Journal of International Financial Trends
type: channel
description: Journal of International Financial Trends (JIFT) is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal dedicated to advancing research on global financial systems, emerging market trends, and the intersection of economics, policy, and technology in international finance. JIFT welcomes submissions from researchers who seek to contribute to the ongoing discourse on international financial trends. The journal encourages original research, empirical studies, and theoretical analyses that offer fresh perspectives on the evolving global financial landscape.
publisher: Nexus Press
language: en
publication name: Journal of International Financial Trends
issn: 3051-2646
items: Testing the Flow-Oriented vs. Portfolio Balance Hypotheses: Beyond Trade Channel Evidence of Balance Sheet Effects Dominance in Asia-Pacific OECD Equity and FX Markets
items: Volatility Persistence, Dynamic Co-Movements, and Portfolio Optimization in Digital Asset Markets: Disentangling Cross-Market Contagion from Internal Hedging Strategies
items: AI-Driven Transformation of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG): A Systematic Review, Gap Analysis, and Future Research Agenda
items: Microstructural Impact of Algorithmic Trading on African Equity Markets: A Causal Evaluation of Efficiency, Liquidity, and Stability
items: Risks, Sustainability, and Interconnection between FinTech Adoption and Traditional Investments
items: Do Portfolio Construction Strategies Matter in Mitigating Macroeconomic Risks?
items: Factors Influencing Consumer Acceptance of AI-powered Shopping Assistants: Evidence from Jumia Sierra Leone
items: How Does Diversification Affect Financial Performance? Evidence from a Case Study of Meituan Group
items: Economic Implications of Digital Banking on Financial Inclusion in the EMEA Regions
items: Data Science vs Econometrics: Testing Different Forecasting Approaches
items: Asylum as Geopolitical Currency: Rents and Incentives in Contemporary Migration Governance
items: Exploring the Impact of Marketing Strategies and Promotional Tactics on Consumer Behaviour in the Healthcare Sector, South Africa
items: The Mediation Effect of Service Innovation on the Relationship Between Promotional Strategies and Market Share in Medical Schemes, South Africa
items: A Boosted Deep ConVNet embedding Long Short Term Memory with Synthetic Minority Oversampling Techniques as Foiling Model for Payment Card Fraud
items: Systemic Risks of Sophisticated Financial Products: A Critical Review of Post-2008 Innovations and the Impacts on Global Markets
items: The Moderating Role of Dividend Payout on the Relationship Between Working Capital Management and Profitability: Evidence from Japan's Technology Hardware and Equipment Industry
items: Exploring User Adoption of Digital Lending Platforms in NBFCs: Insights from the Retail Loan Segment

Testing the Flow-Oriented vs. Portfolio Balance Hypotheses: Beyond Trade Channel Evidence of Balance Sheet Effects Dominance in Asia-Pacific OECD Equity and FX Markets
type: item
description: This study explores the dynamic, multi-horizon linkages between stock market prices and exchange rates across Asia-Pacific OECD countries to test the competing validity of the Flow-Oriented and Portfolio Balance hypotheses. Employing a comprehensive econometric framework that integrates the Panel CS-ARDL model with Breitung-Candelon frequency-domain causality, Time-Varying Parameter Panel VAR (TVP-P-VAR), and asymmetric panel ARDL techniques, the research captures long-run equilibria, regime-dependent shifts, and structural asymmetries. The empirical findings decisively invalidate the traditional flow-oriented trade competitiveness perspective, revealing instead that currency depreciation and interest rate hikes inflict severe contractionary damage on equity valuations through a dominant Balance Sheet effect. Consequently, asset market channels and sentiment-driven capital flows in Asia-Pacific countries with financial integration operate as stronger forces than traditional goods market mechanisms. Conversely, the results strongly validate the stock-oriented Portfolio Balance model, demonstrating that bullish market sentiment and equity market expansions drive rapid, high-frequency currency appreciation via portfolio capital inflows. Asymmetric and time-varying estimations reveal that regional financial markets react significantly more aggressively to negative macro-financial shocks during stress regimes than to positive stimuli during economic expansions. Another unresolved issue concerns whether the stock–FX relationship is homogeneous across Asia-Pacific OECD economies. These economies differ significantly in exchange rate arrangements, export dependence, capital market sophistication, institutional quality, and openness to international investment. The study contributed to the financial market literature by establishing that asset market channels and sentiment-driven capital flows have superseded traditional goods market mechanisms in financially integrated econ…
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Stock Market Prices
  topic: keywords
subject: Exchange Rates
  topic: keywords
subject: Asia-Pacific OECD
  topic: keywords
subject: Currency Depreciation
  topic: keywords
subject: Interest Rate Hikes
  topic: keywords
subject: Market Volatility
  topic: keywords
subject: Bear Markets
  topic: keywords
subject: CS-ARDL
  topic: keywords
subject: Quantile Regression
  topic: keywords
subject: Portfolio Balance Model
  topic: keywords
subject: Balance Sheet Effect
  topic: keywords
subject: Asymmetric P-ARDL
  topic: keywords
subject: Frequency-Domain Causality
  topic: keywords
subject: TVP-P-VAR
  topic: keywords
creator: David Umoru
creator: Beauty Igbinovia
creator: Emoabino Muhammed
creator: Imran Enike Abu
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 David Umoru, Beauty Igbinovia, Emoabino Muhammed, Imran Enike Abu (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-08-14
publication date: 2026-08-14
starting page: 209
ending page: 246
doi: 10.55578/jift.2608.011

