Huge amounts of wastes are generated during shrimp processing, representing approximately 65% of the initial shrimp weight, which can become an environmental problem when accumulated. Residues such as shrimp shells can be processed to obtain value-added products such as chitin, chitosan, astaxanthin, and a nitrogenous extract under the biorefinery concept. In this work, the economic evaluation and the techno-economic sensibility analysis for a mass integrated biorefinery based on shrimp were developed to determine the economic feasibility of the project and to identify the critical techno-economic variables that affect the profitability of the process. The results showed that a biorefinery for the annual processing of 4,113.09 tons of fresh shrimp in Colombia is profitable, with a return on investment percentage (%ROI) equal to 65.88% and a net present value (NPV) of 10.40 MM USD. The process supports decreases of up to 28% in capacity of production and increases of 12% and 11% in the cost of raw materials and variable operating costs without incurring losses, respectively. However, the decrease over 500 USD/t in the shrimp meat selling price is not supported, thus it is mainly recommended to increase the selling price of this product.

In order to evaluate the economy of superhighway, on the basis of the analysis of the cost of the ordinary expressway and high speed railway, the cost of superhighway is estimated. On this basis, the standard of the toll of superhighway at all levels is determined by reference to the standard of the construction cost and the toll collection standard of the ordinary expressway. According to the toll collection standard of superhighway and the fuel consumption cost of superhighway at all levels, the cost of single car and the single person cost of superhighway are calculated. Based on the analysis of highway passenger transport, railway passenger transport and civil aviation ticket price, the single person cost per kilometer of the above travel modes is calculated and compared with the single person travel cost per kilometer of superhighway. The results show that the single person cost of superhighway is between 0.29 and 0.47 yuan /km, which is 0.28 yuan /km higher than the highway bus, 0.18 yuan /km higher than the ordinary expressway self driving and 0.23 yuan /km higher than the express train, but 0.78 yuan/km lower than that of the first class seat of high-speed train, and is 0.92 yuan/km far lower than that of civil aviation flight economy class and 2.42 yuan/km lower than the business class. Therefore, the superhighway trip has certain advantages in economy.

Water management can improve the quality of valuable ecosystem services but can be costly to implement and the management costs are covered by national taxes collected by water users. Based on 30 valuation studies of water quality improvement from the Environmental Valuation Information System (EVIS) database provided by Korea Environment Institute (KEI), a meta-regression analysis was employed to measure the benefits that major river basins provided to the society. We compare these benefits to the costs, namely River Management Funds (RMFs) which are financial resources to support a variety of projects for managing and improving upstream water quality. Based on benefit-cost comparison, this study evaluates the efficiency of water resource management in South Korea. This study also provides policy options that are helpful to maintain the sustainability of water resource by improving the planning and performance of water management in the long run.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which traditional economic policies can be oriented by sound practices. It is becoming widely accepted that sustainable economic growth (and not only economic growth) is the final target of economic policies; but most economic policies are applied just looking to the short-run without taking in account the long-run perspective. Our aim will be to show how a sustainable economic policy-making would be possible, making compatible the stabilization of the economy in the short-run with a sustainable economic growth in the long-run. We confront the design of economic policies with the 17 goals of the 2030 Agenda. We argue that all sustainable development goals can be attained by the design and implementation of sustainable economic policies. Finally, to illustrate this point we will conduct a simulation exercise to show under which combinations of demand policies technological shocks would promote a path of sustainable growth. Our results will provide a reference framework for a sustainable economic policy-making.

The present paper investigates the determinants of the country’s modernisation through the lens of its citizens. A combination of the ‘hard’ determinants of country’s modernisation (effectiveness of digitisation, infrastructure, environment and interoperability of natural resources; behaviour in line with environmental trends of the EU) and ‘soft’ (interest in opportunities and benefits of renewable energy) was investigated. It was revealed that even for some developed countries, the ‘hard’ determinants have a greater impact on country’s modernisation compared to the ‘soft’ ones. A representative cross-sectional survey of 1015 respondents and a factor coupled with a network analysis served as the main research instruments. Lithuania served as a geographic setting for the research.

Recent years' global shocks (e.g., the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic) and environmental shocks - such as natural disasters - have heightened the vulnerability of developing countries to future shocks, and can compromise their development prospects. International institutions and researchers have advocated that the strengthening of productive capacities in these countries would help them enhance the resilience of their economies to shocks, and promote sustainable development. The present paper has examined the effect of productive capacities on economic growth and economic growth volatility in developing countries, in particular when they face a high level of structural economic vulnerability. The analysis covers 117 developing countries over the period 2000-2018. It shows that productive capacities do not only promote economic growth, but also reduce economic growth volatility. On the other hand, structural economic vulnerability reduces economic growth, in particular when it exceeds a certain level, and induces greater volatility of economic growth. Interestingly, the findings suggest that productive capacities promote economic growth and reduce economic growth volatility in countries that face a high degree of structural economic vulnerability. These findings support the recommendation by international institutions and researchers that if they were to enhance the resilience of their economies to shocks, and promote sustainable economic growth, developing countries (in particular the poorest ones) should strengthen their productive capacities.

Shelter-in-place policies and the closure of non-essential workplaces intended to disrupt transmission of the SARS-COV-2 virus are effective approaches to combating COVID-19. They have, however, caused record levels of unemployment in the United States, raising questions of whether mitigation is more societally damaging than the disease. Here we use a coupled epidemiological-economic model to estimate the impact on employment of an unmitigated, business-as-usual approach to the pandemic. We compared unemployment between March-August 2020 in ten Californian socio-economic systems (SESs) to unemployment forecast by a model of industrial sector inter-dependencies subjected to unmitigated outbreaks of COVID-19. We found that economic losses are unavoidable because disease-driven losses propagate economically through SESs, amplifying losses to the disease. While model forecasts are generally lower than actual unemployment, jobs savings would come at the cost of greatly increased worker mortality. The costs would also be disproportionately greater among smaller and inland SESs.

The subject of this paper is to analyse the Math Principia of Economic 3D Black Holes in Roegenian economics. This idea is totally new in the related literature, excepting our papers. In details, we study two special problems: (i) math origin of economic 3D black holes, (ii) entropy and internal political stability depending on national income and the total investment, for economic RN 3D black hole. To solve these problems, it was necessary to jump from macroeconomic side to microeconomic side (a substantial approach so different), to complete the thermodynamics-economics dictionary with new entities, to introduce the flow between two macroeconomic systems, to study the Schwarzschild type metric properties on an economic 4D system, together with Rindler coordinates, Einstein 4D PDEs, and economic RN 3D black hole. In addition, we introduce some economic Ricci type flows or waves, for further research.

This paper has examined the effect of economic complexity on poverty in developing countries. The analysis has used a sample of 84 countries over the period 1980-2017. Results indicate that greater economic complexity results in lower poverty headcount rates. This is particularly the case for countries that enjoy higher economic growth rates, lower levels of income inequality and lower degrees of economic growth volatility, including due to lower sizes of export demand and financial flows shocks. These findings have important policy implications for developing countries that are exploring ways and means to recover from the current COVID-19 pandemic crisis, and prepare for future crises.

The potential effect of implementing environmental regulations on economic growth is a controversial issue for a long time. As portrayed by Porter hypothesis, environmental regulations may impact on economic growth by reconstructing the economic structure. A number of previous literature proved the connections between the above three parties. With the intention of exploring the nature of this mechanism, it is important to understand the internal inter-relation of the three parties, requiring data from a large economy experiencing the transition in economic structure. By constructing a panel containing data from 30 Chinese provinces over 10 years (2008-2019), this paper investigate the dynamic inter-relation of the three parties by introducing PVAR model with Granger Test. Results reveal that environmental regulations give a “U” shaped impact to economic growth. In return, economic growth promotes the development of economy with a weakening strength. In addition, results also support the hypothesis that economic structure is the intermediate of economic growth and environmental regulations. There is a rooftop for the effect of economic structure to environmental regulations. The rooftop may signify the best optimization of primary structure.

The purpose of this paper is to apply China’s economy growth prospects and its potential drivers of future. China's fast rise and its growth model have accelerated important existing structural trends in the global economy and made them decisive characteristics of the world economy. China's role in the world economy over the coming decades, an exercise which would not be possible without an investigation of the prospects for China's continued economic rise. On the one hand, China is a large export market for the United States. A lot of U.S. firms use China as the final destination of assembly in their global supply chain networks. China’s huge holdings of U.S. Treasury securities support the federal government finance its budget failures. However, some analysts contend that China consolidates a number of distortive economic policies such as protectionist industrial policies and an undervalued currency that undermine U.S. economic interests. They warn that efforts by the Chinese government to promote indigenous innovation, often through the use of subsidies and other distortive measures, could negatively affect many leading U.S. industries

The paper addresses an analysis of the efficiency and profitability of the operation of a photovoltaic installation located in the geometric centre of Europe (near Białystok, Poland), where the intensity of solar irradiation is not too high compared to other European countries. It is calculated that in that place average solar irradiation being lower even by approx. 26 kWh than that for the whole Europe, which results in a 26% drop in the economic potential of the utilisation of solar energy for its conversion. A case study and an economic analysis show that without minimum funding amounting to 50% of the investment costs paid for the modernisation of a central heating system assisted by PV cells, the time of return of pecuniary expenditures exceeds 7 years. Apart from the Simple Pay-Back Time SPBT, discount indicators determined in the paper also include the net present value NPV and the internal rate of return IRR. Moreover, a direct ecological effect has been determined for such an investment.

This conceptual article is aimed at evaluating the COVID19 impacts on the global economy and to postulating an ‘economic paradigm shift’. We argue that the existing economic, political, and trade principles have been challenged due to the global pandemic issue. We also compare the COVID19 impact on Western countries and Eastern countries with their control mechanisms. The emerging of new economies is due to the travel restrictions and disrupt of the global economies are discussed that pave a gateway to the economic paradigm shift. The article finally assesses the advent of 5G technology and its implications to face any future health threats that will lead to the next economic paradigm shift in the modern world.

Introduction: Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV prevention has been implemented in several countries. Previous literature has shown that its cost-effectiveness (and, under some specifications, cost-saving character) is dependent on the reduction in price due to generics, the time-horizon and its effectiveness. The intervention has never been studied in Catalonia, a territory with extensive implementation. Methods: Economic evaluation of the implementation of HIV pre-exposition prophylaxis using administrative data from Men who have Sex with Men (MSM) who receive the treatment (at the generic price). A deterministic compartmental model and a social perspective with a micro-costing approach over the time horizon 2022-2062 are used. A baseline 86% effectiveness of PrEP is assumed. Results: Daily oral PrEP is found to be cost-saving: discounted savings in costs are attained after 16 years, and after 40 years they reach 81 million euros. In terms of health indicators, 10,322 additional discounted QALYs are generated by the intervention. Results are sensitive to sexual behavioral patterns among MSM, the price of PrEP (reduced if offered on-demand), its effectiveness and the discount rate. Conclusions: The use and promotion of PrEP in Catalonia is predicted to result in substantial health and monetary benefits because of reductions in HIV infections. Short-term investments in the promotion of PrEP will result in important cost-savings in the long term.

