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To investigate and create theories of socio-economic dynamics has always been relevant for professionals in theoretical and applied economics. These theories are urgent in periods of global and catastrophic events since, on the one hand, they can explain the emergence of critical structural changes in society, and on the other hand, they can determine the likelihood of surviving of crisis processes. However, there are some drawbacks involved therein, and the poor ability to predict unexpected and shocking events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, is a key one. The presented review outlines transformation patterns of socio-economic systems stemming from diverse contradictions. Some widely known transformation theories of socio-economic systems are presented. The major traits of such theories and specific approaches to explaining the features of the emergence and development of dynamic processes are demonstrated. The feasibility of practical application, as well as constraints in explaining and predicting the transformation of society, is indicated. Some theories that consider the transformation of society as a distinct process are specified, and approaches that characterize major transformations as elements of socio-economic dynamics are defined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early days of the COVID‐19 pandemic, we launched the Online Agricultural and Resource Economics Seminar (OARES) in an ostensible effort to maintain a semblance of normalcy in agricultural and applied economics. Our goal with the OARES was to break down the privilege barrier in two ways: by (i) featuring research mainly by junior, female, or minority scholars, and (ii) bringing frontier research to those who may not have had access to a regular seminar series prior to the pandemic. We thus discuss the contribution of the OARES to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in agricultural and applied economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 'The Covid-19 Pandemic Economic Impacts and Government Responses across Welfare Regimes', Jalil Safaei and Andisheh Saliminezhad examine the economic impacts and government responses in selected OECD countries as differentiated by their welfare regimes, finding that the adverse effects on output and employment were worse in the "free market" systems, whilst the social democratic countries fared better. This is the third in a series of special issues of the I International Review of Applied Economics i analysing the economic impact and consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic. In 'An Empirical Investigation of the Economic Impacts of Covid-19: Micro-level Evidence from Europe', using firm level data Ruohan Wu finds that Government support for firms did have an impact, although this varied between high-income and low-income countries. [Extracted from the article]

The article argue that the COVID-19 pandemic caused many U.S. workers to reassess their work status and the nature of their work, especially as regards working in an office or factory versus telecommuting. It mentions shift to home-based work in May 2020 and found that COVID-based telecommuters were likely to be well-educated, white, and higher income. It also mentions COVID's impact on the U.S. labor market and reported less work and less looking for work by women due to in-person schooling.

The almost unlimited access of the general public to economic information of all kinds and distributed by very diverse means makes it increasingly necessary to have rigorous analyses that allow critical interpretation of the information and provide economic agents with tools that allow them to make their decisions in the most appropriate way. Using micro-level data from the Spanish Survey on Household Finances (Encuesta Financiera de las Familias) during the period 2002-2017, their results confirm that there is a strong effect of housing wealth on non-durable consumption of the Spanish households. In conclusion, both empirical studies facilitate the understanding of two economic crises (the COVID-19 pandemic and the housing crisis) and their impact in the labour market and the household consumption. [Extracted from the article]

The 2021 World Economic Forum pledged a "Great Reset", recognising that the Covid-19 crisis would be compounded by several other crises, actual and threatened, including the climate crisis, financial crises, social and economic inequality, and the threat of further pandemics.[1] This is the second Special Issue of the I International Review of Applied Economics i focussing on the Covid-19 pandemic. The "Great Reset" to tackle Covid-19 and other crises Government responses to the Covid-19 pandemic In 'The Covid-19 pandemic and economic stimulus in India: Has it been a hostage of macroeconomic complications?. [Extracted from the article]

Published choice experiments linked to various aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic are analysed in a rapid review. The aim is to (i) document the diversity of topics as well as their temporal and geographical patterns of emergence, (ii) compare various elements of design quality across different sectors of applied economics, and (iii) identify potential signs of convergent validity across findings of comparable experiments. Of the N = 43 published choice experiments during the first two years of the pandemic, the majority identifies with health applications (n = 30), followed by transport-related applications (n = 10). Nearly 100,000 people across the world responded to pandemic-related discrete choice surveys. Within health applications, while the dominant theme, up until June 2020, was lockdown relaxation and tracing measures, the focus shifted abruptly to vaccine preference since then. Geographical origins of the health surveys were not diverse. Nearly 50% of all health surveys were conducted in only three countries, namely US, China and The Netherlands. Health applications exhibited stronger pre-testing and larger sample sizes compared to transport applications. Limited signs of convergent validity were identifiable. Within some applications, issues of temporal instability as well as hypothetical bias attributable to social desirability, protest response or policy consequentiality seemed likely to have affected the findings. Nevertheless, very few of the experiments implemented measures of hypothetical bias mitigation and those were limited to health studies. Our main conclusion is that swift administration of pandemic-related choice experiments has overall resulted in certain degrees of compromise in study quality, but this has been more so the case in relation to transport topics than health topics. • Discrete choice experiments conducted in the context of COVID-19 are analysed and evaluated. • Major discrepancies observed between health and transport sectors in terms of survey quality. • Health studies used larger samples, employed measures of hypothetical bias mitigation more often. • Health studies reported more often on use of piloting and measures of internal validity testing. • Use of social media as recruitment platform was far more prevalent in transport surveys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on fall 2020 survey of 5,000 representative households.