Volatility Persistence, Dynamic Co-Movements, and Portfolio Optimization in Digital Asset Markets: Disentangling Cross-Market Contagion from Internal Hedging Strategies
type: item
description: This study investigates the time-varying volatility dynamics, persistence, and optimal portfolio allocation architecture within the digital asset ecosystem, explicitly separating external cross-market contagion from internal digital asset hedging strategies. Utilizing real-world daily historical return data from 2020 to 2025 for a diverse basket of major (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin) and niche (Stellar, Internet Node Token, Exclusive Coin) digital assets, we employ a multivariate DCC-GARCH framework evaluated under two distinct currency configurations (Euro and US Dollar numeraires) alongside native on-chain alternative hedges. The empirical findings reveal high volatility persistence and long-memory characteristics across all assets, with volatility half-lives extending up to 22.8 days for specialized tokens, confirming that shocks to the system decay slowly. The regime-dependent dynamic conditional correlations demonstrate that cross-asset integration is highly pro-cyclical, intensifying severely during systemic market drawdowns and rapidly eroding traditional diversification benefits among core protocols. To counteract this systematic risk, the study introduces native digital hedges, demonstrating that the stablecoin Tether (USDT) offers superior downside protection and variance reduction (up to 74.15%) over traditional fiat exchange rates, while tokenized gold (PAXG) provides a robust, uncorrelated safe-haven overlay against macro-structural shocks. Significantly, out-of-sample optimization metrics confirm that the dynamic Global Minimum Variance Portfolio (GMVP) heavily outperforms static benchmarks, achieving a 66.19% risk reduction by rebalancing asset exposures daily in response to shifting conditional variances. The study suggests that the Global Minimum Variance Portfolio is not composed solely of the largest caps (BTC/ETH). Instead, significant weight must be shifted toward assets with lower unconditional variance (like STR) or distinct covariance structu…
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Cryptocurrency
  topic: keywords
subject: Volatility Clustering
  topic: keywords
subject: DCC-GARCH
  topic: keywords
subject: Portfolio Optimization
  topic: keywords
subject: Hedge Ratios
  topic: keywords
subject: Bitcoin
  topic: keywords
subject: Stellar
  topic: keywords
subject: Internet Node Token
  topic: keywords
subject: Cross-Market Contagion
  topic: keywords
subject: Stablecoins
  topic: keywords
subject: Tokenized Gold
  topic: keywords
subject: Digital Assets
  topic: keywords
creator: Beauty Igbinovia
creator: Shiloh Akpan
creator: Imran Enike Abu
creator: Emoabino Muhammed
creator: David Umoru
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Beauty Igbinovia, Shiloh Akpan, Imran Enike Abu, Emoabino Muhammed, David Umoru (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-06-29
publication date: 2026-06-29
starting page: 155
ending page: 188
doi: 10.55578/jift.2606.009

