Taiwan 2021: Heightened geo-economic relevance amid rising cross-strait tensions*

Taiwan remained one of the crossroads of international politics in the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Cross-Strait relations with China continued their downward trend, with increasing military tensions in the airspace and waters surrounding the island, leading to speculations of a military takeover. The PLA activism in the Strait was inherently tied, in an action-reaction dynamic, to the further strengthening of relations between Washington and Taipei, with the new Biden administration in the White House operating in broad continuity with the previous Trump administration, albeit with expected differences in style. The Biden administration was instrumental in fostering support among allies to call for «peace and stability» in the Taiwan Strait. In this contest, Taiwan further strengthened relations with Japan, and made inroads in Europe. Partners abroad expanded ties with the island as a result of a broader push back against China's ambitions on the international stage, and the impact of the global supply chain crisis revolving around the shortage of chips. Taiwan's essential role in the supply chain crisis, a result of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's dominance in this strategic industrial sector and of the geographic concentration of chip plants on the island, has presented the Tsai administration with new geo-economic challenges and opportunities. On the domestic front, President Tsai and the DPP obtained an important political victory after the rejection of the referendums on trade, energy, and the electoral law that were supported by the major opposition party, the KMT.

Türkiye'de Mali Alanın Siyasi Konjonktür Çerçevesinde Analizi (2000-2021)

Mali alan kavramı 2000'li yılların başından itibaren literatürde önemli bir yer edinmiştir. Önce gelişmekte olan ülkeler için bir kaynak yaratma aracı olarak görülen bu konu, 2008 krizi ve COVID-19 pandemisi ile birlikte hem gelişmekte olan hem de gelişmiş ülkeler için önem kazanmıştır. Makalede öncelikle mali alan kavramı ve kapsamı incelenmiş, mali alan yaratma yöntemleri açıklanmış, daha sonra ise mali alan literatürü taranmıştır. Çalışmada Heller yöntemi esas alınarak, Türkiye'de 2000-2021 yılları arasında vergi ve harcama politikalarındaki değişim incelenmiştir. Vergi politikası açısından bakıldığında, vergilerin ilgili dönemde dar bir koridorda seyrederek yüzde 24'lerde kaldığı;ayrıca dolaylı-dolaysız vergi kompozisyonunda değişiklik meydana geldiği görülmektedir. Harcama politikası açısından ise ilgili dönemin başında uygulanan istikrar politikaları sonucunda özellikle faiz harcamalarında meydana gelen azalmanın, sosyal yardım, sağlık ve eğitim harcamalarında önemli miktarda artışa imkân verdiği görülmektedir. Bu gelişmeler ile 20 yıl süresince hâkim parti olarak nitelendirilebilecek bir yönetimin, mali alanı nasıl yarattığı ve kullandığı üzerine siyasal konjonktür çerçevesinde bir değerlendirme yapılmıştır.Alternate :The concept of fiscal space has gained prominence in the literature since the early 2000s. Although it was originally perceived as a tool to create additional resources in only developing countries, the concept also became important in developed countries with the 2008 economic crisis and COVID-19 pandemic. This article reviews the literature on fiscal space, including various definitions and explains the efforts to create fiscal space in countries. The article analyzes revenue and expenditure policies of Türkiye by using the methodology of Peter Heller. In terms of revenue policy, tax revenues fluctuated around 24 percent. Between direct and indirect tax proceeds, there has been a swamp between direct and indirect taxes-direct tax revenues becoming less important. In terms of expenditure policy, the decline in interest payments due to the stabilization policies pursued by the government has created space to finance social service expenditures, such as education, healthcare, and social protection. Under the light of these developments, we analyze the fiscal space creation efforts of the government.

Towards more sustainable tourism under a carbon footprint approach: the Camino Lebaniego case study. (Special Issue: Sustainable development of integrated energy, water and environment systems.)

From an economic point of view, the tourism sector is one of the most important in the world with religious tourism, such as pilgrimages, being a growth area. Tourism activities also make a significant contribution to CO2 emissions (roughly 8% of the world's carbon emissions). In this framework, the main objective of this research is to develop an integrated sustainable model by assessing the impact of pilgrimages to the Camino Lebaniego (Lebaniego Way) in the Cantabrian region, which is one of the most popular routes in northern Spain. To do this, it is necessary to quantify the environmental impacts of this activity since this is a key element in establishing appropriate and effective environmental management programmes. This study uses the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method, focused on the Carbon Footprint (CF) impact category, to assess the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of this activity considering 'a pilgrim who completes the route in three days' as the selected functional unit (FU). In addition, the sub-sectors of accommodation, food and beverages, and waste management are taken into account. Following this route generated a total of 13.69 kg CO2 eq./FU, of which accommodation and the services offered there contributed almost 71.47%, food was 17.08%, and waste management 11.45%. The evening meal and propane consumption were the hotspots in the hostel, accounting for almost 74% of the total impact, so alternatives were proposed to reduce the impacts associated with these. In terms of transport, it was found that for the same destination, it was better to use a car rather than a plane, because the associated CO2 emissions were lower. Finally, these aspects are discussed and improvement measures for reducing GHG emissions are proposed, involving the introduction of good practices and environmental commitments from the pilgrims themselves, as well as enterprises and local communities. Ecolabels and environmental certifications should become a key tool for sending this signal to the market as should the use of public transport to the destination, among other actions. Ultimately, religious and nature tourism seems to be on the upturn, and it is likely that pilgrimage routes could be the next post-COVID travel trend.

Market update: Sixty years of change in Papua New Guineaʼs fresh food marketplaces

Open‐air marketplaces are vital to food security, livelihoods, and the national economy in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Over the past 60 years, rapid growth of urban populations, changes in global commodity prices, and the decline in value of the PNG currency have stimulated demand for domestic fresh food. Selling fresh food in marketplaces has also become an attractive way to earn money for rural producers, whose returns on labour on their export crops have declined, and for urban residents struggling to make a living. This in turn has led to significant changes in PNGʼs marketplaces: spatial and temporal changes, changes in what is bought and sold, changes in who is selling, and changes in how food is transacted. In this paper, we bring together research on PNGʼs marketplaces from between 1961 and 2022 to document these changes and their causes, alongside important continuities, and to examine the implications and substantial gaps in our knowledge.

Automated System and Machine Learning Application in Economic Activity Monitoring and Nowcasting

The amount of data is growing at an extraordinary rate each year. Nowadays, data is used in various fields. One of these areas is economics, which is significantly linked to data analysis. Policymakers, financial institutions, investors, businesses, and households make economic decisions in real-time. These decisions need to be taken even faster in various economic shocks, such as the financial crisis, COVID-19, or war. For this reason, it is important to have data in as frequent a range as possible, as only such data will reliably assess the economic situation. Therefore, automated systems are required to collect, transform, analyse, visualise, perform other operations, and interpret the results. This paper presents the concept of economic activity, classical and alternative indicators describing the economic activity, and describes the automated economic activity monitoring system. Due to the different economic structures and the different availability of data in different countries, these systems are not universal and can only be adapted to specific countries. The developed automated system uses working intelligence methods to predict the future values of indicators, perform clustering, classification of observations, or other tasks. The application’s developed user interface allows users to use different data sources, analyses, visualisations, or results of machine learning methods without any programming knowledge. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.