Major Downturn Research Articles

Effects of COVID-19 on Food Supply: A Systematic Review

Abstract: The COVID-19 outbreak has had a significant influence on several critical industries, including agriculture, education, and the economy. This essay investigates these processes, with a focus on agriculture, where the repercussions have been particularly harsh for poor groups dealing with unpredictable food supplies and food safety. Along with a critical examination of the shift to digital education systems, the report highlights the major obstacles that lie ahead for regions lacking adequate digital infrastructure and digital literacy. There have been notable disruptions in the economy as well. Manufacturing, the financial markets, and tourism have all seen major downturns. The study emphasizes the crucial part that following safety measures and boosting immunization campaigns play in mitigating these negative consequences while supporting economic recovery. Also, new technical solutions have emerged throughout this time. The application of drone technology to contactless food delivery is a notable illustration of how creativity can overcome the challenges posed by the pandemic. Finally, the report recommends the development of specific and rigorous methods to strengthen recovery efforts in these critical areas.

Dynamism in a Stagnating Sector: The Birth of Ireland's Beef Industry 1950–60

Between 1949 and 1960 Irish carcass beef exports increased eight-fold, expanding from 6,400 tons to over 50,000 tons. This unprecedented growth marked a fundamental shift in the structure of the Irish livestock industry, as the country moved from an almost exclusive dependence on the live cattle exports in 1949 to a situation where forty per cent of animals were shipped as beef eleven years later. This article examines why Ireland embraced beef processing, who were the main actors in the emerging industry, and where were the primary markets. Moreover, the article details how beef processors restructured their operations and reorientated their exports to Britain and the US following a major downturn in demand between 1954 and 1956. It also assesses the implications of the industry's success for the farm sector and for the historiography of Irish agriculture in the 1950s.

Why to regulate Netflix: the cross-national politics of the audiovisual media governance in the light of streaming platforms

Today, at a time of major downturn in the audiovisual sector, several regions and countries are reconsidering the scope and reach of domestic or regional audiovisual media governance and are developing policy instruments in order to involve transnational Video on Demand (VOD) platforms, such as Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, in the financing, distribution and visibility of local, national and regional audiovisual content. A key issue that emerges from this backdrop is to provide convincing answers about why public authorities are feeling the urge to develop new regulations towards global VOD streamers in a specific sequence and temporality and to focus on variables, which are expected to understand this cross-national policy momentum for regulating VOD services. In addition, even though transnational VOD services represent disruptive new actors, creating industrial, technological and institutional shock, this disruption does not lead to the same political issue cross-nationally and to the same kind of policy responses. Firstly, the article explores the key outlines that the academic literature highlights in order to understand the regulation of online platforms in the media sectors. Secondly, it provides a cross-national portrayal of policy initiatives towards the VOD streamers, focusing on the EU Member States, Australia, Canada, Mexico and South Africa. Thirdly, the article argues that political struggles over VOD platforms are expected to be framed and fought simultaneously by two crucial variables, dealing with state-society relationships and global interdependence.

Which preventive control measure initiated the "flattening of the curve" : Acomparison of Austria and Victoria during the 2nd wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

When acountry introduces different COVID-19 control measures over time, it is important to identify the specific measure that was effective and therefore responsible for "flattening the curve". This information helps policymakers find the right decision and saves the economy by avoiding severe yet ineffective measures. This paper aims to fill the literature gap by investigating two regions that introduced two or three consecutive measures during the second COVID-19 wave, namely Austria and Victoria. We calculated the first derivative (acceleration) of the filtered daily case data and identified the date of the start and end of the acceleration's major downturn (effective phase) relative to the date when the control measures were introduced (Austria: soft/hard lockdowns; Victoria: stages 3/4 lockdowns, mask order). In Austria, the effective phase started 5days after the introduction of the soft lockdown and ended at the start of the hard lockdown. In Victoria, the effective phase started 19days after the introduction of the stage 3 lockdown, 5days after the introduction of the mask order, and ended 6days after the start of the stage 4 lockdown. Considering that the effect of control measures is expected the earliest one serial interval after their introduction, the control measure responsible for "flattening the curve" was the soft lockdown in Austria and the mask mandate in Victoria. The severe lockdowns in both regions were ineffective.

