Global Industrial Development: Insights From the Distribution Dynamics Approach for the Post Covid Era.

The spread of COVID-19 has significantly dampened global economic activity and has also wreaked havoc on the industrial sector. Understanding the disparity and convergence of global industrial outputs is important in assessing the effectiveness of concurrent development policies. This study investigates the spatial distribution of global industrial output to unveil the disparity in industrial development and the feasibility of achieving convergence over time. Stochastic kernel analyses are carried out for national regimes to study the overall pattern of industrialization for all the countries in the world. Countries are then classified into different groups to further analyse the geographical and income effects on industrial development. The results show that disparity between the Global North and the Global South will enlarge further in the future. Industrial development in the Global North will continue to prosper, while the industrial output in many countries in the Global South just cannot reach the global average.

Global Inequality in Service Sector Development: Trend and Convergence

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a huge impact on global service sector. In the pandemic background, to understand the disparity in service sector outputs at the global level is crucial for assessing the effectiveness of development policies in different countries. This study investigate the global service sector and it aims to investigate the transitional dynamics of the output from the service sector by adopting stochastic kernel analyses. Distribution dynamics analyses are carried out for all the countries in the world. The data are then divided into different regional and income groups to evaluate the impacts of geographical location and income on the development of the service sector. The results show that the Global North will continue to make greater strides, while the output capacity in many Global South countries struggles to reach the global average. Moreover, it is shown that countries with higher per capita income will perform better in the development of their service sector than those with low per capita income, thereby highlighting the persistence of global inequality. Finally, this study shows that the Sub-Saharan Africa region and the South Asia region both are very important in the alleviation of global inequality.

COVID-19 and Regional Income Inequality in China.

This study investigates the impact of COVID-19 and social distancing policies on regional income inequality. We base our study on a sample of 295 prefecture (and above) cities in 31 provinces in China. A distribution dynamics approach is employed to reveal the trend and movement of disposable income per capita in each city before the COVID-19 pandemic, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in the period when the COVID-19 was under the control. The findings reveal significant negative economic consequences of the COVID-19 in the first quarter of 2020 and show that most cities will converge to a level of disposable income which is much less than the Pre-COVID level if the COVID pandemic persists. Regional income inequality has intensified in the cities that have a longer duration of stringent social distancing policies during the COVID-19 pandemic and disappeared in the cities with policies of short duration. Disposable income per capita for urban residents recovered quickly when the transmission of coronavirus was effectively contained; and yet the impact of the pandemic on rural residents remains unresolved, if not intensified. This study demonstrates a significant divergence of the trend of disposable income across cities with different durations of social distancing policies and between urban and rural residents. It also highlights the importance of stringent social distancing policies in containing the spread of virus in a short time and calls for special policy attention for rural regions in the recovery from the COVID-19.