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Prevelar raising/fronting has been documented as a “defining feature” of Pacific Northwest English, yet its status in nearby California remains unclear. This study investigates prevelar raising/fronting across four Californian field sites. Examining word list data from 276 White speakers and sociolinguistic interview data from 64 White speakers, we complicate assumptions of prevelar conditioning in the West in two ways. First, the authors show that the prevelar pattern is not confined to the Pacific Northwest but is extensive throughout California. Results suggest that, in line with previous work in Washington and Oregon, this prevelar pattern is also on the decline among younger Californians, although the trajectory of change appears to differ from that observed in Washington. As this is yet more evidence that the West is broadly participating in similar vocalic patterns, this article tentatively explores historical migration events as one possible source for the contemporary Western vowel system. Second, the authors also complicate phonetic notions of prevelar “tensing,” showing that F1 and F2 are not always operating in tandem: speakers who raise bag, for example, do not always front bag to the same degree, and vice versa. All of this points to an increasingly complex view of the prevelar pattern and one that warrants continued investigations for theories of sound change.

The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the most pressing issues at present. A question which is particularly important for governments and policy makers is the following: Does the virus spread in the same way in different countries? Or are there significant differences in the development of the epidemic? In this paper, we devise new inference methods that allow to detect differences in the development of the COVID-19 epidemic across countries in a statistically rigorous way. In our empirical study, we use the methods to compare the outbreak patterns of the epidemic in a number of European countries.

Prevelar raising is the raising of trap and dress vowels before voiced velars. While bag and beg raising have been described in Canada, the Upper Mid-west, and the Pacific Northwest, an in-depth investigation of their distribution across North America is lacking, especially for beg. Using an online survey distributed to over 5,000 participants via Reddit (which skews toward younger, White males) and ordinary kriging for spatial interpolation, this study finds that prevelar raising is more widespread than previously reported: bag raising is found in much of the North and the Upper Midwest, and beg raising is far more variable and is common across much of the Midlands and the West, with concentrated pockets in the Northern Great Plains and various other regions. These data suggest that the two can occur independently, with areas like the upper Midwest exhibiting bag raising alone and the Midlands and the West reporting beg raising alone. These findings suggest that additional research on prevelar raising and other infrequent phonological variables is required to uncover their regional distribution and social meaning.

With 76% of the total main workforce in agriculture and more than 50% small and medium landowning households, the village provides an important case study for understanding agrarian resilience. The conceptualisation of resilience has been majorly confined to a system or a territorial boundary. Agrarian resilience too is commonly assumed to be driven by forces within the agriculture and the rural. i.e. land ownership remains constant, the labour of the peasantry is spatially limited to agriculture, the capital is generated within agriculture and the networks and skills of the peasantry is also confined to agriculture. This has underscored the role of factors and processes working outside the agriculture in conceptualising agrarian resilience. While the primacy of the agrarian processes cannot be denied, there are often processes working outside an agrarian system that can also enable resilience. i.e. the rural workforce can diversify its labour outside agriculture in the urban non-farm sector, capital can also be generated from sources outside the agriculture. In this context, using the case study of a village dominated by small and medium landowning households in the Patiala district of Punjab in India, the paper shows that resilience is driven by processes both within and outside agriculture.

Although the country-of-origin effect on staffing practices of multinational corporations (MNCs) is well-known, its underlying mechanisms are under-theorized. Drawing on the cross-cultural management and comparative institutionalism literatures, we propose an overarching, theory-based framework with two mechanisms, dispositional and contextual, that might explain country-of-origin effects in MNCs’ use of parent-country nationals (PCNs) in their foreign subsidiaries’ top management teams. The tendency of MNCs from some home countries to staff these positions with PCNs is typically labelled as ‘ethnocentric’, a word imbued with negative intentions referring mainly to the dispositional rationale behind this staffing choice. However, fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) of staffing practices of MNCs from ten home countries shows that both mechanisms – dispositional and contextual – have considerable explanatory power. Our methodological approach enables us to analyse conceptually distinct, yet empirically intertwined, societal-level explanations as a pattern, and thus offers a viable solution to integrate different perspectives in international and comparative research.

This paper explores the resilience of the urban informal economy through multi-dimensional conflict. Karachi constituted an ideal case study for the research given the intensity and paradigmatic nature of the multi-dimensional conflict experienced in the city between 2008 and 2013. The paper applies a comparative frame in three sites (Sadar, Orangi and Lyari) to illustrate resilience of the informal economy and its role in supporting the urban poor in Karachi to survive and sometimes thrive, whilst also contributing to peaceful recovery and adaptation, albeit persistent divisions mean violence remains possible. The paper argues for greater recognition of and support for informal economies in urban policy, marking a shift away from the predominant neoliberal forms of governance that diminish the role of the state and burden already vulnerable people with the greatest risks, particularly in fragile, conflict-affected situations where half the world’s poor are predicted to live by 2030.

