Understanding the uneven spread of COVID-19 in the context of the global interconnected economy

The worldwide spread of the COVID-19 pandemic is a complex and multivariate process differentiated across countries, and geographical distance is acceptable as a critical determinant of the uneven spreading. Although social connectivity is a defining condition for virus transmission, the network paradigm in the study of the COVID-19 spatio-temporal spread has not been used accordingly. Toward contributing to this demand, this paper uses network analysis to develop a multidimensional methodological framework for understanding the uneven (cross-country) spread of COVID-19 in the context of the globally interconnected economy. The globally interconnected system of tourism mobility is modeled as a complex network and studied within the context of a three-dimensional (3D) conceptual model composed of network connectivity, economic openness, and spatial impedance variables. The analysis reveals two main stages in the temporal spread of COVID-19, defined by the cutting-point of the 44th day from Wuhan. The first describes the outbreak in Asia and North America, the second stage in Europe, South America, and Africa, while the outbreak in Oceania intermediates. The analysis also illustrates that the average node degree exponentially decays as a function of COVID-19 emergence time. This finding implies that the highly connected nodes, in the Global Tourism Network (GTN), are disproportionally earlier infected by the pandemic than the other nodes. Moreover, countries with the same network centrality as China are early infected on average by COVID-19. The paper also finds that network interconnectedness, economic openness, and transport integration are critical determinants in the early global spread of the pandemic, and it reveals that the spatio-temporal patterns of the worldwide spreading of COVID-19 are more a matter of network interconnectivity than of spatial proximity.

Introduction

This introductory chapter offers an overview of the book. It identifies the growing size and importance of overseas state investors and how they challenge current political economy analyses of the state. The phenomenon is well illustrated by Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs): state-owned investment bodies, often from Asia and the Middle East, that have bought shares in major firms in strategic sectors ranging from finance to communications and transport, as well as landmark buildings. The chapter presents the puzzle of the widespread acceptance of SWF investments: national responses to SWF purchases might have been expected to be hostile, especially as they represent entry into Western stock markets by non-Western overseas states. Yet many Western governments have accepted and often actively encouraged SWF investments, seeing them as an additional means to govern their domestic economies and pursue their political strategies. The chapter then situates this puzzle in the wider political economy literature on the role and power of the state in an increasingly internationalized economy. It argues that recent political economy works focus on the internationalization of private capital, ignoring the capacity of the state itself to become a cross-border economic actor. It summarizes the book’s findings that several Western governments have engaged in internationalized statism, underlining that the patterns of policy differ sharply from those that might be expected given popular and academic views of economic openness.

ASEAN as an Optimal/Nonoptimal Currency Area

Economists have been arguing to this day about the benefits and risks of introducing a community currency. It is very difficult to clearly determine which side is right. Most often, scientists refer to the example of the so-called Eurozone, but it is still far from reaching an agreement between supporters and opponents of such a solution. This paper presents the issues of monetary integration in ASEAN+3 (i.e. ASEAN member countries, China, South Korea, and Japan) in terms of the optimal currency area and other necessary conditions for the creation of a sustainable development region. The researchers argue about whether ASEAN+3 should introduce a single currency. Some suggest that the group meets several OCA theory criteria, i.e. labour mobility and economic openness. According to the results of the study, ASEAN+3 is an economically diverse area and there is a lack of institutions enabling effective monetary integration in the short term. Optimization assumptions included in the analysis determine the real chances of development and survival within the currency area. The author's analysis has indicated that ASEAN+3 should not introduce a single currency for three reasons: failure to meet the optimization criteria, diversification of socio-economic development, lack of an institutional framework and inconsistency in the perception of monetary integration. On the other hand, it should be noted that a single currency could contribute to increasing the monetary security of the entire South-East Asian region, which means that the ​​monetary integration may be a long-term idea.

