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Reducing energy intensity and coping with climate change are important policy issues that face all countries. This study examines the impact of business cycles (recessions and expansions) on energy intensity in sixteen emerging countries in 1990–2014. We find that during periods of economic expansion (recessions), business cycles reduce (increase) energy intensity. We also study the moderating effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) between business cycles and energy intensity and find that FDI lowers (raises) energy intensity in countries with high (low) level economic development. In addition, this study finds a nonlinear relationship between business cycles and energy intensity. Policy implications of the findings are discussed.

The nationally embedded and relatively broad-based economies characteristic of developed industrial countries are usually seen as the incarnation of a modern economy. These economies are largely internally oriented and are based, to a relatively great extent, on production and services based on local and national needs. Their provenance is generally assumed to have been processes of development that began in the sixteenth century and that, in the nineteenth century, accelerated with the expansion of industrial production and the growth of global trade. This article challenges that assumption. It argues that today’s modern economies represent, not the culmination of long-term processes, but a recurring phenomenon within capitalism. It argues that, in the history of capitalism, there have been phases of nationally embedded and global free market capitalism – periods when capital is relatively more, and relatively less, free from the regulation of nation state. Today’s nationally embedded economies represent, not a further point along a unilinear developmental trajectory, but a return to features of the moral economies that characterized both European and non-European societies before the nineteenth century.

This paper examines the predicament of educated youth belonging to socially marginalised groups in realising their aspirations in the city of Delhi. It critically foregrounds the potentials of education and urban location and analyses the educational and employment negotiations and outcomes of the urban youth living at the margins. It is based on a qualitative field study in a settlement predominantly inhabited by Dalits and other backward classes. The paper argues that the local aspirations amid neo-liberal economic expansion in a metropolitan city, alongside the long-cherished dream of respectable jobs, place an enormous hope on pursuing higher education and advanced skills. However, the nature and quality of education and skills that are accessible to these youths hardly enable them realise stable white-collar jobs. Armed with educational degrees, they join and shift between low-end precarious jobs while waiting for stable employment. Gender relations preclude some of these precarious possibilities for female youths who negotiate terms of patriarchal norms to gain economic autonomy. Overall, this paper identifies and elaborates on how urban structural conditions and individual negotiations combine to reproduce social inequalities through a process of socio-economic mobility which is adverse and rarely upwards.

The US economic expansion which began in 2009 was unusually prolonged but relatively weak. Profitability and investment strengthened between 2010 and 2015 but then began to falter. After Trump took office in 2017 there was a minor recovery in investment but the proceeds of major tax cuts were overwhelmingly used to finance payouts to share owners. Unemployment fell steadily from 2010 but with a shift towards lower-paid jobs. Median wages increased from around 2014, but while those for women had risen steadily since the 1980s, those for men only recuperated to their 1980 level in 2018. By contrast, top incomes soared. The impact of the COVID-19 epidemic was partly cushioned by huge government spending programmes, but unemployment among less-skilled workers increased strongly, while the massive monetary response led to an unprecedented bonanza for the rich. The Biden government's first major initiative extended unemployment benefits and promoted a national response to the health emergency, but failed to secure an increase in the national minimum wage to $15 an hour.

The focus of this paper is to analyse sociocultural and politico-institutional factors that contributed greatly to China’s economic expansion. In doing so, the article reveals the importance of long-standing heterodox threads, namely, the role of history, political economy, institutional structures, local culture, social psychology, and international relations. In contrast to neoliberalism’s theoretical fallacies and destructive socio-economic outcomes, it is argued here that purposeful developmental intervention is crucial as it can promote the growth, positioning, quality, and competitiveness of local industries in international markets. The line of argument of this contribution is as follows. Through a lens of political history, the first section analyses the country’s past development efforts. Subsequently, the main sections discuss important aspects of an alternative economic development framework in the context of China; these are based on a highly interventionist, heterodox, developmental state analysis and are examined by placing special emphasis on its politico-institutional and sociocultural traits. Finally, summary and conclusions end the paper.

Japan has historically been a major player within the Indo-Pacific region due to its rapid post-war economic expansion, technological advancement, massive overseas development aid as well as its cu...

The Manufacturing sector of the Nigerian economy can perform better in job creation, particularly during the period of economic expansion, which did not happen in the last period of economic growth between 1981 and 2014. Consequently, it is important to understand the real relationship between growth and job creation in the sector during the period. Therefore, this study investigated the employment intensity of gross value added growth in the sector during the period of growth, using Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) with a view to providing useful statistics to facilitate policies for the development of sectoral employment strategy during the next cycle of economic growth. Previous studies have either used descriptive statistics or less robust econometric models applied to aggregate data of shorter series and did not explore the inter-sectoral relationship effect. The estimated employment elasticity of gross value added in the sector was not significant at 95 per cent confidence level, and can, therefore, not be relied upon for pin-point policy. However, the inter-sectoral and inter-temporal relationships provided significant estimates, indicating that such relationships should be taken into account in designing and developing sectoral employment strategy for the manufacturing sector. There is future scope for the extension of research to cover periods of recession, as well, for example, post COVID-19.

During a period of increasing prosperity, the U.S. debt delinquency rate decreased between 2016 and 2019, with a relatively large decrease for Asians households and somewhat smaller decrease for Bl...