This paper studies long-term trends and patterns in global refugee migration. We explore the intensity, spread, and distance of refugee migration at a global, regional, and country level between 1951 and 2018. The analysis did not detect a long-term increase in the global intensity of refugee migration. Primarily depending on levels of conflict, refugee numbers have fluctuated at levels of between 0.1 and 0.3 percent of the world population. Apparent increases in numbers of the globally displaced are driven by the inclusion of populations and countries that were previously excluded from the data. While refugee populations continue to be concentrated in countries with low-to-medium income levels, the analysis reveals several geographic shifts in refugee migration. Refugees tend to come from a shrinking number of origin countries and move to an increasing variety of destination countries. This trend seems to reflect a concentration of recurrent conflict cycles in a relatively small number of countries and a parallel increase in the number of safe destinations. Although the vast majority of refugees remain near to origin countries, the average distance between origin and destination countries has increased over time, presumably linked to the greater ease of travel and migration-facilitating networks.

This study investigates the effects of national culture on financial sector development in emerging and developing economies. Prior literature on culture and finance has placed little focus on the multidimensionality of national culture and its potential implications for financial sector development. Therefore, this study contributes to the ongoing debate surrounding culture and finance by exploring broader cultural perspectives. The empirical findings show that national culture significantly explains cross-country differences in financial sector development. Various dimensions of national culture have a distinctive impact on financial sector development; for example, individualism and masculinity play boosting role, whereas uncertainty avoidance hampers it. The overall findings are reliable to a series of robustness checks and offer useful policy implications for governments, regulatory agencies, and other stakeholders.

This study examines agrobiodiversity production and consumption among indigenous people and smallholders engaged with cascading migration, coca, and water resource changes. Addressing the questions if and how agrobiodiversity is viable amid intensifying extra-local influences, it combines the theorization of a pathway that has emerged via infrastructure entanglements and the extended case study of local utilization practices. The theoretical orientation integrates key elements of political ecology and social-ecological systems. We undertook surveys, interviews, and ethnographic participant observation in 10 communities and villages of Cochabamba, Bolivia, between 1990 and 2013. Results show how agrobiodiversity was utilized at moderate-high levels in the land and water systems, foods, and other uses of indigenous peasants and smallholder farmers in the 1990–2013 period even as certain minor crops were significantly reduced. Moreover, the results reveal how agrobiodiversity and agrobiodiverse foods have functioned in production and consumption amid the infrastructure entanglements of migration, roads, and irrigation. Embeddedness as both quotidian resource capacities and contingent sociocultural symbols was hinged to agrarian change in these accelerated entanglements. Mobilities of both meaning and people in recent infrastructure entanglement is characteristic of the unfolding utilization of agrobiodiversity and agrobiodiverse foods. Social power in the complex contours of accelerated entanglement have furnished meanings ranging from the resistance politics of indigenous people and smallholders to the purposeful agendas of more powerful groups. The conclusion highlights how dynamic agrobiodiversity utilization has emerged via the pathway of indigenous people and smallholders who are engaged in cascading, extra-local entanglements.

PurposeThe present study evaluates the impact of special economic zones (SEZs) on poverty, both rural and urban with special reference to Andhra Pradesh in India, using household consumption expenditure data. In addition to estimating the effects of the SEZs on poverty, the authors explore some of the possible mechanisms generating these effects.Design/methodology/approachThe authors apply a difference-in-differences (DID) technique on a pooled, cross-sectional, district-level dataset based on official annual household surveys for the period from 2001 to 2012 to estimate the average effects of SEZs on household expenditure per capita, a commonly used measure of household poverty.FindingsThe establishment of the SEZs constituted a major exogenous shock to rural economies by creating demand for large chunks of land, which had an immediate impact on the economic and social settings of these economies and aggravated rural poverty. However, over time the poverty aggravating effects of SEZs in rural areas dampened. The effects of SEZs on urban poverty are found to be different from those on rural poverty. It is also revealed that the districts with multiple SEZs experienced larger effects than those with only one or two SEZs. Overall, the SEZs did have positive expenditure effects, but this transition might have been accompanied by heightened inequality between the rural and urban areas.Research limitations/implicationsFirst, the authors did not have access to village or municipal-level consumption data. It is therefore assumed here that district level performance is a reliable proxy for the relevant impacts of SEZ operations. Second, panel data, which would allow more precise measurement of effects than the pooled cross section data used in this study, are not available. Third, the authors’ econometric analysis is essentially comparative statics in nature and does not capture possible spillover dynamics, issues of relocation of economic activity, or migration.Practical implicationsFirst, land acquisition is likely to emerge as a major political and social challenge for the localities that host SEZs. For effective policy implementation, it is necessary to establish legal institutions to address this challenge. Second, governments in developing countries often announce new SEZ programmes on a very large scale and insist that they be implemented over short periods of time. The authors recommend that the government should adopt an experimental approach in implementing the policy. Third, the authors provide evidence that in the long run, effects of SEZs hinge on the success of SEZs in attracting investment and generating additional employment. The policy must therefore be informed by rigorous analysis of the potential of SEZs in the country, as well as alternative policy options.Social implicationsThe authors’ results show that large-scale land acquisitions to implement large industrial projects are likely to result in shocks to the rural economy exacerbating rural-urban inequalities: village communities lose their resource base, are marginalised in the process, and, as a result, face economic deprivations. It may lead to severe economic, social and political consequences. The authors’ study implies that any strategy for large-scale industrialisation should take cognisance of its effects on the affected communities and should be designed to include strategies to improve their economic opportunities and to ensure social inclusion.Originality/valueSEZs are one of the most controversial topics within development policy discourse. Their regional development effects are subject to intense debate. Yet, there is surprisingly little systematic evaluation to inform the debate and to guide policymakers. This is one of the earliest studies to assess the poverty effects of SEZs and is the first for India, using household consumption data.