This study was conducted to propose the Green Economic Development Plan for Manufacturing S.M.E.s based on financial performance and operations thru Green Initiatives. The descriptive survey method used to gather data to determine the green initiative's implementation of small and medium (S.M.E.s) manufacturing enterprises. Green initiatives use as a basis for crafting a green economic development plan. Document analysis was also employed to obtain data from any available printed materials and records provided by the respondents. Such methods of gathering information used to validate data gathered from local and foreign-related literature. The observation also employed to survey the assets owned and validate any green initiatives practiced, including their implementation. The study's findings show that among the green initiatives implemented by SMMEs, which resulted in the reduction of total costs and expenses, were the proper disposal and segregation of waste materials, water management by recycling wastewater and using water-efficient equipment, natural resources, and raw materials management. SMMEs should encourage active participation and support of suppliers and customers in achieving G.E.D.'s objectives by developing incentive schemes.Furthermore, SMMEs should continue to benchmark with G.E.D. Practitioners are operating locally and abroad to adopt best greening strategies and regularly network with concerned government agencies for continuous updating on G.E.D. Initiatives that may benefit the firm. Further research may be conducted on green initiatives implemented by small and medium enterprises in other industry sectors.

The Nordic countries are practically always well positioned in the main international economic, social and sustainability indices and recommending the scientific literature that the variables that these indices intend to measure translate into sustainable economic growth, with this unprecedented empirical study we intend to verify through the ARDL methodology for space temporal 2004 -2018 if the maintenance of high scores in these indexes translates into effective economic growth. The ARDL methodology has the advantage of giving us short- and long-term coefficients. Using four of the main international indices, we conclude that for Nordic countries for economic growth, economic freedom is of no significance and business-friendly regulation is the most important variable. A fundamental discovery in our study (in which Granger's Causality complements the ARDL methodology) is that these countries have been able to adapt perfectly to the globalization process and that entrepreneurship has worked as an important contribution to the continued economic and social success of these countries, allowing them to continue to enjoy their “Nordic Welfare States” in these uncertain and troubled times. These variables have contributed to its economic and social sustainability.

For water-stressed regions like Iran improving the effectiveness and productivity of agricultural water-use is of utmost importance due to climate change and unsustainable demands. Therefore, a hydro-economic model has been developed here for the Zarrine River Basin with the central concept of that demands are value-sensitive functions, where quantities of water-uses at different locations and times have a changeable economic benefits. To do this, the potential crop yields and the surface and groundwater resources, especially Boukan Dam inflow are simulated using the hydrologic model, SWAT, based on predicted climatic scenarios i.e. quantile mapping-downscaled projections. Then, to allocate the agricultural water based on the agro- economic crop water productivity (AEWP) of crops, a basin-wide water management tool, MODSIM, is customized. Next, a simulation- optimization model has been developed using a coupled CSPSO-MODSIM, to optimize the total AEWP, considering climatic impact and crop pattern scenarios, for 2020-2038, 2050-2068 and 2080-2098 periods. Finally, the optimum crop pattern and crop water irrigation depths are presented for different RCPs and periods. The results indicated that this approach will improve considerably the AEWPs and decrease the agricultural water-use up to 40%. Thus, this integrated model is able to support water authorities and other stakeholder in a water-scarce basin, as is the study area.

Muslim countries witnessed outstanding intellectual and socio-economic prosperity up to the 18th century when they fell into a period of regression following the Ottoman’s global decline. Currently, economically Muslim societies lags behind the modern western world. Scholars hold different views, including the radical notion that Islam is inherently anti-development and thus resists progress. This study discusses the Islamic philosophy and principles of development in the context of institutional economics. The basic principles of Islamic economic development drawn from the Islamic sources and historical experiences will be explored for a better understanding of Muslims’ current condition. This study addresses questions including whether basic religious precepts caused Muslims’ economic underdevelopment, while examining the development process according to Muslim perspectives. The institutions, the organizations, rules, and applications will also be explored in addition to the impact of those institutions on development. The context of development will also be evaluated according to Western value perspective. A model of Islamic economic development will be discussed in addition to the discussions of institutions that contributed to the early development of the Islamic world.

This paper contributes to the debate on the impact of economic diversity and the resource curse on economic growth. We use dynamic panel data models on data on Canadian and US sub-national jurisdictions. We find evidence for a positive relationship between diversity and growth. Based on the Krugman Specialization Index, our analysis shows that the required threshold for not having the resource curse is 0.209. Above this threshold, the marginal contribution of natural resources to economic growth is lower for a more diversified regional economy than a less diversified one. We highlight the policy implications of these findings.

This study attempts to assess the impact of corruption on economic growth in the Mediterranean countries, during the period from 1998 to 2007. Econometric analysis using panel regression has been adopted to test this effect. Individual effects models such as random effects model and fixed effects model were applied to the study sample of 160 observations, and to choose the suitable model, we implemented several tests. For our analysis, we used a basic model that includes the dependent variable GDP per capita as a factor of economic growth and the corruption perception index as the independent variable concerned. Then we completed the model with several standardized macroeconomic control variables mentioned above and applied the individual effects models. The outcomes illustrate that corruption has a negative impact on the selected Mediterranean countries’ economic growth.

Achieving high economic growth rate while maintaining low inflation rate, has become the main objective of monetary authorities all over the world. Indeed, empirical literature reflects that high inflation rates are detrimental to long run growth and entail welfare costs. To achieve this objective, central banks have availed different options from time to time which include inflation targeting. Monetary authorities in Tanzania have been targeting an inflation level of around 5 percent per annum for economic policy purposes. However, when high inflation is to be controlled, tight monetary policy is put in place which might in turn affect the economic activity. Also, the Tobin effect suggests that inflation causes individuals to substitute out of money and into interest earning assets, which leads to greater capital intensity which in turn promotes economic growth. Against these major points, this paper examines a non linear relationship between inflation and economic growth using both a quadratic and threshold endogenous models and attempts to identify the existence of threshold effects between these variables. The paper uses a data set spanning from 1967 to 2015. The most interesting finding of the estimations is that the estimated coefficient of the linear term of inflation is negative while the estimated coefficient of the square term of inflation is positive, suggesting a U-shaped effect as opposed to inverse or inverted U-shaped relationship found in other countries by previous studies. These results suggest that the Tobin effect may be valid for high inflation, in which people strongly realize the importance of substituting money for interest-bearing assets. This leads to an increase in capital investment, and in turn, an increase in economic growth even with high inflation rate. However, this U-shaped relationship between inflation and economic growth suggests that, the economy is better off at extremely low inflation episodes. The optimal inflation rate that ranges between 3.25 percent and 3.75 percent is obtained by minimizing the residual sum of squares and/or maximizing adjusted R-squared. These findings have some policy implications for the policymakers and development partners. The paper is consistent with policy suggestions by international agencies. Efforts to minimize inflation to a very low level are likely to have a positive effect on economic growth.

Tourism may not sustainably support territories with limited natural resource stock as islands. The volume in visitor arrivals and the industry investments can increase the pressure even beyond sustainable levels. There is an evident and unresolved tension between these two great polarities, sustainability and economic growth driven by tourism. The aim for policymakers is to find an acceptable equilibrium between these two dimensions. This paper investigates the tourism evolution between 2007 and 2019 in 15 Mediterranean islands, comparing the tourism pressures through statistical indicators. The analysis will compare tourism demand and supply trends in these contexts. The performances will be evaluated to identify the Islands positioning between sustainability needs and tourism development opportunities considering post-covid-19 challenges.

The COVID-19 outbreak and its economic, social and financial fallouts have generated a renewed interest in finding adequate policies and means to strengthen economic resilience to future shocks, particularly in developing countries. The latter are usually disproportionately affected by adverse shocks (compared to developed countries) and lack the adequate resources to weather these shocks. Strengthening economic resilience is now at the heart of the policy discussion both at the national and international levels. The present paper aims to contribute to this debate by investigating the effect of productive capacities on economic resilience in a panel dataset of 118 developing countries over the period 2000-2018. It constructs a regression-based economic resilience indicator, and makes use of the indicator of productive capacities recently developed by the UNCTAD. Results are quite interesting, including from a policy perspective. The development of productive capacities is associated with greater economic resilience. This is particularly the case for countries with greater trade openness, greater capital account openness, and those that promote a stable macroeconomic environment. Interestingly, development aid appears to matter for the effect of productive capacities on economic resilience. On the one hand, the magnitude of the positive economic resilience effect of productive capacities increases as countries receive higher Aid for Trade (AfT) flows. On the other hand, NonAfT flows (i.e., other development aid flows that AfT flows) hinder the possible positive contribution of productive capacities to economic resilience. These findings have important policy implications that are discussed in the paper.

The quality of the environment affects human behavior, the micro-communities of human beings need creative thinking and ideas. Social environments have a significant impact on collective behaviors and social interactions. Nowadays achieving social indicators in housing with a sustainable approach is one of the goals that have been considered. The most important issue in the field of research is recognizing and examining the value of spaces in residential environments to achieve social life, in which it leads human to be social in public residential spaces. Paying attention to social relations with neighbors and people to create Social relationships are proportionate to the presence of individuals in their realm of life. The concept of neighborhood is being responsible for creating social relationships, influencing people living in the complex and community-based life. In this research, by satisfying the human need to communicate and interact with others, creating collective spaces in different scales such as commercial and recreational spaces in residential complexes, the presence of people in these spaces leads to the socialization of collective space and the factor in which the space achieves success. By explaining and identifying the components of socialization in the collective spaces of residential complexes, such spaces can be prepared for the presence of people in the space.

Researchers’ attention has been turned on Health expenditure, Carbon emissions, and economic growth as they play a focal role in the current debate on environmental protection and sustainable development. Our paper endeavors to investigate the impact of economic growth and CO2 emissions on Health expenditure for two main countries in Asia (China and India) using a dynamic panel data model estimated employing the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) for the period 1960–2019. Our empirical results show that there is a significant relationship between health expenditure, CO2 emissions, and economic growth. The empirical evidence indicates a significant positive impact of CO2 emissions on health expenditure whiles economic growth has a negative impact on health expenditure for both countries for the period under study. The population growth rate has transposed effect on India's health spending; on the other hand, its impact on China’s health spending is significantly positive. The strong observable correlation between health expenditure and economic growth is crucial for economic development.

The COVID-19 has caused gigantic negative effects on populace wellbeing, society, education, and the economy in Bangladesh. The aim is to deliver a comprehensive overview of the observed and the possible impacts that could appear in the coming days. The study is based on secondary information. During the early period, due to a lack of accurate facts about the case affected and death tension up-and-down among the nations. The total number of confirmed cases is increasing following geometric patterns in Bangladesh. Dairy farmers, vegetable producers, pharmaceuticals, poultry farmers are in deep crisis due to lower prices. Also, the pandemic has seriously affected educational systems, banking, FDI, ready-made garments, remittances, etc Finally, it is not possible to mitigate the effects of pandemic individually but the integrated effort from the state authority as well as concern people of all sectors need to come forward.