AI-Driven Transformation of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG): A Systematic Review, Gap Analysis, and Future Research Agenda
type: item
description: Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) considerations have become a central framework for corporate accountability, regulatory compliance, and sustainable value creation amid growing environmental challenges, stakeholder expectations, and institutional pressures. At the same time, advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) are transforming ESG systems by enabling large-scale data integration, predictive sustainability analytics, automated reporting, and real-time governance intelligence. These developments are accelerating the digitalization of sustainability management and reshaping how organizations measure, disclose, and govern ESG performance. This study conducts a systematic literature review to synthesize and critically evaluate the emerging body of research on AI-driven ESG transformation. Adopting a socio-technical governance perspective, the review conceptualizes AI-enabled ESG integration as a transformative process in which algorithmic systems increasingly influence sustainability assessment, disclosure, monitoring, and decision-making across organizational and institutional contexts. The findings reveal that despite significant technological progress, several barriers continue to constrain the effective application of AI in ESG. These include fragmented and inconsistent ESG data infrastructures, algorithmic bias and opacity, regulatory fragmentation, weak explainability and auditability mechanisms, and unresolved ethical, social, and environmental risks. The review also identifies important gaps related to cross-country regulatory evidence, lifecycle assessments of AI technologies, stakeholder trust, and mechanisms for enhancing ESG disclosure credibility while mitigating greenwashing and machine-washing risks. Based on these findings, the study proposes a future research agenda emphasizing ESG data standardization, trustworthy and explainable AI, regulatory harmonization, governance integration, and interdisciplinary approaches to understanding the b…
subject: Review
  topic: section
subject: ESG
  topic: keywords
subject: Artificial Intelligence
  topic: keywords
subject: Sustainability Governance
  topic: keywords
subject: Socio-Technical Systems
  topic: keywords
subject: Responsible AI
  topic: keywords
subject: ESG Disclosure
  topic: keywords
subject: Digital Transformation
  topic: keywords
creator: Attia Gomaa
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Attia Gomaa (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-06-22
publication date: 2026-06-22
starting page: 88
ending page: 113
doi: 10.55578/jift.2606.007

Microstructural Impact of Algorithmic Trading on African Equity Markets: A Causal Evaluation of Efficiency, Liquidity, and Stability
type: item
description: The study provides a detailed empirical evaluation of the effect of the automated trading otherwise known as algorithmic trading (AT) on market efficiency, liquidity, and steadiness in ten main African equity markets. The study offers an in-depth empirical assessment of the impact of AT on market efficiency, liquidity, and stability in ten major African equity markets. To effectively close a critical gap in the literature on research on frontier-markets, the study applies an integrative approach to methodology, which combines along with intraday market microstructure evidence, causal inference approaches and machine learning practices. The intensity of algorithmic trading was measured using microstructure tools, and the study measures the consequential variables of the which includes return autocorrelation, bid ask spread, market depth and volatility persistence. We adopt quasi-experimental designs that exploit market-structure reforms for causal identification on a methodological level. By using a Finite Mixture Model, the analysis first classifies continent exchanges into Class 1 Deep Markets (42% probability, average capitalization $245.6B) and Class 2 Thin Markets (58% probability, average capitalization $18.7B). It shows that AT intensity is highly concentrated in deep capitalized venues. Using a robust double machine learning framework with 5-fold cross-fitting, we estimate the causal effects of quoting automatically. The estimates indicate that an increase in Message-to-Trade Ratio (MTR) and Cancellation-to-Trade Ratio (CTR) compresses the transaction cost significantly. In particular, the effective spread decreases by 0.156 (p < 0.01) and 0.167 (p < 0.01), respectively, while increasing log market depth by 0.098 and 0.087. AT robustly improves informational efficiency, reducing Kyle’s by up to 0.021 units. We quantify a distinct structural trade-off: higher AT activity also leads to a statistically significant rise in realized volatility (MTR effect: +0.027;…
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Algorithmic Trading
  topic: keywords
subject: Market Efficiency
  topic: keywords
subject: Liquidity
  topic: keywords
subject: Microstructure
  topic: keywords
subject: Market Microstructure
  topic: keywords
subject: African Equity Markets
  topic: keywords
subject: Double Machine Learning
  topic: keywords
subject: Liquidity and Volatility
  topic: keywords
subject: Predictive Forecasting
  topic: keywords
subject: High-Frequency Trading
  topic: keywords
creator: David Umoru
creator: Imran Enike Abu
creator: Beauty Igbinovia
creator: Emoabino Muhammed
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 David Umoru, Imran Enike Abu, Beauty Igbinovia, Emoabino Muhammed (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-06-29
publication date: 2026-06-29
starting page: 114
ending page: 154
doi: 10.55578/jift.2606.008