Current State and Trends of Openness of the Ukrainian Economy

The essence of openness of the economy as an object of theoretical study based on the analysis of publications and research of domestic and foreign scientists is explored in the article. On that basis, the authors give their interpretation of the concept. It is noted that the consistent expansion of economic openness is an important factor in modern economic development. Four groups of the division of national economies by the criterion of openness, namely by the share of exports in the country's GDP, are considered. The main conditions of an open economy are highlighted and the main tools (economic and political) with which it is possible to achieve the expansion of economic openness are given. An assessment of the current state and trends of openness of the national economy, based on the analysis of the main indicators of exports and imports of goods and services, as well as the geographical structure of Ukraine's foreign trade by recipient countries and donor countries of goods and services, has been made. It was found that in the current conditions of socio-economic instability, the openness of Ukraine’s economy remains at a fairly high level, which causes its close dependence on changes in external conditions. It is analyzed that the lion's share in the overall structure of Ukraine's foreign trade belongs to goods. The principal recipient countries of Ukrainian goods and services and donor countries in 2020 have been identified. The most common goods and services in the structure of exports and imports of Ukraine are also highlighted. In particular, it is noted that the most common goods for export were products of plant origin, base metals and articles base metals, fats and oils of animal or vegetable origin, and among services - transport services. At the same time, it was determined that the highest volume of imports in the general structure of Ukraine's foreign trade was achieved via machinery, equipment and machinery, electrical equipment and transport services import. It is generalized that the openness of Ukraine's economy is essential for its socio-economic development. Importantly to maximise the use of openness advantages that leads to productivity increasing and adaptation of production to growing competition that in turn is an important factor in improving the overall efficiency of the economy. It is recommended for ensuring the economic development of Ukraine, along with the foreign trade component of economic openness, it is also necessary to develop financial (including investment, technological, communicational) and political components.

Determinants of Poverty in ASEAN Countries

Poverty reduction is a significant concern of all governments in the world, including in Southeast Asia. The research objective is to analyze the determinant of poverty in eight countries of ASEAN using panel data analysis, with an analysis period of 2015-2019. The results show that economic openness and inflation variables can influence the poverty level in eight ASEAN countries. In contrast, the financial sector and economic growth variables do not affect the poverty level. The implication of the results of this study is that the financial sector only facilitates the upper-middle class, and the economic growth has not been inclusive to the poor.

The Average Environmental Efficiency Technique and its Application to Chinese Provincial Panel Data

In this study, we propose average environmental efficiency, a consistent and robust environmental efficiency measurement, and use it to evaluate the environmental efficiency of Chinese provinces. With the help of a nonparametric directional distance function approach, we can measure all possible environmental efficiency scores of the province by considering all projection directions to the efficient frontier. Then, the mean value of the environmental efficiency scores of a province in all possible projection directions is defined as the average environmental efficiency. Furthermore, we investigate the influencing factors of regional environmental efficiency via a feasible generalized least squares regression approach. The empirical results show that China’s national environmental efficiency has a high value of 0.803, and only nine provinces have average environmental efficiency greater than the average of the country. This implies that two-thirds of provinces still have much room for improvement. In addition, the east area achieved the best average environmental efficiency over the studied period, followed in order by the west area, central area, and northeast area. Moreover, we find that the energy consumption structure, government intervention, and economic openness negatively influence the regional environmental efficiency, while higher education positively influences this efficiency at the 1% significance level.

CIVIL LIABILITY OF REAL ESTATE NOTARY IN JORDANIAN LEGISLATIONS: A COMPARATIVES STUDY: المسؤولية المدنية للموثق العقاري في التشريع الأردني: دراسة مقارنة

The notary has enjoyed a privileged position in the legal system, and the work of the notary is considered a form of achieving justice, as this profession has an impact on society, as it is considered one of the most dangerous professions because the nature of the documentary’s work is based on establishing the rights of individuals in an official form such as the transfer of ownership, and given the importance of the documentary in The law has assigned the legislator a special protection for it and in return impose a penalty for everyone who prejudices the sanctity of the contracts notarized and concluded by the real estate notary, as the authority of the notary is considered the authority of the law, as the notary is authorized by the state and has rights and obligations regulated by law. Documentation has also become one of the basic factors in the lives of individuals and their relationships in society, as it has become a tool in the hands of the state to follow up and supervise legal work, and with the development of the notary’s work with social and economic openness, there has become a great demand for documentation by individuals in order to ensure their rights and obligations. It is considered a legal guarantee of individual rights (Makhlouf, 2015, p. 81). We conclude from this study that the notary is responsible for his professional mistakes towards his client, and for this reason the aggrieved (client) has the right to refer to the notary or the authority to which the notary is affiliated in his work based on the provisions of the responsibility of the follower for the fault of the follower, and the aggrieved party has the right to sue them together, as the aim of these The study is a statement of the civil liability that falls on the real estate notary and a statement of the duties and rights that he owes. As for the lawsuit for compensation for the damage that the client suffered against the notary, the law did not distinguish it with special provisions in terms of its prescription period, but rather subjected it to general provisions in the civil law, In order for the civil notary to be responsible, the general elements of any liability must be met, which are three pillars: First, the documentary error, whether intentional or not, and it occurred before the writing of the notary, or during its writing, or after the writing of that contract, and the criterion by which this error is measured is the behavior of the notary Average in terms of adequacy, and that the damage is realized and is a direct result of that error.