Global Commodity Chains and Supply Bottlenecks in Austria with Medical Devices in the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 Pandemic led to a strong increase in demand for medical products. At the same time, supply problems in international supply chains kicked in due to health policy interventions (e.g., lockdowns) and economic policy measures (e.g., export controls). Combined, both resulted in temporary shortages and triggered a controversial discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of globalised production structures, which led to strong dependencies on a few, primarily Asian, locations and producers. Against this background and based on case studies for Austria, the article deals with the question which factors determine the robustness of global commodity chains for respirators, protective gloves and respiratory equipment and which national and European policies could be suitable for increasing resilience in the supply of medical products. © 2022 Austrian Geographical Society. All rights reserved.

Guidelines for the Region's Socio-economic Policies During the Pandemic

The study focuses on identifying the benefits of implementing the region's socio-economic policies according to the principles of lean production to overcome the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The author investigates the problems of socio-economic development of the regions of Russia during the COVID-19 pandemic, identifies the most significant threats to the regions (rising unemployment, falling average per capita incomes of the population, reduction of regional budgets and growth of regional public debt). The author proved that the principles of lean production can be successfully implemented as fundamental in the implementation of the socio-economic policy of the region. The focus of regional socio-economic policies during the pandemic should be the optimization of the cost of maintaining the region's public administration and increasing the quality of regional governance;improving regional policies to support people in the aftermath of a pandemic;developing the infrastructure and businesses implementing lean technologies. The author developed an algorithm for the formation and realization of regional socio-economic policy according to the principles of lean production during the pandemic, as well as describes the features of its implementation in the Belgorod Region. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Introduction

Individualised employment relations formed a key pillar of the shift to neoliberal economic policy in the 1980s, complementing other dimensions of orthodoxy deployed across governments, public administrations and central banks in the same time. In the neoliberal narrative, market forces would ‘naturally' and justly compensate labour for its contribution to productivity, like any other input to production. Consequently, redistributive institutions empowering workers to win more adequate wages and conditions (through minimum wages, Awards, unionisation, and collective bargaining) were dramatically eroded, or discarded entirely. Combined with welfare state retrenchment, this restructuring of labour market policy increased the pressure on people to sell their labour, and under terms over which workers wielded little influence. Since then, forms of insecure, non-standard work have proliferated globally, and employment relations have been increasingly individualised. Now, most workers in Anglo-Saxon market economies, and a growing proportion of workers in European and Nordic nations, rely on individual contract instruments (underpinned only by minimum wage floors typically far below living wage benchmarks) to set the terms and conditions of employment. Wages have stagnated, the share of GDP going to workers has declined, and inequality and poverty (even among employed people) has intensified. More recently, after years of this employer-friendly hegemony in workplace relations, successive crises (first the GFC and then the COVID-19 pandemic) have more obviously shattered traditional expectations of a natural linkage between economic growth and workers' living standards.After a generation of experience with this individualised model of employment relations, and with the human costs of that approach becoming ever-more obvious, there is renewed concern with reimagining policies and structures which could support improvements in job quality, stability, and compensation. Important policy dialogue and innovation is now occurring in many industrial countries, in response to the negative consequences of neoliberal labour market policies. In those conversations, institutions like collective bargaining have returned to centre stage.

Economic policy uncertainty and international tourist arrivals: a disaggregated analysis of the Croatian Adriatic coast

This is the first study to examine the differential impact of Croatian and European economic policy uncertainty indices while controlling for the real effective exchange rate and industrial production on international tourist arrivals for the seven coastal counties of Croatia and the country as a whole. The Toda-Yamamoto long-run causality modeling approach with a Fourier approximation is employed to capture structural shifts. This approach is particularly useful in light of the disruption from the COVID-19 pandemic on the tourism sector. The results show unidirectional causality from both Croatian and European economic policy uncertainty indices to international tourist arrivals with the impact of the economic policy uncertainty indices negative and statistically significant across the respective coastal counties. Moreover, the findings show that European economic policy uncertainty exhibits a greater adverse impact on international tourist arrivals relative to Croatian economic policy uncertainty.

