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Comprehending the spatiotemporal dynamics and driving factors of small and micro wetlands (SMWs) holds paramount significance in their conservation and sustainable development. This paper investigated the spatiotemporal evolution and driving mechanisms of SMWs in the Yellow River Basin, utilizing buffer zones, overlay analysis, and the Geodetector model based on Landsat satellite images and an open-surface water body dataset from 1990 to 2020. The results revealed that (1) from 1990 to 2020, SMWs in the Yellow River Basin exhibited an overall pattern of fluctuation reduction. The total area decreased by approximately 1.12 × 105 hm2, with the predominant decline occurring in the 0–1 hm2 and 1–3 hm2 size categories. In terms of spatial distribution, SMWs in Qinghai and Gansu decreased significantly, while the SMWs in Inner Mongolia, Henan, and Shandong gradually increased. (2) From 1990 to 2020, SMWs were mostly converted into grassland and cropland, with some transformed into impervious water surface and barren, and only a small percentage converted into other land types in the Yellow River basin. (3) The alterations in SMWs were influenced by factors, with their interplay exhibiting nonlinear or bilinear enhancement. Among these factors, annual precipitation, elevation, and potential evapotranspiration were the primary natural factors influencing the changes in the distribution of SMWs. On the other hand, land use cover type, gross domestic product (GDP), and road distance were the main anthropogenic factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The demand for electricity is soaring, propelled not only by population and GDP growth but also the pressing effects of climate change. This study seeks to address the uncertainties surrounding future electricity demand by projecting monthly consumption in Florida, USA, taking into account diverse climate scenarios and their potential impacts. Our approach involves utilizing the degree-day method and constructing an energy consumption regressionmodel grounded in historical data. Key variables, including population, employment, GDP, electricity prices, temperature, and daylight hours, are systematically analyzed. This model acts as the fundamental basis for forecasting future electricity needs in residential, commercial, and industrial sectors across the state of Florida up to the year 2050, considering different climate scenarios. Under the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 4.5 scenario, the residential sector foresees a substantial 63% increase in electricity demand from 2001-2019 to 2050. Under the more extreme RCP 8.5 scenario, this surge climbs to 65%. Meanwhile, the commercial and industrial sectors are expected to witness a 47% and 54% upswing in demand under RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5, respectively. Intriguingly, heightened demand for cooling during scorching summers outweighs the reduced need for heating in winter, particularly in the residential sector. The current renewable energy policies fall short of addressing the impending climate-driven surge in electricity demand. To combat this, our recommendation is the implementation of a Renewable Portfolio Standard, aimed at significantly enhancing the proportion of renewables in Florida's electricity mix. This paper concludes with a set of crucial policy recommendations, imperative for steering a sustainable transition to renewable energy and effectively managing the impacts of extreme heat on people's lives. These recommendations serve as a strategic roadmap for navigating the evolving landscape of electricity demand amidst the complex challenges posed by climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of the political hierarchies of cities in China from different perspectives. First, we examine the economic disparities between prefectural cities and municipalities. Furthermore, this paper draws upon a quasi‐ experiment to analyze the impact of upgrading Chongqing to a municipality in 1997 using the synthetic control method. The city‐upgrading policy significantly increased Chongqing's gross domestic product (GDP) in the following 4 years. Finally, we find that the policy increased GDP in treated cities within 1200 km of Chongqing by about 10%–13% relative to the control cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to estimate the effect of liquidity on the profitability of firms listed on the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange (HSX) in Vietnam during the COVID-19 outbreak. Using a quantitative research method (the feasible generalized least squares method - FGLS), six factors affecting the firms' performance from 2012 to 2021 are identified: COVID-19, the liquidity ratio, firm age, firm size, tangible assets, and gross domestic product growth. This paper has especially highlighted liquidity's negative and significant effect on firms' performance during the pandemic. Therefore, the study findings indicate that manufacturing firms with high liquidity during COVID-19 lose the opportunity to increase revenue due to funds tied to working capital that cannot be used to support the company's operations under the trade-off theory. Besides, high liquidity also increases the company's opportunity cost, which decreases company profitability. However, the study was conducted in a country with government intervention, political stability, and peace, unlike a country in a period of war and economic difficulties, such as Ukraine. Therefore, the article used a cross-country database for more generalizable results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to evaluate the culture and arts of Kyoto Prefecture through the calculation of its cultural GDP in 2015. The method for calculating the cultural GDP in Japan is mainly based on the criterion of the UNESCO Culture Satellite Account (CSA). Results reveal that the ratio of the cultural GDP to the total GDP in Kyoto Prefecture (about 2.0%) is slightly higher than that of the whole country in Japan (about 1.8%) and each