Burkina Faso: Jihadist landscape will become murkier

Significance These included the death of 53 gendarmes at Inata in November and an ambush that killed over 40 government-affiliated vigilantes near Ouahigouya in December. Public anger is producing protests and backlash that have put President Roch Marc Christian Kabore’s administration under intense pressure, including possible coup plotting exposed by arrests this week. Impacts Local dialogue efforts with jihadists may be inhibited by harder-line government policies. Kabore’s administration will struggle to define and pursue its ‘national reconciliation’ project. Burkina Faso’s 2021-25 national development plan may deliver modest improvements in growth prospects. Burkina Faso will have longer-term problems operationalising military cooperation with neighbours.

Mapowanie produktów polskiego eksportu produktów rolno spożywczych kierowanego do wybranych krajów Unii Europejskiej w 2020 roku

The article focuses on the search for growth prospects for Polish exports of agri-food products with economies belonging to the European Union and being the most important export markets for Poland in terms of agri-food products. Groups of these goods were identified that are characterized by positive and negative indicators of revealed comparative advantages and indicators of the trade balance. The study used a method based on the product mapping matrix.

Teaching Profession in Technical Education in Community Schools

Technical Education in Community School (TECS) is considered pertinent for the socio-economic transformation, particularly in a developing country like Nepal. Instructors of these schools are the key persons who transform curriculum into practice, however, their profession in their perspectives was hardly studied. With this consideration, this study was carried out to understand the experience of TECS instructors on their teaching profession. To attain this research objective, four instructors from the Diploma in Civil Engineering program of two TECSs were purposively selected, and a narrative inquiry approach was utilized to study the cases in-depth. The result showed that the instructors were interested in teaching in TECS; however, they were not ready to go to TECSs of remote villages. For them, the village settings lacked source for extra earning opportunities and career growth prospects. They were motivated to teach in Diploma in Civil Engineering as they could apply their prior knowledge and skills. At the same time, theoretical knowledge gained from their teaching in TECSs had been helpful for their engineering profession as well.

Thriving family businesses in tourism and hospitality: A systematic review and a synthesis of the relevant literature

PurposeThis contribution appraises previous theoretical underpinnings that are focused on family businesses in tourism and hospitality. It discusses about the opportunities and challenges for their development.Design/methodology/approachA systematic literature review was carried out through peer-reviewed publications that were indexed in Scopus and Web of Science. It relied on the PRISMA protocol to evaluate rigorous articles and reviews. A content analysis sheds light on high impact contributions on “family business” and “tourism” or “hospitality”, which were published since 2010.FindingsThis bibliographic research captured, analyzed and synthesized the findings from previous contributions to identify the factors that are facilitating the growth prospects, long-term sustainability and innovative approaches of family businesses within the tourism and hospitality industry.Originality/valueCurrently, there are just a few contributions that advance relevant knowledge and understanding on the business development of family firms in tourism and hospitality. This research addresses this academic gap as these entities constitute the life blood of tourist destinations in various contexts.

Limits of Land Capitalization and Its Economic Effects: Evidence from China

Academic debates over the advantages and disadvantages of land capitalization are ongoing in China, but the fundamental issues behind the debate have not been adequately explored. We suggest that the core issue in land capitalization is the degree of capitalization. This study first theoretically deduced the existence of land capitalization limits; then, we used panel data from 35 key cities to conduct an empirical test, and finally we analyzed the current risk of excessive land capitalization in China. The results indicated that the mutual restriction of multiple land attributes determined the limits of land capitalization. Therefore, land capitalization has been categorized into two types—moderate and excessive—which produce different economic effects. The degree of land capitalization and real economic growth showed a significant inverted-U relationship, and the turning point appeared when the land capital value reached 2.5 times the land factor value. According to this threshold, we can infer that many key cities have been overcapitalized, which may lead to an economic recession and affect the growth prospects of China’s economy. Further analysis indicated that excessive land capitalization could be related to the unique Chinese style of decentralization. These conclusions have important policy implications for the reform of land marketization in countries undergoing economic transition. The goal of land reform is to allow the market mechanism to play a major role in land resource allocation, but the excessive capitalization of land must be prevented.

Greek GDP growth in 2022 will rely on EU recovery aid

Significance The economic rebound from a 9% contraction in 2020 is mainly being driven by strong domestic demand supported by accommodative fiscal policies and higher-than-expected tourism revenues. However, the deteriorating epidemiological situation in Greece, and new COVID-19 variants expanding into Europe -- possibly resistant to vaccines -- pose risks to future growth prospects. Impacts Persistent supply-chain disruptions will slow down expansion in industrial output in 2022. Winding down the fiscal stimulus will narrow the primary budget deficit from 7.6% of GDP in 2021 to an estimated 1.2% in 2022. The primary budget deficit will widen in 2022-23 thanks to front-loading defence spending. Greater penetration of digital services is a positive side-effect of the pandemic. A deceleration in bank credit issuance could restrict corporate investment in 2022.

The Logic of Gig Economy (Origins and Growth Prospects)

The 2007+ crisis led to an increase in occasional and task work, which unleashed the potential of new technological and organizational solutions. The advancements in digital technological platforms stimulated the growth of the segment referred to as gig economy. The article aims to apply a systematic approach to the driving forces behind the emergence of gig economy and its success to date and to assess its development prospects. It argues to confirm the thesis that gig economy has its own inherent logic, while it remains part of the multi-stage process of the evolution of employee-employer relations, from the industrial stage to the digital era to platform-mediated work. Based on the analysis of the current world literature, the article posits that gig economy, as the next stage of development, has significantly reduced the quality of work, but it may also not meet the individual needs of the contemporary consumer. This increases the likelihood of the need for its change. The article also envisages the direction of this change towards post-platform economy based on distributed market spaces and provides the characteristics of its determinants, including social capital and a sense of individual entrepreneurship. The primary methods used in the study involved analysis and critique of the current world literature as well as the method of analysis and logical construction.

Optimal Short-Termism

This paper develops a dynamic contracting (multitasking) model of a levered firm. In particular, the manager selects long-term and short-term efforts, and shareholders choose optimal debt and default policies. Excessive short-termism ex post is optimal for shareholders because debt has an asymmetric effect: shareholders receive all gains from short-term effort but share gains from long-term effort. We find that grim growth prospects and shareholder impatience imply higher optimal levels of short-termism. Also, an incentive cost effect and a real option effect create nontrivial patterns for the endogenous default threshold. Finally, we quantify agency costs of excessive short-termism, which underscore the economic significance of our results. This paper was accepted by Gustavo Manso, finance.