect financial markets through heterogeneous, asymmetric and time-varying mechanisms. Their effects depend on the type of shock, market characteristics, country-specific factors and prevailing economic conditions. Supply, demand and risk shocks generate different responses, while spillovers tend to increase during periods of uncertainty and financial stress. The review highlights the importance of energy shocks as a source of financial market volatility and their influence on financial conditions through economic activity, inflation, credit conditions and expectations.

Abstract: Whether a monetary anchor independent of discretionary issuance can remain stable at the macro level is the central open problem identified by the first paper of this program (Cheng and Cheng, 2026d). The present paper takes up that problem under the program’s normative premises and develops a conditional reconstruction of inflation and macrostability. We first specify the complete life cycle of the currency: issuance and extinction are mirror images of the creation and consumption of value. Consumption events trigger the cancellation of the corresponding money at the platform clearing node; durable value is extinguished on an amortization schedule that tracks physical depreciation; money issued against non-rival knowledge persists. The money stock thereby corresponds to the surviving value stock at every instant, M(t) ≡ ks·V(t). On this basis we identify five mechanisms through which inflation is structurally precluded rather than suppressed — temporal synchrony, the quantity identity, channel excision, expectation self-stabilization, and the separation of relative prices from the price level — and we state the structural price-stability proposition with its scope made explicit: the accounting unit, the money price of a unit of negentropic value, satisfies P(t) ≡ ks as a matter of accounting construction, while the consumer price level experienced by households is governed by the dual-price band analyzed in Section 4.7. Inflation is then rediagnosed as the relative deviation produced by four identifiable integrity failures: accounting falsification, consensus distortion, issuance corruption, and extinction failure. The zero-inflation condition, the monotonic structure of consensus distortion, and the existence of a buffering bound for the stability coefficient ks are stated as propositions, together with a viability condition for the metabolism backstop, a composition bound on experienced inflation, an optimal buffering rule under stochastic shocks, and a tipping condition for the transition window in which the new unit coexists with legacy money. The framework’s falsifiable content is discharged computationally: five of the six pre-registered hypotheses are executed in an agent-based stress test (Appendices C and D), yielding three confirmations, one strong confirmation of the extinction layer’s necessity, and one partial falsification with a repair whose scope correction has been folded back into the main text. The sixth hypothesis — a real-world panel test of whether measurement and consensus integrity predict subsequent inflation volatility — cannot run in a model that implements the theory’s own equations; it is therefore specified as a complete pre-analysis plan with named data sources, identification strategy, and decision rules (Appendix E), and executed at baseline depth against that plan (Appendix F), where the pre-registered decision rules return a verdict of not confirmed — correct signs, economically large point estimates, insufficient precision — so that the hypothesis enters the literature with an executable target and an unsoftened first verdict. All simulation parameters are labeled by provenance, and all code is committed to public deposit.

Abstract: Prior research links wealth transfers to reduced labour force participation, but their effects on intra-household allocation of domestic tasks remain unexplored. This paper explores how inheritances impact gender differences in time use within the household among heterosexual couples older than 50 years in Europe. We use panel data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) to analyse the time spent on paid work, unpaid work, and leisure. We employ a Pooled Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) model with fixed effects to estimate the impact of inheritances greater than €5,000 on time allocation to different activities within the household. Specifically, we adopt the intra-household approach to assess ownership, where we consider inheritances as individual assets, rather than the mainstream approach of inheritance pooling that considers inheritances as household assets. Our results show that women significantly reduce their time spent on unpaid work, specially when they are the inheritance owners and when they are aged between 50 and 70 years. Robustness analyses support these results, we find that the mechanism behind the decline in unpaid work is outsourcing to the market, and the results are mainly driven by liquidity constrained households. Our findings suggest that intergenerational wealth transfers in ageing societies shift intra-household dynamics, enhancing women’s bargaining power and reducing inequality in unpaid work among the poorest households.