domain shows different characteristics from the national situation. Considering the growth strategies of cultural industries formulated by Japanese government, Kyoto Prefecture should focus on developing its competitive tertiary industry and vigorously promote its cultural industries as well as activate the development of the traditional culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing threat of global warming has prompted Malaysia to pledge a 45 % reduction in its greenhouse gas emissions intensity of gross domestic product (GPD) by 2030. The industrial sector is a critical area for mitigation, and carbon accounting, mitigation, and trading are crucial steps towards reducing emissions. While previous studies have focused on individual accounting, mitigation and offset assessment, a comprehensive and integrated approach is needed to guide Malaysian industries towards carbon neutrality. This paper proposes such a framework, which combines carbon accounting, mitigation, and offsetting measures. The paper also introduces the Carbon Mitigation Measures Index (CMI), which assesses carbon mitigation measures based on both their environmental and economic impacts. The proposed framework and CMI can serve as a guide for Malaysian industries to achieve their carbon neutrality goals and contribute to global efforts to mitigate climate change. By adopting this integrated approach, Malaysian industries can reduce their carbon footprint, meet national emissions reduction targets, and contribute to global efforts to combat climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate spatial distribution of gridded gross domestic product (GDP) data is crucial for revealing regional disparities within administrative units, thus facilitating a deeper understanding of regional economic dynamics, industrial distribution, and urbanization trends. The existing GDP spatial models often rely on prediction residuals for model evaluation or utilize residual distribution to improve the final accuracy, frequently overlooking the modifiable areal unit problem within residual distribution. This paper introduces a hybrid downscaling model that combines random forest and area-to-area kriging to map gridded GDP. Employing Thailand as a case study, GDP distribution maps were generated at a 1 km spatial resolution for the year 2015 and compared with five alternative downscaling methods and an existing GDP product. The results demonstrate that the proposed approach yields higher accuracy and greater precision in detailing GDP distribution, as evidenced by the smallest mean absolute error and root mean squared error values, which stand at USD 256.458 and 699.348 ten million, respectively. Among the four different sets of auxiliary variables considered, one consistently exhibited a higher prediction accuracy. This particular set of auxiliary variables integrated classification-based variables, illustrating the advantages of incorporating such integrated variables into modeling while accounting for classification characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many developed countries around the world, the connection between immigration and crime has been a subject of discussion. The indigenous populations of the most advanced nations usually held the opinion that immigration fuels delinquency. Therefore, this paper provides an empirical connection between immigration and crime in the period 1988-2018 across 30 OECD countries. For empirical analysis, advanced panel econometric approaches are used which can address both heterogonous coefficients and cross-section dependency. The findings show that no statistical evidence exists to relate an increase in the number of immigrants to the rise of any kind of crime. If there is we found a significant negative association between immigrants and only one of the six kinds of crime studied. Moreover, an increase in foreign prisoners (FP) reduces all kinds of crimes. While an increase in the real gross domestic product (RGDP) only increases property crimes. The increase in M25–29 only increases serious assault (SA) out of six crime types analysed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use a preanalysis plan to analyze the effect of measurement error on economics research using the fact that the Bureau of Economic Analysis both revises its gross domestic product (GDP) data and also publishes a second, theoretically identical estimate of U.S. output that only differs from GDP due to measurement error: gross domestic income (GDI). Using a sample of 23 models published in top economics journals, we find that reestimating models using revised GDP always gives the same qualitative result as the original publication. Estimating models using GDI instead of GDP gives a different qualitative result for three of 23 models (13%). (JEL C80, C82, E01) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the effects of anticipations of tax changes on economic activity through the release of tax news in the media in the United States. I provide a measure of anticipations by exploiting the content of television news. This information typically flows faster than standard measures of gross domestic product, thus I propose a mixed frequency dynamic factor model to estimate both the economic activity latent factor and the effects of anticipated tax shocks on it. I find that one-month-ahead anticipations of tax cuts significantly stimulate current economic activity while those of tax increases produce the opposite effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The business-to-business (B2B) marketing literature is heavily focused on the manufacturing sector. However, it is the B2B service sector that shows the highest growth in gross domestic product (GDP). Beyond a vibrant stream of literature on servitization, the B2B literature has neglected drawing on the wider service literature. This paper aims to examine recent streams of service research that have promising implications and research opportunities for B2B marketing. Design/methodology/approach: Together, the author team has decades of