Essays in economic policy and human behavior

This dissertation is composed of three chapters. While the chapters pertain to very different contexts, an overarching theme is the analysis of human behavior in response to policies that are inherently economic.The first chapter is the product of joint work with Justin Holz and Rafael Jimenez Duran. It studies repugnance towards price gouging. Emergencies like natural disasters or pandemics trigger sharp price increases for essential products. Anti-price gouging laws are ubiquitous and people take costly actions to report violators to law-enforcement agencies, which suggests that they value punishing sellers that spike prices in these situations. This chapter uses a field experiment to understand individuals' willingness to report sellers who increase the price of personal protective equipment at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that reporting decisions contain information about repugnance to price gouging and find that willingness to pay to report is non-trivial and heterogeneous. We also find evidence that repugnance is partly due to distaste for seller profits, depending on the product. These results suggest that regulation discussions would benefit from incorporating repugnance into welfare and from addressing products separately.The second chapter focuses in the use of temporary driving restrictions as a tool for air quality management in Mexico City. Road congestion is understood to be a major source of urban air pollution and is also associated with other large non-health-related costs. Millions of people live in cities in which the number of cars on the road is controlled by allowing or prohibiting the use of a car on a given day depending on its license plate number. The empirical evidence available suggests little benefit from these programs;the policy increases the marginal cost of using the road for some users while decreasing it for others and incentivizes the acquisition of extra vehicles. This chapter studies the effect of temporary increases in the stringency of the restrictions as an add-on policy intended to alleviate extreme pollution events. The increased restrictions are triggered by Ozone levels surpassing a pre-specified threshold. This, coupled with the fact that said threshold was modified several times between 2005 and 2018, allows us to identify the effect of the policy. We document a sizable increase in the average speed of cars in the city during restricted days. This suggests the policy does alleviate congestion. We also observe a reduction on Carbon Monoxide and Ozone concentration, but these results are not robust to changes in the specification's functional form. While we cannot explicitly quantify welfare effects, the minor improvements are unlikely to compensate the major disruption in the commuter network without serious investment in public transit alternatives.The third chapter, co-authored with Enrique Seira and Alan Elizondo, investigates the role of information disclosure on financial markets as tool for consumer protection. We implement a randomized control trial in the Mexican credit card market for a large population of indebted cardholders and measure the impact of disclosures of interest rate and time required to pay outstanding debt on default, indebtedness, account closings, and credit scores;these disclosures are required by law in the United States. We also test the effect debiasing warning messages and social comparison information has on the same outcomes. We find that providing salient interest rate disclosures had no effects, while comparisons and debiasing messages had only modest and short-lived effects at best. We conduct extensive external validity exercises in several banks, with different disclosures, and with actual policy mandates. We conclude the null result is robust. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

A Review on Solar Energy Policy and Current Status: Top 5 Countries and Kazakhstan

The article describes the world's experience in developing the solar industry. It discusses the mechanisms of state support for developing renewable energy sources in the cases of five countries that are the most successful in this area—China, the United States, Japan, India, and Germany. Furthermore, it contains a brief review of state policy in producing electricity by renewable energy facilities in Kazakhstan. This paper uses statistical information from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the International Energy Agency (IEA), British Petroleum (BP), and the Renewable Energy Network (REN21), and peer-reviewed sources. The research methodology includes analytical research and evaluation methods to examine the current state of solar energy policy, its motivators and incentives, as well as the prospects for its development in Kazakhstan and in the world. Research shows that solar energy has a huge development potential worldwide and is sure to take its place in gross electricity production. This paper focuses on the selected economic policies of the top five countries and Kazakhstan, in what may be considered a specific research limitation. Future research suggestions for the expansion of Renewable Energy (RE) in Kazakhstan could include analysing the impact of introducing dedicated policies and incentives for solar systems and exploring the benefits and challenges of implementing large RE zones with government–business collaboration.

Economic policy uncertainty, Covid-19 and corporate investment: Evidence from the gold mining industry

Mining is a capital-intensive sector that requires substantial upfront investments and continuous capital expenditure to sustain and improve production. This study investigates the impact of Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) on the investment decisions of the top 5 gold mining countries, namely Australia, China, Russia, the USA, and Canada, with a focus on the COVID-19 Pandemic. Using a two-step generalized method of moments, we analyze data from 333 gold mining companies from 2006 to 2021. Our results demonstrate that the EPU index has a negative effect on the investment decisions of gold mining companies during the COVID-19 Pandemic. We also utilize quantile regression analysis, which shows that the estimated coefficients for the low and high quantiles are significant. Our study reveals that during periods of uncertainty, gold mining companies tend to be risk-averse, which subsequently dampens investment projects. Furthermore, the capital-intensive nature of the gold mining sector renders companies to be more vulnerable to economic conditions. These findings have significant policy implications for investors, portfolio managers, and policymakers, which will be discussed in the conclusion section.

