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This document is an introduction to a special issue of the journal "Chinese Economy" that focuses on the comparisons and connections between the Chinese economy and Latin America. It provides summaries of several papers included in the special issue. The papers cover topics such as the importance of Sino-Latin American trade for economic growth, China's role as a major lender in Latin America, and the differences in China's approach to South America and Mexico due to the United States' influence. The article also discusses the impact of China on trade relationships with Mexico and various Latin American countries, highlighting the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) as a factor that makes Mexico different from other Latin American economies from China's perspective. The article concludes by emphasizing the role of government policies in shaping these trade relationships and suggesting further research on the spillover effects of government decisions. [Extracted from the article]

The paper explores art and the city beyond the 'hype' of large cultural investment, urban creative titles and cultural place branding programmes. It emphasises the importance of exploring the neglected perspective of the role that everyday culture can play in cities, especially in moments of crisis. It investigates Athens and the economic crisis that affected urban life in the last decade to consider the impact this has had on everyday cultural practices, arts institutions and the experience of the city. Drawing on de Certeau's concept of everyday practice and using the case study of Athens Fringe Festival, we highlight how ordinary artistic practice and everyday creativity in the city can shape new patterns of cultural participation, urban dialogue and, possibly, cultural citizenship, in a moment of crisis. The paper concludes by arguing for the need to re-orient academic scholarship and future research agendas on art and the city towards everyday creative practice, moving beyond conventional city marketing and institutional, cultural regeneration discourses and strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Call for papers for a special issue on economic policy in an era of crises and uncertainty - tackling global inequality and financial instability, building forward post-covid, and securing net zero Papers for this Special Issue are invited to address the complexity of economic policy formation given the multiplicity of policy objectives along with the uncertainty over the global economy. The I International Review of Applied Economics i invites papers for a Special Issue on 'Economic policy in an era of crises and uncertainty - tackling global inequality and financial instability, building forward post-covid, and securing net zero'. [Extracted from the article]

This paper examines the explanation of commercial crises offered by William Huskisson in 1810 in the wake of the debate on the Bullion Report. Huskisson argued that the suspension of convertibility made it possible to extend issues of paper currency beyond its proper limits. Such an expansion, being in the interest of all parties concerned, would actually take place and stimulate excessive speculations, which would eventually prove unsustainable and bring generalized ruin and distress. Although some elements of these explanations were not new (having been anticipated by writers such as James Currie in 1793, William Roscoe in 1793, William Anderson in 1797 and some anonymous writers in 1793 to 1796), Huskisson's explanation is more systematic and better organized, and his emphasis on the endogenous character of the crisis and on the instability of the dynamics of trade and credit makes it an interesting foreshadower of the theories of crises that were advanced half a century later. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper extends previous research to investigate the determinants of the operating performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) backed by private equity (PE). The paper is based on a sample of 208 unique private equity-backed firms operating at the European level. A multivariate linear regression model is estimated, in which the private equity-backed firms’ operating performance—as measured by ROA, Revenues/Total Assets, and EBIT/Total Assets—is a function of a variety of factors. These include whether or not the firm is an SME, the presence of family shareholders, and various features specific to the expertise of the private equity investor, as well as the industry, country, and years covered. The analysis is limited to private equity deals that occurred in the European Region between 2005 and 2017. According to the results, the effectiveness of private equity in improving the operating performance of target companies in the three years post-investment is impacted by whether or not the backed firm is an SME. This research paper aims to further existing publications on the link between the involvement of the private equity investor and the status of the backed firm as an SME. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before the global financial crisis, the assistance of the lender of last resort was thought to be limited to commercial banks. During the crisis, however, the Federal Reserve created a number of facilities to support brokers and dealers, money market mutual funds, the commercial paper market, the mortgage-backed securities market, the triparty repo market, and so on. In this paper, we argue that the elimination of specialized banking through the eventual repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act (GSA) has played an important role in the leakage of the public subsidy intended for commercial banks to nonbank financial institutions. In a specialized financial system, which the GSA had helped to create, the use of the lender-of-last-resort safety net could be more comfortably limited to commercial banks. However, the elimination of GSA restrictions on bank-permissible activities has contributed to the rise of a financial system where the lines between regulated and protected banks and the so-called shadow banking system have become blurred. The existence of shadow banking, which is directly or indirectly guaranteed by banks, has made it practically impossible to confine the safety to the regulated banking system. In this context, reforming the lender-of-last-resort institution