research, managerial and executive teaching experience related to B2B marketing and services marketing and management. The observations and reflections in this paper originate from this unique perspective and are supplemented by insights from 16 expert interviews. Findings: The authors identify and discuss in this paper four broad and related themes from the service literature that can stimulate B2B research and practice. First, the authors highlight the implications for capturing value in economies with their rapidly increasing specialization and related growth in B2B services. Specifically, the authors explain where B2B firms should focus on to gain bargaining power in the value chains of the future. Second, an additional strategy to enhance a B2B firm's power to capture value is servitization, which allows firms to get closer to their customers, increase their switching costs and build strategic partnerships. The authors explore how firms can use service productization to enhance their chances of successful servitization. Third, servitization is expensive, and productivity and scalability are often a challenge in B2B contexts. These issues are tackled in a recent service research stream on cost-effective service excellence (CESE) where the authors derive implications for B2B firms. Fourth and related to CESE, latest developments in intelligent automation offer exciting opportunities for B2B services to be made more scalable. Originality/value: This paper is based on the unique perspective of the author team and a panel of experts and connects major streams of service research to the B2B literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of the money supply in different states of inflation and economic growth in South Africa from 1990 to 2021. The term "states" defines periods of low and high rates of economic variables of interest. Markov-switching dynamic regression (MSDRM) and time-varying parameter structural vector autoregression (TVP-VAR) are used in this paper. The contribution of this paper is not only based on the long run but also on the examination of the impact of the money supply in different states of inflation and economic growth. Moreover, the use of shock accounts for time-varying elasticity. It is found that there is a 0.70% decrease in the gross domestic product for a 1% increase in money supply in state 1, while in state 2, the money supply was insignificant. The money supply had a negative and a positive impact on inflation in states 1 and 2, with rates of 0.05% and 0.35% in the respective states. The money supply had a high multiplier effect on gross domestic product and inflation. More than 5 years were spent in each state for both gross domestic product and inflation, while the transition probability of moving and returning to each state is significant. The trade-off of using the money supply for economic growth and inflation is evident in South Africa. It is recommended that the state of the economy be considered when using the money supply in an effort to stimulate economic growth or stabilise inflation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alauddin Madrasa has played an important role in Albanian society since its foundation until today. Madrasa graduates have a respectable place in society and as such have always been close to the people in the most difficult days. However, despite the contribution that madrasa graduates make to society, no one has been interested in their welfare. In other words: How do they cope with the challenges of life? The aim of this paper is to study the religious coping of madrasa graduates. To achieve this goal, a survey was conducted with 300 madrasa graduates. A construct measuring religious coping was adopted from the literature. Data were analysed using SPSS ver. 27. All mean scores obtained as a result of the research show that the level of religious coping of madrasah graduates is high. This indicates that madrasa graduates generally are coping quite well. The madrasa has prepared them well for the life challenges that graduates face. In light of these findings, the paper discusses the impact of studying in a madrasa and the lessons it teaches its graduates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A National Innovation System (NIS) supposes updated, continuous, and collaborative work between different agents, so the value chain approach fits perfectly with this NIS conception. The sector selected to illustrate our proposal is the biotechnological industry because of its structure in technology-based companies and its contributions to de Cuban GDP. This is the first research that works in a proposition of NIS for Cuba. The objective of this paper is to suggest a NIS for Cuba based on the value chain of its biotechnological industry. We follow a benchmarking methodology. First, we analyze nine international NIS experiences from developed and developing countries. Then, we highlight several items to be applied to the Cuban proposed NIS by analyzing five indicators: regulations, technology and innovation policies, financial systems, business activities, and research and education systems. The proposed NIS shows links between funding, production, service, and scientific sectors based on the biotechnological industry. It is considered beneficial for the three most important actors in a nation (companies, government, and society) because it allows a profitable and durable solution for economic and social troubles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of TEME: Casopis za Društvene Nauke is the property of TEME: Casopis za Drustvene Nauke and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper, we draw on the concepts of in-betweenness and migration interdependence in order to investigate the vulnerability of Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine due to their confl icting relations with Russia and the exposure of their economies to remittance fl ows from the latter. To achieve this goal, we explore whether and how migrant fl ows and remittance fl ows have diverged since 2014, when the three