Abstract: Rural development in the Global South requires governance frameworks that bridge the sectoral divides between community-based rural institutions amid compounding socio-economic and climate pressures. Community forestry (CF) and agricultural cooperatives (AC) are two such foundational institutions that operate in institutional silos despite their functional interdependence. Focusing on Nepal through Ostrom’s polycentric governance theory, this study explores:(1) How can the governance structures of CF and AC be analysed through a polycentric lens? (2) What institutional, legal, economic, and socio-cultural factors enable or constrain their collaboration? (3) What models effectively integrate them to strengthen rural resilience? A narrative synthesis of 107 peer-reviewed and grey literature sources (screened from 886 records, spanning 1990-2026) reveals a critical governance paradox: the robust legal foundations for legal collaboration exist, yet a compound governance deficit-fragmented vertical linkages, elite capture, and capacity constraints-prevents operational integration. Building on this diagnostic framework, the study develops a novel conceptualization demonstrating that CF-AC integration improves co-managed resource management, enhances livelihood diversification and climate resilience, and promotes inclusive decision-making. To operationalize these synergies, policymakers should develop integrated governance frameworks that incentivize collaboration through financial support and capacity-building, driving both ecological conservation and agricultural productivity. This study makes three core contributions: (1) theoretically extending polycentric governance to the underexplored CF-AC nexus; (2) analytically combining Ostrom’s design principles with cross-scale analysis to diagnose barriers; and (3) practically proposing three implementable governance models that preserve institutional autonomy, offering transferable insights for developing countries facing coupled socio-ecological challenges.

Abstract: The first paper of the negentropic value currency program established the value ontology and the microeconomic incentives (Cheng and Cheng, 2026d); the second proved that macrostability is equivalent to the maintenance of four integrity conditions — the measurement layer unfalsified, the calibration layer uncaptured, the issuance layer uncorrupted, and the extinction layer unfailing (Cheng and Cheng, 2026b). Both papers, however, left the guardian of integrity offstage: they assumed the existence of legitimate accounting, consensus, and supervision procedures without specifying the procedures themselves. The present paper takes up this suspended constitutional question: who guards the four integrity conditions, and by whom, through what procedures, and under what constraints is α set, so that the system escapes majoritarian tyranny, technocratic rule, and the alienation of algorithmic black boxes alike? We formalize the problem as the delegation of value judgments and propose a three-tier governance architecture. The first tier is the bicameral algorithmic democracy of the Global Value Parliament (GVP): a House of Citizens generated by three-dimensional stratified sortition (500 seats, three-year terms, no reappointment) and a House of Experts nominated by authoritative learned bodies and confirmed through peer review (300 seats, six-year terms), with revisions of core parameters requiring a double majority in both houses. The second tier is three constitutional firewalls — the Minority Protection and Exploration Fund (value-inclusion axis), the independent Audit and Emergency Adjustment Committee (process-oversight axis, with quarterly disparate-impact audits and emergency braking powers, extended here to the audit of the extinction layer), and a blockchain-notarized platform of popular oversight (popular-oversight axis, with million-signature initiatives and a 70% opposition re-review rule). The third tier is an economic constitution of metabolic governance, now with four clauses: the intrinsic metabolism rate δ, the Civilization Time Bank, financial minimalism, and knowledge-genealogy attribution with intergenerational decay of inheritance. A guardianship matrix assigns every institution to the integrity condition it defends, and the capture-cost proposition states that global capture is conjunctively superadditive. The teleological loop then anchors the architecture to the survival and elevation of civilization: knowing, utilizing, and mastering cosmic truth, until the withdrawal of money itself. Every mechanism is accompanied by its failure-mode analysis, and all claims of validity are marked as designed but unexecuted; the verification designs are ordered by execution priority, with the audit-detection design first and the sortition design re-scoped to laboratory evidence.

Abstract: This study examines how mobile money agents’ credibility is associated with mobile money adoption, customer loyalty and financial inclusion in Nigeria. It addresses a gap in digital-finance research that has emphasised platform characteristics and generalised trust while paying less attention to the frontline agent as a trust intermediary. Using a qualitative exploratory design, 67 Firstmonie agents were interviewed. Participants were recruited purposively on the basis of operational experience and customer-facing exposure, with snowball referrals extending access across locations. Sample adequacy was judged using information-power principles rather than statistical power. Interview material was analysed through NVivo-supported thematic analysis, case classification, matrix coding and case-level co-occurrence analysis. The analytic constructs were generated through a theory-informed and data-refined coding framework: agent credibility comprised competence, integrity/honesty, responsiveness, transparency and transaction reliability; adoption captured uptake and continued use; loyalty captured repeat patronage and relational preference; and financial inclusion captured access to and sustained use of formal financial services. Co-occurrence patterns supported the proposed relationships between agent credibility and adoption (45 of 67 cases), customer loyalty (23 of 67 cases) and financial inclusion (42 of 67 cases). The findings position credible agents as trust intermediaries whose conduct can strengthen digital-finance engagement, while network failures, delayed reversals, fraud concerns and weak platform support constrain that role. The study contributes an agent-level relational perspective to mobile-money adoption and inclusion research and highlights the importance of agent governance, consumer protection and transaction reliability.

