Analysis of Road Transport Response to COVID-19 Pandemic in Nigeria and its Policy Implications.

The COVID-19 pandemic presents a serious global health challenge to humanity in recent times. It has caused fundamental disruptions to the global transportation system, supply chains, and trade. The impact on the transport sector resulting from lockdowns has led to huge losses in revenue. At the moment there are limited studies of the road transport sector response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper fills this gap using Nigeria as a case study area. A mixed method involving both qualitative and quantitative research was employed. Principal Component Analysis and Multiple Criteria Analysis were used to analyze the data. The results suggest that road transport operators strongly (90.7%) believe that 51 adopted new technologies/innovations, processes, and procedures will keep them and passengers safe from the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria. A breakdown shows that observing the lockdown directive is perceived by road transport operators as the most effective response to the pandemic. The breakdown continues in descending order thus: COVID-19 safety protocols, environmental sanitation, and promotion of hygiene, information technology, facemask, and social distancing. Others are public enlightenment, palliative, inclusion, and mass media. This indicates that non-pharmaceutical measures are very effective in the fight against the pandemic. This finding leverages support for the application of non-pharmaceutical guidelines in containing the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria.

Were Consumers Less Price Sensitive to Life Necessities During the COVID-19 Pandemic? An Empirical Study on Dutch Consumers

This research investigates if consumers were less price sensitive to life necessities during the COVID-19 pandemic via a demand modeling system. Consumers’ price sensitivity was explicitly quantified by the price elasticity of demand. Consumer behavior in nine categories of products considered as life necessities were studied in two non-overlapping time periods: a year before the onset of the COVID pandemic and a year following the initial panic buying caused by the declaration of the COVID pandemic. The changes in price elasticity of demand between the two periods across the nine product categories were determined from the weekly sales data of a Dutch retailer. Using the proposed demand modeling system applied to available data, it was empirically found that the majority of essential food products were price inelastic, while the majority of non-food products were price elastic during the COVID period. Among the nine product categories, four categories were identified to have significantly different elasticities across the two time periods, while eight categories were observed to have practically smaller magnitudes in elasticities. These insights not only prove the usefulness of the proposed demand modeling system, but also provide valuable theoretical and managerial implications for retail business practitioners, particularly in pricing and inventory planning. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Quantitative Analysis of the Impact of Ecological Industry and Ecological Investment on the Economy: A Case Study of Beijing, China

As China attaches increasing importance to its ecological environment, ecology-related industries have become essential to China’s national economy. However, in the current national economic accounting practice, the ecological industry (eco-industry) is not independent, and the ecological service value ecology creates is currently not within the scope of national economic accounting. To clarify the impact of the development of the eco-industry on the whole regional economy, this paper takes Beijing as the study area. For the first time, the input–output analysis method is adopted to differentiate the eco-industry as an independent sector. Moreover, the ecosystem services value is integrated into the eco-industry, and each coefficient is quantitatively analyzed from an industrial-chain perspective. The results show that the eco-industry exerts a good pulling effect on the regional economy. The inputs and outputs of the eco-industry clearly tend to focus on eco-environmental and public-service-related industries, followed by industries for which ecological development can create value. Judging from the entire regional economy, ecological investment significantly impacts both the education and financial industries. Ecological investment can promote socio-economic development, achieving a 1.318 increase in regional GDP per unit of eco-investment. The results imply that the development of the eco-industry in China should be boosted further and social capital investment should be attracted. Finally, this paper provides a scientific basis for policymakers to better understand the overall situation of both the eco-industry and industry linkages and guide them to develop relevant ecological investment strategies.

HOUSEHOLDS’ CONSUMPTION PATTERN AND SAVING – EVIDENCE FOR THE FIRST YEAR OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN BULGARIA2

Households’ saving jumped up in 2020 as a response to the outburst of the Covid-19 pandemic. The objective of the paper is to analyse the mechanism behind the hike in households’ saving through the changes in their consumption pattern. The analysis makes use of the households’ budget survey annual data for the period 2008-2020 for Bulgaria. Households’ downward adjustment in spending in 2020 followed the pattern of 2009-2010, but the reduction was more pronounced in expenditures on recreation, culture, and education (related both to the Covid-19 restrictive government measures and self-restrain from consumption caused by enhanced health risk) and spending on health (self-restraint). A supposition may be drawn that the enhanced health risk perception and self-restraint might contribute to a relatively elevated saving rate. Subdued consumption of services, most affected by Covid-19 restrictive measures, might sustain at least in the near future and slow down the overall growth rate. Policy measures to boost consumption, particularly of services, may be ineffective. © 2022, Bulgarska Akademiya na Naukite. All rights reserved.

Learning Residents’ Consumption Structures Based on the ELES Model

The worldwide spread of COVID-19 has greatly hit global economy by now. The world’s major economies including both developed and developing countries have felt the resulting impact on their financial markets. Accordingly, learning residents’ consumption structure is significant for boosting consumption demand and recovering financial market. In this paper, the Extend Linear Expenditure System (ELES) model is explored to learn both urban and rural residents’ consumption structures of China during COVID-19. In specific, the indices of marginal propensity to consume, income elasticity of demand, and price elasticity can be yielded via the ELES model based on the disposable income and the consumption data. Furthermore, the consumption structures before and during the corona virus epidemic can be quantitatively compared. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that the epidemic has made profound impacts on the consumption structure of residents. Among them, the marginal propensities on food and medical services have greatly increased, while the proportions of other expenditures have been decreased. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Does Distance Matter for Trade in Services? The Case of Interprovincial Trade in Canada

We examine the impact of geographic distance, economic size, and jurisdictional borders on Canadian interprovincial trade in services at the industry level. Using a gravity model, we find that the average elasticity of service trade with respect to distance is − 1.1, which coincides with the median estimate of average elasticity of merchandise trade with respect to distance. However, the point estimates of the elasticity of distance are significantly higher in magnitude in Arts and Health, while distance matters much less for Telecommunications and Information Technology. We also find that the elasticity of trade with respect to exporter and importer gross domestic product is highly industry specific. Our findings suggest that distance is still a key determinant of service trade and the income elasticity of demand is heterogeneous within the service sector.