requires fundamental changes within the financial system itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Responding to an article by Marvin Lloyd Miller, we welcome the recent change in the approach of Nehemiah 5, the corner-stone of social-scientific exegesis. We reassert that the chapter does not reflect the complaints of marginal farmers. We doubt the value of the notion of whimsical taxation by the Achaemenid administration. We warn against adducing the vituperations of eighth century BCE prophets as clues of socio-economic crises. They should rather be read in light of appeals by contempo-rary aid agencies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In her introduction, by bringing the book into the present and not allowing the modern welfare state off the hook, Beaumont prepares us to make sense of the Great Depression from a perspective based in the here and now. Beaumont's chapter twenty-six, titled "Women at Risk", further steps outside of existing Depression Era historiography, addressing a highly overlooked sector in most historical examinations of the period. Australia's Great Depression: How a Nation Shattered by the Great War Survived the Worst Economic Crisis It Has Ever Faced: By Joan Beaumont. [Extracted from the article]

This paper assesses quantitatively the impact of COVID-19 on the Capesize as well as the Panamax sectors using the event analysis method based on the ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD). Different components are decomposed from the freight rates time series. The decomposed dominant modes manage to capture the event of COVID-19, accounting for the major movements of the freight market. The event of 2008 financial crisis is utilized as a benchmark to analyze the impact of COVID-19. Compared to the 2008 financial crisis, the dominant modes during COVID-19 rebound in quite a short time. Factors contributing to the decline of freight rates during the COVID-19 pandemic are relatively simpler than during the 2008 financial crisis, indicating that the COVID-19 should not have a long-lasting impact on the dry bulk shipping market. The results not only prove that the method used in this paper is capable of evaluating the impact of future events on the freight market but also provide some practical implications to the maritime industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper answers the question why the Dutch state has gone from vigorously stimulating private-rental growth and liberalization to actively restricting the tenure. Answering this question is important in understanding an emergent wave of more restrictive, or even "post-neoliberal" housing policies across countries. This paper presents an analysis of the changing private-rental politics in the period following the Great Financial Crisis, combined with a quantitative study of renters' housing outcomes. The central argument is that policies promoting private-rental growth and liberalization and the subsequent turn restrictive policies are both outcomes of the state seeking to balance the property-led accumulation with middle-class residential demands. Supportive policies were the result of a presumed alignment of the interests of capital, the state and the middle classes, but ongoing liberalization has undermined middle-class housing affordability – revealing a key tension between capital and middle-class interests. This tension triggered new, more restrictive policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2007, opinion has been divided over whether its root cause was weak regulation and bank funding problems or the pressure of investor demand for US safe assets. New research on the European banks' role in the crisis may finally help to resolve the issue. Far from being peripheral players in the crisis, European banks were deeply implicated in its causal origins as evidenced by their activities in the two US debt markets that were at the heart of the crisis: those for collateralised debt obligations (CDOs) and for asset backed commercial paper (ABCP). These activities would seem to lend weight to the conclusion that regulation and bank funding issues were the key causal variables in the financial crisis. However, it is a conclusion only made possible by ignoring the pre-crisis connection between the federal funds rate and the rate of ABCP demand from the institutional money market mutual funds (MMMFs). This paper argues that when this connection is closely examined, it turns out that the evidence surrounding the European banks' role in the financial crisis gives greater weight to the safe asset demand explanation of the crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses a Polanyian frame to place the plight of Roma in Europe in the context of an age of crisis, as evidenced by faltering neoliberal economies and a corresponding rise in xenophobia and extreme manifestations of nationalism. The situation of the Roma remains precarious, a situation exacerbated by the 2008 economic crises and the COVID-pandemic. Despite a number of social inclusion measures in recent decades, at the national and European level which target the Roma, Roma exclusion remains a serious challenge. The paper assesses why previous policy regimes failed but also reflects on what is the way forward in terms of inclusive policy frameworks. The article seeks to provide some answers to these questions with a vision of a Polanyian countermovement in the form of a New Social Europe predicated on redistribution, recognition and community action but also a re-envisioning of integration and transformative change in structural and cultural terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How to manage sovereign debt has become a key question in the problems that developed after the financial crisis. This author maintains that Keynes, who thought about this deeply between the wars, provides some critical lessons. