Economies, Volume 7, Issue 2 (June 2019) – 37 articles

The paper is aimed at investigating the factors affecting the level of private deposits in banks in Russian regions and the verification of various theoretical concepts of personal savings. To achieve this purpose, we built a set of alternative Cobb–Douglas-type regressions with fixed time effects and logistic-type regressions based on panel data of 80 Russian regions from 2014–2016. Their estimations allowed us to reveal the dependence of private deposits in Russian regions at the level of real personal income and its structure, the personal income inequality, the demographic structure of the population, the state of the labor market, the level of accumulated wealth, the rate of urbanization, and the level of development of the financial system in the regions. Signs with variables summarize both direct and indirect effects of the input variables on the deposits, confirming some theoretical concepts and rejecting others, while the calculated elasticities show the strength of these effects. The results we obtained are applicable to the management of financial resources in Russian regions and the smoothing out of interregional differences in their development. Full article

While the topic of climate change is of global importance and has global consequences, the context is far more dangerous for emerging economies, including small island developing states (SIDS) and their coastal cities. The literature supports the need for robustness in infrastructural dimensions of such economies. However, the preparatory economic aspects have been overlooked in favour of post-impact disaster management studies by many countries. The latter studies have also focused upon the need for heavy financial investments without investigating solutions for economic strengthening of those economies including climate change mitigation and affordability. As such, emerging SIDS economies have struggled to meet these obligations from their internal finances that draw predominantly from tax revenue sources and foreign aid thereby often leading to increased debts contributing to economic austerity and decreasing liveability levels when repayment commitments fail. Public-private partnerships (PPP), another sought-after loan strategy, which often attracts foreign direct investment (FDI), can work if PPPs are carefully designed within strict public monitoring criteria. However, their applicability needs to be expanded to include the wider social strata of a city to ensure inclusivity and cohesiveness, and formulated to contribute to a wider urban regeneration agenda. This paper proposes a more inclusive framework bridging governance with drivers for sustainable development, using urban heritage and culture as a strategic thread for debt repayment and economic empowerment through PPP. This paper seeks to inform policymakers on sustainable pathways as it relates to SIDS cultural heritage conservation policies and practices towards better economic resilience in the wake of climate change. Full article

There are severe issues of public open space (POS) underinvestment and overexploitation. However, few studies have been conducted on the property rights structure and its impacts on rural commons governance, specifically concerning local neighbourhood residential POS quality and sustainability. The social-ecological system framework and the new institutional economics theory were employed to examine the local diverse property rights system and its effects on the emergence of POS dilemmas. Rural commons covering neighbourhood residential Country Lease (CL) and Native Title (NT) POS from the districts of Kota Kinabalu and Penampang, Sabah Malaysia were selected. A mixed-method phenomenological case study, involving multi-stakeholders’ perspectives across public-private-user sectors, was employed. This study revealed four main interconnected property rights issues, including attenuated rights, incomplete rights, maladaptive rights, and security-based de facto perceptive rights, under the complex state-private regime, which incentivise the opportunistic behaviour of individuals in externalising POS commons dilemmas. The findings further inferred that the local diverse property rights issues and POS dilemmas caused, and are associated with, other rights issues and dilemmas, forming a rights-dilemmas nexus. Not only do the institutional failures actuate POS dilemmas, but the former also engender other forms of property rights failures, while the latter cause other POS dilemmas. This paper suggests policy and management insights to public officials, in which the importance of the institutional-social-POS behavioural factor and the re-engineering of POS governance via adaptive property rights realignment are emphasised. Full article