Afro-descendants and indigenous peoples in Latin America face higher poverty rates and are disproportionately represented among the poor. The probability of being poor is between two and three times higher for indigenous and Afro-descendants than whites. Using comparable fiscal incidence analyses for Bolivia, Brazil, and Guatemala, I analyze how much poverty and inequality change in the ethnoracial space after fiscal interventions. Although taxes and transfers tend to reduce the ethnoracial gaps, the change is very small. While per capita cash transfers tend to be higher for the nonwhite population, spending on these programs is too low, especially when compared with the disproportionate number of poor people among nonwhites.

Institutional quality in the form of extractive or inclusive institutions influences economic outcomes. We examine the positive moderating effect of institutional quality on the relationship between financial inclusion and poverty alleviation over a sample of seventy-five developing and developed countries (2004–2017). We use six different financial inclusion measures together with an informal political institution variable, applying both cross-section and quantile analysis. We find that institutional quality intensifies the beneficial effects of financial inclusion on poverty rates. This effect is more pronounced in poorer economies than in wealthier ones. Our findings yield implications for policy makers seeking to tackle the institutional causes of poverty.

This article argues that mopeds played an ambivalent but ultimately positive role in the long-term success of Dutch cycling. Unlike in many other countries, Dutch cycling levels dropped but remained significant throughout the 1950s and 1960s, partly because cycling infrastructure continued to be constructed. One underexplored factor explaining this is the role of mopeds in the 1950s. The Netherlands constructed a significant network of cycle paths before the 1950s. When mopeds became popular, the existence of this network raised the question of where they should ride. Engineers and politicians classified mopeds as bicycles, assigning them to the cycle path. As a result, engineers decided to build more and wider cycle paths. Despite the danger and discomfort of sharing cycling paths, cyclists therefore also benefited in the long run from the decision to reframe cycle paths as cycle-and-moped paths.

Policymakers are increasingly concerned with enabling sustainable corporate behavior as part of the transition toward a more sustainable society. Yet, it remains unclear to what extent a country’s governance quality impacts on the sustainable behavior of firms. Drawing on the good governance literature, we hypothesize that the quality of different governance dimensions at the nation-level affects corporate social performance (CSP). This reasoning is tested using a longitudinal data set that combines nation-level and firm-level observations. Different model specifications confirm that countries with a better governance quality have higher CSP. In particular, higher levels of voice and accountability, regulatory quality, rule of law, and control of corruption are positively associated with CSP across model specifications. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for research and practice.

The neoliberalization of housing policy and housing financialization have brought unequal impacts on housing outcomes. Drawing on eight waves of census data, this study uncovers the changing mechan...

During the past few decades, the Asia-Pacific region grew much faster than any other part of the world while Latin America and the Caribbean largely stagnated. Since innovation is a key ingredient of economic growth and becoming a central tenant of policy, we analyze and compare innovation in the two regions. The data clearly show that Asia-Pacific innovates more than Latin America and the Caribbean, which implies that greater innovation may have contributed to its superior growth performance. To offer substantive policy advisory we present novel results. Formal empirical analysis based on panel regression techniques shows that investment in R&D, secondary school enrolment, and infrastructure access have positive effects on innovation. Our descriptive and empirical analysis therefore yield important policy implications for promoting innovation policy in the two regions.

Politics may color interpretations of facts, and thus perceptions of risk. We find that a higher share of Trump voters in a county is associated with lower perceptions of risk during the COVID-19 pandemic. Controlling for COVID-19 case counts and deaths, as Trump's vote share rises in the local area, individuals search less for information on the virus and its potential economic impacts, and engage in fewer visits to non-essential businesses. Our results suggest that politics and the media may play an important role in determining the formation of risk perceptions, and may therefore affect both economic and health-related reactions to unanticipated health crises.

According to social disorganization theory, a well-developed family and community structure is a pre-condition for low crime rates. Using annual data for 16 advanced countries constructed for two centuries, this paper examines the extent to which the changing family and community structures over the past two centuries have influenced the evolution of crime. Furthermore, we test whether a weakened family structure has a stronger effect on crime in communities with weak social networks by allowing for the interaction between urbanization (community network) and divorce rates (family network). Broadly, we find that changes in family and community structures and their interaction have been influential for the evolution of crime rates since 1810.

Until 1945, Western countries were the only ones to have introduced unemployment insurance programs. Since their adoption was extremely controversial, almost all Western nations introduced income support for the unemployed only in the wake of national emergencies such as war and economic depression. This article examines the determinants of program adoption in the Global South, which commenced after the Second World War. With the exception of military conflict, we find that the introduction of unemployment insurance was shaped by factors deviating from the driving forces of program adoption in the Western world. More specifically, we provide evidence that international factors such as war, the activities of the ILO and policy diffusion were more important than domestic factors.

This paper investigates the effects of governance quality on exports in sub-Saharan African countries. We include the six worldwide governance indicators (i.e., voice and accountability, political stability, regulatory quality, rule of law, control of corruption, and government effectiveness) as explanatory factors for exports and its components in a sample of 45 countries over the period 1996–2019. System GMM approach is privileged for estimations. We find that total exports and exports of services are positively affected by the six governance indicators, while manufactured goods are positively associated with those indicators except government effectiveness. While political stability, voice and accountability, rule of law, and control of corruption have positive effects on exports of goods, only voice and accountability impact positively primary commodities. This indicates that sub-Saharan African countries should focus on strengthening political governance and improving business environment to boost exports.