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This research explains how unexpected and uncontrollable chance events can facilitate or constrain competitive advantage in sport, through a study of Iran in five weight division-specific sports (i.e. weightlifting, wrestling, taekwondo, judo and boxing). The analysis relied on data collected from 25 semi-structured interviews. The study identifies six types of chance events impacting elite sport – economic crises, sport-specific crises, diplomatic tensions with foreign countries, political decisions by foreign governments, technological discontinuities, and new policies and rules of international governing bodies. The contributions of this paper to the literature reside in the identification of crises as a major type of chance events and the discovery of some chance events specific to elite sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis paper evaluates the natural rate of interest (NRI) for Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, [Taipei, China], and Thailand and aggregates them using a GDP-weighted average. This paper discusses four key points. Firstly, to estimate the NRI in emerging Asian economies, this paper introduces a Time Varying Parameter Vector Autoregression (TVP-VAR) model that integrates exchange rates alongside conventional growth and inflation variables. Secondly, the results show that NRIs in the emerging Asia have been declining in trend since the 1990s. Thirdly, the behavior of the NRI for each economy is not uniform across crises—the Asian Financial Crisis, the Global Financial Crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Fourthly, the findings reveal that the ascertained Asian NRI decreased to the vicinity of 0% during the COVID-19 pandemic period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper an attempt is made to calculate the profit rate of the banking sector in the period following the 2007–2008 financial crisis, in order to compare it with that of other real productive sectors. Various techniques are used, highlighting the differences between the results of national accounts data—on which the GDP calculation is based—and those of the central bank. This paper studies the problem of this difference on Italian data and offers a possible explanation, which confirms some analysis (Banque de France on French data) related to an earlier period. The second step in the analysis is directed at comparing bank profit rate and the productive profit rate. The result is that the bank profit rate has been surprisingly low in recent years, due to a decrease in net interest income, an increase in capital and an increase in non-performing loans. However, since 2021, bank profitability has improved greatly, thanks in part to institutional interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the great financial crisis of 2007–2009, central banks were handed a macroprudential mandate to contain systemic risks, a mandate seen as endangering their independence due to expected distributional conflicts. At the same time, depoliticization through scientific expertise was largely foreclosed, as systemic risk was a largely undefined concept. This paper focuses on how central banks dealt with this conundrum. It examines the scientific debate on systemic risk and macroprudential regulation post-crisis, focusing on the debate's impact on final regulation. Employing author-topic-modeling on a unique dataset of 2397 published economic papers on the relevant topics, we detect the formation of a new alliance between central bankers and academic economists working jointly on developing systemic risk measures. Centered around a hinge of systemic risk contribution by individual banks, this new alliance expresses itself by incorporating the macroprudential concerns of practitioners into abstract market-based systemic risk measures. These measures develop incrementally, using and repurposing techniques from financial economics pre-crisis to legitimize and justify macroprudential interventions post-crisis. This alliance allows us to account for the incremental change witnessed post-crisis and point to its potential for long-term fundamental change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the paper by Anil K. Kashyap on the financial crisis of Japan as of December 2002. Role of macroeconomics in the financial crisis; Problems in the banking sector; Analysis of the cost of recapitalization.

The recent political and economic crisis in Venezuela has given rise to an increase in Venezuelan migrants and refugees to Brazil. Situated in the northern state of Roraima, bordering Venezuela, this research explores the military-humanitarian response coordinated by the Brazilian government. Investigating the underpinning logic of such a humanitarian approach highlights the ways in which vulnerable mobile groups are offered support, while at the same time, are tightly governed for the protection of state security. I argue that Brazil's military-humanitarian approach to mobility governance reflects a logic of debility that works to control migrants. This logic emerges through subtle forms of violence and consequently reinforces migrant vulnerabilities, keeping them in a cyclical loop of exclusion. This paper addresses the militarisation of the response across the urban streetscape of the city of Boa Vista, including humanitarian spaces of care, to investigate processes of securitisation and hygienisation. By doing so, this paper contributes to timely discussions on military-humanitarianism and draws attention to South-South mobilities and the salient geographies of Brazil and Latin America more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Indonesian government has issued hundreds of regulations and policies to deal with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. These various policies and regulations assess how a government responds, mitigates, and prevents systemic crises in its country. These decisions- and policy-making processes are largely determined by the country's unique socioeconomic and political landscape. This paper reviewed 875 regulations issued by the Indonesian government at the national level in 2020–2022 to determine which policies have the most direct social, economic, and health impact on the Indonesian population. We highlight social protection to explore the challenges and opportunities to respond future risk by taking benefit from progressive effort of the Indonesian government to protect all Indonesian populations with the priority of the most vulnerable groups. This paper aims to map out government policies and regulations in handling the pandemic and exploring the potential opportunities for adaptation to respond future risk. The study is based on expert group discussion and policy mapping. As one of the findings of the investigation, this paper discusses the interaction between large-scale and micro-scale social restriction and social protection policies, which are considered the foremost solutions