The Effect of Economic Crises on Japan’s Bilateral Trade Distribution: Examination of the Tohoku Earthquake Impact on African Markets

This paper examines the Japanese International Bilateral Trade Flow (JIBTF) in relation to economic crises, such as the Tohoku earthquake, and focuses on changes in the Distribution Networks of JIBTF (DNoJ) concerning African countries and Japanese Major Trade Partners (JMTP). The Harmonized System 6-digit level (“total” and product level) panel data from 2001 to 2019 are analyzed by employing the (structural) gravity method. First, the results of the study find that the Tohoku earthquake, compared to the 2008 crisis, has a stronger negative impact on the JIBTF and affects the DNoJ among Japanese trade partners. Second, the results prove that Japanese trade intention with African markets decreases relatively. In other words, exporting to African countries has a negative interaction effect after 2015. On the contrary, this interaction effect on JMTP comparatively increases; thus, Japan relocates its export to other markets such as JMTP. The Tohoku earthquake shaped the JIBTF to be more integrated with the Asia-Pacific and the EU regions, instead of African markets.JEL Classification Codes: F10, F14, C23, C24

The Effect of Economic Crises on Japan’s Bilateral Trade Distribution: Examination of the Tohoku Earthquake Impact on African Markets

This paper examines the Japanese International Bilateral Trade Flow (JIBTF) in relation to economic crises, such as the Tohoku earthquake, and focuses on changes in the Distribution Networks of JIBTF (DNoJ) concerning African countries and Japanese Major Trade Partners (JMTP). The Harmonized System 6-digit level (“total” and product level) panel data from 2001 to 2019 are analyzed by employing the (structural) gravity method. First, the results of the study find that the Tohoku earthquake, compared to the 2008 crisis, has a stronger negative impact on the JIBTF and affects the DNoJ among Japanese trade partners. Second, the results prove that Japanese trade intention with African markets decreases relatively. In other words, exporting to African countries has a negative interaction effect after 2015. On the contrary, this interaction effect on JMTP comparatively increases; thus, Japan relocates its export to other markets such as JMTP. The Tohoku earthquake shaped the JIBTF to be more integrated with the Asia-Pacific and the EU regions, instead of African markets.JEL Classification Codes: F10, F14, C23, C24

What has happened and what has not happened due to the coronavirus disease pandemic: a systemic perspective on policy change

The societal and policy transformations associated with the coronavirus disease pandemic are currently subject of intense academic debate. In this paper, we contribute to this debate by adopting a systemic perspective on policy change, shedding light on the hidden and indirect crisis effects. Based on a comprehensive analysis of policy agenda developments in Germany, we find that the pandemic led to profound shifts in political attention across policy areas. We demonstrate that these agenda gains and losses per policy area vary by the extent to which the respective areas can be presented as relevant in managing the coronavirus disease crisis and its repercussions. Moreover, relying on the analysis of past four economic crises, we also find that there is limited potential for catching up dynamics after the crisis is over. Policy areas that lost agenda share during crisis are unlikely to make up for these losses by strong attention gains once the crisis is over. Crises have hence substantial, long-term and so far, neglected effects on policymaking in modern democracies.

The Case Experience of Integrating the SDGs into Corporate Strategies for Financial Risk Management Based on Social Responsibility (with the Example of Russian TNCs)

The motivation of this research consists in the following: the traditional commercial approach to financial risk management amid economic crises implies the reduction of corporate social responsibility, based on the assumption that this responsibility raises the financial risk of business. Due to this, the contribution of business to the achievement of the SDGs is not stable and is often negative, since practices of business management contradict the SDGs in crisis periods and hinder their achievement in society and the economy. However, the refusal from corporate social responsibility during a crisis does not guarantee the following increase in the level of business development in the period of stability. A study of the case experience of integrating the SDGs into corporate strategies of the largest Russian companies during the COVID-19 crisis improved the understanding of the contribution of corporate social responsibility to financial risk management of the business. Dynamic modelling showed that, in a crisis period, corporate social responsibility leads to a reduction of the financial risks of business—it is commercially profitable, similarly to the phase of stability, and critically important. Based on this, an alternative (new) approach to financial risk management is developed, which allows raising the effectiveness of this management amid economic crises (including the COVID-19 crisis) through the integration of the SDGs into corporate strategies and the manifestation of high social responsibility during crises.

