Source Countries Research Articles

A Review on Turkey’s Renewable Energy Potential and its Usage Problems

The need for energy resources in the world continues to increase day by day. Energy demand will increase in the coming years in parallel with population growth, industrialization and technological developments, especially in developing countries. The fact that fossil energy sources cause environmental problems, their reserves will be depleted shortly, dependence on source countries causes various political and economic problems, and price instability increases the interest in renewable energy sources. Especially in developed countries, renewable energy sources such as hydraulic, wind, geothermal, solar, biomass, wave, hydrogen etc. Energy sources are used in various ways, especially electricity production. As a developing country, Turkey's need for energy resources increases day by day in parallel with its increasing population and growing economy. Turkey, which is approximately 75% foreign-dependent in terms of its current energy structure, seems to be a necessity rather than a choice to reduce this dependency on renewable energy sources. In this study, Turkey's current renewable energy potential has been revealed, and various suggestions have been made by analyzing the renewable energy potential.

Changes of China’s soybean import market power and influencing factors

ABSTRACT Whether Chinese soybean importers can keenly grasp the changes of different source countries’ market power, will directly affects the safety and cost of soybean import. Based on the analysis of changes in China’s soybean import trade structure, this paper utilizes monthly data from January 2009 to December 2021, combines with the residual demand elasticity model, to compare and analyse the market power of the three major source countries. The results show that although the United States is no longer China’s largest soybean import country, its market power in China’s soybean import market has not been affected, while Argentina’s market power is gradually increasing. Although Brazil has grown into the first source of China’s soybean imports, it has only weak market influence. In addition, China, as the world’s largest buyer, doesn’t have market power. China’s soybean import price is mainly affected by futures prices, domestic soybean prices, international crude oil prices, Sino-US trade frictions and COVID-19 epidemic.

Determinants of International Tourism Demand in India: An Augmented Gravity Model Approach

Abstract This study examines the determinants of international tourism demand in India using time series data from 1991-2019 from the top 15 source tourist countries. To do this, the study employed an augmented gravity model estimated using a two-step panel fixed-effect model to identify the factors affecting tourism demand in India. These factors include the income of both India and its origin countries. The domestic exchange rate of both India and the source country is included to capture the impact of the cost of living and prices of goods and services. Supporting variables like distance, common border, and common language between India and source of origin country were also identified. Further, it includes the impact of similarity and common membership to SAARC. Empirical results indicate that the level of Indian income, language, and similarity have a positive impact on tourism inflow to India. On the other hand distance and the domestic exchange rate of India have negative impacts. Further, the income level of origin countries has a significant positive impact. Also, common membership to SAARC and the common border between India and the origin country have a significant positive impact on tourism demand in India. Furthermore, international demand for Indian tourism is not affected by the relative price in the origin country.

The returns to school-quality-adjusted education of immigrants in Germany

This paper explores the role of school quality in immigrants’ home countries on their earnings in Germany, using native Germans as a benchmark. We propose an empirical analysis that highlights two important insights. First, there is a substantial gap in the returns to education between natives and immigrants in Germany, especially when we consider the quality of schooling in the source country where education was obtained. In particular, lower school quality reduces the endowment advantage that immigrants possess from their education. Second, quality-adjusted education helps us to better understand the potential driving force behind the native–immigrant wage gap. We show that this measure accounts for a substantial fraction of the unexplained part in the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition. These findings emphasize the role of the school quality in explaining the imperfect transferability of human capital of immigrants in Germany.

Lipoprotein(a) in Cardiovascular Diseases: Insight From a Bibliometric Study.

