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Measuring trade costs and analyzing the determinants of trade growth between Cambodia and major trading partners: 1993–2019
No full textHigh trade costs pose substantial barriers to the process of trade liberalization. This study aims to measure trade costs and explore the driving forces behind the growth of bilateral trade between Cambodia and its top 30 trading partners from 1993 to 2019. Using a micro-founded measure of trade costs derived from the gravity model, we find that Cambodia’s average trade costs decreased by 35.43 percent between 1993 and 2019. Fluctuations in average trade costs persisted until 2014, despite Cambodia’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2004. Since then, these costs have declined more rapidly. Cambodia’s bilateral trade costs are lower with its major trading partners in Southeast Asia and East Asia than with those in South Asia, Oceania, Europe, and North America. Cambodia’s average trade costs with developing and emerging economies are lower than those with developed economies. Between 2014 and 2019, Cambodia experienced a notable decline in average trade costs with trading partners along the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) corridors by 34.78 percent, twice as fast as with non-BRI trading partners. Regarding the decomposition of trade growth, we find that the expansion of Cambodian trade over the period from 1993 to 2019 was driven by three factors: the rise in income (59.65 percent), the decline in trade costs (56.69 percent), and the decline in multilateral resistance (–16.34 percent). The findings of this study have significant implications for a better understanding of Cambodia’s development process toward global trade integration over the past two decades. Our results suggest that Cambodia can optimize its trade expansion potential by focusing on its relations with trading partners exhibiting high economic growth potential and those showing substantial reductions in trade costs
The online portrayal of urban farmers: Professionals’ perspectives on their influence on constructing farming-career paths
No full textThis research extends existing studies on the role of alternative food movements in supporting new farmers. It focuses on the urban agriculture movement, particularly the online portrayal of urban farmers in social media, and its impact on constructing farming-career paths. Analyses explore the perspectives of professionals (N = 32) involved in urban farming initiatives (practitioners, policy professionals, and beginning urban farmers) in Pennsylvania and Illinois. The study uses qualitative thematic coding and aggregates the theoretical dimensions supported by contemporary career theories. Career aspiration, career intention, and career orientation are the career-construction paths that are the interests of the study. Findings suggest that portrayals of urban farmers are multi-faced: "smallness," "diversity," "guidance by moral values," "innovativeness," and "popularity" are the essential themes explaining farming-career aspirations. Farming-career exposure and career experiments via social media are values that drive planned or unplanned career intentions. The portrayal of urban farmers as moral achievers is perceived as a motivator in career orientation by activating relationally driven (inspirations gathered from online relationships) and protean (self-driven) attitudes. Overall, our study demonstrated that online portrayals of urban farmers can shape perceptions about careers within sustainable sectors, including agriculture-related professions
Turnaround in sight for the construction industry: Political pressure for action is nonetheless increasing
No full textReal construction volume is expected to decline for the fifth year in a row: A decline of nearly four percent is expected for 2024 and it should fall by almost one percent in 2025. However, the construction industry may manage to reverse the trend in 2026, when real construction volume is projected to grow by two percent. However, this should not obscure the fact that the declines over the past years have created an even greater gap between construction demand and output. Infrastructure is ramshackle in many places, older buildings are frequently insufficiently insulated, and the housing crisis in cities has worsened. Political pressure, especially to fix the housing shortage, is increasing. Higher degressive depreciation on investments in new residential construction or measures to limit construction cost increases and to speed up related processes are important for improving the structural investment conditions in residential construction. However, these measures are not a quick solution to the housing shortage in cities; this issue requires an emergency program to restart social housing construction
The diverging trends of male and female bottom earnings in Germany
No full textMen at the bottom quintile of the German male earnings distribution had lower average earnings in 2019 than in 2001. In contrast, female earnings have increased throughout the distribution. What explains these diverging trends and how did they translate into changes in net income? Data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) reveal that the drop in bottom male earnings is mostly due to a decrease in work hours, while hours worked of females with low earnings have increased. Changes in socio-demographic characteristics explain little of the evolution of income inequality. Households and the welfare state have cushioned much of low-earning men's income drop, while disposable incomes of women have increased by less than their earnings. Finally, earnings poverty is persistent: About half of individuals in the bottom quintile are still in the bottom quintile after five years
Weniger Gegenwind vor Ort: Akzeptanz des Windausbaus
