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The comments to Stephens' crucial overview of Kemeny's regime theory, discuss two issues. Firstly, the embeddedness of housing in the political and economic system and its narrowed interpretation. Secondly, the analysis of the socialist and the housing systems of the new EU member states based on Kemeny's approach, which I consider to have low explanatory power and inadequate interpretation of the facts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is an attempt at applying Samir Amin's lens in the analysis of socio-economic development in Africa. Social and economic development in Africa has been substandard, largely because of the economic system followed and because effective structural transformation has not taken place – Samir Amin's works explained what needed to be done to transform Africa (and the broader global south). It is in this context that the paper posits that post-colonial Africa has had to contend with disruptive socio-economic and political realities instituted by European colonialism, slave trade and inappropriate integration of Africa to the so-called global economy. The fundamental explanation for the poor socio-economic development in Africa is global capitalism, and one of the possible solutions is in Samir Amin's delinking proposal as well as the restructuring of the African economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops an optimal replacement policy V* for a multi-state manufacturing system. The manufacturing system would be repaired imperfectly once its performance cannot meet the production demand, and would be replaced when the production demand is not met for the V*-th time. Due to imprecise state assignments and unpredictable external working conditions, the performance and transition intensity of the multi-state machine cannot be accurately identified and then inevitably lead to epistemic uncertainty. In addition, the economic dependence and resource dependence that prevailed in the manufacturing system should be considered. In this paper, economic dependence is described as the time and cost saved by simultaneously repairing multiple identical machines, and resource dependence is caused by finite capacity buffers. To take these into account, the fuzzy Markov model and fuzzy stochastic flow manufacturing network (FSFMN) are tailored to evaluate the fuzzy reliability of machines and manufacturing systems, respectively. To obtain the optimal replacement policy V*, we derive the expression of the long run fuzzy profit rate under epistemic uncertainty. The replacement policy is demonstrated on the ferrite phase shifting unit manufacturing system, and the results of the subsequent comparative study and sensitivity analysis show that this policy is more effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on Italian social media influencers whose celebrification is inextricably linked to their performances as mothers. Mom influencers are situated within an economy of visibility that functions to centralise the maternal body in processing marketing models and adopting specific trends and norms of the so-called platformisation of cultural production. I situate these content creators in the context of the ideology of intensive motherhood and the new momism, both of which are discursive ideologies framed in a neoliberal economic system. Through a multimodal analysis of three case studies' Instagram posts, this paper aims to provide a new framework for understanding the self-branding of Italian mom influencers, interrogating how they operate in what I label as a digital maternal ambivalence. This framework acknowledges that – in order to stay relevant for the platform algorithms – mom influencers operate a constant negotiation between the pressure of adhering to idealised representations of motherhood and the need for re-presenting an authentic self, including affects, actions, and emotions that may contrast with popular understandings of what constitutes a good mother image. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a generalisation of the regional extraction method used by Dietzenbacher at el. [(1993). The regional extraction method: EC input–output comparisons. Economic System Research, 5(2), 185–206. ]. The production system represented by an input–output table is broken down into three flow matrices: intermediate input, final demand, and value added. The approach of Dietzenbacher et al. (1993) focuses on the input matrix to obtain both the backward and forward dependencies. The present paper, offers an alternative approach includes the final demand matrix to calculate the backward dependencies, while the value-added matrix is included for the forward dependencies. These two approaches are then compared by applying them to the empirical data based on the EUREGIO database. The results indicate that the Dietzenbacher et al. approach underestimates the dependencies, and the difference between these two approaches could lead to a different ranking of the dependence of the regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distributed economic dispatch system has gained a lot of attention because it has better robustness, faster computation and less communication burden, but the system stability in the presence of communication delay is still researched at the fundamental level. By introducing the concept of virtual distributed generation, this paper develops a fully version of the distributed economic dispatching strategy for an active distribution network, and establishes the stability analysis model of the distribution network considering symmetric and asymmetric communication time-delay. The Lyapunov stability theorem and the free weight matrix method are comprehensively applied to derive the time-delay stability criterion of the system and solve the delay stability margin with a lower conservativeness. The distributed economic dispatch strategy in this paper under various operating conditions, the delay stability analysis method and delay stability margin solution are verified by the simulation results on an active distribution network modified based on the IEEE-14 system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investment in capital, new technology, and agricultural techniques has not been considered an endeavor worthwhile in a medieval economy because of a lack of strong property rights and no incentive on the part of lords and barons to lend money to or grant rights to peasant farmers. Therefore, the medieval economy and standards of living at that time often have been characterized as non-dynamic and static due to insufficient investment in innovative techniques and technology. Paul Baran's concept of the economic surplus is applied to investment patterns during the late medieval, mercantile, and early capitalist stages of economic growth in England and the UK. This paper uses Zhun Xu's Baran Ratio concept to try to develop general trends to demonstrate and reinforce other historical accounts of these times that a productive and sufficient level of public and private investment out of accumulated capital income, taxation, and rents does