Risks, Sustainability, and Interconnection between FinTech Adoption and Traditional Investments
type: item
description: FinTech has rapidly transformed the global banking sector by redefining financial intermediation, investment systems and risk management practices. This paper explores the association between FinTech adoption, banking risks, sustainability performance and conventional investments in an increasingly interconnected financial environment. The study investigates the effect of digital financial innovations, including artificial intelligence, blockchain technology, cloud computing, digital payment systems, and big data analytics, on banking sustainability, financial stability, and investment interconnectedness. The methodology is qualitative and conceptual, and it is based on a systematic review of recent academic studies published between 2020 and early 2026. The study synthesizes the existing theoretical and empirical literature on FinTech adoption, operational and cybersecurity risks, sustainable banking practices, ESG-oriented finance, and financial interconnectedness. In this paper, rather than empirically estimating these relationships, an integrated conceptual framework is developed to explain the dynamic linkages between FinTech adoption, banking sustainability, risk exposure and traditional investment systems. The literature reviewed in this study indicates that the adoption of FinTech can have a positive impact on banking efficiency, operational flexibility, financial inclusion, customer experience, and sustainability performance through digital transformation and technological innovation. FinTech further enables ESG-oriented financial practices and the modernization of traditional investment systems. But growing reliance on digital financial infrastructures may also give rise to increasing operational, cybersecurity, regulatory and systemic risks at the same time. Moreover, stronger links between digital financial assets and traditional investment markets could increase financial contagion and market volatility in times of economic uncertainty. This study contr…
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: FinTech adoption
  topic: keywords
subject: sustainable banking
  topic: keywords
subject: banking risks
  topic: keywords
subject: financial stability
  topic: keywords
subject: traditional investments
  topic: keywords
subject: digital transformation
  topic: keywords
subject: financial interconnectedness
  topic: keywords
creator: Oumaima Abouzaid
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Oumaima Abouzaid (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-06-05
publication date: 2026-06-05
starting page: 78
ending page: 87
doi: 10.55578/jift.2606.006

Do Portfolio Construction Strategies Matter in Mitigating Macroeconomic Risks?
type: item
description: This study examines how macroeconomic variables—the market risk premium, inflation, the exchange rate, and the interest rate—affect the performance of portfolios constructed using six different strategies applied to the Egyptian Exchange (EGX). Using monthly data for 31 non-financial stocks over the period of 2020 to 2024, we construct and compare Equal Weighting (EW), Minimum Variance (MinVar), Equal Risk Contribution (ERC), Mean-Variance Optimization (MVO), Value, and Growth portfolios, and subject all six to a multivariate OLS regression framework with stationarity controls. The market risk premium dominates all other factors across every strategy. Minimum Variance portfolios have been most affected by the exchange rate depreciation, while the Growth portfolios have been insulated to a great degree. The interest rate positively impacted five portfolios, which is a paradoxical effect. The interest rate normally negatively impacts portfolios, but in the case of the Egyptian economy, the interest rate increased during the crisis, which caused the risk premium to widen. The inflation rate positively impacted the Value portfolio. The results showed an interesting anomaly whereby the heuristic Equal Risk Contribution portfolio outperformed the theoretical Minimum Variance portfolio. Policy implications include transparent exchange-rate adjustment, credible inflation targeting, and improvements in corporate governance standards.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Egyptian Exchange
  topic: keywords
subject: Equal risk contribution
  topic: keywords
subject: Minimum variance
  topic: keywords
subject: Inflation hedging
  topic: keywords
subject: Portfolio construction
  topic: keywords
subject: Emerging markets
  topic: keywords
subject: Macroeconomic factors
  topic: keywords
subject: Tactical allocation
  topic: keywords
creator: Shahd Elboghdady
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Shahd Elboghdady (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-04-15
publication date: 2026-04-15
starting page: 63
ending page: 77
doi: 10.55578/jift.2604.005

Factors Influencing Consumer Acceptance of AI-powered Shopping Assistants: Evidence from Jumia Sierra Leone
type: item
description: The National Innovation and Digital Strategy (2019–2029) of Sierra Leone emphasizes the application of technology to foster economic growth, improve service provision, and invigorate trade. This strategy emphasizes including digital tools in corporate framework and adherence to the United Nations E-Commerce and Digital Economy Principles. Despite adopting this strategy, the country still faced significant issues regarding implementing and adopting AI-powered tools to assist customers in shopping. This study explored factors influencing consumer acceptance of AI-powered shopping assistants in Sierra, with a significant focus on customers of Jumia Sierra Leone. Through the snowball sampling technique, the study collected data using Google Forms from 384 customers who have been using Jumia. The collected data was analyzed using the structural equation model (SEM) and bootstrapping method of AMOS software. The study found that the perceived usefulness of AI-powered shopping assistants had a positive and significant impact on behavior intention toward AI-powered shopping assistants. It was discovered that perceived ease of use of AI-powered shopping assistants had a negative and significant impact on behavior intention toward AI-powered shopping assistants. The results reveal that attitudes towards AI partially mediate the relationship between perceived usefulness, ease of use, and behavior intention toward AI-powered shopping assistants. Jumia should highlight the benefits of its AI-driven shopping assistants, enhancing the shopping experience and time efficiency and providing tailored recommendations.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Attitude towards AI
  topic: keywords
subject: Behavioural intention to use
  topic: keywords
subject: Perceived ease of use
  topic: keywords
subject: Perceived usefulness
  topic: keywords
subject: Sierra Leone
  topic: keywords
creator: Sulaiman Kamara
creator: Saidu Koroma
creator: Abdul Caesar Fofanah
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Sulaiman Kamara, Saidu Koroma, Abdul Caesar Fofanah (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-03-23
publication date: 2026-03-23
starting page: 46
ending page: 62
doi: 10.55578/jift.2603.004