Purpose: The research aims to examine China's economic activities around the world from the broad perspective of the country's economic security. The authors begin with explaining the concept of economic statecraft and then deal with the analysis of the Chinese overseas economic expansion. Design/Methodology/Approach: The main tools used to achieve the objectives mentioned above include a literature analysis, logical reasoning and statistical research. Findings: The last decades have revealed a new pattern in global economic cooperation. The Belt and Road Initiative turned out to be a successful instrument supporting China's economic growth and deepening international economic cooperation and interdependence. The BRI project allows China not only to secure access to supplies and markets but also strengthen its soft power and gives the possibility to build a powerful network of interconnected countries, independent from the Western powers, willingly cooperating with China in every field. Practical Implications: The research results are helpful to realise the extend and importance of the Belt and Road Initiative in China's economic statecraft and indicate potential fields for future international cooperation under the BRI. As close economic cooperation under the BRI can have significant consequences for China and all countries covered by this project, all partners have to be aware of the complexity of their involvement in this initiative and the pros and cons of such interdependence. Originality/Value: The Belt and Road Initiative is a novel form of broad international cooperation. Thus it deserves special attention and research. The research concerns an economic dimension of the Belt and Road Initiative and provides a comprehensive analysis of China's worldwide economic expansion., peer-reviewed

China has a large and professional diplomatic team spread all over the world. Chinese diplomacy mainly relies on soft power in its relations with international partners. Despite the unified outlines, Chinese foreign policy differs from one country to another, depending on the geographical location, the political system and the volume of trade exchange. Chinese foreign policy has gone through many stages, most notably the period of Mao Zedong who strictly applied the rules of socialism, and the period of Deng Xiaoping, known for its reform and openness policy, thus establishing a modern and more flexible Chinese system. President Xi Jinping's term is an extension of Deng Xiaoping's rule of thumb, but with more openness to international partners and economic expansion, especially with the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013. This paper deals with China's foreign policy towards Myanmar, and refers to the development of bilateral relations and China's interest in a distinguished relationship with Myanmar. The research indicates the strategic factors that make China interested in developing the relationship with Myanmar.

Little is known about how economic fluctuations affect educational inequalities in mortality in low- or middle-income countries. The objective of this study is to analyze the temporal variations in educational differentials in suicide in four Argentinian provinces. Data on suicides for ages 25 years and over and three age groups (25–44, 45–64, and 65 +) in four Argentinian provinces during the period 1999–2013 were linked to population data and information on the educational level of the deceased. Regression models were estimated using age, sex, year, province of residence, educational level, and economic character of the year (expansion or recession) as explanatory variables. The educational gap in suicide mortality widened since the expansion following the crisis of 1999–2002, and then only decreased in 2005 and 2011. For ages 45–64, the confidence intervals of the suicide rate overlapped each year, and the suicide rate of the middle-high education population exceeded the suicide rate of the low-education population in 2 recession years, 1999 and 2002. Considering the years of economic expansion or recession as a dichotomous variable, at ages 45–64 differences in suicide rates by educational level disappeared during years of recession, while they were present in years of expansion. Suicides rise during economic downturns but these periods could reduce the educational gaps of suicide mortality by increasing the vulnerability of adults of high educational level to changes in the economy.

A crime epidemic appears to have erupted in many advanced economies, raising questions on whether higher unemployment leads to greater incidence of crime. In this paper, we establish a robust connection between unemployment and crime, considering both violent and non-violent crimes, in a 4 variable time-varying VAR setting in identifying four shocks: unemployment, output, migration fear, and crime shocks. Using data from France and the UK over the time period 1975Q1 to 2013Q4 and 1983Q1 to 2018Q2 respectively, we find significant positive effects of unemployment shocks on crime rates in both countries, particularly so during the times of economic contraction. We also find that crime rates decline during times of economic expansion (in response to a positive shock in GDP growth). Considering shocks in migration fears, we find that migration fears are fuelling higher incidence of crime in France, whereas unemployment shock continues to drive crime rates in the UK. Undertaking further analysis for a single country at quarterly frequency for the UK, and with panel data from 24 countries at annual frequency over the period 1998 to 2016, we support our main hypothesis that higher unemployment rate tends to increase non-violent crime. Our results imply that maintaining stable economic activity is critical in order to stabilize incidence of non-violent crime. These findings have political significance, given the recent unprecedented levels of concern and uncertainty about migration in European countries.

India's ambition of playing a prominent role in regional and global affairs has been particularly visible since the assumption of office by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in May 2014. The ambition has resulted in India's external engagement, abandoning the posturing of non-alignment for a more proactive multi-alignment strategy. Its efforts to engage with major powers such as the US and China, as well as other global middle powers such as Japan, the UK, and Australia, have been positioned on rapid economic progress, enabled by one of the fastest rates of growth among major economies. Attempts to expand global strategic influence, a natural outcome of robust economic expansion, should have seen India pursuing an aggressive outward-oriented external trade policy for increasing its share in global trade. India, though, has shown a marked resistance to open trade, including being reluctant to engage in regional and bilateral trade negotiations. This paper examines the dichotomy between India's desire to play a prominent global role and its aversion to open trade policies. Attributing the inward-looking approach to lack of competitiveness of Indian industry, absence of domestic pro-trade constituencies, and discomfort in negotiating new-generation trade issues, the paper argues India's quest for greater global strategic influence might be adversely affected by its restrictive trade policies.

En lo concerniente a los temas de este trabajo, el escenario abierto por la pandemia desnuda problemáticas socioeconómicas estructurales que afectan sustantiva y desigualmente a las poblaciones y los territorios de distintas regiones del mundo, pero más aún a los de América Latina. En tal sentido, la Comisión Económica para América Latina (CEPAL) revela que lamentablemente durante el 2020 hemos sido la región más afectada por el Covid-19, con el aciago dato de contar con el 28% de los fallecidos por esta causa a nivel mundial, cuando la región sólo representa el 8,4% de la población del mundo (CEPAL, 2021). Pero además, para CEPAL la pandemia ha puesto de manifiesto y profundizado los problemas estructurales de desigualdad, informalidad, pobreza y desprotección social que caracterizan de manera mayoritaria nuestra sociedades, con sustanciales aumentos en los niveles de vulnerabilidad social y de precariedad laboral[2]*. [1] Byung-Chul Han, “Teletrabajo, ‘zoom’ y depresión”, diario El País, 21/3/2021

This study examines the relationship between internal absorption, financial and business cycles in selected African countries. Using Markov’s regime change model on data for the period 1960-2018. The data was obtained from the online version of the World Bank’s World Development Indicators. The results show that the Keynesian or monetary effects on each phase of the business cycle is different in the various countries. During the phase of economic expansion, the rate of evolution of consumption and gross fixed capital formation accelerate the expansion trend. During the phase of recession, these variables play a stabiliser role by moderating the fall in real GDP. Liquidity ratio and nominal exchange rate affect the behaviour of real GDP in a mixed manner in both the phase of economic expansion and economic recession. These results show that economic policies should focus on household consumption and gross fixed capital formation to regulate the dynamics of the economy.