This paper explores the relationship between export, import, and output for Thailand over the period from 1990 to 2017. The threshold vector autoregressive (VAR) and threshold vector error correction (VEC) models were applied. The empirical evidence confirms that the export-led growth hypothesis is valid, implying feedback within the export–output growth nexus. During business cycles, the export–output characteristics in economic cycles can be classified by the two-threshold VAR and VEC models. These relevant variables converge from the long-run equilibrium. As for the thresholds which are correlated, gross domestic product (GDP) vs. export and GDP vs. import exist as a long-run equilibrium relationship, while there does not seem to be a relationship of export vs. import. Furthermore, a five-year forecast was created (the period of 2018–2022). The export–output growth scenarios appear to swing upward continuously throughout the short-term trend. Therefore, policy-makers should highlight countercyclical macroeconomic policies at lower, medium, and upper regimes to strengthen the state of recovery and encourage the state of short recession. Full article

This paper analyses China’s energy consumption and economic growth spillover effects on four world regions: (i) America (North and South); (ii) Europe and Central Asia; (iii) Asia Pacific; and (iv) Africa and the Middle East. An annual aggregated time series by world region, from 1970 to 2016, and an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach were used. The results are consistent with the feedback hypothesis in the short run. With regard to the long run, feedback is present in America and the Asia Pacific. In Europe and Central Asia and in Africa and the Middle East, the results are consistent with the conservation hypothesis. Additionally, China’s spillover effects on the world energy-growth nexus are essentially a long-run phenomenon, with impacts on Europe and Central Asia, Asia Pacific, and Africa and the Middle East. Accordingly, policy-makers should be aware that China’s policies may have impact around the world, which indirectly may cause a restriction in economic growth. Full article

This article explores the fitting of Autoregressive (AR) and Threshold AR (TAR) models with a non-Gaussian error structure. This is motivated by the problem of finding a possible probabilistic model for the realized volatility. A Gamma random error is proposed to cater for the non-negativity of the realized volatility. With many good properties, such as consistency even for non-Gaussian errors, the maximum likelihood estimate is applied. Furthermore, a non-gradient numerical Nelder–Mead method for optimization and a penalty method, introduced for the non-negative constraint imposed by the Gamma distribution, are used. In the simulation experiments, the proposed fitting method found the true model with a rather insignificant bias and mean square error (MSE), given the true AR or TAR model. The AR and TAR models with Gamma random error are then tested on empirical realized volatility data of 30 stocks, where one third of the cases are fitted quite well, suggesting that the model may have potential as a supplement for current Gaussian random error models with proper adaptation. Full article

This paper investigates the impact of fiscal policy on private consumption and labor supply in the UK economy using time-varying parameter vector autoregression (TVP-VAR) with stochastic volatility for the period Q2 1987 to Q2 2017. It considers fiscal variables such as government expenditure and net tax revenue and evaluates their impact on private consumption and average hours worked per week. Three sample periods were selected and two approaches were used to identify impulse responses, first taking the average of stochastic volatility over the sample period, and then allowing for sign restrictions based on contemporaneous relationships among the selected variables. The study found a negative wealth effect of public spending on private consumption and a positive effect on hours worked, as people tend to work more hours to maintain the same standard of living. Similarly, a tax shock generates negative effects on consumption but the impact on worked hours remains unclear over a three-year time horizon. These findings are almost consistent across sample periods and alternative specifications of impulse responses. This is one of only a few studies to determine the linkages between fiscal policy and the labor market using a macroeconomic framework. Full article

This paper presents an interactive study on the relationship between the foreign trade structure, opening degree and economic growth of the provinces in western China (except Tibet). It shows that the export of primary products and labor-intensive products has a positive impact on the external development of the western region, while the export of capital and technology-intensive products has a smaller inhibitory effect on it. At the same time, the system GMM model shows that the opening degree of the western region has a positive effect on economic growth. After including the foreign trade structure interaction item, this result has not changed, and on the basis of opening up to the outside world, the export of labor-intensive products and capital-intensive products plays a significant role in promoting economic development. Therefore, this paper holds that the western region should optimize its foreign trade structure, continue to promote the construction of foreign trade demonstration, and give priority to the development of local characteristic industries to promote economic growth. Full article

