Economic Path Research Articles

Empowering rural human Settlement:Digital Economy's path to progress

Digital economy development (DED) empowers rural habitat (RH) improvement and promotes the construction of harmonious villages. Based on a panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2013 to 2019, this paper empirically tests the impact of DED on RH and its endogenous mechanism in multiple dimensions using panel fixed effects model and spatial Durbin model. The results show that DED significantly improves RH, which remains robust after a series of robustness tests and dealing with endogeneity issues. The mechanism analysis shows that DED helps to bring into play the rural resource allocation effect, the innovation and entrepreneurship effect, and the carbon emission reduction effect, and improves the RH through these three effects. Further study finds that the digital application divide and regional divide are the main barriers to digital technology enabling RH improvement, there is a spatial spillover effect of DED, which helps to promote the improvement of RH in neighboring areas. The results of the study can provide theoretical support and decision-making reference for the construction of digital villages and the balanced regional development of RH in China.

Navigating the Creative Economy in the Wake of Pandemic and Digital Disruption: A Comparative Analysis of Korea and the UK

This article delves into the intricate landscape of the creative economy in the aftermath of the global pandemic and the pervasive influence of digital transformation. In particular, it conducts a comparative analysis between South Korea and the United Kingdom, shedding light on the contrasting strategies and outcomes within these two creative industry ecosystems.The creative economy's path to recovery is multifaceted, requiring adaptive strategies, government support, and digital transformation. The experiences of South Korea and the UK offer valuable insights into the dynamic and evolving landscape of the creative industry, poised to shape the future of culture and commerce.

The Impact of COVID-19 and War in Ukraine on Energy Prices of Oil and Natural Gas

The oil and gas sector remains pivotal in supplying energy globally. The COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia–Ukraine crisis intertwined the energy supply and demand, incurred the volatility of energy prices and disrupted the world economic order with profound effects on global political and economic paths in the long run. To investigate the impact of global COVID-19 on the energy prices of oil and natural gas for the period 2020–2022, a type of vector autoregressive (VAR) model, the vector error correction (VEC) model and the ordinary least squared (OLS) method were used for empirical analysis, producing the following main results. (i) COVID-19 significantly Granger caused both oil prices and natural gas prices to fluctuate at the 5% level. (ii) Oil prices significantly Granger caused natural gas prices to fluctuate at the 1% level because of the relations of substitutes for each other. (iii) OLS estimation validated that the cumulative number of COVID-19 confirmed cases was positively correlated with both oil prices and natural gas prices. However, the effect diminished in the long term as the pandemic was eventually brought under effective control. Exploring the effects of global issues including the pandemic and the war in Ukraine on the energy market is crucial to understanding the relationship between the supply shock and the energy sector green transitions and the global economy recovery.

Inter-temporal co-evolution of divergent economic activities and spatial economic resilience embedded in informal institutions

ABSTRACT The emergence of divergent economic activities in the context of developing economies characterised by institutional voids and market failure is a result of changes in the institutional environment and institutional arrangements. This study provides an inter-temporal framework for understanding the emergence of economic activities, institutional change, path dependence, and spatial economic resilience mediated by continuous and reciprocal interactions between economic and institutional agents (formal and informal) at the micro-level. Co-evolutionary studies of divergent economic activities in the Indian city of Delhi have revealed that radical changes in the institutional environment that did not enable retention of the existing ‘lock-in’ and informal institutional arrangements such as social ties and networks led to institutional drift and path exhaustion for the industrial sector. Meanwhile, in the service sector, the response of economic entrepreneurs to changes in the institutional environment has led to technological lock-in and the emergence of supporting informal institutional arrangements. Formal institutional arrangements have undergone institutional layering that has led to economic path creation for the service sector.

Balancing resources and sustainability: Analyzing the impact of mineral resources utilization on green growth

This study investigates the impact of mineral resource utilization on green growth in selected Central Asian economies using autoregressive distributed lag analysis on data from 1995 to 2021. Our findings reveal that increased mineral resource extraction has a detrimental effect on the region's green growth index in both the short and long term due to adverse environmental consequences. Conversely, a 1% increase in hydropower production leads to a 0.10% and 0.19% improvement in the green growth index in the short and long term, respectively. However, higher carbon dioxide emissions weaken green economic growth due to environmental harm and increased healthcare costs. Urbanization also negatively impacts the green growth index in the long term, decreasing it by 0.06%. Policy recommendations include diversifying mineral resource exports, promoting green financing for sustainable resource projects, and expanding sustainable power generation to steer Central Asia toward a more environmentally sustainable economic path.

