ABSTRACT
Pope Francis' vision for a global compact on education, including the role that Catholic universities should play, is in sharp contrast to the vision that dominates the higher education sector: that of producing graduates for gainful employment. Can Catholic colleges and universities rise to the challenge? This article provides a partial answer to that question by first considering four trends affecting higher education globally: (i) the impact of Covid;(ii) the technologization of higher education;(iii) the promise of employability;and (iv) the great unbundling towards micro-credentials. Thereafter, using data for the United States, the article provides a brief assessment of whether Catholic universities may be losing ground, while nevertheless keeping some sources of comparative advantage. The analysis remains explorative and tentative. What seems clear is that there is a lot of heterogeneity between institutions, with some struggling and others finding ways to maintain their comparative advantages.
ABSTRACT
COVID-19 is expected to have contributed towards changing the geographical structure of world trade, including trade between individual EU countries and China. This article presents the results of an analysis of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Sino-EU trade flows. The research aims to ascertain whether European Union countries noted a strengthening of their competitive advantage in trade with China in any of the 21 HS sections by increasing the value of the normalized revealed comparative advantage index (NRCA). To identify and select the most significant NRCA observations, Chebyshev's inequality was used. The analysis was carried out for 2015 to 2020, with a particular emphasis on 2020, when the first effects of the COVID-19 pandemic were recorded. EU-China trade relations have been the subject of numerous studies, but their nature has not yet been fully elucidated. This article tries to fill that gap. The analysis of mutual trade, especially at such an important moment from the socio-economic perspective, can bring significant results. The analysis revealed that the pandemic did not result in any decline in EU-China trade. In fact, global trade rose in 2020, with most of the 27 EU countries recording increases in both imports and exports. There were also no significant changes in the structure of the distribution of comparative advantage. However, in contrast to the previously analyzed years (2015-2019), in 2020, the NRCA index shows a flatter distribution, suggesting that most EU countries with the highest comparative advantages actually observed reductions in them. © 2022 Sciendo. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
This study analyzes the trends and determines the comparative advantage and competitiveness of India's fish and fishery products trade in the world market and of India's exports to 10 major destinations over the period of 2000-2021. We use the revealed symmetric comparative advantage (RSCA) index to quantify India's comparative advantage in exporting fish and fishery products and the Vollrath index to measure the revealed competitiveness of the country's fish and fishery products trade. We collected relevant data at Harmonized System (HS) four-digit level from the UN Commodity Trade (UN Comtrade) database. Our analysis shows that India has a revealed comparative advantage (RCA) in exporting fish and fishery products to the world market. Specifically, India has a comparative advantage in exporting frozen fish, crustaceans, and mollusks;but it has a comparative disadvantage in exporting live fish, fresh and chilled fish, fish fillets and other fish meat, and dried/salted/in-brine and smoked fish to the world market. In terms of individual destinations, India has RCA in exporting live fish to Hong Kong;fresh and chilled fish to UAE (in recent years);frozen fish to China, Hong Kong, Thailand (recent years), and Vietnam (recent years);fish fillets and other fish meat to Japan (recent years);dried fish to Hong Kong;crustaceans to Japan, the US, and Canada (recent years);mollusks to the EU, Thailand (recent years), and Vietnam (recent years);and other aquatic invertebrates to Vietnam. India has a comparative disadvantage (RCD) in exporting fresh and chilled fish to the EU, Japan, the US, and Vietnam, and fish fillet and other fish meat to the US, Canada, and Vietnam. The COVID-19 pandemic has negatively affected India's export, comparative advantage, and trade competitiveness of fish and fishery products. India's RCA and competitiveness in exporting fish and fishery products decreased in 2018-2020, but the RCA and competitiveness increased by 2021.
ABSTRACT
COVID-19 is expected to have contributed towards changing the geographical structure of world trade, including trade between individual EU countries and China. This article presents the results of an analysis of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Sino-EU trade flows. The research aims to ascertain whether European Union countries noted a strengthening of their competitive advantage in trade with China in any of the 21 HS sections by increasing the value of the normalized revealed comparative advantage index (NRCA). To identify and select the most significant NRCA observations, Chebyshev's inequality was used. The analysis was carried out for 2015 to 2020, with a particular emphasis on 2020, when the first effects of the COVID-19 pandemic were recorded.EU-China trade relations have been the subject of numerous studies, but their nature has not yet been fully elucidated. This article tries to fill that gap. The analysis of mutual trade, especially at such an important moment from the socio-economic perspective, can bring significant results. The analysis revealed that the pandemic did not result in any decline in EU-China trade. In fact, global trade rose in 2020, with most of the 27 EU countries recording increases in both imports and exports. There were also no significant changes in the structure of the distribution of com-parative advantage. However, in contrast to the previously analyzed years (2015-2019), in 2020, the NRCA index shows a flatter distribution, suggesting that most EU countries with the highest comparative advantages actually observed reductions in them.
ABSTRACT
This paper focuses on the path of China’s participation in global value chain reconstruction and concludes three ways to reconstruct the global value chain: embedding in the global value chain, reconstructing the national value chain, and leading the regional value chain. Based on the value-added accounting system and the latest statistics of the TiVA database, we construct an index system for the path selection of global value chain reconstruction and put forward a more suitable path for different manufacturing industries in China. According to the VRCA index and ranking of each type of manufacturing industry, our study concludes that: transportation equipment manufacturing tends to embed in global value chains;textiles, clothing, leather, and related manufacturing;wood products, paper products, and printing;chemical and non-metallic mineral products;base metals and metal products;computer, electronic, and electrical equipment manufacturing;machinery and equipment manufacturing;and other manufacturing industries tend to dominate the regional value chains;and food and beverage manufacturing and tobacco industries tend to restructure national value chains. Finally, our paper gives suggestions and prospects for path upgrading;promoting the integrated development of e-commerce and the manufacturing industry can enhance the competitive advantages of China’s manufacturing industry and achieve path upgrading and optimization. Furthermore, the two-way nesting of the “Belt and Road” regional value chain and global value chain can help China’s manufacturing industry eliminate the dilemma of low-end lock-in and upgrade from the original low-end dependent embedding mode to the middle high-end hub embedding mode.