This review has been realized within the agribusiness sector and experiments the Transaction Cost Theory a branch of the New Institutional Economy which explain market failure caused by many factors. Transaction costs are associated with carrying a transaction between buyers and sellers. This study has been conducted between 2014 and 2017; and has collected data from 11 broiler producers in Jezzine, Lebanon, about: Production costs, capital investment, revenues, land tenure, access to infrastructure, and information about the contract. The propensity score matching method is used to compare the effect of participating in contract farming and to solve the hypotheses, which say: There is a positive relationship between contract farming and the economic benefits of broiler producers and the development of the broiler sector in Jezzine District. Findings from farmer’s interviews indicated that sustainability, guaranteed price, risk reduction, credit facilities and technical aids are the main reasons for signing a contract. In contrast, Farmers have expressed problems concerning the contractors’ responsibilities such as delay in payment and delivery. Also, when prices are high, it was argued that farmers were selling the products in the open market.

This paper aims to research whether there is link between FDI inflows and Economic growth in the Republic of Seychelles Island. The ordinary least square results obtained shows that in the impact of FDI inflows on economic growth is low. Small Island Developing States attracts less FDI inflow because they are limited to few resources that attracts overseas firms which results in retarded development. The research lighted that impact of foreign direct investment on host countries does not only depend on the quality and quantity of the FDI inflows but some other variables such as the internal policies and the management skills, market structures, economic trends among others.

This paper examines the indirect effect of democracy on economic growth using a dataset of 17 MENA countries from 1990 to 2015. Democracy is assumed to affect growth through a series of channels: education, health, physical capital accumulation per labor, government consumption, and trade openness. A system of six simultaneous equations, 3SLS, is used to estimate the effect of democracy on growth through these channels. For further analysis, the countries are classified into groups according to the democratic status on the one side, and the level of income on the other. The results indicate that democracy enhances growth through its positive effect on health in all classifications of countries within the MENA region. However, the effect of democracy on growth through education and physical capital/labor is non-monotonic. Democracy always hinders growth through government size and trade openness. Once all of these indirect effects are accounted for, the overall effect of democracy on growth is negative in less democratic countries and poor countries, but positive in more democratic countries and rich countries.

The paper examines the impact of inward remittances flows on per capita GDP growth in Bangladesh during 1976-2012. We find that the growth effect of remittances is negative at first but becomes positive at a later stage, an evidence of a non-linear. Unproductive use of remittances was rampant in the beginning when they were received by migrant families but better social and economic investments led to more productive utilisation of remittances receipts at later periods. This was the possible mechanism behind the U-shaped relationship. Unlike what is suggested in the literature that the effect of remittances is more pronounced in a less financially developed economy, our evidence do not show that the effect of remittances on per capita GDP growth in Bangladesh is conditional on the level of financial development.

This research is aimed at determining the characteristics of the current level of entrepreneurial potential of the Three Seas Initiative (3SI) countries, the ability to overcome the consequences of extraordinary events, such as COVID-19 and prospects for the return to an accelerated development once the destabiliser of the economic system, the coronavirus pandemic, has ceased. Eurostat, World Bank and the World Economic Forum data for 2015-2019 were used for the purpose of the research. The research was divided into three stages, i.e. assessment of economic development on the basis of a synthetic ratio of economic anchor development, for which a relative benchmark method based on spatial median (so-called L1 median or Weber point) was used, identification of conditions for the development of entrepreneurial capacity and statistical analysis showing the correlation between economic anchor measures and selected factors of the 3SI countries economic development. Our study found that the entrepreneurial capacity of the 3SI countries in 2015-2019 was determined by nine characteristics, belonging to six areas, i.e. local economy, demographic situation, social situation, trade exchange, innovation and tourism economy. The entrepreneurial potential of the 3SI countries was spatially diversified, and its development was determined, among others, by the entrepreneurial activity of residents (entrepreneurship index) and the conditions for running a business.

The Circular Economy of plastics is a promising concept that has the potential to reduce pollution and close the loop on plastic waste. However, further research is needed to develop more efficient and environmentally friendly methods of recycling plastic. This review article discusses the Circular Economy of plastics, its potential benefits and drawbacks, and the challenges that need to be addressed to make it a reality. Some case studies are also examined to explore how the Circular Economy of plastics has been implemented across the globe.

The objective was to estimate the monetary loss of potato producers up to the year 2100 as a result of temperature and precipitation impacts, taking into account the A2 and B2 scenarios of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). The Pooled Production Panel Model was used, whose database was prepared taking into account climatic variables (temperature and precipitation) and agricultural variables (production, harvested area, farm-gate price) for the period 1996 - 2020, which form the independent variables of the study. The estimations used 60 observations and a total of 38 estimations were run in the econometric software EViews8, of which Equation 05 of the Production Pooled Panel Model was chosen as the best. The model obtained used temperature and precipitation forecasts from Brazil's INPE (National Institute for Space Research), validated for the study area. The results indicate a concave function between potato production (t/ha), temperature and precipitation. Finally, based on the A2 climate scenario, which is the most pessimistic and using the period 2021 - 2100, a loss for potato producers of approximately 8'927,521.48 million soles was estimated.

The poultry industry is affected by many epidemics and Newcastle Disease (ND) is a constant threat, known as a devastating disease for poultry farmers around the world. According to the average death time of chicken embryos, virus strains can be classified as lentogenic, mesogenic, or velogenic. The current research will clarify the vulnerable host range as well as the epidemiology and geographic distribution of ND in Pakistan. The introduction of the virus into poultry can have serious economic consequences, including the loss of production of sick and dying poultry, the cost of control measures (such as population reduction and disinfection measures), and possible trade restrictions in the event of an outbreak. The virus is transmitted by direct contact with sick poultry or carriers. Infected birds can also spread the virus in their feces. It can also be spread through respiratory secretions, contaminated feed, equipment, water, or feces. We will also discuss vaccines that which vaccines are available for NDV in Pakistan and vaccines can fight against this disease or not? In this study, a qualitative risk analysis was carried out to assess Pakistan's vulnerability to the introduction of virulent NDV strains

In this article we propose an application of humanitarian logistics theory to build a supportive framework for economic reactivation and pandemic management based on province vulnerability against COVID-19. The main research question is: which factors are related to COVID-19 mortality between Peruvian provinces? We conduct a spatial regression analysis to explore which factors determines the differences in COVID-19 cumulative mortality rates for 189 Peruvian provinces up to December 2020. The most vulnerable provinces are characterized by having low outcomes of long-run poverty and high population density. Low poverty means a high economic activity that leads to more deaths of COVID-19. There is a lack of supply of a set of relief goods defined as Pandemic Response and Recovery Supportive Goods and Services (PRRSGS). These goods must be delivered in order to mitigate the risk associated to COVID-19. A supportive framework for economic reactivation can be built based on regression results and a delivery strategy can be discussed according to the spatial patterns that we found for mortality rates.

This paper uses the spatial analysis software GeoDa as a tool, takes GRP (Gross regional product) of Sichuan Province in 2012 and 2018 as the dependent variable, and takes the city (autonomous prefecture) factor-driven, investment-driven and innovation-driven indicators as the dependent variable to explore the impact of innovation activities on regional economic development and the spatial distribution characteristics of regional economy. Through the comparison of the global correlation and local correlation, this paper explores the crux of the regional economic polarization and unbalanced development, and puts forward some measures to solve the existing economic development problems, such as cultivating and improving the regional industrial dependence, accelerating the regional transportation accessibility and convenience, and constructing the regional collaborative innovation system, So as to achieve the strategic goal of the construction of innovative Province in Sichuan Province.

The purpose of this study is to examine the connection between economic growth and unemployment in Liberia between 2001 and 2019. The unit root test and the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) Co-integration test were used to examine the relationship between unemployment and GDP. The Auto Regressive Distribution Lag (ARDL) bounds test is used to determine if the variables are linked in the long run. According to the results of the ARDL model, there is no long-run relationship between unemployment and economic growth. This study' results have particularly important policy implications for Liberian economic authorities. In both the long and medium term, the observational results showed no meaningful relationship between unemployment and economic growth. The Liberian government should direct its spending toward activities that directly and indirectly promote the creation of employment and decent jobs, a conducive environment and flexible labor market policies or legislation that are not impediments to job creation, and finally, the government should prioritize labor intensive industries.

Since the financial crisis in 2008, the U.S. economy has weakened, and the world economy has slowly developed. As the world's leading country, the United States has used many methods to restore the economy. But it does work efficiently. However, there are many issues in developed countries such as domestic social, economic, immigration in the United States/United Kingdom; those are not optimistic. Developed countries have entered a dilemma. The neoliberalism financial system has been unable to move forward. Populists have pointed out that those problems have been causing by globalization. Under the leadership of the Brexit Referendum, President Trump has caused a wave of anti-globalization. Under a series of systems such as the China-US trade war and the US-Mexico border wall repairs, the anti-globalization trend is getting stronger. This article mainly analyzes the in-depth reasons and mechanism research of globalization and anti-globalization alternately—the data obtained from an international method performance study. The results show that anti-globalization is temporary, along with globalization. There are three main factors affecting globalization: the situation of the dominant country, natural disasters, and wars. After so much literature review, I believe that the United States' globalization is gradually weakening, and globalization may return to regionalization under the United States' opposition.

Underpinned by the research works on private returns on education in developing nations that have found a positive correlation between earning and subsequent level of schooling, this paper presents a concept of an investment policy which will help the impoverished children in becoming economically successful through systematic funding of their educational needs with an obligation of interest adjusted returns.

The Corona Virus (COVID-19) pandemic situation has posed significant effect on tourism industry. Tourism destinations have embraced emergency health care measures and restrictions imposed on human movement around the world. Beaches and resorts are empty, peoples’ movements are stopped and travelling between territories is strictly controlled. The COVID-19 lockdown around the world has imposed negative impact on the livelihood of people and world economy as well. The present study attempts to find out the scopes for sustainable tourism development in near future from the consequences of social, economic, and environment in COVID-19 pandemic situation.

The goal of this paper is to explore the relationship between the specific non-performing loan ratio (NPL ratio) and the corresponding impact on the bank’s profitability and lending behavior. It also seeks to investigate the macroeconomic impacts of economies with excessively high NPL ratios as well as the efficacy and impact of alleviation measures used by banks and governments around the world to help facilitate a decrease in high NPL ratios. The possible implications and effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on NPL ratios is also addressed in this paper. It is found that when excessively high NPL ratios go unaddressed, the economy tends to suffer. On the other hand, this study shows that when measures are taken to reduce or eliminate the high NPL ratios, economic performance improves, and the reduction has a clear positive impact on the economy.