The subject of this study is the competitive relations in the political and economic spheres that have developed on the African continent in the 21st century between the French Republic and the People’s Republic of China. The author focuses on the main conflict-generating factors that caused the latent confrontation between the two countries that arose in the face of a changing geopolitical situation in the world in general and in Africa in particular. The methodological basis of this study is the comparative historical method; the work is based on the principles of historicism, reliability and scientific objectivity. Using the method of historical reconstruction allowed the author to trace the dynamics of relations between France and China over the past two decades. The work is based on the study of factual historical material, a chronicle of the events of the last decade; analytical materials published on the pages of French and Russian mass media were used. The author concludes that the basis of the conflict between Paris and Beijing lies in the desire of the Champs Elysees not only to preserve the political, economic and military-strategic preferences of France in the countries that were formerly colonies of the French Empire, but also to protect French interests in the English-speaking countries of East Africa. The rapid growth of China’s influence on the African continent, the ever more obvious expansion of the Heavenly Empire into the economies of African countries, forces France to change the paradigm of its foreign policy. If the predecessors of E. Macron, denying in words the policy of “Françafrique”, relied on the use of military force and covert operations of the French security services then the current head of the Fifth Republic in his relations with African countries prefers to use his resources on “soft power” politics. The experience gained by E. Macron during his first (not very successful) African tour in 2017 prompted him to change the tone of communication with the leaders of African countries from patronically arrogant to friendly and trusting.

Since the early 1990s, persistently low fertility in Mediterranean countries has attracted the interest of empirical research aimed at identifying factors associated with demographic change in what were traditionally high-fertility contexts. Most of these studies have been carried out at the national scale, while spatial analyses of sub-national patterns remain mostly absent. The present study aims to fill this gap, investigating the spatio-temporal changes in local fertility in Spanish municipalities over a 16-year period that covers consecutive waves of economic expansion (2002–2009) and recession (2010–2017). The analytical framework is grounded on descriptive statistics, spatial statistics (that is, Global Moran’s I and Local Indicators of Spatial Association) and non-parametric inference testing the pair-wise correlations between fertility levels and contextual variables (including population density, topography, accessibility and distance from central locations). Results of this study reveal a fertility decline in most areas of the country—especially in depopulated districts. The highest fertility is observed in Southern Spain, along the Mediterranean coast, and around the main cities. With recession, spatial heterogeneity emerges as the main trend characterizing regional fertility—a finding in line with research from other Mediterranean countries. Local fertility rates were less spatially clustered in the recession than in the expansion period, with a progressive shrinkage of high-fertility districts. A persistent decline in local fertility may be considered an early-warning indicator of depopulation in Spain’s rural districts and can be used to delineate demographically fragile areas.

A growing body of literature has recently emerged establishing that political socialization influences foreign policy preferences of the public. But the empirical domain of this literature has been confined largely to American foreign policy and whether and how this empirical regularity holds in a non-democratic, non-western setting is unknown. Filling this lacuna, this research note studies the Vietnamese public attitudes toward Chinese economic expansion. I argue that Vietnamese citizens who grew up amid Doi Moi (renovation) had a political socialization experience very different from that of the birth cohorts who immediately preceded them. I demonstrate that the traditional ‘socialist brotherhood’ rhetoric that used to moderate otherwise hostile public opinions about China became insignificant through the course of the reform. This abrupt change led to markedly divergent views between the pre- and post-Doi Moi birth groups on China. Using the data from the latest Pew Global Attitude Survey, I demonstrate that Doi Moi increased the Vietnamese public's negative perception of Chinese economic expansion.

This article was compiled based on the results of a study aimed at knowing and understanding the Strategy to Face the Challenges of Global Cultural Flow through Cultural Education Based on Culture. This study uses a qualitative method. Data obtained through observation, interviews, documentation, and literature study, in a natural setting. Data analysis was carried out through three activities simultaneously, namely: data reduction, data presentation, and conclusions or verification. The results of the study indicate that the world of education is currently facing the challenges of global cultural currents, namely the process and system of economic expansion of a transnational free market economy that has penetrated into various fields of life such as politics, religion, socio-culture, including education. In the era of openness marked by the dynamics of local, national, and global communities that have the potential to cause various impacts it is impossible to avoid. Therefore, it is important for a nation to have character and identity in the face of global cultural currents, in order to remain firmly established on the noble values ​​of the nation's culture. Culture-based character education can be used as an educational strategy and symbolic investment strategy accompanied by efforts to create a conducive social environment through a tri center of education (family, school, and community). Reviving local cultural values ​​in certain packages is one cultural approach to empowerment. Thus the revitalization of local cultural values ​​in the era of globalization plays an important role. This needs to be done considering the cultural behavior among children and adolescents has begun to change along with the growing pressure of global cultural currents.

CLOs and Leveraged Loans 2020 was a virtual (online) event held June 16–17, 2020. Many of the speakers and panelists expressed strongly positive outlooks for the CLO and leveraged loan sectors. Although the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic was a central theme in many sessions, the dominant view was that leveraged loans and CLOs will be able to weather the storm. Sessions covered include: • Get to Know Your CLO Manager! • Opening Keynote: The Longest US Economic Expansion Comes to an End • The Evolution of CLO Documentation Standards • CLO Master Class for Allocators • The New Normal: Evolution of the 2.0 CLO Manager • LIBOR Transition in a Covid-19 World: Preparation Amidst the Chaos • Mezzanine Investor Roundtable: Getting Your Cash Back to Work! TOPICS:CLOs, CDOs, and other structured credit, manager selection Key Findings • The CLO and leveraged-loan markets have withstood the stresses of early 2020 and are well positioned to handle further stresses that may appear. • CLO notes, especially highly-rated notes from recent vintages, have high levels of credit enhancement and other structural protections that enable them to survive adverse scenarios. • Still, tail risk remains. A double-dip recession or a second wave of COVID-19 could derail expectations and lead to tail-risk scenarios.