As the COVID-19 spreads across the world, many nations impose lockdown measures at the early stage of the pandemic to prevent the spread of the disease. Controversy surrounds the lockdown as it is a choice between economic freedom and public health. The ultimate solution to a pandemic is to vaccinate a massive population to achieve herd immunity. However, the whole vaccination programme is a long and complicated process. The virus and the vaccine will persist for quite a long time. How to gradually ease the lockdown based on vaccination progress is an important issue, as both economic and epidemiological issues are involved. In this paper, we extend the classic SIR model to find optimal decision making to balance between economy and public health in the process of vaccination rollout. The model provides an approach of vaccine value estimation. Our results provide scientific suggestion for policymakers to make important decisions about when to start the lockdown and how strong it should be over the entire vaccination cycle.

The ethnic divide remains a persistent challenge for Vietnam. This paper explores one mechanism that could drive ethnic inequalities by analysing risk-sharing networks in rural communes. After find...

International audience; Shrinking cities have been touted as an opportunity to rethink unsustainable growth-centric policies, but to what extenthave they abdicated from the pro-growth urban agenda? We explore one of the most overtly growth-oriented ‘solutions’to urban shrinkage: housing construction. Our nationwide analysis of Spanish cities illustrates the widespread emergenceof shrinking cities following the Great Recession and the disconnect between population and housing dynamics. Ourfindings highlight the continued demographic decline of Spanish shrinking cities despite considerable spatial growth.This depiction of growing shrinking cities expands conceptualizations of urban shrinkage and advances discussionsregarding the growth imperative in planning cultures.

The whole world is trying to keep the coronavirus under control. However, it is certain that the consequences of coronavirus do not affect the world economy but also health care and health-conscious consumer behaviour. The first wave of coronavirus came under control when the second wave appeared. What impact will this wave have on consumers’ health consciousness? The article focuses on examining the difference between the level of health consciousness at the time of the decline of the first wave and the release of measures against coronavirus and the second upcoming wave of the mutated version of the virus. The main goal of the state is to examine the level of health consciousness and follow the recommendations of W.H.O. against the spread of coronavirus in Slovakia and Hungary during the decline and re-emergence of coronavirus. The research consisted of two phases - the first phase after the first wave of the pandemic and the second during the onset of the second phase. The one-way ANOVA test and linear regression analysis were used to explore the relationship between health consciousness and W.H.O’s recommendations in the fight against coronavirus. The results indicate a close connection in the conditions of Slovakia and Hungary. At the same time, we concluded that health consciousness changes due to the acuteness of the situation. The results can be used in many fields (medicine, sociology, psychology, marketing), both theories and practice. Implications for Central European audience: European countries, as well as the whole world, are fighting the coronavirus. Preliminary results suggest that the second wave will bring more infected. Health consciousness and prevention provide the best opportunity to fight coronavirus in times without an effective vaccine. It is, therefore, the role of the responsible authorities to examine the level of health consciousness and to try to influence it positively. The results suggest that only proper consumer information and adherence to the basic recommendations of W.H.O. can positively affect the level of health consciousness.

Despite extensive discussion about the shape of post-pandemic trade recovery after the COVID-19 outbreak, no consensus has been reached Using 414 outbreaks as exogenous shocks from 1951 to 2015 and matching bilateral trade data, we find that outbreaks have a significant long-term negative impact on the export of affected countries The results show that it takes at least five years after the end of an epidemic for the export levels of affected countries to recover to the ex-ante average Our mechanism analysis shows that the prejudice generated by an outbreak has long-lasting adverse effects on exports Our heterogeneity analysis shows that the negative impact of epidemic prejudice on exports is more pronounced for trading partners with greater linguistic and cultural differences, weaker political ties, and larger income gaps Our findings contribute to understanding the post-pandemic global trade recovery process and validate behavioral economics and social psychology theories © 2021 Economic Society of Australia, Queensland

The COVID-19 pandemic that began in the last quarter of 2019 seriously impacted the transportation industry. Countries around the world adopted various restrictions and policies to prevent the spread of the pandemic, which resulted in a sharp drop in the demand for transportation. China was the first country to detect the pandemic and the fastest to recover. Existing policies and impacts were reviewed to analyze the impact of the pandemic on China's urban transportation sector and propose measures that may be taken to reduce the impact of COVID-19. This study reviews the impact on urban transportation system operations and how government should respond to a viral pandemic. The recovery measures during and after the pandemic and their hierarchical response system are analyzed. Furthermore, to empirically explore the effect of the recovery measures, this study adopted the Event Study Methodology (ESM) to quantitatively analyze the impact of the epidemic as well as anti-pandemic policies on the traffic flow sequence in the resurgence of COVID-19 in Beijing. The research findings provided solid policy implications and experiences for constructing sustainable urban transportation system and improve flexibility, reliability, and resilience of traffic governance in post-pandemic era.