How Does Diversification Affect Financial Performance? Evidence from a Case Study of Meituan Group
type: item
description: In the current era, characterized by constant changes in the market landscape, enterprises seeking development face numerous risks and challenges. Adopting a diversified operations strategy has emerged as a critical direction for companies aiming to break through competition in homogeneous product markets. As an early adopter of diversification among Chinese internet platform enterprises, Meituan has achieved significant results through its diversified operations, ultimately realizing synergies among its various business units. Therefore, studying Meituan’s diversification strategy and its outcomes holds considerable significance. This paper elaborates on the research background, purpose, and significance of diversification studies and systematically outlines the concepts and importance of diversification research. It examines Meituan’s diversification strategy from three perspectives: the implementation context, development history, and specific manifestations of the strategy. Furthermore, it analyzes the pathways through which diversification impacts financial performance and conducts a comprehensive evaluation using four financial indicators: solvency, operational capability, profitability, and growth capability.This paper takes Meituan as the research object and employs case study method and financial analysis method to conduct a correlational analysis on the impact of diversified operations on Meituan’s financial performance. It is found that there is a significant correlation between diversified operations and the improvement of enterprise financial performance. It is concluded that Meituan’s diversified operation strategy has a positive impact on the enterprise, but it also brings some problems and challenges to Meituan. This research focuses on exploratory case analysis, aiming to reveal the correlation path between diversified strategy and financial performance, and providing reference for similar platform enterprises.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Meituan
  topic: keywords
subject: Diversified Operations
  topic: keywords
subject: Financial Performance
  topic: keywords
subject: Impact Analysis
  topic: keywords
creator: Leming Zhang
creator: Aicong Liu
creator: Shi Yin
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Leming Zhang, Aicong Liu, Shi Yin (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-01-23
publication date: 2026-01-23
starting page: 18
ending page: 32
doi: 10.55578/jift.2601.002

Economic Implications of Digital Banking on Financial Inclusion in the EMEA Regions
type: item
description: The economic impact of digital banking were explored in this study in a manner to expand financial inclusion across the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) region. The study incorporated Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) in its central discussion while concentrating on two strategic components of economic interest how useful customers comprehend digital banking and how straightforward it is to adapt. The study discussed how consumers and small medium enterprises (SMEs) particularly in underserved communities are implementing these systematic inventions. By adopting Chi-square statistical analysis test, the study established a compelling correlation between digital banking adoption and improved financial inclusion, with a Chi-square value of 11.136 at the 0.05 significance level. The study findings underscore the access to internet connectivity, automated teller machines (ATMs), mobile phones, and point of sale (POS) terminals, performing the main functions in enabling the utilization of digital financial services. This study observed that the regions with greater digital infrastructure along supportive policies were inclined to high ranking adoption levels. On the other hand, obstacles persist specifically among the low-income citizens and rural areas where inequalities in digital literacy, inconsistent regulations, and limited infrastructure endure to limit economic progression. Integrating TAM across-regional economic environments, this study appends additional assessment to the discussion surrounding financial inclusion. The study points to the behavioral and technological factors that guide the implementation and demands inclusive schemes, focused financial education, and greater investment in digital infrastructure. These identifiable economic and technology components advanced practical speculations for policymakers, financial institutions, and tech developers thriving to creäte a more rightful digital economy throughout the EMEA economic regions.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Digital Banking
  topic: keywords
subject: Financial Inclusion
  topic: keywords
subject: SMEs
  topic: keywords
subject: Mobile Financial Services
  topic: keywords
subject: Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)
  topic: keywords
subject: Customer Relation Model (CRM)
  topic: keywords
creator: Inimfon Bassey Bassey
creator: Okechukwu Matthew Ani
creator: Frederick Oscar
creator: Godwin Nse Ebong
creator: Okwudili Matthew Ugochukwu
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Inimfon Bassey Bassey, Okechukwu Matthew Ani , Frederick Oscar, Godwin Nse Ebong, Okwudili Matthew Ugochukwu (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-01-16
publication date: 2026-01-16
starting page: 01
ending page: 17
doi: 10.55578/jift.2601.001