No full textSogar bei Anhängern windkraft-kritischer Parteien fällt die Akzeptanz von Windrädern bei tatsächlicher Betroffenheit deutlich höher aus als in einem Wohnumfeld ohne Windkraftanlagen. Ein wichtiger Hebel zur Stärkung der Akzeptanz des Windkraft-Ausbaus - auch dort wo derzeit keine Anlagen stehen - istzudem die finanzielle Beteiligung vor Ort
Bank-advisor certification and willingness to pay for sustainable finance products
No full textWe examine Swiss retail investors' willingness to pay (WTP) for sustainable finance products and the influence of bank advisor certification. In a hypothetical choice experiment with a randomized controlled trial (RCT), we assigned participants to either a priming treatment with a bank advisor certified in sustainable investing or a control group. We found a WTP between 1 and 1.5 percentage points of annual return for sustainable mutual funds, especially among financially literate investors. The presence of a certified green finance advisor further increased WTP between 0.2 and 0.8 percentage points, particularly for investors with low financial literacy
When banks hold back: Credit and liquidity provision
No full textBanks are reluctant to tap central bank backup liquidity facilities and use the borrowed funds for loans to the real economy. We show that excessively parsimonious borrowing and lending can arise in a stigma-free model where the banking sector has an incentive to overissue deposits. Banks don't heed the central bank's call for more credit to finance investment because they simply ignore the collective gains from stronger activity in their atomistic decisions. Central banks can address this market failure by disintermediating market-based finance. A lender-of-last-resort (LOLR) system in which the central bank offers liquidity liberally but on non-concessionary conditions improves over a pure laissez-faire arrangement, where asset liquidation in the marketplace is the only source of emergency liquidity. But under LOLR banks remain reluctant to intermediate. Credit easing (CE) and quantitative easing (QE), instead, can stimulate bank borrowing and repair the broken nexus between liquidity provision and credit. Empirical analysis using bank-level and loan-by-loan data supports our model predictions. We find no empirical connection between loans and borrowed reserves obtained from conventional refinancing facilities. In contrast, there is a robust connection between loans and structural sources of liquidity: reserves borrowed under a CE program or non-borrowed, i.e. acquired from a QE injection. We also find that firms with greater exposure to banks borrowing in a CE program or holding larger volumes of non-borrowed reserves increase employment, sales, and investment
Avaliação da evolução da eficiência e da produtividade em transplantes de órgãos no Brasil
No full textBrazil has one of the most extensive public program for organ transplantation in the world, and the Brazilian National Health System (SUS) provides full coverage procedures related to organ donation, transplants, and post-transplant. Despite the relevance of the subject and the existence of long waiting lines, transplantation process efficiency and productivity assessments are still uncommon in Brazil. This study aims to evaluate the efficiency and productivity of the Brazilian states and the Federal District in transforming potential organ donors into actual donations. We applied Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and the Malmquist Index in conjunction with the Bootstrap technique, using organ transplantation data from 2013-2021
Child poverty on the island of Ireland
No full textThe effects of poverty in childhood can last a lifetime. Research shows that children living in poverty have lower levels of health and wellbeing, attain lower levels of education, have lower levels of occupational attainment and are more likely to be poor in adulthood. In this report, we focus on child poverty on the island of Ireland. While child poverty in each jurisdiction has been studied separately, there is an absence of comparative research. A comparative analysis of this sort can help to identify the features of the two systems that are influential in preventing or exacerbating child poverty. In both Ireland and the UK, children have had the highest income poverty rates of all age groups over the past ten years. While child poverty rates worsened over the past decade in the UK (Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2024), they remained relatively stable in Ireland over the 2000s when measured by household income. However, rates of child material deprivation rose and fell following the pattern of economic boom, bust and recovery (Roantree et al., 2024). This report sets out to compare child poverty across the two jurisdictions, using a mixed-methods approach with harmonised national survey data on incomes and living standards (SILC and FRS), as well as consultations with stakeholders from both jurisdictions to help identify policy issues most relevant for child poverty in each jurisdiction. The study addresses three research questions: 1. Which groups of children are most vulnerable to poverty in the two jurisdictions? 2. What is the role of household labour market situation and social background in shaping the risk of child poverty in Ireland and Northern Ireland? 3. How do policy approaches to addressing child poverty differ in Ireland and Northern Ireland and how do these policies influence the patterns of child poverty observed? The report uses two measures of poverty: Income poverty, which is having a disposable income that is less than 60 per cent of median income for Ireland or the UK; Material deprivation is measured by the lack of access to five items that are considered as standard within societies and are common to the two data sources, such as arrears on bills or inability to keep the home adequately warm. The consideration of deprivation is important because income alone does not capture the variation in needs and long-term resources of households
