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The White Paper on International Economy & Trade 2024 is a comprehensive analysis of global economic trends and foreign policies that impact trade. It emphasizes the need to rebuild a rules-based international trade order and strengthen cooperation with countries in the Global South. The paper also highlights the importance of strengthening export capabilities and fostering companies that can compete globally. It discusses various economic factors and trends, including the risk of over-dependence on imports from specific countries and the need for diversification in supply chains. The article also focuses on Japan's trade balance and export competitiveness, suggesting that improving terms of trade and supporting indirect export enterprises are important policy issues. Encouraging domestic medium-sized companies to invest in intangible assets is crucial for their growth and expansion. [Extracted from the article]

The Journal of Housing & Community Development has published a call for abstracts, papers, presentations, and posters for the 2025 Pan-African City Symposium and Exposition. The event, organized by the US-Africa Collaborative, aims to bring together experts, professionals, students, government officials, and thought leaders to exchange ideas, present research, forge partnerships, and showcase advancements in sustainable and equitable urban development. Participants will also have the opportunity to participate in international design competitions and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development's Innovative Housing Showcase. The event will take place in Washington DC and attendees will have the chance to explore the city's amenities, entertainment, culture, and history. More details and submission guidelines will be announced soon. [Extracted from the article]

The METI White Paper on International Economy & Trade 2024 emphasizes Japan's support for a rules-based international trade regime based on free trade. It acknowledges the importance of economic security in international trade and the need to respond to social concerns such as labor rights and the environment. The paper highlights the economic benefits of free trade, including lower prices, increased availability of essential goods, and the motivation for domestic economic reforms. Despite rising geopolitical risks, global trade is still projected to grow, indicating the continued progress of globalization. Japan's support for free trade is also driven by the need to maintain influence and partnerships with nations in the Global South. [Extracted from the article]

As an important recyclable and reusable resource, waste paper is traded in millions of dollars around the world every year. Global waste paper trade not only addresses resource scarcity issues, alleviates environmental pressures and brings substantial economic gains, but also contributes to the development of global circular economy. Using complex network methods, bilateral waste paper trade data, and temporal exponential random graph models (TERGM), we construct global waste paper trade networks (GWPTNs) during 2000–2018, and examine their structural evolution and determinants. We report that: (I) GWPTNs display obvious features of small-world network, low reciprocity, heterogeneity and disassortativity; (II) Asia is the leading recipient of global waste paper, while Europe and North America are the main exporters; (III) China and India dominate the waste paper import markets while the United States is the largest exporter, and Germany plays an essential role in both importing and exporting hubs of waste paper; (IV) The evolution of the GWPTNs is significantly influenced by endogenous reciprocity, transitivity and preferential attachment, and economies with more partners or within the same continents are more likely to trade waste paper. Economies with higher urbanization rates, more per capita income, stricter environmental regulation, or lower industrialization rates are more likely to export waste paper; conversely, they are more likely to be the importers. Economy-pairs sharing a language or religion, being a former colony of the same colonizer, historical colonial relationship or a border, or signing regional trade agreements are more likely to trade waste paper. • Global waste paper trade networks (GWPTNs) in 2000–2018 are established. • GWPTNs show the features of small-world network, low reciprocity, heterogeneity and disassortativity. • Asia is the leading recipient, while Europe and North America are the main exporters. • China and India dominate import markets, and the US is the largest exporter. • Key factors influencing waste paper trade are revealed using the TERGM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigates the changing nature of pulp and paper trade patterns within the European Community as the pulp and paper industry responded to increasing global competition between the years 1960 and 1985. Internationalization of the industry during the 1980s; Specialization in the trade of individual pulp and paper products between European member states; Grubel and Lloyd's index.