ABSTRACT
The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic generated an upsurge in demand for medical products. Trade policy changes, including export restrictions and import reforms, have led to a shortage of medical products. The World Health Organization has recommended countries to encourage local production and identify various import sources for medical products to ensure sustainable healthcare capacity to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and any similar events in the future. This study aims to examine the comparative advantages and competitiveness in producing medical products among top exporters. The contribution of this study is the ability to identify various import sources specific to developing countries. From the exporter's perspective, this study allows countries to recognize their existing competitive strengths in the medical products trade, allowing them to strategize and compete in the international markets of medical products. Using Balassa's revealed comparative advantage index, this study analyzes 25 primary medical product exporters, identifying several countries with a comparative advantage in producing medical products. Medicines are primarily dominated by high-income countries, including Switzerland and Germany, whereas middle-income countries, such as China and Malaysia, are more specialized in medical supplies, medical equipment, and personal protective products. This finding provides a basis for policy formulation that can facilitate the process of building a sustainable healthcare capacity.
ABSTRACT
Ta raziskava obravnava primerjalno analizo konkurenčne trgovine znotraj grozdov tržnih gospodarstev Evropske unije. Cilj tega članka je izvedba trgovinske analize znotraj konkurenčnih držav na evropskem trgu od leta 2009 do 2018. To je obdobje po svetovni krizi leta 2008 in pred pandemijo covida-19 leta 2019, namen analize pa je določiti obseg konkurenčne trgovine znotraj evropskih gospodarstev. Izbrana metrika je indeks razkritih primerjalnih prednosti (RCA) Béle Balasse, ki se uporablja za določanje primerjalne prednosti ali slabosti trgovanja različnih držav. Ugotovitve kažejo, da države z RCA > 1 v primerjavi z drugimi konkurenčními gospodarstvi na nižji ravni gospodarsko uspevajo. In dejstvo je, da gospodarstvo Evropske unije uspeva z mehaniziranim trgovanjem, ki ne zajema kmetijskih proizvodov, ne glede na konkurenčni trg. Studija je pomemben prispevek k izboljšanju Ricardovega modela primerjalnih prednosti na skupnem trgu evropskih gospodarstev.Alternate :This research is concerned with the comparative analysis of competitive trade within the cluster market economies of the European Union. The aim of this paper is to carry out trade analysis within the competing countries in the European market from 2009 to 2018 which represents the period after the global crisis of 2008 and prior to the Covid-19 pandemic of 2019 for the purpose of determining the extent of competitive trade within the European economies. The chosen metric is Béla Balassa's Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) index used for determining various countries' comparative advantage or disadvantage in trade. The findings show that the countries with RCA > 1 thrive economically in comparison to other competing lower economies. And the fact that the European Union economy thrives on mechanized trade other than agricultural products irrespective of the competitive market. This study is a significant contribution towards improving the Ricardian model of comparative advantage on trade within a cluster market in the European economies.
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As a primary agricultural commodity, cocoa is the essential commodity and source of income for farmers, workers, and companies in terms of its supply chain. In Indonesia, cocoa is a commodity number three after coconut palm oil and rubber. Therefore, it plays a crucial role in creating job opportunities, which focusing on agribusiness and domestic agroindustry, environmental conservation, and regional development. In conjunction with the significant contribution of cocoa as an agricultural commodity, this study seeks to investigate the cocoa commodity competitiveness dynamics in Indonesia and Ivory Coast before and during the Covid-19 pandemic. This study calculates the data of export using a four-digit Harmonized System (HS) on the basis of the United Nations' Standard International Trade Classification (SITC) from 2016 to 2020. In determining the country's competitiveness, this study applies the Balassa Revealed Comparative Advantage (BRCA). This study indicates that the competitive dynamics of cocoa commodities occurred in Indonesia and Ivory Coast before and during the Covid-19 pandemic. Thus, the chocolate industry network should promote good governance for improving sustainable agricultural resources, including fair and inclusive labour policy and green supply chains incentives. Also, creating a better policy climate for effective agricultural management and developing a downstream chocolate industry should be crucial for both countries. © IEOM Society International.
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Data driven analysis is proven to create a competitive advantage to business. Governments and nonprofit organizations also turn to Big Data to harness its benefits and use it for social good. Among different types of data sources, location data collected from mobile networks is especially valuable for its representativeness, real-time observation, and versatility. There is a distinction between mobile positioning data (MPD) generated by the exchanges between mobile devices and the core network;versus over-the-top or system-level location data collecting individual GPS location. MPD is composed of all mobile network events regardless of the mobile phone brand, operating system, app usage, frequency bands or mobile generation;it is uniform and ubiquitous. Getting the best out of MPD relies on the knowledge of how to create an advanced algorithm for homogeneously processing this massive, complex data into insightful indicators. Anonymized and aggregated MPD enables the testing of multiple combinations with other data sources, fully abiding by GDPR, to arrive at innovative solutions. These unique insights can help tackle societal challenges (the state of mobile data for social good June 2017 GSMA, UN Global pulse). It can help to establish accurate statistics about population movements, density, location, social patterns, finances, and ambient environmental conditions. This article demonstrates how MPD has been used to help combat Covid-19 in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Furthermore, depending on the future direction, MPD and data analysis can serve powering economic development as well as working toward the Sustainable Development Goals, whilst respecting data privacy.