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This article examines the regulation of labor in the context of artificial intelligence (AI) in Eastern and Southern Africa, with a focus on South Africa and Kenya. It identifies two main concerns: the regulation of labor for African workers engaged in low-end AI work and the sharing of information in authoritarian states and its impact on organized labor and civil society. The article also discusses the lack of regulation for low-end AI work, such as data janitorial work, and the potential biases and negative effects of AI on women in sectors like fintech. It provides country-specific examples, including the use of AI in South Africa's healthcare and transportation systems, as well as the limited attention given to AI by established unions. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of responsible AI practices and addressing regulatory concerns while harnessing the economic potential of AI. In South Africa, the call center industry is at risk of job loss due to AI, and the lack of AI policy and regulation exacerbates this issue. In Kenya, the development of a strong Fintech sector based on AI technologies has led to financial inclusion but also raises concerns about data privacy and protection. The article also highlights the emergence of union-like organizations in Kenya to represent workers in the digital platform economy. Overall, AI regulation in Africa is incomplete, and progress towards informal regulation has been uneven. [Extracted from the article]

This study examines the importance of governance quality of local government in small businesses' future revenue growth forecasting accuracy. Forecasting errors are due to either overestimation or under-estimation. When local governance quality improves, transaction costs are eliminated, boosting firms' actual performance up to the level forecast, thereby reducing overestimation. Also, when local governance quality improves, institutional trust (trust in government) and generalized trust (trust in strangers) improve, lifting the expectation of future performance to the actual level, thereby reducing under-estimation. We investigate these two mechanisms using a set of more than 250,000 small businesses in Vietnam using an instrumental variable approach to control for potential endogeneity. It is found that governance quality enhances forecasting accuracy by reducing under-estimation forecasting errors but, interestingly, without affecting overestimation errors. This paper is one of the first that links governance quality to business forecasting, indicating that local authorities can help local businesses make efficient resource preparation by improving their governance quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Circular economy (CE) is necessary for achieving sustainability goals. Nonetheless, the distillation of CE practices into business operations has been unsatisfactory as firms struggle to transition to CE. There is an increase in studies that have attempted to identify challenges impeding the implementation of CE practices. However, most of these studies focus on technical and external aspects affecting CE, leaving intra-organisational aspects such as organisational learning and knowledge largely unexplored. The latter aspects can play a significant role in CE transitions, and thus warrants further research. To address this research gap, this study draws on lean thinking as an organisational learning system and accentuates knowledge obstacles, seen as wastes, that can stifle a transition to CE. Subsequently, it deploys action-learning research, involving collaboration between researchers and the participants in the action to generate actionable knowledge. The analysis of the findings is used to develop a novel framework including six measures that can be implemented to counteract knowledge obstacles and lay a foundation for a CE transition. The proposed framework can be the basis for further research on lean and intra-organisational aspects that can help firms restructure the current linear mode of production, and thus accelerate a smooth CE transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professors Robert A. Baron and Michael Frese are the joint recipients of the 2024 Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research. Their research contributions have helped establish the disciplinary foundation necessary to explore entrepreneurship from theoretical and applied psychological perspectives. From a theoretical psychological perspective, Professor Baron has repeatedly introduced a disciplinary scaffolding from cognitive psychology, social psychology, and judgment and decision-making psychology to develop the field's socio-cognitive perspective. He has examined entrepreneurship's basic "why" questions: (1) Why do some persons but not others choose to become entrepreneurs? (2) Why do some persons but not others recognize opportunities for new products or services that can be profitably exploited? (3) Why are some entrepreneurs so much more successful than others? From an applied psychological perspective, Professor Frese has examined entrepreneurship as the epitome of a proactive approach to work, advocating the benefits of personal initiative and the need for a self-regulatory approach to performance among both small business owners and employees in transition economies. Continually taking stock of what is known about the psychology of entrepreneurship through reviews and meta-analysis, he and his students have advanced an evidence-based approach to entrepreneurial training and performance in challenging contexts. Together, Professors Baron and Frese have served as ambassadors for the field of entrepreneurship, welcoming an entire generation of micro scholars to explore the entrepreneurial process and the psychology of the entrepreneurs who enact it. Plain English Summary: The winners of the 2024 Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research, Robert Baron and Michael Frese, have improved our understanding of the psychology of entrepreneurship, introducing many of the conceptual tools needed to examine why some persons but not others become entrepreneurs, recognize opportunities, and succeed in entrepreneurship. Professor Baron illuminated the role of affect in the entrepreneurial process, developed the notion of opportunity recognition as pattern detection, and enabled the study of entrepreneurial cognition by articulating the potential of the cognitive perspective as an alternative to the personality traits approach. His efforts have helped facilitate the field's rapid theoretical maturity, equipping it to examine not only its own knowledge frontier but also the disciplinary foundations that it draws upon. Simultaneously, Professor Frese demonstrated the importance of personal initiative and efficient self-regulation in the practice of entrepreneurship in several challenging settings, ranging from transition to developing economies. His tireless efforts to promote an evidence-based approach to the phenomenon and to document its empirical findings have facilitated entrepreneurial training and development while advancing an applied psychological approach to the field of entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forecasting financial distress of corporations is a difficult task in economies undergoing transition, as data are scarce and are highly imbalanced. This research tackles these difficulties by gathering reliable financial distress data in the context of a transition economy and employing the synthetic minority oversampling technique (SMOTE). The study employs seven different models, including linear discriminant analysis (LDA), logistic regression (LR), support vector machines (SVMs), neural networks (NNs), decision trees (DTs), random forests (RFs), and the Merton model, to predict financial distress among publicly traded companies in Vietnam between 2011 and 2021. The first six models use accounting‐based variables, while the Merton model utilizes market‐based variables. The findings indicate that while all models perform fairly well in predicting results for nondelisted firms, they perform somewhat poorly in predicting results for delisted firms in terms of various measures including balanced accuracy, Matthews correlation coefficient (MCC), precision, recall, and F1 score. The study shows that the models that incorporate both Altman's and Ohlson's variables consistently outperform those that only use Altman's or Ohlson's variables in terms of balanced accuracy. Additionally, the study finds that NNs are generally the most