Adopting new technologies during the crisis: An empirical analysis of agricultural sector

Research and development in agricultural sector are becoming a crucial issue, especially to answer to growing global market needs and, in general, for rural innovation development. The innovation process involves stakeholders of all levels and rural development requires both personal farmers' characteristics along with favourable socio-political and infrastructural environment. Many countries and governments have executed innovation projects for agricultural firms, involving a number of actors from the public and private sectors. However, the literature lacks of studies that investigate the identification of the main factors that determine the agricultural entrepreneurs' probability to adopt new technologies during a crisis context. Thus, through the adoption of the Extended Theory of Planned Behaviour, this study aims at filling this lack. More specifically, the exploratory empirical analysis focuses on a sample of 130 agricultural entrepreneurs operating in a rural developing Italian region, during the historical context of global pandemic crisis of COVID-19. The results provided several insights showing the factors that influence the adoption of technologies, such as the Attitude to Environmental-Economic Sustainability and the Planned Behavioural Control. An important role is also assumed by the past farmer's technological experience. The paper offers implications for entrepreneurs and public government. © 2022 Elsevier Inc.

Is there a J-curve under COVID-19 effects

Because of the outbreak of pandemic COVID-19, the economy and financial markets had a sharp decline. Also, based on the lockdown, we saw that amount of production and trade had decreased. This situation continues, and the effect on trade is still an important concern. In this paper, we investigate whether COVID-19 has an effect on trade by means of the real exchange rate in China-EU27 and China-USA. By using J-curve concept, for each trade partner, we use three models, which are ARDL, NARDL, and Multiplier NARDL, using three different data periods considering COVID-19. The results show that inverted J-Curve is proved with the long-run J-Curve effects for both partners, while COVID-19 makes factors favor J-Curve. Although J-Curve was inverted before the pandemic of COVID-9, during the COVID-19, we recognize the effect of J-Curve, which shows that the effect of real exchange rate on trade of China-EU27 and China-USA seems to favor China. © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

EXPORT AND EXPORTS RISKS OF SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

COVID-19 has created an entirely new unknown environment with new risks. Various restrictive national measures seeking to protect health took precedence over economic measures. Moreover, a large number of businesses are entirely dependent on international trade and exports. The aim of this paper is to map and analyze the development of small and medium enterprises' exports during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Czech Republic. Moreover, it identifies the most significant export risks and their perception by small and medium enterprises. The chi-square test, Cramer's coefficient, and exact binomial test were used to verify the statistical dependencies of research questions and hypotheses. Empirically, the statistically significant impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the decline in small and medium enterprises' exports was confirmed. In connection with the effectiveness of risk management, it was found that less than 50% of enterprises in the research sample are not ISO 31000-certified. The study concluded that the most significant export risks confirmed by statistical testing were COVID-19 risks and payment morale of foreign trading partners. © Romana Heinzova, Eva Hoke, Tomas Urbanek, Pavel Taraba, 2023.

Stability improvement for index tracking during a healthcare crisis using a dual decomposition approach

This paper developed a factor-based robust approach to improve the tracking fund's stability. Similar to the financial crisis, the recent coronavirus pandemic amplify the global market volatility significantly, which suggests that healthcare-based factor can be used to hedge against the jump risk. The index tracking fund is constructed by a developed cardinality constrained conic programming. To overcome the large-scale computational challenge, we decompose the problem into two simplified cases and quickly calculate the tighter lower bound and its feasible upper bound. In addition, a subgradient-based inequalities are derived to exclude the suboptimal points that have been traveled in previous iterations. It turns out that the proposed model, along with the designed solving technique, can be used as an alternative to build reliable tracking portfolios. We demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method by testing different large real data sets. © 2022 Elsevier Ltd

E-learning course recommendation based on sentiment analysis using hybrid Elman similarity