Lipoprotein(a) [Lp(a)] is a complex polymorphic lipoprotein comprised of a low-density lipoprotein particle with one molecule of apolipoprotein B100 and an additional apolipoprotein(a) connected through a disulfide bond. The serum concentration is mostly genetically determined and only modestly influenced by diet and other lifestyle modifications. In recent years it has garnered increasing attention due to its causal role in pre-mature atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease and calcific aortic valve stenosis, while novel effective therapeutic options are emerging [apolipoprotein(a) antisense oligonucleotides and ribonucleic acid interference therapy]. Bibliometric descriptive analysis and mapping of the research literature were made using Scopus built-in services. We focused on the distribution of documents, literature production dynamics, most prolific source titles, institutions, and countries. Additionally, we identified historical and influential papers using Reference Publication Year Spectrography (RPYS) and the CRExplorer software. An analysis of author keywords showed that Lp(a) was most intensively studied regarding inflammation, atherosclerosis, cardiovascular risk assessment, treatment options, and hormonal changes in post-menopausal women. The results provide a comprehensive view of the current Lp(a)-related literature with a specific interest in its role in calcific aortic valve stenosis and potential emerging pharmacological interventions. It will help the reader understand broader aspects of Lp(a) research and its translation into clinical practice.

Timber carbon stocks and influencing factors in the “Belt and Road Initiative” region

Most “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI) countries are developing countries in the early and middle stages of economic development and industrialization. The ecological environment in the BRI region is relatively fragile. Therefore, ensuring the green development of the BRI is of great significance for realizing global sustainable development goals. As the largest terrestrial ecosystem, forests can offset carbon dioxide emissions and maintain biodiversity. This paper aims to study the BRI region's timber carbon stock flow pattern and the influencing factors. A multi-regional input-output model and carbon stock-accounting methods are used to analyze the embodied timber carbon stock flows. We also reveal the spatiotemporal characteristics of embodied timber carbon stocks in critical countries. Furthermore, a structural decomposition analysis (SDA) is used to examine the factors that influence timber carbon stock changes. The results show that the timber carbon stocks imported to the BRI region account for an increasing percentage of the global imported volume, while the exported percentage has decreased. Although the BRI region has been a net export, the net export volume has shown a declining trend. China and India are the largest timber carbon stock consumers in the BRI region. The United States, Japan, and Germany are the main export destination countries of timber carbon stocks outside the BRI region. The major source countries of timber export have transferred to developed countries outside the BRI region due to the requirement of forest certification systems for combating illegal logging. The changes in the import and export of embodied timber carbon stocks are mainly affected by the negative effect of timber carbon stock intensity and the positive effect of per-capita final demand. The analyses indicate that the developing countries in BRI region with abundant forest resources no longer rely on deforestation to export raw materials in exchange for low profits. Instead, they are gradually enacting sustainable forest management, and exporting wood products with higher added value.

New evidence on the role of human capital in economic development

ABSTRACT This study provides new evidence on the role of human capital in economic development by investigating the earnings and occupational attainment of immigrants in Venezuela. The results show that immigrants are representative of the source country’s population and are more likely to use their skills in the labour market of the host country. This allows us to measure the human capital endowments of the source countries more precisely. Using the standard development accounting framework to explain the variation in output, the study finds that physical capital and human capital account for 73–79% of income differences across countries.

Research on Diversified Selection of Soybean Import Sources from the Perspective of Import Risk Minimization

From the perspective of reducing import risks, this paper quantitatively analyzes the optimization path of China's soybean import structure in 2020. The research conclusion shows that compared with 2000, China's soybean import sources will gradually diversify in 2020, and the import risk will increase significantly. In order to minimize the risk of soybean imports, China needs to increase soybean imports from the United States, while appropriately reducing soybean dependence on Brazil and Argentina. In addition, other import source countries such as Canada and Russia still have great import potential, which helps to diversify the concentrated import risks.

Celebrity endorsement in international destination marketing: Evidence from eye-tracking techniques and laboratory experiments

Celebrity endorsement has become ubiquitous in international destination marketing, but studies have rarely assessed the differences between the effects of endorsement by a local celebrity vs. a celebrity from tourist source countries (source celebrity). To bridge the literature gap, this paper draws on meaning transfer theory and match-up hypothesis to examine the effectiveness of these two types of celebrity endorsement by exploring the underlying mechanism. By carrying out a pretest and three experiments, the eye-tracking results and lab experiments show that international destination marketing involving a source celebrity (vs. local celebrity) can significantly increase tourists’ visual attention to the advertising destination scenery, positive attitudes toward the destination and intentions to visit. Furthermore, a serial mediation model of celebrity endorsement → celebrity–tourist congruency → tourist attitude toward celebrity → tourist response is also identified. Finally, this paper empirically examines the moderating role of regulatory focus on the celebrity endorsement effect.

