We introduce human capital accumulation into a real-business-cycle setup. We calibrate the model to Bulgarian data for the period following the introduction of the currency board arrangement (1999–2018). We investigate the quantitative importance of the presence of skill acquisition for cyclical fluctuations in Bulgaria. After subjecting the smodel to a battery of tests, we find the quantitative effect of such a channel – aside from producing a moderate increase in the variability of hours – to be relatively small. In other words, government spending on education turns out to be an ineffective instrument when it comes to smoothing the cycle.
Sustainable automobilities is one of the key topics of the mobile risk society and the future of modern societies in general [...]
The study investigates how the agricultural sector can respond to a growing non-food biomass demand. Taking Germany as an example, a stylized case of biomass production under conditions of technological advance and constantly growing demand is modelled. It is argued that biomass producers might seek to adjust their farm size by simultaneously optimizing benefits from the production scale and transaction cost savings, where transaction costs are measured using Data Envelopment Analysis. The results extend the debate on transaction costs and structural change in agriculture by revealing a possible synergy and trade-off between transaction cost savings and benefits from (dis)economies of scale. They show that if larger farms cannot economize on transaction costs, then investments in land and labor, needed to adjust to higher biomass demand, partly compromise the returns to scale, which decelerates the farm size growth. A higher degree of asset specificity gives rise to transaction costs and reduces the rate at which the farm size decreases. Smaller producers may disproportionally benefit from their higher potential of transaction cost savings, if advanced technologies can offset the scale advantage of larger farms. The findings inform policymakers to consider this complex effect when comparing the opportunities of smaller and larger agricultural producers in the bioeconomy.
While the rural exodus dominates public and scientific debates, considerably less attention has been given to studying why the overwhelming majority of people worldwide remain immobile. As a consequence of this, the reasons why people stay, especially in economically weaker rural areas, are still not fully understood. This paper aims to contribute to closing this gap by addressing the question of why rural people stay put despite inter-regional welfare. Based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) we model staying intentions of villagers in rural Kazakhstan, where many people leave toward urban areas. Our model focuses on staying behaviour, but explicitly includes the leave option as the alternative to staying, as well as both staying and leaving barriers. We apply a cutting edge partial least square structural equation model. Our study reveals the existence of an interaction between staying and leaving barriers. Thus, any policies reducing rural-urban migration barriers have a multiplier effect as people view staying as comparatively more difficult when leaving becomes easier. We further show that existing positive narratives of urban life weaken staying intentions. However, the strongest factor slowing rural exodus is not related to the rural economy, but to the future prossspects of children, including access to high-quality educational institutions in close proximity.
Measures to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic have put a sudden halt to street protests and other forms of citizen involvement in Europe. At the same time, the pandemic has increased the need for solidarity, motivating citizens to become involved on behalf of people at risk and the vulnerable more generally. This research note empirically examines the tension between the demobilisation and activation potential of the COVID-19 crisis. Drawing on original survey data from seven Western European countries, we examine the extent, forms, and drivers of citizens' engagement. Our findings show the remarkable persistence of pre-existing political and civic engagement patterns. Concurrently, we show that threat perceptions triggered by the multifaceted COVID-19 crisis have mobilized Europeans in the early phase of the pandemic. Similarly, the role of extreme ideological orientations in explaining (regular) political engagement indicates that the current situation may create its specific mobilisation potentials.
Tests for identification through heteroskedasticity in structural vector autoregressive analysis are developed for models with two volatility states where the time point of volatility change is known. The tests are Wald-type tests for which only the unrestricted model, including the covariance matrices of the two volatility states, has to be estimated. The residuals of the model are assumed to be from the class of elliptical distributions, which includes Gaussian models. The asymptotic null distributions of the test statistics are derived, and simulations are used to explore their small-sample properties. Two empirical examples illustrate the usefulness of the tests in applied work.
In the present study, the authors examined the impact of financial sanctions on economic growth using Iran's data and intervention time-series analysis over the period 2005-2017. Financial sanctions targeted the country's financial resources and increased interest rates and medium- and long-term financing costs. In general, financial sanctions adversely affected the financial sector. In this regard, blocking of assets and restricted access to financial and foreign exchange resources, depreciated domestic currency, reduced investment, exports, and production along with increased inflation and unemployment ultimately reduced economic growth. The results indicated the effectiveness of financial sanctions on economic growth in the short-run. However, during the third period (2010-2014), when severe and multilateral financial sanctions are imposed, the coefficient is negative (0.54), which is higher, compared to the other periods. As the economic sanctions of Iran have intensified, the economic growth has slowed down. Nevertheless, in the long run, financial sanctions have had a weaker negative effect of 0.19 on the economic growth. JEL Classification: F51، O 47، O 53
Wie kann globale Gesundheitssicherheit erreicht werden? Prioritatenkonflikte zwischen Handelsrecht und Gesundheitsschutz sowie zwischen problemspezifischen und strukturellen Gesundheitsmasnahmen, aber auch die Frage einer universellen Krankenversicherung pragen die Debatten.