Online learning is also referred to as E-learning which has gained huge attention and attracted most people during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Due to the excess of online information, users face severe challenges and difficulties realizing the best course that is being competitive in the global market. Therefore, it is necessary to develop an online recommendation system that supports the users in selecting the finest course with E-learning. Thus, the proposed work develops a robust RS model using different approaches. Initially, the pre-processing stage is performed to reduce the presented noise in the website data. Then, the feature extraction stage is done to extract the needed features using Improved TF-IDF, W2V (Word 2 Vector), and Hybrid N-gram. Finally, Elman Minimal Redundancy Maximum Relevance and Enhanced Aquila Optimization (EMRMR_EAO) model is proposed to provide Robust course recommendations. In this work, the ERNN method is used to classify the sentiments based on the similarity measure of the MRMR model. The top course recommendation is afforded depending on the similarity scores like Jaccard similarity, cosine similarity and euclidean similarity. Also, the loss function in the classifier is reduced by optimizing the weight parameters using the EAO approach. The performance analysis shows that the proposed recommendation model obtains improved results in terms of accuracy of 99.98%, recall of 99.81%, precision of 99.65%, and F-measure of 99.95%. The comparative analysis exhibit that the proposed EMRMR_EAO model attains better performance than the other existing works in the literature. © 2022 Elsevier B.V.

Impact of Covid-19 on shipbuilding and shipping industry

Covid-19 has been affecting the world for more than two years. The maritime sector in general has been hit hard by the pandemic as well. Since most of the world trade is carried out by sea transportation, the sector has been suffering deeply. The supply and demand chain were broken due to preventive measures such as lock-downs, travel restrictions etc. have been imposed the governments. Passenger transportation by sea was affected as well. As a result of all these the demand for ships and in turn for new buildings was dipped. Some of the shipyards got into trouble completing their ongoing projects due to financial difficulties even bankrupted. This paper deals with the problems that were surfaced during pandemic in maritime industry and for possible remedies to get out of it. Along with the global review of the impact of the pandemic, the effects on Turkish shipbuilding was also taken into consideration. © 2023 the Author(s).

Pattern changes of ecological product trade in countries along the Belt and Road.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was designed to promote economic and trade cooperation between countries along the Belt and Road (B&R), specifically by building an international trade network. Ecological resources are the basis for human survival. Countries along the B&R transform ecological resources into ecological products by production activities. These products can then be used for trade, thereby driving the countries' economic development. This study uses net primary productivity (NPP) as a unified measure of ecological products, and explores the pattern changes of ecological product trade in countries along the B&R, from 2013 to 2019 (from the BRI proposal to the outbreak of COVID-19). The purpose of the study is to reveal the impact of the BRI on the trade of ecological products. The results show that (1) the trade scale of ecological products in the B&R region has changed significantly. The total volume of traded ecological products increased from 2071.74 to 2631.00 TgC. This represented an increase of about 26.99%, or 7.41% higher than the global average. (2) The spatial distribution pattern of ecological product trade did not change significantly in countries along the B&R. However, the gravity centers of the total and net trade volume of ecological products moved 120.74 km to the northeast and 392.98 km to the southeast, respectively. (3) The trade structure of ecological products in the B&R region, six sub-regions, and most countries remained relatively stable. Only the proportion of the livestock products trade in Mongolia and the proportion of the forest products trade in Bhutan have increased significantly. This finding suggests that the strength and breadth of the construction of unimpeded trade in countries along the B&R still need to further strengthened, in order to accelerate the realization of the vision of the Green Silk Road.

Liber Amicorum Manfred Weiss

Liber Amicorum Manfred Weiss by Marius Olivier, Nicola Smit, and Evance Kalula (Cape Town, South Africa, Juta, 2021, 395 pp.).

The Future of Multilateralism in the Post-pandemic World

This paper applies an endogenous institutionalist framework to understand the evolution of the rules-based international trading system since the end of World War II. We argue that the initial success of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs and re-enforcement that led to the formation of the WTO can be explained by three major factors: the hegemonic position of the US, the belief that international trade would foster prosperity and peace, and Cold War politics. However, declining US hegemony along with a shift in global comparative advantage in labor-intensive manufacturing led to a shift from multilateral towards preferential trade agreements since the 1990s. Today, the WTO faces several new challenges, including increasing geo-political competition between the US and China, increasing digitization of commerce, and disrupted supply chains following COVID-19. A functioning WTO that facilitates global economic re-integration remains crucial to ensure a strong recovery from the pandemic and continued long-term prosperity and stability of the global economy. © 2023 Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Machine Learning Algorithm on Assets' Behaviour During and Post Covid Pandemic

Global financial assets behaviour has become highly volatile during the pandemic period, especially the highly risky assets. Financial instruments like cryptocurrencies are basically speculative and the investors basically trade on these anomalies. Even though the entire world has come to standstill these markets were never. In order to understand the market anomalies during the COVID pandemic the popular asset in cryptos which is bitcoin along with the global market index such as S&P 500, Global Crude Oil prices and gold prices daily trading data are taken into consideration during and post covid. Some of the interesting aspects of Machine Learning (ML) such as variety of techniques, parameter selection, nonlinearity and generalization ability make it well suited for the problems of uncertain functional structure. Price prediction of stock markets is a challenging problem because of unpredictable noise and the number of potential variables that may impact on the prices. The research work presented in this paper involves the development of a ML algorithm which will throw light on the price behaviour of these instruments during and post crisis. © 2022 WMSCI.All rights reserved.