Theories on economic voting and democratic accountability are rooted in the reward–punishment hypothesis, stating that voters punish incumbent governments for economic decline and reward them for economic expansion. We argue that this accountability mechanism goes beyond economic performance indicators, as voters take into account a moral perspective about the economy as well. More specifically, we argue that when economic inequality is high, citizens’ social justice preferences are infringed upon, which could lower support for the incumbent. Moreover, as inequality leads to higher levels of conflict over economic resources, we should observe higher levels of economic voting in unequal contexts. Hence, we hypothesise that (1) economic inequality is negatively related to electoral support for the incumbent party (parties), and (2) the level of economic inequality moderates the effect of perceptions of economic performance on electoral support for the incumbent party (parties). We test our hypotheses using hierarchical models based on the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and the European Social Survey. While we do not find support for a direct effect of inequality on electoral support, our findings strongly support the second hypothesis: incumbents are punished more strongly for a bad economic performance when economic inequality in the country is high.

Over the last four decades, China has sustained extraordinary economic development despite Western assertions of under-constructed economic markets and the lack of an independent adjudicative process. The purpose of this paper is to set out the context of China’s judicial independence and high economic development scenario in the global economy. The paper aims to establish that vast economic expansion is possible without the conventional concept of an independent judiciary in which China provides an important example for the world. The study is mainly qualitative in nature and takes the analytical approach. The data and statistics have been collected from sources of the World Bank, IMF, WTO, UNCTAD, The World Factbook of the CIA, and the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics. The content analysis references the Chinese Constitution and judges law, reports of the Supreme People’s Court, books, journal articles, newspaper articles, media reports, and internet documents. The findings of the study are that China preserves “adjudicative independence” as a unique feature instead of embracing the Western concept of judicial independence that promotes the confidence of investors to make more investments. Additionally, the initiatives of “Made in China” and “One Belt, One Road” attach new wings to China’s emergence as the world’s crucial economic power. The article concludes that China’s experience provides a lesson for policymakers and economists of other developing or transitional countries struggling with weak legal and court systems, and emerging financial markets. The study strengthens the flourishing literature on the connection between judicial independence and economic development.

In many developing world economies in recent years, the state has been seen to encourage neoliberal economic expansion policies. This has involved both large‐scale foreign corporations and sometimes large‐scale domestic corporations. Many studies have discussed the new landscapes of economic hardship and the impacts on small businesses. The aim of this paper is to argue that the impacts on small traders are in fact more complex and varied than usually appears in the literature. The research was conducted in the industrial city of Durgapur in the Bardhaman district of West Bengal, India. First it is argued that the impact has been greatest on the ‘kirana’ owners, operating small convenience type stores with legalized trading arrangements and fixed premises. On the other hand, the street vendors (often unlicensed and having no fixed premises) seem not to be affected in terms of customer loss and indeed could be seen to be doing well against the backcloth of neoliberal expansion. In fact we argue that the growth in the number of street vendors provides as much of a threat to future livelihoods for traditional kirana owners as the growth of large corporations itself.

This study aims to uncover the determinants for the formulation of accounting practices and their impact on firm performance in Pakistan through the lens of institutional theory. Based on a pragmatic approach, this study has collected data from 455 participants and 21 semi-structured interviews have been conducted. Firstly, it is noted that accounting practices can be traced back to the Mughal regime, and subsequently underwent a major development in the British colonial system. Secondly, our results indicate that institutional factors, namely, accounting regulatory framework, political factors, economic factors, cultural factors, and country-specific factors have also played a major role in the development of accounting practices after the creation of Pakistan as a separate state. Finally, this study suggests that the development of accounting practices have a novel contribution towards the performance of firms. This research thus provides a pathway for policymakers in this county to closing the gaps between accounting practices and the policies of the International Accounting Standard Board (IASB). Furthermore, firms can enhance their performance by implementing international accounting standards. This paper helps Pakistan’s regulatory institutions such as the SECP (Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan) and SBP (State Bank of Pakistan) in the process of developing new policies. Such decisions are related, but not limited to: attracting foreign investments, economic expansion, and international trade. Furthermore, it provides a pathway for firms to improve their performance. Ultimately, this research fills the gap as concerns international accounting standards by assessing, both empirically and theoretically, the role of various determinants for the formulation of accounting practices and their impact on the performance of firms.

The world is in a clash between the perspectives of economic expansion and sustainable environment. The high pace of technological progress opens space for fostering economic growth but at the same time, it creates a big dilemma for humans in protecting the environmental quality. The environmentally specific technologies are expected to help human beings to achieve dual objectives of economic prosperity and environmental sustainability. Despite its importance, attention to the role of environmental-related technologies in reducing environmental degradation is limited. This paper, therefore, intends to discover the impact of environmental-related technologies on the ecological footprint for 20 OECD from 1990 to 2015. The results endorse a long-run relationship between ecological footprint and green technologies, renewable energy, international trade, energy intensity, and real income. Environmental-related technologies and renewable energy consumption are found to be impetuous to sustainable development. The study provides relevant implications for policymakers to support the development and adoption of green technologies.

The aim of the article is to analyze the Russian economic policy in its external dimension (economic expansion), in the context of discussions about changes in the global economy held in the Russian Federation. The starting point for reflections in this respect is Sergey Glazyev’s view of the current evolution of international relations. The article contrasts the propositions of the Russian author and the strategy of activities of the Kremlin, which uses the state corporations for its external targets.

