Conditional cross-border effects of terrorism in China

This paper explores whether the cross-border effect of ethnic violence is contingent on internal factors, such as domestic security measures, distribution of religious sites, availability of communication tools, and proximity to turbulent neighboring countries. Using county-level data from Xinjiang (1995–2012), our analyses show no support for direct violence-enhancing effects of outside terrorism in Xinjiang. When terrorist attacks increase globally or in neighboring countries, overall violence in Xinjiang diminishes. We attribute this to increased security measures by the government. However, the reduction in violence is highly conditional on local factors. We find that historical religiosity and geographic proximity to the border reduce the subsident effects of external terrorism.

The Impact of Venture Capital Background on CEO Replacement in Portfolio Companies: Empirical Evidence from China

Taking Chinese startups backed by venture capital (VC) in 1997–2017 as the sample, this study investigates the impact of VC background on chief executive officer (CEO) replacement in portfolio companies. The results show that (1) compared to foreign VC, domestic VC is more likely to replace the CEO of the portfolio companies. (2) Syndicate with domestic VC can overcome the disadvantage of foreign VC geographically distant from the portfolio companies, and domestic VC as coinvestors can effectively monitor portfolio companies, increasing the possibility of CEO replacement. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the positive effect of VC background on CEO replacement exists in the subgroup of VC geographically proximate to the portfolio companies, indicating that geographic proximity to the portfolio companies helps VC more easily grasp the development of the portfolio companies and more likely to replace CEO. This paper reveals the differences in the behavior of VC in replacing CEO during the postinvestment management process, highlights the critical role of geographical proximity, and provides important management insights for VC and entrepreneurs.

Austronesian Lights the Way: The Origins of the Words for ‘Sun’ and Other Celestial Voca bulary in Old Ryukyuan

This paper examines the evidence for historical contacts between Ryukyuans and Austronesians and uses this as a starting point to explore the borrowing of celestial vocabulary from Austronesian languages into Proto or Old Ryukyuan. The previous hypotheses for the etymology of Proto-Ryukyuan *tenda ‘sun’ are discussed in detail, and this is followed by discussions on Old Ryukyuan words meaning ‘sun’, ‘sun, light’, ‘heaven’ and ‘moon’. In all of these cases it is argued the most plausible source languages are Austronesian, based on strong phonetic and semantic correspondences, geographic proximity to the Ryukyus or the Old Ryukyuan trade route, shared celestial worship, as well as the lack of cognates in Japanese.

Effects of COVID-19 on Variations of Taxpayers in Tourism-Reliant Regions: The Case of the Mexican Caribbean

Given the tourism industry’s risk and vulnerability to pandemics and the need to better understand the impacts on tourism destinations, this research assesses the effect of the COVID-19 outbreak on the variation of taxpayer units in the Mexican Caribbean region, which includes some of the major sun-and-sand beach destinations in Latin America. Using monthly data of registered taxpayer entities at the state and national levels as the analysis variable, probability distributions and definite integrals are employed to determine variations of the year following the lockdown, compared with previous years’ data. Results indicate that despite the government’s measures to restrict businesses’ operations and a reduction in tourism activities, registered taxpayers at the regional level did not decrease for most of 2020. Further, as business activities and tourism recovered, taxpayer units increased at the end of 2020 and beginning of 2021. Surprisingly, such a pattern was not observed at the national level, which yielded no statistically significant variations. A discussion of factors influencing the resilience of the tourism region in the study (e.g., outbound markets’ geographic proximity, absence of travel restrictions, closure of competing destinations) and implications for public finances are presented.

Expansion by migration and diffusion by contact is a source to the global diversity of linguistic nominal categorization systems

Languages of diverse structures and different families tend to share common patterns if they are spoken in geographic proximity. This convergence is often explained by horizontal diffusibility, which is typically ascribed to language contact. In such a scenario, speakers of two or more languages interact and influence each other’s languages, and in this interaction, more grammaticalized features tend to be more resistant to diffusion compared to features of more lexical content. An alternative explanation is vertical heritability: languages in proximity often share genealogical descent. Here, we suggest that the geographic distribution of features globally can be explained by two major pathways, which are generally not distinguished within quantitative typological models: feature diffusion and language expansion. The first pathway corresponds to the contact scenario described above, while the second occurs when speakers of genetically related languages migrate. We take the worldwide distribution of nominal classification systems (grammatical gender, noun class, and classifier) as a case study to show that more grammaticalized systems, such as gender, and less grammaticalized systems, such as classifiers, are almost equally widespread, but the former spread more by language expansion historically, whereas the latter spread more by feature diffusion. Our results indicate that quantitative models measuring the areal diffusibility and stability of linguistic features are likely to be affected by language expansion that occurs by historical coincidence. We anticipate that our findings will support studies of language diversity in a more sophisticated way, with relevance to other parts of language, such as phonology.

Access to primary healthcare Services in Conflict-Affected Fragile States: a subnational descriptive analysis of educational and wealth disparities in Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, and Nigeria

Background Measuring and improving equitable access to care is a necessity to achieve universal health coverage. Pre-pandemic estimates showed that most conflict-affected and fragile situations were off-track to meet the Sustainable Development Goals on health and equity by 2030. Yet, there is a paucity of studies examining health inequalities in these settings. This study addresses the literature gap by applying a conflict intensity lens to the analysis of disparities in access to essential Primary Health Care (PHC) services in four conflict-affected fragile states: Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali and Nigeria. Methods For each studied country, disparities in geographic and financial access to care were compared across education and wealth strata in areas with differing levels of conflict intensity. The Demographic Health Survey (DHS) and the Uppsala Conflict Data Program were the main sources of information on access to PHC and conflict events, respectively. To define conflict intensity, household clusters were linked to conflict events within a 50-km distance. A cut-off of more than two conflict-related deaths per 100,000 population was used to differentiate medium or high intensity conflict from no or low intensity conflict. We utilized three measures to assess inequalities: an absolute difference, a concentration index, and a multivariate logistic regression coefficient. Each disparity measure was compared based on the intensity of conflict the year the DHS data was collected. Results We found that PHC access varied across subnational regions in the four countries studied; with more prevalent financial than geographic barriers to care. The magnitude of both educational and wealth disparities in access to care was higher with geographic proximity to medium or high intensity conflict. A higher magnitude of wealth rather than educational disparities was also likely to be observed in the four studied contexts. Meanwhile, only Nigeria showed statistically significant interaction between conflict intensity and educational disparities in access to care. Conclusion Both educational and wealth disparities in access to PHC services can be exacerbated by geographic proximity to organized violence. This paper provides additional evidence that, despite limitations, household surveys can contribute to healthcare assessment in conflict-affected and fragile settings.

Introduction of Long-Term Care Systems: The Nascent Diffusion of an Emergent Field of Social Policy

The introduction of social protection schemes for long-term cares that is assistance with daily living activities in case of extended impairments, constitutes a comparably recent development. Taking a birds-eye perspective, this chapter explores which international interdependencies and national constellations contributed to the establishment of long-term case systems from 1945 to 2010. In particular, we investigate the relevance of channels of horizontal diffusion, that is, geographic proximity, cultural similarity, and colonial ties, the influence of the European Union as well as domestic factors such as problem pressure and women’s political empowerment.