Spatio-temporal approach for classification of COVID-19 pandemic fake news.

The spread of Fake News during this global pandemic COVID-19 has dangerous consequences on economy and health of public. From origin of virus, spread, self-medication to hoaxes on vaccination, it created more panic than the fatality of the virus. For better infodemic preparedness and control, it is necessary to mitigate fear among people, manage rumours, and dispel misinformation. A survey on Fake News during COVID-19 was made by Poynter Fact Check institute. It stated that major chunk of the fake news on COVID-19 originated majorly in Brazil, India, Spain, and the United States. Fake news menace is severe in countries where the trust on online media is high such as Brazil, Kenya and South Africa. Based on these observations, this study provides preliminary insight on the co-relation of the spatial and temporal meta-information of the news like the news source country, the name of the countries specified in the news, and date of publish of news to the credibility of news. The main contribution of this study is to analyse the impact of spatial and temporal information features for classification of fake news, which to the best of our knowledge has not been explored yet. Also, these features are directly not available in any news article available online. Hence, these features are handcrafted. Meta-data of the news article such as origin of news is considered. Additional spatial information is extracted from the news article using NER tagging. Temporal information such as date of origin of news is given as an input to the LSTM model. These features are given as an input to Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model along with GloVe vectors and word length vector. A comparative analysis for accuracy is tested of the models with and without spatial and temporal information. The model with spatial and temporal information has achieved noteworthy results in fake news detection. To ensure the quality of prediction, various model parameters have been tuned and recorded for the best results possible. In addition to accuracy, the spatial and temporal information for fake news detection offers several other important implications for government and policy makers that will be instrumental in simulating future research on this subject.

Offshoring and well-being of workers

Using long panels of industry-specific offshoring information and subjectively reported well-being datasets mainly from Germany, which is also supported by datasets from the UK and Australia, this paper aims to investigate the relationship between offshoring and workers’ subjective well-being in the source country. We employ panel data fixed-effects models with time-variant personality measures and industry-specific measures to alleviate the bias stemming from the non-random sorting of individuals in industries. Our findings suggest that offshoring negatively relates to workers’ subjective well-being. The result is unexceptionally consistent across Germany, the UK, and Australia, and the effect is larger in business services and among high-skilled workers. We extensively discuss how contextual “fear-factors” prevailing in the source countries interact with the angst generated by the negative framing of offshoring. To single out such angst, we first show that objective and subjective job security concerns, job characteristics, and labor market conditions only marginally relate to the well-being effect of offshoring. Then, we investigate how the effect of offshoring on well-being is amplified by a larger set of contextual factors pertaining to temporary economic shocks, negative narratives about offshoring during electoral cycles, partisan political preferences, and high immigration rates. Finally, we show that a recent skill upgrade significantly diminishes the negative effect of offshoring on well-being.

Outbound Tourism Demand Modeling – Region Destination Approach: The Case of Vietnam’s Data

ABSTRACT Although there have been several studies on international tourism demand, research on outbound tourism has not received as much attention, especially approaching destinations as a region (group of countries). This paper aims to establish outbound tourism demand modeling and determine the role of factors influencing this model. Using Vietnam’s data from 1995 to 2019, the study focuses on eleven main destination countries divided into three regions, namely Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia, and intercontinental. The autoregressive distributed lag model (ADLM) for panel data and robustness tests was deployed and shows that population size and income per capita of the source country are important factors that determine the size of the outbound tourism market. Moreover, traveling abroad remains a luxury service for Vietnamese people, especially to countries in Northeast Asia. Prices also affect outbound tourism demand, but most demand is inelastic by own and cross prices. In addition, the study also pinpoints the competing destinations and complementary destinations for overseas travel trips by Vietnamese people.

Do the determinants of foreign direct investment have a reverse and symmetric impact on foreign direct divestment?