for handling Indonesia's more severe economic crisis and facing current and future risks, including climate change impact. While social protection is one of the massive strategies to relieve economic impact to the most affected group, effectiveness and success are still challenges concerning data. This paper also provides important notes regarding climate change adaptation and how the government must respond to future risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During financial and economic crises, government expenditure is a potential source of liquidity and replacement for private demand; this expenditure, in turn, generates more deposits and spending in the economy at large, potentially increasing the endogenous supply of money and overall liquidity in a given economy. Governments may also require liquidity support during crises, if bond market activity constrains access to funding. This paper introduces government activity to Mott's elaboration of Kalecki's theory of increasing risk, and its implications for endogenous money creation, especially during periods of heightened liquidity preference. Some governments are likely to face greater obstacles in providing liquidity and accessing funding in times of economic uncertainty, whether due to their issuance of a non-sovereign currency, their position in the global currency hierarchy, or both, while others may find their ability to provide liquidity is bolstered by popular perceptions of their credit worthiness. Recent crises illustrate the importance of understanding the monetary and financial factors that may constrain governments' abilities to fund deficits, especially given the importance of fiscal expenditure as a stabilizing economic force, or as a potential driver of development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a major economic crisis worldwide. The monetary policy response of the European Central Bank (ECB) was fast and massive. The ECB also intervened on the supervisory side because, after the establishment of Banking Union, the ECB was given responsibility for banking supervision in the euro area through the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM). This paper explains the response of the ECB-SSM to the COVID-19 related economic crisis during 2020 and 2021, up until February 2022. These ECB actions include the reduction of bank capital buffers, the redefinition of non-performing loans, and the limitations on dividends and bonuses paid by banks. We adopt a neofunctionalist approach, which suggests that policies are developed at the EU level in response to need, whereby supranational actors and spillovers are particularly important. We offer some concluding insights into whether the ECB-SSM's responses have led to a further deepening of integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crowdfunding emerged as a flexible method of financing various projects during the financial crisis but has since developed into a fully fledged financing instrument that requires special attention from the academia and legislators. The purpose of this study is to perform a quantitative analysis of the up-to-date crowdfunding research employing bibliometric analysis. We have used data from the Scopus database and have extracted a number of 1951 research papers. Using VOSviewer software, we have looked into the yearly research production, the categories in which the studies fall, citation records, highly cited authors and papers, most prolific authors and country of origin in crowdfunding. We grouped keywords into clusters and identified emerging trends. We then revealed the thematic progression of the occurring keywords into four time ranges. We find that crowdfunding research has been growing steadily from 2006 to date, with a particular focus on business and finance. The most productive countries are highly developed economies, but other countries have started exploring crowdfunding, too. The most cited references are published between 2013 and 2016, which is when the bases of this stream of research have been established. We finally discuss the theoretical and practical implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In times of economic crisis, academics, policy-makers, and pundits often debate the correct level and best use of government debt. This paper argues structural political and economic factors grant core economies more fiscal space than peripheral economies. While the federal governments of the US, Germany, and other core economies may easily issue and sell debt in private markets, smaller economies, both municipalities within countries, and countries in the global periphery, are more vulnerable to demand fluctuations. All economies may benefit from explicit commitments by monetary authorities to resume their historic roles as governments' banks, especially during crises. By highlighting present political constraints, monetary structures, and market factors that may inhibit governments' successful placement of bonds, this paper deepens present debate about the potential feasibility of functional finance to facilitate fiscal activity, even in unprecedented times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides the first evidence on the role of national culture in the integration of Eurozone life insurance markets. It analyzes seven markets over a sixteen-year sample period that includes the financial crisis. We focus on three cultural values, which are individualism, trust, and hierarchy. The results indicate that collectivism culture increases cost and revenue performance and integration of Eurozone life insurance markets. Trust contributes to this integration, particularly in financial crisis, and egalitarian culture facilitates it in non-crisis time. We find that these relations prevail for unaffiliated single companies, but they weaken or do not even hold for groups of insurers. Our findings are robust with tests designed to alleviate endogeneity concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are black swans? And why are mainstream economists so often surprised by financial crises? Furthermore, have supply-side responses to crises merely deepened economic inequality and instability? Rather than simply comparing theories and methods – economics' 'ontological turn' posits that what is foremostly required is an audit of prevailing theories' metaphysical commitments. That is, to interrogate what economics presumes there is to observe, interact