not have a real impact on economic per capita growth until around the 1600 s in Britain. This would also be about the time of capitalism's ascent as the dominant economic system in England. Even then, dramatic increases in investment and economic growth do not appear until the late 18th Century when investment more consistently becomes more than one hundred percent of the level of the domestic economic surplus and takes in government spending. The types of investment, threshold amounts of investment out of profits and rents along with government spending seem to matter when it comes to a growth path raising GDP per capita and national income per capita to higher levels. Although much of this knowledge perhaps is embodied in current historical accounts, the Baran Ratio nicely summarizes and illustrates the importance of levels of investment to economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a system approach to regional economic resilience. This approach argues that regional economies undergo, to varying degrees, changes to their economic system that result from the collective but uncoordinated action of economic actors in an attempt to be resilient to shocks. The system change, particularly focusing on changes to economies' structure and function, which occurs during and following a shock, determines the type of resilience (i.e., engineering, ecological, evolutionary and transformative) employed by regions. The type of resilience employed can influence regions' long-term growth trajectory and resilience to future shocks. This approach advances the examination of regions' resilience capacity, which has largely been ignored in empirical studies of resilience. In doing so, the approach developed in this paper is heuristic rather than deterministic, with the latter characterizing the bulk of the literature. A greater investigation into system change can provide a holistic understanding of resilience. This approach has many advantages, such as developing greater insight into resilience, applying a heuristic method rather than deterministic and examining regions' adaptive capacity. To advance the system approach, this paper provides greater conceptual clarity of resilience, highlighting the notions conceptual parameters and rethinking the oppositional context in which the four main types of resilience are commonly discussed. Specifically, it conceptualizes the main types of resilience as complementary rather than oppositional. The overall contribution of this paper is twofold. First, it establishes a greater conceptual framework of resilience. Second, it develops an approach in which regions' adaptive capacity can be investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Doctoral education in Europe has changed significantly in the last two to three decades. This transformation, visible in the structuring dimensions of doctoral education, appears to indicate a move to a more instrumental approach. This paper aims to determine the prevalence of an instrumental concept of doctoral education in Portuguese universities. It draws on the findings of a 2020 study that focused on how these institutions are adhering to this concept. The study relied on the analysis of the information disclosed by the institutional websites of 118 doctoral programmes, selected to be representative of all the doctoral offer in the country. Findings suggest the existence of a hybrid concept of doctoral education among Portuguese universities, which is revealed by its association sometimes with a traditional concept, other times with an instrumental concept, or with a combination of both. Especially in these two last cases, the influence of academic capitalism and isomorphic pressures is evident. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's employment policy has been continuously improved,and the employment situation has undergone tremendouschanges. Based on the economic system and typical employmentpolicy since the founding of China in 1949, this paper dividesthe employment system into five stages: the period ofplanned economic system featuring 'unified contracting anddistribution' (1949-1977), the period of dual-track system featuring'three-in-one combination' (1978-1991), the period of promoting the're-employment project' (1992-2001), the period of implementingactive employment policy (2002-2011), and the period of promotinghigher quality and fuller employment (2012-present). In these fivestages, while China has made great achievements in employmentwork, the pressure still exists and the quality of employmentremains the focus of attention. Can the development of employmentpolicy improve China's labor market? To study the effectivenessof employment policy in each stage, this paper uses two keyindicators of the unemployment rate and structural deviationdegree, then it reflects the economic effect in each stage andconcludes that the coordination degree between employment andindustrial structure is improving, but it still has a long way to go.Finally, the paper puts forward solutions to the remaining problemsand points out the direction for future employment work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The System of Environmental and Economic Accounting aims at the integration of national accounts with the contributions of the environment. After three decades of development, though, only a portion of it has become an international standard for national accounting. Its uncertain, experimental status reflects the complexities faced by a project that requires a clear and implementable concept of valuation to be applied to non-market goods. In this paper, we review the debate between competing theories of value that had a role in the early development of the System and we follow the discussion that first accompanied the drafting of its current version and is now informing a revision process that will lead to a new edition of the Experimental Ecosystem Accounting module by 2021. The next developments and every step made toward integration will affect not just the content of the national accounts but also how it can be collected and used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

