Unstable Policy Research Articles

Market Demand, Policy Environment, and Future Trends: Analysis of New Energy Vehicle Industry in China

Under the complex and ever-changing global economic situation, the sales of new energy vehicles in China are facing many development opportunities and practical challenges. Market demand and policy environment impact the development of China's new energy vehicle industry. This research takes the new energy vehicle industry in China as the research object, adopts a combination of literature review and case analysis methods by combing and analyzing relevant literature, combined with practical cases, deeply discusses the development status and problems of China's new energy vehicle industry, and proposes improvement suggestions from two dimensions: market demand and policy environment. Research shows that insufficient market demand, insufficient technological innovation, and an unstable policy environment are the main factors that restrict industrial development. To solve these problems, measures need to be taken, such as increasing government support, enhancing technological innovation capabilities, and promoting reforms and innovations in marketing and other aspects, aiming to inspire China's new energy vehicle industry to go global.

The Status Quo, Dilemma, and Transformation Path of the Carbon Neutrality-Related Policy of the ASEAN

After joining the globalization initiative, countries from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have experienced an exponential growth in carbon emissions. The high carbon lock-in of the energy consumption structure and lagged energy infrastructure construction have led to high carbon emissions, which has put great pressure on ASEAN countries to reduce their carbon emissions. To achieve the goal of carbon neutrality by the middle of this century, ASEAN countries have successively formulated strategic guidelines for energy transformation and green development, focusing on the structural transformation of energy development and utilization, a coal decommissioning plan, grid interconnection, the electrification of urban transportation patterns, energy conservation, consumption reduction, and international technological cooperation. ASEAN countries still face many challenges in achieving their carbon neutrality targets, including unstable policies, poor environmental awareness among residents, poor guarantee for energy transformation, disconnection between technology and capital, and difficulties in regional coordination. These are reflected in the obvious carbon lock-in effect and the strong dependence on carbon in traditional industries. ASEAN countries are seeking a balance of interests in the Sino–US infrastructure game. In this context, China, as an advocate of South–South cooperation, is committed to expanding the cooperation with ASEAN countries on carbon neutrality in the following aspects: the development and utilization of renewable energy resources, formulation of a progressive grid interconnection plan, establishment of the green financial system, and research and development of green technologies. The purpose is to help ASEAN countries achieve their goals of carbon neutrality.

Financing and Successful Micro, Small and Medium Scale Enterprise Development in Nigeria

This study explored entrepreneurial development as it relates to micro, small and medium-size enterprises (MSMEs) development in Nigeria. The evolution of entrepreneurship which is regarded as “an engine for growth” is being viewed from the perspective of economic, sociological, political, psychological, and composite perspectives. Entrepreneurial development in Nigeria is observed to be hampered by some factors including financing, management, infrastructure inadequacy, socio-cultural problems, strategic planning problems, multiple taxation, and unstable policy environment. In averting these problems to stir entrepreneurial spirit, this study suggested that Nigeria needs to resort to the 1999 United Nations work plan on National Enterprise Promotion Agency; plus, establishment of an anchor scheme to bring together MSMEs and provide capacity building and training programs on subjects such as corporate governance and having correct documentation in place to obtain credit.

Political and security instability and its effects on foreign investment: with reference to Iraq's experience after 2003

The research deals with the conceptual framework of political and security stability and foreign investment, the theoretical framework for the impact of political and security stability on foreign investment, and the practical aspect that affected political and security stability on foreign investment in Iraq for the period 2003-2021. The research aims to explain the reasons for the modest levels of foreign investment in Iraq and the fluctuation of its flows. Since 2003 and studying the causes of this imbalance, and among these reasons the security and political instability for the period under study, the Iraqi society was chosen as a sample for the research, and simple statistical tools were used in the analysis. The measurement method (SPSS) and linear programming were excluded because the results obtained are negative and do not explain Scientific explanation of the relationship between the two variables. Therefore, the method of direct analysis was resorted to through the tables obtained related to the index of political and security instability, and the results were positive and depended on solid scientific facts.
 On the outside world and then lift the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq, and the issuance of the investment law for the year 2006 had a great impact in encouraging the flow of foreign investment to Iraq. Although these flows are still modest and weak, and most of them are in the oil sector, and what indicates the obstacles to foreign investment are the security and political instability and cases of administrative and financial corruption were among the reasons that prevented the provision of an appropriate investment climate capable of attracting foreign investments. And the research recommended that Political stability is an attractive factor for foreign investors to invest their money inside the country because stability is one of the important elements for the investor and the economy of Iraq must be developed because Iraq’s economy is a one-sided renter economy that depends on oil and the development of the rest of the sectors to advance the economic reality and build a strong state. The instability index is considered one of the dangerous and important indicators, and due to the fluctuations of government systems and their unstable policies in recent times, this has led to a deterioration in conditions and a decrease in the demand for invest.