Theory and economic intuition suggest that domestic institutions influence the employment impact of economic reform, but the evidence base is thin. This paper seeks to address this by examining the extent to which differences in regional labour market flexibility shaped the impact of unanticipated economic reforms on employment in informal (unregistered) manufacturing enterprises in India (1990–2001). It employs a difference-in-differences strategy and finds that tariff reductions are not associated with significant employment shifts in informal enterprises, a finding that may be attributable to the fact that these enterprises rarely engage in international trade. However, on average and ceteris paribus, delicensing (FDI reform) is associated with statistically significant increases (increases) in informal employment and informal enterprise numbers in inflexible (flexible) labour markets. There is some evidence that the delicensing effect is attributable to increases in product market competition in delicensed industries. However, the channel underlying the result associated with FDI reform is less clear. In light of the persistent primacy of the informal sector in India and other developing economies, these findings have substantial policy relevance. Full article

The aim of the article is to verify the convergence process of the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) (CEE10) countries towards Western European countries (EU15) in years 1995–2016. Additionally, the paper aims to show the interaction between economic integration and convergence as well as business environment and growth. The study methods applied in in the article are analysis of the literature and wide range of quantitative methods (descriptive statistics. regression models (OLS and panel), the elements of taxonomic analysis (cluster analysis and Clark’s coefficient of divergence). In the study years, CEE10 and EU15 countries were developing in accordance with the convergence hypothesis. The impact of economic integration on convergence was confirmed as well as the dependence of growth from the business environment in EU10. The added value of the study is the combination of three important research problems: convergence, economic integration and business environment. In addition, the research area concerns the CEE countries, which is very desirable. Many prior studies suggested to elaborate development and business processes in emerging countries like CEE. Thus, the article tries to fulfill this research needs. It has not only cognitive but also utilitarian values. The research results can be taken into consideration by policy makers to create an appropriate development policy and a conducive business environment. Full article

The purpose of the study was to investigate which factors determine saving and financing in Islamic banks in Indonesia by using Gregory–Hansen cointegration, vector error correction mode (VECM), Granger causality, and the impulse response function. The results disclose the existence of a long-running cointegrating relationship with a structural break in the deposit and financing case to the consumer price index, industrial production, interest rate, exchange rate, and Jakarta Islamic Index. Most of the structural breaks appeared in January 2006 and April 2007 for both deposit and financing, revealing the first stage of the financial crisis. Any short-term deviation between deposit and financing will give rise to a stable relationship in the long term. In the short-term, there is bidirectional causality between deposits and industrial production and between the consumer price index and financing. This finding shows that real activity, as measured by industrial production, is a highly determinant factor of Islamic bank deposits, while inflation, as measured by the customer price index, is the determinant factor of Islamic bank financing. Our results also suggest that a mix of dynamic behaviors from both Islamic bank savings and financing was revealed in response to the shock of the macroeconomic variable, giving better insight for the government and stakeholders into Indonesian Islamic banking. Full article

Since the early 1990s, there have been larger and increasing labor productivity differences across industries in Japan. More specifically, a clear pattern of sigma and beta divergence across industries is observed. To shed light on these stylized facts, we first evaluate the input–output structure of Japan through the lens of a community-detection algorithm from network theory. Results from this analysis suggest the existence of two input–output network structures: a densely-connected group of industries (a stationary community), whose members remain in it throughout the period; and a group of industries (a transitional community) whose members do not belong to this first group. Next, we re-evaluate the industrial divergence pattern of Japan in the context of each network structure. Results suggest that divergence is mostly driven by the transitional community. Interestingly, since 2007, a pattern of sigma convergence started to re-appear only in the stationary community. We conclude suggesting that industrial divergence and instability in community membership are not necessarily indicative of low productivity performance. Full article