with, and know. Seeking to garner greater analytical purchase over the 'real-world', the ontological turn has also birthed several multidisciplinary syntheses – namely, Austrian-materialism (Lewis, P., 2005. Boettke, the Austrian school and the reclamation of reality in modern economics. The Review of Austrian Economics, 18 (1), 83–108.) and Keynesian-critical realism (Lawson, T., 2003. Reorienting economics. New York: Routledge.). Alternatively, and in support of the constructivist claim that social dynamics ultimately drive economics, this paper resituates and extends Wesley Widmaier's (2004) vision of a Keynesian-constructivism within the broader ontological turn. Herein, this paper interrogates the concepts of black swans vis-à-vis post-Keynesian understandings of business cycles, demand-side logics, and Modern Money – en route to establishing new analytical frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1990s, sustainability agenda has dominated cities' efforts to improve their environment; has been elaborated in European Commission documents, has been disseminated and funded through different mechanisms. The paper examines the way urban sustainability has been framed in Thessaloniki's EU funded urban regeneration projects, focusing on projects that have been materialized or planned, since the outbreak of the financial crisis in Greece in 2010. It places emphasis on conceptual shifts in EU policies regarding sustainability and their reflection on specific urban projects. A critical light is shed on imaginaries pursued, and processes employed in these projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the micro effect of export stimulus policy. We use the seven rounds of export tax rebates implemented by the Chinese government during the international financial crisis as a natural experiment and explore their impact on the export resilience of firms using the difference-in-differences approach. We find that the export resilience of Chinese enterprises increased by 0.027 standard deviations due to export tax rebates. Further studies confirm that export tax rebates significantly improve export resilience mainly by reducing value-added taxes, expanding production scale, and accelerating the adjustment of export structure. In addition, the positive effect of export tax rebates varies among enterprises and products. These results highlight the critical role of stimulative policies in promoting export resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a multi-regime threshold vector autoregressive model to investigate the asymmetric and nonlinear impacts of financial stress on China's real economy in high- and low-stress regimes. Special attention is paid to the reliability of the measures of financial stress and real activities in China. We find that the response of China's real economy to a financial stress shock is bigger in high-stress regimes than in low-stress regimes. The negative response to a positive shock is bigger than the positive response to a negative shock. The response to a positive shock is disproportionately larger when the size of the shock increases, but a negative shock does not have this amplifying effect, indicating the danger of a severe financial crisis and the difficulty to revert its damage to China's real economy [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article sets out to empirically examine the salience of EU fiscal integration processes between 2007 and 2022. By employing text-mining and qualitative analysis, the previously generated discourse on fiscal integration during and after the financial and sovereign debt crisis, several EU regulatory overhauls, Brexit and the COVID-19 crisis has been tracked. Particularly important have been the new counter-COVID-19 policies such as SURE and NGEU as these substantially impacted the course of common fiscal integration. The assessment covered a body of 160 documents including legal texts, peer reviewed articles, communications and reports of the EU bodies and policy papers, and has relied on the neo(neo)functionalism theory to identify shifts in fiscal integration. The findings show that the discourse on fiscal integration gains prominence with each economic and political crisis and that the shifts can go in the direction of either more (upward) or less (downward) fiscal integration, or involve enough (nil) integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The so-called 'Oxford Study' by Flyvbjerg et al shows Olympic cost overrun of 170-750% with a substantial risk of a further cost overrun above this range in the future. The aim of this paper is to re-analyse the results by using a method in accordance with the international convention of comparing across time and geographies. The dataset used has abundantly more governmental data than in the Oxford Study. The results of the Oxford Study for the period of 2000–2016 could not be replicated. It is argued why the statistical analysis and their data reliability are misleading, thus leading to a discovery of six typical misperceptions. In contrast to those authors, this paper shows cost overruns (Olympics 2000–2014) for direct non-OCOG investments in the range of 13–178%. Further, it shows that the costs of the Olympic Games represent less than 0.28% of the GDP; hence, it is clear that the Games cannot cause a severe national economic crisis. This paper provides a discussion on the underlying assumptions of the Oxford study, thus providing valuable insights for politicians who intend to submit an Olympic bid, and contextualises cost overruns caused by fixed deadlines and long planning horizons. I disagree with the claim by Flyvbjerg et al. that hosts give a blank cheque to the IOC and I contend that demands and a tight coupling are fixed in the Host City Contract, thus negating the blank cheque assertion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Doctoral students occupy a unique space in academia: as future scholars and instructors, they are both trainees and trainers, positioned to reproduce research and teaching practices as well as to disrupt and improve them. The role of the state in the social, political, and economic crises of 2020, including the COVID-19 pandemic and continuous, racialized police violence, has highlighted the need to critically interrogate public affairs' (PA) norms and values. The "New Four E's" (empathy, engagement, ethics, and equity) suggest a reorientation of the field's norms