GDP is one of the most robust indicators of civil war onset. As debate continues over the mechanisms underlying the relationship between economic development and civil war, this paper scrutinizes the indicator of GDP directly, disaggregating it into its constituent components to examine whether their distinct associations with conflict onset can shed some light into the black box. Analysis of the individual correlations allows for identification of the driving force behind the aggregate statistical relationship. With this information to hand, consistency checks can be made with existing theories and a new theory presented in this paper, which draws attention to a critical structural factor that drives the supply of civil war labor, namely the lack of consumption opportunities. This factor increases the likelihood of civil war in less economically developed countries as individuals with low consumption opportunities have little to lose from reordering the economic and political system. Analysis of the correlations between components of GDP and the onset of civil war shows that this new theory is most consistent with the key drivers of the aggregate relationship. The examination also highlights a new indicator, which is arguably preferable to GDP as a measure of this relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The key organizing theme for this special issue is "Sustaining Rural Systems: Rural Vitality in an Era of Globalization and Economic Nationalism." The multiplicity of roles that rural communities play in economic and social systems are often overlooked in conversations about globalization and economic nationalism. Yet rural communities, economies and landscapes are closely tied to global industries, migrant flows and markets, while simultaneously subject to nationalist economic policies and strategies. These articles are drawn from the 2019 International Geographical Union Commission on the Sustainability of Rural Systems Colloquium and examine the interplay between rural places and the competing narratives of globalization and nationalism. The studies come from Croatia, Belgium, Australia, the USA, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Mexico, Italy and Spain. In each article, the authors seek to elucidate the nuanced ties between people and industries that are at once intensely local and simultaneously tied to regional and global processes. The articles challenge us to critically examine oversimplified messaging of highly complex systems and provide insights into processes of change at local scales across major global regions, highlighting the contemporary status of rural change through the lens of sustainability and set within current competing narratives of globalization and economic nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new energy demonstration city policy (NEDC), an essential economic system aiming to implement innovative development strategies and energy structure transformations in China, is crucial for solving the current plight of resource-based cities. This paper studies the effect of the implementation of the NEDC on the green total factor productivity (GTFP) of resource-based cities in China; understanding this relation is of great significance for the further promotion of the NEDC. For this purpose, the SBM-undesirable model is employed to measure GTFP. The propensity score matching and difference-in-difference (PSM-DID) model and the mediation effect model are also utilized to empirically examine the impact of the NEDC on GTFP across a dataset of 106 resource-based cities between 2005 and 2016. The empirical results indicate that the NEDC can significantly improve the GTFP of resource-based cities. After both counterfactual and common trend tests are performed, the research conclusion of this paper is still robust. Moreover, the NEDC promotes the GTFP of resource-based cities through structural effects, technological innovation effects, and fiscal support effects. Furthermore, the effect of the NEDC on GTFP is also affected by the regions, sizes, and types of the different resource-based cities. This research provides evidence for the ability of the NEDC to improve GTFP and optimize the spatial layout of new energy demonstration cities in resource-based cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is becoming increasingly common in recent years that Chinese government officials visit companies on site and the news about this spread widely on the Internet. Official visits can bring various benefits to companies in China, where the government still plays an important role in allocating economic resources, including bank credit. Based on the data of officials' visits to Chinese listed firms during 2006–2019, this paper finds that firms' access to short-term bank loans increases significantly after officials' visits, which, in turn, significantly enhance the degree of maturity mismatch. Furthermore, the paper finds that the stock market reacts negatively to the maturity mismatch. However, firms' stock return is discounted less for maturity mismatch both in short and long term when firms are visited by officials. The findings in this paper are helpful in profoundly understanding China's economic system and Chinese government–enterprise relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Productivity, equity and sustainability are regarded as 'essential components' in the human development paradigm. They reflect structural aspects of an economic system and create the material conditions for widespread human development and wellbeing. Nevertheless, the consistency among these principles is significantly questioned in the economic literature, depicting a potential 'trilemma' for contemporary human development. This paper analyses the ability of different economies to consistently advance productivity, equity, and sustainability. A new composite indicator – the Human Development Structural Consistency (HDSC) index – is introduced to measure the integrated performance in productivity, equity and sustainability of 66 economies from 2006 to 2019. The analysis shows a general progressive improvement in the ability of economies to advance the three structural components of human development consistently, although the three measures continue to appear incompatible with each other, whereby the process of economic growth is still associated with rising environmental degradation and a weak contrast to inequalities. This paper discusses the possible policy solutions to this 'trilemma', such as the structural changes necessary to ensure that improvements in productivity are accompanied by rising equity, sustainability, and effective human wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper celebrates the contributions to Keynesian theory of the late Brazilian economist Fernando Cardim de Carvalho (1953–2018). We use Carvalho's 12 refereed English-language papers on Keynesian theory — the first published in 1983, the last in 2016 — as a point of departure for reflecting on two questions confronting macroeconomists today. First, what is the work of the economist — in what does economic analysis consist? Second, in this post-crisis era, how might macroeconomics — and specifically Keynesian macroeconomics — be rebuilt? Carvalho's writings show that the work of the economist can be as much about understanding the raw elements of human behavior in the real world — what we will call the foundational level of analysis — as about constructing models depicting the momentum of economic systems incorporating these behaviors. Adopting this approach to the practice of theory leads to insights and frameworks that would be lost if macroeconomic theorizing were equated with formal model building: it will enrich exchanges among economists, deepen the conceptual roots of Post Keynesian macroeconomics, and facilitate interdisciplinary exchange. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Security represents one of the most important challenges for the global supply chains that characterise our globalised economic systems. The occurrence of (lack of) security related events has raised the attention of practitioners, governments and scholars. The aim of this paper is twofold. It first wants to propose a review of the models that concern transport security and to highlight that some of them refer to the prevention (regime models, proactive models and participation models) while others attain the efficient and effective reaction and the minimisation of the consequences of security related episodes (barrier models, preparedness models and reactive models). The presentation of the models is complemented by a comparative analysis that will draw some general remarks on the main common topics that emerge in the previous description and highlights the ever-increasing role of coordination and communication among stakeholders for the enhancement of transport security. The second objective of the paper lies in the subsumption of transport security in general Supply Chains. In order to reach this goal, the points of vulnerability and risk factors of the supply chain are considered. This analysis is then extended to a discussion of the main supply chain security practices and activities and of the relevant role played by the transport security models. The review allows to draw several conclusions. A sound security strategy is based on preparation and planning, alongside effective partnerships, structural and managerial adaptation and dedicated communications and technologies both in a static and in a dynamic perspective. Moreover, security strategies need to consider the trade-offs with privacy and with efficiency issues. Security efforts should be concentrated on the preeminent infrastructures, nodal points and arcs according to their degree of weakness and to their centrality in the supply chain. It is also important to plan a set of incentives for the firms that contribute to the security investments and of penalties for those who adopt a free-riding behaviour. Lastly, it is relevant to assess which share of security activities can be accomplished internally and the ones that have to be outsourced to security specialised firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nicholas Kaldor made much of the Verdoorn's Law and the objective of this paper is to examine the validity of this alleged law and whether it justifies special treatment to manufacturing. This paper reviews the Smith-Young approach to increasing returns and shows that Kaldor was not much guided by this framework when it came to policy making. He was more guided by empirical observations with respect to the applicability of Verdoorn's Law. The paper also critically reviews Verdoorn's Law particularly in so far as Verdoorn himself was not fully convinced of its general applicability. The correspondence between Kaldor and Lauchlin Currie (and Roger Sandilands) is also highlighted in this regard and brings out their differing views on both agriculture and industry. The paper's main conclusion is that even if Verdoorn's Law is valid it does not call for a special treatment to manufacturing. The logic of favoring manufacturing at the cost of other sectors distorts intersectoral relationships, leads to adverse terms of trade for agriculture, and is likely to pose a demand constraint for industry itself. To undo one distortion (i.e., protection to industry), one has to match it with other distortions like price support and marketing board in agriculture, and dual exchange rates to promote exports. The whole economic system becomes an intricate maze with adverse consequences for growth and productivity for the whole economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The legacy and vision of the RPAA is very familiar to us: a diverse group of talented urban reformers wanted to restructure social and economic systems to create decentralized, interconnected clusters of contained settlements in the form of garden cities protected by open space, with healthy, nearby industry providing ample employment opportunities. Regions would be linked by geography, culture, and climatic unity. The problem of great cities would be approached 'not from within but from without'. In this paper, I consider three urban issues currently dominating our urban discourse a century after the RPAA was formed – the pandemic and its impact on urban life, gentrification and displacement, and climate change – and conjecture about what the RPAA might have thought or done if confronted with such challenges. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the RPAA, what can we surmise about a likely response from this influential group of urban and regional reformers? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using control charts to monitor healthcare systems has gained particular attention. In this paper, a risk-adjusted cumulative sum control chart is designed to monitor surgery outputs. Before undergoing surgery, the patients have some unique risk factors which influence the surgery outputs. Thus, risk-adjustment is carried out with the purpose of taking these risks into account using an accelerated failure time model. But the technical implementation of the chart requires determining the design parameters which should be selected in an optimal way putting the desired statistical and economic considerations into service. To this end, a multi-objective model, considering multiple assignable causes with different occurrence rates and effects, has been proposed and the model is solved with the help of a 5-stage algorithm based on the data envelopment analysis method. Then, to show the performance of the proposed procedure, a real case study has been conducted in the cardiac surgery center. Finally, sensitivity analysis on some cost parameters has been conducted. Furthermore, comparisons of the proposed multi-objective model with the pure economic and pure statistical design models have been made. The results reveal that the multi-objective design of the risk-adjusted cumulative sum chart shows acceptable performance in the presence of multiple assignable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geographically weighted regression (GWR) is a classical modeling method for dealing with spatial non-stationarity. It incorporates the distance decay effect in space to fit local regression models, where distance is defined as Euclidean distance. Although this definition has been expanded, it remains focused on physical distance. However, in the era of globalization and informatization, where the phenomenon of remotely close association is common, physical distance may not reflect real spatial proximity, and GWR based on physical distance has clear limitations. This paper proposes a geographically weighted regression based on a network weight matrix (NWM GWR) model. This does not rely on geographical location modeling; instead, it uses network distance to measure the proximity between two regions and weights observations by improving the kernel function to achieve distance attenuation. We adopt the population mobility network to establish a network weight matrix, modeling China's urbanization and its multidimensional driving factors using network autocorrelation and NWM GWR methods. Results show that the NWM GWR model has more accurate