Uncertainty of temperature rise under nationally determined contributions and carbon neutral policies

Nationally determined contributions raised by Paris Agreement aim to control the temperature rise below 2 °C or even 1.5 °C at the end of the 21st century, compared to pre-industrial levels. However, the climate response of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) remains uncertain due to unstable policies and their credibility. In this study, we calculated the uncertainty of global temperature rise caused by uncertain NDCs and carbon-neutral policies and discussed the difficulty of policy implementation. The results show that there will be 8 GtC uncertainty in emission at the end of the 21st century, responsible for the temperature rise of 0.37 °C (1.73–2.10 °C). A delayed policy in emission reduction by major emitters would result in a temperature rise of over 2 °C, while under non-delay policy, the 2 °C target will be possibly achieved. Besides, low-emission countries would introduce a 30 GtC cumulative emission uncertainty at the end of the 21st century if there are no restrictions, leading to a 0.3 °C global warming uncertainty. Developed countries need more substantial reductions in carbon intensity to achieve their climate policies while developing countries are under less pressure. The reduction of carbon intensity requires the strengthening of technical and economic methods. This study provides a reference for the realization of emission policies and temperature rise targets.

Conformity and variety: city planning in Taiwan during 1683–1895

ABSTRACT This article examines the planning intentions and practices of sixteen administrative cities in Taiwan during 1683-1895, focusing on their relationship with the giant city system of Qing Dynasty. Since Taiwan was brought under Qing’s rule in 1683, sixteen cities were gradually planned and constructed as government seats to achieve spatial governance of new territory. These cities thus became a small but typical group within the entire city system, which included over 1500 members at that time. How were these cities planned and constructed in such remote, undeveloped territories? What principles and methodology had been strictly complied with or actively adjusted in their planning, facing the reality of various topography, unstable policies, diverse social demands, and changing situations of different times? This article attempts to answer the questions from four aspects: city site selection, city-wall shaping, functional facility configuration, and planning and construction sequence. Multiple study materials were employed in this research to reconstruct and analyse historical planning practices, including officially compiled local gazetteers, multisource historical records, digital elevation model(DEM), and field survey data. This study aims to enrich the understanding of city planning history in Taiwan, and to reveal these cities’ conformity and variety to the age-old Chinese city-planning tradition.

Investment Environment has Changed, Natural Selection Makes Investors Pay More Attention to Liquidity

With the rise of global protectionism, de-globalization, Sino-U.S. Trade conflict, the instability of policies will increase the probability of tail events. In this paper, we mentioned the natural selection in the financial industry. In the past, the investment environment has been stable for a long time, it would cause some investors have not ability to respond to the crisis. Change some investment habits, and deal with the hold up and Bank run caused by the tail events with increased probability by retaining more cash flow. This method can enable us to effectively respond to market fluctuations caused by unstable policies and improve the success rate.

Зовнішньополітичний курс Д. Трампа в умовах формування нового світопорядку

The author made an observation of foreign policy course of the United States of America during D. Trump presidency. The United States foreign policy in the 21st century is strategically oriented to global leadership, forming of the new world order, and active application of information space as a foreign policy instrument that is supposed to implement national interests. Such an approach causes significant consequences due to presidential administrations activity, their realization and reaction to global challenges and threats that appear as a result of single countries and their alliances policy. The author of the article has made attempts to analyze D. Trump foreign policy course during his presidency. Controversial rhetoric of the candidate during the election campaign considerably differs from D. Trump foreign policy as a president. Early election campaign includes public statements about renewal of relationships with the Russian Federation, staying apart from being involved in conflicts in the Middle East, refusal to extend idea of democracy in the world, reluctancy to use military troops as means of solving problems in international relations. The article focuses on American-Russian and American-Ukrainian relationships that seemed to be controversial from time to time. D. Trump foreign policy doctrine is identified and described. Its essence is in escalation for de-escalation. The author singled out and described the situations, which demonstrate public statements as effective means used in information space for strengthening of president’s power and foreign policy of the United States. The author came to the conclusion that D. Trump policy course and his international political subjectness reflect unstable policy movement from interventionism to isolationism.