This research aims to lay out a framework to quantify the impacts of mining booms on the macro-economy in Mongolia, a country that is increasingly dependent upon its mining sector. The study uses a dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to examine the long-term effects on the economy with three sets of scenarios: (1) a moderate boom in the productivity of agriculture, manufacturing, coal mining and coal service sectors; (2) a drop in the world price of coal and metal ores; and (3) the combination of these two scenarios. We assume that these shocks are seismic, and the findings are important for policymakers to implement policy to deal with the negative impact of mining booms. Our study result shows that reinvestment in the agriculture and manufacturing sectors could help to mitigate the resource curse, and suggests that suitable macroeconomic management and prudent administration of the mining sector’s windfall income are important. Full article

The study applies a multi-sector multi-household static computable general equilibrium (CGE) tax model to assess the economy-wide impacts of taxes in Vietnam. It examines two tax reform scenarios based on the tax reform plan proposed by the Vietnam Ministry of Finance. The first scenario is increasing the value-added tax (VAT) rate to 12% from the current 10% rate. The second scenario relates to setting a competitive corporate income tax (CIT) rate to the lowest rate in ASEAN (Associations of South East Asian Nations) countries by reducing it from 20% to 17%. Correction of current tax distortions will have positive impacts on labour supply, utility, consumption, output, and welfare of households as they reallocate resources from more to less productive sectors of the economy. The CGE model allows for the finding of the macroeconomic and sectoral effects on prices and outputs, as well as on welfare of households. While this study contributes to the literature on the CGE model for the Vietnam economy, it is a small step for finding the optimal tax structure in Vietnam. It recommends that the Vietnam government should increase the standard VAT rate to 12% and reduce CIT rate to 17% to shift the tax burden from capitalists to consumers. Full article

This paper explores the importance of central banking policies in financial market performance, using the case of India. For this purpose, the paper comparatively analyzes the performance of financial markets during the regimes of last three governors of the Reserve Bank of India—Y V Reddy, D Subbarao, and Raghuram Rajan. The paper discusses the central banking policies in these periods with respect to monetary stability, inflation, and growth challenges. The paper presents an analysis of returns and volatility in stock markets and currency markets in their tenures in comparison with those from other selected emerging markets (Brazil, Russia, China, South Africa) and developed markets (USA and UK). The paper also brings out the leverage effect by applying the exponential generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (EGARCH) model in addition to comparatively analyzing the performance of financial markets. Further, the paper assesses the impact of central banking policies on financial markets by using the fixed effect model on the reference countries for the period under reference. Full article

This paper looks at how trade liberalization and institutional quality influence real income. Previous evidence has provided mixed results, and we find that indicators representing trade liberalization have been very weak. By using strongly balanced panel data of 45 Sub-Saharan African countries covering the last 34 years (1980–2013), along with numerous advanced econometric instruments (random effect, fixed effect, system-generalized method of moments, pooled mean group) and composite trade indicators (KOF indicators), this paper determines the impact of trade liberalization, social factors and political globalization on real income per capita in both static and dynamic settings. The paper also considers short-term and long-term effects. The study confirms that free trade has a significant positive impact on the growth of real income per capita in static and dynamic settings. However, it also finds that countries must pay in the short-term to gain more significantly in the long-term. Further, we point out that social factors, especially information flows, can have significant but varying influences on real income under different scenarios and that political globalization both challenges and gives opportunities for improving living standards. We also find that institutional quality is a key factor for economic development in any situation. Full article

We analyzed India’s export competitiveness in the textiles and clothing (T&C) sector in the United States. The T&C industry is traditionally important for the Indian economy due to its significant contribution to export, employment, and industrial production. However, the competition in the global T&C market intensified after the Multi-Fiber Arrangement phase-out in 2005. Therefore, it is necessary to examine the export competitiveness of India’s T&C sector in the U.S., India’s largest export destination and one of the world’s largest consumers of T&C. In this study, we calculated the comparative advantage of India’s T&C based on Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA), Market Comparative Advantage (MCA), and Comparative Advantage by Countries (CAC). Our analysis shows that India had a comparative advantage in the T&C sector in the U.S. from 1991 to 2017, despite intensified competition in the global market. Full article