The US paper and paperboard industry has experienced significant structural changes over the past 25 years, including reductions in the number of mills, lower rates of capacity growth, employment cutbacks and a loss of market share to foreign competitors. These structural shifts portray an industry that increasingly has difficulty adapting to a more competitive global environment. Based on aggregate data from 1965 to 1996, this article estimates a short-run translog (TL) cost function for the industry. The estimated model fits the data well and all sample points satisfy monotonicity and concavity conditions at all points. Among the findings, the industry operates at slightly increasing returns to capital utilization and labour and energy are Allen-Uzawa complements but Morishima substitutes in production. Technological progress generated 0.02% reduction in annual operating costs and consistent with an ailing US industry, estimated marginal costs approximated average operating costs until 1982 after which marginal costs significantly diverged from average operating costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the existence of shell companies or those devoid of physical or human substance, as a problem issue in the international economic order as of April 2019. Topics covered include such companies' place of incorporation legalistic treatment in private law, and the global competition for incorporation services and misuse of corporate personality. Also noted is the need to view private laws on the national level as they can lead to poor outcomes in various jurisdictions.

This document is an editorial for a special issue of the journal "Innovation & Development" focused on the financing of innovation for development in the Global South. The editorial highlights the need to address the relationship between finance and innovation, particularly in underdeveloped countries. It discusses the role of public financial institutions, such as national development banks, and explores novel forms of financing for innovation, such as micro-finance and venture capital. The editorial also introduces six research papers included in the special issue that touch on various aspects of finance and innovation in the Global South. Overall, the editorial aims to inspire new research questions and studies in this field. [Extracted from the article]

Capital and routine building repairs - attics, basements, roofs, ventilation ducts, and cabinets for sewerage and other pipes, trash chutes, and so on - can be done by private repair companies and organizations on a competitive basis without involving budget resources since they are, in essence, commercial entities. This article analyzes current problems in housing-and-utilities services and their impact on ecology. At present, programs have been outlined to reclaim landfills, separate waste collection, and build enterprises to sort and process garbage. [Extracted from the article]