Effect of Interest Rate Spread and Bank Specific Factors on Survival of Tier-One and Tier-Two Deposit Money Banks in Nigeria

In today’s economic setting, there must be a healthy banking sector for banks to survive. Banks survival determine sound financial mediator in achieving economic performance. However, bank spread and unstable policies towards bank specific factors have become threat to bank survival in Nigeria. Secondary data and ex-post facto research design were used within the period of 2011-2020 for both Tier-1 and Tier-2 deposit money banks in Nigeria. The study found that interest rate spread, asset quality, management efficiency, bank size and board size affect bank survival in Nigeria. The study suggests that bank managers should give maximum attention to interest rate spread, and bank specific factor like asset quality, management efficiency, bank size and board size so as to ensure their survival.

Analysis of policy responses to COVID-19: a case study in Babol University of Medical Sciences (BUMS), Iran

BackgroundPreparation and financing of treatments, control of disease by limited resources, are known as the most important challenges encountered by the policy-makers involved in an epidemic outbreak. Therefore, the present study was conducted to analyze the policy responses of Babol University of Medical Sciences (BUMS) to Coronavirus (COVID-19).MethodsA qualitative study was performed to investigate the policy responses of BUMS to COVID-19 in Babol of January to March, 2021. The statistical population included the experts, pundits, policy-makers and planners involved in four areas of management, treatment, healthcare, and health donation. Data collection was done according to interviews and policy documents, and the obtained data were analyzed based on the Walt and Gilson’s policy triangle.ResultsThere are five main themes to names: policy context, policy analysis, policy-making process, actors and stakeholders and 16 sub-themes. After several rounds of revision, the text of the interviews and policy documents were tagged and finally, various issues related to sub-themes were extracted. Also, two sub-themes entitled (improving the policy framework, People’s participation) were obtained from the strategies to reduce the incidence of Covid-19 theme.Conclusions(BUMS) was able to use the capacities and skills of experienced physicians, specialists and nurses to respond to patients awaiting treatment. Therefore, most of the policies were aimed at patient care and treatment. The lack of financial resources was compensated by health donors. But the (BUMS) could not use the power of the city government to control traffic and comply with health protocols and prevent infections. It was mainly the formulation and implementation of irregular and unstable policies.

Robust Adaptive Ensemble Adversary Reinforcement Learning

Reinforcement learning needs to learn policies through trial and error. The unstable policies in the early stage of training make it expensive (and time-consuming) to train directly in the real environment, which may cause disastrous consequences. The popular solution is to use the simulator to train the policy and deploy it in a real environment. However, the modeling error and external disturbance between the simulation and the real environment may fail the physical deployment, resulting in the sim2real transfer problem. In this letter, we propose a novel robust adversarial reinforcement learning framework, which uses the ensemble training of multi-adversarial agents that can adaptively adjust adversaries' strength to enhance RL policy's robustness. More specifically, we take the accumulative reward as feedback and construct a PID controller to adjust the adversary's output magnitude to perform the adversarial training well. Experiments in the simulated and the real environment show that our algorithm improves the generalization ability of the policy for the modeling error and the uncertain disturbance simultaneously, outperforming the next best prior methods across all domains. The algorithm was further proven to be effective in a sim2real transfer task through the load experiment of a real racing drone, and the tracking performance is better than the PID-based flight controller.

Alleviating the estimation bias of deep deterministic policy gradient via co-regularization

The overestimation in Deep Deterministic Policy Gradients (DDPG) caused by value approximation error may result in unstable policy training. Twin Delayed Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (TD3) addresses the overestimation but suffers from the underestimation. In this paper, we propose a Co-Regularization based Deep Deterministic (CoD2) policy gradient method to mitigate the estimation bias. Two learners characterized by overestimated and underestimated biases are trained with Co-regularization to achieve this goal. The overestimated and underestimated values are updated conservatively in CoD2 for policy evaluation. Experimental results show that our method achieves comparable performance compared with other methods.