We examined the impact of energy generation on economic growth in Nigeria by explicitly focusing on the two significant sources of energy generation. The study covered the period 1980–2017, and we made use of the error correction model as a technique of estimation. Our results indicated the existence of cointegration among the variables. We found that gas energy, physical capital and interest rates are crucial to the development of economic growth in the long run. However, in the short run, hydropower contributed to the development of the economy. The two sources of energy generation need massive investment and upgrading as the current generation is not sufficient for economic expansion in Nigeria. The efficiency of the gas fire plants is hampered by insufficient gas supply, while hydropower is suffering from the lack of modern technology and outdated facilities.

The Chinese initiative «One Belt, One Road» has a growing influence on the development of the global economy. As it progresses, it carries both new opportunities, risks, and challenges for concrete regions and countries. On this background, «One Belt, One Road» begins to encounter ambiguous perception and often with the opposition. This article is devoted to the analysis of this tangle of problems. The authors identify the main economic prerequisites for its occurrence; define economic and political goals, which can be achieved by China within its implementation, and also describe the main geographical directions of the initiative’s development. It’s noted that China began to experience competitive pressure from the USA and the EU, mainly in the form of countering Chinese economic expansion, as well as the anti-Chinese media campaign. Critical arguments for the Chinese initiative, as well as arguments in its favor, are presented and explored in the paper. Basing on the analysis of “pros” and “cons”, the authors come to the conclusion that the nature of the «One belt, One Road» is likely to be changed towards greater consideration of the interests of the hosting countries.

The current economic expansion in the United States, which began in the summer of 2009, has lasted for more than nine years as of this writing, making it the second longest expansion since the end of World War II. The previous two expansions, of the 1990s and 2000s, were prolonged by big asset bubbles, which have played a key role in the neoliberal era in promoting long economic expansions. However, the current expansion has not seen an asset bubble large enough to significantly affect the macroeconomy. This paper examines the expansion since 2009 by analyzing the movements of the rate of profit, and its determinants, and the role of aggregate demand, with the aim of determining the factors that have kept crisis tendencies at bay so far. JEL Classification: E32, E30, E11, E02

In this article, we explore how the massive incorporation of the foreign-born population into the labour market during the economic expansion in Spain and the subsequent destruction of employment in the period of the economic downturn have contributed to changes in Spanish class structure. Drawing on data from the Labour Force Survey we estimate an entropy-based segregation index in order to assess the extent to which the unevenness of the distribution of natives and immigrants within social classes has contributed to the overall demographic composition of social class structure. Our results reveal that in the period of economic expansion the segregation of the class structure increased as a result of the concentration of immigrant population in specific classes. In contrast, during the economic crisis this process has been reversed: the uneven class distribution between natives and immigrants has levelled out and segregation among natives has decreased.

In times of climate change, biodiversity loss, or growing natural resource scarcity, the circular business model (CBM) concept is increasingly attractive, promoting the reorganization of current value creation architectures and supply chains toward a sustainable system of production and consumption. Driven by a vision of continued economic expansion and growth on a planet with finite natural resources, CBMs are endorsed by political institutions, multinational corporations, business consultancies, and academia. Some argue that CBM configurations contribute to a more holistic and radical change in the existing business logics than approaches that achieve incremental resource efficiency improvements. However, how “holistic” and “radical” are CBMs theoretically constituted in academia if we consider the deep structural and paradigmatic shifts in societies necessary to deal with the challenges associated with the Anthropocene? Prior studies do not examine the inherent normative settings and the operational change approaches beneath CBM concepts. To reconstruct the theoretical foundations of CBMs critically, the recent CBM body of academic literature is systematically reviewed according to (1) the legitimacy of CBMs (why should it be done) (2) the modes of value creation and offerings (what should be done), and (3) the core principles of CBM integration into daily business (how should it be done). From this synthesis, the predominant notion of sustainability behind the CBM concept can be revealed. This study argues contemporary scientifically constructed CBMs need to be reconsidered if they are intended to contribute to a profound economic transition toward sustainability. Hence, the paper shows how principles from more “holistic”, “radical”, and pluralistic economic approaches can widen CBMs and how future research can help to diversify the concept.

Studies of Victorian work, political economy, industrialism, and realism in Hard Times have taken for granted Charles Dickens’s broad range of masculine figures represented in the text. Dickens’s novel explores the environmental costs of masculine ideologies conceived as endless struggle and competition. The novel’s depiction of an ecological crisis in Coketown functions as an ideological critique of Victorian toxic masculinity in a double sense: as a form of masculinity that harms both women and men socially, physically, and psychologically and as a pandemic deeply linked to a larger environmental crisis caused by unsustainable forms of economic expansion. All masculine characters in Coketown embody toxic forms of masculinity that cause suffering for others and for themselves. Toxic masculinity represents both a symptom of environmental disaster in the novel and a great facilitator of climate change denial. To think ecologically in the novel entails an implicit challenge to masculinist ideologies predicated on the subordination of women and the exploitation of the environment.

This study assesses the effect of tax incentives on scrappage in periods of both economic expansion and crisis. Although such incentives are common during a recession, they may also be useful in renewing the vehicle fleet during other periods in order to reduce pollution and improve road safety. The present analysis is based on panel data covering the period from 2011 to 2017 in Spain, where several schemes were intermittently implemented. Using duration models, we specify the scrappage rate as a function of car age and other factors related to business cycle and transportation sector. On the base of this specification, we control for tax incentives. Our results confirm the relevant impact of car age and scrappage schemes on the scrappage rate and, consequently, on fleet age distribution. Therefore, cash for clunkers schemes may be of interest to policymakers as part of a strategy to reduce pollution and road accidents, regardless of the stage of the business cycle.

We analyze the effects of children’s health on human capital accumulation and on long-run economic growth. For this purpose, we design an R&D-based growth model in which the stock of human capital of the next generation is determined by parental education and health investments. We show that (i) there is a complementarity between education and health: if parents want to have better educated children, they also raise health investments and vice versa; (ii) parental health investments exert an unambiguously positive effect on long-run economic growth, (iii) faster population growth reduces long-run economic growth. These results are consistent with the empirical evidence for modern economies in the twentieth century.