The growth model (GM) programme in comparative and international political economy attempts to do three things. First, it encourages a dialogue between international and comparative political economy research through creating a shared theoretical framework that moves beyond the methodological and ontological nationalism of traditional comparative research. Second, it draws upon post-Keynesian macroeconomics to emphasise the importance of domestic demand, credit debt, and macro-financial regimes in shaping the politics of advanced capitalism. Third, it draws attention to the dynamics of political conflict, coalition building and social agency in shaping country-specific GMs. Each paper in this special issue either directly or indirectly touches on these different aspects of the nascent GM research programme. But they do so with a particular focus on the comparative political economy of Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the economic growth and prosperity, ports and shipping play an increasingly important role in the national economy and international trade. Numerous studies related to the field of port and shipping were conducted to propose some managerial insights. This paper uses the bibliometric method to analyze the research papers published from 2000 to 2019 on port and shipping in the field of management science. The number of published papers, impact score and cite score are identified as evaluation criteria to analyze the research contributions of researchers, affiliated institutions and countries/regions in the port and shipping field. At the same time, the importance of each keyword can be obtained by the bibliometric method, which may help new researchers grasp research hotspots and trends in related fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the global dynamics of a general 2×22×2 competition models with nonsymmetric nonlocal dispersal operators. Our results indicate that local stability implies global stability provided that one of the diffusion rates is sufficiently small. This paper extends the work in [3], where Lotka-Volterra competition models with symmetric nonlocal operators are considered, to more general competition models with nonsymmetric operators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, the development of information technology in all fields is very rapid, including in the manufacturing sector, thus making the social environment of manufacturing change a lot. Traditional manufacturing research focuses on applying technology, such as production models, supplier arrangements, automation, advanced machines in the manufacturing industry, etc. Global competition and increasingly diverse customer demands are a phenomenon that occurs today. Social manufacturing is a new distributed, collaborative, and intelligent manufacturing, that every consumer can participate in the entire process of product design, manufacture, and even marketing. This study aims to examine the development of social manufacturing systems and the latest research in social manufacturing. The method used is to review the latest papers related to social manufacturing that provide a new paradigm for the manufacturing industry, then map based on the concepts, frameworks, and technologies used. The results of this review paper are in the form of mapping research papers taken from the database of a reputable international journal, Scopus. The mapping includes data on the author, co-author, terms on social manufacturing paper, year of publication, type of document and publisher. This systematic literature review can be one of the references for basic research on social manufacturing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green development is the main theme of modern development in China and even the world. Green development depends on green technology innovation (GTI). Therefore, for developing countries like China in the stage of economic transition, it is urgent to accelerate GTI to gain sustained advantages in the new round of international competition. As an important representative of contemporary rapid transportation, high-speed railway (HSR) can not only alleviate the rapidly growing transportation demand of the public, but also have potential benefits to the energy consumption structure and environmental quality. Whether and how HSR affects GTI has become the focus of this paper. Hence, by employing the panel data of 286 cities in China from 2007 to 2018 with the time-varying DID model, this paper verifies that HSR development can contribute to GTI. The main findings of this paper are as follows: (1) The operation of HSR can not only make the incremental development of GTI, but also improve the quality of GTI simultaneously. Moreover, the quality improvement effect of HSR is greater than the quantity increment effect. (2) Heterogeneity analysis shows that the positive effect of HSR on GTI is more significant for cities that have implemented LCCP. (3) This paper verifies the mediating effect of high-quality human capital. The opening of HSR further stimulates GTI by improving the level of high-quality human capital in cities and increasing the opportunities for knowledge exchange and diffusion. Based on the above findings, this paper proposes some policy recommendations to help developing countries achieve GTI with positive externalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a digital platform restrictiveness index for 64 countries based on ECIPE's Digital Trade Estimates database and the Digital Trade Restrictiveness Index. We identify specific restrictions that affect online platforms with a focus on online search, e‐commerce and social media. The results show that both OECD and non‐OECD countries show high levels of trade restrictions on online platforms. Moreover, some of the most restricted countries are characterised by large markets, signifying that a substantial part of the global economy gravitates towards restricting online platforms. Based on the platform restrictiveness index, we perform an econometric analysis showing that trade restrictions for online platforms are significantly associated with lower contributions of the ICT sector to productivity growth in the entire economy. The results suggest that reducing restrictions on online platforms can increase the ICT's contribution to overall productivity growth towards a level seen before the global financial crisis. Sectors that would benefit the most are those that make wider use of online platforms and the Internet, including information services, business services and financial services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces a special issue on technological development and policy making in China, highlighting their importance for China's economic growth. It discusses the shift in China's economy from reliance on property sector investment and low-value manufacturing to a new paradigm based on technological innovation and internal market expansion. The article emphasizes the need for adaptive policy making and financing support for science and technology development to enhance productivity growth. It also explores the Augmented National Innovation System (ANIS) in China, the growth of the semiconductor industry, and the limitations of the fiscal system. The research papers in this collection provide insights into China's economic transformation and propose reforms to support its development. [Extracted from the article]

This article explores the controversial topic of inward foreign direct investment (FDI) and its impact on emerging, developing, and underdeveloped economies. The authors highlight that while some studies show positive effects of FDI on economic growth, others fail to find such a relationship. The article presents six papers that delve into various aspects of FDI, including its effects on economic diversification, technology transfer, innovation, global value chains, and cultural distance. The findings suggest that the relationship between FDI and economic growth is complex and context-dependent. The article concludes by suggesting future research avenues, including the role of government corruption, the interaction between FDI and human capital, and the differentiation of FDI types. [Extracted from the article]