fit and better stability than ordinary least squares and GWR models, and better reveals relationships between variables, which makes it suitable for modeling economic and social systems more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beyond job creation, informal economic activities have received little recognition for their contribution to economic systems. However, in recent years, new research trends have suggested that enterprises in the informal sector have productivity potential that can be encouraged through technological innovation. Nevertheless, the majority of these studies come from Asian and African countries, relegating Latin America's contributions to a marginal proportion. Through a qualitative analysis, this paper makes a pioneering contribution to the topic from a Mexican perspective, corroborating the presence of different types of innovations in the informal plastic industry and sizing its reach and social diffusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper conducts a time series econometric analysis in order to examine empirically the relationship between the financial system and economic growth in Portugal from 1977 to 2016. The Portuguese financial system has experienced a strong wave of privatisations, liberalisations and deregulations since the adhesion of Portugal to the European Economic Community in 1986, which has not favoured a sustained path of strong economic growth since then. The paper estimates a linear growth model and a non-linear growth model, which includes four proxies for the financial system (money supply, credit, financial value added and stock market capitalisation) and four further control variables (inflation, government consumption, trade openness and education). The paper finds a negative linear relationship between the banking system and Portuguese economic growth, a positive linear relationship between the stock markets and Portuguese economic growth, a concave quadratic relationship between the banking system and Portuguese economic growth, and a convex quadratic relationship between the stock markets and Portuguese economic growth. This suggests that Portuguese policy makers should canalise efforts to decrease the importance of banking system and to increase the importance of stock markets in order to support more robust economic growth in the coming years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through globalization, countries around the world have been integrated into an interconnected economic system underpinned by international trade. Against this backdrop, this paper visualizes the evolving patterns of world trade geographies from 2000 to 2019. The maps show that the global trade centres have transformed from the two traditional major trading circles of North America and the European Union to the present three major trading circles of North America, the European Union and the Asia-Pacific region, along with the rapid rise of East Asian economies centred on China, Japan and South Korea. At the same time, some emerging economies have significantly increased their status in the world trade system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Network-based transactions are attractive as a system for economic exchange because they give network members greater protection against opportunism and exchange hazards compared to more anonymous market transactions. At the same time, networks restrict the possibilities to exploit economies of scale and other efficiency enhancing properties of markets. When the problem-solving capacity of networks do not make up for the losses generated by not trading with outsiders, trust is important to promote transactions among strangers in the anonymously market. This paper offers an economic analysis of this idea. With the help of a social evolutionary model, it is also demonstrated that mutual trust relations can survive in the anonymous market, even when there is a clear danger of opportunism, and the conventional mechanisms like repetitions and contracts are ruled out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been unrest in the research community investigating the inoperability of an economic system under disaster situations. The inoperability input–output model (IIM), which is very popular in the risk management field, has become a center of argument, particularly from the input–output researchers, that IIM is a straightforward application of the standard Leontief input–output model. This paper revisits the concept of inoperability, rather than IIM, and proposes its new role in disaster impact analysis using a conventional tool, i.e. the RAS method, for illustrating how the inoperability of an economic system in the aftermath of disaster can be evaluated. The proposed framework is employed to examine the inoperability of industries resulting from the 1995 Kobe earthquake. The findings of the analysis reveal the usefulness of inoperability concept that can even incorporate resilience (gained operability) using the proposed framework of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is there only one type of successful entrepreneurial ecosystem? This paper applies qualitative comparative analysis to identify and analyse configurations of regional entrepreneurial ecosystems in Europe. We test two rivalling causal logics: a completeness logic stating that all entrepreneurial ecosystem elements need to be present and the weakest link is the most important constraint, and a substitutability logic arguing that elements are substitutable. High entrepreneurship outputs can be realised with different entrepreneurial ecosystem configurations. However, focusing on regions with the highest entrepreneurship outputs, our results point at the importance of a complete entrepreneurial ecosystem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the global financial crisis burst in 2008, central bankers have been at centre stage in addressing its negative consequences across the economic systems of many countries. This has been further noticed in the aftermath of the pandemic crisis that erupted at the beginning of 2020 at global level, when a number of governments did intervene also in a rather 'unconventional' way to support economic activity through public spending. In both circumstances, central bankers have been in a position to satisfy private interests of the relevant stakeholders even though this has been affecting both income and wealth distribution against the common good. This paper investigates the political benefits that these 'unconventional' policy interventions have elicited in advanced economies to point out the political and distributional consequences of them, suggesting an alternative monetary policy stance that considers climate-related issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes visible austerity-based infant food exchange as a contemporary food acquisition practice outside of commercial and regulated foodscapes. It presents results from a netnography conducted within two popular online platforms in Canada between April 2017 and February 2018: the Kijiji classified advertising site, and Facebook. Qualitative analysis