and values towards social justice. As part of this field-level shift towards more just public affairs, this paper offers a reimagining of PA doctoral training by institutionalizing the socioemotional processes of reflexivity and deliberation in three key areas of doctoral training: core coursework, pedagogical training, and professional development. The argument outlined in this paper draws on literature from the fields of public administration, education, pedagogical philosophy, psychology, management, and sociology to stimulate dialogue and action among PA scholars and practitioners with the ultimate goal of embedding the New Four E's as core field values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically analyzes the impact of economic freedom on loan spreads from the perspective of borrowing firms. We highlight the role of economic freedom in reducing firms' borrowing costs during the global financial crisis. Our key prediction is that higher economic freedom leads to a decline in bank loan spreads during the financial crisis. As the ongoing COVID-19 has severely damaged financial markets, our findings contribute to the literature on how to mitigate the adverse economic impact of the pandemic. Finally, our results also show that the implications of all the components of economic freedom vary across different economic regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the 2008 financial crisis, institutional adaptability and economic diversification through smart specialization have been considered key forces for attaining an effective resilience trajectory of regional economies. Successful policy responses should not capture only limited, conjunctural and transitory measures, but should rather promote pro-active capabilities, able to cope with spatial perturbations and related drastic transformations, thus generating a more efficient regional development pattern. In this process, the economic and institutional factors, the conditions under which changes occur, as well as the actors of change play a pivotal role. The paper traces whether institutional arrangements have a decisive impact on the recovery of the European Union's lagging regions after the economic crisis and whether these could be instrumental in developing a smart specialization potential, which could make regions even more capable to enhance strong adaptive mechanisms. Using a mix of econometric methods (e.g. panel analysis, logistic regression) to emphasize both institutional and smart specialization aspects in the European Union core-periphery differentiation, the present study is based on a multidisciplinary approach. The results highlight that the existence of smart specialization capacity is associated with higher institutional adaptability; they also distinguish between relevant resilience characteristics of the European regions and formulate appropriate response policies for strengthening their specialization potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we apply the banking sector volatility connectedness proposed by Diebold and Yilmaz 2014 to measure the dynamic aggregate volatility risk of the bank system. Using this measure, we study how the aggregate volatility risk of the bank system affects the innovation quality of non-financial listed firms in China. This study finds a positive relationship between the banking sector volatility connectedness and corporate innovation quality. Financial constraints and bank supervision are two plausible channels through which banking sector volatility connectedness could affect corporate innovation quality. In addition, the positive effect of banking sector volatility connectedness on firm innovation quality is suppressed for bank-related firms, and during high economic policy uncertainty and post-2015 stock market crash periods. The results are consistent to a battery of robustness test. Our empirical results present a novel finding that an appropriate high aggregate volatility risk of the bank system has a bright side for company innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides an overview of research on international HRM practices in the context of uncertainty and crisis. With a pool of 72 research articles drawn from 32 journals and published between the years 2000 and 2018, this paper aims to systematically review three distinct research streams within the uncertainty and crisis literature and their effects on international HRM. These three distinct research streams are 1) economic crisis, 2) natural disasters and 3) political uncertainty. In the context of constant economic crisis, we propose further research to explore and integrate high-performance HRM practices and talent management into socially responsible HRM practices. In a natural disaster context, we propose looking into emergency management frameworks within HRM. Finally, in a politically uncertain context, we propose that the development of expatriate assignments and their needs be further investigated. A key contribution of our research is its focus on context and responsiveness in an ever-changing business setting. The importance of boundary conditions and their effect on the implementation of HRM have been overlooked and understudied. A focus on these aspects will provide a nuanced and more realistic understanding of how international HRM unfolds. Relatedly, we consolidate existing research regarding international HRM practices in an uncertainty and crisis context, for our review found it to be scattered and fragmented among disciplines. By doing so, we review existing gaps in the literature and provide a detailed map for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines government debt's effect on economic growth on a sample of 16 countries from Central and Southeast Europe for the period 2009–2018 period. We develop a non-linear dynamic panel-regression model. The findings point out to concavity of the growth function with respect to government debt. The estimates from the baseline model determine the debt threshold at the level of 77.3% of GDP, while the debt threshold ranges from 69.4 to 74.1% of GDP when the primary and overall budget balances are included as covariates. The GMM estimates that we make to deal with potential endogeneity determine the debt threshold at the level of 78.9% of GDP when there are no covariates, while the debt threshold ranges from 75.8 to 80.7% of GDP when the gross fixed capital formation and employment are added as