Abstract: Globalized production and trade have knitted national economies into a tightly coupled interdependent network, in which a localized shock can propagate through dependency links and escalate into a systemic event. Sulfur underpins phosphate fertilizer and the clean-energy transition, yet the global sulfur trade network is concentrated, heavily import-dependent, and exposed to geopolitical chokepoints. This paper develops a data-driven complex network framework for cascading risk propagation and demonstrates it on the directed-weighted global sulfur trade network (GSTN) built from UN Comtrade over 2015–2024. A threshold-based cascading failure model propagates load redistribution until a country’s import loss exceeds its capacity buffer. Three results emerge. First, although total trade volume grew by 129%, the network contracted sharply after 2022, indicating rising systemic vulnerability. Second, avalanche sizes follow a heavy-tailed, approximately power-law distribution: Russia is the dominant systemic-risk source (nine rounds, 41% of trading countries, collapse conversion above 80%), Turkey is a secondary amplifier, while the largest exporter, the United Arab Emirates, transmits risk mainly through indirect contraction. Third, the model is calibrated against the 2022 Russia–Ukraine shock (R² = 0.8538). The framework offers an early-warning tool for identifying systemically important nodes and for stress-testing interdependent economic and financial networks.

Abstract: The paper addresses digitalization as a global challenge, wherein cyber fraud, unrestricted by national boundaries, poses a major threat to global financial security. It categorizes digital threats into two types, cognitive manipulation and technological breaches. The primary focus of the paper is on cyber fraud falling under cognitive manipulation at the initial stage of financial transactions, and understanding how the internet helps criminals in money laundering operations, as well as how they utilize cryptocurrencies to their advantage. The paper conducts an in-depth study of cognitive manipulative traits that lead to cyber fraud victimization, and examines the subsequent flow of illegal money, including how criminals erase their digital footprints and disappear with illicit funds through cyber channels. The objective is to help devise a system that can protect potential victims and assist investigative agencies in curbing illegal money laundering activities. The main findings of the research include suggestions to incorporate the cost of protection based on the probability of susceptibility to cyber fraud, determined by cognitive traits, as well as the introduction of controls to verify the identity of individuals who receive and forward money. It also recommends blocking transactions in the absence of a traceable identity, along with other measures discussed in the paper.

Abstract: A symmetric game acquires an asymmetry as soon as its players can condition their behaviour on an observable but payoff-irrelevant role, such as owner and intruder. Selten's theorem states that no mixed strategy survives as an evolutionarily stable strategy under such role conditioning. We study the dynamical counterpart of this result in the presence of uniform mutation, modelling the two roles as two populations governed by the replicator-mutator dynamic. The system is equivariant under the role swap, its fixed-point subspace carries the role-blind dynamic, and at every symmetric rest point the Jacobian splits into a role-blind block and a transverse block. Without mutation the two spectra are exact mirror images, so the rate at which a symmetric equilibrium attracts in the role-blind game is precisely the rate at which it repels once roles are observed. Mutation shifts both spectra by the same amount. For games whose barycentre is a rest point we prove that the role-conditioned equilibrium is asymptotically stable if and only if the mutation rate exceeds the largest modulus of the real parts of the role-blind spectrum, which for an evolutionarily stable strategy equals its fastest attraction rate. For two-strategy games we obtain closed forms for the threshold, for the critical point, and for the supercritical pitchfork law governing the emerging role conventions, together with a Dulac argument that excludes cycles. For three or more strategies the symmetry-breaking mode can be complex, and an equivariant Hopf bifurcation produces anti-phase role cycles in which the two roles follow the same orbit half a period apart, as we verify for the rock-paper-scissors game. Forced symmetry breaking and finite-population simulations complete the analysis. The results read the emergence of property-like conventions as spontaneous symmetry breaking controlled by the exploration rate.