The impact of monetary policies and their implementation by exchange rate covered the economic condition of Ghana. The social inclusion and conversion factors change the implemented policies of nations, where the real price, trade, technology, a price rate and price level of ratio take an important part of growth. The reform of the financial sector favors the free floating of the exchange rate and global trade by under the premise of flexible exchange rates. The tragedy of country growth and exchange rate toward a trajectory of growth with the growth-enhancing effect through social inclusion, conversion factors, price level ratio, exchange rate, merchant rate, export and trade services. The research study is based on secondary study and social inclusion equity indicators with public resources, building human resources and social protection for economic development has determined. The monetary policies are classified by the different evidence and trade indicators. The significant influence of growth and internal policies has affected trade and exchange rates with growth and reserve policies. The results have computed by linear regression and it proved that social inclusion and alternative conversion factors impact on the global trade and create short term binary relationship.

We present a new method of estimating fitness of countries and complexity of products by exploiting a non-linear non-homogeneous map applied to the publicly available information on the goods exported by a country. The non homogeneous terms guarantee both convergence and stability. After a suitable rescaling of the relevant quantities, the non homogeneous terms are eventually set to zero so that this new method is parameter free. This new map reproduces the findings of the method proposed by Tacchella et al. [1], and allows for an approximate analytic solution in case of actual binarized matrices based on the Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) indicator. This solution is connected with a new quantity describing the neighborhood of nodes in bipartite graphs, representing in this work the relations between countries and exported products. Moreover, we define the new indicator of country net-efficiency quantifying how a country efficiently invests in capabilities able to generate innovative complex high quality products. Eventually, we demonstrate analytically the local convergence of the algorithm.

Assessing the economic supply of biomass in a geospatial context while accounting for risk from natural disasters was studied. Risk levels were estimated from a component of factors which included: population density, road density, federal ownership, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ecoregions, and Presidential Disaster Declarations. The Presidential Disaster Declarations included risks due to: coastal storm, drought, fire, flood, freezing, hurricane, mud land slide, severe ices, severe storms, snow, tornado, and tropical storm. Presidential Disaster Declarations included summaries based on a short-term time period from 2000-2011, and on a long-term time period from 1964-2011. Risk categories were developed as a function of the number of disaster declarations, agricultural-to-forest land ratio, average road density, and average population density. A significant contribution of the research was the allocation of spatially explicit data using GIS technology at the 5-digit zip code tabulation area. The average area for 5-digit ZCTAs in the Eastern U.S. study region was approximately 169 kilometers². Long-term risk (1964-2011) from disaster declarations had a greater impact on the economic availability of biomass supply relative to short-term declarations (2000-2011). The greatest risk to biomass supply came from population density relative to the other risk factors studies. Of the 25,044 total ZCTAs, 12,256 ZCTAs were in locations that did not include population density ≥ 150/km², road density ≥ 14 km/km², federal ownership, and US Environmental Protection Agency Level III ecoregions. Of the remaining 12,256 ZCTAs, 26.8% were considered to be moderate-to-high risk based on short-term declarations (2000-2011) and 29.4% were considered to be moderate-to-high risk based on long-term declarations (1964-2011). Lower risk locations for procuring biomass supply for both short-term and long-term declarations, across all risk factors, were in southern Georgia, South Carolina, and Texas.

Oil revenues and external debt might have stimulated economic growth in the oil exporting countries via investment in capital projects. The paper estimated economic growth on oil revenues and external debt after controlling public investment and population growth over the period 1970-2015. Following the confirmation of the order of integration, our analysis is based on autoregressive distributed lag bound testing to cointegration approach. The key findings are that oil revenues and public investment contributes to Nigeria’s economic growth. However, our findings also indicate that external debt and population growth retards growth. The study suggests that minimizing fiscal deficits and unnecessarily foreign loans by creating tax avenues through the development of the non-oil sectors would reduce the dependency syndrome on a single commodity (oil) in Nigeria.

An entrepreneur is a business-able physical person who performs activities to gain the profit and who is registered according to law. Starting from the national and theoretical and legal solutions and court practice from comparative law, the authors analyze the concept and the legal position of an individual entrepreneur noticing the problems and inconsistencies in legal regulations. The authors of the work make a few conclusions and suggestions: 1) terminology is not coordinated with legal terminology from comparative law. In our law, the legal term is “entrepreneur”, which is a too wide and unspecified term because in economic profession this term represents the genus term for individual and collective entrepreneurship; 2) analyze all forbidden activities for entrepreneurs, judge the reasons pro et contra and work on eliminating prohibitions and favouring legal entities; 3) set by law the bankruptcy of an individual entrepreneur i.e. the individual bankruptcy of a physical person; 4) work on passing a separate legislation in the field of the individual entrepreneurship, especially on passing and changing the laws which would regulate handicrafts (including old crafts and jobs of home industry), free professions as well as agricultural activity.

Economic risks for livestock production are caused by volatile commodities and market conditions, but also by environmental drivers like increasing uncertainties due to weather anomalies and global warming. These risks impact the gross margin of farmers and can stimulated investment decisions. For confined pig and poultry production, farmers can reduce the environmental impact by implementing specific adaptation measures to reduce heat stress. A simulation model driven by meteorological data was used to calculate heat stress impact as a projection for 2030. For a business-as-usual livestock building, the indoor climate for several adaptation measures was calculated. The weather-related value-at risk quantified the economic risks caused by global warming and the stochastic component of the weather. The results show that only energy-saving adaptation measures to reduce the inlet air temperature are appropriate to reduce the economic risk to the level of the year 1980. The efficiency of other adaptation measures to reduce heat stress is distinctly lower. The results in this study can support the decision making of farmers concerning adaptation management and investments. It can inform agricultural policy design as well as technological development.

During the past few years many projects and initiatives were undertaken deploying and testing automated vehicles for public transportation and logistics. However in spite of their ambition, all of these deployments stayed on the level of elaborated experimentation deploying no more than 4 maximum 5 AVs in rather small sites (few Kms of roads) and never really reached the level of large scale “commercial” deployment of transport services. The reasons for this are many, but the most important being the lack of economically viability and commercially realistic models, the lack of scalability of the business and operating models, and the lack of inclusive citizen/user centric services required for the large end-user acceptation and adoption of the solutions. In this paper, based on the experience gained in the H2020 AVENUE project, we present the missing pieces of the puzzle, ad which will be addressed in the Horizon Europe project ULTIMO.

Background: Covid-19 patients with any pre-existing cardio-vascular disease (CVD) are at highest risk for viral infection and for developing of severe disease. Pathophysiological mechanism is characterized by the viral link to Angioten-sin-Converting Enzyme 2 (ACE2) and the involvement of the endothelial system with the release of cytokines and direct damage on myocardium, micro throm-bosis, and alterations of oxygen diffusion. Aim of the study is to analyze clinical course, treatment and outcome in patients (gender stratified) with pre-existing CVD. Methods: Out of the 1299 (700 M/599 F) patients admitted to Internal Medicine COVID Unit of “Castelli Hospital”, Lazio, Italy, from 01/01/2021 to 31/12/2021, 278 patients (167 M/111 F), mean age 76 (76 M/ 75 F) had previous CVD. Demographic characteristics, length of the stay (LOS) and oxygen therapy were evaluated. Results: Most common CVD pathologies were Hearth Failure (HF): 131 (72 M/59 F), Atrial Fibrillation (AF): 45 (25 M/20 F), Myocardial Infarction (MI): 26 (19 M/7 F) and associations among them. 100% of CVD COVID patients under-went Non-Invasive Ventilation (NIV) and were treated with more than 5 drugs. HF was linked with increased LOS (23 days) compared to AF (21 days), MI (18 days) and no CVD (16 days). Overall mean LOS was 16,5 days. 21,4% of total pa-tients had CVD. Conclusions: Timely identification and evaluation of patients with pre-existing CVD are fundamental for adequate treatment based on gender, severity and state of illness and for risk reduction. Keywords: polypharmacy, gender medicine; COVID 19; Sars CoV 2; cardiovas-cular disease.

The last few years have witnessed an explosion of research on Sustainable development. Most of this research is concentrated on the developed countries related to the issues not compatible with developing countries. This paper fills the gap and reviews the literature related to developing and emerging economies and their environmental and social constraints under Renewable energy and sustainable development (RESD). It also investigates how RESD can be implemented in the presence of serious issues pertaining to population increase, shortage of energy supply, lack of transportation, shortage of clean water, less food production and bad environmental systems and these are coupled with war, and hunger and political instability. The main contribution of this paper is to present extensive discussion in the context of hypotheses of economic growth and its association with energy consumption, and renewable energy options for sustainable development.

The goal is to reduce poverty, the method used is a literature study to see the effect of using Financial Technology (Fintech) on financial inclusion, method to see the effect of financial inclusion on poverty. From the results of the tests, the use of Fintech can increase financial inclusion, thereby encouraging poverty alleviation. It can be seen that the Financial Inclusion variable has a significant and negative effect on the poverty variable. This shows that countries that have high levels of financial inclusion are generally estimated to have low poverty rates. Increasing a country's financial inclusion can reduce poverty.

Forest enterprise has been identified as a means of generating income among people; plays a vital role in enhancing the quality of life of forest-dependent people. Despite the opportunities timber marketing offers the people, the disparities in the income generation of the marketers in the Bodija sawn wood Market and the effect of socio-economic factors on income generation of the marketers is not well understood. This study was conducted to assess the socio-economic determinants of contributions of timber marketing to the income of timber merchants in Bodija sawn-wood Market. One hundred structured questionnaires were administered randomly in five zones of the sawn wood Market to obtain information on the socio-economic background of the sawn wood marketers and the contribution of timber trade to their incomes. The result indicated that 99.0% of the respondents were male while females constituted 1.00%. Seventy-five percent of the marketers had post-primary education and 25% had primary education. Two percent of the marketers had below 10 years of marketing experience, twenty-six percent had between 11 and 20 years, 57.00% had between 21 and 30 years, and 15.00% had more than 30years experience. Fifty-eight percent of the respondents earned between ₦10000-₦60000 (1US$ = 360.00) from timber marketing, thirty-one percent earned between ₦60001 and ₦110000, 7% earned between ₦110001 and ₦160000, while 4% earned above ₦160000 per month. Chi-square analysis of the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents and income generation at α level of 0.05 indicated that ethnicity (0.001) and years of experience (0.009) significantly influenced income while the level of education (0.101), age (0.122), and religion (0.745) had no significant influence on the incomes of marketers. Experience is an important factor in sawn wood marketing and a major determinant of the contribution of timber marketing to the income of timber marketers in Bodija sawn wood Market.

During the last two decades, energy poverty has captured a growing attention of researchers and policymakers due to its strong association with economic poverty and poor economic performance. This study uses a broad set of macro level indicators and makes the first attempt to measure energy poverty and its impact on economic growth of Pakistan over the period 1990 to 2017. In particular, our energy poverty indicator considers four main dimensions of energy poverty, namely, energy services, clean energy, energy governance and energy affordability. Our main results show that though the overall energy poverty has reduced in Pakistan during the selected sample period, the country shows an increasing dependence on polluted energy supply in order to meet its growing demand of energy. In second stage of the investigation, we test the neoclassical growth theory where we incorporate energy poverty along with human capital as source of economic growth. Our cointegration results reveal a strong relationship between energy poverty and economic growth that is also dynamically stable in short run. These strong negative linkages between energy poverty with economic growth for the sample economy complement the previous literature on the subject.