Costs can hugely affect the state of economy and cost-effectiveness of the company. It is crucial to note that not always high income can be an indicator of the company's financial health. To achieve the full picture we need to look at the costs (ie the costs of the enterprise). Each company has its own costs arising from different aspects of the operation. But each enterprise to preserve the economy and cost-effectiveness of its operations should control costs and systematically reduce them. The reduction of costs, as a consequence, contributes to greater profitability of the company, and the greater profitability of the company leads to an increase in the share capital , cash reserves, etc. In the long run, costs always influence the solvency of enterprises because they spend periods of expansion and expansion that increase costs. Therefore, each company should control costs and constantly find ways to minimize them. Cost reduction drives the company ahead of the competition because it can deliver quality but at the same time give it a lower and more attractive price. Cost reduction and increased profitability can contribute to the growth of the enterprise and through mergers and acquisitions, because with the newly created capital and the economy can be developed. In terms of costs, it must be noted that cost cutting and cost control must be carried out consistently regardless of the scope of the enterprise, activity, etc. The economy of an economic entity is the most important feature, since we are witnesses of once successful economic entities that, due to uneconomic, are already part of history. The reasons for this can be found in the growth of costs in times of economic expansion to the state of the peak of prices, when the economy enters correction or recession.

The interconnection of tourism and transport activity is present at all levels of development of society and economy. The occurrence of rail, then car and plane has led to the transformation of tourism from an individual into a mass phenomenon. The general economic expansion, the rise in living standards, and especially the rapid development of tourism in the 20th century, have had a significant impact on the overall transport system, and especially on change of means of transport. The sudden development of motor vehicles is the beginning of the The Second Transportation Revolution, and at the same time other revolutions in tourism. Tourism is the sector that records the highest growth in the world economy. The aim of this paper is to examine the analysis of interconnections and relations between transport and tourism industry. Tourism and transport are interconnected phenomena, where all major epochs in the development of transport becoming the turning points in the development of tourism. Transportation is an integral part of the tourism industry since it connects tourists with various tourist attractions. In most countries, the development of tourism depends on the development of the transportation system. The promotion and development of tourism depends directly on the development of the transport system (road, maritime, air, rail, river and PTT traffic), maintenance and construction of existing roads, construction and maintenance of railways and air traffic, as well as the construction of local airports and the improvement of flight operations. Serbia has relatively favorable natural and material conditions for the development of various types of traffic in accordance with the requirements of domestic and foreign tourists. Road traffic has a dual importance for tourism. First of all, it allows tourists to travel on vacation with certain advantages that consist of being able to go directly from home, at will, to choose the time of departure, the route and speed they will travel, and the choice of travel companions depends on them. One of the main reasons that led to massive use of cars for tourist purposes is their economic efficiency. The connection between tourism and transport is also evident in the fact that many roads that serve primarily for tourism are built. Air traffic has opened new destinations and tourist forms, such as long distance trips.

Using a linked employer-employee data set derived from German administrative data, we investigate the cyclicality of worker and job flows. The analysis stresses the importance of two-sided labour market heterogeneity in this context. We find that firms that are characterized by high turnover, a small size, and low productivity, hire mainly at the beginning of an economic expansion. At this point, the workers are mostly recruited from the rank of the short-term unemployed. Later on in the expansion, as the pool of the short-term unemployed dries out, hirings more frequently result from direct jobto-job transitions, with employed workers moving to larger and more profitable firms with lower worker turnover. Contrary to our expectations, workers moving to larger firms do not experience significantly larger wage gains than workers moving to smaller establishments, which is probably due to the instiutional settings of the German labour market. We argue that our findings have important implications for understanding the cyclicality of firms hiring, separation, and churning decisions, of worker flows, and of wage dynamics.

Which factors have driven fiscal revenue in Sub-Saharan Africa in the long run? We address this question by studying quantitatively the long-term relationship between fiscal outcomes, economic expansion and external dependency in four francophone West African countries – Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, Niger and Senegal – between 1893 and 2010. Using panel co-integration modelling we find a long-term relationship between, on the one hand, tax revenue and local economic development, proxied by international trade, and, on the other hand, tax revenue and developments of the economy and taxation in the former colonizing power France. The results indicate that economic expansion has been a significant factor in driving the long-term development of tax revenue in West Africa, just as it was in historical Europe, but also point to the historical vulnerability and external dependency of the fiscal systems of the four West African countries. We suggest that the wider implication of these results is that they point to the importance of deepening our understanding of how domestic contexts interact with external economic and institutional external forces to shape African fiscal systems, in contrast to factors such as inter-state warfare that are ubiquitous in narratives of historical European taxation and state development.

At present the contestation of the Indonesian state’s dispossessory policies regarding land and other natural resources is dominated by a discourse based on adat. This situation is reminiscent of the colonial period, when invoking adat was a relatively effective means of protecting Indonesians from losing their land to plantation companies supported by the Netherlands–Indies government. However, adat lost its traction when Indonesia became independent and the new state started to vigorously pursue nation building and economic expansion. Only after the end of the New Order in 1998 did civil society groups revive the adat defence against dispossession. This article analyses current debates and developments concerning the place of adat in national land law and its potential for protecting communities against dispossession of their land by the Indonesian state. We argue that the promotion of adat has produced few concrete results and that it is unlikely to be more successful for this purpose in the future. Given Indonesia’s current social and political realities, any land rights strategy for protecting people against dispossession that is based on indigeneity is problematic, and alternative approaches are needed.