states signed their Association Agreements with the EU and their economic relations with Russia deteriorated. In this respect, we examine how interstate relations impact upon migration and remittances fl ows. After discussing in-betweenness and migration interdependence, we investigate the origin of the remittance infl ows in Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine and the destination of the migration outfl ows. We map the development of remittances from the World, Europe, and Russia and relate it with the development of their GDP using longitudinal data. A comparative analysis of our fi ndings suggest that the three cases differ from each other, but, in all three cases, Russia has not used migration interdependence as leverage. We conclude that remittance fl ows in the three in-between states are more affected by the state of the global economy, the economic situation of Russia, and domestic circumstances rather than from interstate relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theoretical background: The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is the largest mega- regional trade agreement ever signed, accounting for more than 30% of the global population, exports, and gross domestic product (GDP). It is also the largest automotive market worldwide, with significant potential both in terms of automotive manufacturing and sales.Purpose of the article: The paper’s main objective is to characterize China-RCEP automotive trade in the years 2012–2021 with reference to key provisions and implications of the aforementioned mega-regional trade agreement for the automotive industry. In the empirical part of the paper, the authors attempt to verify the hypothesis that trade liberalization under RCEP may contribute to the expansion of the regional automotive industry in terms of trade volume, as well as fragmentation of value and supply chains. Research methods: The authors conducted an analysis of intra-industry trade disaggregated into 54 six-digit HS tariff codes using the Grubel–Lloyd and Balassa indexes, accompanied by cross sectional analysis and studies of sectoral reports and literature in the field of mega-regionalism in trade. Main findings: The hypothesis formulated in the introduction of the paper was verified positively –the authors provided an added value to previous empirical studies on RCEP, in the form of a perspective of the automotive industry and in-depth analysis of sectoral trends for the last ten years. The potential for further fragmentation of value and supply chains inside the region was identified, including the possibility of relocation of manufacturing and assembly activities to lower the cost of RCEP Member States to strengthen comparative advantages over extra-regional counterparts (EU, USMCA). The authors pointed at the prospective rising attractiveness of RCEP in automotive manufacturers’ location decisions worldwide, considering both costs, retreat from global-oriented manufacturing and export strategies, investment security, sustainable development, as well as geopolitical trends in respect of newly established tariff and non-tariff barriers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – the main goal of the paper is to examine the role of macroeconomic factors in promoting the technological development of upper-middle-income countries. Research methodology – to carry on with the investigation the paper selected the expenditure in research and development as a proxy for technological advancement while GDP per capita, Final consumption expenditure, Domestic credit to the private sector, national income, and government transparency are selected as proxies for the macroeconomic indicators. Moreover, a VECM approach is performed in order to capture the long-run and short-run relationship among the variables. Additionally, a Granger causality test was used to observe the causality direction among the variables. Findings – the obtained results revealed that in the short run, all the selected variables have no prominent impact on R&D expenditure. However, the long run result, presented that the transparency situation of upper-middle-income countries, simultaneously the governments’ final consumption, the amount of credit provided to the private sector, and national income are unfavorably affecting technological development while the GDP is positively affecting the expenditure in R&D. Research limitations – the exclusive focus on macroeconomic factors and upper-middle-income countries as well as the fact of excluding the role of micro factors and low-income countries are the major limitation of the study. Practical implications – policymakers and nations looking to accomplish technological transformation in the age of digitization can benefit from the study’s findings. Originality/Value – since prior studies highlighted the link of macroeconomic factors with specific sectors such as healthcare, education, and agriculture. Thus, giving little attention to or neglecting the information technology sector that compromises a more specific branch such as research and development. For that reason, this paper will bring light to this phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The progress of green credit in China is accelerating, but its development is uneven and insufficient in different regions. And whether the issuance of green credit can effectively promote the improvement of the environment and economy is not well understood. Objective: Previous research has found that green credit promotes economic growth through improvement of the industrial structure and green technological innovation. However, these studies have not considered the positive externality of environmental improvement even though environmental improvement and economic growth are requirements of the sustainable development concept. Methods: We use the chain-mediated model to estimate the impact of green credit issuance on the economic growth of different provinces since the large-scale implementation of green credit in China with data from 2008 to 2016. Results and conclusion: This paper shows that the issuance of green credit can improve labor supply rather than labor productivity through the improvement of air quality to achieve regional economic growth. Such a chain-mediated path is different from the economic growth caused by industrial structural adjustment and green technology innovation. At the national level, every 1% increase in green credit issuance relative to industrial loans will increase the per capita gross domestic product (GDP) by approximately 4.6 yuan, or 0.012%, through air quality and labor supply, accounting for 2.875% of the total effect. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that due to regional industrial structure differences and diminishing marginal effects, the impact of green credit is stronger in the western region than in the eastern and central regions. For every 1% increase in the proportion of green credit issuance relative to industrial loans, the per capita GDP growth achieved through the chain-mediated path is approximately 30.17 yuan in the western region, approximately 6.6 times greater than that at the national level. Within a 95% confidence interval of 5000 bootstrap samples, this path is found to be true, and the chain-mediated effect accounts for approximately 12.96% of the total indirect effect. Limitations: The limitation of this paper is the measurement of green credit. Although green credit has a large volume, it remains underdeveloped, and there is a lack of perfect indicators. Most existing studies have adopted only alternative or reverse indicators to measure the issuance of green credit. For example, this paper takes the interest expenditure of six high-energy-consuming enterprises as the reverse indicator, which may to a certain extent lead to the overestimation of the issuance of green credit and its impact on the environment and economy. Future research can accurately explore the performance of green credit on the basis of its mature development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The modern finance industry is composed of not only numerous financial intermediaries but also internet-based mechanisms which are operated by mobile phone users and online consumers daily. In the coming 10 years, estimates suggest that over half of banks' functions will likely be replaced by high-tech artificial intelligence. Given the great ongoing shifts in contemporary financial systems, the transmission effects of internet-based finance practices have introduced an important yet unaddressed empirical question on the coupling relationship between the internet finance industry and economic policy uncertainty (EPU). This paper adopts the time-varying parameter vector autoregressive model with stochastic volatility (TVP-SV-VAR) model and novel data from Alibaba Corp. to investigate this relationship. We find: First, the impact of internet-based financial approaches on EPU is greater than the reversal effect, indicating that China's gross domestic product (GDP) is largely influenced by the online finance industry. Second, the lag impacts are time varying and become stable after 2016, corresponding to the current Chinese government's long-term strategic plan that emphasizes maintaining the economy's overall stability. Lastly, additional evidence shows that the online financial approaches are positively correlated with consumers' behaviors, implying that the online finance industry is gaining its momentum when people are using e-currency rather than real cash. After all, it takes time to observe the real effect of these macro policies. With internet and information technology developing, artificial intelligence is being used in the areas of big data, credit lending, and risk control. This largely reduces the data analyzing cost for internet finance companies and makes risk control more convenient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some Ricardian models would predict a fall in unemployment with trade liberalization. In contrast, the Heckscher-Ohlin model (Stolper Samuelson Theorem) would predict trade liberalization would cause a fall in wages for labor scarce countries, resulting in greater unemployment if there are wage rigidities. The choice of which theoretical model is used affects the empirical results obtained. This paper produces estimates of the change in unemployment due to a change in imports that are not model dependent. The estimates produced are total derivatives that capture all the ways that imports and unemployment are correlated. I find that unemployment increases with increased imports for Austria, Greece, Japan, Portugal, South Korea, Slovenia, and Sweden, but that unemployment decreases with increased imports for Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, the UK, and the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The role of subchondral bone in the pathogenesis of osteoarthritis has received continuous attention worldwide. To date, no comprehensive bibliometric analysis of this topic has been carried out. The purpose of this study was to investigate the knowledge landscape, hot spots, and research trends in subchondral bone research through bibliometrics. Methods: Web of Science Core Collection database was used to collect articles and reviews on subchondral bone in osteoarthritis published between 2003 and 2022. CiteSpace, VOSviewer, Scimago Graphica, and a bibliometric online analysis platform (http://bibliometric.com/) were used to visualize the knowledge network of countries, institutions, authors, references, and keywords in this field. Both curve fitting and statistical plotting were performed using OriginPro, while correlation analysis was done using SPSS. Results: A total of 3,545 articles and reviews were included. The number of publications on subchondral bone showed an exponential growth trend. The US produced the most (980), followed by China (862) and the United Kingdom (364). Scientific output and gross domestic product were significantly correlated (r = .948, p < .001). The University of California System and Professor Pelletier Jean-Pierre were the most