This study investigates the long-term legacy of the slave trade on contemporary violence in sub-Saharan Africa. Using a geo-coded disaggregated dataset and exploiting within-country variation in slave trade intensity, we document a robust positive relationship between slave exports and contemporary conflict; the slave trade has long-lasting impacts on ethnic conflict and riots in particular. We examine the mechanisms underlying this persistence and find that the slave trade has weakened national identity, leading to a higher risk of ethnic conflict, and has also undermined economic development, which partly explains the relationship between the slave trade and riots. Furthermore, using the individual attitudes from the Afrobarometer survey, we show that the impact of the slave trade on national identity is mostly attributed to the inherited beliefs and norms rather than the external environment.

The aim of the presented paper is to examine the specific situation in the institutional provision of tourism in Slovakia with special regard to the most important and in the crisis period the most vulnerable tourism regions, their identification is a partial goal of the paper. With regard to the current crisis period, the survey is supplemented by identifying factors of employment change, focusing mainly on the region's competitiveness in tourism. The importance of regions is assessed in the article on the basis of potential for tourism development, further in terms of their importance for tourism in Slovakia based on tourism performance expressed by the number of overnight stays and on the basis of industry concentration of tourism measured by employment in tourism. We consider the most vulnerable regions to be those that reach the level of specialization in tourism (based on the localization coefficient) and it has a growing tendency. The research results show that the importance of regional competitiveness in tourism for employment change (which is a regional component) is very different despite the established destination management, it is even negative, and in the case of positive figures, it is without an obvious advantage over other factors analyzed in the shift-share analysis. Also, it is possible that the current crisis period caused by measures in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic will help to find endogenous solutions to fragmented destination management in the most important and vulnerable tourism regions, or legislative solutions related to the amendment to the Tourism Promotion Act.

Development studies on the middle-income trap have highlighted the challenges for developing economies to transform their productive systems from simple towards high value-added activities. Here, we use trade data of 116 countries to quantify the stages of productive sophistication and reveal the critical phase that countries encounter at intermediate levels of economic sophistication. Our results reveal that only five countries (i.e. Ireland, Israel, Hungary, Singapore, and South Korea) overcame the gravitation towards simple products and fully transformed their economies towards complex products between 1970 and 2010. They successfully made use of windows of opportunities in the digital and electronics sectors through smart industrial policies that promoted endogenous skills and access to international knowledge sources. In contrast, countries like Brazil or South Africa still struggle with the gravitation towards simple economic activities, social fragmentation, and a lack of coherent industrial policies.

The COVID-19 pandemic emerged against the backdrop of the longer-term climate change crisis and increasing global awareness of the imperative for climate action, disrupting the post-Paris trajector...

In December 2019, Covid-19 virus spread from Wuhan, China, to the rest of the world and had profound impact on politics, economy, society, and culture as well as significant effect on libraries and information utilization. This study aimed to propose future directions for library service by analyzing information use behavior of researchers and deriving the requirements through a survey method. As a result, it was initially identified that the data types and search paths used by researchers have changed to using electronic or online resources. Second, it was difficult to access and acquire certain data only available offline along with difficulty in searching and selecting data suitable for the purpose of research, difficulty in grasping the material, and technical problems such as usage method, search, and information use environment were identified. Third, after Covid-19, there has been a change in demand for services people need from libraries. Including the expansion of budget support for securing digital content, free provision of e-books and e-journals for a limited time by publishers, free provision of paid educational content for a certain period, and temporary copyright agreement for works, libraries were required to make efforts to secure information resources available online in response to Covid-19.

The emergence of educational technology (“EdTech”) in developing countries has been received as a promising avenue to address some of the most challenging policy questions within educational systems. In this paper, I review and synthesize all existing studies with credible causal identification frameworks of EdTech interventions in developing countries. While other studies review the evidence for EdTech interventions in developed countries, there is currently no equivalent study for developing contexts, in spite of the rising number of studies being produced. I classify studies into four thematic categories based on the type of EdTech intervention analyzed: Access to technology; technology-enabled behavioral interventions; improvements to instruction; and self-led learning. I find that EdTech interventions centered around self-led learning and improvements to instruction are the most effective forms of EdTech at raising learning outcomes. Similarly, technology-enabled behavioral interventions are less promising for generating large effects but highly cost-effective given their typically low marginal costs. Although expanding access to technology alone is not sufficient to improve learning, it is a necessary first step for some other types of interventions. More broadly, the overall success of interventions rests on the thoughtful customization of the EdTech solution to the policy constraints at hand. Finally, EdTech interventions across all thematic areas can and should act as complements by leveraging their respective comparative advantages to address deficiencies within educational systems in developing countries.

A more sustainable post COVID-19 world requires urban transport policies aiming for resilience, social equity and decarbonisation. Instead of just focusing on the transport sector, the authors propose an integrated approach to housing and mobility. This approach acknowledges the challenges posed by inadequate housing and dependence on motorised transport during the COVID-19 crisis. In contrast, adequate housing and cycling became paramount resources while confronting the pandemic. Using Santiago de Chile as a case study, this research examines how different relocation scenarios for its current housing deficit cannot only affect the ability to implement stay-at-home measures, but also the potential of cycling as a relevant commuting alternative. The current location of the families suffering this deficit is compared to three scenarios: compact, pericentral and extended. In light of the learnings from the COVID-19 crisis, a housing-cycling policy becomes a tool for resilience; equity is achieved by enforcing the right to housing, by increasing job opportunities among the poor, and by reducing the dependence on expensive motorised transport; decarbonisation is achieved by promoting active transportation and reducing the dependence on motorisation.

