The paper considers a specific type of such financial instrument as an option, namely an exotic barrier call option of the European type. Exotic options are gaining popularity among ordinary investors due to the development of information and telecommunication technologies, thanks to which such specific financial instruments as options have become readily available. We investigate the hedging problem for such options with some restrictions on the payment function and the availability of dividend payment on a risky asset in the classical Black-Scholes model. An analogue of the Black-Scholes formula for the mentioned variant of the exotic barrier is proved. In the future, it is planned to generalize the obtained results for put options and for more general payment functions.

Using a desktop review of literature, the effect of illegal capital flows on the economic performance of Sub-Saharan Africa is examined. The review focus on articles with attention to illegal capital flows and their effects on the economic performance of Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole. By way of sampling method, purposive sampling was used, and so the desktop review focused purposively on articles published on issues of illicit financial flows and their effects on the economic performance of Ghana and Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole. The review found a high propensity of trade mis-invoicing and thus high illicit financial flows, transactions across boarders from developing countries and for that matter Sub-Saharan Africa to the developed economies. Therefore, the research recommends that customs divisions in sub-Saharan Africa should have up-to-date commodity-level world pricing information to make relatively better comparisons to detect mis-pricing and avoid such falsification and manipulation in trade. Given the high propensity of trade mis-invoicing resulting in high illicit financial flows, we recommend that cross-border transactions from developing sub-Saharan African countries be subjected to heightened scrutiny to curtail any potential traces of falsification in trade for tax evasion.

Consumer behavior is evolving, demanding a wide range of products with fast shipping and reliable service. The automotive aftermarket industry, worth billions, requires efficient distribution systems to stay competitive. Manufacturers strive to balance growth with product and service excellence. Distributors and retailers face the challenge of maintaining competitive pricing while keeping inventory levels low. An adequate supply chain and accurate product data are crucial for product availability and reducing stock issues. This ultimately increases profits and customer satisfaction.

The level of business competition in several online shopping sites for fashion products is currently experiencing quite crucial dynamics. Competitive match will indirectly affect consumer purchasing decisions. This research explores what factors are dominantly influencing the level of product purchase decisions on online shopping sites in terms of product variety, price, brand image and promotion aspects. This research design uses a quantitative research design. Determination of the sample in this study using the convenience sampling method with a total of 110 respondents. Data collection uses a questionnaire distributed online during the period from May to June 2021. This study concludes that product variations and brand image have a positive and significant influence on purchasing decisions. Then for the effect of price and promotion on purchasing decisions obtained a positive but not significant impact. This study confirms the importance of paying attention to aspects of pricing and product promotion strategies on the Reebonz online shopping site.

The pharmaceutical industry relies extensively on Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) as essential components in the production of drugs. The supply chain supporting these APIs is complex, encompassing multiple stages from raw material sourcing to distribution to pharmaceutical manufacturers worldwide. This manuscript explores the intricate challenges encountered within the pharmaceutical API supply chain, focusing on regulatory compliance, quality control, supply chain disruptions, and global dependencies. Regulatory compliance poses a significant hurdle, with varying standards across regions necessitating meticulous adherence to ensure market access and product safety. Quality control and assurance are paramount to maintaining consistency and purity in APIs, yet they present ongoing challenges such as batch variability and contamination risks. Supply chain disruptions, ranging from natural disasters to geopolitical tensions, highlight vulnerabilities in global sourcing strategies, underscoring the need for resilient supply chain management practices. Global dependencies on a limited number of suppliers or regions expose the industry to supply shortages and pricing pressures, exacerbated by geopolitical events and trade policies. These dependencies necessitate strategic diversification and risk mitigation efforts to ensure continuity in API availability and affordability. By addressing these challenges collaboratively, stakeholders can enhance the resilience and reliability of the pharmaceutical API supply chain, thereby ensuring uninterrupted access to essential medications and improving global healthcare outcomes.

Innovations in computing and communication technologies are reshaping finance. The seismic changes are casting uncertainty about the future of financial services. On one hand, fintech evangelists project a rosy future, asserting that the fast-moving algorithms can deliver low-cost financial services intuitively, customized to meet robust consumer expectations. On the other hand, many finance veterans fret that the traditional banking model could disintermediate, bleeding banks via a ‘death by a thousand cuts’, reducing them to passive portfolio holders with no direct customer relationship, eclipsed by digital giants which use their enormous treasure troves of customer data to offer banking as an added service with nearly free cost. Amidst the upbeat technological promises and apocalyptic forebodings, there are two constant, mostly agreed-upon, truths. The first is the vital importance of data. Advances in the internet, cloud computing, and record-keeping technologies are producing an ‘exponential growth in the volume and detail of data’. Some of this big data are personal information. Smartphones are deployed in almost all developed and emerging economies, serving as little spies; tracking, recording location histories, social networks, and app usage of their unsuspecting owners; often with a great degree of precision. ‘People are walking data-factories’ in this ‘mobile digital society’. Data are the fermentation of these global exchanges, electronic commerce and communication, and financial transactions. To just take Facebook as an example, it shares 30 million people a day through updates and posts, hosting personal information on 2.23 billion users. To the alarm of the uninformed public, much of this information is available for commercial harvest. The second constant is the rise of intelligent solutions. Consumers today—be it disclosed or not—are fed tailored clothes, music, film, holiday packages—almost anything you like, notably dynamic pricing, varying in accordance with individual profiles, or personalized search results. The availability of powerful computers has enabled comparable applications that are intended to make the system more responsive to their customer profiles and desires, or to capitalize competitive business possibilities. Such changes will transform the financial industry and occupy a prominent position among the mechanisms of policy competition, reshaping the way in which financial services are bestowed and led on the demand side.

Cloud native ETL pipelines support the extract and transform phases of real time claims processing in large scale insurers. The cloud native approach offers dramatic improvements in scalability, reliability, resiliency and agility as well as seamless integration with the diverse set of data sources, destinations and technologies characteristic of large scale insurers. The ETL process extracts data from source systems such as core transaction, fraud, customer and accounting processes, transforms the data to create a usable format for analytics and other applications, and loads the resulting tables into business intelligence or data lake systems for subsequent storage and analysis. By addressing these two phases of the overall ETL process, cloud native ETL pipelines can provide timely, reliable and consistent data to data scientists, actuaries, underwriters and other analysts. Real time processing represents a key priority within the overall claims process: faster, more accurate claim approvals reduce insurer costs, improve customer service and enhance premium pricing. As a result, a variety of claims related use cases are moving from batch to real time.