prolific institutions and influential authors, respectively. The most active and influential journal for subchondral bone research was Osteoarthritis and Cartilage. The majority of papers were financed by NSFC (474, 13.4%), followed by HHS (445, 12.6%), and NIH (438, 12.4%). In recent years, hot keywords have focused on the research of pathomechanisms (e.g., inflammation, apoptosis, pathogenesis, cartilage degeneration/repair, angiogenesis, TGF beta) and therapeutics (e.g., regeneration, stromal cell, mesenchymal stem cell). Conclusion: Subchondral bone research in osteoarthritis is flourishing. Current topics and next research trends would be centered on the pathomechanisms of cellular and molecular interactions in the subchondral bone microenvironment in the development of osteoarthritis and the exploration of targeted treatment medicines for the altered subchondral bone microenvironment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the extent to which the East African Community (EAC) countries have developed economically over time and whether income inequality decreases with economic growth. The relationship between trade and GDP per capita amongst EAC member countries is evaluated using the World Bank's meta-data of development indicators and the EAC Secretariat's data spanning from 2000--2019. Convergence in GDP per capita and inequality are tested using Coefficient of variation (CV) and weighted beta. The results show that agriculture, manufacturing, trade and repair, construction, and transport and storage constituted the top five GDP value adding activities, contributing about 38 percent to total annual GDP. The EAC GDP per capita were diverging in the long run but converging in short to medium terms, implying increase and decrease in the regional income inequality respectively. Agriculture, electricity and gas, transport and storage, real estate activities, public administration, and education were income inequality-increasing sectors. Together with finance and insurance, these sectors were also positively associated with GDP per capita. The exports of EAC member countries were found to be highly concentrated in few sectors and destination markets, implying limited diversification of products and markets. In their quest to diversify, these countries should choose the right mixes of export goods and services keeping in view of the prevailing market factors in importing countries, such as, changing taste and demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Railways were an important driver of global economic growth in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Whilst their role is well documented in industrial economies, we know less about their macro‐economic impact in developing countries. In this paper, we first estimate the aggregate growth impact of Indian railways, one of the largest networks in the world in the early twentieth century. Then, we compare their impact in India to four emerging Latin American economies (Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Uruguay) and the Cape colony. Using growth accounting techniques common to the cross‐country estimates, we argue that the aggregate growth impact of Indian railways was significant, increasing Indian gross domestic product (GDP) per capita by 13.5 per cent by 1912. We also find that the growth impact of Indian railways was similar to Brazil and Mexico, but smaller than Argentina and the Cape. Compared with the latter, India had a smaller size of railway freight revenues in the economy and lower wages to fares leading to lower passenger time savings. Railways were the most important infrastructure driver of economic growth in India during the first era of globalization from 1860 to 1912, but they contributed less than in richer and more dynamic developing economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism development is not only an economic issue. Measuring its quality more comprehensively has important implications for achieving sustainable tourism. China has adopted the principle of High-quality Development to avoid the problems caused by the obsessive pursuit of GDP growth in the past. This study constructs an index system to measure the level of High-quality Development of tourism (HQDT), based on the new development philosophy that including innovation, coordination, green, openness, and sharing. This paper measures the HQDT in Heilongjiang Province from 2005 to 2019, and the results show that the level of HQDT in Heilongjiang Province has grown slowly. This reveals that the quality of the tourism industry has not achieved the same rapid growth as the tourism economy. Innovation have not played a driving role in HQDT, and coordination, green and open are the direct factors restricting the promotion of HQDT. The study initially reveals the feasibility of using HQDT to comprehensively evaluate the quality of the tourism industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Freight transport is a fundamental activity for the economic growth of a country or region, and the transport sector is one of the main contributors to gross domestic product (GDP) measurements. The total tons to be transported per year and transport types must be taken into account by state organisations for infrastructure planning, routes, prices and taxes. Governments make investment decisions according to the size of the freight mobilised per year. Transportation companies should contemplate external and internal variables, for example, fuel prices, distances, environmental impact, among others. Sustainability has become a determining factor in transport companies' decision making. This paper presents a novel study about the factors that affect freight land transport from the sustainability perspective. Then it proposes a conceptual framework to act as a roadmad to build a simulation model of freight land transport by defining the key parameters in economic, social and environmental terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Known as the "King of Spice", pepper (Piper nigrum) is the most widely used and traded