effective models in terms of both balanced accuracy and MCC. The most important variable in Altman's variables as well as the combination of Altman's and Ohlson's variables is "reat" (retained earnings on total assets), whereas "ltat" (total liabilities on total assets) and "wcapat" (working capital on total assets) are the most important variables in Ohlson's variables. The study also reveals that in most cases, the models perform better in predicting results for big firms than for small firms and typically better than in good years than for bad years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT In this work, we look at the role played by cultural values on individuals' tax preferences towards contributing to public goods. More specifically, looking at the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Former Soviet Union (FSU), we analyse the role of specific cultural values in the willingness of an individual to pay more taxes with the aim of improving public good provision relating to education, health and support of people in need, as well as to combat climate change. To this purpose, we integrate Hofstede's cultural dichotomy individualism–collectivism with Schwartz's cultural dichotomy embeddedness–autonomy, as both capture similar values regarding group interest and self‐determination. We posit that individual values aligned with the concept of individualism/autonomy will be associated with a greater willingness to contribute towards public good provision. Our analysis exploits data from the third wave of the Life in transition Survey (2015–2016). Our analyses reveal that respondents' willingness to contribute to different types of public and common goods is positively associated with them holding values compatible with individualism/autonomy. These associations are statistically significant and robust to changes in specifications and estimators and to changes in the sample investigated.. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in the social mobility of men in Scotland between the late‐19th and the late‐twentieth century are examined using new individual‐level data from nineteenth‐century censuses, linking records of men aged 0–19 in 1871 to their records in 1901, and then comparing their patterns with the social mobility of men aged 30–49 in 1974 and in 2001 as recorded in social surveys at these dates. The extent of social mobility in the nineteenth century was large. In particular, the social origins of people in the highest classes—the salariat—were very varied, indicating a society that was more open than is sometimes supposed. There was a slow growth in social mobility between then and 2001. In both periods, class inheritance—sons in the same social class as their father—was strongest in the economically declining sectors, which were agriculture and fisheries in 1901 and industry in 1974 and 2001. In the 1901 data, however, the transition to a non‐agricultural economy induced strong outward mobility from agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since gaining academic and financial autonomy in 2018, a number of leading private universities in Kazakhstan have separated teaching and research into two distinct career tracks and implemented outcome-based faculty performance evaluation. This initiative aimed to increase the quality of both teaching and research, boost faculty’s research productivity, and improve the competitiveness of these universities in the local higher education market. However, despite being central to the development of universities, the restructuring of academic careers in Kazakhstan has received little scholarly attention. This study employs the framework of managerialism and collegiality to explore how faculty in research-track and teaching-track positions perceive and respond to the new career structures. Drawing upon the thematic analysis of 25 semi-structured interviews with faculty members working in the country’s top private universities, the study provides nuanced insights into the changing career structures in Kazakhstan by examining faculty experiences related to research and teaching, faculty evaluation and promotion, development of research culture, and work environment. By interpreting the study findings in light of the concepts of managerialism and collegiality, the study offers a fresh perspective on the neoliberal trends in university governance in the context where universities historically lacked autonomy from the state. The paper concludes by discussing the potential implications of the findings for improving the conditions of research-track and teaching-track faculty. The study may be of interest to policymakers, university administrators, and researchers concerned with changes in academic careers in transitional economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate scientists are warning policymakers across the globe that climate change, biodiversity loss and declining ocean health are leading to the collapse of critical ecosystems. Together with the United Nations (UN), they are calling on nations to immediately transition their economies in a sustainable direction. Moreover, in the eyes of scientists as well as the UN, shifting to sustainable development will invariably lead to improvements in social development and human health. Focusing on the Caribbean, which comprises one of 36 global hotspots, this study hypothesizes that higher levels of intentional economic/regulatory policy development, will showcase stronger sustainability results across the SDGs that deal with climate change, ocean health and biodiversity loss (SDGs 13–15). Utilizing Cuba, the Dominican Republic (DR) and Jamaica as test cases, this study employs the process-tracing method to analyze major national planning documents to assess each nation's approach towards sustainability, in response to major UN initiatives during the MDG and SDG-eras. Afterwards, various quantitative assessment instruments are utilized to measure the sustainability progress of each nation. Overall, there is modest evidence that Cuba deployed the highest levels of regulation and enjoyed the greatest sustainability gains and scores, relatively to DR and Jamaica. As far as the DR, with low levels of regulation, and Jamaica, with moderate levels, the picture was mixed with recent data suggesting that Jamaica may be beginning to outgain the DR. As such, the results of this study give modest support to those who believe strong levels of state intervention are necessary to achieve sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews and analyzes the process of the implementation of the circular economy in the European Union (EU) and Spain, and its links to the low-carbon transition. The EU implementation of the circular economy went through several stages. Since the adoption of the first action plan in 1993, the links between the circular economy and carbon transition goals have become intertwined. Recently, the EU approved the framework of new monitoring measures and indicators for the circular economy. The adopted actions have involved the adaptation of European legislation at the national level. Spain has participated in this process since 2017, when the Circular Economy Pact was signed. The subsequent approval of the Spanish Strategy for a Circular Economy in 2020 was developed, considering a close relationship between decarbonization and the circular economy. Lately, the circular economy implementation has been strengthened with the strategic project for economic recovery and transformation, linked to the recovery of COVID-19, and the roadmap for the sustainable management of mineral raw materials, with both documents including actions directly related to transforming the energy system. Data show that Spain has made significant improvements in the circular economy transition. However, Spain's vulnerability to externalities is greater than that of the EU as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How has the changing structure of the economy during the transition in Central and Eastern Europe resulted in reskilling, deskilling, or upskilling of the labor force? Using data from the Life in Transition Survey and survival analysis we find that the scale of changes in the skill-sets has been surprisingly limited. Instead, the transition has resulted in a generational change: workers from declining sectors left employment, while the young cohorts took up the jobs in the emerging sectors. Furthermore, to a large extent, pre-retirement exits can be explained by a lack of relevant skills in the older generation that were necessary for the open