COVID-19: Reshaping Medical Tourism through Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotics

The tourism and travel sector is a large and thriving industry, with almost 5 billion international tourist arrivals recorded in 2019, with an annual growth of 4% on the previous year. Yet it suffered a major downturn, globally due to Covid 19. Since the concept of healthcare has existed, humans have been willing to travel to access it. From the spas of the ancient Sumerians, Greeks, and Romans, to the supposed curative properties of alpine and seaside health resorts in early modern Europe, the idea of traveling long distances for health reasons, and marketing destinations for that purpose, is certainly nothing new However, lately, medical tourism has been growing due to the low-cost treatment, Specialization of medical agencies, hospitals, and medical professionals in the host countries. This type of tourism was valued at USD 16.761 million in 2018, and it is expected to reach USD 27,247.6 million by 2024. However, the appearance of COVID 19 has completely changed the tourism sector, where a loss of USD 910 billion to USD 1.2 trillion from export revenues from tourism was reported Moreover, the different types of Tourism and travel industry are taking advantage of Artificial intelligence (AI) in order to perform a variety of administrative and customer service tasks. For medical tourism the development of these technologies (AI, robotic, and so on) play a key role in supporting the medical agencies in connecting physicians and prospective medical tourists. In addition to make it more feasible and credible option for patients, respond to questions and provide valuable information to customers, and allows to reduce the time would be impossible for humans. Furthermore, international remote surgeries will allow various clinical centers to pool their expertise and offer remote surgeries from a central operating theatre that is convenient to access for patients and persuade patients to invest in the local economy. Keywords: Medical Tourism, COVID-19, AI, Robotics.

Application of the moving Lyapunov exponent to the S&P 500 index to predict major declines

Predicting major downturns in financial markets is a popular topic among researchers. Improving the models used for this could benefit individuals, investment banks and financial institutions. The latest developments in econophysics provide additional forecasting tools that may aid this endeavor. This paper introduces an innovative method to identify early warnings for major declines in the Standard & Poor’s 500 (S&P 500) index. This method performs a nonlinear analysis of the logarithmic returns of the index and then uses the moving Lyapunov exponent as a dynamic indicator of stability. The results show that the fluctuating behavior of the moving Lyapunov exponent forms spikes, which may act as warning signals since they precede all significant events that have caused major drops in the S&P 500 index over the past 20 years, including the dot-com bubble, the Great Recession and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Sustainable recovery of tourism in the post-COVID-19 world: Advocacy for a Resource Nexus perspective

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic had unprecedented impacts on tourism worldwide, causing a major downturn in sectoral economic development and employment. Even though affected regions, businesses and customers are united in their hope of a rapid recovery, a return to business-as-usual is not desirable from an environmental perspective. The COVID-19 pandemic could, however, also be an opportunity for sustainability-oriented transformations in various segments of the tourist industry. A concept that has received growing attention in sustainability science and policy but that has not yet been applied to tourism may have a significant future potential here: the Resource Nexus. As a consistent and application-oriented framework for the integrated management of environmental resources, the Resource Nexus can be a model for advancing sustainability in tourism. Instead of looking at a single dimension only, the Resource Nexus considers environmental resources in a holistic way, including potential synergies and trade-offs between different development goals. This can ultimately support a transition not only to more sustainability, but also to greater resilience of the tourism sector against environmental changes.