We need stable, long-term policy support! — Evaluating the economic rationale behind the prevalent investor lament for forest-based biofuel production

Uncertain and unstable policy support has often been claimed to be a major cause of the slower than expected deployment of technologies for production of advanced biofuels. We investigate the economic rationale of this claim by applying a real options framework incorporating uncertainties regarding energy prices, investment costs, and prevalence of policy support, in terms of an economic support per produced unit of biofuel depending on the greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation potential. Six industrially relevant forest-based technologies for production of drop-in biofuels were evaluated. The technologies were integrated with a pulp mill and an oil refinery and are at different stages of their technical development. The results show that there is a limited economic rationale behind the claim that policy uncertainties are a major source for the stalled deployment of forest-based biorefinery technologies. Only technologies that require very high policy support to become economically viable, with associated low likeliness of investment, showed any significant sensitivity to the policy uncertainty. The results show that the stalled deployment is mainly related to the uncertainties regarding investment costs and future energy prices — and not related to the specific policy uncertainty. The results show that the stalled deployment is mainly related to the uncertainties regarding investment costs and future energy prices. This results in technologies with lower sensitivity with respect to these uncertainties have a larger chance of becoming commercially relevant investment options. The findings show that reduced policy uncertainty will neither lead to earlier investments nor improve the commercial viability of emerging biorefinery technologies. Literature citing policy uncertainty as the main hindrance for commercial deployment cannot do so from an economic perspective without simultaneously investigating the impacts from investment cost and market price uncertainties. Additionally we find that if policy support is intended to promote investment in technologies with high GHG performance, it must be directed specifically to these technologies, otherwise, it is more beneficial to invest in technologies with more favourable conditions for investment and operational costs, but lower GHG performance.

Village-level landscape succession and its driving mechanism in the agro-pastoral ecotone of Ningxia, China

The relationship between human activities and landscape patterns and its regulation are one of the core fields in landscape ecology. The ecological conditions and local cultures of agro-pastoral ecotone are gradually wea-kening due to environmental fluctuations, land-use characteristics (suitable for both farming and grazing), and unstable policy. Therefore, protecting and restoring this semi-natural landscape and the resulting biological, ecolo-gical and cultural functions are becoming increasingly urgent. Here, by combing remote sensing data with interview survey and geographic investigation, we characterized the landscape changes (1964 to 2019) of Wanjigou Village in Yanchi County of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, which lay within the agro-pastoral ecotone. We further explored the rules of landscape succession and the underlying natural and social mechanism, as well as the interactions between landscape types. Results showed that Wanjigou Village had been subjected to a succession from the landscape characterized by grassland, arable land and sandy land to that characterized by grassland, shrub land, sandy land and arable land. The change from the competition of landscape function separation to the preliminary integration had formed a definite succession path for grassland-arable land-sandy land-shrub land. The main driving factors were a synthesis of policy, human needs, and environment. Policy often promoted landscape change through large-scale and intensified human activities, while environment promoted landscape succession through internal driving force of ecosystem toward a mutual adaption between landscape and the innate conditions. The driving factors of landscape succession were soil moisture variations caused by the change of soil physical structure, and vegetation change in adapting to new environment. In agro-pastoral ecotone with low resource density, the separation of landscape functions was one of the main reasons for land desertification. The integration and coordination of landscape functions greatly alleviated the situation of ecological deterioration. The critical path to maintain sustainable development of agro-pastoral ecotone was to achieve complementation among landscape types and even integrating with external resources by transforming landscape separation competition into landscape symbiosis.