market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transition to a neoliberal economy that has been happening in Northern Canada has promised increasing control over resources to residents. Yet, the neoliberal approach carries significant risk, especially as it attempts to extract profit from failed and abandoned public projects—what Anna Tsing calls "salvage accumulation". In Churchill, Manitoba, the primary economic drivers—shipping and tourism—have turned the town as a place into a particular type of salvage commodity. Built upon abandoned infrastructure, non‐human nature, the collapse of other industries, and the changing climate, these industries rely upon the overall place image of Churchill to bring non‐market goods into the commodity process. This process removes local control of place image (and experience) yet still embeds the risk of the venture in the location itself. Salvage accumulation as an entrepreneurial practice unequally distributes the risk onto residents while allowing the profits to accrue elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether, and what kind of, regional knowledge has a stimulating effect on circular economy (CE) innovation by companies. We thus add to the literature on regional knowledge spillovers, which has rarely focussed explicitly on the CE. For the empirical study, we create econometric regressions based on a representative dataset with extensive information on the CE activities of about 1400 Swiss firms. The results confirm that regional knowledge is important for the implementation of CE innovations. However, geographical distance and the quality of the knowledge must be taken into account, that is, companies primarily learn from the best. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the effects of green innovation (GI) on financial performance under both accounting and market‐based perspectives in European Union (EU) listed non‐financial firms. In addition, this study explores whether the R&D investments and the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) disclosure play a mediating role over the association between GI and accounting‐based and market‐based financial performance, respectively. Based on a sample of 526 firms over the period 2012–2022, we find that GI is negatively associated with accounting‐based financial performance and positively associated with market‐based financial performance. We further find that GI impacts on accounting‐based financial performance via the channel of R&D investments and on market‐based financial performance via the channel of ESG disclosure. This study provides useful contributions to prior research by encouraging the adoption of an integrated perspective when evaluating potential effects of GI. This study can also assist managers in better preparing for the challenges of implementing GI by leveraging the ESG disclosure. It also advices to investors to carefully assess the more complex impact of GI on financial performance of the firm within their capital allocation decision‐making process. In the same vein, it offers some insights to policy makers interested in facilitating the transition to a sustainable economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of the paper is to understand the role of workers' bargaining for the labor share in transition economies. We rely on a share-capital schedule, whereby workers' bargaining power is represented as a move off the schedule. Quantitative indicators of bargaining power are supplemented with self-constructed qualitative indices derived from textual information describing the legal environment enabling bargaining in each country. Due to multiple data constraints, we employ a cross-sectional empirical model estimated using instrumental variables (IV) methods, where former unionization rates and the time since the adoption of the ILO Collective Bargaining Convention serve as instruments. The sample comprises 23 industrial branches across 69 countries, including 28 transition economies. In general, we find the stronger bargaining power to influence higher labor share, when the former is measured either quantitatively or qualitatively. Conversely, higher bargaining power is associated with a lower labor share in transition economies. This is likely a matter of delayed response to wage pushes, a function of the structural transformation of transition economies, and reconciled with the increasing role of MNCs which did not confront the workers' power rise per se, but introduced automation and changed market structure amid labor market flexibilization, which eventually deferred bargaining power's positive effect on labor share. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on imprinting theory, this study examines how organisational imprinting, i.e. imprinting with the research institute background, impacts innovation of enterprises from restructured research institutes in subsequent periods. Using a sample of Chinese listed companies during 2000–2020, this study uses firm random effects and industry / year fixed effects models to test the hypotheses. Our study finds that organisational imprinting positively influences corporate innovation. Furthermore, CEO’s ideological imprinting weakens the impact of organisational imprinting on corporate innovation. Finally, as the institutional development improves and equity checks and balances strengthen, the negative impact of CEO’s ideological imprinting on the relationship between organisational imprinting and corporate innovation will be weakened. This study contributes to the literature on the imprinting theory by predicting the impact of organisational imprinting on innovation using a consistent and integrative framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines whether capital account liberalization is beneficial for inducing foreign investment and positively affects allocative efficiency and economic performance in Korea. Using panel data on Korean industries and firms from 1991 to 2019, we confirm that capital account liberalization is positively associated with foreign investment. This effect is more pronounced for industries with high external financing dependence. Additionally, we conduct a firm-level analysis and find that capital account liberalization improves capital allocative efficiency, indicating that it helps firms with high growth opportunities to make more investment. Furthermore, changes in allocative efficiency attributable to capital account liberalization positively affect firms' future financial performance. Overall, our study highlights the importance of capital account liberalization in attracting foreign capital, improving allocative efficiency, and enhancing the economic performance of firms in a transition economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article contributes to an ongoing debate in comparative political economy on the integration of the demand and supply sides in growth model (GM) analysis. In particular, the article focuses on the characteristics of export-led GMs in emerging economies and addresses questions of GM change. The article makes two contributions. First, for capturing differences between countries that adopt export-led growth, the article introduces the concept of a sectoral locus of growth. Second, the article links GM change to the interaction of politics and sectoral transformations that a country accumulated during the preceding GM. The article presents empirical support for its arguments from the cases of Estonia and Lithuania, which both recovered from the Global Financial Crisis by shifting from debt-led to export-led growth based, however, on different sectoral loci of growth: exports of low-quality manufacturing and services in Lithuania and exports of dynamic services in Estonia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transition from linear economy to circular economy (CE), which can reduce natural resource depletion and minimize waste generation, has become a worldwide trend. The current challenge for Vietnam is to identify the key areas for the transition, given that financial resources are limited and that a detailed and comprehensive accounting of waste generation and collection for decision-making is lacking. This study aims at filling the gap by analyzing the waste flows throughout the supply chains and identifying the key areas for the CE transition in Vietnam. The 2018 updated IO table is used as an econometric tool to identify direct and indirect waste collection intensity for all types of waste. The result shows that in terms of waste intensity, among primary sectors, Coke and the group of Mining and