OPPORTUNITIES AND RISKS OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN POST-COVID PERIOD FOR UKRAINE AND EASTERN EUROPE

After a major downturn of the global economy in 2020 caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and despite renewed lockdowns in some parts of the world there are optimistic projections about global economy to rebound in 2021. The authors consider the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic for the economies of Eastern Europe and Ukraine. Purpose of the article is to analyze the latest tendencies of economic growth perspectives in Eastern Europe countries due to COVID-19 pandemic and define the main risks, challenges and strong positions of Ukraine in post-pandemic period. The relevance of this topic lies, first of all, in the importance of determining the prospects for economic development of countries in different scenarios of the pandemic. Based on an in-depth analysis of data from international and Ukrainian agencies and individual experts, forecast data on the future economic development during 2021-2022 of Ukraine and some Eastern Europe countries are summarized. Ukraine, comparing to many countries around the world, has a relatively smaller reduction of economic indexes in 2020, due to the transformational nature of our economy, weak participation in global value chains, a significant share of shadow business and income, underdeveloped tourism, a significant share of agriculture and a large share of large-scale production, which did not stop even during peak quarantine periods.. Attention was paid to the specific risks of a pandemic for the economic development at global level, in Europe and Central Asia region and in Ukraine. The most significant challenges for national economic development were defined as such: strengthening hybrid threats to Ukraine's national security, lack of external financing and narrowing of access to international capital markets, failure to receive planned funding from the IMF, low intensity of reforms. Due to such serious risk factors, there is a need to develop a balanced regulatory to counter growing threats and restore economic growth to pre-pandemia level.

About this title - Characterization of Modern and Historical Seismic–Tsunamic Events, and Their Global–Societal Impacts

Earthquakes and tsunamis are devastating geohazards with significant societal impacts. Most recent occurrences have shown that their impact on the stability of nations–societies and the world geopolitics is immense, potentially triggering a tipping point for a major downturn in the global economy. This Special Publication presents the most current information on the causes and effects of some of the modern and historical earthquake–tsunami events, and effective practices of risk assessment–disaster management, implemented by various governments, international organizations and intergovernmental agencies. Findings reported here show that the magnitude of human casualties and property loss resulting from earthquakes–tsunamis are highly variable around the globe, and that increased community, national and global resilience is significant to empower societal preparedness for such geohazards. It is clear that all stakeholders, including scientists, policymakers, governments, media and world organizations must work together to disseminate accurate, objective and timely information on geohazards, and to develop effective legislation for risk reduction and realistic hazard mitigation–management measures in our globally connected world of today.

The influence of globalization processes on the innovative development of the food industry of Ukraine in the phases of business cycles

Aim. One of the important problems in the development of the food industry in Ukraine is the infl uence of globalization processes, accompanied by cyclical development of the economy. The cycles are manifested in periodic ups and downs of the business climate, taking into account the infl uence of various factors (climate change, risks in agricultural production, legislative changes, etc.), i.e. when the economy seeks to fi nd equilibrium. Therefore, the identifi cation of fl uctuations in economic activity and, accordingly, changes in market conditions that arise as a reaction to the action of well-defi ned, predictable factors of the market environment are relevant and necessary. The purpose of the article is to reveal the infl uence of globalization processes and economic cyclicality on the innovative development of the food industry in Ukraine, to identify the phases of business cycles, to determine the criteria for the effective functioning of individual food industry sectors during periods of crisis and depression in order to develop effective tools for leveling and smoothing their consequences at different levels of management. Methods. Based on the application of classical and modern methods for assessing economic cycles, we developed a methodological approach to justifying the phases of the business cycle and identifying the development specifi cities of individual sectors of the food industry of Ukraine (meat processing, milk processing, baking, sugar production) in these phases. In the authors’ algorithm, at the appropriate stages of the study, the following methods were applied: factor analysis  to calculate the indicator of the business climate; smoothing time series  to identify individual phases of the business cycle; average values of growth rates  to summarize the characteristics of the phases of the business cycle and identify the characteristics of the development of food industry sectors of Ukraine in these phases. The primary data for the calculations were the data of global and national statistics. Results. It has been established that the consequences of the impact of globalization on the development of the food industry of Ukraine since the beginning of the new millennium are: changes in the industrial structure; its formation under the infl uence of an external market, where raw materials and primary processing products are most in demand; accelerated growth in consumer prices for food products, which does not correlate with real incomes of the population; expanding the monopolization of food markets; the imbalance of supply and demand, which leads to differences in the development of economic phenomena, in particular  in the innovative development of the food industry, etc. The study showed that the development of individual sectors of the food industry is affected by the cyclical development of the national economy. The periods of the business cycle phases for the Ukrainian economy (from 2002 to mid-2019) and their impact on the activity of the food industry are determined. It was established that during this period the Ukrainian economy went through 4 business cycles with fi ve major downturns and peaks in economic activity. It was revealed that a sign of its development is the presence of separate business cycles in which there is no depression phase. Conclusions. The assessment of the intensity of the development of the food industry sectors during the phases of business cycles gives grounds for the justifi cation of their slower innovative development. The main reasons for this phenomenon in the food industry are as follows: imbalance in supply and demand for goods; low purchasing power of the population; investing signifi cant amounts of fi nances in increasing production volumes, and not in innovative development, ineffi cient pricing policy. The methodological approach proposed in the article, based on the identifi ed signs of the phases of the business cycle, makes it possible to justify the problem periods of the food industry in the short term, as current problems signifi cantly affect the implementation of long-term plans. This confi rms the feasibility of applying the proposed methodological approach in further research.