agricultural product in the world. In Sarawak, pepper is listed as the few industrial crops in producing and contributing the most to the gross domestic product (GDP) of the country, Malaysia. However, the recent price fluctuation in the global pepper market has caused some farmers to abandon pepper farms due to the lower pepper prices against the high cost of input materials and farm maintenance, in addition to limited marketing choices and bargaining power when dealing with buyers due to their geographic remoteness, small production quantity, and variable product. To improve the circumstances, the use of blockchain technology with Byzantine-based consensus algorithm is proposed in this paper to minimize some of the constraints faced by the sniallholder farmers. With the PBFT consensus algorithm on-board, the blockcliain network (BCN) operates without miners as it relies on the message-transfer mechanism to achieve the total consensus. Besides, the PBFT consensus algorithm with varying network structures were evaluated. Upon comparison between network structures, the group network structure dominated the entirety of the experiment and presented as the proposed network structure, with the addition of specific nodes such as relay, storage, administer and brackets: bench and penalty to facilitate and maintain the longevity of the BCN. The implementation of blockchain technology in Sarawak's pepper industry has the potential to improve the linkages and cohesion between pepper stakeholders but its overall integration would have to be further explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The wide use of telecommunications, computers and the internet, especially over the last four decades, has formed a new economic phenomenon, the "Digital Economy". As a matter of facts, the development of digitalization has raised questions about its contribution to official economic indicators. This research examines the evolution of the information and communication industry (ICI) and its contribution to the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of six European entities. Time series and auto-ARIMA models are employed to process the data. Moreover, this study forecasts the development of the ICI in the future. The results demonstrate a clear stable growth in the variable under examination over time, showing an increasingly greater contribution of the ICI to the national GDP in most cases with the exception of Greece, which has a high provisional risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Environmental & Social Management Journal / Revista de Gestão Social e Ambiental is the property of Environmental & Social Management Journal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We show that macroprudential regulation significantly dampens the impact of global financial shocks on emerging markets. Specifically, a tighter level of regulation reduces the sensitivity of GDP growth to capital flow shocks and movements in the Chicago Board Options Exchange's VIX. A broad set of macroprudential tools contributes to this result, including measures targeting bank capital and liquidity, foreign currency mismatches, and risky credit. We also find that tighter macroprudential regulation allows monetary policy to respond more countercyclically to global financial shocks. This could be an important channel through which macroprudential regulation enhances macro‐economic stability. We do not find evidence that capital controls provide similar benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives this paper investigates the effects of wealth taxes on the South African economy by analysing the relationship between wealth taxes and the gross domestic product (GDP). Prior Work Although other factors such as investment, government expenditure, labour (unemployment), population and capital (education and technology) can also have an impact on economic growth, the idea was to isolate the effects of the taxation, in this case wealth taxes, and to do a test run on current wealth taxes. Approach It considers the Engle and Granger cointegration technique on annual tax data of the current forms of wealth being taxed (donations tax, transfer duty and estate duty), to determine the empirical relationship between wealth taxes and GDP. Results The study suggests that wealth tax increases GDP in the long run, with no impact in the short run. Value The proposed wealth tax is a continuous annual tax and will therefore cause individuals to make changes to their economic activities. The paper contends that the introduction of a comprehensive wealth tax in South Africa by the government would not yield favourable results and is thus not recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The experiences that can be lived only by traveling and exploring new geographical and cultural areas, made tourism one of the most developed industry generating over 10% of worldwide GDP. The purpose of the paper is to provide evidence of the development of the tourism and travel sector in the European Union. The conclusion that can be drawn from this article is the openness of European countries for the international flow of tourists and the better promotion of countries less new in the international tourism flow, European Union being one the greatest players in the tourism industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how and why Green Recovery could be beneficial for the Visegrad countries based on a modelling exercise using the E3ME macroeconometric model. Green Recovery is defined as including policies in recovery plans that not only target economic recovery, but also contribute to environmental targets. The paper proposes that a Green Recovery could be valuable and suitable for the region contributing to both restoring employment and boosting economic activity as well as reaching climate goals. This is tested through a macroeconomic simulation, using the E3ME model. E3ME is built on Post- Keynesian economic theory and on econometric estimations of macroeconomic relationships. The results of the analysis focus on three