Economic Policy Uncertainty and Emerging Stock Market Volatility

This research examines the effect of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) indices on Pakistan's stock market volatility. Particularly, we examine the impact of the economic policy uncertainty index for Pakistan and bilateral global trading partner countries, the US, China, and the UK. We employ the GARCH-MIDAS model and combination forecast approach to evaluate the performance of economic uncertainty indices. The empirical findings show that the US economic policy uncertainty index is a more powerful predictor of Pakistan stock market volatility. In addition, the EPU index for the UK also provides valuable information for equity market volatility prediction. Surprisingly, Pakistan and China EPU indices have no significant predictive information for volatility forecasting during the sample period. Lastly, we find evidence of all uncertainty indices during economic upheaval from the COVID-19 pandemic. We obtained identical results even during the Covid-19. Our findings are robust in various evaluation methods, like MCS tests and other forecasting windows.

Real Estate Insights The continuing uncertainty of property investment markets – an outlook for the UK in 2023

PurposeThe aim of this Real Estate Insight is to comment upon the outlook for real estate investment in the United Kingdom (UK) at the beginning of 2023 in light of global inflation brought about by the pent-up post-pandemic demand push for goods and services and the exacerbation of the Ukraine/Russia conflict.Design/methodology/approachThis Real Estate Insight will comment upon changes in the investor's view of the UK economy and the relative attractiveness of the different property sectors and the shift in thinking post-pandemic.FindingsThis paper will consider a number of scenarios and possibilities flowing from the current uncertainties in the property market and the wider economy.Practical implicationsAs with all property investment, the value and performance of the property assets is interlinked with the use and demand of different property types. Understanding the supply and demand drivers provides investors with a reasoned conjecture of how the property market may perform going forward.Originality/valueThis is a review of the UK market in relation to post-COVID-19 changes to supply and demand at both an operational and investment level.

Feminist Governance in the European Parliament: The Political Struggle over the Inclusion of Gender in the EU's COVID-19 Response

The research objective of this article is to analyze the European Parliament's response to the COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of feminist governance. Feminist governance can either play a role in ensuring the inclusion of a gender perspective in crisis responses, or, quite the opposite, crises may weaken or sideline feminist governance. The empirical analysis focuses on two aspects of feminist governance: (1) a dedicated gender equality body and (2) gender mainstreaming. In addition to assessing the effectiveness of feminist governance, the analysis sheds light on the political struggles behind the policy positions. The article argues that feminist governance in the European Parliament was successful in inserting a gender perspective into the COVID-19 response. The article pinpoints the effects of the achievements of the European Parliament's Women's Rights and Gender Equality Committee and gender mainstreaming on gendering the pandemic crisis response.

Economic policy uncertainty, governance institutions and economic performance in Africa: are there regional differences?

In recent years, the global economy has witnessed several uncertainty-inducing events. However, empirical evidence in Africa on the effects of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on economic activities remains scanty. Besides, the moderating effect of governance institutions on the uncertainty-economic performance relationship in Africa and the likelihood of regional differences in the response of economic activities to EPU on the continent are yet to be investigated. To address these gaps, we applied system GMM and quantile regressions on a panel of forty-seven African countries from 2010 to 2019. We find that while global EPU and EPUs from China, USA and Canada exert considerable influence on economic performance in Africa, the effects of domestic EPU and EPUs from Europe, UK, Japan, and Russia were negligible, suggesting that African economies are resilient to these sources of uncertainty shocks. We also find that governance institutions in Africa are not significantly moderating the uncertainty-economic performance relationship. However, our results highlighted regional differences in the response of economic activities to uncertainty, such that when compared to East and West Africa, economic performance in Central, North and Southern Africa is generally more resilient to global EPU and EPUs from China, USA, Europe and UK. We highlighted the policy implications of these findings.

The COVID-19 pandemic, economic policy uncertainty and the hedging role of cryptocurrencies: a global perspective