Extraction industries (S4-S7) have significant room for reducing waste. In terms of IO interaction, collection rate and recyclable potential of waste, among secondary sectors, Paper production and services (S11), Plastics (S16), and Building materials (S17) should be prioritized for the CE transition in Vietnam. Having a long supply chain and meeting all priority criteria, Plastics is identified as one of the key industries to be selected to exemplify managerial implications to show which solutions/innovations should be proposed in each circular economy period to improve sustainable efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In transitional economies, contract farming is widely recognized as a means for addressing numerous market failures affecting small farmers. Reviewing the scholarship on contract farming, we show that its traditional understandings have been framed by the narratives of transaction cost economics and power dynamics. We critically evaluate these narratives and demonstrate how stakeholder theory, with its relational understanding of business, offers a more comprehensive understanding of contract farming. We argue that a stakeholder theory perspective underscores the trust-based and collaborative nature of successful contract farming arrangements. It highlights the importance of informal and moral stakeholder relationships that compensate for the limitations of weak enforcement mechanisms and inadequate legal frameworks in transitional economies. This way, a stakeholder theory perspective on contract farming highlights its strategic management and business ethics dimensions, offering valuable guidance for cultivating successful stakeholder relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For a sustainable landscape of local economies, many researchers have emphasized the importance of field-oriented differentiation in government policies. In particular, the Paris Agreement, based on the bottom-up approach, aims to maximize the participation of all economic agents, in contrast to the top-down approach of the Tokyo Protocol. In response to these global paradigm shifts in the local landscape, local governments in Korea have made significant efforts to adapt to sustainable development during the pilot phase of emission trading scheme (ETS), during the period from 2015 to 2020. This study evaluates the performance of these local government policies in the transition to a carbon-zero economy. Using the general non-radial directional distance function (GNDDF), we found that Gyeongsang Province demonstrated enhanced environmental total factor productivity (TFP) during the pilot project, whereas the Seoul metropolitan area lagged behind due to a lack of governance. As the economic center of Korea, Seoul showed poor environmental performance because of the arbitrary elimination of green belt areas and unchecked land development, resulting in environmental degradation, a trend common in many developing countries facing climate adaptation challenges. To address these urbanization issues, this study concludes that a balanced approach combining stricter regulations with market-oriented promotional incentives is essential for optimizing the transition of local economies to a sustainable landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union (EU) integration process of transition economies from Southeast Europe has faced significant political and economic challenges. Two decades in, these challenges persist, leading to slower-than-expected economic development and fostering local frustration, nationalism, populism, and migration flows. This article aims to disentangle the institutional complexities in these regions. Using an exploratory, inductive approach based on 30 qualitative interviews across three Southeast European countries, the research conducts a multi-level analysis. The findings reveal that complex institutional settings are characterised by institutional voids and asymmetries stemming from the transition process and EU integration. The perception of the overall institutional setup is central, negatively influenced by institutional voids and asymmetries but positively impacted by participatory law-making approaches. Additionally, competing institutional logics on the micro-level influence companies' perspective. This article provides insights into the institutional challenges faced by companies in transition economies, crucial for policy formulation and development projects in the context of EU integration. The key takeaway emphasises the importance of well-designed participatory policymaking, highlighting the need for careful preparation and a foundation of trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

E‐government presents one of the utmost opportunities and challenges for development and offers solutions to tackle corruption. Corruption generates even erratic impacts in developing and transition economies. Developing and transition economies can dramatically benefit from related technological innovation uptake that would spur public sector transparency and sustainability. The intersections of these areas have not received full academic consideration and appear to be under‐explored. In addition to a review of the existing literature on these topics, this study applies extensive reliance on existing metrics and indexes, including those developed by the World Bank and Transparency International. By accentuating relevant and recent findings, the results of this study can be used for a better conceptualization of national or regional growth and development strategies based on the nexus between corruption and e‐government advances among developing and transition countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transition economies, on the one hand, grapple with a communist legacy; on the other hand, they seek the optimal institutionalization for knowledge generation, dissemination, and commercialization to compete globally. However, the incumbent knowledge of certain aspects of their innovation systems remains very limited. In particular, intra-organizational cultural relics of the past and their inter-organizational and, consequently, systemic implications require research. This study examines how interaction barriers among universities, industry, and government, stemming from intra-organizational cultures, impact structural change in the innovation system of Azerbaijan. Utilizing the TH model, interviews with 59 participants revealed that a "Statist" TH model in Azerbaijan hinders organic cultural development within organizations, leading to interaction issues among TH actors. Moreover, problems in inter-organizational communication pave the way for a systemic failure that necessitates government intervention, strengthening the "Statist" TH model. The findings increase the context sensitivity of the TH framework by exploring an understudied context and provide valuable insights relevant to other transition economies facing similar institutional legacies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Purpose – This article examines potential impacts of increase in non-tax government revenues and public expenses on corruption for 11 transition economies in the Central and Eastern Europe. Design/methodology/approach – The empirical analysis uses yearly panel datasets and employs second-generation panel data models which take cross-sectional dependency and slope heterogeneity into account. Findings – The empirical results reveal the fact that there is a strong linkage between public expenses and corruption and a weak linkage between non-tax revenue collection and corruption in the transition economies. We perform the same analysis by using data sets from G-7 countries but do not notice any linkages between those variables. Research limitations/implications – The research topic requires further discussion on constitutional political economy to digest the empirical findings. Thus, an extended version combined with political economic approach might be useful. Practical implications – Through economic transitions, there might be a linkage between public expenditures and corruption index. Thus, public spending might be controlled by using constitutional economics policies. Originality/value – This paper is the first empirical work in the literature, which examines if there is a linkage between corruption and public expenditures and government tax income structure by using panel data sets. Moreover, it compares the results from transition countries with those of G-7 countries and provides certain policy suggestions in the context of constitutional economics.