The increasing amount of municipal sludge in China requires safe and effective management to protect human health and ensure environmental sustainability. Pyrolysis is a thermochemical process that that decompose organic matter at elevated temperature and under anaerobic conditions, and it has attracted an increasing attention in sludge treatment in the recent years. However, comprehensive environmental and economic assessment of sludge pyrolysis in China's context is rare, due to the small quantities of full-scale sludge pyrolysis plant. In this paper, we applied our design and operation parameters of full-scale sludge pyrolysis plants to generate the material and energy consumptions of the pyrolysis system under various of conditions, including sludge organic content and moisture content, system size, system energy distribution, and whether or not heat substitution is applied. Life cycle assessment and techno-economic assessment were then applied to investigate the environmental and economic performance of the system Our results demonstrate the significant environmental and economic impacts associated with sludge properties and system size. Generally, sludge with higher organic content and lower moisture content requires less natural gas consumption, which leads to a simultaneous improvement of the system environmental and economic performance. The system economic performance is more sensitive to the system size, and centralized sludge handling using a larger pyrolysis is more economic favorable. In the most ideal case, the average global warming potential and minimum sludge handling price of sludge pyrolysis could be as low as -32.5 kg CO₂-Eq/t DS and 188.8 $/t DS, respectively. Based on these results, we discussed the pathways that could be taken to further optimize the environmental and economic performances of the pyrolysis system.

Abstract：This paper uses the balanced panel data from 29 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) in China for a total of 17 years from 2000 to 2016 as a research sample, and establishes an empirical model to examine the impact of environmental regulations and technological innovation on the quality of economic growth. Then this paper test technological innovation as a threshold variable, in which play a regulatory role. Taking the provincial balanced panel data as a research sample, a fixed effect model, a system GMM model, and a panel threshold model were established for empirical testing and the robustness test. Based on the empirical results, this article draws the following conclusions: from a national perspective, environmental regulations and technological innovation can significantly promote the quality of economic growth; from a regional perspective, there are regional differences in impact effects. Under the constraints of environmental regulations, the promotion effect of technological innovation on the quality of economic growth will be reduced; the impact of environmental regulation on the quality of economic growth will have a "threshold effect", and environmental regulation can significantly promote the quality of economic growth only after crossing the threshold and the threshold of technological innovation.

World Economy today depends on business investments that are propelled by Green technology, innovations and entrepreneurial activities. In recent years, developing economies in Asia, Africa and Latin America have embarked on easy capital access to Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to facilitate their economic growth. Kenya is among the Middle Level Income Countries that have gained global recognition through entrepreneurial innovations. In this study we assess the role of entrepreneurship towards poverty alleviation in Kenya. The objectives of the study were: to evaluate the role of entrepreneurship in poverty alleviation in Kenya; to identify entrepreneurship innovations and their economic contribution in Kenya and to determine the significance of entrepreneurship to Kenyan economy. Methodology of study took a parametric approach through pure desktop studies on entrepreneurship cases in Kenya. Success case studies of entrepreneurial innovations like M-pesa, M-soko and Uwezo Fund initiatives were assessed. The paper notes that activities undertaken in each of these case studies have made great contributions to poverty alleviation and economic development in both urban and rural areas of Kenya.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the Spanish economy hard. The result is an unprecedented economic and social crisis due to uncertainty about the remedy, and due to the socio-economic effects on people’s lives. Methods: We performed a retrospective analysis of the macro-economic impact of COVID-19 in 2020, using the principal indicators of the Spanish economic and productive model. National statistics were examined in the search for impacts or anomalies occurring since the beginning of the pandemic. To estimate the strength of the impact on each of the indicators analysed, we used Bayesian structural time series. Results: In 2020, the cumulative impact on the Gross Domestic Product was of -11.41% [95% credible interval: -13.46; -9.29]. The indicator for Business Turnover fell by -9.37% [-12.71; -6.07]. The reduction in business activity was related to the sharp fall in demand. The Spanish employment market was strongly affected; our estimates showed a cumulative increase of 11.9% [4.27; 19.45] in the rate of unemployment during 2020. The autonomous communities which are economically the most heavily dependent on the services sector were those which recorded the worst indicators. Conclusions: Our estimates portray a dramatic situation in our country, and show all too clearly the fragility of a productive system which has to make the behavioural changes that are necessary to confront the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 changed the way we interact and engage in commerce at a fundamental level. Social distancing and stay-at-home orders leave businesses and cities wondering what economic activity will look like in the future. Given a likely reduction in face-to-face interactions, it is important to better understand how social interactivity influences economic outcomes. Here we measure the effect of social interactions in the workforce on patent production and economic efficiency. We decompose U.S. occupations into individual work activities, determine which of those activities are associated with face-to-face interactions, and reaggregate the labor force of each U.S. metropolitan statistical area (MSA) into a metric of social interactiveness. We then calculate each MSA’s density of social work activities and find that this measure is more highly correlated with an MSA’s per capita patent production than simple population density. This suggests that density of face-to-face interactions is the important driver of a city’s rate of invention. We close by exploring analogies between the development of cities and the development of stars, suggesting ways these analogies may help frame future research on cities.

Over time, the agricultural sector's contribution to the nation's Gross Domestic Product and revenue is declining exponentially; the decline may be attributed to varying problems affecting the agricultural value chain resulting in low productivity. The agricultural value chain comprises a series of activities and value addition processes required to transform raw materials into useable products to maximize the final consumers' utility.¹ The agricultural value chain's marketing activities have been skewed with challenges, thus affecting agricultural productivity and agricultural sector contribution to the economy. The paper critically examines and discuss the impact of agricultural marketing to economic development, a historical review of agricultural marketing in Nigeria, challenges undermining the impact of agricultural marketing, measures to reposition agricultural marketing potential to build back better, policy recommendations to reposition the future of Nigeria's agricultural productivity. The paper aims to promote concerted efforts through knowledge dissemination to build back better through market research and facilitation and boost economic prosperity.

The incorporation of wind generation introduces challenges to the operation of the power system due to its uncertain characteristics. Therefore, the development of methods to accurately model the uncertainty is necessary. In this paper, the spatio-temporal Kriging and analog approaches are used to forecast wind power generation and used as input to solve an economic dispatch problem, considering the uncertainties of wind generation. Spatio-temporal Kriging takes into account the spatial and temporal information given by the database to enhance wind forecasts. We evaluate the performance of using the spatio-temporal Kriging, and comparisons are carried out versus other approaches in the framework of the economic power dispatch problem, for which simulations are developed on the modified IEEE 3-bus and IEEE 24-bus test systems. The results show that the use of Kriging-based spatio-temporal models in the context of economic power dispatch can provide an opportunity for lower operating costs in the presence of uncertainty when compared to other approaches.

In Bangladesh, microcredit program has been in function for almost half a century. Though popularly termed as a tool for poverty alleviation and women empowerment, criticism about microcredit program’s actual effectiveness isn’t new. This study attempts to evaluate the impact of such programs by measuring borrowers’ social mobility. Using a multidimensional approach, indicators like household income, economic susceptibility, living conditions, consumption pattern, children’s education, healthcare facilities, women’s participation in decision-making were taken into account for measurement. Quantitative method was used. Based on a non-probability sampling, 107 microcredit borrowers were selected for conducting interview schedules who live in a rural, a semi-urban and an urban area. Statistical analysis of data reveals that those who have been taking loans for several number of years have all managed to increase their income level to a variety of extent, but only those have gained some sort of mobility who have been taking loans for more than 4-5 years and have taken 5 times or more. Few of them have actually moved from microcredit to become a microfinance client by taking bigger amount of loans and having savings. Positive responses about the indicators being used in the study were found among the handful of those who have mobilized significantly. In true sense, most of the borrowers are stuck at the bottom end of socio-economic ladder and are struggling to manage a better living standard.

Economic globalization has increased interdependence, particularly among the developing economies. This has increased the potential of migration across the national borders. In a similar context, the Indian economy has witnessed a rapid growth in the number of migrants after the phase of globalization. The rise in the migrant stock has led to a massive increase in the income generated through international borders in the form of remittances. India has become one of the top recipients of remittances with 79$ billion inflows in 2018. The major factor driving the growth of migrant remittances has been the monetary incentives that raise the standard of living of the recipient’s households. The rise in the income level of these households also affects other economic parameters including consumption and investment. Apart from this, the pattern of migration has also changed since the past few years with skilled workers migrating to the developed economies and unskilled ones migrating to the Gulf economies. In this context, the present study examines the trend and pattern of remittance inflows in India for the period of 1975-2017. Additionally, the study explores how remittance inflows affect the level of household consumption and investments. This relationship was examined using a two-stage least squares method by framing a set of simultaneous equations. The findings of the two-stage least square estimates indicate that though personal remittances do not impact the gross domestic product of the economy directly. But, an increase in the inflow of personal remittances leads to a rise in consumption and investment which in turn plays an important role in determining the Gross Domestic Product of the economy.

The sample data are used from Shaanxi Statistical Yearbook （1999-2018）and poverty population in X County of Southern Shaanxi in 2018. By using Eviews and Excel, this report focuses on analyzing the relationship between education investment and economic growth, education for poverty population, per capita income and poverty caused by education in X county, which can explain reasons for the phenomenon of poverty caused by education. The countermeasures are proposed to solve the phenomenon of poverty caused by education, including establishing scientific education view, correctly understanding education investment and benefit, and improving the aid mechanism for poor students to realize the effective connect among poverty alleviation through education, accurate poverty alleviation and rural revitalization.

A common motivation for increasing open access to research findings and data is the potential to create economic benefits – but evidence is patchy and diverse. This study systematically reviewed the evidence on what kinds of economic impacts (positive and negative) open science can have, how these comes about, and how benefits could be maximized. Use of open science outputs often leaves no obvious trace, so most evidence of impacts is based on interviews, surveys, inference based on existing costs, and modelling approaches. There is indicative evidence that open access to findings/data can lead to savings in access costs, labour costs and transaction costs. There are examples of open science enabling new products, services, companies, research and collaborations. Modelling studies suggest higher returns to R&D if open access permits greater accessibility and efficiency of use of findings. Barriers include lack of skills capacity in search, interpretation and text mining, and lack of clarity around where benefits accrue. There are also contextual considerations around who benefits most from open science (e.g. sectors, small vs larger companies, types of dataset). Recommendations captured in the review include more research, monitoring and evaluation (including developing metrics), promoting benefits, capacity building and making outputs more audience-friendly.