We analyse the effects of fiscal and monetary policies in two South Eastern European (SEE) economies with currency pegs (Croatia and Macedonia) estimated by the Bayesian Vector Autoregression. The main results of the study are as follows: Fiscal tightening leads to economic expansion in Macedonia and a decline in economic activity in Croatia. In both countries fiscal tightening leads to a decline in inflation and money market rates. Monetary tightening leads to output contraction and a decline in inflation in both countries. We find opposite reaction of fiscal authorities to a monetary shock: monetary contraction is accompanied by fiscal tightening in Croatia and by loose fiscal policy in Macedonia.

Despite its currency, ‘global urbanism’ is a nebulous concept deployed in dissonant registers that offer diverse perspectives on the dynamics of a global urban age. This chapter considers another invocation of global urbanism: one that echoes a postcolonial appreciation of the diversity of processes and relations defining a ‘world of cities’. This is a form of global urbanism that frames maniform global challenges—climate change, resource consumption, economic expansion, inequality and poverty, biodiversity, migration, and so on—both as distilled in and governable through cities’ diverse social, material and political capacities. Urban governance innovation can be traced across three key dimensions. First is relations. A second dimension is the proliferation of mechanisms aimed at nurturing innovation that builds operational and financial capacity. Finally, distinctive operational transformations are being fomented by the political necessity to maintain legitimacy as essential to the authority to govern. Dispositif thinking displaces the city as a predetermined territorial object of enquiry.

The security of critical information infrastructure is a core issue of a national cybersecurity mechanism. Each state develops a specific regulatory and institutional mechanism of regulation. Russia and China both pursue the digital nationalism model. The advantages and disadvantages of the Russian and Chinese national mechanisms are determined. The need and possibility of implementation of the Chinese positive practice is considered. A few general scientific (system-structural, formal-logical and hermeneutic methods) and special legal methods of cognition (comparative legal and formal-legal methods) are being used. The Chinese mechanism for ensuring the security of critical information infrastructure is undergoing the formation phase. The specific Russian federal act clearly defines the CII sectors and the system of state authorities with the strict distribution of their powers. The Chinese mechanism envisage the extension of the CII sectors by executive regulations. The structure of institutional mechanism is undefined and there is a partial duplication of the powers of some authorities. The formation of the Chinese mechanism is complicated by the need to simultaneously achieve goals in the spheres of national security and economy (in the aspect of opposing the US economic expansion into the Chinese market). Both the Russian and the Chinese mechanisms reflect the features of national security systems of each state. The positive practice of People’s Republic of China is to be considered in the aspect of simultaneous achievement of national security and economic goals.

The main purpose of this work is to assess whether the Chinese market efficiency has changed over the years. The first chapter will provide a brief overview of the Chinese political and economic history, with a focus on the development of exchange markets. It is essential to understand the history and the crucial steps in the evolution of Chinese political thought and socio-economic reforms to fully grasp the reasons for its ability to replace well-known old-world superpowers. The analysis of available literature, presented in chapter two, explores several topics such as market efficiency, the relations between Asiatic markets, and the impact of regulatory changes. More specifically, the literature review will focus on the most relevant journal articles related to Chinese market efficiency because market efficiency is the prompt for economic expansion. A careful reading of the sampled articles will allow an assessment of the EMT theory by Eugene Fama (1970), when used to understand the market reaction to information. The hypothesis of market efficiency is closely related to market players’ rational behaviour, as all players are subject to the information they receive. An efficient financial structure attracts investors from all over the world, but, if the market is not as predictable and stable as possible, there is a risk of discouraging investments. The third chapter will explore the macroeconomic data and China’s foreign relations, with a glance at evolving policies and strategies implemented towards foreign powers and investors, which have fostered its staggering economic growth. The economic, social, political changes and reforms, which have affected the entire Chinese apparatus, will be examined through an analysis of relevant literature. Tables with a summary of the method, goals and results of the studies reviewed in the chapter will come in handy. The aim of this work was to analyse some relevant literature to find evidence of the existence of a Chinese market weak form. This topic has been selected due to the Chinese great economic growth and its different political and economic structure. The literature review focuses on ten papers written from 1999 to 2019. Their research was complex because of the scarcity of relevant documents and the dissemination of unclear information. The major difficulty in finding accurate data was encountered at the beginning of this study, when the initial research question was to test the Efficient Market Theory. Because of insufficient scientific information and available documents to conduct this kind of analysis, academic journal articles, which stress the EMT, have been chosen in their place. All the scholarly works reviewed in this brief discussion draw the same conclusions: the Chinese market appears inefficient. When Fama’s hypothesis is applied, analysis results demonstrate that weak form efficiency holds in the Chinese market; therefore, the available information on past experience cannot be useful to predict future yields. The empirical results show that China is not influenced by seasons; in particular, it does not suffer from the January effect, which can help to predict future trends. This study has also revealed the problem of the scarcity of useful information for investment purposes, which can be easily overcome by making State and institutional transformation transparent. The results of the papers do not change during the years: in 1999 the inefficiency of Chinese market depended especially on the excessive volatility caused by the policy changes and the scarcity of information, and the same results were also obtained in 2019. This study also aimed at analysing the correlation between the policies implemented and the market. The Chinese “open attitude”, adopted in the last years, is pointing in the right direction. Fostering cooperation and cultural exchanges can help solve the problem of data transparency. This characteristic is essential to raise information efficiency, which is the base of EMT. The negative effect of continuous reforms for the Western countries is that Chinese policy-makers’ decisions strongly influence the market, and they make it unpredictable for us due to our lack of knowledge of Eastern philosophies, a condition which China is trying to fix by opening as many communication channels as possible with the West. Hence, the Belt and Road initiative is paramount to cooperation with Europe and to rise to global superpower status. China is trying to engage in this initiative a lot of European and Asian countries to increase its global influence and make its culture and history known. Italy has always wanted to cooperate with the Chinese government being an enthusiastic supporter of the Belt and Road Initiative. The linearity that the Chinese government was aiming at was halted by the Covid-19 global pandemic. It was the first time that the Chinese economy slowed down since 1992. However, this period did not stop the expansionist impulse in the market, which initially reacted negatively but then recovered, proving that operators continue to trust China’s promises. Between July and September 2020, the Chinese economy showed an increase compared to the same quarter of 2019. China was one of the first countries which had economic recovery, and it is expected to be the only G20 economy to grow in 2020. Cooperation, inclusion, and transparency should be the three key elements on which the reconstruction and economic and social resurgence of the (near) future should be based in order to make the market more efficient and to attract investors.