We use the Theil index and data from the 2012–2016, American Community Survey 5-Year Sample to document and analyze gender wage inequality for American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) women across single, multiracial and ethnic identity groups. Mean differences in hourly wages by gender contribute little to measured wage inequality when individuals are separated based upon their proximity to tribal homeland areas. Instead, we find between-group wage inequality is a function of glass-ceiling effects that differ by AIAN identification and homeland area. Differences in glass-ceiling effects across AIAN identity groups suggest the need to disaggregate data by AIAN ethnic identity. Furthermore, under certain circumstances, it may be appropriate to combine some racial AIAN identity groups into a single population even if the focus is to study policy impacts on citizens of federally recognized AIAN nations for those using government survey data. Full article

The aim of the paper is to examine the effects of the US–China trade war on both countries and some emerging economies. Two scenarios are examined, one where only US protectionist measures are considered, and another in which Chinese retaliation is taken into account, using the GTAP (Global Trade Analysis Project) Computable General Equilibrium model. The results showed that, on one hand, the trade war would lead to a reduction in US trade deficit and an increase in domestic production of those sectors affected by higher import tariffs and Chinese producers and consumers would bear the lion’s share of the burden of the trade war. But, on the other hand, both countries and the world as a whole would lose in terms of welfare, due to the significant reduction in allocative efficiency, especially in the US, and the loss of terms of trade in the Chinese case. With the increase in protectionism between the two largest global economies, some important emerging countries, not directly involved in the trade war, would benefit by the shift in demand to sectors where they have comparative advantages. Full article

Newer approaches of industrial policy that focus on catalytic and facilitating interventions of government have become a rivalling model to neoclassical laissez-faire approaches. Inspired by the success stories of East Asian newly industrialised economies (NIEs), newer approaches advocate a more experimental policy stance. Newer industrial policies, including the concept of the “entrepreneurial state”, call upon governments to play a catalytic and facilitating role in increasing innovation and, thus, economic growth. During the past three decades, countries have experimented with some of these new approaches, and so has the European Union (EU). Currently, two major policy frameworks of the EU, Horizon 2020 and smart specialisation, shape the European approach to industrial policy and are gaining in importance for enlargement and neighbourhood countries, too. At the same time, these countries outside the EU have pursued their own experiments in industrial policy. The article argues that to better understand what contributes to the success or failure of industrial policies, learning from experiences made both by the EU and its neighbours is valuable. The article draws conclusions from three countries in the EU’s neighbourhood, Israel, Tunisia, and North Macedonia. In particular, the article examines the role EU approaches and programs, such as smart specialisation or Horizon 2020, can play in anchoring more entrepreneurial industrial policies in enlargement and neighbourhood countries and addresses problems to be expected when governments are to engage in policy experimentation. Full article

There is a growing consensus that knowledge drives firms’ process and product innovations. An important source of these innovations is from firms networking with R&D partners, such as those in the science system and other industries in the enterprise group. This paper aimed to examine firms’ innovation collaborations with science systems and enterprise group partners and how these influence their product and process innovations. We focused on firms in the manufacturing sectors in the Czech Republic and Hungary. For our empirical analysis, we used the truncated data from the Eurostat Community Innovation Survey (CIS) 2012–2014, and the binary logistic regression model. Our results have demonstrated that firms’ collaborations with these actors have a discernible positive influence on their product innovations. Conversely, the collaborations with these R&D partners for process innovations produced mixed results for both countries. Full article