Background and Objectives: Due to huge demand and availability of Banana, innovative cost effective method is necessary to promote and smoothen the banana production among farmers commercially mitigating the demand. Method and Materials: In this study, we feed cow dung mixture along with Urea, TSP, MoP, water to the distal part of rachis after cutting down male bud as soon as the female flowers matured into fruits (T1). The effect of this method was then compared with two control groups; one with the same strategy except fertilizer applied on root following ring method (C1, Positive control) and another was male flower untouched without applying fertilizer on rachis or root (C2, Negative control). Results and Conclusion: T1 showed more than double increase in length than controls. In the same way, in case of shape (diameter), T1 (0.46 cm) showed twice as better growth in the C1 (0.22 cm) and C2 (0.18 cm). Trend analysis showed the test group T1 curve is much steeper than the control groups suggesting faster growth rate than the other two. Finally, the cost of fertilizers for T1 per plant was estimated 0.091 USD while for positive control C1 it was 2.9 USD. This study shows an approach to be effective and economic comparing to traditional method of fertilizer application, which can be adapted as a new method of banana production.

This study evaluates inequalities in the use of dental services according to place of birth before and after the economic crisis in Spain. A cross-sectional study was performed in the population aged 18 to 65 years in Spain. We used data from three Spanish National Health Surveys for years 2006 (before the crisis), 2014 and 2017 (after the crisis). Log-binomial regression was used to quantify the association between region of origin and use of dental care services before and after controlling for the selected covariates. In 2006, we found a greater probability of not using dental care services in immigrants from Asia (PR:1.36, 95% CI:1.10–1.67) and Africa (PR:1.16; 95% CI:1.05–1.28) compared to the natives. For 2014, the probability of not using dental care services was greater for all immigrants compared to the natives, with the greatest odds for those from Africa (PR:1.71; 95% CI:1.46–2.01) and Asia (PR:1.3; 95% CI:1.23–1. 47). The associations for 2017 were weaker in magnitude than the ones observed for 2014, although stronger than for 2006. This study suggests that the economic recovery did not have the same impact for natives and immigrants regardless of regions of origin, given the observed inequalities in use of dental services.

This paper highlights the impact of financial inclusion on individuals’ borrowing and saving decisions in the United States and the United Arab Emirates. It does so, using data from the 2014 Global Financial Inclusion database, and an empirical strategy consisting of first testing the significance of the joint bivariate model over its binary conterparts using the Lagrange multiplier test, followed by a contrast between the fully-parametric and semi-parametric specifications of the saving and borrowing equations. Based on model performance measures, the semi-parametric bivariate probit specification is identified as a better framework for describing the two processes of saving and borrowing, with a correlation coefficient of 12.3%. Although no significant difference exists between UAE and US residents in borrowing behavior, we find that US residents are 31.4% more likely to save than their UAE counterparts. In addition, and in line with the Permanent Income Hypothesis, the results reveal the absence of an income based saving or borrowing gradient in the two countries. Conversely, we found the prevalence of a gender based saving (12.4%) and borrowing (13.8%) inequality in favor of the male gender. Furthermore, access to a bank account and a debit card, companies policy of direct wage and salary transfer, and government transfer programs with direct deposit options are all financial inclusion strategies that are found to significantly raise the likelihood of saving and borrowing. As such, companies with payroll practices based on cash or physical paycheck issuing, especially in the US, should revise such policy to create more financial inclusion, and thereby more saving potential which in turn would contribute to further borrowing, investment and growth of the national economy.

At the Atsumi Wind Farm in Aichi Prefecture, Japan, damage to wind turbines occurred frequently due to terrain-induced turbulence. In the present study, numerical analyses of terrain-induced turbulence were conducted by reproducing the topography in the vicinity of the wind turbine sites in high resolution and using RIAM-COMPACT natural terrain version, which is based on large eddy simulation (LES). The results of the diagnoses indicated that, in the case of south-easterly wind, terrain-induced turbulence is generated at a small terrain feature located upstream of Wind Turbine (WT) #2, which serves as the origin of the turbulence. At the Atsumi Wind Farm, a combination of the series of wind diagnoses and on-site operation experience led to a decision to adopt an "automatic shutdown program" for WTs #1 and #2. Here, "automatic shutdown program" refers to the automatic suspension of wind turbine operation upon the wind speed and direction meeting the conditions associated with significant effects of terrain-induced turbulence at a wind turbine site. The adoption of the "automatic shutdown program" has successfully resulted in a large reduction in the number of occurrences of wind turbine damage, thus, creating major positive economic effects. 1) a reduction in the repair costs by 9.322 million yen per year per wind turbine, 2) an increase in the availability factor by 8.05%, and 3) an increase in the capacity factor by 1.7%.

LiFePO₄ (LFP) or Lithium-ion battery with its advantages compared to common current motorcycle battery is an appropriate alternative in substituting wet and dry cell battery. Huge amount of demand of motorcycle along with the battery in Indonesia also make it an interesting product for business. In order to assess the commercial potential for such a new technology, market share needs to be estimated as well as the techno-economic feasibility. Hence, market share prediction using the residents of Surakarta Region and techno-economic analysis using NPV, IRR and PBP indicators have been conducted in this study. Calculation using markov chain method shows that LFP battery tends to dominate the market after certain period. Techno-economic analysis also figures out that the commercialization is feasible in three conditions - first mover, even with market leader and equilibrium point. Therefore, there is a great commercial potential for LFP battery especially in Indonesia.

This paper discusses the management of public expenditures in Indonesia in State Budget 2017. The data collected from fiscal policy documents, especially about government spending plans in 2017, and then be reviewed by policy analysis, the theory of public expenditures, and the theory of public goods, and compared with the theory of public expenditure in Islamic economics. Public expenditure management in Indonesia has implemented a distribution system that divided public expenditure for central government expenditures, transfers to the regions, and the village fund. In terms of fiscal policy, public expenditure priorities to support the achievement of sustainable economic growth, job creation, poverty reduction, and the reduction of gaps in the welfare of the whole community. In Islamic economics, public expenditure is used to meet the needs of the community based on the principles of general interest derived from the shari'a. Public expenditure on Indonesia's government as an effective tool to divert economic resources and increase the income of society as a whole, and focused on the embodiment of the people's welfare.

Most empirical work on sources of economic growth for different countries lack country-specific empirical evidence to guide policy choices in individual developing countries and previous studies of factor productivity tend to focus on the entire economy or a single sector. In this study, we use the recently developed growth accounting tools to explicitly determine the sources of economic growth at both national and sectoral levels in Zambia between 1970 and 2013. We use data from World Development Indicators and Zambia’s Central Statistical Office. On average, total factor productivity (TFP) contributes about 5.7% to economic growth. Sectoral analysis shows that agriculture contributes the least to GDP and that within each sector; factors that contribute to growth differ. Structural transformation has been slow and contributed to the observed inefficiency. We outline the implications of the observed growth and provide recommendations.

The rapid development of China’s textile industry leads to consumption and pollution of large volumes of water. Therefore, the textile industry has been the focus of water conservation and waste reduction in China’s 13th Five-Year Plan (2016–2020). The premise of sustainable development is to achieve decoupling of economic growth from water consumption and wastewater discharge. In this work, changes in blue water (water consumption), grey water (water pollutants), and water footprints of the textile industry from 2001 to 2014 were calculated. The relationship between water footprint and economic growth was then examined using the Tapio decoupling model. Furthermore, factors influencing water footprint were determined through logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI) method. Results show that the water footprint of China’s textile industry has strongly decoupled for five years (2002, 2006, 2008, 2011, and 2013) and weakly decoupled for four years (2002, 2007, 2009, and 2010). A decoupling trend occurred during 2001–2014, but a steady stage of decoupling has not been achieved yet. Based on the decomposition analysis, the total water footprint is mainly increased by production scale and inhibited by the technology. In addition, the effect of industrial structure adjustment is relatively weak.

A techno-economic model was developed to investigate the influence of components on the system costs of redox flow batteries. Sensitivity analyses were carried out based on a example of a 10 kW/120 kWh vanadium redox flow battery system and the costs of the individual components were analyzed. Particular consideration was given to the influence of material costs and resistances of bipolar plates and energy storage media as well as voltages and electric currents. Based on the developed model it was possible to formulate statements about the targeted optimization of existing battery systems and general aspects for future developments of redox flow batteries.

Nowadays, determining the socioeconomic factors' influence on environmental quality is a crucial issue for policymakers. We aim to explore the impact of socioeconomic factors i.e., ethnic conflicts inform ethnic fragmentation, institutions quality effectiveness, and energy consumption on environmental quality by testing the various hypotheses (Pollution Halo Hypothesis, IPAT, and EKC) in 40 selected Asian countries throughout 1993-2019. We also use a set of control variables which are gross domestic product per capita, foreign direct investment inflows, and population growth to determine their impact on environmental quality. We use the Panel Quintile Regression Method of 0.25, 0.5, and 0.75 to analyze the results. We find ethnic conflict negatively affects the environmental quality at all quantiles. The institution's variables regulatory quality and rule of law negatively influence the environmental quality. Our result supports Porter's hypothesis because the effect of direct foreign investment on the amount of CO2 emissions is negative and significant at 0.25, 0.5, and 0.75 quantiles which states that foreign direct investment in the host country supports environmental quality. Furthermore, our results support the IPAT hypothesis in selected Asian countries.

The feasibility of hydroelectric plants depends on a variety of factors: water resource regime, geo-graphical, geological and environmental context, available technology, construction cost and eco-nomic value of produced energy. Choices about the building or renewal of hydroelectric plants should be based on the forecast of the future trend of these factors at least during the project life of the system. Focusing on the economic value of the produced energy this paper examines its influ-ence on the feasibility of hydroelectric plants. Analysis, referred to Italian case, were based on three different phases: i) the economic sustainability of small-scale hydroelectric plants under a minimum price guaranteed to the hydroelectric operator; ii) the estimate of the incentives to reach the thresholds of "acceptability" and "bankability" of the investment; iii) the analysis of results ob-tained in the previous phases using a model of the evolution of the electricity price in the period 2014-2100.

This paper presents the results of quantitative research regarding the examination of the levels of efficiency of the fire protection system and the training of employees in Electrical power distribution of Serbia for fire protection, ie the analysis of the manner of implementation of fire protection measures, and determining whether these measures are adequately applied. Following the subject set in this way, the aim of the research was set, and that is the scientific analysis of the manner of application of fire protection measures. The results of this research showed that the employees of Electro distribution Belgrade perceive the preparedness of their company highly positively and certain socio-demographic characteristics also affect certain attitudes, especially those related to the experience with fire, the knowledge of employees to react in case of fire, and the choice of the appropriate response, assessment of the readiness of the company and the employees themselves. It was found that knowledge of how to react in case of fire is influenced by gender and level of education; the choice of one of the methods of action in case of fire is influenced by gender; the assessment of the readiness of the employees themselves is influenced by the marital status; the desire of employees to participate in training to increase their preparedness for fires is influenced by gender. The results of the research can be used to improve the preparedness of employees in various organizations to respond to disasters caused by fires.

