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The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

The aim of this study is to examine the motive of China's and India's engagement in African countries particularly in Ethiopia and to address the land grabbing and debt-trap diplomacy between Ethiopia and the Asian drivers, which creates challenges across the diverse social, political, economic and ecological contexts.

This study utilises both primary and secondary data. The available literature is also reviewed. The primary data were gathered through semi-structured interviews and discussions from (1) several authority offices in Ethiopia, sources close to authorities, information-rich informants, employees and (2) perspectives, perceptions and prospects from individual members of society.

The study unmasks the win-win cooperation strategy from the perspective of the members of society in Ethiopia, evaluates whether China and India have strings attached or land grabbing motives. The study also shows that whether China's and India's move was deliberate, the implications of debt-trap diplomacy and exploitation in Ethiopia are apparent. Additionally, this study investigated several considerable potential threats to Ethiopia that will persist unless significant measures are taken to control the relations with Asian drivers.

Some of the limitations of this paper pertain to the primary data collection process from the Ethiopian Investment Commission (EIC) and other authorities, which was very challenging because people can be punished for talking to journalists or researchers. Furthermore, some investors were not willing to participate in discussions because they were engaged in areas that are not related to their licenses. Many interviewees were also not willing to disclose their names, and the data are not exhaustive in the number of investment projects covered.

This study provides new evidence on the influence of Chinese and Indian investment, aid and trade on Ethiopia's social, political and economic spheres. Additionally, this study contributes to the ongoing debate on land grabbing and debt-trap diplomacy in Ethiopia.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the pricing objectives (e.g. customer-related objectives, sales-related objectives, profit-related objectives) that service companies pursue to set their prices and to examine the impact of market structure on these objectives.

To achieve the research objectives, data were collected from 184 companies operating in four different service industries, namely, logistics companies, financial services providers, information technology companies and airlines.

The findings indicate that the companies that were investigated in the current study seem to follow a hierarchy of pricing objectives, in which their main focus is on the maintenance of the existing customers and the attraction of new ones to ensure their long-term survival in their market without, however, disregarding financial issues and objectives. The study also revealed that the market structure, along with the sector of operation, has an impact on the pricing objectives pursued, as different market conditions were found to lead to different pricing objectives.

The above findings indicate that managers responsible for setting prices within their firms should be guided by the unique characteristics of their markets.

Given the lack of similar studies within the existing services sector literature, the originality/value of the paper lies in the fact that it presents one of the first attempts to empirically examine this issue from a marketing point of view.

The purpose of this article is to examine all the studies carried out within the scope of e-HRM and smart HRM, grouped according to the sub-functions of technical and HRM. The use of technology in HRM has started since the mid-1990s. However, this study focused on the articles published after 2014 in order to keep up to date. Any search strategy should allow for the completeness of the search to be evaluated. The terms “electronic-HRM”, “AI and HRM”, “Industry 4.0 and HRM”, “Society 5.0 and HRM”, “Human Resource Information Systems” and “Digital Technologies and HRM” “Human-robot interaction” has been questioned in IEEE Xplore, ALM digital library, Emerald Insight, SpringerLink, and Science Direct. The Web of Science and Scopus were also queried to double-check the findings and find other relevant articles in lesser-known libraries. Google Scholar was also used for forward and backward searches. These online databases have been chosen because they present the most important peer-reviewed full-text journals, conference proceedings, book chapters. Then, the references of each article were reviewed for additional articles on digital technologies and HRM. Each subsequent article is then reviewed for additional reference.

A total of 5,580 articles have been reviewed. Duplicate items have been removed. The titles and abstracts of 3,500 articles have been scanned to identify potential articles. The full-text evaluation of 2,554 was based on compliance with the inclusion criteria. In addition, 2,458 studies have been excluded. In total, 96 studies have been selected for data extraction. Additionally, questionnaires and reviews have been used to provide comprehensive research on e-HRM and smart HRM. The search terms used are expected to cover most, if not all, of the studies involving e-HRM and smart HRM.

The study carried out in this article is qualitative research. In the article, which methods are used and what has changed in e-HRM and smart HRM are examined. In particular, it has been thought about what can happen with the inclusion of human-machine interaction, AI, chatbots, industry 4.0 and information systems in HRM. Unlike previous studies, this review takes HRM from a broader perspective and groups it by topic, both by technical and HR functions. In addition, the reviewed articles provide brief information about the AI technologies used. In particular, criteria were taken into account according to the field, type and subject of the articles.

This study has the distinction of being the first in the literature in terms of examining all the studies carried out within the scope of e-HRM and smart HRM and grouped according to the sub-functions of technical and HRM in line with its purpose. The article focuses specifically on research published after 2014. It is expected to contribute to the literature in terms of collecting all studies in a single article. Other contributions of this article can be summarized in four main articles: 1) it presents a summary of previous research by grouping the studies on e-HRM and smart HRM according to the interests of researchers. 2) It saves time for the reader as it provides a brief explanation of the studies on the subject. 3) Instead of explaining in detail the general details analyzed in other articles, it offers a practical perspective by focusing on the type, subject and field of the article. 4) With the digitalization of HRM, new, up-to-date research and techniques are introduced.

Trust in open networks has emerged as a prime research topic, partly due to the vast unexploited possibilities unrestricted distribution of ideas, innovations and information provided. This paper aims to present an abstract model for anticipating the probabilities of the target object to meet with the expectations of the inquirer, emphasising consistent behaviour and managing diverse conceptions by relying on sentimentally like‐minded.

The basic building blocks of trust are presented and motivated. Each presented problem is addressed and formulas facilitating rightful interpretation are given.

The paper presents some ideas how to approach the problems faced when rightfully interpreting information gathered from anonymous collaborates in a scalable manner by pointing out the basics of them.

This paper depicts ideas as illustrations that are easy to understand and give an overview of the fundamentals on which to conduct further research.

The paper provides a conceptual discussion of the need for trust in open networks.