Cooperation and Environmental Responsibility as Positive Factors for Entrepreneurial Resilience

In this review, we study the state of entrepreneurial education as it applies to business resilience. We consider records over the last 20 years about entrepreneurial resilience that consider their social impact and focus on sustainability. The aim of the study was to determine whether an enterprise that stresses social impact and sustainability rather than profits could reinforce entrepreneurial resilience. The importance of this study is that it offers a more complex description of entrepreneurial resilience by connecting social and environmental sensitivity with a profit-oriented logic. We found a mild incremental rise in, first, the years of the 2000s and a jump by 2010. We then used VosViewer to create a cluster map from the record list of WOS, creating three clusters of: “education and sustainability”, “entrepreneurship and social impact” and “innovation”, and these three clusters were related to superior entrepreneurial resilience. This approach should be adopted in real time to be able to adapt to socio-economic crises, adopting a functional approach based on cooperativeness and awareness of complexity.

The Mercosur in the midst of the crisis

Since 2016, the four States Parties to the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) - Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay - are experiencing internal political and economic crises that cannot be understood without observing the South American regional context. With the pandemic of the new coronavirus, the crisis also took on a health dimension, whose repercussions in 2021 made the celebration of the bloc's thirty years a moment of reflection on the effectiveness of the integration process, due to the absence of territorial management that addresses the Mercosur needs. The purpose of this text is to discuss the measures adopted in the context of Mercosur in the face of the current pandemic, economic and political crisis. The methodology used for the elaboration of the text included a bibliographic review on the regional integration process in Mercosur and the analysis of news about the situation and the measures adopted to contain the effects of the crisis in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Assessing the level of competitiveness of the insurance sector during economic crises: The example of Ukraine

In the context of the crisis in Ukraine, it is important to increase the competitiveness of the insurance sector as a measure of its stability and dynamism under various scenarios of economic development. The purpose of this paper is to assess the competitiveness of the insurance sector and determine the impact on its level of factors caused by economic crises. Using the method of integrated analysis, the index of competitiveness of the insurance industry is built, which considers the number of businesses, employment, sales, capital investment in the industry, insurance sector performance, share of profitable enterprises, and profitability of the insurance sector in Ukraine for 2012–2020. The results showed that the impact of the 2014–2015 crisis due to endogenous factors, namely political instability in the country and the devaluation of the hryvnia, led to a significant reduction in the competitiveness index of the insurance sector. At the same time, during the pandemic, the insurance sector is stabilized, as evidenced by the growth of sales and the share of profitable enterprises, as well as increasing profitability of insurance activities. The competitiveness index did not change significantly during the pandemic. To analyze the dependence of the integrated indicator of the competitiveness of the insurance sector on economic fluctuations during the crisis, regression equations are constructed. It is proved that the greatest impact on the competitiveness index of the insurance sector in times of crisis is exerted by changes in employment and the amount of capital investment.

Gerakan Sosial Digital “Warga Bantu Warga” Sebagai Respon Masyarakat Indonesia dalam Menghadapi Pandemi

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on all aspects of people's lives. Economic crises and social problems are inevitable and touch all levels of society, especially the lower classes. Even so, the Indonesian people have proven resilience and empowerment in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. The existence of the internet and social media has encouraged the emergence of digital social movements, one of which is Warga Bantu Warga (Citizens Helping Citizens). Through this movement, the Indonesian people work together, collaborate, and show solidarity in helping others overcome difficulties due to the pandemic. The movement seemed to bind the community collectively and direct their actions in actions that did not only occur on a regional scale, but also nationally in all provinces in Indonesia. Although it is a movement that was born and proceeds at the digital level, in fact this movement has produced great benefits for the community, and it still persists to this day when COVID-19 cases have decreased. This phenomenon is studied through a framing approach, so that it can be seen how the framing of events in the Warga Bantu Warga movement is able to harmonize understanding and mobilize social media users to join the Warga Bantu Warga movement.

A re-introduction of Pancasila from Neutrosophic Logic perspective: In search of the root cause of deep problems of modern societies

The present economic crises induced by covid pandemic have called our attention toreconsider where we are heading as a global community; because as we know withthe emergence of ubiquitous Internet, then the world has become a global village inreal sense.. Shall we lend ourselves to directive and -at times- insistence to move tonew economy called the industrial revolution 4.0? Or is there another way, even if itseems like a less traveled path for now? In this article, we also re-introduce Pancasilafrom Indonesian weltanschauung (fundamental tenets) to become one of these lesstravelled path available at our table. The essence of the Indonesian Five Principles(Pancasila) is to return to spirit of communal values, but in a peaceful way, not viarevolution. That is a path that in Indonesia, is called as “gotong royong” (or to put itin a more scientific term: cooperative collective dynamics).