Energy and institutional quality are two factors that determine economic output, but these two factors are often neglected in the search for economic output. Therefore, this study examines the relative importance of energy use and its interaction with institutional quality for economic output. We employ a robust econometric estimation technique on a panel sample of 21 African countries between 2002-2019. Our results show that energy use is significant and negatively related to economic output while moderating terms of institutional quality are significantly associated with economic output, but the direction of the association depends on the specific quality. We find the moderating term control of corruption and government effectiveness to be negative and significantly associated with economic output, whilst political stability, regulatory quality, rule of laws, voice, and accountability positively impact. Our results imply that improved economic output is possible when there are specific institutional strategies.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 poses a devastating threat to human society in terms of health, economy and lifestyle. Establishing accurate and real-time models to predict and assess the impact of the epidemic on the economy is instructive. We have designed a new model to quantitatively assess the impact of the COVID-19 on the economy of China’s mainland. The nominal GDP in the Q1 of 2020 that we predicted for China’s mainland with the Baidu Mi-gration Data is RMB 20,785.7 billion, which is less by 3.59% than that in 2019. The estimated val-ue is confirmed roughly by the official report released in April 17, 2020 (RMB 20,650 billion, 6.8% year-on-year declined). Strict control measures during the epidemic have greatly reduced Chi-na's economic activity and had a serious impact on the country's economy. Orderly promotion of population mobility plays a decisive role in economic recovery.

This paper summarizes opinions on the economic impacts of horticulture research and extension at MSU Coastal Research and Extension Center. More than 8,400 horticulture producers, master gardeners, research and extension staff, and non-profit organizations participated in horticulture events during the last five years. Qualitative assessments of horticulture research and extension performed by the faculty and staff were solicited during voluntary surveys.

The study's motivation is to gauge the nexus between economic policy uncertainty and financial innovation for the period 2004M1 to 2018M12 in BRIC nations. For establishing a long-run cointegration study applied Autoregressive Distributed Lagged (ARDL) and asymmetry effects of economic policy uncertainty investigated following nonlinear framework known as NARDL. Furthermore, directional causality is established by performing a non-granger causality test. Cointegration test results of Fpss, Wpss, and tBDM confirmed the long-run association between EPU and financial innovation. On the other hand, the Wald test results proved asymmetry effects furring from EPU to financial innovation both in the long-run and short-run. Referring to asymmetry effects that positive and negative shocks in financial innovation, the study revealed that negative linkage between shocks in EPU and financial innovation in the long-run but short-run effects are insignificant. Furthermore, financial innovation measured by R&D investment exhibits positive linked with shocks in EPU, implying that uncertainty induces innovation in the economy. Refers to directional causality estimation, the study revealed evidence supporting the feedback hypothesis between EPU and financial innovation in all sample countries.

Dwindling Economy is otherwise known as depression economy or economy depression interchangeably and/or recess economy. It is an occurrence wherein an economy is in a state of financial turmoil, often the result of a period of negative activity based on the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rate. However, this has become a global phenomenon; a good example of a necessitating factor is the global oil crash market and pandemics virus (Covid-19) ravaging the human race. That has conjointly led to the decline in the GDP growth per capital of a country; which forces degradation in the performances of economic sectors, retrenchment of staff and wrapping-up of industries. It is a lot worse than a recession, with GDP falling significantly, and lasts for periods of time. Pen ultimately, Nigeria has been in deteriorating financial state for years; her economy in the last few years has been going through some turbulence. A country that had recorded an average GDP growth of 6.5 per cent, one of the highest in the world less than a decade ago, is now projected to grow at about 2.3 per cent in 2016. It is no longer news that Nigeria's economy is experiencing total collapse and if nothing is done to put the peg in the right spot something worse than what we are witnessing may soon be on sight. Based on some of all these issues and other, Nigeria was said to be technically recess.In this paper, efforts were made to explore the state of the Nigeria economy in the last 36 years (1981-2017) and correlate it with the recent phenomena that conjointly constitute to its dwindling economy. Our comprehensive and elusive literary survey and extemporariness suggested way forwards to rescue the raveling situation of Nigeria dwindling economics, if not providing lasting solution but temporarys’ one that could stand test of time.

Recent developments in US immigration policies have brought tired attention to the problems of immigration in the United States. Although there has been growing awareness of the need to manage immigration that address the economic causal factors underlying the motivation to cross borders, the recent changes in immigration policies fail to do so. This paper brings attention to the futility of border control laws and calls on urban planners to address immigration through strategic planning for a socially-responsible, sustainable economic development in sending countries. This paper concludes with recommendations for how to do this.

The purpose of this paper is to test the Kuznets Environmental Curve (KEC) hypothesis for 10 MENA (Middle East and North Africa) countries during the period 1987-2017. To do this, the translogical functional form has been adopted to estimate the relationship between Toxic Gases (TG) emissions, energy consumption and GDP per capita. The results confirm the presence of KEC, GDP per capita and energy consumption have a positive influence on TG emissions, and the presence of a feedback relationship between GDP per capita and energy consumption. As a result, the environmental framework of the selected countries improves as their level of growth has become more advanced. In addition, to reduce TG emissions, MENA countries are expected to significantly increase the use of renewable energy and a more efficient energy policy.

(1) Background: Most of the existing studies focus on the evaluation of technology finance; the relationship between technology finance and technology innovation. But there are few studies on the development of technology finance and the quality of economic development in our country; (2) Methods: Based on the panel data of 30 provinces in China, this paper constructs an index system to measure the development of technology finance through the improved entropy method, and tests the spatial correlation of the development of technology finance in China by Moran'I index. According to the test results, this paper constructs a spatial econometric model to empirically analyze the promoting effect of scientific, technological and financial development on high-quality economic development, and analyzes its promoting effect in different regions and different time periods; (3) Results: The results show that the quality of China's economic growth is spatially dependent, and the development of science, technology and finance can significantly promote the quality economic development in China. And the promotion coefficient of the central region is the largest, as well as the coefficient of the eastern region is the smallest. The promotion coefficient was small and not significant before 2015, and was significantly positive after 2015; (4) Conclusions: this paper puts forward the corresponding policy recommendations according to the research results.

This paper studies the mechanism of how China’s state-owned enterprise (SOEs) reform can influences economic growth, and distinguishes the capital efficiency between state-owned and private enterprises. The results show that: 1) the capital allocation efficiency among state-owned enterprises is lower than private enterprise due to an insufficiently released productivity of state-owned enterprises; 2) although with a higher capital allocation efficiency, the improvement of technology progress of private enterprises at a much slower pace compared to its rapidly increasing share in China’s economy. In case of poor allocation with private sector, blindly reforming ownership of state-owned enterprises cannot effectively alleviate the problem of efficiency losses. State-owned enterprise reform can boost economic growth by increasing capital marginal output, improving capital dynamic allocation efficiency, promoting TFP growth and exerting external spillovers on other firms. At present, China is exploring the endogenous power of economic growth, improving the market institutions and promoting the state-owned enterprises reform with positive and steady pace. By properly re-allocation SOEs into the private sector, which has significant influence on improving economic efficiency and promoting sustained economic growth.

Understanding the distribution in drought and floods plays an important role in disaster risk management. The present study aims to explore the trends in the standardized precipitation index and extreme precipitation days in China, as well as to estimate the economic losses they cause. We found that in the Northeast China, northern of North China and northeast of Northwest China were severely affected by drought disasters (average damaged areas were 6.44 million hectares) and the most severe drought trend was located in West China. However, in the north of East China and Central China, the northeastern of the Southwest China was severely affected by flood disasters (average damaged areas were 3.97 million hectares) and the extreme precipitation trend is increasing in the northeastern of the Southwest China. In the Yangtze River basin, there were increasing trends in terms of drought and extreme precipitation, especially in the northeastern of the Southwest China, where accompanied by severe disaster losses. By combining the trends in drought and extreme precipitation days with the distribution of damaged areas, we found that the increasing trend in droughts shifted gradually from north to south, especially in the Southwest China, and the increasing trend in extreme precipitation gradually shifted from south to north.

The major aim of this study was to investigate and explores the linkage between economic growth, electricity access, energy use and population growth in Pakistan. To check the variables stationarity, Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) and Phillips-Perron unit root test was applied and an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach to co-integration was applied to investigate the dynamic causality link among the study variables. These tests shed light on the long-run connection among the variables; further, the results revealed that electricity access to population, electricity access to urban population, energy usage, population growth, and urban population growth had a significant impact on economic growth, while the electricity access to rural population and rural population growth has a negative impact on the economic growth in Pakistan. According to these findings, study commends that government of Pakistan pay further attention to increase its electricity production from different sources including, hydroelectric, solar, oil and gas and nuclear in order to fulfill the country’s demands. By using ARDL bounds testing approach, this study filled the literature gap regarding economic growth, electricity access, energy use and population growth in Pakistan.

Previous research suggests that the economic crisis can affect mental health. The purpose of this study was to analyse the association of risk of poor mental health with various socioeconomic, demographic, health, quality of life and social support variables; and to evaluate the contribution of socioeconomic variables most affected by the beginning of the economic crisis (employment situation and income) on the changes in the prevalence of the risk of poor mental health between 2005 and 2010. A study of prevalence evolution in adult population residents of the Valencian Community in the Spanish Mediterranean was conducted. We studied 5781 subjects in 2005 and 3479 in 2010. Logistic regression models have been adjusted to analyse the association between variables. A standardization procedure was carried out to evaluate which part of the changes in overall prevalence could be attributed to variations in the population structure by age, sex, employment status and income between the years under study. The prevalence of GHQ + increased from 2005 to 2010, in both men and women. Several variables were closely associated with the risk of poor mental health (sex, age, country of birth, number of non-mental chronic diseases, social support, disability, cohabitation in couple, employment status, and income). The changes produced as a result of the onset of the economic crisis in income and unemployment (increase in low income and in unemployment rates) contributed to the increase of poor mental health risk. This could confirm the sensitivity of mental health to the economic deterioration caused by the crisis.

Agricultural land conversion (ALC) is an incentive–driven process. In this paper we further investigate the inter–relationship between land economic value (LEV) and ALC. To achieve this goal, we calculated LEV for agricultural and non-agricultural (housing) uses in two areas in East Java, Indonesia. The first area represents suburban agriculture, facing rapid urbanization and experiencing high rate of ALC. The second area represents rural agriculture with zero ALC. Furthermore, we identified factors affecting LEV in both areas for both uses. The resut of this study show that agricultural land yielded higher economic benefit in rural area. Conversely, comparing to agricultural land, housing creates 7 times higher value in urban area. Moreover, agricultural land shown to create higher profit after converted. Ironically, the similar comparison doesn’t exists in rural area. Agricultural land only yielded 19% more value, indicate that agricultural land can be easily converted. It is also proven by the growing number of new urban core in the periphery area. There are several factors affecting land economic value, for agricultural use, soil fertility, accessibility, and cropping pattern are important variables. While accessibility and location in urban area increases land value for housing.