Abstract: The EU protects EU growers of 15 kinds of fresh fruits and vegetables against international competition by the entry price system (EPS), which is designed to restrict imports below the product-specific, politically designated entry price level. This study investigates the relevance of the EPS per product and country of origin. We develop two indicators for the effectiveness of the EPS, which serve as variables in a cluster analysis identifying four classes differing in the relevance of the EPS. The relevance of the EPS is found to be heterogeneous among products as well as countries of origin. It is highest for artichokes, courgettes, cucumbers, lemons, plums and tomatoes. The influence of the EPS on apples, clementines and pears is significantly lower, and of least relevance for apricots, mandarins, oranges, peaches and nectarines and table grapes. The EPS has the greatest effect on countries which neighbour the EU, whereas it is of minor importance for exports from far-away countries with the exception of China and South Africa. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In recent decades, the COVID-19 pandemic is the biggest social and economic crisis that has influenced all aspects of human life. The main purpose of this research paper is to yield a bibliometric analysis in terms of research papers regarding the influence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus on the international economy. Accordingly, the findings will reveal the papers written in the domains of economics, business and business finance, management, hospitality, leisure, sport and tourism. Thus, current areas of research were examined and future study may be proposed. The analysis shows key information concerning the authors, journals, countries and keywords. It may be acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic was of utmost importance for the worldwide researchers. Our judgments and recommendations are supposed to act as a framework to possible research opportunities and conspicuous implications for the economic area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the rapidly evolving realm of financial technology, blockchain integration has catalyzed transformative changes. This study delves into the intricate relationship between traditional banks and the blockchain technology. Drawing from the perspectives of International Political Economy (IPE) and Science and Technology Studies (STS), this study understands the blockchain technology through the lens of infrastructure, where power dynamics are constantly shaped by the entity wielding the strongest agency. This analysis delves into how traditional banks strategically leverage blockchain not only for technological integration but to exert control. Grounded in the concept of "power of social interaction," this study reveals how and why banks secure a central position within this evolving infrastructure, dynamically influencing the interplay between technology and financial institutions. A focal point of this exploration is the tokenization process, which illustrates how banks actively engage with blockchain, seamlessly integrating it into their structures to shape the infrastructure narratives. By contributing insights into the implications of blockchain adoption by traditional banks, this study enhances understanding of power dynamics within financial infrastructures and their transformative potential, underscoring the process of infrastructuring governing the endeavor to attain a central position within an infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the intensification of global economic competition, innovation has become one of the core elements of vigorous development in various regions. Improving the innovation ability of cross-regional central cities is the main factor influencing whether a region can achieve economic and social development. In this paper, an innovation primacy index system is designed according to the links of the innovation value chain, and the innovation advantages and empirical effects are comprehensively analyzed by using the point-to-point method, entropy weight method, gravity model and two-way fixed effect model. Based on the data of 8 cities in the core area of the Huaihai Economic Zone from 2010 to 2020 in China, Xuzhou's innovation primacy ranks first in the core area of the Huaihai Economic Zone, which accords with its status as the central city of the region. Its index has been rising, and its development trend is also good. However, the overall innovation ability of the core area of the Huaihai Economic Zone is unbalanced; the overall economic foundation is not solid enough. In terms of knowledge innovation, R&D innovation and industrial innovation, the industrialization level, around the activation of Xuzhou city vitality, enhances the Xuzhou innovation radiation drive, leading to a decrease in the Huaihai Economic Zone. Finally, some corresponding suggestions on innovation primacy have been proposed for the city of the Huaihai Economic Zone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In January 2021, the largest free trade area in the world measured by number of participating countries came into effect. This African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which links 54 countries and 1.3 billion people, is designed to foster rapid economic growth and pull tens of millions of people out of poverty. Despite the fact that this project raises issues central to International Political Economy (IPE) scholarship, major journals in the field including Review of International Political Economy (RIPE) have given it negligible attention. The paper begins by asking why the AfCFTA has remained at best, marginal, and at worst, absent in the IPE literature. Drawing on the critical and postcolonial literature in the field to address this question, the paper identifies IPE's Eurocentrism as the root cause of the discipline's oversight of the continent. After uncovering the implications and costs of this oversight, the paper discusses the insights that emerge from a close consideration of the AfCFTA, including the Pan-African ideology which undergirds the project and insights that contribute to the literature on regionalism. Highlighting the implications of both the AfCFTA and the analysis, the paper additionally discusses the promises and challenges in the future trajectory of the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including the inclusion of six empirical papers, economic disparities between small E.U. member countries with differing development levels post-2004 E.U. accession, and promoting hotel employees.