Judicial decisions in bankruptcy are often influenced by the goal of preserving employment. Using the text of judicial decisions and the random assignment of cases across courts in the state of Sao Paulo in Brazil, we construct a novel court-level measure of pro-labor bias and study its effect on labor market outcomes. Employees of distressed firms assigned to high pro-labor courts are more likely to stay with their employer; however, they experience a 4.5% decline in earnings. This effect is driven by wage adjustments, it is stronger for workers with better outside options, and concentrated in periods of economic expansion.

Domestic materials are vital for production and consumption patterns and their sustainable use holds a prominent place in supporting a virtuous circle of wellbeing-environment-ecological system. In this context, this study contributes to the comprehension of material use dynamics during different phases of the economic cycle, bringing new insights into the dematerialization process. Therefore, this paper examined the effect of economic cycles on material consumption using a STIRPAT framework for 12 emerging economies for the period 1970–2017. In order to ascertain robustness, our estimation techniques account for (country-specific factors) endogenous economic growth, cross-sectional dependence, and cross-country heterogeneity within a panel framework. Thus, evidence suggests that economic expansion constitutes periods of increase in material consumption mainly due to the consumption side effect of expansion, while the occurrence of recession is associated with economic dematerialization. In addition, we found a moderating effect of material productivity on materials utilization. Based on these insights, we submit that increasing material productivity leads to sustainable practices and patterns of materials utilization. On this note, policymakers should understand the effective mechanisms that are detrimental to achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs) such as curbing material consumption during the recession and maintain a smooth material consumption balance over economic cycles.

Author(s): Garg, Teevrat; Shenoy, Ajay | Abstract: Does economic development have an unavoidable ecological cost? We examine the ecological impacts of one of India’s signature place-based economic policies involving massive tax benefits for new industrial and infrastructure development following the creation of the new state of Uttarakhand. The policy, which had an explicit pro-environment mandate, resulted in no meaningful change in local forest cover. Our results suggest that even in settings with low levels of enforcement, place-based economic policies with pro-environment mandates can achieve sizeable economic expansion without major ecological costs.

Fertility is a spatially non-stationary property of regional demographic systems. Despite the wealth of quantitative (micro&ndash, macro) information delineating short-term population dynamics in advanced economies, the contribution of economic downturns to local fertility has still been under-investigated along urban&ndash, rural gradients, especially in low-fertility contexts. Recent studies have assumed suburban fertility rates as systematically higher than urban and rural fertility rates. This assumption (hereafter known as the &ldquo, suburban fertility hypothesis&rdquo, ) has been grounded on stylized facts and spatial regularities in advanced economies that reflect a significant role of both macro (contextual) and micro (behavioral) factors that positively influence fertility in suburban locations. To test the suburban fertility hypothesis at the macro-scale, the present study compares gross fertility rates from seven regional units of the Athens metropolitan area between 1991 and 2018. A refined spatial analysis of gross fertility rates during an economic expansion (1999&ndash, 2008) and recession (2009&ndash, 2018) was carried out in 115 urban, suburban, and rural municipalities of the same area. Experiencing sequential waves of economic expansion and recession, Athens&rsquo, socio-demographic dynamics were considered a sort of &ldquo, quasi-experiment&rdquo, for Southern Europe, linking late suburbanization with the multiple impacts of (rapid) economic downturns. Compared with both urban and rural locations, a higher fertility rate in suburban municipalities (15&ndash, 20 km away from downtown Athens) was observed during the study period. However, a subtle distinction was observed during the economic expansion versus the recession. In the first period, the highest birth rates were recorded in industrial locations west of Athens, hosting economically disadvantaged communities with a relatively young population structure. With the recession, the highest fertility was associated with residential and service-specialized (wealthier) locations east of Athens, attracting resident population from neighboring areas, and better responding to crisis. The results of our study document how recent urban expansion and economic downturns have intrinsically shaped fertility dynamics, with implications for urban sustainability and social cohesion of metropolitan regions.

At some point in the very near future the dream of human space settlement will either thrive and become the next step for human civilization or die and become another lost cause, a shriveled dead branch on the tree of historical possibilities. Dreams of space settlement and economic expansion have waxed and waned before. After Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon in July of 1969 there were high hopes that this amazing accomplishment was only the first step in a grander plan of further space exploration and settlement: an era of Moon bases, permanent human occupation, the seeds of a cosmos-based economy. The dream fizzled when the funding ran out along with the political will to fight for the dream. The Moon shot was only a political statement to demonstrate that American technology and commitment was superior to that of Russia. After we celebrated our victory in the space race we retreated to other, safer, national priorities that redirected space expenditures to Earthly concerns and stranded the dream of human space settlement back out on a limb.

The Tunisian economy was affected by political and financial instability after the 14 January revolution which led to a fall in investment and a rise in the inflation rate. In this paper, we attempt to estimate the nonlinear reaction function of the Tunisian Central Bank (TCB) through modeling the Taylor rule. Needless to say, the Taylor rule is a tool used by the monetary authorities to estimate short-term interest rate when expected inflation rate differs from target inflation rate and expected growth rate of GDP differs from long-term growth rate of GDP. In this paper, we apply STAR model on monthly and quarterly data during the period 2010–2017. Such model enables to take into consideration the asymmetries in the preferences of the TCB in terms of objectives. The empirical results clearly show that the cyclical phenomenon of the Tunisian monetary policy with asymmetrical phases is well-documented. Such asymmetry can be justified by the fact that the TCB shows an unequal aversion towards a recession and an economic expansion or during high inflation and deflation periods.