Abstract: Currently, thermal power is the largest source of power in the world. Although the impacts of climate change on cooling water sufficiency in thermal power plants have been extensively assessed globally and regionally, their economic consequences have seldom been evaluated. In this study, the Asia-Pacific Integrated Model Computable General Equilibrium model (AIM/CGE) was used to evaluate the economic consequences of projected future cooling water insufficiency on a global basis, which was simulated using the H08 global hydrological model. This approach enabled us to investigate how the physical impacts of climate change on thermal power generation influence economic activities in regions and industrial sectors. To account for the uncertainty of climate change projections, five global climate models and two representative concentration pathways (RCPs 2.6 and 8.5) were used. The ensemble-mean results showed that the global gross domestic product (GDP) loss in 2070–2095 due to cooling water insufficiency in the thermal power sector was −0.21% (−0.12%) in RCP8.5 (RCP2.6). Among the five regions, the largest GDP loss of −0.57% (−0.27%) was observed in the Middle East and Africa. Medium-scale losses of −0.18% (−0.12%) and −0.14% (−0.12%) were found in OECD90 (the member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development as of 1990) and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, respectively. The smallest losses of −0.05% (−0.06%) and −0.09% (−0.08%) were found in Latin America and Asia, respectively. The economic impact of cooling water insufficiency was non-negligible and should be considered as one of the threats induced by climate change.

Over the past decade, the credit quality of loan portfolios across most countries in the world remained relatively stable until the financial crises hit the global economy in 2007–2008. In this paper I discuss, the relationship between non-performing loans and economic landscape. Since 2008, nonperforming loans have been an increasingly hot topic in the international scene, due to their important and rising volume and their impact on the economy as a whole, on the banking system and on its credit supply. Since then, average bank asset quality deteriorated sharply due to the global economic recession. Yet the deterioration of loan performance was very uneven across countries. I am interested in explaining these differences in bank asset quality across countries and over time. In this paper, I therefore study the empirical determinants of non-performing loan (NPL) ratios using a data set for EU countries covering the past decade. The paper assumes that the spatial organization of banking systems and the geographical distribution of comercial banks branches, ATMs and GDP growth are major factors influencing the effectiveness in credit system. The aim of this paper is to construct a continuous and quantifiable model, which will demonstrate a role of economic condition, technology, competition, policy, business climate in Financial Stability. Main hypotheses suggests, that GDP growth, interest rate, new business, FDI, ATMs and geographical distribution of branches have an influences on NPL (non-performing loans).

The relationship between economic growth, growth volatility and financial sector development continues to attract attention in the theoretical and empirical literature. Over time, some studies hypothesize that finance has a causal linear relationship with growth. Recently several other authors contradict this claim and argue that the relationship that exists between finance and growth is nonlinear. We investigate these claims for Nigeria for the period between 1970 and 2015, using semi-parametric econometric methods, Hansen sample splitting techniques and threshold estimator. We observed no evidence of ‘Too much finance’ as claimed by many researchers in recent times. We show that the relationship between financial development and economic growth is U-shaped. This is equally true for the relationship between financial development and growth volatility. We also discuss policy implications of our findings and recommend financial innovations and decentralization of stock exchanges to boost access to financial services, in addition, improved regulation to enhance financial market efficiency.

A global revolution in information and communication technologies (ICT) has occurred over the past few decades, emerging first in industrialized countries and then in developing countries. While researchers have examined many facets of the ICT revolution, relatively little work has systematically examined the degree to which ICT has reduced natural disaster vulnerability. In this article we use cross-country data over the 1980-2013 period to estimate the relationship between newly-emerging cell phone access/use and disaster-induced fatalities. Our estimates suggest that a one-standard-deviation increase in cell phone usage reduces disaster fatalities by nearly one half. The estimated effect increases to almost three quarters for geologic events where people are typically afflicted without warning. The largest marginal benefit from cell phones in terms of saving lives come from events where there is typically no warning, thus many are caught by surprise; cell phones are used to call for help and coordinate assistance.

1) Background: The environmental, financial and social questions in Africa remain unanswered up-to-date, with the rapid increase in human population and the demand for fuel energy, trigger the need to generate data on the socio-economic factors influencing the knowledge of use and adoption of family-sized bio-digesters. The increasing prices of fossil fuels and taxes on energy sources require finding the alternative, clean and economical sources of energy for households in developing countries. Moreover, in Africa, the consumption of firewood and charcoal continues to increase, with wood fuel consumption predicted to increase by 2030 to over 140%. The study objectives were 1) to determine the socio-economic characteristics of the people in Ngoma district, 2) to assess socio-economic factors influencing people to use and adopt family-sized bio-digesters. 2) Methods: Quantitative data collected with semi-structured questionnaires and interviews were analyzed using descriptive statistics. 3) Results: The results show that many households had not realized the potential benefits of biogas use and adoption in Rwanda. The study further found that a number of factors such as household income levels, socio-economic, technological, and institutional influence the household use and adoption of biogas energy. 4) Conclusions: At the end, the study suggests the need for all players such as Government, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO's) and local communities to work together to provide incentives and favorable environment that can attract individual households to invest in biogas energy production and utilization.

In this paper, the validity of the Wagner’s law is investigated in tenth selected Sub- Saharan African countries, namely Botswana, Equatorial Guinea, Mauritania, Nigeria, South Africa, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Madagascar, and DR Congo. Five variants of the Wagner’s law were tested for the period 2005-2014, using panel econometric approaches encompassing cointegration and causality. The study found a long run relationship between the public expenditure and the various explanatory variables used as proxies of income. The long-run causality tests indicate that there is bidirectional causality between expenditure and income in all models with the exemption of the Gupta model. It is concluded that for Sub-Saharan Africa, both the Wagner’s law the Keynesian hypothesis tend to be valid under the period of investigation. The explanation is that there has been the tendency for public expenditure to grow relative to national income (Wagner’s law) and that public expenditure is a policy instrument (an exogenous factor) for improving national income (Keynesian hypothesis) during the 10-year period.

This paper explores how the sustainable investment impacts financial returns and economic development in of Asia Pacific and North America, utilizing real data empirically. In academia and industrial field, it is polemical that indeed, the sustainable behavior has economic returns. In order to clarify that, we tested hypotheses with an analysis of seven stock markets, accounting of rates such as ROI, ROIC, and ROA in eleven companies, and GDP/GNI per capita. The results indicate that both financial return and economic development are positively germane to the sustainable investment. Besides, the variance of sustainability to economic development exists, depending on GDP per capita between two regions. We conclude, concerning the sustainability, by corroborating micro perspective for corporate level and macro perspective of economic development in the private and public sector. This research consequence will be interested in both practitioners and researchers in the measurement of sustainability performance

In this study, the efficiencies of flat-plate and U-tube solar collectors were investigated experimentally when an Al₂O₃ nanofluid was used as a working fluid and compared to those of solar collectors using water. The energy saving and CO₂ and SO₂ generated were calculated and compared to those of solar collectors using water. In addition, based on the experimental results, an economic analysis of the use of solar collectors in various countries was performed. As the concentration of the Al₂O₃ nanofluid increased, the performance of the solar collector improved. The highest efficiency for the solar collectors was shown at the concentration of 1.0 vol% with the nanoparticle size of 20 nm. The maximum efficiencies of the flat-plate and U-tube solar collectors using 1.0 vol%-Al₂O₃ nanofluid with 20-nm nanoparticles was 74.9% and 72.4%, respectively, when the heat loss parameter was zero. The efficiencies of the flat-plate and U-tube solar collectors using Al₂O₃ nanofluid were 14.8% and 10.7 higher, respectively, than those using water. When 50 EA flat-plate solar collectors were operated for one year using Al₂O₃ nanofluid, the coal use, generated CO₂, and generated SO₂ were 189.99 kg, 556.69 kg, and 2.03 kg less than those of solar collectors using water, respectively. In addition, the largest electricity cost reduction was in Germany.

This theoretical article reviews the model describing processes in social systems based on the analysis of their resource base. Application of the system theory can help to explain why some systems are aimed at prevention of type I errors, while other seek to decrease quantity of type II errors. Such differences are manifested in investment of resources either into deep interaction or into wide coverage. Some examples of such strategies in economic, market and production systems are provided in the article. The article introduces some provisions of the system theory in the context of the resource flows. The main indicators that are considered in this article are the characteristics of the sources of the exchanging flows of resources. Their relative frequency and quality are investigated, on the basis of which the most effective strategy of the system is derived, as a mechanism for redistributing resources. The rigor of the system's strategy depends on the magnitude of the difference in characteristics. It is explained how exactly it influences the exchange processes, that in reality systems do not interact simultaneously, and one of the opposite resource flows is always delayed. It is shown how the system strategy depends on the risks linked with interactions. Also, there are grounds for the need to accumulate resources, including in the situation of their surplus. The model helps also explain shift of economic centers throughout history. Additionally, there is an analogy between systems strategies and the competitive strategies described by M. Porter, and outsourcing versus integration.

An abundance of natural resources is both an opportunity and a challenge for developing countries. Several resource-rich, low-income countries receive amounts of foreign aid that are similar to or larger than their actual or potential revenues from natural resources. In such countries, the donors may have an opportunity to help a government to use its resource revenues productively and minimize the magnitude of risks created by resource rents. Development of aid instruments tailored for such purposes might be helped by model-based analysis of the effects of foreign aid on resource-rich, low-income economies and its interactions with the flows of natural resource revenues. This paper develops a growth model à la Barro in which the government receives windfalls (from natural resources and foreign aid) and rent-seeking agents contest for public funds. The key conclusion is that making aid countercyclical helps to achieve higher economic growth, and so does conditioning disbursements on enhancement of public capital. Introducing elements of insurance in the design of both aid products financing investments in infrastructure and social services and supporting policy and institutional reforms may help to achieve both of these objectives.

Gwadar is essential for Pakistan's financial stability. The third deep-water port in Pakistan, Gwadar, plays a significant part in trade between the Gulf countries, Africa, China, United Arab Emirates, and Cordillera Administrative Region. However, the load Shedding of 12-16 hours in Gwadar is the most concerning issue. Pakistan imports 70 MW of electricity from Iran. The wind and solar system are already installed but for a limited residential area. In Gwadar, there are enough renewable energy resources that can be utilized for electricity generation. In this context, a Techno and Economic Analysis is performed using the Hybrid Optimization Model for Multiple Energy Resources (HOMER) Pro. Two models are considered for this study. Model-1 includes PV/Wind Turbine/ and Battery while Model-2 consists of PV/Wind Turbine/Converter and Grid. The yearly energy generated by Model-1 and Model-2 is 57.37 GWh and 81.5 GWh, respectively. The levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for Model-1 and Model-2 is respectively $0.401/kWh and $0.0347/kWh. It is shown that the simple payback of Model-1 is of 6.70 years, and the simple payback of Model-2 is 7.77 years. Due to the high LCOE of Model-1, its payback year is lesser than model-2. All of these facts indicate that Model 2 is the most optimal solution.