Abstract: Artificial intelligence (AI) is widely expected to raise productivity, yet whether its diffusion is already lifting growth in emerging economies is unclear. We assemble a panel of 42 emerging economies over 2010–2023 and construct an AI Adoption Capacity Index (AACI) that combines five indicators of connectivity, compute and data infrastructure, competency and technological context through principal component analysis. The index is validated against AI patenting (Spearman ρ = 0.59). Two-way fixed-effects growth regressions with Driscoll–Kraay standard errors find no positive short-run association between the AACI and GDP per capita growth: the preferred estimate is −1.07 percentage points per standard deviation (p = 0.12). System GMM estimates are negative and significant, but their over-identification diagnostics are marginal, and a peer-diffusion instrument is too weak to be informative. The average hides systematic heterogeneity. The AACI’s growth effect rises with tertiary enrolment (interaction p = 0.02), and it is more negative in economies with below-median initial income. Using Penn World Table data, total factor productivity and labour productivity growth respond negatively in the short run. Together, these patterns match a productivity J-curve, in which building AI capacity absorbs resources before complementary skills and intangibles pay off. They do not support the view that AI capacity is already a growth engine for emerging economies. The results caution against treating AI infrastructure as a substitute for human-capital deepening and point to absorptive capacity as the binding constraint on AI-led convergence.

Abstract: This paper investigates intersectoral linkages in Czechia and Hungary pre-and post-European Union (EU) accession following Wassily Leontief’s Input-Output (IO) framework. This approach applies symmetric Supply and Use Tables (SUTs) in the derivation of structural input coefficients, sectoral output and income multipliers as well as intersectoral backward and forward linkages. The results suggest significant structural transformation in Czechia and Hungary after the EU accession with increased output and income multipliers in most sectors for example agriculture, manufacturing, construction, electricity and water. Furthermore, the results reveal increased forward linkages of agriculture, manufacturing, utilities, construction, information and communication as well as finance and insurance services after the EU accession. Additionally, the paper finds that mining shows the least forward linkages with the local economies. Finally, the results show that the contribution of sectors to value added growth increased after the EU accession and is dominated by industry (manufacturing and construction) and services sectors.

Abstract: Historians infer the composition of vanished populations of texts, documents and persons from the fraction that survives. Recent quantitative work estimates how much was lost, yet most historical claims concern what kind of thing was lost, and survival is rarely blind. This article recasts Arnold Esch's distinction between the chance and the accident of transmission as a problem of partial identification. An accounting identity links survivor shares to original shares through a relative survival rate; a birth-death model of copying and loss and open data on 799 medieval narrative works in six vernaculars illustrate the results. Survivor shares alone identify no original share. A known loss rate yields an interval whose width equals the loss rate. Bounding relative survival by a factor Γ yields closed-form intervals and a breakdown value for every compositional claim. Comparisons between contexts that share a selection regime are identified exactly even when levels are not. Disaggregated unseen-species estimates always imply at least as much loss as pooled ones: for the medieval corpus, 61.9 rather than 68.3 per cent of works survive. Loss amplifies selection, so that modest copying disadvantages produce large distortions. Historians should report identified sets and breakdown values alongside survivor shares.

Abstract: This study examines the dynamic relationship between international oil price fluctuations and economic activity in Morocco, assessing the extent to which results depend on the specific measure of oil price changes and the activity indicator used. The analysis employs quarterly data from 1998Q1 to 2024Q4, focusing on real GDP, non-agricultural real GDP, and the industrial production index. Three measures are compared individually: the log change in oil prices (OIL_DH), the net oil price increase calculated over the preceding four quarters (NOPI4T), and the net increase calculated over the preceding twelve quarters (NOPI12T). Estimates are generated within a dynamic modeling framework that incorporates lags of economic activity and oil price measures, as well as a dummy variable representing the subsidy and price-indexing regime for petroleum products. The results reveal heterogeneous coefficients depending on the oil price measure and the activity indicator. For real GDP, OIL_DH is not statistically significant, whereas NOPI4T shows a statistically significant negative association—a pattern not observed with NOPI12T. Responses of non-agricultural GDP and the industrial production index also vary according to the measures used. The statistical significance of the institutional variable across all nine specifications highlights the importance of the price-setting regime in interpreting the results. Thus, the study demonstrates that the relationship between oil prices and economic activity cannot be characterized uniformly based on a single measure of oil price fluctuations.