Business process re-engineering (BPR) is an approach to improving organizational performance. It evolved mostly within the private sector to maintain a successful business model despite increasing global competition. BPR presents a fundamental improvement in the essential organizational design. This paper investigates recent studies of BPR and identifies the success factors of BPR projects and their connection to the human–technology–organization (HTO) framework. By examining the relevant literature, we study various factors and their effects on the implementation of BPR and how these factors can affect process performance, successfully or otherwise. The aim is to study the literature to determine the success factors and challenges for BPR in the HTO framework. The article concludes by emphasizing the factors that will help to allow BPR to be implemented with a wider use in different sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism is transforming states. Nevertheless, how, in what ways, and with what consequences has yet to be adequately theorised and interrogated. This paper takes up this task by asking: How does tourism govern and transform states? And, what does this mean for places and people? Tourism is a global mobilities system with immense power. While this system is capable of governing and transforming all states, it has particular resonance in postcolonial states. Due to their historically constructed economic dependency on international tourism, postcolonial states are increasingly conceptualising, representing, and governing their territory/citizenry as desirable/safe 'tourism destinations' and 'touristic figures' for international—primarily white Western—tourists. This, we argue, is indicative of postcolonial states enacting a mode of governance that harks back to the colonial practice of human zoos and, thus, that they are acting as competitive 'zoo-managers'. Through theorising and interrogating this touristic state transformation we reveal the continued coloniality of postcolonial states and how this is being experienced, negotiated, and resisted by citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses three stress tests that the future European Commission will face in relation to European antitrust policy. The first stress test evaluates the effectiveness of the EU's Article 22 referral policy and the Commission's ability to examine mergers globally. The second stress test pertains to the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA) and its ability to regulate digital competition. The third stress test evaluates the EU's regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact on competition and innovation. The article argues that the Commission is likely to fail the first and second stress tests but has the potential to succeed in the third. The author criticizes the Commission's new guidance on Article 22 referrals, stating that it violates the principles of subsidiarity and legal certainty. The article concludes by providing guidance on how to respond to each stress test. [Extracted from the article]

The article provides an overview of recent policy developments and enforcement actions in Taiwan's digital economy. It focuses on two specific cases: the competition between delivery platforms and the mergers of online banks. In the case of delivery platforms, the article explains how Foodpanda's practices can harm competition and give it an advantage. In the case of online bank mergers, the Taiwan Fair Trade Commission (TFTC) considered factors like data access and protection. The TFTC found that data was not a barrier to entry and that the mergers did not restrict competition in terms of data protection. The article concludes by stating that the TFTC's enforcement decisions consider the unique characteristics of the digital economy. [Extracted from the article]

With the intensification of global competition and the increasing awareness of reducing energy consumption, sustainable supplier selection is crucial for establishing a solid cooperative relationship in sustainable supply chain management. This paper proposes a new framework that considers both the effective expression of uncertain information and the objective weights of decision makers to select sustainable suppliers. We first apply an interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy set to express the information of decision makers. Moreover, this paper applies a plant growth simulation algorithm to aggregate decision makers' information. Next, we adopt the similarity measure method to derive the target weight of each decision maker. Then, we apply the score function to rank the candidate sustainable suppliers. Finally, two practical cases are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed framework. The outcomes and comparative discussion show that the developed framework is efficient for sustainable supplier selection. Therefore, the proposed framework can be used to establish a solid cooperative relationship in the process of sustainable supply chain management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Citations are important building blocks for status and success in science. We used a linked dataset of more than 4 million authors and 26 million scientific papers to quantify trends in cumulative citation inequality and concentration at the author level. Our analysis, which spans 15 y and 118 scientific disciplines, suggests that a small stratum of elite scientists accrues increasing citation shares and that citation inequality is on the rise across the natural sciences, medical sciences, and agricultural sciences. The rise in citation concentration has coincided with a general inclination toward more collaboration. While increasing collaboration and full-count publication rates go hand in hand for the top 1% most cited, ordinary scientists are engaging in more and larger collaborations over time, but publishing slightly less. Moreover, fractionalized publication rates are generally on the decline, but the top 1% most cited have seen larger increases in coauthored papers and smaller relative decreases in fractional-count publication rates than scientists in the lower percentiles of the citation distribution. Taken together, these trends have enabled the top 1% to extend its share of fractional- and full-count publications and citations. Further analysis shows that top-cited scientists increasingly reside in high-ranking universities in western Europe and Australasia, while the United States has seen a slight decline in elite concentration. Our findings align with recent evidence suggesting intensified international competition and widening author-level disparities in science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]