of over 2000 user generated secondhand exchange ads show practices from selling, trading, sharing, and seeking whereby infant foods works as a form of currency to acquire either economic capital when sold, an alternative food capital when traded, or are gifts in the moral economy of exchange. While infant food exchange is often collaborative in nature, it is austerity-driven involving different forms of capital parents have or seek to accomplish the responsibility of feeding. As excluded consumers, posters are motivated by a complex mixture of desperation, innovation, ecological concerns, and morality to care for others when mainstream food access is out of reach within the current political and economic system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several authors have recently argued that the excessive focus on equilibrium models in mainstream economic analysis prevents economists from providing accurate representations of the complex and dynamic nature of real economic systems. In response, this paper argues the following. Many economic systems are the products of deliberate and centralized human design. People can and do build and support structures, such as social institutions, aiming to enhance the predictability of economic systems, and thus to move them toward being equilibrium systems. This provides a reason to think that many economic systems can be represented by equilibrium models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, state leaders including Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping and Xi Jinping have all made important statements on the fundamental economic system of socialism. Reviewing and analyzing the history of the formulations in important Chinese documents on the fundamental economic system, this paper highlights China's exploration of theoretical innovation as promoted by innovation in practice. The paper contends that in dealing with the relationships between planning and market and between government and market, and while defending the fundamental role played by the market in resource allocation, we should consistently stress the superiority of socialism and point to the active roles of the party and government, while emphasizing the attribute of "socialist." In discussing how to combine the socialist economic system with the market economy, the paper stresses the superiority of socialism as a fundamental system, and contends that public ownership must be retained as the mainstay of the economy, so that the general character of the market economy can be transformed and endowed with a socialist character. The paper also discusses how the market economy should be combined with the fundamental economic system of socialism from the perspective of political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent input–output (IO) literature offers original proposals on using linear programming (LP) to make 'tolerable limits' approach suitable for measuring the importance of IO coefficients to an economy. In this paper, I focus on one of such influential proposals presented in Tarancón et al. [(2008). A revision of the tolerable limits approach: searching for the important coefficients. Economic Systems Research, 20, 75–95]. In the theoretical part of this paper, I provide exact analytical solutions to the LP problems formulated in Tarancón et al. The main result proves that the classification of IO coefficients with respect to their importance in the sense of the LP-based indicators of Tarancón et al. does not depend on the benchmark welfare measure of interest. This fact, in turn, severely reduces practical applicability of the discussed LP-based approach to tracing important IO coefficients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Generated electricity from renewable sources such as solar panels and wind turbines is considered, until now, as clean and nonpolluting energy. However, these systems are responsible and directly tied to greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions when considering their different steps of manufacturing, transportation, operation, maintenance, and decommissioning. This paper describes a new sizing optimization methodology of a stand-alone hybrid Photovoltaic/Wind/Battery system, minimizing the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), the Loss of Power Supply Probability (LPSP), and the Equivalent Carbon Dioxide (CO2-eq) life cycle emission. An elitist Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm (NSGA-II) is used to solve this constrained nonlinear multi-objective optimization problem taking the expected photovoltaic peak power, wind turbine output power, batteries' energy capacity as decision variables and embodied carbon dioxide per unit of electricity consumed as a constraint. Different combinations of PV/Wind/Battery systems are optimized and compared to identify the cost-effective, reliable, and environmentally friendly optimal architecture. Finally, a sensitivity analysis is applied to the proposed algorithm; only the batteries' state of charge (SOC) setpoint is considered to examine its impact on the system sizing procedure. The proposed algorithm is used for optimal planning of a stand-alone hybrid renewable power system expected to be installed in Borj Cedria Science and Technology Park (latitude = 36.71ºN, longitude = 10.42ºE). Simulation results proved the effectiveness of the proposed method to achieve economic, energetic, and environmental objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The deployment of renewable power systems is influenced by the geographical, economic, social, and environmental aspects of the location. These factors play a leading role in the project's sustainability and compel developers to carefully analyze them before the decision to install. In Cameroon, there are reported cases of off-grid systems that were deployed arbitrarily such that they could not generate power within the systems' economic life. This necessitates the development of a viable framework of criteria on the sites earmarked for the implementation of these systems. Six potential off-grid sites for the implementation of hybrid solar PV – hydro were examined with the aim of determining the suitable location of the hybrid solar – hydro system in Cameroon. The sites were selected from the North West and South West Regions of Cameroon and were assessed in this paper. In this framework, the computation of the weighted values of the criteria was done through brainstorming with energy experts in Cameroon. The hybrid AHP-TOPSIS method was used in the site selection analysis. The results of this study showed that accessibility of site, resource availability (solar and mini-hydro resources), acute power need, good topography, and distance from the nearest grid-connected locality were the most effective factors influencing the placement of a hybrid solar PV – hydropower system in an off grid location. Munkep was the most suitable site for the installation of the hybrid solar – hydropower system with a performance score of 0.63, hence, it was ranked the first in the analysis. In descending order, Munkep, Zhoa, Esaghem, Kingomen, and