dimensions: (1) social - employment, (2) environmental - level of CO2 emissions and (3) economic activity - gross domestic product (GDP). Outcomes indicate that a green recovery can shorten the time needed for employment and economic recovery as well as contributes to CO2 emission reductions. In Hungary, Czechia and Poland, the impact persists into the long-term; however, the paper also concludes that countries with high reliance on coal (e.g. Poland) could return to coal in the long term if no further policies are introduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an adaptive network fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) based decision support system that can provide European policy makers with systematic guidance in allocating and prioritizing scant public resources, whilst accomplishing the best growth performance at a regional level. We do so by taking the stance of the Smart Specialization Strategies, which aim at consolidating the regional strengths and make effective and efficient use of public investment in R&D. By applying the ANFIS method, we were able to understand how—and to what extent—the competitiveness drivers promoted technological development and how the latter contributes to the economic growth of European regions. We used socio–economic, spatial, and patent-based data to train, test, and validate the models. What emerges is that an increase of R&D investments enhances the regional employment rate and the number of patents per capita; in turn, by taking into account the several combinations of specialization and diversification indicators, this leads to an increase of the regional gross domestic product (GDP). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This paper aims to investigate and assess the UAE's overall entrepreneurship performance (ecosystem) by applying the Global Entrepreneurship Index (GEI). Research Design & Methods: This paper assesses the United Arab Emirates' entrepreneurial ecosystem and compares it with Qatar and Saudi Arabia by using the Global Entrepreneurship Index (GEI) data collected between 2011 and 2016. The GEI approach is applied to measure the entrepreneurship ecosystem at the country level, and it constitutes an appropriate method to encourage a higher level of entrepreneurship by considering its quality aspects. Findings: Outcomes show an entrepreneurial ecosystem with a GEI index of 44.6. Technology absorption is a critical bottleneck that suppresses entrepreneurial goals. Despite the low score of this pillar, the UAE has one of the highest GDP per capita among all participating countries. As a result, the GEI score of the United Arab Emirates and its sub-indices are above the global average trend and count to the most innovation-driven economies worldwide. However, the UAE is not performing well compared to other average performers in its category. Implications & Recommendations: Crucial policy interferences are required for the improvement of technology absorption. UAE calls for 4% additional resources to expand the GEI score by 10%. Contribution & Value Added: Using a novel approach incorporating individual and institutional variables into a single model, this paper identifies the weak aspects of UAE's entrepreneurial performance. Also, the utilisation of (PFB) is used to identify which entrepreneurial factors should be tackled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although entry to the Euro area (EA) is based only on fulfilment of the Maastricht criteria, implementation of optimum currency criteria and real economic convergence determines the benefits and costs of monetary integration. This paper focuses on the synchronization of business cycles among Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) and the EA. Business cycles are extracted from GDP data series using a double Hodrick-Prescott filter method. The degree of co-movement of cycles is evaluated on the basis of various methods of rolling correlation. Results show that there is no common CEE business cycle, although a synchronization trend is evident. Similarly, there is a strong trend of convergence of CEEC national business cycles toward that of the EA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The Arab region comprises 22 countries located in the Middle East and North Africa, sharing cultural and linguistic ties. Arab countries have continued to lag in terms of biomedical research compared to other nations for several past decades. Cancer is a major public health concern, being the second leading cause of death globally. Given that high research activity on cancer reflects positively on screening programs, awareness, and clinical practice, this article aimed to examine the activity and trend of cancer research in the Arab world between 2005 and 2019. Methods: Between 2005 and 2019, the number of cancer-related articles published by each Arab country, and regarding 27 different types, was assessed using the PubMed database. Numbers were normalized with respect to each country's average population and average Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Results: Arab countries contributed to 1.52% of total cancer publications. The number of cancer publications has steadily grown since 2005, with the last 7 years alone witnessing 75.69% of the total Arab cancer-related publications. In terms of publications per million persons, Qatar ranked first (393.74 per million persons), while in terms of publications per national GDP, Egypt ranked first (464.27 per billion US dollars). Breast, liver, and colorectal cancers had the highest numbers of all Arab cancer-related publications, while testicular, vulvar, and gallbladder cancers had the least. Conclusions: This paper pools information and insight for scientists, clinicians, funders, and decision-makers on the actualities and developments of cancer research in the Arab world. Addressing the barriers facing cancer research remains a cornerstone in the plan to improve the Arab world's output and contribution to the field of oncology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]