Unter den Folgen der Corona-Pandemie leiden viele Menschen. Gefluchtete gehoren jedoch in vielen gesellschaftlichen Bereichen zu einer der am schlechtesten gestellten Gruppen. Sie leben uberdurchschnittlich haufig in beengten Wohneinrichtungen wie Gemeinschaftsunterkunften und sind dadurch einem erhohten Infektionsrisiko ausgesetzt. Gleichzeitig waren sie schon vor der Pandemie uberproportional haufig psychisch stark belastet. Sie konnten daher von der Pandemie besonders betroffen sein. Der Wochenbericht untersucht deshalb, wie sich die ersten Monate der Corona-Pandemie auf die psychische Gesundheit Gefluchteter ausgewirkt haben. Er zeigt, dass die psychischen Belastungen Gefluchteter im Jahr 2020 unverandert hoch sind. Daruber hinaus fuhlten sich Gefluchtete in dieser Zeit weiterhin sehr einsam. Die psychische Gesundheit Gefluchteter sollte daher weiterhin genau beobachtet werden, um einerseits steigenden psychischen Belastungen rechtzeitig entgegenwirken zu konnen und andererseits bestehende Einsamkeit abzubauen. Dies ist auch fur die erfolgreiche Integration der Gefluchteten wichtig.
Purpose: The COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) global pandemic forced hospitality and tourism service providers to respond by pivoting business models in line with governmental restrictions to curb the spread of the virus. This paper explores the online responsiveness of tourism-affiliated culinary service providers to a major external disruption. Methods: This study uses ecosystem resilience and Internet marketing theories to analyze 139 web homepages of culinary tourism service providers promoted by the official tourism website of Jamaica, to measure of Jamaica to measure online responsiveness to the COVID-19 pandemic. Results: Findings show that web page responses vary between the official tourism web page and the restaurants promoted on its site. Responses also vary across restaurant affiliation clusters and across location clusters. Further, resilient web page responses are more commonly associated with hotel restaurants and eponymous restaurants. Implications: Culinary service providers promoted by the official tourism marketing arm of a destination should consistently practice resilient online marketing response to external shocks. This study provides a novel analysis of online responsiveness to COVID-19 and contributes a summary framework for resilient response by culinary ecosystem providers preparing for post-pandemic travel.
Background: Traditional face-to-face instruction swiftly transitioned into online learning during the global COVID-19 outbreak. Students’ experiences and academic performance in this new learning platform need evaluation. Purpose: The purpose of this research was to determine the undergraduate nursing students’ stress, satisfaction, and academic performance during online learning. Methods: This research was considered a cross-sectional and descriptive-correlational study. The research participants were the second-year undergraduate nursing students from one nursing school in the Philippines. The data were collected using a web-based survey questionnaire and then analyzed using descriptive statistics and Spearman’s rho correlation. Results: The results revealed that the undergraduate nursing students considered having online learning during the COVID-19 outbreak to be stressful (44.4%) and very stressful (47.2%). Moreover, the undergraduate nursing students had low satisfaction (37%) and moderate satisfaction (46.3%) having the online learning during the COVID-19 outbreak. The undergraduate nursing students’ academic performance were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and resulted in poor (37%) to fair (50%) academic performance and were considerably (43.6%) and greatly (30.6%) affected by the pandemic. Online learning stress had a significant and inverse correlation with online learning satisfaction (p=.000) and academic performance (p=.012). Conclusion: Stress negatively impacts the undergraduate nursing students’ satisfaction and academic performance. This research suggests that certain measures should be performed to reduce stress and improve the online teaching–learning processes during the COVID-19 outbreak.
In the paper the authors proved that China’s growth towards dominance in international trade has begun recently, but, on average, the growth of China’s trade volume has doubled every four years over the past three decades. The paper analyses that the rapid growth of the Chinese economy provides all countries around the world especially neigh boring countries, with a chance of interconnected development, which had a decisive impact on the economic prosperity of the world economy at the end of the last and at the beginning of this century. The key priority of Chinese economic policy was called attracting FDI, but gradually it focused on foreign direct investment (FDI) from China. Therefore, the “one belt, one road” initiative has brought maximum effect not only on the country itself, but on the entire global economy, and has become the basis for multilateral economic development. Accordingly, we have come to the conclusion that the project the “one belt, one road” has a goal to strengthen the geopolitical cooperation between Asia and Europe, so it is Ukraine that is important in its implementation. Ukraine is a strategically important logistics hub between Asia and Europe. It is proved that Ukraine is now a promising country in Eastern Europe and has a significant deferred purchasing power potential, which will increase if the political and economic situation in the country stabilizes.