Environmental, social, and governance adoption in the Malaysian wood products and furniture industries: Awareness, adoption, and challenges

As the world intensifies efforts to mitigate the effect of global climate change, an on-line survey was carried out involving 1,081 wood products and furniture manufacturers in Malaysia. The main objective was to evaluate the level of awareness, extent of adoption, and challenges faced by these manufacturers in adopting environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices. The survey found that large-sized companies were more receptive to adopting ESG practices, as opposed to the medium-, small-, and micro-sized companies. Respondents were apparently more responsive to environmental requirements, followed by governance, and finally the social factors. Within the environmental sphere, compliance with using certified and legal wood and wood products, waste management, and conformance to emission standards were well received among respondents. The survey revealed that market forces and legislative requirements were the two most important factors that enticed respondents to comply with the ESG practices;among those respondents who did not comply with ESG requirements, the primary deterrent factors include lack of awareness, no direct benefit from adopting ESG, and the high cost involved. The ESG compliance may transform the wood products and furniture industries into a more sustainable industry, offering equitable wages and green jobs while producing high value-added products.

Assessing the effects of trade regionalism in East Asia – evidence from augmented gravity models

This paper investigates the effects of trade regionalism in East Asia from 1995 to 2018, by applying a series of gravity models. An initial, basic gravity model is repeatedly augmented to account for a range of economic, geographical, cultural, and above all institutional factors representing free trade agreements in effect. Unlike previous studies, this investigation distinguishes between the bilateral and multilateral measures of regional trading arrangements. Two interesting findings are reported. First, the results confirm the impact of trade regionalism on the export flows between the economies of East Asia in the period under study. Second, the effects of multilateral trading agreements vary greatly depending on the agreement and on the particular country's range of influence, in particular cases showing no sufficient economic benefits. Overall, the results point to the complementarity of bilateral and multilateral trading arrangements in the region and to the emergence of a certain distinctive model of cooperation and integration in East Asia – which has been underpinned during the COVID-19 pandemic by the conclusion of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), and which will be further verified in the post-COVID character of global trade and regional trading arrangements.

Commodity supply risk assessment of China's copper industrial chain: The perspective of trade network

With the rapid development of China's new energy industry, the consumption demand for copper resources is increasing. As a key raw material, copper resources are becoming increasingly important. Taking the demand for copper commodities in China's new energy development as the research background and the international trade environment and pattern of copper supply as the research perspective, this paper makes an overall assessment of the commodity supply risk of China's copper industrial chain from 2010 to 2021 using the complex network and the newly established three-dimensional risk assessment model and finally reaches the following conclusions. The supply risk of commodities in China's copper industrial chain has been rising continuously since 2019 after experiencing fluctuating development in the early stage and a continuous decline in recent years, and there may be a trend of continuing to rise. The supply risk of China's copper industrial chain was gradually reduced from upstream to midstream and downstream, and the supply risk of copper smelting was more severe. The disruption potential risk of China's copper industrial chain was relatively low, and the international import market structure of copper commodities was relatively reasonable. The supply risk characteristics of each link in China's copper industrial chain were different. Due to the influence of import dependence, the copper mining industry had a high risk of trade exposure. However, the smelting and copper processing industries had certain limitations in production management, operation management and technology research and development, and their ability to withstand risks was weak. In addition, the impact of the domestic COVID-19 epidemic ha caused a high industrial chain vulnerability risk. © 2023 Elsevier Ltd

Catalysing regional integration in Africa: The role of infrastructure

Now, more than ever, infrastructure integration in Africa has become critical to recalibrating Africa's growth strategy toward increased intraregional trade, especially in an era of global isolationism, protectionism and supply chain disruptions from COVID and the war in Ukraine. This paper investigates the extent to which infrastructure development and integration can act as a catalyst for trade, innovation and income improvements in Africa. Using panel data analysis, we show that the infrastructure sector with the strongest multiplier effect on economic activity is the information and communication technology (ICT) sector, followed by the transport sector, the electricity sector and, last, the water sector. This ranking of the catalytic role of infrastructure sectors should guide policy prioritisation on infrastructure investments to accelerate growth and unlock the potential of the AfCFTA. Benchmarking exercises on infrastructures' catalytic role in the regional economic communities (RECs) show that infrastructure has had the strongest impact on economic outcomes in the East African Community bloc, making the EAC a type of flying‐geese RECs for other regions to emulate.

