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In the highly competitive field of material manufacturing, stakeholders strive for the increased quality of the end products, reduced cost of operation, and the timely completion of their business processes. Digital twin (DT) technologies are considered major enablers that can be deployed to assist the development and effective provision of manufacturing processes. Additionally, knowledge graphs (KG) have emerged as efficient tools in the industrial domain and are able to efficiently represent data from various disciplines in a structured manner while also supporting advanced analytics. This paper proposes a solution that integrates a KG and DTs. Through this synergy, we aimed to develop highly autonomous and flexible DTs that utilize the semantic knowledge stored in the KG to better support advanced functionalities. The developed KG stores information about materials and their properties and details about the processes in which they are involved, following a flexible schema that is not domain specific. The DT comprises smaller Virtual Objects (VOs), each one acting as an abstraction of a single step of the Industrial Business Process (IBP), providing the necessary functionalities that simulate the corresponding real-world process. By executing appropriate queries to the KG, the DT can orchestrate the operation of the VOs and their physical counterparts and configure their parameters accordingly, in this way increasing its self-awareness. In this article, the architecture of such a solution is presented and its application in a real laser glass bending process is showcased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A dynamic AIDS model was employed to estimate the expenditure, own-price, and cross elasticity of five major import source countries for shrimp, salmon, albacore and tuna, crab, and cuttlefish in Japan. Our findings show that COVID-19 has had no significant impact on Japan's fishery imports in the short term. The expenditure elasticities of fishery imports in Japan are greater than 1 or close to 1, implying that consumers in Japan have a relatively high dependence on fishery imports. Specifically, the expenditure elasticities of shrimp and cuttlefish imports from Vietnam, albacore and tuna imports from Australia, and crab imports from Russia are close to 1, while their own-price elasticities are the least sensitive compared with other import source countries, suggesting a greater export potential in the Japanese market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study performs survival analysis to evaluate duration of revived and new machinery import and the hazard ratios (HRs) of covariates related to the global financial crisis (GFC) and COVID-19 pandemic in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The results indicate that large tariff margins decreased the possibility of disruption (HR: 0.8024) to Japanese import from ASEAN countries after revived during the COVID-19 pandemic and increased the possibility of disruption (HR: 1.0338) to Chinese import from ASEAN countries of new import during the GFC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study empirically examines the determinants of the utilisation of regional trade agreements (RTAs). We employ RTA utilisation data with rich country variations in 6 importing and 16 exporting countries in Asia. Then, we compute an 'RTA utilisation rate', which is defined as the share of imports under RTA regimes out of total imports of RTA‐eligible products. Finally, the RTA utilisation rate is regressed at a country‐pair–product level on various elements. Our major findings are as follows. Similar to existing studies, this study determines higher RTA utilisation rate when the preference margin is larger, the exporter's international competitiveness is higher, or the importer's demand is greater. Furthermore, we reveal that the RTA utilisation rate is higher when exporting products are finished products. However, it is lower when the presence of foreign‐owned firms in the importing country is greater. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this quasi-field experiment was to test whether an office ergonomics training program reduces employees' psychological stress and improves their environmental control, environmental satisfaction, and communication levels. A conceptual model was developed and used to test these relationships. Preintervention and postintervention survey data were collected from 89 knowledge workers. The office ergonomics training program significantly improved workers' self-reported perceptions of environmental control, satisfaction with the work environment, and the degree to which the environment supported communication with coworkers. However, psychological stress was unchanged. Environmental control was found to mediate the relationship between preenvironmental and postenvironmental satisfaction. Overall, the results confirm the importance of incorporating ergonomics training into office workplaces to enhance the effective use of work environments and of knowledge workers sense of control and environmental satisfaction. Keywords: environmental control; environmental satisfaction; communication; psychological stress; office ergonomics training

The purpose of thisstudy is to investigate the average treatment effect of the preferential tariff scheme at the HS 6‐digit level on the imports of fishery products between each OECD country and the world. The estimated results by employing a difference‐in‐differences with matching method show statistically positive average treatment effects for imports of frozen yellowfin tuna (HS030342) and fresh long‐finned tuna (HS030231) in many countries. However, there are also several negative average treatment effects on imports, implying that several OECD countries do not utilize preferential tariff schemes with exporter countries with sufficient productivity. This study fills the gap in the literature by providing more rigorous insights in the discussion regarding the trade creation/diversion effect of preferential trade agreements (PTAs). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study quantitatively evaluates the impact of the Tourism Nation Promotion Project on tourism demand. Data were obtained from Japan Tourism Agency's quarterly survey from 2010Q2 to 2015Q4. Cox and zero-truncated negative binomial models and difference-in-differences approach were applied to analyze tourism demand and the project's impact on inbound tourists' length of stay and expenditure in Japan. Empirical results showed a positive and significant average treatment effect on length of stay and expenditure for tourists from Australia, China, Russia, and Thailand. These findings indicate that the Japanese government should use differentiated strategies considering different nationalities' characteristics to attract foreign tourists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the location choice of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in China, shedding special light on the role of agglomeration of same-nationality firms. We examine how this role differs according to firms' productivity. Furthermore, we compare the location choice of Japanese and Taiwanese MNEs in China, taking into consideration that Taiwanese MNEs experience less uncertainty in investing in China due to Taiwan's linguistic and cultural advantages. When considering firms' productivity, we find that less productive Japanese firms prefer to locate close to larger same-nationality agglomerations while there are no differences in location choices in the case of Taiwanese firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the impact of the elimination of import tariffs and nontariff policy barriers (NTPBs) on agricultural trade in a notional East Asian Free Trade Agreement using a Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP)-based computable general equilibrium model. The investigation is divided into two parts. We first measure the NTPBs by employing a widely used method derived from the literature on border effects. Then, by adding into the GTAP database our estimates on the NTPBs, which the original GTAP database by its nature does incorporate, we compute the impact of the entire elimination of policy barriers (the complete reduction of import tariffs and NTPBs) on GDP. The result shows that there are remarkable differences between the effect of abolition of import tariffs and that of entire elimination of all import barriers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]