This study evaluates the impact of the anti-corruption campaign launched by President Xi since 2013 on coal mine mortality in China. Combining several unique provincial-level datasets on coal mines from 2004 to 2017, we find evidence that provinces with stronger exposure to the anti-corruption campaign have experienced a significantly larger decrease in coalmine death rates. This effect survives a vast array of robustness checks and also displays great heterogeneity. Further evidence suggests the campaign has led to fewer safety violations, more fixed investments and a decrease in profits accompanied by an increase in the costs of principal business in the coal mining industry. The above findings are most consistent with the interpretation that the campaign has made coal mining firms less likely to shirk on safety by curbing collusion between coal mines and local officials. We also rule out other channels such as intensified inspection and the change of employment composition in the industry.

In many countries of the global south, Governments have recently encouraged neoliberal economic policies which have seen large corporations controlling more of the production process. Some studies have welcomed these interventions, arguing they provide enhanced welfare and income prospects for local farmers. Others have been more cautious, arguing they provide new landscapes of economic hardship for small farming communities, both for those contracted to the corporate chains and those that are not. This paper provides a case study of the impacts of the expansion of contract farming by PepsiCo on small-scale farmers in a small village in West Bengal, India. Through a series of detailed focus group and subsequent one-to-one interviews, we explore whether these local farmers are financially better off when tied to contracts with larger firms, whether they benefit from enhanced training and knowledge about better farming methods and whether they feel they are involved in genuine partnerships and the consequent implications for relationships around status, power and trust. The paper concludes that there are many concerns over contract farming some of which have not been discussed in the literature to date. The paper also reports on different types of coping mechanisms operated by small or marginal farmers, which in some cases, breaches the contracts made with PepsiCo.

This study analyzes the effects of corruption on economic growth for different levels of economic freedom. The effects of corruption on the economy, which can increase or decrease growth, were tested in emerging countries in Latin America and Pacific Asia, between 2000 and 2017, through one-step System-GMM estimation panel data regressions. The results showed that economic freedom works as a moderator in the relationship between corruption and economic growth. On both continents, greater economic freedom, on average, supports the growth of GDP per capita. In Latin America, it was possible to corroborate the hypothesis that corruption damages countries with greater economic freedom but favors economic growth in countries with lower economic freedom levels. Regarding the Asian countries studied, there was only a negative effect of corruption on economic growth in countries with less economic freedom. When comparing this reality with the one in Latin America, it was observed that in terms of development, the countries in this continent are in earlier stages compared to the Asian countries, even though both country groups are called “emerging.”

Neoliberal environmental logics have increasingly characterized China's grassland governance since the 1980s. The government has implemented a series of policies premised on the assertion that intensification and marketization will alleviate grassland degradation caused by overgrazing by increasing returns on production and thus enabling herders to raise fewer livestock. However, after several decades, overgrazing is more severe than ever. This study explains this outcome through the lens of political ecology. Based on qualitative and quantitative analysis of data from field research in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, this study explores how market-based policies that aimed to allow herders to destock by improving returns on production have instead decreased production returns and exacerbated overgrazing. Results show that the development of market-based intensive production and herders' marginalized political-economic position have together eroded their ability to benefit from livestock production, causing a simple reproduction squeeze and a cycle of indebtedness that forces herders to overgraze. Overgrazing is not a result of herders' lack of knowledge or care for the grasslands. Instead, it is caused precisely by state policies aimed at increasing economic efficiency for the purpose of environmental improvement.

Over three decades after market-oriented structural reforms termed “Washington Consensus” policies were first implemented, we revisit the evidence on policy adoption and the effects of these policies on socio-economic performance in sub-Saharan African countries. We focus on three key ubiquitous reform policies around privatization, fiscal discipline, and trade openness and document significant improvements in economic performance for reformers over the past two decades. Following initial declines in per capita economic growth over the 1980s and 1990s, reform adopters experienced notable increases in per capita real GDP growth in the post-2000 period. We complement aggregate analysis with four country case studies that highlight important lessons for effective reform. Notably, the ability to implement pro-poor policies alongside market-oriented reforms played a central role in successful policy performance.

Since the 1980s, globalization has reduced between-country inequality and increased within-country inequality in most countries. There has been a debate about whether global inequality, which combines both between- and within-country inequalities, increased or decreased. With more adequate and updated data over the past two decades, this debate has been settled. Global inequality unmistakably diminished in the age of globalization. Underlying this reduction in aggregate global inequality is the rise of China and India into the middle strata of the global income distribution, income stagnation of the working class in rich countries, and the expansion of internal inequality in poor and rich countries. This shift in global income distribution contributed to new geopolitical conflicts and political backlash against globalization in the developed world. This global distributive politics will in turn determine the future of globalization and shape the trajectory of global income inequality change.