Barriers in the adoption of buyback schemes for used plastic packaging material – a contextual relationship analysis

The prescribed buyback schemes as a part of the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) of companies are believed to be an effective practice to eliminate the landfill of packaging materials. The coercive measures include the reuse and recycling of plastic packaging material. The lack of awareness, motivation, concern and enforcement of rules are major concerns of the government in implementing the buyback schemes of plastic wastes in developing economies. In the present study, 11 barriers are identified and defined through an extensive literature review. The total interpretive structural modeling method (TISM) and MICMAC analysis are used for examining the interrelationship between the barriers by utilizing experts’ opinions. A contextual relationship-based structural model is developed by considering the direct relationships and transitivity links. The contextual model helps in identifying the influential barriers. Further, the MICMAC analysis segregates the barriers into four based on their dependence and driving influence. The result of this study indicates that the unclear and unstable policy is the most influential barrier which prevents the adoption of a buyback scheme for used plastic packaging material. The study further reveals that consumer motivation is the least influential and most dependent barrier which could be improved by establishing the infrastructure and minimizing the difficulty in availing the scheme.

ANALYSIS OF INDIAN REAL ESTATE SECTOR IN COVID-19 POSED BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT

The real estate sector of India is one of the largest sectors of economy contributing to 6 to 7%. The real estate sector provides immense employment opportunity in unorganized labour market. Owing own house is prominent amongst dreams of all individuals and this sector helps to convert this dream into reality. India is witnessing large section of middle class and there is rise in disposable income. This is creating thrust for real estate sector in India. With market size increasing from 120 billion US dollars in 2017 to whopping projected size of 1000 billion US $ in 2030, the sector is projected to experience boom. The most noticeable change in real estate business is shift from family oriented set up to professionally managed ones. Although there are numerous growth drivers for the sector, but the threats and challenges too are simultaneous. Unstable government policies, red tape, inflation pull, litigations, lack of transparency and issues pertaining to tax negatively impact the sector. Above all, the lockdown and pause in construction work due to Covid-19 has pulled the industry in trench. This paper analyses the strength, weakness, opportune area and emerging trends of the sector and also entail governmental initiatives and future trend. If certain corrective measures are taken during the lockdown, the industry would be able to attain the projected status.

A framework for barriers, opportunities, and potential solutions for renewable energy diffusion: Exemplified by liquefied biogas for heavy trucks

This study has developed and applied a framework to analyse barriers, opportunities, and potential solutions for the diffusion of alternative fuels, here exemplified by liquefied biogas (LBG) for heavy trucks. The study is based on expert and stakeholder interviews in Sweden. Also, the study estimates a cost example of using heavy duty LBG-trucks instead of conventional diesel trucks.The framework is based on two previously published frameworks to categorise barriers, opportunities, and potential solutions and comprises five categories: financial, technical/commercial/physical, policy, public acceptability, and market structure/interaction barriers. Each category considers both the system and actor levels. The results of this study fit the framework's categories well, and the framework is appropriate for analysing the diffusion of liquefied biogas for heavy trucks, and other technologies with similar characteristics. The results further indicate that a network level, in addition to the system and actor levels, could advance our understanding of renewable energy diffusion.The most mentioned opportunities were climate/environmental benefits, potential profitability, and newly introduced policies. The cost estimates show that given current taxes and policies in Sweden, the costs of using LBG-trucks are only marginally higher than those of using conventional diesel trucks.Commonly cited barriers were financial issues, an unstable policy context, lack of infrastructure, and lack of knowledge. Suggested solutions for overcoming barriers were financial incentives, a stable policy context, demonstration projects, and information campaigns. Improved knowledge and working together throughout the biogas value chain, with a palette of renewable energy options, are important for accelerating a sustainable renewable fuel diffusion. Several policy instruments that currently exists in Sweden already target the mentioned barriers. Thus, it is important to continuously evaluate policy instruments to understand if they are effective and efficient, or if anything need to be changed to reach the targets of the policy instrument.

ناجێگیریی سیاسەتی ئەمریکا بەرانبەر ڕۆژئاوای کوردستان

This study attempts to explain the US policy towards Syrian Kurds and highlight the key reasons behind establishing of military relations between Kurds and US. Further, it endeavors to explore the fact that why the US policy towards Syria Kurds is unstable and why Trump administration allowed Turkey to attack Kurdish autonomous region in Syria. In reality, the emergence of relations between Kurds and US backed to 2014, especially when ISIS controlled vast majority of Syria and Iraq territory and posed serious threat to the US security interests in Iraq and region. In this regards, the US saw the Kurdish forces as a trusted partner to confront ISIS in Syria. In particular, the Syrian armed groups did not want to fight ISIS and even some of them had relations with ISIS. However, despite the US military support to the Kurds, but politically US has a contradiction and unstable policy toward Kurds in Syria and it does not have any intention or agenda to support autonomous region or federal system for Kurds. This has been the key reasons behind Trump attempts to withdrawal its troops from Syria without taking into consideration the future of the Kurds there and allowed Turkey to attack Kurds. In fact, Turkey pressures, US willingness to withdrawal its troops form Middle East and defeating ISIS might push US to completely withdrawal all forces and abandon the Kurds in Syria.