The purpose of this study was to research and understand the interrelations between the growth of gross fixed capital formation (GFCF), the volume of construction industry, supply of interindustry balance, and amount of fixed-asset investments in Russia between 2000 and 2016. The autoregressive distributed-lagged (ARDL) bound testing methodology and regression analysis were applied to evaluate the cointegration and influence of construction industry volume on gross fixed-capital formation. Empirical studies on the role of the construction industry are at the forefront of economic research; however, ARDL modeling studies of GFCF have yet to be conducted in Russia. The study revealed a non-linear causation between construction industry volume and the growth in GFCF over a long time period. The correlation was stationary and cointegrated. Fixed investment positively affected gross fixed capital formation only in periods of economic expansion, whereas the effectiveness of fixed-asset investments had greater volatility in times of crisis. The construction industry was not practically affected by crisis shocks, demonstrating a permanent stationarity in the causal relationship with GFCF, whereas causal relations between GFCF and the supply of interindustry balance were absent. The results are important for further research in the field of economic growth, the development of a national budget and investment policy, as well as investment project selection. Full article

Taking Turkey’s experience as a case study, this study provides further insights into the evaluation of time-varying Granger-causal relationships in the trade openness and economic performance nexus. We reinvestigated the Granger-causal relationships between trade openness and real economic growth in Turkey for the time period 1950–2014. We employed a rolling version of Breitung and Candelon’s frequency domain Granger-causality test, which allowed us to identify the changes in the nature of the causal relationships overtime. Hence, in the face of different results found in the literature overtime, our study provides a more unified evidence on the relationship between trade openness and real economic growth in Turkey. In addition, we found empirical evidence for the possibility of a distinct temporal ordering in a feedback relationship between trade openness and economic growth. We called this situation “sequential feedback”. Full article

Based on the development of the industrial structure of prefecture-level resource-based cities in Northeast China, this paper selects three indicators of industrial structure—diversification, rationalization and upgrading—conducting empirical analysis on the transformation of the industrial structure of these resource-based cities. The effects of the industrial transformation of resource-based cities of the same kind are analysed and the development of industrial structure in different provinces is compared. It indicates that the transformation process and adjustment effect of the industrial structures in resource-based cities of Northeast China were different and were not very satisfactory on the whole and the secondary industry was still the leading industry in most cities. In addition, the article analyses the impact of the industrial transformation on the economic growth of resource-based cities in Northeast China. It can be concluded that the rationalization and upgrading of industrial structure generally promoted the cities’ economic growth. The promotion of industrial structure rationalization was greater than that of upgrading. In order to promote the sustainable development of resource-based cities’ economy in Northeast China and solve problems in the process of the cities’ development, two suggestions are proposed. One is to pay attention to the rational development of the industrial structure, so it is necessary to strengthen the overall planning of resource-based cities in the Northeast region, promote regional coordination and rationally arrange and adjust the industrial structure from the overall scope of the region. Another is to continue to promote the process of industrial structure upgrading by introducing high-tech industries through preferential policies and to develop relevant industries based on the advantages of the cities, instead of just extending the original industry. Full article

For most studies that have been carried out, a country’s level of income and aggregate wealth go a long way in shaping the overall welfare of citizens therein. This study seeks to investigate the relationship between wealth status and educational attainment, as a manifestation of income inequality, especially when the wealth status is disaggregated. With data obtained from the National Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) 2013 and the adoption of the multinomial logit model, this study captured exogenous variables such as wealth index, the core variable; household sex preference, a dummy variable that takes the value of 1 if a household prefers a male child and 0 otherwise; and place, another control variable. This study finds that there is a very significant relationship between wealth status and educational attainment, especially for the individual categories of wealth index, hence, educational inequality hinders the quest to achieve higher educational levels for individuals from low wealth families. This study therefore recommends that the government should engender state-based subsidized education cost programs that will be targeted at poor households, as well as intensify efforts in solidifying the overall educational framework in the country, especially in the rural areas bereft of facilities. Full article

