ABSTRACT
Public support mechanisms for agriculture in many cases hinder the transformation towards healthier, more sustainable, equitable, and efficient food systems. This report sets out the compelling case for repurposing harmful agricultural producer support to reverse this situation, by optimizing the use of scarce public resources, strengthening economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, and ultimately driving a food systems transformation that can support global sustainable development commitments. The report provides policymakers with an updated estimate of past and current agricultural producer support for 88 countries, projected up until 2030. The trends emerging from the analysis are a clear call for action at country, regional and global levels to phase out the most distortive, environmentally and socially harmful support, such as price incentives and coupled subsidies, and redirecting it towards investments in public goods and services for agriculture, such as research and development and infrastructure, as well as decoupled fiscal subsidies. Overall, the analysis highlights that, while removing and/or reducing harmful agricultural support is necessary, repurposing initiatives that include measures to minimize policy trade-offs will be needed to ensure a beneficial outcome overall. The report confirms that, while a few countries have started repurposing and reforming agricultural support, broader, deeper, and faster reforms are needed for food systems transformation. Thus, it provides guidance (in six steps) on how governments can repurpose agricultural producer support - and the reforms this will take.
ABSTRACT
Purpose: This study aims at the sudden outbreak of COVID-19, which had an unprecedented negative impact on the Chinese economy, with firms being affected most. Firms differ in terms of their specific internal environment, shaping their ability to respond to the outbreak, so the impact may also vary. Design/methodology/approach: In this paper Chinese listed firms are selected as samples to investigate the mediating effect of prior digital technology on the relationship between R&D (research and development) investment (funds and staff) and firm performance during the epidemic. Firm size and diversification are then introduced as moderating variables to explore the conditional mediating effect of digital technology. Findings: The results indicate that the higher the firm's prior R&D investment, the higher its digital technology level, and thus the stronger its resistance to the epidemic. Moreover, compared with large-scale firms, small-scale firms have the advantage of strategic flexibility to technological changes, which can help them accumulate experience from R&D activities for digital transformation, thus attenuating the negative impact of the COVID-19 on firm performance. Finally, the results also show that digital technology mediates more strongly between R&D investment and firm performance in diversified firms than in centralized firms. Originality/value: The study builds a mediation model to reveal the process mechanism through which R&D investment affects firm performance via digital technology. Firm size and diversification are then innovatively introduced as situational factors to build the moderated mediation model, which opens up a new perspective for understanding the effect of firm internal factors on the relationship between R&D investment, digital transformation and firm performance. © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited.
ABSTRACT
Although switching from non-renewable to renewable energy is believed to stimulate low-carbon economic growth, the means to establishing this energy transition have largely remained unexplored in the extant literature. Against this backdrop, this study focuses on evaluating how scaling public investment in renewable energy-related research and development projects impacts the carbon productivity levels in the top-10 renewable energy-investing countries. The estimation strategy comprised econometric methods that can handle cross-sectional dependency and slope heterogeneity related concerns in the data. Regarding the key findings, higher public research and development-related investments in renewable energy are observed to boost carbon productivity levels in the concerned countries, while natural resource consumption and net exports are found to reduce carbon productivity. Besides, the results endorsed that public research and development investment for renewable energy development exhibits a moderating role by jointly boosting carbon productivity with higher natural resource consumption and net exports. Moreover, it is also seen to inflict a mediating effect by jointly boosting carbon productivity with urbanization. In line with these findings, the concerned governments are recommended to scale such investment in order to stimulate technological innovation so that renewable energy transition can take place to establish low carbon economic growth. © 2023 Elsevier Ltd
ABSTRACT
After Covid-19 Pandemic, with an instable European geo-political context and a constant pressure to decrease the CO2 emissions, EU needs to implement explicite actions to limit its environmental impact. EU decarbonation is an ambitious proposal to make the bloc climate-neutral by 2050. This study aims to determine how can be improved the energy generation from RES considering important macroeconomic indicators. In the same time, the research shows the strong correlation between investments in research and development and decreasing of carbon emissions. One of the major conclusions of the research is that the best solution in increasing the production of energy that comes from RES, is the investment in R&D, especially in businesses and higher education sectors. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Purpose: This study aims at the sudden outbreak of COVID-19, which had an unprecedented negative impact on the Chinese economy, with firms being affected most. Firms differ in terms of their specific internal environment, shaping their ability to respond to the outbreak, so the impact may also vary. Design/methodology/approach: In this paper Chinese listed firms are selected as samples to investigate the mediating effect of prior digital technology on the relationship between R&D (research and development) investment (funds and staff) and firm performance during the epidemic. Firm size and diversification are then introduced as moderating variables to explore the conditional mediating effect of digital technology. Findings: The results indicate that the higher the firm's prior R&D investment, the higher its digital technology level, and thus the stronger its resistance to the epidemic. Moreover, compared with large-scale firms, small-scale firms have the advantage of strategic flexibility to technological changes, which can help them accumulate experience from R&D activities for digital transformation, thus attenuating the negative impact of the COVID-19 on firm performance. Finally, the results also show that digital technology mediates more strongly between R&D investment and firm performance in diversified firms than in centralized firms. Originality/value: The study builds a mediation model to reveal the process mechanism through which R&D investment affects firm performance via digital technology. Firm size and diversification are then innovatively introduced as situational factors to build the moderated mediation model, which opens up a new perspective for understanding the effect of firm internal factors on the relationship between R&D investment, digital transformation and firm performance. © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited.
ABSTRACT
Severe price spikes of the major grain commodities and rapid expansion of cultivated area in the past two decades are symptoms of a severely stressed global food supply. Scientific discovery and improved agricultural productivity are needed and are enabled by unencumbered access to, and use of, genetic sequence data. In the same way the world witnessed rapid development of vaccines for COVID-19, genetic sequence data afford enormous opportunities to improve crop production. In addition to an enabling regulatory environment that allowed for the sharing of genetic sequence data, robust funding fostered the rapid development of coronavirus diagnostics and COVID-19 vaccines. A similar level of commitment, collaboration, and cooperation is needed for agriculture.