What are the boundaries of humanitarianism? This question is controversially debated among humanitarian practitioners and scholars, given ever-changing spaces and temporalities of human suffering. This paper explores an understudied site of this controversy: the domestic humanitarian engagement of Medecins Sans Frontieres and Medecins du Monde, two NGOs widely regarded as epitomes of liberal international humanitarianism. Their Mission France started in the 1980s to support vulnerable populations in France through medical aid, socio-legal support, and political activism. It has provoked fierce internal opposition ever since, in the name of an inherited vision of humanitarianism as impartial emergency aid. Drawing on organisational documents, archival sources and key informant interviews, we analyse how these conflicts gave rise to an unstable settlement around the diagnostic function of Mission France: Leaders aimed to make the assistance function of Mission France secondary to the advocacy function of drawing attention to health inequity, thus avoiding any long-term substitution for state services. However, the political strategizing demanded by this approach clashed with local volunteer preferences for immediate aid and claims to political neutrality. This conflict about the hierarchy of humanitarian values in the NGOs' home country sheds new light on the contentious politics of humanitarian witnessing and assistance. Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2021.1916393 .
The COVID-19 pandemic is putting new and unforeseen pressures and has resulted in substantial disruption in the lives of the people across the globe. Although there is a budding body of literature on the impact of COVID-19 on mental health and psychological well-being, little research has been published among Filipino Graduate students in the context of a pandemic. This descriptive-correlational, cross-sectional research examined the relationship of resilience on COVID-19 perceived stress, anxiety, and fear. Two-hundred and three Graduate students participated in the online survey conducted in the last week of August 2020. Four self-reported questionnaires were used to gather the data. Descriptive statistics and correlational analysis were performed. Results indicated that the composite scores of the COVID-19 stress, anxiety, and fear were 2.81 (SD=.605), 3.94 (SD=.686), and 3.03 (SD=1.004) respectively. The composite score on the resilience scale was 3.33 (SD=.496). COVID-19 stress and fear had a significant inverse correlation with resilience. Resilience has a protective influence on COVID-19 fear and is pivotal to cope with COVID-19 stress. Educational institutions may need to cultivate and harness the resilient trait of Graduate students in the midst of pandemic and other stressful events to help combat negative mental states and undesirable psychological consequences.
The literature on autocracies has argued that repression of protest is either a result of the political environment in which protest occurs, or depends on particular characteristics of the protest events themselves. We argue that the interaction of both matters. Authoritarian regimes vary in how they legitimize their rule, and they should be particularly thin-skinned if protesters challenge the basis of their legitimacy. Using event-level data on mass mobilization in autocracies between 2003 and 2015, we use text classification methods to extract protest issues from newspaper reports. Our analysis shows that dictators are more likely to repress protest against incumbents when they claim legitimacy based on the person of the leader. Overall, our study shows that protest issues are not universal in triggering repression; rather, they need to be considered together with the political context in which they are raised.
Several suggestions on distinguishing between “modes” of valuation practices are found in the literature. In this contribution, valuation practices are moves in a kind of social play that generates its own kind of value. Valuation in the Arts is chosen as an empirical example. Following the model, the Arts are interpreted as a set of games with the same kind of value code, in which artists and producers create performances for engaged and curious spectators. The four kinds of players engage in valuations of objects and other players in their respective games. The broad range of observations in art games demonstrates that valuation is practiced in three modes: attribution, assessment and payment. While practices of attribution and assessment generate and stabilize art-specific value accumulation, paying practices link the attributed and assessed values to the monetary valuation in games of commercial play. The distinctions of valuation practices employed by three recent authors are set into relation to the suggested modes.
The quest for self-determination on the basis of shared identities motivates many subnational conflicts worldwide, but our understanding of the linkages between identity, contested land, and strategies is incomplete. What role do symbolic territorial attachments play for strategy choice in self-determination demands? I argue that groups tend to escalate their demands if they can exploit mobilization advantages of symbolic territory, creating identity-based territorial focal points for mobilization. I present new data on strategy choice in self-determination demands worldwide between 2005 and 2015. Using multinomial logit estimations, I find that symbolic territory contributes to limited degrees of escalation, and discourages armed conflict.