Subfossil trees suggest enhanced Mediterranean hydroclimate variability at the onset of the Younger Dryas

Nearly 13,000 years ago, the warming trend into the Holocene was sharply interrupted by a reversal to near glacial conditions. Climatic causes and ecological consequences of the Younger Dryas (YD) have been extensively studied, however proxy archives from the Mediterranean basin capturing this period are scarce and do not provide annual resolution. Here, we report a hydroclimatic reconstruction from stable isotopes (δ18O, δ13C) in subfossil pines from southern France. Growing before and during the transition period into the YD (12 900–12 600 cal BP), the trees provide an annually resolved, continuous sequence of atmospheric change. Isotopic signature of tree sourcewater (δ18Osw) and estimates of relative air humidity were reconstructed as a proxy for variations in air mass origin and precipitation regime. We find a distinct increase in inter-annual variability of sourcewater isotopes (δ18Osw), with three major downturn phases of increasing magnitude beginning at 12 740 cal BP. The observed variation most likely results from an amplified intensity of North Atlantic (low δ18Osw) versus Mediterranean (high δ18Osw) precipitation. This marked pattern of climate variability is not seen in records from higher latitudes and is likely a consequence of atmospheric circulation oscillations at the margin of the southward moving polar front.

Aquatic vegetation responses to island construction (habitat restoration) in a large floodplain river

AbstractThe Upper Mississippi River is maintained in its current navigable state through impoundments, dredging, and other engineering projects. These stressors, along with anthropogenic impacts and natural system processes, led to declines in aquatic vegetation and the loss of fish and wildlife habitat, with a major downturn the late 1980s and early 1990s. Large‐scale restoration projects, such as the one evaluated here, are primarily designed to rehabilitate and enhance fish and wildlife habitat. We determined whether an individual restoration project, construction of an island complex, fulfilled a programmatic goal of re‐establishing diverse and abundant native aquatic vegetation. Eighteen years of aquatic vegetation monitoring data from impact and reference areas were compared to evaluate the anticipated direct effects (within 400 m of the constructed islands) and indirect effects (>400 m downstream of constructed islands) of restoration. Impact areas were also compared with an unrestored negative reference area ~200 km downstream of the project and with a positive reference area in adjacent, relatively natural backwaters. Only indirect effects of restoration were evident. Prevalence and species richness of aquatic vegetation in both of the impact areas and in the negative reference area increased prior to restoration, suggesting large‐scale improvement independent of the project examined here. Indirect effects were demonstrated as further increases in both prevalence and species richness coinciding with restoration in the area >400 m downstream of the restoration. We conclude that increased abundance and diversity of aquatic vegetation was partially achieved, with observed improvements potentially linked to reduced wind fetch.

Editors' Intro: Thirteenth International Conference on the Management of the Pakistan Economy Igniting Technology Led Growth in Pakistan: Role of Monetary, Fiscal and Investment Policies (29th-30th March, 2017)

The Pakistani economy currently stands at a crossroads; while it has stabilized over the last few years, the focus has turned towards restarting economic growth. This is a challenging task because of structural problems faced by the economy as well as the global economic slowdown. While the economy has avoided a major downturn since the IMF’s package in 2013, economic growth has been sporadic due to a variety of causes, including fiscal deficit, and financial vulnerabilities.