A major objective of economic development or growth is poverty reduction, and it is especially a high priority in developing, low-income economies such as Vietnam. Vietnam is an important transition open high-growth economy since Doi Moi in 1987 and with increasing global geopolitical influence in South East Asia but with concerning high poverty incidence. While poverty is recognised internationally as a multidimensional incidence with interdependent relationships among the country's many activities in the sense of Marshall or Haavelmo, rigorous studies with focus on these multidirectional causality issues for Vietnam are currently very limited. The paper addresses these issues by introducing an endogeneity or simultaneous multi-equation modelling approach with World Bank and other international data and system estimation to studying the growth-poverty relationship with Vietnam as a case study. The objective is to explore empirical evidence for this causal relationship with an economy-wide transmission mechanism and with common causality postulates for the improvement of sustainable growth and poverty reduction strategic policy analysis. The main findings show growth-poverty circular causality and the strong impact of growth on poverty reduction and of trade openness on growth. The approach advances the literature, and the findings are also a useful guide for aid consultants, economic researchers, policy makers, nongovernment organizations (NGOs), and official development assistance (ODA) donors in Vietnam in particular and in developing countries in general.

Whether firms in transition economies undertake corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an important research topic in business ethics. Applying the middle-status conformity perspective, this study uses listed companies in the transition economy of China from 2010 to 2020 to assess the influence of social status on CSR conformity. The empirical findings revealed an inverted U-shaped relationship between social status and CSR conformity. That is, firms with low- or high-level status were less inclined to adopt CSR practices than the firms with a more middling status. Moreover, performance expectation gaps strengthened, while managerial ability flattened, the aforementioned inverted U-shaped relationship. This study sheds new light on the complicated motives for firms in transition economies to adopt CSR practices and further substantiates the boundary conditions of the curvilinear relationship between social status and CSR conformity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractWe analyze developmental strategies in various sectors in countries with underdeveloped economies and their implications for North Korea. We investigate the development plans of four underdeveloped transitional economies during the 1990s using the World Bank’s engagement reports. We find an emphasis on energy, transportation, and agriculture in those countries, while development strategies in North Korea focused on ICT in addition to energy, transportation, and agriculture during the same period. Statistical regression analysis reveals that ICT has the greatest potential impact on economic growth. Historically, domestic and external constraints have limited the performance of North Korea’s ICT policy. However, we recommend that ICT should have high priority in North Korea’s strategic development plan for the following reasons: the socio-economic environment is changing; ICT service trade across borders has been increasing; the population is aging; and our analysis identifies disruptive [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canada has committed to establishing a socially equitable, environmentally sustainable and economically viable blue economy but has not yet determined a sustainability standard that industry must meet to be included in this aspirational blue economy. For the blue economy to be an effective, sustainable alternative to the regular ocean economy, clear criteria for ocean business must be established to reduce the risk of blue washing. The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide an ideal theoretical basis from which to develop a marine sector standard for blue economy industry. Using a criteria-based approach, this work selected relevant SDG targets that can guide Canada's ocean industry in the transition to a blue economy. Through a stepwise process, the selected targets were further contextualized to the company level resulting in a blue economy capacity assessment framework (BECF) that offers four blue economy industry aims and associated enabling mechanisms. The BECF practically links the theory of the SDGs to a desired outcome, providing a method for an ocean-based company to assess its contribution to all three dimensions of Canada's blue economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In May 1954, Joy Manufacturing Company of Pittsburgh in collaboration with Fortune magazine commissioned seven celebrated artists to create visual interpretations of its latest mining equipment—the continuous miner machine for automated coal excavation. The paintings and prints were first published in Fortune magazine and, a few months later, gifted to the Carnegie Institute when they also began a frenetic tour and publicity campaign around the country. The Continuous Miner series of paintings and prints brings into focus how the Pittsburgh region has been shaped both materially and culturally through a nexus of extractive economies, philanthropic capital, and art institutions and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to ascertain how cluster organisations have been fostering green transformation in Poland. Design/methodology/approach: This paper adopts a multiple case study approach. Data collection methods involved in-depth interviews with cluster organisation managers and researchers to identify support measures for green transformation and to investigate the factors influencing their actions as well as a comprehensive analysis of documents, including cluster organisations' strategies. Findings: Cluster organisations manage and participate in actions that create favourable conditions for pursuing low-carbon and circular economy ventures. They not only assist their members in overcoming obstacles related to green transformation but also engage non-members – which can lead to spillovers reaching beyond their borders. Their engagement takes place across all phases of the green transformation process. Research limitations/implications: For various reasons, the research was designed as qualitative to understand the opinions and experiences of various actors engaged in green transformation within cluster organisations' ecosystems. The key factor influencing this decision stems from the fact that knowledge of the involvement of cluster organisations in supporting green transformation still needs to be completed and scattered. The limitations of the study include limited access to information and the fact that qualitative research allows for a certain amount of subjectivity, and the results should be generalised carefully. Moreover, the interviews were carried out with a non-random sample of participants. Another limitation of the study is related to biased views, which could have been shared by interviewees acting as representatives of the studied cluster organisations. Practical implications: Cluster organisations have emerged as drivers of circular transition by promoting sustainable