Wone were ranked with values of index of proximity to the ideal solution (Rp) of 0.638, 0.491, 0.487, 0.45, and 0.39 respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The urban is a site of diversity, multiplicity and conviviality under threat from commercialization, not least through tourism. The dominant socio-spatial logic of capitalism has urbanized its extractive practices capturing value from the urban and social fabric and its affective and communicative values. This monetizing of everyday life through all manners of platform capitalism embedded in ubiquitous connectivity will erode urban cultural diversity. As a counter measure the paper discusses the theoretical contours of urban conviviality and will conceptually explore how to re-story the urban fostering such conviviality, engaging with the most recent tourism policy of the city of Amsterdam. Conviviality mediated through a vibrant urban fabric can make for spaces of alterity and reinstate use-value as central to our economic systems. Countering thereby capitalist monoculture of urbanity, urban design animated by care and responsiveness can foster multiplicity and conviviality. Applied to the tourism encounter and a reoriented understanding of hospitality allows for tourism animated by autonomy and creativity, personal interdependence and redistributive justice, contributing to the momentum needed to overturn the deadening urban frontier of capital accumulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the opening policy in 1978, China's tourism increasingly took relevance, up to become an important industry in the last two decades. Despite this, no analysis has been conducted at macroeconomic level to check both tourism industry interdependencies and wealth creation. To fill this gap, in this paper we elaborated an innovative conceptual model for the theory-based analysis of the tourism phenomenon in China, having the Keynesian macroeconomic theory as the background and using an SAM as the model accounting representation, and conducted an original, comprehensive methodological analysis of China's tourism industry. As the database, we used a purposively elaborated 2015 SAM for China with 19 industries, on whose basis we identified endogenous and exogenous accounts, set up an innovative impact multiplier model adjusted to them and conducted an economic analysis of tourism interdependencies never performed so far. Evidence shows that manufacturing, agriculture and trade industries provide a relevant support to tourism services production, and that tourism greatly contributes to value added/GDP and household income creation. Overall, tourism industry has direct policy management implications, representing a sector on which enterprises and government can profitably base their decisions, with exogenous tourism demand shocks positively activating China's economic system and growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies stability and stabilisation issues of switched linear time-invariant systems with stable/unstable multiple equilibria. Investigation of such switched systems is motivated by a switching economic system. The well-known common Lyapunov function method is shown to be ineffecctive in analysing region stability of switched systems with multiple equilibria via a counterexample. When every subsystem has an equilibrium point and all multiple equilibria pairwise differ, this paper proposes some sufficient conditons for region stability/instability of such switched systems with respect to a region containing all multiple equilibria under arbitrary quasi-periodical switchings. These novel results imply that there may exist stable limit cycles of such switched systems. Based on the stability results, a global asymptotic region-stabilising controller, quasi-periodical switching path, and corresponding algorithm are all designed for such switched control systems. Several illustrative examples demonstrate the effectiveness and practicality of our new results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political economy of Brexit generates new challenges for the UK's national business model and for European capitalism more broadly. Two symposia examine the implications of the UK's withdrawal from the EU in key economic policy areas. These symposia contribute to two main bodies of academic literature: the political economy literature on varieties of capitalism, with a specific focus on the UK, and the political economy literature on key economic policy areas of the EU. This short introduction to the first symposium first outlines the key features of the British variety of capitalism and highlight the main questions raised by Brexit in that respect. It then summarises the main findings of the papers of the first symposium and tease out some common themes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Input-Output model assumes that the technical coefficient matrix changes as an economic system develops, following either of two tendencies; one, the entries of the matrix shrink, due to increased efficiency on the production lines; two, they expand, while productivity gains concentrate in the use of factors. Further, the economic structure grows more complex, as industries become more tightly (vertically) integrated and the development process evolves. Both phenomena have seldom been analysed together, despite the apparent connections they may have with the evolution of economic structures and the development opportunities countries may face. This paper intends to examine the implications of these tendencies for the evolution of economic systems in regards to the dynamics the growth process may adopt. Two indicators are presented here useful to characterise such dynamics, later tested on the Mexican IO data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Auguste Fabre was a French contractor specialized in the construction of masonry vaults. He founded his company in 1896 and patented different systems of light and economic vaults, among them one for tile vaults. Fabre built thousands of vaults in France, Belgium and Algeria, some of them of great importance, such as the dome of the Petit Palais for the international exhibition in Paris in 1900, or the dome of the Congo Museum in Tervuren (Belgium). Historicism was a breeding ground for the construction of vaults, however, there is scarce technical documentation about them in the journals of the time. This paper explains the work of Auguste Fabre, his patents and some of his buildings, focusing in particular on the construction of tile vaults [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The vast number of transformations in the present business environment, its significant growth and the variety of its possibilities, together with the need for accelerated development of economic systems tightly linked to innovative culture development necessitated this paper. The task of this paper is to review personnel innovative development, directions including increase in labour productivity, educational potential, innovative qualification, innovative culture level and innovative climate through overcoming innovative