This research aims to study celebrity endorsement in the context of social media when done by sports celebrities and its influence on purchase intention. Four dimensions have been studied: word of mouth, brand image, brand trust, and brand attitude. By relating these variables, we seek to answer the following questions: Will consumers be influenced by a sports celebrity that they admire to buy a product/service from a brand that they support? Will the brand’s components be valued as a result of celebrity endorsement? Using a questionnaire shared on social networks, 303 valid answers have been obtained. Our statistical analysis has used a structural equation model and the results have been analyzed using SmartPLS software, which has confirmed all the model assumptions. Therefore, celebrity endorsement has an impact on brand image, word of mouth, brand attitude, and brand trust. Furthermore, it directly affects purchase intention. The effectiveness of celebrity endorsement has been verified in the context of social media and this research can thus help marketeers understand the importance of using sports celebrities to endorse brands. Implications for brands have been identified, based on the research results.

The Tax on the Increase in Value of Urban Natural Land (IIVTNU), better known as the municipal capital gains tax has been one of the most questioned taxes due to the problems arising since its application and the continuous modifications as a result of the rulings of the Constitutional Court, which has led to its calculation being significantly changed. However, and despite the continuous reforms, the IIVTNU still has major problems that have not been corrected. In addition, no official estimates are available on the budgetary impact of the new regulation, nor does it seem that the General State Administration will pay any kind of compensation to the municipalities for the foreseeable loss of tax collection, as it is a fiscal capacity delegated to local entities. Finally, the IIVTNU has many more collection problems than other taxes such as the Property Tax or the Business Tax. This article addresses all these limitations and proposes a set of alternatives to improve the fiscal capacity of the IIVTNU, both generally and specifically for Galician municipalities.

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted the health, economy, and social sectors, and micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) worldwide, including in Indonesia. This paper examines the use of social media and e-commerce with an entrepreneurial orientation to enhance the business performance of MSMEs. The study should serve as a model for improving the quality of micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises in the Jambi Province, in Indonesia. The research employs quantitative and qualitative approaches. The latter method employs in-depth interviews, focus group discussions (FGDs), and observation, whereas the former uses the partial least squares method (PLS). The findings and discussions conclude that social media adoption positively affected the performance and entrepreneurial orientation of MSMEs during the said period. Similarly, e-commerce positively affected the performance and entrepreneurial orientation of MSMEs. Entrepreneurialism and social media adoption had a significant impact on the performance of MSMEs, and due to its entrepreneurial orientation, e-commerce influenced the performance of MSMEs.

Most mutual fund performance evaluation studies interpret fund alphas as the incremental performance of managers in relation to passive benchmark indices, which should exhibit statistically insignificant alphas. However, if these indices present significant non-zero alphas, standard (non-adjusted) fund alphas are biased. This paper investigates the impact of using benchmark-adjusted alphas to assess the performance of Portuguese-based mutual funds, investing in domestic and European equities. For the period 2000-2020, our results show that fund benchmarks exhibit significantly negative alphas, which lead to an underestimation of mutual fund performance when employing standard models. As a result, benchmark-adjusted alphas are significantly higher than unadjusted alphas for both fund categories, though the differences are larger for domestic than for European funds. We have also found that the impact of the benchmark-adjustment procedure depends on the state of markets. The domestic (European) benchmark exhibits considerably lower (higher) alphas during crisis than during non-crisis periods. During market crises, the differences between pre- and post-adjustment alphas are statistically significant only for domestic funds, whereas during non-crisis periods, both fund categories exhibit significant performance improvements. Our findings suggest that the benchmark-adjustment procedure has a higher impact when benchmark indices exhibit higher concentration.

Crimes related to sexual abuse and rape attract large social mobilizations, as happened following the assault on an 18-year-old woman at the San Fermín festival in Pamplona, Spain, by a group of men known as “la manada” (“the wolf pack” in English). Understanding how the aftermath of protests and socioeconomic factors influence the perceptions of fear of crime, safety and justice, measured as judiciary decisions, are the aims of this paper. A randomized sample collected in two periods was obtained (N=605), the first one (n1=454) performed after the judicial sentence of the case, the second (n2=151) four months later, after the social alarm had decreased. The perception of safety increased after the peak moments of the demonstrations. The trust in justice was low and fell after protesters had risen to the streets although its perception was greater among higher income earners. Hence, the perception of safety rises during social mobilizations but only improves for a short period of time whereas the effects on that of justice last for longer.

The article deals with the problem of waste management in Algeria. It aims to analyze the various policies undertaken by the government in order to be able to respond to the principles of sustainable development and the circular economy from the perspective of sustainable and integrated waste management. The analyses carried out show that the first waste management strategies in Algeria are more reactive and constitute a response to the crisis of the proliferation of waste. It is only from the year 2016 that the national integrated waste management strategy constitutes a perspective of registration of this sector in a circular approach of profitability and sustainability.

This article presents a case study on the link between the management of plastic waste in Morocco (mainly in Casablanca and Rabat) and the divergent working conditions of workers (formal and informal) that conforme the sector, in the context of transformation of the sector towards the Circular Economy (CE). To such an end, we take into account the perspective of multiple experts in the field, as well as the public administration in charge of managing the transition process, the private business sector and the informal collectors themselves. This approach allowed us to understand the complexities and nuances of the transition of waste management in Morocco and to identify the main challenges in terms of social justice associated with the change towards a Circular Economy.