PurposeThe COVID-19 pandemic is still raging, which calls for an exploration of how to prevent and control pandemics to promote sustainable development. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of the digital economy in sustainable development, the relationship between the two, the impacts of the outbreak on economic and social development, and changes in China's digital economy.Design/methodology/approachThe study used the time-series data from 2002 to 2019 and an unconstrained VAR model to examine the relationship between the digital economy and sustainable development before the pandemic.FindingsChina's digital economy has promoted the country's sustainable economic and social development; it has advanced rapid economic growth, improved people's living standards, increased efficient utilization of resources, and strengthened environmental protection.Research limitations/implicationsAmid the pandemic, China's digital economy developed effectively; it showed strong resilience because of its unique advantages. The digital economy in China has helped the country to control the pandemic in a short period, reduced the risk of supply chain disruption, promoted China's economic growth, and ensured the orderly operation of society. Therefore, countries worldwide are encouraged to prioritize their digital economies.Originality/valueCompared with the extant literature, this study explores the sustainable supply chain in a broader sense in the context of a pandemic, and how the supply chain is influenced by the digital economy. It not only includes the stability, resilience, and viability of the supply chain in economic development but also involves aspects of people's life, resource utilization, and environmental protection.

Over the last two decades, increasing participation rates in post-secondary education in many countries have been accompanied by decreases in aggregate economic growth and raising social tensions. It is obvious now that education does not ‘automatically’ produce more well-being (at least, if conventionally measured through income or gross domestic product) either for the individual or for society. This puts the question about education’s ‘utility’ in a new light, especially in relation to funding, which is central to the policymaking process. We briefly review literature on various rationales for supporting education and analyze existing evidences concerning the effects or consequences for societies of such investments in education and its related expansion. We outline two alternative agendas for positioning education in the framework of broader socioeconomic development. These agendas stem from different answers to the core question: can education drive the change in other spheres of societal life, or does it only respond to and follow the logics of larger institutional transformations? We suggest greater recognition in policy and public debates of the possible contribution that education may have to shaping transformative agency, and outline related prospects and potential pitfalls.

Both vulnerabilities to COVID-19 and childhood trauma have deep roots in health inequities. Children of color especially risk severe COVID-19 illness, with long-term effects that amplify existing health disparities, including trauma exposure. Similarly, children of color report more adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) than non-Hispanic White children. ACEs and other potentially traumatic events are associated with lifelong physical and psychological health problems. Policy must prioritize health equity (the absence of differences in health care access, quality, and outcomes based on ethnicity, race, and socioeconomic status). A trauma-informed approach emphasizes recovery and resilience. Principles of health equity can join with trauma-informed policy and practice for families and communities to help mitigate the effects of childhood trauma during the pandemic and beyond.

Region’s capability to retain economic growth and resist external shocks is important, particularly in the increasingly globalized economy with a plethora of political and economic uncertainties. This paper uses Chinese custom data to investigate the ways in which regional export resilience has been affected by related variety in the post-crisis era. The hypothesis is that regions with a large number of related industries are more vulnerable to external shocks due to the risk-spreading effect, where the negative effects of external shocks on certain industries may be easily transferred to other related industries. Empirical results support our hypothesis that cities with many related industries are often less economically resilient to external shocks and tend to face greater economic decline in the post-crisis era. We also find that industries with high levels of related variety are also vulnerable to external demand shocks.

About 56 percent of the world’s population lives in urban environments. In more economically developed countries, this percentage is considerably higher. Increasingly, cities’ more vulnerable and culturally diverse neighbourhoods are the context of violent conflicts linked to interconnected socio-economic (inequality), ethnocultural (discrimination) and public-institutional (delegitimation) causal factors. Social outbursts such as London (2011) or Husby’s (Stockholm, 2013) riots are amongst the most notorious recent examples of these. Both the frequency and intensity of these conflicts are only expected to worsen as the economic impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic takes hold. This article introduces the ‘Theory of Rupture Frames (TRF)’, which offers a new three-dimensional explanatory model of violent conflicts in vulnerable neighbourhoods with high socio-cultural diversity. The ‘TRF’, it is argued, offers a novel and suitable framework for founding and guiding social work’s preventative and healing-oriented interventions facing these. This is in relation to the TRF’s dual potential for (i) contributing to the theoretical understanding in the social work profession of this type of conflict and for (ii) offering a tool for guiding the assessment of needs and strategic planning of social work-led actions in the context of the neighbourhoods affected by the conflicts or at risk of their outburst., Increasingly, cities’ more vulnerable and culturally diverse neighbourhoods are the context of violent conflicts linked to inequality, discrimination and a public institutional lack of recognition of ethnic minorities’ equal rights. Social outbursts such as London (2011) or Husby’s (Stockholm, 2013) riots are amongst the best-known recent examples. The frequency and the intensity of these conflicts are only expected to worsen as COVID-19 economic impact takes hold. This article introduces a new theory, the ‘Theory of Rupture Frames (TRF)’, which explains violent conflicts in vulnerable neighbourhoods with high sociocultural diversity. The ‘TRF’, the authors argue, can guide social work’s preventative and healing-oriented interventions facing the conflicts. This is in relation to the TRF’s potential for (i) contributing to the theoretical understanding of this type of conflict and for (ii) offering a tool for guiding the assessment of needs and strategic planning of social work-led actions in the context of the affected neighbourhoods.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper to systematically review and critique research on professional accounting development published in English during the last two-and-a-half decades. This paper focusses on developing countries (DCs) and suggests a future research agenda. In recent decades, many DCs have undergone reforms in the professionalisation of accounting (PA).Design/methodology/approachExtant research articles are selected from major accounting journals between 1995 and 2020 for the review. A conceptual analysis of the selected literature is presented to evaluate the focus and scope of existing work.FindingsPrevious empirical research on DCs has focused on the state and political ideology, religion and Sharia law, racial/class discrimination, colonialism and closure (e.g. the monopolisation of accounting work). Also, a complex set of globalisation, political, economic, and social contexts. In particular, a strong tradition of British accounting associations providing accounting qualifications in DCs is noted. Future research should aim to examine such issues as the politics of decolonisation, domination, neoliberalism, competition from Western professional associations, accounting in state-owned organisations, government accounting reforms, and social and environmental accounting issues.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper covers only PA research in high-ranked English language accounting journals and chapters of a monograph. Accounting research published in other languages and lower-ranked journals could be imperative sources as well but not included in this study.Originality/valueWhile PA has been explored in a variety of locations and from different perspectives in Western countries, a review in DCs was lacking.