Abstract: Artificial intelligence is creating closer links between computing infrastructure, electricity supply, critical minerals, nuclear capacity, and clean-energy investment. This study examines daily market-price transmission among U.S. natural gas (NG), copper futures (HG), the Global X Uranium ETF (URA), the iShares Global Clean Energy ETF (ICLN), and the PHLX Semiconductor Sector Index (SOX). Source prices cover 4 November 2010 to 31 December 2025; exact-date alignment produces 3,810 common prices and 3,809 daily returns. The analysis combines a discount-factor time-varying parameter vector autoregression with generalized forecast-error variance decomposition, directional connectedness, VIX-defined stress regimes, a prespecified post-AI comparison, and leakage-safe expanding-window forecasts. Average total connectedness is 30.78%. Stationary block-bootstrap confidence intervals show that TCI is 10.49 percentage points higher in high-VIX states and 3.23 points lower after the AI cutoff. In a joint Newey-West regression, the corresponding conditional differences are 10.31 and -2.32 points. Weekly aggregation preserves the baseline transmitter-receiver ordering, and pairwise lead-lag checks show that the largest absolute correlation for every market pair is contemporaneous. Cross-market models do not produce systematic forecasting gains. Overall, the results point to an AI-energy risk network that becomes more connected under market stress, rather than to uniformly higher integration after the AI boom or consistently exploitable predictability.

Abstract: The study considers the development of a nationally contextualized model of catastrophe risk insurance in the Republic of Tajikistan (RT) as an instrument for overcoming the insurance protection gap. The topic is relevant for RT due to high natural vulnerability, significant role of agriculture, hydropower and transport corridors, as well as the limited capacity of the national insurance market. Insurance protection against catastrophic risks cannot be reduced to a shortage of insurance lines, but has a complex institutional nature, encompassing legal, financial, informational, and behavioral constraints. The methodological basis is comparative institutional analysis. Tajikistan is considered as the main case, while China’s dirigiste model is used as a comparative reference point. The study also examines international approaches to managing natural disaster risks, parametric insurance, insurance pools, reinsurance, and public-private mechanisms for distributing catastrophic losses. Results. Reasonable solution for RT is not a universal insurance programme, but a hybrid multi-level system. The proposed model includes five interrelated elements: the state regulatory framework, a national insurance operator, a national insurance or reinsurance pool, a parametric level of insurance protection, and limited compulsory liability insurance in high-risk segments. A special role is assigned to the State insurer “Tojiksugurta” as a potential institutional hub for launching pilot products, accumulating insurance statistics, and facilitating interaction with the state, policyholders, and international partners. The insurance protection gap in Tajikistan can be bridged only through a combination of insurance instruments, state regulation, subsidization, reinsurance, data infrastructure, social protection, and the phased implementation of pilot mechanisms.

Abstract: This study examines time-varying return connectedness among WTI crude oil, gold, the U.S. Dollar Index (DXY), and the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET). A discount-factor TVP-VAR with separately estimated stochastic-volatility paths is applied to 4,206 synchronized daily observations from February 2008 to December 2025. Generalized forecast-error variance decompositions, directional connectedness, generalized impulse responses, prespecified crisis comparisons, and sensitivity checks are employed. Full-sample connectedness is low (mean TCI = 1.8004), with own-return shares of 97.7067%-98.6715%. During the cleaned Global Financial Crisis (GFC) window, mean TCI rises to 2.2968 versus 1.6315 outside the GFC; however, the lower median and insignificant rank-based tests indicate that the increase is concentrated in the upper tail. The clearest GFC feature is a gold-centered configuration: Gold-to-Oil transmission increases by 1.3723 percentage points, while Oil's net position remains close to zero and specification-sensitive. Gold is the strongest net transmitter and DXY the strongest receiver during the GFC, but their roles change across COVID-19 and Russia-Ukraine regimes. Impulse responses attenuate within approximately two days. The findings show that energy-financial transmission is weak on average, short-lived, and crisis-dependent, supporting conditional rather than structural interpretations of cross-market risk.