The aim of this research was to examine the causal link between terrorism and FDI in tourism on the example of a panel of 50 countries for the period from 2000 to 2016. Other control variables were included in order to ensure the validity of the results—number of international tourist arrivals per capita, the KAOPEN index, the KOF Globalisation Index and GDP per capita. The main goal was to look at this issue from the perspective that terrorism does not affect FDI in tourism. The research employed the Granger causality test in a vector autoregressive model (VAR model), the analysis of variance decomposition and the impulse response function within the panel setting. Based on research results, it was found that terrorism does not Granger cause FDI in tourism. The results are in line with recent research related to the subject matter which indicated that the negative effect of terrorism on FDI in tourism was questionable. Full article

The present study applies a bootstrapped data envelopment analysis (DEA) procedure to compute bias-corrected measures of agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) change and its components (technical change and technical efficiency change) using a panel data of 19 regions of Bangladesh covering a 23-year period (1987–2009), thereby overcoming the limitation of the lack of statistical inference of the conventional non-parametric DEA. Results revealed that overall productivity grew at a modest rate of 0.03%, mainly powered by technological progress at 0.03% and a negligible decline in technical efficiency at 0.004% with large disparities amongst regions. Six regions in the middle order shifted ranks with regard to TFP change following bias correction. The estimated confidence intervals demonstrated that many regions underwent either progress or regress in productivity performance over time. Investments in research and development (R&D), agricultural extension, and crop diversification are suggested to improve regional inequality and declining technical efficiency. Full article

This study extends the political science and political psychology literature on the political ideology of lawmakers by addressing the following question: How stable is a legislator’s political ideology over time? In doing so, we employ Nokken–Poole scores of legislators’ political ideology for members of the United States (U.S.) House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate who were elected prior to the 103rd Congress that began in early 1991 and who served consecutively through the 115th Congress, which ended in early 2019. Results from individual time-series estimations suggest that political ideology is unstable over time for a sizable portion of the members of both major political parties who serve in the U.S. Congress, while analysis of the pooled data suggests that, after accounting for inertia in political ideology and individual legislator effects, Republican legislators become more conservative over time. These results run somewhat counter to the finding in prior studies that the political ideologies of lawmakers and other political elites are stable over time. Full article

Heterodox feminist scholars have argued that global trade patterns reflect patterns of competitive advantage—rather than comparative advantage—and that that competitive advantage is gendered. Further, they have suggested that we need more theoretical and empirical scholarship in this area. This paper assesses the state of the literature against this call to action for more feminist–heterodox work on trade, with an emphasis on the manufacturing sector. New strands on the impact of gender on global production have been developed, including (a) integrating gender relations into global value chain analysis, (b) empirical work examining possible trends in the de-feminization of industrial sectors with technological upgrading, and (c) conceptual and empirical work on the interplay between gender, social provisioning, informal work, and the informalization of formal work. The first two strands, although well developed, would benefit from more research that is better integrated with the third strand. Further, this whole range of scholarly work needs to contend more broadly with the causes and effects of persistent gender-based occupational segregation, which underpins all three strands of work. A lot of excellent work has been done, and yet, more scholarship is needed to best understand the extent to which employment in industrial exports can function as a means to gender equity, empowerment, and mobility. Full article

Innovation, in contemporary times, has been established as the lynchpin of growth and national competitive advantage among countries. Supranational and national resources have jointly combined to create sound innovation strategies and diffusion policies for member states in recent times. However, there is the question of whether increased innovation translates to effective diffusion of innovation. With this in mind, the present research aims to comparatively assess and evaluate the efficiency of diffusion of innovation of European Union member states in reference to their European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) rankings. Using the Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes (CCR) model of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), the present research found contrasting diffusion efficiency scores of member states with different innovation performances as most innovative member states had much lower efficiency scores compared to some supposedly weak innovating member states. We also computed the input-redundancy and output-deficiency of member states, provided recommendations for efficient input-output combinations based on findings of respective member states and innovation groups, and finally, outlined directions for future studies. Full article