Resilience of Urban Network Structure in China: The Perspective of Disruption

In light of the long-term pressure and short-term impact of economic and technological globalization, regional and urban resilience has become an important issue in research. As a new organizational form of regional urban systems, the resilience of urban networks generated by flow space has emerged as a popular subject of research. By gathering 2017 data from the Baidu search index, the Tencent location service, and social statistics, this study constructs information, transportation, and economic networks among 344 cities in China to analyze the spatial patterns of urban networks and explore their structural characteristics from the perspectives of hierarchy and assortativity. Transmissibility and diversity were used to represent the resilience of the network structure in interruption scenarios (node failure and maximum load attack). The results show the following: The information, transportation, and economic networks of cities at the prefecture level and higher in China exhibit a dense pattern of spatial distribution in the east and a sparse pattern in the west; however, there are significant differences in terms of hierarchy and assortativity. The order of resilience of network transmissibility and diversity from strong to weak was information, economic, transportation. Transmissibility and diversity had nearly identical scores in response to the interruption of urban nodes. Moreover, a highly heterogeneous network was more likely to cause shocks to the network structure, owing to its cross-regional urban links in case of disturbance. We identified 12 dominant nodes and 93 vulnerable nodes that can help accurately determine the impetus behind network structure resilience. The capacity of regions for resistance and recovery can be improved by strengthening the construction of emergency systems and risk prevention mechanisms.

The Dynamic Influence of High-Speed Rail on the Spatial Structure of Economic Networks and the Underlying Mechanisms in Northeastern China

Drawing on 185 cities in the northeastern region of China, this paper improves the radiation model by incorporating the accessibility index to characterize the asymmetric process of economic linkages before HSR in 2007 and after HSR in 2016. Then social network analysis is utilized to examine the impact of HSR on the spatial structure of economic networks, including nodal centrality and community structures. Finally, spatial econometric models are employed to explore the driving factors of nodal centrality in economic networks and some policy implications are proposed. The major findings of this paper are the following. First, HSR services can weaken the core-peripheral inequality of economic linkages and a corridor economy is evident in northeastern China. Second, HSR services have significantly improved the out-degree centrality of prefecture-level cities but have slightly decreased the in-degree centrality of Liaoning. Third, there was a slight decline of coherence in the economic network after the construction of HSR and the within-modular connections were strengthened by HSR. Four, the spatial error model (SEM) is more desirable for explaining the distribution of in-degree centrality. GDP, fixed asset investment, education, population, and fiscal expenditure are important contributors to the in-degree centrality in economic networks. These findings give significant insights into city system planning, integrated transport and land use development, formulating regional poles and the coordinated development across administrative boundaries in northeastern China.

Kaizen in Automotive Innovation: How the Hungarian Automotive Clusters Can Profit From the Adoption of Kaizen Principles – A Literature Review of the Central European Automotive Industry

Due to historical, political, and cultural similarities the Central European (CE) domestic market grew to one of the closest and most integrated economic networks of the world. Sharing the necessary technological competencies and resources, industries like the au-tomotive industry arose to cross-bordering ecosystems. In contrast to the supply chains of other consumer goods, Hungary established a suitable environment to become dominant in the primary industry of manufacturing rather than a sole cost-reducing supplier. However, the analysis of current organizational framework of operating automotive enterprises in CE highlighted, that long existing concepts like Kaizen are still not tailored into the day-to-day business concept. Consequent-ly, competitors from other hemispheres might have an impactful market advantage. Thus, the purpose of this paper focuses on the barriers of implementing said organizational changes and identifying necessary steps towards internal reorganisation in Hungary while keeping the se-curity of known and long-established structures alike. By analysing the experiences of neighbouring countries which are also part of the CE supply chain, critical factors are revealed. The findings of the paper elaborate on the positive long-term effects of Kaizen for this specific industrial sector as well as drafting a recommended innovation roadmap for the Hungarian automotive innovation.

Women' Empowerment to Support Household Income at Pulau Tuba, Langkawi

Women with careers nowadays play an important role in their household income to support breadwinner husbands in easing the financial burden of families. To achieve the role, women are empowered to be independent and not too dependent on others by handing over the duty to generate a family income solely to their husbands. With low physical, financial, and human capital, and limited social and economic networks in Pulau Tuba, Langkawi when the socio-economy activities of its majority Muslim population are depending on agriculture, aquaculture, and tourism, the activities should be expanded to potential activities to increase family income since the island is well known with its natural resources. Women on the island also identify less participate in increasing the family income. Thus, this study aims to identify the potential activities for women of Pulau Tuba for family income upgrading and also to study factors that contribute to the empowerment of women for the success of the activities. Keywords: Household Income, Family, Pulau Tuba, Women, Women Empowerment

Black Markets and Militants

Understanding the political and socio-economic factors which give rise to youth recruitment into militant organizations is at the heart of grasping some of the most important issues that affect the contemporary Middle East and Africa. In this book, Khalid Mustafa Medani explains why youth are attracted to militant organizations, examining the specific role economic globalization, in the form of outmigration and expatriate remittance inflows, plays in determining how and why militant activists emerge. The study challenges existing accounts that rely primarily on ideology to explain militant recruitment. Based on extensive fieldwork, Medani offers an in-depth analysis of the impact of globalization, neoliberal reforms and informal economic networks as a conduit for the rise and evolution of moderate and militant Islamist movements and as an avenue central to the often, violent enterprise of state building and state formation. In an original contribution to the study of Islamist and ethnic politics more broadly, he thereby shows the importance of understanding when and under what conditions religious rather than other forms of identity become politically salient in the context of changes in local conditions.

Digital economic networks in the context of global transformations

Theoretically, the digital economy (DE) is the core of the modern networked economic system, and in practice – a growing sector of national and world economies. The essential features of IT as a new phenomenon in the socio-economic system are complemented on an interdisciplinary basis by the epistemology of information and computer sciences, electronic technologies and platforms. This refers to the widespread use of margins (marginal costs, marginal capital, marginal labour, etc.) and concepts such as institutions, trust, risk, security, etc. The purpose of the study is to investigate the trends of economic digitalisation, theoretical and methodological changes and applied vision of economic processes. Analysis, comparison, and generalisation were used in the study. The study considers the current trends of digitalisation of the economy, which cause significant theoretical and methodological changes and a new applied vision of economic processes. In the current conditions, the actual economic laws of IT are determined by the prevailing concepts and doctrines – neoclassical and neo-institutional. It was concluded that the synergistic synthesis of the categorical framework of the economic mainstream and computer sciences allows for the development of complexity economics, which is characterised by fundamentally new dimensions and parameters.