PurposeThe COVID-19 pandemic has led to global economic policy uncertainty, which has increased the need to investigate ways to mitigate the uncertainty. This study aims to examine the potential of cryptocurrencies as a hedge and safe haven avenue against economic policy uncertainty.Design/methodology/approachThis study investigates the behavior of the five leading cryptocurrencies in relation to country-level and group-level economic policy uncertainty indices, as measured by the text-based method developed by Baker et al. (The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2016, 131, 1593-1636). The research covers a broad range of emerging and developed economies from July 2013 to September 2020. The study employs the approach of Narayan et al. (Economic Modelling, 2016, 53, 388-397) to examine the hedging and safe-haven properties of cryptocurrencies.FindingsThis study finds that the top cryptocurrencies play a hedging role against economic policy uncertainty, with some exceptions. Additionally, there is evidence to support the idea that cryptocurrencies can serve as a safe haven during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, investors may benefit from using cryptocurrencies as a risk-management avenue during times of uncertainty.Originality/valueThis research contributes to the existing literature by testing the cryptocurrencies' hedging and safe haven properties in a new way, by analyzing their lead and lag behaviors using a recent and innovative approach. Additionally, it examines a wide range of emerging and advanced markets, providing insight into the potential of using cryptocurrencies as a risk mitigation avenue.

Which COVID-19 information really impacts stock markets?

Information about the COVID-19 pandemic abounds, but which COVID-19 data actually impacts stock prices? We investigate which measures of COVID-19 matter most by applying elastic net regression for measure selection using a sample of the 35 largest stock markets. Out of 24 measures, COVID-19 related Google search trends, the stringency of government responses and media hype prevail during the height of the COVID-19 crisis. These measures proxy for COVID-19 related uncertainty, the economic impact of lockdowns and panic-driven media attention, respectively, summarizing key aspects of COVID-19 that move stock markets. Moreover, geographical proximity to the virus's outbreak and a country's development level also matter in terms of impact.

Insights from India's Encounters with COVID-19

The uncertainties relating to the COVID-19 pandemic continue to pose extraordinary challenges to policymakers worldwide. The recent lifting of restrictions in China raised the spectre of another wave of infections beyond its borders, which has thankfully not occurred, so far. Now, three years after the pandemic emerged, policy assumptions and responses are being re-evaluated-from whether the virus emerged as a laboratory leak, to whether vaccines have efficacy, to whether Sweden's laissez-faire approach was superior to other countries' ambitious interventions. We examine India's experience with COVID-19-impressionistically-to draw larger lessons for policymakers. India's responses were a mix of hits and misses. Some measures helped contain the pandemic and assisted those in need. Other measures seemed performative-geared towards garnering glory on the global stage. Together, they throw light on the challenges of coping with a crisis in real time.

Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on a Small Island: The Isle of Man Case Study

The Isle of Man is a semi-autonomous small island in the Irish Sea between Great Britain and Ireland. It has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and over the past year, the government has undergone reactive and proactive strategies with the aim of curtailing territorial disease spread. Using government tracking data gathered since March 2020, data analysis shows that island had a slow but steady spread of COVID-19 beginning with an island resident who returned from a trip abroad. Over twelve months, the island has had three infection peaks which saw quick policy reactions with Circuit Breaker lockdowns including strict guidelines of isolation combined with economic support for individuals and business. The island is small and has to receive daily supplies of food, fuel and other goods via ferry from England. Close monitoring of the infection rate has enabled quick reflexive policy actions. The disease has not been eradicated, but each lockdown has resulted in a slowdown of disease progression. A relatively small percentage of individuals have been infected and even smaller percentage have lost their lives. The smallness of the island, circuit breaker lockdowns and the island residents' stoic culture have helped with the control of disease progression. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

China: The Bankable State

The volume on China: The Bankable State rejects neoliberal consensus and focuses on crucial contributions of the Chinese state in shaping Chinese economy. This book makes crucial theoretical contributions to the study of local political economy of China. This book engages with Chinese state responses to challenges China faces in the processes of reform, transition and development of both commercial and non-commercial banks. This book explores Chinese economic growth and development policy processes and its uniqueness in the wider world economy. The book examines Chinese financial policy praxis and offers an insightful account of its successes for the wider resurgence of alternative political economy of local development. Additionally, this book also showcases state led entrepreneurship in China. The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021.

COVID-19 and Russia

Russia was hit hard by the pandemic. However, its economic consequences were milder and recovery came faster than initially expected. Several factors (briefly outlined in the chapter) contributed to this. One of them was of an existential nature. Russia unwillingly happened to be well equipped to face the global disruption of economic ties and COVID-related restrictions. A series of deep external shocks that regularly hit Russia's newly established market economy since the default and devaluation of 1998 made the elite suspectable of unconditional embracing global finance. This sentiment translated into amassing international reserves and a drastic reduction of the international debt of the Russian state since the early 2000s. The pandemic did not change the trend, in fact the accumulation of reserves continued despite the calls to resort to them for the implementation of social relief policies. On the other hand, the combined effect of the devaluations, the impact of the Great Recession and the sanctions imposed on Russia since 2014 had induced import substitution and the adjustment of domestic production and consumption before the arrival of COVID that disrupted international trade. COVID crises did not generate any new trend in Russia's economic profession. Rather, it reinforced the economic policy approaches emerged in the late 1980s and 1990s. In the chapter, we delineated four such approaches which express the attitudes of different elements among the Russian establishment. It seems plausible in retrospect that the pandemic triggered the recombination in the establishment. We presume that with the pandemic becoming the history, the future of Russian political and economic system will be defined by the eventual balance of forces resulting of this recombination. If so, the description of four approaches is the main result obtained in this chapter. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