Negative foreign direct investment (divestment) between countries has received little attention in international macroeconomics. This is the first country-level study to investigate whether conventional drivers of bilateral foreign direct investment (FDI) have a reverse, but symmetric, impact on foreign direct divestment (FDD). Using bilateral negative and positive FDI data between 126 countries or territories, from 2005 to 2018, we find that conventional gravity variables that have statistically significant effects on FDI, such as host and source country GDP, distance, and source-country remoteness, have similar-signed effects on FDD, rather than opposite-signed effects. Formal testing of whether coefficients on the determinants of the absolute value of divestment are equal but opposite signed to those for investment rejects this hypothesis. The view that what may lead to more FDI may impede FDD is not supported by our empirical findings.

An Assessment of Market Dependency Risk in the International Student Industry

Literature suggests that the international student industry faces increasing risk, given the substantial dependence on a few source countries. Inbound international student mobility (ISM) data of leading higher education (HE) destination countries were examined, with China and India as the source countries. This study classifies Australia, Canada, and the USA as host countries with a high international student source country dependency risk; the UK as a host country with a moderate dependency risk. By exploring the issue from a dependency risk mitigation perspective, this study identifies an elaborate two-step market diversification approach involving international market selection and marketing strategy.

Shifts in the Trend and Nature of Migration in the Ethiopia-South Africa Migration Corridor

Over the past 25 years a significant (but unknown) number of migrants from Ethiopia have been migrating to South Africa through the “southern route.” This male-dominated migration is becoming more and more irregular and includes multiple transit countries, largely controlled by human smugglers. The size of the Ethiopian immigrant population in South Africa has increased. The profile of individuals on the move has also changed in terms of migrants’ age, ethnicity, place of origin, gender and socioeconomic status. Youth from rural areas have joined the migration trail, and, increasingly, women are migrating for marriage in South Africa. Today, migrants from southern Ethiopia (Hadiya and Kambata) dominate Ethiopian migration to South Africa. The age and socioeconomic status of the migrants have also changed where teenagers, college graduates and civil servants are entering the migration stream in recent years. Equally changing is the nature and operation of the smuggling and settlement processes. Like the broader field of migration studies in which source and destination countries receive the overwhelming focus, the multiple transit countries Ethiopians on the move to South Africa travel through, and the migration journeys themselves, have not received adequate research attention. The effects these journeys have on the settlement processes are also largely ignored. This article, therefore, explores these emerging patterns with a view to understanding the inequalities faced by Ethiopian migrants on their journey to South Africa and the factors behind it. With the intensification of border closures due to multiple factors, including the COVID-19 pandemic, we examine the shift in the nature and trend of smuggling and how it is reflected in inequalities experienced by Ethiopian migrants in South Africa.

In Between Escapade and Peril

The outbreak of COVID-19 has damaged the world economy, resulting in the termination of thousands of jobs which affects migrants and their families who have both economic and other investments in migration. This article explores the experiences and challenges of Nepali migrant workers who returned from Malaysia and their wives who were left behind when they originally migrated. We discuss the aspirations of returnee workers, their life and experiences in Malaysia during the pandemic and their experiences of tackling the bureaucratic challenges of the return process in Malaysia and Nepal. We find that any problems in migration also affects those family members who are left behind and discuss the experiences of husbands affect migrants’ wives, including their understanding of the foreign employment situation of the husbands and their involvement in different decisions related to foreign employment and the return of their husbands. The study follows a qualitative methodology. Phone interviews were conducted with ten returnee migrants from Malaysia and ten as well as three informants who have knowledge and experience of the sector. The article argues that both migrants and their family members face the consequences of any failures and challenges in migration and that policies should encourage joint discussion among governments of source and host countries on coping with the challenges of migration including in the context of a global pandemic.