The Impact of COVID-19 on EU-China Trade Flows

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.

How COVID-19 has affected supply and demand within tourism industry

There is no doubt that coronavirus has succeeded in crippling businesses and people worldwide. It has led to unprecedented economic crisis in countries around the world. The tourism sector isn't an exception to its devastating impacts. The virus has succeeded in affecting not just the economy. In addition to such, job opportunities, and regional developments in local communities have been greatly affected. Tourism throughout the world has been stagnant since the month of April 2020 due to the advent of COVID-19. Given this temporary problem, economies and employment rates have been affected to a great extent. Also, local communities around the world are struggling to survive. In most countries, 50% the revenue generated from exports is contributed by tourism. This means it is a major contributor of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) as well as employment. The major aim of this paper is to carry out an objective review that can enable researchers and experts understand as well as manage the impacts of COVID-19 on tourism. For this to be achieved, this paper discussed the transformational opportunities presented by COVID-19 including questions that it raises. The paper attempts to identify pre-assumptions, institutions, and fundamental values which the tourism industry including other academia need to challenge for development to be achieved. Furthermore, the paper discusses the major impacts, experiences and behaviors being experienced by the 3 stakeholders in the tourism industry - social cost, supply, and demand. Just as measures have been adopted by countries to ameliorate the situation, recommendations have been put forward to ensure speedy recovery of the sector.

Analysis and perspectives of sweetpotato industry contributing to national food security in China

Chinese food security has been impacted by the combination of climate change, trade war, COVID-19 and partial conflict. This paper summarized the characteristics of sweetpotato for its high yield and adaptability in China. Chinese sweetpotato industry has wide space and solid foundation for development in the future, and the utilization ways of sweetpotato tend to be diversified.

FROM THE DESK OF CHIEF EDITOR: A QUARTERLY PEER REVIEWED MULTI-DISCIPLINARY INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL

Energy market instability and price increases are specifically being caused by the conflict in Ukraine, with headwinds in most other economies more than offsetting growth in energy exporters. In many emerging market and developing countries, the invasion of Ukraine has also contributed to a sharp rise in the price of agricultural commodities, causing food insecurity and extreme poverty (EMDEs). In order to enhance development, strengthen macroeconomic frameworks, lessen financial vulnerabilities, help disadvantaged population groups, and lessen the long-term effects of recent global shocks, EMDE authorities and the international community must take decisive and comprehensive policy action.

International Trade in the Post-Soviet Space: Trends, Threats, and Prospects for the Internal Trade within the Eurasian Economic Union

This paper discusses the dynamics of foreign trade in the post-Soviet space within the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) during the period from 2015 to 2021. Additionally, the paper analyzes export indicators in foreign and mutual trade of the EAEU member countries and diversification of the commodity structure as well as its dynamics based on the commodity concentration index for each member country. Our paper identifies the strengths and weaknesses of the EAEU, analyzes the opportunities and threats of development, and focuses on the trends and prospects. The main strengths include the institutional and legal structure of the EAEU single market, the historical, cultural, and economic proximity of the EAEU member countries, the transit potential of the territory, the high level of domestic trade, and the increasing share of ruble transactions in the trade turnover. The most significant weaknesses are the low efficiency of the institutional structure, the gap in the socio-economic level of development of the participating countries, unstable geopolitical situations in some member countries, the low level of recognition of the EAEU in the world market, economic and political conflicts of interests of the member countries, and the dependence on Western technologies in some key industries. Strategically important opportunities can be found in the creation and implementation of a long-term development strategy, diversification of trade with the Middle East and Asian countries, expansion in terms of the territorial composition, development of the institutional and legal structure as well as cooperation ties, as well as the cooperation in the field of technological innovation and financial security. Among the most significant threats were identified the outpacing growth in the share of EAEU members' trade with China, the expansion of economic and political contradictions between the EAEU member countries, and the strengthening of the positions of alternative currencies in foreign trade.