The Fast Track Land Reform Program (FTLRP) in Zimbabwe effected changes in the racial, class, and gender structure of land ownership. However, while changes in the racial and class structure have been well explored in existing literature, their articulation to gender in the agrarian structure is not yet well understood. This is because the literature has mainly accounted for gender in relation to the formal redistribution of land to women through titling, and not as a structural element of agrarian reform that locates women within the labor and capital nexus of land ownership. This article aims to fill this gap in our understanding of the gendered agrarian component of FTLRP by locating gender within the political economy of the agrarian reform and by evaluating gender in relation to the capitalist accumulation structure which the land reform sought to alter.

There are many questions related to poverty in South Africa that remain unsatisfactorily answered. Given the poor performance of the South African economy, including declining per capita incomes and increasing unemployment, since 2010 or so, it is important to examine poverty dynamics in the recent years. Many recent studies in this regard have relied on 2015 data, and do not examine all the three interrelated aspects of wellbeing viz. poverty, human development and inequality. In this context, this paper uses all the five waves of the National Income Dynamics Study and employs different poverty and inequality measurement techniques to investigate poverty dynamics, human development and inequality during the post-apartheid period in South Africa. The estimates suggest that although poverty was declining prior to the coronavirus pandemic, the African/Black population group is the most affected by poverty. The phenomenon of feminisation of poverty is also verified based on the evidence of increasingly more women in poverty than men. The proportion of population experiencing multiple deprivations, measured by the Multidimensional Poverty Index, have not changed in the post-apartheid period. Similarly, human development has not improved during this period. South African society continues to be one of the most unequal societies in the world. The paper argues that the inability to sufficiently reduce poverty, unemployment and inequality results from the weak performance of the South African economy. In the same vein, it is the structure of the South African economy that has kept the levels of human development low and income inequality high.

Purpose This study aims to examine the impact of financial inclusion on per capita gross domestic product (GDP) at varying degrees of financial inclusion for a sample of 76 developing countries between 2011 and 2017. To evaluate the heterogeneous impact, this paper constructs the multi-dimension index of financial inclusion to classify sample countries into two sub-samples in terms of the value of FIID, taking account of three dimensions of financial inclusion: access, usage and availability. Design/methodology/approach This study attempts to identify the presence of reverse causality and long-run relationship between financial inclusion and economic growth by using the Granger causality test (Wald test) and three alternative panel cointegration tests (Kao Test, Pedroni Test, Westerlund Test) respectively. Because of the existence of the bi-directional causality between financial inclusion and per capita GDP, this study uses a fixed effect instrumental variable model with lagged dependent variable to get unbiased estimators from the panel regressions for sample countries. Findings This paper finds a strong positive impact of financial inclusion on per capita GDP growth in sample developing countries, controlling for labor market structure, financial institutions’ efficacy, infrastructural and governance issues. This study suggests that economic growth will be high in developing economies with a higher level of financial inclusion; however, the positive impact for two sub-samples countries (low and medium level of inclusion and high level of inclusion) are heterogeneous. The estimated result explains that a 1% increase in the financial inclusion index leads to a 0.0153% point increase in the per capita GDP for the countries with a low and medium level of financial inclusion, while this positive impact is significantly higher, 0.0794% point for countries with the high level of financial inclusion. This study also suggests that the higher concentration in the financial market by few agents and the lower level of governance may have an adverse impact on economic growth for the economies with a low and medium level of financial inclusion. Originality/value This study is an original study that contributes to the research gap by explaining the heterogeneous impact of financial inclusion on economic growth at varying degrees of inclusion in the two sub-sample countries. Moreover, this study posits greater appeal as it explores the issue using the sample of only developing economies.

Rising partisan polarization in the American public over the last decade has been linked to stress and anxiety, raising questions about how communities and public health experts should respond. As the strength of an individual’s social network correlates with better health outcomes, could building a diverse set of connections moderate the effect of political polarization on an individual’s health? This study examines the role of social capital as a key intervening variable in the relationship between polarization and health. Drawing on a nationally representative survey of 2,752 U.S. residents conducted in December 2019 compared with county-level data, we use negative binomial, logit, and gamma models to examine the interaction between indicators of political polarization and bonding, bridging, and linking social capital on physical and mental health outcomes. We find consistent evidence that bonding social ties intervene to improve the physical and mental health of individuals in polarized communities, while bridging ties are related to worse health for politically isolated residents. By highlighting the relationship between polarization, social networks, and health, our findings shed light on how public health experts, and policymakers can improve health outcomes in polarized communities.