Data Science vs Econometrics: Testing Different Forecasting Approaches
type: item
description: Forecasting is a critical activity for economists, financial analysts, and businesses engaged in budgeting and planning. Recent advances in Data Science promise greater forecasting sophistication and accessibility, often through automated or semi‑automated tools. However, these techniques also carry risks, particularly when users are unaware of the underlying data‑generating processes. This paper compares popular Data Science forecasting approaches with long‑standing Econometric methods using simulated data under varying assumptions about noise and structural complexity. The results show that while Data Science methods can perform competitively in highly noisy environments, structural econometric models consistently outperform them when data noise is low or when underlying relationships are complex. This reinforces a long‑standing insight often missed by automatic approaches: the source and structure of shocks matter for accurate forecasting.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Data Science
  topic: keywords
subject: Econometrics
  topic: keywords
subject: Forecast comparisons
  topic: keywords
creator: Colin Ellis
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Colin Ellis (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-01-26
publication date: 2026-01-26
starting page: 33
ending page: 45
doi: 10.55578/jift.2601.003

Asylum as Geopolitical Currency: Rents and Incentives in Contemporary Migration Governance
type: item
description: This article examines the political economy of asylum as an emergent logic reshaping the contemporary international refugee regime. Building on the post-War II foundations of the 1951 Refugee Convention, the analysis traces how escalating displacement, geopolitical asymmetries and governance externalization have progressively eroded the universalist, rights-based architecture of asylum. Through a reconstruction of the concept’s theoretical lineage – introducing refugee rentierism and situating it within debates on rentier-state theory, migration diplomacy and global governance – the article argues that states increasingly convert the presence, containment or potential mobility of refugees into strategic rents. Drawing on a transdisciplinary framework that incorporates international political economy, global governance, international law and critical migration studies, the analysis maps a series of key cases – including the EU-Turkey Statement, EU partnerships with North African states, the UK-Rwanda plan, the Italy-Albania protocol, the Australia-Nauru offshoring model and recent U.S. initiatives in the Darién region. These practices reveal the instrumentalisation of refugees as geopolitical assets, enabling states to secure financial transfers, diplomatic concessions or domestic political capital while outsourcing protection obligations to peripheral regions. Normatively, the rise of refugee rentierism undermines the authority of international law, entrenches global inequalities and accelerates the delegalization and fragmentation of the asylum regime. The article concludes that refugee rentierism is not a marginal trend but a structural transformation that shifts asylum from an inalienable right to a transactional instrument, challenging the future viability of a universal protection system and calling for renewed commitments to global justice, solidarity and responsibility-sharing.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Refugee Rentierism
  topic: keywords
subject: Political Economy of Migration
  topic: keywords
subject: Border Externalization
  topic: keywords
subject: International Financial Trends
  topic: keywords
subject: Asylum Governance
  topic: keywords
subject: Geopolitical Bargaining
  topic: keywords
creator: Ricci Antonio
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Ricci Antonio (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-12-18
publication date: 2025-12-18
starting page: 102
ending page: 116
doi: 10.55578/jift.2512.007

Exploring the Impact of Marketing Strategies and Promotional Tactics on Consumer Behaviour in the Healthcare Sector, South Africa
type: item
description: Marketing strategies have been recognised as pivotal in shaping consumer behaviour and facilitating organisational success, particularly within the healthcare sector, where decision-making processes are inherently complex. This study examined the interplay between marketing strategies, focusing on promotional tactics, and consumer behaviour in healthcare. Guided by the conceptual framework of Ġostar and Ristanović, it investigated the influence of the 4 Ps (product, price, place, promotion) on healthcare consumer decisions. Employing a qualitative methodology, the study interrogated the efficacy of promotional tools such as discounts, coupons, and exclusive offers. Results demonstrated that while promotional strategies can effectively enhance brand engagement and stimulate short-term sales, overemphasising these tactics erodes long-term brand equity and financial viability. Furthermore, the study highlighted significant challenges intrinsic to healthcare marketing, including multifaceted stakeholder dynamics, restricted information access, and systemic complexity, which collectively constrain consumer agency. The findings underscore healthcare organisations’ need to balance immediate promotional gains against sustained innovation-driven growth. Consequently, the study advocates integrating service innovation, refining outsourcing models, and strategically aligning promotional activities with broader organisational objectives to reconcile profitability with sustainable innovation.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Marketing Strategies
  topic: keywords
subject: Consumer Behaviour
  topic: keywords
subject: Healthcare
  topic: keywords
subject: Promotional Strategies
  topic: keywords
subject: Service Innovation
  topic: keywords
subject: Organisational Performance
  topic: keywords
subject: Healthcare Marketing
  topic: keywords
creator: Michael Willie
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Michael Willie (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-06-25
publication date: 2025-06-25
starting page: 90
ending page: 101
doi: 10.55578/jift.2506.006