Impact of economic crises on long-term regional development in Poland

The existing research indicates large differences in the degree of socio-economic development at the local and regional level in Poland. The study presented in this paper identifies the trends characterising the long-term economic development of regions in Poland. The research sample consisted of all types of gminas (lowest administrative units in Poland), i.e. rural, urban-rural, urban, and cities with powiat (county) status. A classification method based on the pattern and anti-pattern of development in a dynamic perspective was applied in the analyses, which made it possible to compare the values of the synthetic measure of development over time. The data used in the study came from the Local Data Bank of Statistics Poland and covered the years 2006–2021. The aim of the research was to determine the longterm economic path of development of the different types of gminas by voivodship (highestlevel administrative unit in Poland). The novelty of the study is not only the fact that it covers a long research period, but, more importantly, that it allows the comparison of the effects of two crises (of a different nature) on the development of gminas. The first of them resulted from the collapse of the US real estate market in 2007, and the second was caused by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. A strong differentiation in terms of the level of development of the particular types of gminas was observed across voivodships, as well as a strong similarity of their development paths throughout the studied period. The results based on the dynamic measure of development also indicate that rural and urban-rural gminas were more resilient to crises than urban gminas and cities with powiat status. It also became evident that gminas were significantly more resistant to the negative effects of the pandemic than to the financial crisis.

Examining the Upstream Renewable Energy Source Variability on PEM Water Electrolyzer Behavior

Hydrogen bears a unique prospect to decarbonize sectors like electricity, transportation, manufacturing, and construction simultaneously in an economical path toward mitigating global warming. A proton-exchange membrane water electrolyzer (PEMWE) coupled with an upstream variable renewable energy (VRE) source is a promising candidate for green hydrogen production. However, the seasonal variation and uncertainties in available power from upstream VREs vary geographically and diurnally, posing various challenges to the operational limits of PEMWEs. It is imperative to understand the stochastic variability in energy sources and operating conditions for maximum throughput through electrolysis, to provide a long-term energy storage with hydrogen. Energy storage systems with regenerative hydrogen fuel cells are prime candidates to reduce VRE curtailment in power grids because of greater energy storage on investment than lithium-ion batteries. In this work, we investigate the geospatial and seasonal variation of upstream energy supply to PEMWEs and delineate region-specific design considerations through a mechanistic modeling framework. The varied implications of the microstructural design space allow us to evaluate a balance between target hydrogen cost whilst alleviating VRE curtailment and accommodating variance in energy supply.

The effect of innovation pilot on carbon total factor productivity: Quasi-experimental evidence from China

Since the policy design for carbon emission reduction must consider both the efficiency and the cost of emission reduction, improvement in carbon total factor productivity (CTFP) is widely regarded as an important economic path in reducing carbon emissions. With prefecture-level data in China from 2003 to 2016, this paper explores the role of innovation pilot on the CTFP using China's Innovative City Pilot (ICP) policy as a quasi-experiment. First, we construct a novel CTFP framework, that combines the non-parametric Luenberger productivity indicator with the biennial non-radial directional distance function, to take the slack issues and infeasibility problem into consideration. Next, with the staggered difference-in-differences model, we examine whether innovation can stimulate CTFP improvement. The results show that the ICP policy exerts a significant positive effect on CTFP, increasing cities' CTFP by 0.015 on average. Moreover, we identify five potential channels from both economic analysis and comprehensive factor decomposition: technological and low-carbon innovation, industrial upgrading, energy efficiency, carbon emission intensity, and efficiency change. These positive impacts are heterogeneous across different kinds of cities. Specifically, the effects of innovation are stronger in the eastern and central cities, large cities, and cities with tighter environmental regulations. Meanwhile, the political incentives analysis shows that in cities with higher political incentives, officials perform better in energy intensity reduction and CTFP improvement. This paper explores direct evidence for the innovation's effect on carbon productivity, which provides a novel perspective for improving carbon productivity and the future direction of innovation in China.

The Impact of the Belt and Road Initiative on Chinese Higher Education

When the Chinese government created an economic path with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, many domestic policies were amended after extensive research conducted on industrial development. However, there have been few study to date of the relationship between the BRI and higher education (HE). This paper analyzes how the BRI influences China’s HE to generate greater opportunities for cross-border collaboration amongst the countries along the route. The three pillars of the triple-helix system—government, industry and institutions—were examined. The paper argues that HE within the BRI is a complex system comprised of many stakeholders and notes several transformations currently taking place in highly HE-oriented industries. These findings pave the way for both Chinese policymakers and their counterparts at HE to build mutual understanding and promote further international collaboration.