Tropical weathering of the Taconic orogeny as a driver for Ordovician cooling

Research Article| June 09, 2017 Tropical weathering of the Taconic orogeny as a driver for Ordovician cooling Nicholas L. Swanson-Hysell; Nicholas L. Swanson-Hysell 1Department of Earth and Planetary Science, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720-4767, USA Search for other works by this author on: GSW Google Scholar Francis A. Macdonald Francis A. Macdonald 2Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA Search for other works by this author on: GSW Google Scholar Author and Article Information Nicholas L. Swanson-Hysell 1Department of Earth and Planetary Science, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720-4767, USA Francis A. Macdonald 2Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA Publisher: Geological Society of America Received: 23 Jan 2017 Revision Received: 11 Apr 2017 Accepted: 19 Apr 2017 First Online: 23 Jun 2017 Online Issn: 1943-2682 Print Issn: 0091-7613 © 2017 Geological Society of America Geology (2017) 45 (8): 719–722. https://doi.org/10.1130/G38985.1 Article history Received: 23 Jan 2017 Revision Received: 11 Apr 2017 Accepted: 19 Apr 2017 First Online: 23 Jun 2017 Cite View This Citation Add to Citation Manager Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Search Site Citation Nicholas L. Swanson-Hysell, Francis A. Macdonald; Tropical weathering of the Taconic orogeny as a driver for Ordovician cooling. Geology 2017;; 45 (8): 719–722. doi: https://doi.org/10.1130/G38985.1 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Refmanager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentBy SocietyGeology Search Advanced Search Abstract The Earth’s climate cooled through the Ordovician Period leading up to the Hirnantian glaciation. Increased weatherability of silicate rocks associated with topography generated on the Appalachian margin during the Taconic orogeny has been proposed as a mechanism for Ordovician cooling. However, paleogeographic reconstructions typically place the Appalachian margin within the arid subtropics, outside of the warm and wet tropics where chemical weathering rates are highest. In this study, we reanalyze the paleomagnetic database and conclude that Ordovician constraints from cratonic Laurentia are not robust. Instead, we use paleomagnetic data from well-dated volcanic rocks in the accreting terranes to constrain Laurentia’s position given that the Appalachian margin was at, or equatorward of, the paleolatitude of these terranes. To satisfy these allochthonous data, Laurentia must have moved toward the equator during the Ordovician such that the Appalachian margin was within 10° of the equator by 465 Ma. This movement into the tropics coincided with the collision and exhumation of the Taconic arc system, recorded by a shift in neodymium isotope data from shale on the Appalachian margin to more juvenile values. This inflection in detrital neodymium isotope values precedes a major downturn in global seawater strontium isotopic values by more than one million years, as would be predicted from a change in weathering input and the relatively long residence time of strontium in the ocean. These data are consistent with an increase in global weatherability associated with the tropical weathering of mafic and ultramafic lithologies exhumed during the Taconic arc-continent collision. A Taconic related increase in weatherability is a viable mechanism for lowering atmospheric CO2 levels through silicate weathering contributing to long-term Ordovician cooling. You do not have access to this content, please speak to your institutional administrator if you feel you should have access.

Service Quality, Behavioural Intentions and Lipstick effect. Evidence from a Masstige context

This paper explores the role of the "Lipstick effect" on consumers' decisions, from a managerial perspective. The chosen research context is New Luxury (Silverstein and Fiske, 2003). During hard economic times, people tend to buy less expensive prestige goods. This "Lipstick effect", first observed in cosmetics, has been noticed in major downturns such as the Great Depression, and the 2008 crisis (Hill, 2012). This paper considers masstige goods as a visible market response to the Lipstick effect. To explore the impact of Lipstick effect, this paper uses income as a moderating variable on the linkage between the major components of service quality and behavioural intentions, in a New Luxury context. 488 questionnaires have been collected within stores of an Italian jewellery retail chain. Results show that perception of store atmosphere still appears to be stronger for higher income consumers; lower-income consumers put a greater emphasis on more material attributes of the offering (i.e., staff interaction).