FUNDAMENTAL & TECHNICAL ANAYSIS OF CRUDE OIL PRICES

The human mind is not as good at processing large amounts of information as we might like. Psychologists have shown that human beings are only able to juggle small numbers of related and often conflicting pieces of information without making judgment errors. As a result, individuals faced with the vast amounts of information available to support investment decisions often find themselves swamped by the enormity of the task; unable to see the wood from the trees. Technical analysis is a field of financial markets research that works to address the above problem by focusing on a single, commonly available, data source that reflects all known information and activity relating to all monetary securities- Price history. Technical analysts argue that as markets are efficient, prices reflect all known information and that they move over time as participants react to new information and changing needs.
 As a result, the technical analysis of these price changes can provide real insight into the market dynamics and be used to develop trade strategies that exhibit superior risk/reward characteristics. While technical analysis approaches have developed significantly over the past few decades, some techniques are far more ancient. While their real origins are anonymous, Japanese candlestick charts have been recorded as being employed in the rice markets as far back as the 1600s. What is particularly interesting is that various of these ancient approaches continue to provide highly effective trading signals when applied to modern markets and securities.
 Crude oil price volatility is in the midst of the largest business risk that oil and gas companies face. This is followed by unstable policy regime, managing costs and risks emerging from technological advancements. The high levels and rapid fluctuations of petroleum prices have become a great concern to individual consumers, firms, policy makers and society. Technical Analysis is the forecasting of future financial price movements based on an examination of past price movements. Like weather forecasting, technical analysis does not result in absolute predictions about the future. Instead, technical analysis can help investors anticipate what is "likely" to happen to prices over time. Technical analysis uses a wide variety of charts that show price over time. Hence, to mitigate the negative impacts of price volatility and to predict about the future price movement of crude oil and natural gas we can use technical analysis.
 Technical analysis is the study of market action, primarily through the use of charts, for the purpose of forecasting price trends. The term “market action” includes the three principal source of action available to the technician-price, volume and open interest. This research paper highlights fundamental factor which affects the Brent price and analysed the factor which are highly correlated with Brent price and on the basis of the results forecasted the Brent price for next five years. Fundamental analysis of Brent oil, price pattern & movement of crude oil has also been carried out using candlestick technical tool.

Fundamental & Technical Analysis of Crude Oil Prices

The human mind is not as good at processing large amounts of information as we might like. Psychologists have shown that human beings are only able to juggle small numbers of related and often conflicting pieces of information without making judgment errors. As a result, individuals faced with the vast amounts of information available to support investment decisions often find themselves swamped by the enormity of the task; unable to see the wood from the trees. Technical analysis is a field of financial markets research that works to address the above problem by focusing on a single, commonly available, data source that reflects all known information and activity relating to all monetary securities- Price history. Technical analysts argue that as markets are efficient, prices reflect all known information and that they move over time as participants react to new information and changing needs. As a result, the technical analysis of these price changes can provide real insight into the market dynamics and be used to develop trade strategies that exhibit superior risk/reward characteristics. While technical analysis approaches have developed significantly over the past few decades, some techniques are far more ancient. While their real origins are anonymous, Japanese candlestick charts have been recorded as being employed in the rice markets as far back as the 1600s. What is particularly interesting is that various of these ancient approaches continue to provide highly effective trading signals when applied to modern markets and securities. Crude oil price volatility is in the midst of the largest business risk that oil and gas companies face. This is followed by unstable policy regime, managing costs and risks emerging from technological advancements. The high levels and rapid fluctuations of petroleum prices have become a great concern to individual consumers, firms, policy makers and society. Technical Analysis is the forecasting of future financial price movements based on an examination of past price movements. Like weather forecasting, technical analysis does not result in absolute predictions about the future.