Abandon the idea of an “optimal economic path” for climate policy

AbstractMany economic modelers believe that there is an “optimal economic path” for solving the climate problem that exists independent of human choices. This belief rests on the notion that Integrated Assessment Models can determine the path that “maximizes global welfare” and, in turn, this path should drive climate policy. This commentary focuses on an under‐appreciated problem with that belief. We argue that the existence of pervasive increasing returns to scale, network externalities, learning curves, spillovers, and other nonlinear effects puts the idea of a single optimal economic path at odds with our current understanding of the most important forces driving the development of real economic and technological systems. We further argue that this idea is detrimental to rigorous understanding of climate solutions.This article is categorized under: Assessing Impacts of Climate Change > Scenario Development and Application Climate Economics > Economics and Climate Change Climate Economics > Economics of Mitigation

The state, political trigger events and path creation in tourism destination in Ethiopia

This study addresses the gap opened up by the increasing attention in evolutionary economic geography (EEG) studies on the role of the state in economic path creation. The study links the path creation notion of trigger events with political economy perspectives to investigate the role of the state in destination emergence. We offer insights into understanding how the state utilises trigger events for new path development through the case study of Unity Park in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. A qualitative research approach is adopted that involves key informant interviews, analysis of policy documents and observations. The findings reveal that the idea formation for this destination developed along incremental changes in public policies until a state official seized a political transition event as an opportunity to cause a decisive shift in its trajectory. This incident triggered more real-time opportunities for the state to influence the development of this tourism destination through the application of power and agentic processes. Thus conceptually, we found that while public policies shape destination development visions, it often takes trigger events and strong state involvement to broker new destination pathways. The study contributes to broadening the current understanding of the state’s role in path creation and the significance of trigger events as well as offering empirical evidence on the political-economic mechanisms involved in destination development processes.

Study on the Optimization of the Material Distribution Path in an Electronic Assembly Manufacturing Company Workshop Based on a Genetic Algorithm Considering Carbon Emissions

In order to solve the problems of high carbon emissions, low distribution efficiency and high costs related to the process of material distribution in manufacturing workshops, a multi-objective workshop material distribution path optimization problem model is established, and the model is solved using an improved genetic algorithm. The problem is processed using Gray code and crossover and variation operations with a genetic algorithm. To improve the search accuracy and convergence speed of the algorithm, an adaptive mutation method is proposed to enhance the diversity of the population and to achieve global optimal path objective finding. The improved algorithm is applied to workshop path multi-station logistics path planning, which effectively solves the transport path optimization and station solving problems in workshop logistics distribution, and the convergence speed and convergence accuracy of the algorithm are significantly improved. Finally, a simulation analysis is carried out on the optimization of the production material distribution of a smart gas meter workshop owned by K Company, which is an electronic assembly manufacturing company. We used MATLAB software for the case company logistics distribution route model for data analysis and solving. Due to the consideration of carbon emissions, we did not consider two kinds of experiments, which were two different cases of the optimal path. The experimental results verify that the distribution optimization scheduling model can meet the demands for immediate material distribution in the production workshop, which is conducive to improving material distribution efficiency, reducing logistics costs and achieving the goal of lowering carbon emissions. This optimization model has a certain utility in that in the current context of aiming for carbon neutral and carbon peaking, early low carbon distribution layout can reduce the environmental cost of the enterprise, making material distribution a more environmental economic path.

Preparing for an alliance: China’s socialist model and Albania’s economic path in the Early Cold War

ABSTRACT Based mainly on Albanian primary sources, this article explores the implications of Albania’s economic cooperation with China during the late 1950s and early 1960s. It shows that in Albania’s shifting alliances, the role of economic calculations has been as important as that of political convenience. The article argues that China’s emphasis on industrialization, mass mobilization and the principle of self-reliance was appealing to Albanian leaders’ long-term economic plans. This was even more so after the Comecon division of labour left Albania at the margin of the economic integration of the European Soviet bloc, relegating it to an agriculture-based development. The article also argues that although there was no substantial technological transfer between China and Albania during the 1950s, those years served for Albania as a period of study of the Chinese socialist system, which ultimately suited Albanian leaders’ political and economic aims more than the Soviet one. Economic relations with China opened new trade routes for Albania, potentially linking Albania’s economy with new markets and the international flows of goods. These opportunities, however, remained fully unexploited due to Albania’s own economic shortcomings, limited industrial capacity and poor infrastructure.