Bilateral foreign direct investments: differential effects of tariffs in source and destination countries

We study the asymmetric effects of bilateral tariffs in FDI-receiving (destination) and FDI-sending (source) countries on bilateral FDI using Gravity analysis, with bilateral FDI and average tariff data for 47 countries during the period 2001–2012. Theory suggests that while the former would encourage tariff-jumping inward FDI, the latter would discourage offshoring and export-oriented outward FDI. Our empirical study uses two alternative methodologies to estimate a Gravity model, viz., PPML estimation method which uses pairwise, destination-time and origin-time fixed effects, and GMM with time fixed effects, which can deal with possible two-way causality. After correcting for possible two-way causality, our study confirms the theoretical expectations. We also find that the 2008 Financial Crisis has had a significant impact on the magnitude of the effects of bilateral tariffs. We find that one percentage-point increase in tariffs in the destination country increases inward FDI stock to GDP ratio in that country by 0.06% in the non-crisis years and by 0.01% in the crisis years. Similarly, one percentage-point increase in tariffs in the origin country decreases outward FDI stock to GDP ratio from that country by 0.06% in the non-crisis years and by 0.02% in the crisis years.

Ability of residents to assess relative risk from tourists during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT This paper compares relative risk perceptions of residents to inbound tourists from countries with different COVID-19 profiles. Results suggest residents are able to distinguish between COVID-19 risks based on the incidence of COVID-19 in the tourists’ source country. Residents’ risk perceptions were better aligned with the absolute number of cases (ignoring population size) in tourists’ country of origin than with the number of COVID cases per capita. This was primarily influenced by China’s relatively large population. The results suggest people can accurately assess relative risk, especially when the media provides quality information (as was the case for COVID-19 cases). By examining perceptions of residents rather than tourists, this paper adds new insights into tourism outcomes of successful crisis management, especially in the context of public health disasters.

Policy Brief 10: Using anti-money laundering frameworks to fight illegal wildlife trade in Uganda

In February 2020, Uganda made a high-level political commitment to work with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and Eastern and Southern Africa Anti-Money Laundering Group (ESAAMLG) to strengthen the effectiveness of its anti-money laundering (AML) regime. Among other commitments, Uganda undertook to demonstrate that law enforcement agencies and judicial authorities apply the money laundering offence consistent with the identified risks. 
 Studies show that Uganda has high risks for cross-border movement of illegally obtained wildlife and wildlife products, both as a source and transit country. In addition, Uganda and the East African region in general have made some massive seizures of illegal wildlife products, which points to organised criminal activity. Notably, no money laundering prosecutions have to date arisen out of illegal wildlife trade (IWT) as a predicate offence in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.
 This short Policy Brief provides an outline of how the AML framework (intelligence, investigations and prosecutions) can be utilised to help combat IWT and the corruption that facilitates it. The insights are drawn from the Ugandan context, but can be applied with appropriate adjustments to other jurisdictions seeking to strengthen efforts to combat IWT and related corruption/money laundering.

Cosmopolitan Repair: Reclaiming and Restoring Cultural Heritage in Postcolonial Nigeria

The retention of sacred artifacts against the will of source countries, particularly ex-colonies, represents a form of social and cultural control that facilitates and exacerbates political and economic inequities between nations. Since independence, generations of Nigerian artists have engaged in various forms of recuperation of pre-colonial aesthetics through the adoption of postcolonial modernist visual tactics to negotiate a sense of self-determination and to recover an autonomous postcolonial national identity. Contemporary artists in Nigeria, particularly in Benin and throughout the diaspora have employed a range of aesthetic political practices to disrupt the legacies of colonialism still pervasive within their industries and communities. Through the creation of subversive artwork which attempts to think beyond the framework of western benevolence embedded in the project of restitution, some have made efforts to resist hegemonic influences within the global contemporary art world. The tactics of decolonial resistance that some Nigerian and diasporic artists have employed suggest a strategic redeployment of an aesthetic tradition that simultaneously advocates for the reclaiming of a black radical indigenous history and full realization of Nigerian cultural autonomous potentialities, while also envisioning a future situated within a global cosmopolitan framework – what I refer to as cosmopolitan repair. Such forms of cultural production constitute a critical component of the recent resurgence of decolonial activism that has swept the global art world which, at its core, poses a resistance to extractive capitalism in the Global South.