The Mediation Effect of Service Innovation on the Relationship Between Promotional Strategies and Market Share in Medical Schemes, South Africa
type: item
description: Orientation: The dynamic global healthcare landscape requires ongoing adaptation and innovation. Service innovation (SI) is pivotal for healthcare funders and providers, particularly in medical schemes, where it significantly enhances the effectiveness of promotional strategies (PS) and improves market share (MS). Research Purpose: This study investigated the mediating effect of service innovation on the relationship between promotional strategies and market share in the private healthcare sector, with a focus on medical scheme beneficiaries in Gauteng, South Africa. It aimed to assess how service innovation amplified the impact of promotional strategies on market share and examined the implications of outsourcing marketing services. Motivation for the Study: Rising complexity in the healthcare market and the need for medical schemes to attract and retain members amid growing competition drive this study. Understanding how service innovation mediates the relationship between promotional strategies and market share offers insights into optimising marketing efforts for better market penetration. Research Approach/Design and Method: A quantitative research approach utilising a mediation analysis design was adopted. Data were collected from 260 beneficiaries of medical schemes in Gauteng, South Africa, through snowball sampling. The analysis followed the mediation framework proposed by Baron and Kenny, with additional validation conducted using STATA software, incorporating the approach developed by Zhao, Lynch, and Chen. Main Findings: Service innovation partially mediates the relationship between promotional strategies and market share, accounting for approximately 12% of the total effect. This finding underscores service innovation's role in enhancing promotional strategies' effectiveness. It indicates that service innovation is a key explanatory mechanism through which promotional efforts contribute to the growth or retention of market share within the healthcare in…
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Healthcare Funders
  topic: keywords
subject: Market Share
  topic: keywords
subject: Mediating Effect
  topic: keywords
subject: Medical Schemes
  topic: keywords
subject: Outsourcing Marketing Services
  topic: keywords
subject: Promotional Strategies
  topic: keywords
subject: Quantitative Analysis
  topic: keywords
subject: Service Innovation
  topic: keywords
creator: Michael Willie
creator: Abigail Chivandi
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Michael Willie, Abigail Chivandi (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-06-12
publication date: 2025-06-12
starting page: 51
ending page: 60
doi: 10.55578/jift.2506.004

A Boosted Deep ConVNet embedding Long Short Term Memory with Synthetic Minority Oversampling Techniques as Foiling Model for Payment Card Fraud
type: item
description: Payment card fraud with contemporaries have persisted as strain challenges bedeviling the financial institutions. With hi-tech thieves exploiting flaws in the digital fraud prevention and detection system to prompts derogatory effects of unquantifiable financial losses, cash back, and customer frictions. An ideal Fraud Detection System (FDS) and countermeasure is require for mitigating these concerns. As a result, several scholars anticipated statistical methods, rule-based approaches with many others for detection. But, majority of these approaches suffers from imbalance data distribution, high dimensionality with sparsity challenges, and real-time detection. This study recommended enhanced Deep ConVNet embedding Long Short-Term Memory and resampling method of SMOTE (DCNN-LSTM+SMOTE) as potential solution. The model is design and implemented on Google Colab platform with GPU; where Tensorflow is used for the DL and Scikit learn for ML models respectively, and Python as the modelled language. Firstly, baseline experiment is steered on two orthodox ML models of Random Forest (RF), Logistics Regression (LR) for feature selection and engineering. While probing kaggle dataset obtained; comprising 284,807 records with 31 field’s features. This dataset is very imbalance with data distribution sort of 0.17% deceitful and 99.8% non-deceitful. Second trialing is conduct; using SMOTE techniques to balance the dataset sort distribution and improved on used LR, RF, with other models such as Isolation forest, Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Multiple Layer Perceptron’s (MLP), Light Gradient Boosting Machine (LGBM), Deep ConVNet and Long Short-Time Memory. In testing efficacy of these models, confusion matrix performance evaluation metrics is delved. This revealed the outcome of the balancing model trial; that described the proposed DCNN-LSTM+SMOTE superclass performance against other models. Where, its accuracy score and prevalence result is 99.8% distinctly. The model offered t…
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Fraud Detection System
  topic: keywords
subject: Imbalance Dataset
  topic: keywords
subject: Deep Learning
  topic: keywords
subject: Financial Institutions
  topic: keywords
creator: Lateef Salaudeen
creator: Danlami Gabia
creator: Muhammad Garbaa
creator: Hassan Umar Surua
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Lateef Salaudeen, Danlami Gabia, Muhammad Garbaa, Hassan Umar Surua (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-06-13
publication date: 2025-06-13
starting page: 61
ending page: 89
doi: 10.55578/jift.2506.005