Battery data integrity and usability: Navigating datasets and equipment limitations for efficient and accurate research into battery aging

A tremendous commitment of resources is needed to acquire, understand and apply battery data in terms of performance and aging behavior. There are many state of performance (SOP) and state of health (SOH) metrics that are useful to guide alignment of batteries to end-use, yet how these metrics are measured or extracted can make the difference between usable, valuable datasets versus data that lacks the necessary integrity to meet baseline confidence levels for SOP/SOH quantification. This work will speak to 1) types of data that support SOP and SOH evaluations on mechanistic terms, 2) measurement conditions needed to assure high data integrity, 3) equipment limitations that can compromise data high fidelity, and 4) the impact of cell polarization on data quality. A common goal in battery research and field use is to work from a data platform that supports economical paths of data capture while minimizing down-time for battery diagnostics. An ideal situation would be to utilize data obtained during normal daily use (“pulses or cycles of convenience”) without stopping the daily duty cycles to perform dedicated SOP/SOH diagnostic routines. However, difficulties arise in trying to make use of daily duty cycle data (denoted as cycle-by-cycle, CBC) that underscores the need for standardization of conditions: temperature and duty cycles can vary over the course of a day and throughout a week, month and year; polarization can develop within an immediate cycle and throughout successive cycles as a hysteresis. If CBC data is envisioned as a data source to determine performance and aging trends, it should be recognized that polarization is a frequent consequence of CBC and thus makes it difficult to separate reversible and irreversible components to metrics such as capacity loss and resistance increase over aging. Since CBC conditions can have a major impact on data usability, we will devote part of this paper to CBC data conditioning and management. Differential analyses will also be discussed as a means to detect changing trends in data quality. Our target cell chemistries will be lithium-ion types NMC/graphite and LMO/LTO.

Disputas contables en el Banco de España en 1859: valoración a precios de mercado vs valoración a precio de adquisición, el devengo y otras cuestiones

En el presente artículo se abordan los antecedentes cercanos a la constitución del Banco de España - 1856-, partiendo de su antecesor el Banco Español de San Fernando, si bien su origen realmente se encuentra en 1782 con la fundación del Banco de San Carlos. Asimismo se analizan los cambios bancarios iniciados en esa época como consecuencia de un nuevo marco normativo. Esa configuración determinaría la base de donde arranca la banca española actual.
 El entorno económico fue impulsado por una legislación en varios frentes más favorable, lo que facilitó la entrada de capitales extranjeros como vía de fomento en el desarrollo económico del país.
 En un nuevo orden, la situación tradicional de supremacía del Banco de España en el sistema bancario se ve reducida y aumenta la presión por nuevos competidores directos, las Sociedades de Crédito, auténticos Bancos Privados bajo otra denominación. Por otro lado, el Banco debe aprender a asumir una oposición en las Juntas de accionistas a sus criterios de gestión, administración y contabilidad.
 Las pretensiones de los accionistas, algunas de ellas compartidas por individuos de los Órganos de gobierno del Banco de España, respecto a valoraciones del Balance a precios de mercado en Deuda e inmuebles, en contra del vigente principio del precio de adquisición; mayores exigencias de información contable; el modo de aplicar el principio del devengo e incluso los propios modelos de Balances publicados, fueron temas candentes con un trasfondo contable. Estos temas, incluso llevaron a pensar en renunciar al mismo Gobernador, máximo responsable de la Institución, y cuyo nombramiento correspondía al Gobierno y no a los accionistas.
 Al hilo de temas contables también otros supusieron debates y réplicas por parte del Banco en defensa de su actuación, y conservación de su reputación.
 Parece que en los tiempos actuales muchos de los argumentos que pueden utilizarse en defensa de unos fundamentos contables y en contra de otros, están superados. Sin embargo, la conclusión es que las mismas razones que aquellos esgrimían no ha mucho tiempo se han vuelto a escuchar con motivo de la aceptación de las Normas Internacionales de Contabilidad (NIC) en Europa. Unos 150 años después, de alguna manera, la cera sigue ardiendo en el candil de las controversias.

The Agrivoltaic Potential of Canada

Canada has committed to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by increasing the non-emitting share of electricity generation to 90% by 2030. As solar energy costs have plummeted, agrivoltaics (the co-development of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems and agriculture) provide an economic path to these goals. This study quantifies agrivoltaic potential in Canada by province using geographical information system analysis of agricultural areas and numerical simulations. The systems modeled would enable the conventional farming of field crops to continue (and potentially increase yield) by using bifacial PV for single-axis tracking and vertical system configurations. Between a quarter (vertical) and more than one third (single-axis tracking) of Canada’s electrical energy needs can be provided solely by agrivoltaics using only 1% of current agricultural lands. These results show that agrivoltaics could be a major contributor to sustainable electricity generation and provide Canada with the ability to render the power generation sector net zero/GHG emission free. It is clear that the potential of agrivoltaic-based solar energy production in Canada far outstrips current electric demand and can, thus, be used to electrify and decarbonize transportation and heating, expand economic opportunities by powering the burgeoning computing sector, and export green electricity to the U.S. to help eliminate their dependence on fossil fuels.