The mean reversion/persistence of financial cycles: Empirical evidence for 24 countries worldwide

Research background: The globalization trend has inevitably enhanced the connectivity of global financial markets, making the cyclicality of financial activities and the spread of market imbalances have received widespread attention, especially after the global financial crisis. Purpose of the article: To reduce the negative effects of the contagiousness of the financial cycles, it is necessary to study the persistence of financial cycles and carve out the total connectedness, spillover paths, and sources of risks on a global scale. In addition, understanding the relationship between the financial cycle and economic development is an important way to prevent financial crises. Methods: This paper adopts the nonlinear smoothing transition autoregressive (STAR) model to extract cyclical and phase characteristics of financial cycles based on 24 countries during 1971Q1?2015Q4, covering developed and developing countries, the Americas, Europe, and Asia regions. In addition, the frequency connectedness approach is used to measure the connectedness of financial cycles and the relationship between the global financial cycle and the global economy. Findings & value added: The analysis reveals that aggregate financial cycles persist for 13.3 years for smoothed and 8.7 years for unsmoothed on average. The national financial cycles are asynchronous and exhibit more prolonged expansions and faster contractions. The connectedness of financial cycles is highly correlated with systemic crises and contributes to the persistence and harmfulness of shocks. It is mainly driven by short-term components and exhibits more pronounced interconnectedness within regions than across regions. During the financial crisis, the global financial cycle movements precede and are longer than the business fluctuations. Based on the study, some policy implications are presented. This paper emphasizes the impact of systemic crises on the persistence of financial cycles and their connectedness, which contributes to refining research related to the coping mechanisms of financial crises.

Impacts of environmental policy uncertainty on urban environmental pollutant emissions in China: a study based on textual analysis

How to accelerate the clean use of fossil energy and promote the transformation and upgrading of energy structure is an important challenge commonly faced by countries around the world. In the post-Covid-19 era, the uncertainties faced by countries around the world are increasing and the frequency of policy adjustments in various countries is accelerating. The discharge of pollution by enterprises is significantly impacted by environmental regulatory policies. Under the carbon neutrality goal, the uncertainty of environmental policy caused by multiple political factors can directly influence the decisions made by businesses and residents, in turn, affect their confidence and expectations. However, researchers have given limited attention to measuring the environmental policy uncertainty index (EPUI). In this paper, we select 460 newspapers from the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) newspaper database from 2001 to 2016 and use the text analysis method to directly construct China's national, provincial, and prefecture-level EPUI. The results show that China's EPUI has obvious stage characteristics and regional characteristics. By applying the Chinese city-level EPUI to the field of urban pollution reduction, we have obtained an important finding that when urban environmental policy uncertainty increases by 1%, urban industrial sulfur dioxide emission decreases by about 0.145%, and carbon dioxide emission decreases by about 0.053%. We believe that this is due to an increase in environmental policy uncertainty inhibiting the development and scaling of secondary industries.

Oil price shocks, economic policy uncertainty, and green finance: a case of China

This study investigates the long- and short-run effects of crude oil price (COP) and economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on China's green bond index (GBI) using the quantile autoregressive distributed lag model. The empirical results show that COP and EPU produce a significant positive and negative influence on GBI in the long-run across most quantiles, respectively, but their short-run counterparts are opposite direction and only significant in higher quantiles. Thus, major contributions are made accordingly and shown in the following aspects. The findings emphasise the importance of understanding how COP and EPU affect China's green bond market for the first time. In addition, both the long- and short-run effects are captured, but long-run shocks primarily drive the green bond market. Finally, time- and quantile-varying analyses are adopted to explain the nexus between COP and EPU to GBI, which considers not only different states of the bond market but also events that occur in different time periods. Some detailed policies, such as a unified and effective green bond market, an early warning mechanism of oil price fluctuation, and prudent economic policy adjustments, are beneficial for stabilising the green finance market.