covariates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the evolution of Swedish stabilisation policies through six policy regimes between 1873 and 2019. We focus on discretionary policy decisions by estimating policy shocks using a SVAR model. Through these shocks, we explore how stabilisation policies have evolved over time and how policymakers responded to key economic events such as financial crises and wars. Our results show three key results (i) policies are often a source of destabilisation rather than stabilisation, (ii) regimes are designed for a specific time and ends when economic circumstances change, and (iii) fixed exchange rates worsen the economic effects of financial crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyse stock price reactions to the announcements of monetary and fiscal policy actions in 12 stock exchanges worldwide between 1 June 2007 and 30 June 2012. While past papers have analysed the effect of policy interventions focusing on monetary policy actions (e.g. Ricci 2015), our paper focuses on stock indices either capturing the whole stock market or various industries. By estimating abnormal stock reactions around the announcement date, we show that (1) stock industry indices react to policy interventions in a different manner than the broad stock index does; (2) stock returns react negatively to restriction measures for general and non-banking sector indices; and (3) stock reaction to expansionary measures was stronger at the beginning of the financial crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the Special Issue. It reviews the response of financial institutions to the global financial crisis in the provision of loan and equity finance to SMEs, and highlights the emergence and role of alternative forms of finance, including crowdfunding, microfinance and credit unions. The paper concludes that any continued constraint in the supply of and effective demand for finance for the SME sector will have significant implications for the overall performance of economies in both developed and developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Financial heterogeneity generally refers to differences in the financial environment, which will affect the efficiency and risk of a country's financial market. This paper describes financial heterogeneity from three aspects: the difference of financial market structure, the difference of financial intervention level and the degree of financial openness, and studies the relationship between financial heterogeneity, deposit insurance coverage and bank risk-taking before and after the 2008 financial crisis, using panel data of 98 market countries. The results show that the nonlinear relationship between bank risk-taking and deposit insurance coverage. This research finds that estimated coefficients' sign and significance of some variables, such as household saving rate, bank deposit loan spread, their interactions with deposit insurance coverage, and bank credit to bank deposits show cyclical characteristics cross periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper argues that Chinese involvement in the Eastern Mediterranean is primarily motivated by increasing the country's economic role within the region through Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The paper uses case study analysis methodology dwelling on the evolution and content of Chinese involvement in Greece and Cyprus. Primarily focusing of the nature of the Chinese investments in strategic sectors of the two cases in question the role that that China plays in Eastern Mediterranean is described as a 'silky involvement'. China's policy choices are also perceived to be an opportunity for Greece and Cyprus to combat the negative effects of 2007–2008 economic crises and to increase their geopolitical stronghold in the post-Cold War geopolitical environment of the Eastern Mediterranean. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently worldwide Islamic finance has gained considerable attention. However, Islamic financial institutions face multiple risks to sustaining and growing further. Against this backdrop, the paper examines the impact of both liquidity and credit risk on the efficiency of Islamic banks (IBs) operating in Bangladesh. This paper uses IB's data from 2007 to 2018 and offers a two-stage assessment. In the first stage, it uses data envelopment analysis (DEA), and in the second stage regression models to assess the impact of both liquidity and credit risk on the efficiency of the IBs. Efficiency scores confirm that IBs are operating with an 86% efficiency level through a 68% share in the constant returns to scale (CRS). Our results also confirm that both liquidity risk (LR) and credit risk (CR) have a significant impact on the efficiency of the IBs in Bangladesh. A higher score for efficiency is shown by a higher liquidity risk, whereas mixed results are confirmed by credit risk indicators. Moreover, the Z-score (a bank stability measurement) and number of branches (a measurement of the bank's network coverage), have a positive impact on efficiency. On the other side, the size of the bank and the financial crisis period show a negative relationship with the bank's efficiency. The findings of our paper significantly contribute to the Islamic banking sector, especially for the policymakers and academic researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the consistency of asymmetric interest rate past-trough (IRPT) using a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag framework. Superior to the previous studies, this study exploits the historical profile of Indonesia to enrich the analysis. Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) which crashed the country in 1998 and several monetary policy changes implemented by the government offer different perspectives to grasp IRPT. The results of this study indicate that there is a consistent upward rigidity in the long-run pass-through in Indonesia. Particularly during the AFC, it is well proven that the asymmetric behavior is fickle whether disappear or bounce back to the downward rigidity. This finding demonstrates the importance of a rolling-window approach in understanding IRPT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a Structural VAR approach, we estimated fiscal multipliers for social benefits in Brazil for 1997–2018. Our results suggest that social benefits have relatively large multiplier effects, even when compared to public investment. The multipliers are also larger in the full sample, which includes the country's 2014–16 economic crisis than in the period 1997–2014. In particular, our results show that spending one unit on social expenditures generates a final change in GDP of almost three after two years. The higher estimated multipliers in the full sample appear in the response of household consumption and private investment to shocks in total social expenditures and for different types of social benefits (e.g. cash transfers, unemployment insurance, and pensions). In a context in which the expansion of social protection became prominent as a response to structural changes in the labor market and the Covid-19 pandemic, our paper reinforces its potential role in the short-run economic recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Banking Union was a major policy response to the financial crisis that began in 2007 and the subsequent Eurozone crisis. Moral hazard has frequently been presented as a major cause of these crises. Therefore, Banking Union can be understood as a response to moral hazard in relation to banks and sovereigns. Yet, moral hazard was an acknowledged and supposedly managed problem prior to these events. Paradoxically, moral hazard has been used to justify contradictory policy options to safeguard European financial system stability, such as decentralized institutional arrangements for banking supervision but also a centralized system coordinated by the European Central Bank (ECB). To address this paradox, this paper investigates moral hazard as a political concept. Based on a comparison of how central bankers from the Bundesbank and the ECB understand and use the moral hazard concept, this paper argues that moral hazard is closer to the realm of politics than expertise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the rapidly growing cities of the Global South, and Africa in particular, urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) is increasingly recognized as a survival strategy both by researchers and international development organizations. While UPA is well researched, direct links to economic crisis and class variations in participation have only received limited attention in the Nigerian context. This study focuses on Benin City, the second largest city in Nigeria's southern oil producing region, where repeated and unpredictable fluctuations in oil prices have significant implications for livelihoods. The paper discusses the results of field-based data collected using qualitative research methods (observation, in-depth interviews and questionnaire surveys) in Benin City, Southern Nigeria, where there is a dearth of published material on the practice of UPA. The paper reveals that in the context of unpredictable and frequent exposures to economic shocks, households at all socio-economic levels depend significantly on food production activities, not only for their immediate survival, but as a means of reducing household vulnerability and building resilience against future shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue addresses the effects of the most recent financial and economic crisis (starting in 2007) on mobility, housing and labour markets, in order to learn some lessons for the future that would enable regions to mitigate the effects of a recession and speed recovery. These empirically based papers cover various different European studies for different regional contexts and scales of analysis (from local to national/international). Of special concern are the Southern European countries, especially badly hit by the economic crisis due to structural problems, labour market conditions and social inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to investigate the possible dual causality between exchange rates and stock indices of China and ASEAN using Structural Vector Auto-Regressive Model (SVAR). The paper has analysed the dynamic relationships between the Yuan and the Shanghai Composite Index and Shenzhen Stock Index in the context of China's third largest trading bloc, i.e., ASEAN, after the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997. The Asian Financial Crisis of 1997–98 had an adverse impact on stock indices and the currencies of ASEAN countries. It was also expected that a devaluation of the Yuan would follow soon, thus plummeting investors' confidence in the Chinese markets. Further research was needed to explore the complex relationship between financial and forex markets in the context of China and ASEAN. The focus of this paper is to explore such relationship with the focus on China. The results of the model confirm the dual causality between the two variables of interest in China. It concludes that a positive financial shock does have a small but significant impact upon the Yuan, whereas a positive exchange rate shock has a high and a significant impact upon the Shanghai and Shenzhen Composite Indices. The paper finds the effect of monetary and demand shocks upon the Yuan and stock market indices to be insignificant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International tax justice issues, such as corporate tax avoidance, have gained particular salience over the past decade in an environment of financial instability and government austerity. Civil society involvement has ranged from trade unions and NGOs calling for parliamentary inquiries to civil disobedience by less established actors. Since the international financial crisis, how have levels of contentious collective action around these issues waxed and waned? Is contentiousness associated most with domestic politics or global media events like the Panama Papers? This paper uses an original hand-coded dataset from five national newspapers in the United Kingdom and Australia between 2008 and 2016. Political claims analysis (PCA) was used to collect all instances of claims around international tax justice and compare the types of actions and the different frames used by civil society actors. In both countries, mobilising grievances are generated most strongly in the period after domestic austerity policies are introduced. The qualitative coding provides evidence of accompanying frame alignment in these periods, as international taxation is problematized in terms of national revenue, demonstrating scale shift from the global to the national political stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]