Economic Citizenship at the Intersection of Nation, Class, and Gender

This paper looks at the adaptation of the idea of economic citizenship (EC), or the conditioning of civil inclusion on economic participation, to the Palestinian citizens of Israel, who as a national minority are subject to long-standing political discrimination. I focus on two categories of women—low-income, poorly educated women and middle-class professional women—to explore the articulation of EC at the intersection of gender, class, and nationality. I argue that in the current phase of Israeli neoliberal ethnocracy, EC is offered as a bypass mechanism intended to allow the state to sustain the Jewish-and-democratic complex by reducing “democratic” to a free-market version, with minimal public and legal accountability, while continuing to buttress the “Jewish” component. However, the ethnographic zoom on women’s complex reactions shows that they invest the idea with practical meanings that complicate its connotations. They do develop expectations that paid employment will expand their social inclusion yet remain savvy regarding their perilous position as Palestinians in Israeli society and, depending on class, the profitability of permanent employment. Their experiences show that while the economic path hardly seems to undermine the Palestinians’ political rejection, it provides a new channel for their continued uncanny membership of the citizenry.

Aftermath of the Ukrainian War: Tracing Russia's Economic Path

Aftermath of the Ukrainian War: Tracing Russia's Economic Path

Advanced Route Optimization using Hybridized Salesforce Geopointe Package

The study explores how Geopointe, a route optimization tool, affects the effectiveness of industrial supply chains and proposes a novel method for route optimization that is used in the IT industry. Outdated solutions have been retired as Google Maps and its API have been improved. Route optimization is the process of determining the fastest and most economical path for your distribution network between nodes. By improving routes, both the productivity and environmental impact of mobile workers will increase. Along with route optimization, these two-technique based API will be compared to other methods, like Salesforce and Geopointe tool, etc., to evaluate performance, expense, and carbon emission. Numerous optimization technologies, including Geopointe, Map Anything, Amazon, etc., are contrasted in the article to investigate the delivery and cost function difficulties. All sectors must have a strong supply chain, and route optimization technologies, which are utilized by many different businesses and include ERP, Salesforce, NetSuite, and others, may address this issue. This article uses a useful method to assess the impact on IT sectors.

Drowning prevention education in Poland and the attitudes of bathers

Purpose: The article presents a comprehensive study of the attitudes of bathers within identifying potential challenges and opportunities as well as recommendations for the future of drowning prevention education. Design/methodology/approach: The study employs literature analysis, tabular comparisons, and questionnaires of bathers. The approach for the research was based on a desktop evaluation of accessible information, statistics, and other data from international and sources. The qualitative data acquired from self-research was used in the statistical analysis. The research group had 314 respondents, and the research was scheduled for the summer vacation season of 2021. Findings: Parallels exist in governance and policy alignment, while disparities are evident in economic development and sectoral priorities. These findings offer a nuanced understanding of shared traits and distinct differences shaping the business landscapes and economic paths of these Central European nations. Research limitations/implications: The research has limitations, such as its specific timeframe and omitted variables. Practical implications: Practical implications extend to i.a. the need of implementing effective prevention programs (level 1 prevention) of safe behavior on the water and include this from the municipal level through the regional and national levels and introducing of a multi-year, unified national program of education and behavior in water areas, will increase the swimming skills of all age groups and reduce drowning. Social implications: The study suggests indicating systemic measures aimed directly at people enjoying water activities, with educational activities playing the most important role in eliminating the so-called "low swimming culture," which manifests itself in a lack of basic knowledge of the specifics of the water area used for swimming and the swimming skills possessed. Originality/value: The uniqueness of this research lies in the development of a technique to survey bathers' sentiments via an innovative, self-developed questionnaire mobile application, which allowed the interviewer to conduct the survey on a mobile device and independently by the tourist after receiving a link or scanning a "QR code". The research findings are applicable to both academic discourse and practical implementations, providing unique insights to foster collaboration and development within policymakers' institutions and organizations. Keywords: Swimming, drowning, water rescue, drowning prevention, recreation, bathers, Poland. Category of the paper: research paper.