Systemic Risks of Sophisticated Financial Products: A Critical Review of Post-2008 Innovations and the Impacts on Global Markets
type: item
description: This article provides a critical review of systemic risks arising from post-2008 financial innovation, with a focus on sophisticated instruments such as structured products, crypto derivatives and decentralised finance (DeFi). Drawing on recent theoretical developments and empirical insights, the study investigates how these products amplify market instability through leverage, interconnectivity and algorithmic reflexivity. The analysis criticises traditional regulatory frameworks, highlighting their limitations in addressing emerging risks and proposing a shift towards functional, risk-based governance. By consolidating fragmented academic and regulatory perspectives, the article offers a comprehensive conceptual synthesis of how modern financial engineering contributes to systemic vulnerabilities. It also identifies regulatory gaps, in areas such as programmable finance and synthetic tokenisation, that challenge current supervisory mechanisms. This analysis is intended to serve as a reference point for policymakers, researchers and financial institutions in the ongoing effort to mitigate systemic threats in increasingly digital and decentralised financial systems.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Financial Innovation
  topic: keywords
subject: Systemic Risk
  topic: keywords
subject: Sophisticated Financial Products
  topic: keywords
subject: Tokenisation
  topic: keywords
subject: Algorithmic Trading
  topic: keywords
subject: Decentralised Finance (DeFi)
  topic: keywords
subject: Financial Regulation
  topic: keywords
subject: Adaptive Markets
  topic: keywords
creator: Natália Teixeira
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Natália Teixeira (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-04-28
publication date: 2025-04-28
starting page: 1
ending page: 17
doi: 10.55578/jift.2504.001

The Moderating Role of Dividend Payout on the Relationship Between Working Capital Management and Profitability: Evidence from Japan's Technology Hardware and Equipment Industry
type: item
description: This study examines the moderating impact of dividend payout on the relationship between working capital management and profitability. The working capital management is measured by the cash conversion cycle, and return on assets and Tobin’s Q as profitability measure. The data were collected from the Thomson Reuters Eikon database spanning from 2002 to 2023. The study employed the two-step Generalized Method of Moments (GMM), and Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS) methods, to estimate the moderating effect of dividend payout ratio on the relationship between CCC and profitability. The findings of this study revealed a negative and statistically significant impact of dividend payout on the profitability of Japan's manufacturing firms, particularly in the technology hardware and equipment industry. It also suggests that in industries where high capital expenditures are necessary, maintaining lower dividend payout ratio may be more conducive to sustaining profitability. These findings encourage a re-evaluation of dividend strategies, emphasizing the importance of aligning dividend payouts with the firm's long-term financial and operational goals to avoid undermining profitability. The study extends the inconclusive empirical evidence on the determinants of dividend policy, working capital management and profitability fills the lacuna in existing literature by focusing on how dividend policy influence working capital management practices and profitability of firms in Japan. The findings are also useful to the board of directors of non-financial firms in deciding an appropriate dividend policy, and to the shareholders in making investment decisions.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Cash conversion cycle
  topic: keywords
subject: Dividend Payout ratio
  topic: keywords
subject: FMOLS
  topic: keywords
subject: Japan technology hardware and equipment industry
  topic: keywords
subject: Tobin’s Q
  topic: keywords
creator: Saidu Koroma
creator: Sulaiman Kamara
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Saidu Koroma, Sulaiman Kamara (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-05-15
publication date: 2025-05-15
starting page: 29
ending page: 50
doi: 10.55578/jift.2505.003

Exploring User Adoption of Digital Lending Platforms in NBFCs: Insights from the Retail Loan Segment
type: item
description: This study aims to evaluate user perceptions of digital loan platforms, analyze the role of technology in enhancing loan accessibility, and provide strategic recommendations for Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs) to optimize their digital lending infrastructure. A quantitative research design has been employed, with data collected from individual users of digital loan mobile applications to identify adoption patterns. Purposive sampling was used, targeting individuals who have processed loan applications through digital platforms at selected NBFCs in India, specifically those with a Head Office or Branch in the state of Gujarat. The findings reveal that Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU) has a greater influence than Perceived Usefulness (PU) on users’ Attitude Toward Use (ATU). This suggests that simplifying the digital loan application process has a more significant impact on shaping users' attitudes toward adoption than merely increasing the perceived usefulness of the platform. Non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) play a crucial role in addressing the credit needs of organized and unorganized sectors, particularly where traditional banks have limited reach. With a competitive advantage in offering customized products, NBFCs have a significant opportunity to expand in the micro, small, and medium enterprise (MSME) and retail sectors [1].
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Digital loan
  topic: keywords
subject: Digital Banking
  topic: keywords
subject: NBFC
  topic: keywords
subject: TAM
  topic: keywords
creator: Arun Boliya
creator: Sonam Arora
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Dr. SONAM ARORA, Arun Boliya (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-04-30
publication date: 2025-04-30
starting page: 18
ending page: 28
doi: 10.55578/jift.2504.002