barriers. Methods of contrastive analysis, dynamic analysis, method of decomposition and fuzzy sets theory's tools form the methodological basis of the research. As a result of practical research, the paper considers author's classification of the personnel barriers to the innovation development in the company and the complex of their quantitative indicators. This research may be useful for management as the performed innovative culture diagnostics allow estimating the depth of personnel innovative development and personnel involved in innovative processes, forming conclusions of dynamics of overcoming personnel barriers to innovative activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper situates Sub-Saharan African migration to the global core, especially the United States, within a historical-structuralist framework and in the process connects migration from the region to global capitalism in a political economy. It considers mechanisms adopted in exploiting the region’s human capital in three regimes of accumulation under capitalist expansion: slavery, colonialism, and globalization. The paper uses both the historical record and empirical data from American Community Survey in analyses. It concludes that recent migration from the region is a continuation of the historic exploitative relationship between the global core and Sub-Saharan Africa. By connecting African human capital utilization to global capitalism, the findings of this paper emphasize the continued need to consider migration as part of the broader postcolonial project. The policy implication of these findings for the region is that countries need to focus on economic development, rather than focusing solely on the role of remittances, brain drain and gain, and migration policy to the detriment of development policy. The paper also argues that core country policies to the migration crisis depend upon whether conservative/nationalists, neoliberal or humanist perspectives prevail in these countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When it comes to asset allocation and portfolio management, Kelly criterion is a mathematical formula used to optimise expected log-returns over the long term. Nonetheless, not all stocks are well suited for analysis using Kelly criterion, due to their transient nature and noisy data. This paper presents an innovative index by which to assess the suitability of stocks for analysis using the Kelly criterion. When applied to real-world stock data, the correlation coefficient between the proposed KSI and log-returns based on the Kelly criterion was − 57.045 % with a p -value of 1.215 × 10 − 1 . In a robustness test based on the Mid-Cap 100 dataset, the correlation coefficient was − 44.064 % with a p -value of 2.438 × 10 − 5 . The results demonstrate the efficacy of the KSI for portfolio management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The piled ring foundations offer an economic foundation system. Piled ring foundation systems can be used under structures like chimneys, OHRS, and towers. In this paper, an experimental study was carried out to understand the behavior of ring footing (with/without RDFS cushion) and piled ring foundation (with/without RDFS cushion) in soft clays. Total 57 model tests were carried out to comprehend the effect of parameters like variation of radii ratio of ring footing, spacing between piles, a diameter of pile, length to diameter ratio, RDFS cushion on the behavior of the piled ring foundations. The outcome of this study helped in understanding the effect of these factors on axial stiffness, load sharing, load improvement factor, and settlement reduction ratio. From the results of the experimental study, it was found that the ultimate load carrying capacity of the ring and piled ring foundation with RDFS cushion was significantly higher than that of ring footing and piled ring foundation without RDFS cushion. It was also observed that the behavior of ring footing with RDFS cushion resembles that of circular footing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent economic experience of countries such as China, Vietnam, Laos, etc., has invoked some interest in the economic system in these countries. This economic system which is often characterised as the socialist market economy is first conceptually distinguished from a centrally planned socialist economy as well as from a market socialist economy. Then a simple macroeconomic framework of a stylised socialist market economy is set out and its principal properties are highlighted. The paper concludes with a brief examination of the political economy of the socialist market economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Floods can be devastating to communities and result in fatalities and injuries, negatively impacting the economy, and quality of life. This paper presents a review of community resilience research with a focus on flood hazard including recent advances in flood risk quantification methods and trends to integrate socio-economic factors. The focus of this review was placed on flood risk components including hazard, exposure, and vulnerability to move the current research from deterministic to probabilistic approaches in order to propagate uncertainties through flood modeling, damage, loss, and recovery. Both short-term and long-term impacts of different flood resilience measures are included. The largest gap identified in flood risk research was the need for a standardized quantitative assessment tool or framework that could measure the impact of approaches to improve resilience at the community level. That tool should include the interactions between the different community systems (physical infrastructure, economic systems, and social systems). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper studies how approaches to disaster planning have been changing with the rise of 'resilience,' a concept that has been widely recommended by various international institutions. The critical studies on resilience argue that resilience only serves to legitimise a neoliberal policy agenda that is compatible with a global economic system of capitalism. Contesting that position, this paper argues that the rise of resilience can imply a shift in the mode of governance, and an opportunity for planners to engage with more progressive practices. To make this argument, we propose a 'postmodern lens' through which resilience can be seen as an attitude and a style of governance that goes beyond neoliberal assumptions by embracing uncertainty and complexity of governance challenges. Postmodern framing of resilience notes (1) how the concept can initiate a shift in the planner's view of and practices on knowledges (going beyond 'expert knowledge'), (2) how the flexibility of the concept can be used for developing political narratives that are progressive (3) how the concept can open up potential venues for nonconventional powers to intervene in policy making processes. To demonstrate how this lens works, we compare the cases of Seattle and Paris, which have drastically different risk governance political structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]