The COVID-19 Pandemic and Entrepreneurship in Germany

The COVID-19 pandemic severely affected not only incumbent firms, but also the emergence of start-ups. This paper investigates and analyzes the pandemic’s effect on new business formation, as well as business exits and insolvencies, in Germany. We find that the overall level of business registrations slightly decreased during the first year of the pandemic, but that the effect is specific to certain industries. Innovative manufacturing industries and technology-oriented services experienced an increase in the numbers of start-ups. High subsidies and a temporary suspension of important criteria obliging firms to declare insolvency weakened market selection resulting in fewer exits in 2020. The relaxation of insolvency regulations may lead to considerable numbers of ‘zombie’ firms. Generally, the pandemic re-enforced ongoing structural change, but also exerted specific effects that may be temporary in nature.

Target Market Selection for the Major Aquaculture Products of Turkey - An Evaluation on Export Markets by Hybrid Multi-criteria Decision-making Approach

After 50 years of rapid development, today's aquaculture industry has become one of the driving forces of economic growth in many countries thanks to the increasing aquaculture production. However, less attention has been given to its growing global market demand and its contribution to relevant countries’ trade potential. Turkey has achieved significant success in aquaculture production dominated by Trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), Sea Bass (Dicentrarchus labrax), and Sea Bream (Dicentrarchus labrax)species thanks to its geographical and biodiversity advantages. Thereby, Turkey has an exporting advantage in the face of increasing global seafood consumption demand. In this paper, we focus on the target market selection of these priority products to support the exporting potential of Turkey. Therefore, this is a multicriterion problem, and this paper aims to provide forecasting about target markets based on qualitative and quantitative criteria by combining fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) and the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) methods. Seven criteria as trade balance, consumption, distance, average tariff, ease of doing business, non-tariff requirement and logistics performance index were chosen for evaluating the target markets. According to FAHP results, the trade balance criterion has the most significant effect while the distance criterion has least effect on the decision problem for ranking the target countries. According to these seven criteria, Japan is the best target market for Trout and Sea Bass while Russian Federation is the best for Sea Bream.

The Roles of Magnetorheological Fluid in Modern Precision Machining Field: A Review

Owing to some of its specific advantages, magnetorheological fluid (MRF) has drawn significant attention in a broad range of modern precision machining fields. With the diversification and increase in demand, many novel structural configurations and processing methods have been applied to mechanical machining equipment. Although different applications using MRF have been proposed in the existing literature, the classification, latest approaches, and further trend are not understood clearly for the machining field. Therefore, the current applications such as machining auxiliary equipment and surface polishing equipment that used MRF are summarized from 2016 to 2020, in this article. Especially, some detailed structures of equipment are investigated, and relative limitations are analyzed based on the characteristics of MRF. Finally, in view of the current equipment, advantages and defects are briefly reported; the developing trends of modern precision machining with MRF are discussed. Therefore, in the state-of-the-art review, the significant role of MRF in the machining field is emphasized, which paves the way to innovative development and market selection.

International market selection: a MABA based EDAS analysis framework

Research background: International market selection is an essential issue for big companies that supply food products. Different types of decision factors and different characteristics of different international markets have brought up a complicated decision-making problem for food supply companies. In order to select the most suitable and profitable market, food supply companies have to consider several qualitative and quantitative factors, including social, political, economic, and ecological aspects. Purpose of the article: In order to overcome international market selection issues, the current study develops a novel integrated decision-making tool. Methods: A novel decision-making model of market analysis is developed as an extended model of Market Attractiveness and Business Attractiveness (MABA) analysis based on the Multiple Attribute Decision Making (MADM). To improve the MABA analysis model, we combine the EDAS method with MABA analysis to empower decision-makers in food supply companies to evaluate several international markets and select the most profitable market for their products. Findings & value added: In this study, we first identified the most important and frequently used decision factors for market analysis problems within MABA analysis under two categories: market attractiveness and business attractiveness. To show the proposed methodology's applicability and feasibility, we perform a case study for a food supply company in Iran that supplies products to Middle East and Asian countries. In order to investigate the reliability of the obtained results, we perform a sensitivity analysis concerning the importance of involved decision factors. The proposed decision-making tool results suggest that the model can be used as a reliable tool for market analysis problems. To sum up the long-term value of the study, we have developed a novel decision-making tool using MABA analysis and the EDAS method. No study integrates any MCDM methods with MABA analysis to the best of our knowledge. Integration of EDAS method with MABA analysis empowers decision-makers in market selection division to use more systematic methods for evaluating several markets.