Dis-Integrating Credit Markets - Diversification, Securitization, and Lending in a Recovery

Using exogenous variation in exposure to hurricanes, this article explores how differently diversified US banks lend during the protracted recovery from a major downturn. Compared to diversified banks, local banks:(i) originate a higher share of new mortgage and small business loans in affected areas, but (ii) sell a higher share of the new mortgages into the secondary market. These results suggest a pattern of specialization, whereby loans in affected areas are increasingly originated by banks with special abilities or incentives to seize opportunities in a distressed market, but increasingly transferred to agents which can better support the associated risk.

Can collapsing business networks explain economic downturns?

In this paper we argue that major economic downturns should be seen as collapses in the client and supplier relations between production entities, i.e., collapses in the trade network. In a model where individual units like firms and workers produce more if they have a larger network, but where they have to break up with existing links within their network in order to upgrade technologically, we find endogenous network cycles. In the up-swing part of the cycle, productive units increase their links allowing them to specialise more completely at current technologies, whilst in the downward part of the cycle, some units deliberate down-size in order to upgrade their technology, but this leads to a recession due to the negative externality on trading partners. We argue that network collapse is likely to have been an element of three major downturns (the Great Depression in the US of the 1930s, the collapse of the Russian economy following the reforms in 1990, and the downturn in the Indonesian economy after the Asian crisis in 1997). Simulations show that various features of downturns are replicable with the basic model.

Dis-Integrating Credit Markets: Diversification, Securitization, and Lending in a Recovery

Using exogenous variation in exposure to hurricanes, this article explores how differently diversified US banks lend during the protracted recovery from a major downturn. Compared to diversified banks, local banks (i) originate a higher share of new mortgage and small business loans in affected areas, but (ii) sell a higher share of the new mortgages into the secondary market. These results suggest a pattern of specialization, whereby loans in affected areas are increasingly originated by banks with special abilities or incentives to seize opportunities in a distressed market, but increasingly transferred to agents which can better support the associated risk.

President's Page

As this article is written, there is continued upheaval in the oil, gas, and mining sectors of the geophysical community. Commodity prices have dropped precipitously and have not recovered from a year of declines. The majority of the members and associates of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists are actively engaged in the extraction industry and have subsequently seen a substantial number of layoffs and major changes in company budgets as a result of the price downturn. And even though the industry may remember its history of booms and busts, this downturn is especially traumatic in terms of both severity and timing. The last major downturn was nearly 30 years ago, and the industry has been mostly stable since then.

Economic Crisis and Share Price Unpredictability: Reasons and Implications

During the recent financial crisis, there was a dramatic spike, across all industries, in the volatility of individual firm share prices after adjustment for movements in the market as a whole. In this Article, we demonstrate that a similar spike has occurred with each major downturn in the economy since the 1920s. The existence of this long history of crisis-induced spikes has not been previously recognized. The Article evaluates a number of potential explanations for these recurrent spikes in firm-specific price volatility, a pattern that poses a puzzle in terms of existing financial theory. The most convincing explanations relate to reasons why information specifically concerning individual firms would become more important in difficult economic times. This discovery of a long history of crisis-induced spikes in firm-specific price volatility has important implications for several areas of corporate and securities law. With regard to securities law, the Article concludes, for example, that because of these spikes, private damages actions are much less effective deterrents to corporate misstatements and insider trading in crisis times than in normal times. Consequently, substantial additional resources should be devoted to SEC enforcement actions during crisis times. The Article considers as well the most contentious corporate law issue of the last 30 years: the extent to which a target board of directors will be allowed to prevent shareholders from accepting a hostile takeover bid at a premium over the pre-bid share price. The Delaware Supreme Court’s approach to this question has been largely based on the difficult-to-define concept of “substantive coercion.” The Article concludes that these spikes could be a way of giving real meaning to the “substantive coercion” justification for board approval of defenses against hostile takeover attempts, but that the instances where this justification is appropriate will be rare.