practices such as material recycling, biological recovery and parts harvesting. These initiatives contribute to reducing waste, conserving resources, and minimising the environmental footprint of industries. These organisations can be active agents of transformation, orchestrating collaborative efforts that have a far-reaching impact on industries and economies. Originality/value: This is one of the first and most comprehensive studies on the role of cluster organisations in Poland in supporting green transformation. This paper identifies and systematises the actions undertaken to provide a clear understanding of the internal processes within cluster organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the role of the Spa Health Resort as the Economic Engine of the Municipal Business Ecosystem. Usualy a single larger enterprise drives the local economy at the municipal level, and in the case of Serbia that company has often been from heavy industries. For many transitional economies, local communities have been supported by the main municipal organization, identified in the literature under the terms economic engine, anchor, driver, powerhouse, catalyst, hub or lifeline. Most literature defines it as a company that plays a pivotal role in propelling municipal economic growth and development, acting as the source of economic stability and resilience within the municipality. Our research is based on dataset gathered from the Serbian Chamber of Commerce, extracted from the annual financial and business reports of 80,737 companies and sole entrepreneurs in Serbia from 2013 to 2022 and supplemented by detailed insights into business reports of hypothesized economic engine. Our findings support the hypothesis that Specialized Rehabilitation Hospital Banja Koviljaca's acts as economic engine for the region. Conclusion is that investment in balneo industry returns mutlifold benefits of different categories to the community and the state [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research objective is defined as the identification and confirmation of empirical relationships between shadow banking activities and economic development in developing and transitional economies to establish a theoretical basis for minimizing potential risks associated with shadow banking. The methodological design is based on a quantitative approach, implemented through correlation-regression analysis and ARIMA forecasting methods. The research findings confirm Hypothesis 1: China's shadow banking is closely interconnected with the country's economic development. However, Hypothesis 2 (the reduction of shadow banking in China contributes to per capita GDP growth) is only supported for specific structural elements of shadow banking that contribute to economic overheating. In contrast, for other structural elements, such as entrusted loans, a strong direct correlation exists, promoting a positive impact of shadow banking on the country's economic development. This highlights the need for a highly balanced state policy to minimize shadow banking risks. The research results can be valuable for professionals in public administration and academic researchers, particularly in terms of shaping future research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the notions of an integrated approach, this study investigates the roles of people, plan, and process related activities in strategy implantation success in organizational contexts. Data were collected from 307 top- and mid-level managers working in public and private sector organizations in Kazakhstan. The findings revealed a significant influence of people-, plan-, and process-related activities on strategy implementation success and competitive advantages. However, the study found insignificant moderating roles of hierarchy culture and transactional leadership in strategy implementation and competitive advantage relationships. The findings reiterate the importance of an integrated approach in strategy implementation success and provide guidelines to initiate appropriate people, plan and process related activities in future strategic management practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - This study aims to explore the potential mediating role of differentiation strategy in the relationship between market orientation and restaurant performance based on balanced scorecard approaches. Methodology - Based on the Vietnamese Yellow Pages database, a sample of 144 small restaurants in Vietnam was analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling. Findings - The results indicate that differentiation strategy fully mediates the relationship between market orientation and restaurant performance based on balanced scorecard approaches. Originality of the research - This study contributes significantly to the field by deepening our understanding of the underlying mechanisms of differentiation strategy on the market orientation-performance links. Focusing on Vietnam, a collectivistic and transitional economy, enhances our comprehension of the influence of market orientation and differentiation strategy on the performance of small restaurants in these distinctive environments. The study provides robust evidence supporting the positive effects of differentiation strategy on performance by using balanced scorecard approaches. It advances the theoretical development of the resource-based view by using a contingency perspective to empirically demonstrate how organisations can sustain competitive advantages by leveraging their resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Whether command‐control environmental regulation can play a positive role in circumstances of imperfect market incentive‐based environmental regulation remains rarely explored. Using the difference‐in‐difference model, we find that command‐control environmental regulation can significantly improve the environmental performance of heavily polluting firms. This result still holds after a sequence of robustness tests. The analysis of the economic mechanism indicates that the new environmental protection law mainly contributes positively to the environmental performance of high‐polluting firms by improving the quality of their environmental investments and pollution treatment disclosures, and by reducing the government subsidies they receive to improve the environmental performance of high‐polluting firms. Meanwhile, the new environmental protection law has a more pronounced impact on heavily polluting enterprises in the eastern region, with imperfect internal control, stronger environmental regulations, more distant political connections, greater pressure on regional GDP growth and weaker industry competition. This paper confirms the effectiveness of the new environmental law in improving environmental performance of heavily polluting enterprises in pursuit of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals, and provides new evidence to test the weak Porter hypothesis in the context of transition economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effect of electoral competition on corruption, rent-seeking and informality remains poorly understood, especially in the context of post-communist economies. In a context where there is little moral value attached to law abidance, businesses or households that engage in informal activities might perceive a tolerant government as "magnanimous" and might be persuaded to support it in upcoming elections. In this paper, we investigate the case of Albania, a post-communist transition economy, characterized by high levels of corruption. The objective of this paper is to obtain insight into fiscal enforcement during elections, hence to further our understanding of the relationship between corruption, clientelism, informality and elections in the context of a transition/post-communist country. To this end, we report complementary quantitative and qualitative analysis suggesting that the incumbent deliberately lowers monitoring of enforcement vigilance before elections (e.g., through lower/fewer fines) and yielding insights into how such behaviour effects come about. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 'Embracing the Brave New World: A Response to Demekas and Grippa', a response to our article 'Walking a Tightrope: Financial Regulation, Climate Change, and the Transition to a Low-Carbon Economy', both published in the Journal of Financial Regulation, Gruenewald, Knijp, Schoenmaker, and van Tilburg claim that climate risk is a clear and present danger to financial stability that justifies imposing higher capital requirements on supervised firms. Until the current prudential risk framework is revised to fully capture climate risk, they advocate ad hoc measures, such as adjustments to risk weights, which, they believe, would have the desired effect. In this article, we argue that these claims are misguided. Given the nature of climate risk, risk assessment models cannot provide a reliable basis for calibrating capital requirements. On the basis of the evidence, prudential tools would have only a negligible impact on the transition. And the idea of adjusting risk weights for climate exposures has been abandoned—for good reasons. Ultimately, there is nothing financial regulation can do about the energy transition that an appropriately designed carbon tax cannot do better. Central banks and financial regulators should resist the pressure to take on additional responsibilities that are essentially political and that they cannot properly discharge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Neolithic (i.e., farming and stockbreeding) spread from the Near East across Europe since about 9000 years before the common era (BCE) until about 4000 yr BCE. It followed two main routes, namely a sea route along the northern Mediterranean coast and an inland one across the Balkans and central Europe. It is known that the dispersive behavior of farmers depended on geography, with longer movements along the Mediterranean coast than along the inland route. In sharp contrast, here we show that for both routes the percentage of farmers who interbred with hunter-gatherers and/or acculturated one of them was strikingly the same (about 3.6%). Therefore, whereas the dispersive behavior depended on the proximity to the Mediterranean sea, the interaction behavior (incorporation of hunter-gatherers) did not depend on geographical constraints but only on the transition in the subsistence economy (from hunting and gathering to farming) and its associated way of life. These conclusions are reached by analyzing the clines of haplogroup K, which was virtually absent in hunter-gatherers and the most frequent mitochondrial haplogroup in early farmers. Similarly, the most frequent Y-chromosome Neolithic haplogroup (G2a) displays an inland cline that agrees with the percentage of interbreeding reported above. The Neolithic transition spread across Europe via a coastal, southern route and an inland, central route. Here, the authors use haplogroup clines and space-time simulations to show that interbreeding between farmers and hunter-gatherers was the same along both routes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the new normal, enhancing digitalization to empower the transition to a green economy is a critical instrument to promote China's economic transition from virtual to real sectors. It is also a necessary approach to realize the high-quality economic development in China. Based on panel data of 282 prefecture-level and above cities in China from 2011 to 2020, the study employs panel regression, spatial metrics, and other methods to explore the impact of urban digitization on the transition to a green economy from the dimensions of direct and indirect transmission mechanism, as well as heterogeneous effects. The findings reveal that digitalization not only exerts a positive effect on the green transition but also generates significant spatial spillover effects. The influence of digitization level on green economic transition exhibits notable regional heterogeneity. Advancement in digitization can foster green economic transition by catalyzing green technological innovation. While digitalization contributes to the green transition by optimizing the structure of energy consumption, its mediating effect is relatively modest. Therefore, it is essential to fortify the supply of digital innovative technology and strengthen digitalization and green technology innovation to jointly facilitate the transition to a green economy. This necessitates the implementation of differentiated development paths for digitization-enabled green economic transition in various regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Africa is an energy-intensive developing country in Africa and ranked as the 1st and 14th emitter of greenhouse gas (GHG) in Africa and the world, respectively. The abundance and availability of coal in South Africa make it the mainstay primary source of energy contributing 56% of national total GHG emissions. This paper focused on the duo of energy generation and emission associated with coal processing and utilization in South Africa, and the urgent need to advance coal processing technologies marked by high carbon footprints in consonance with the sustainable development goals. Different gasification techniques and their performances have been compiled and discussed. The economic, environmental impact, energetic, and exergetic characteristics of existing hydrogen production technologies for renewable and non-renewable energy sources have been examined along with hydrogen production from plasma gasification of coal. Hydrogen production via coal or coal/biomass plasma gasification technology (nuclear-, wind-, PV solar-, and concentrated solar power-driven) in addition to carbon capture technology for transforming the captured CO 2 into value-added products appears to be the most viable option to considerably reduce emissions and meet the energy demand of South Africa. This proposed technology can be pivotal to achieving a low-carbon economy (medium-term) and transition to hydrogen economy (long-term) as championed by the global sustainable development agenda. Conclusively, hydrogen (stored in different forms e.g., liquid hydrogen, ammonia, and organic hydride) seems to find more applications (in the space industry, transport, energy storage, defense industry, etc.) than coal owing to its immediate use in distribution/demand centers and remote areas. • Coal is the primary energy source of South Africa and key driver of national CO 2 emissions. • Traditional coal gasification technologies are marked by high CO 2 emissions. • Coal plasma gasification technology is a viable option for low-carbon energy economy. • Hydrogen production via coal or coal/biomass plasma gasification technology leads to zero-carbon economy. • This immensely supports the drive towards attaining the sustainable development goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the increasing recognition of the potential of Circular Economy (CE) strategies, their effective application to decarbonize the construction value chain faces multiple challenges. Ambiguity surrounding CE, stemming from a lack of clarity on actionable strategies, is a common concern. Existing studies lack a holistic approach for systematically integrating CE principles throughout the construction value chain, resulting in a scarcity of information on how to practically adopt CE within projects. This research aims to accelerate CE adoption by creating a value chain-structured portfolio of CE strategies and analyzing the implementation of such strategies in actual projects. To this end, a portfolio of CE strategies was compiled in a value chain-based-structure, which was evaluated against 71 US-based projects of exemplary sustainability criteria to scrutinize their successful implementation. Additionally, the study examined the interconnections and network dynamics among these strategies through association rule mining, network, and statistical analysis techniques. Results revealed a pronounced focus on strategies within the design, construction, and end-of-life value chain phases, with significant gaps existing in areas related to project financing, planning, logistics, property market, and operations. "Requiring sustainability certifications, standards, or labels" emerged as the most pivotal strategy in terms of frequency and number of associations, highlighting owners' significant role in CE transition. This study contributes to the body of knowledge by providing practical guidance and insights for industry practitioners in terms of actionable CE strategies and their state of implementation, ultimately fostering a more sustainably built environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatial spillover of R&D activities in transitional economies depends not only on distorted institutional gains caused by government policies, but also, to a large extent, on market-oriented corrections. This paper estimates the effect of policy-induced distortions and market-oriented corrections on R&D spatial spillovers using dynamic panel data from Chinese industry between 2000 and 2019. It is found that policy-induced distortion hinders the diffusion of elements of innovation into efficient R&D spaces and it reduces the spatial correlation between innovation elements. In addition, it does not have a significant effect on the improvement of R&D spatial spillover. Market-oriented correction optimizes the regional spatial distribution of factors involved in innovation and has a significant positive effect on R&D spatial spillover. The potential policy implications of the above conclusions lie in the improvement of the amount of R&D spatial spillover. This also includes the elimination of the fetters of policy-induced distortions and it depends to a great extent on the coordination of the development of regional innovation through the improvement of market-oriented innovation mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The strife for more incredible and sustainable human development is often associated with compromised environmental standards. Early growth may increase pollutant emissions that can be regulated later. Human development, the main ingredient of sustainable development, may increase emissions or reduce them through technological improvements. The emerging seven (E7) economies provide an intriguing case to test the direct and indirect impact of human development on CO2 emissions to confirm the nexus in the early stage of industrialization. The study applies the structural equation approach to investigate the relationship between the human development index (HDI), green technological innovations, and CO2 emissions in E7 economies over the period 1990–2021. Our findings indicate that HDI increases consumption-based CO2 emissions both directly and indirectly, where even the mediating impact of innovations is also positive, thereby confirming the fact that HDI and innovations both may have deteriorated implications for environmental performance at the earlier stages of development. The study findings imply that the policymakers of the transition economies need to rethink their policy choices regarding controlling pollution and safeguarding the environment. The study's conclusion has essential ramifications for reducing pollution through enacting HDI and supporting innovations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the relationship between bank competition and stability within a transitioning economy, focusing on Vietnamese banks from 2007 to 2018. Set against the backdrop of a transformative banking landscape post the collapse of the socialist bloc, the article utilises the Lerner Index to measure bank competition. The Z-score is used as a measure of bank stability. Panel fixed effects and difference GMM estimations suggest that heightened competition correlates positively with bank stability. Notably, these dynamics hold true even after omitting state-owned banks, signifying that government-controlled banks do not exclusively drive the observed relationships. Policymakers, hence, face the crucial task of balancing liberalisation efforts with safeguarding bank stability and emphasising the need for robust risk management and strong corporate governance in transitioning economies dominated by public ownership. This article thus offers valuable insights for policy refinement in similarly poised nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Household food consumption (HFC) has considerable implications for sustainability which need to be assessed for effective mitigation interventions. The related extant research focuses on high‐income countries and selected diets, while comprehensive sustainability assessments of HFC in developing and transitional economies remain insufficient. This represents a critical knowledge gap given the rapidly increasing patterns of food consumption in non‐western households. This study conducts a holistic sustainability assessment of HFC in rural and urban China based on the nationally established sustainability assessment indicator system (SAIS) and a comprehensive assessment index (CAI, measured on a scale ranging from 0 to 100 points), as previously detailed in literature. The determinants of overall sustainability of HFC are identified via regression analysis. The results indicate that food consumption is characterized by lower economic sustainability but higher environmental sustainability. 99.5% of households are either relatively sustainable (i.e., in the assessment they score 50–75 points) or relatively unsustainable (25–50 points) while the remaining 0.5% of households are sustainable (75–100 points) or unsustainable (0–25 points). Sustainability has considerable inter‐monthly and spatial variations; it also varies across household income and size. Household income has a significant positive impact (p <.01), while household size, the presence of household members trying to lose weight, and COVID‐19 exert significant negative impacts (p <.1, p <.05, p <.01) on overall sustainability. The study provides a scientifically grounded reference to enhance sustainability of HFC in China. The methodological framework developed and validated in this study can inform the design of future research on sustainability of HFC conducted in other countries and regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]