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The purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants and convergence of government effectiveness in African and Asian countries.

The study utilizes data from 100 countries in Africa and Asia from 2002 to 2018. The panel-corrected standard error regression is used for the regression analysis, while both beta-convergence and sigma-convergence among the countries are tested.

Both beta-convergence and sigma-convergence exist among African and Asian countries. Asia performs better than Africa across all indicators except for press freedom, and voice and accountability. Corruption perception index, government size, voice and accountability, regulatory quality and economic wealth have a significant positive effect on government effectiveness. Press freedom negatively impacts on government effectiveness, suggesting that freedom is necessary but not sufficient if there are political actors whose actions undermine freedom. Similarly, the political constraint index, as reflected by checks and balances are necessary but not sufficient to enhance government effectiveness, especially in Asia.

The results reveal that for press freedom and political checks and balances to enhance government effectiveness, there is a need for a different and holistic approach. The results are relevant for policymakers, public sector practitioners and academics.

This study utilizes a new dataset and is premier in exploring the convergence of government effectiveness among African and Asian countries.

COVID-19 has been a major challenge to global governance, highlighting the necessity for stepping up innovative governance. Beginning in 2020, governments have been trying to adjust in dealing with the massive challenges of COVID-19, implying that attention has been diverted from attaining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to handling the pandemic. COVID-19 poses a genuine threat to economic progress, food safety, health, and educational parity in developing countries. The article examines the pandemic's impact on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals through a comparative lens of Bangladesh and the Philippines.

The purpose of this paper is to (a) examine the current state of the digital economy in Southeast Asia (SEA), the challenges and opportunities derived from digital transformation and the digital economy, and the impact of the digital economy on SEA, especially human and physical capital development, and (b) propose policy recommendations for SEA countries to better manage digital transformation.

This is a conceptual paper. The theoretical framework has been built from the three-sector governance approach to identify the issues of the digital economy and propose solutions to address the issues. Specifically, it examines the role and activities of the public sector, the private sector and the third sector to address the challenges posed by the digital economy, especially human and physical capital development.

This paper revealed challenges and opportunities derived from the experience of Southeast Asian countries and proposed several policies recommendations, including a common data policy and payment platform for the Asian region, a good training and development policy to equip the workforce with digital skills, and digital mindset as well as build cybersecurity capability and capacity at the regional level.

This paper is significant as it examines the development of the digital economy from an interdisciplinary perspective – including economics, digitalisation, governance, management, public policy, technology and human resource development. It also provides better insights into how SEA's digital economic development can be further improved to contribute to a sustainable regional economy.

In a supply-constrained region like Asia, promoting exports has always been a challenge particularly at a time when Asia’s trade has been severely affected by lack of external demand. This paper argues that price barriers have taken a new shape during the global financial crisis period which may generate differential impacts on trade flows as we proceed toward recovery. The size and shape of price barriers would be higher if NTBs, applied by the countries during the crisis period, were counted. One of the conclusions of this paper is that ‘price’ barrier is still more important than ‘non-price’ barrier in enhancing Asia’s trade and integration. The higher the price barrier between countries in a pair, the less they trade. In other words, a 10 percent increase in the ad-valorem price (transport and tariff) lowered trade by 6 percent. Tariff and transport costs, each considered separately, also influence the trade flow in the same direction, to more or less the same extent. There are indications of huge domestic infrastructure bottlenecks in countries in Asia. Based on direct and indirect evidence related to trade barriers, this paper concludes that complementary trade policies focusing on price and non-price barriers have immense importance in enhancing international trade and integration in the post-crisis period.

This study aimed to explore the determining factors for green bond markets in ASEAN plus three countries. In contrast to previous publications that primarily examined the incentives for green bonds and institutional differences among economies, the analysis focused on the role of competition among sub-financial sectors in fostering the growth of green bond markets.

This study adopted Driscoll and Kraay fixed effect panel methods to account for country-level heterogeneity and enhance efficiency, using quarterly data from 2016 to 2022.

The findings showed that healthy competition among sub-financial sectors was crucial for the growth of green bond markets. Growth in specific sub-financial sectors such as brown corporate bond and stock markets as well as banks contributed positively to these markets. Variables related to market microstructure also had no significant impact on green bonds but macroeconomic factors did.

The findings suggested that governments should promote healthy competition among sub-financial sectors and implement diverse policies to ensure the sustainable growth of green bond markets.

This study further pioneered the importance of competition among sub-financial sectors for the development of green bond markets.

In recent years, the People's Republic of China has made remarkable progress in science and technology. The Chinese industry is competing for leadership in cutting-edge technologies such as 5G, robotics, artificial intelligence, aerospace and green energy. This article aims to analyze: What role do industrial parks, especially Suzhou Industrial Park, play in upgrading technology to encourage independent innovation and economic development? How SIP is related to the Belt and Road Initiative?

This research summarizes China's most important scientific and technological reforms and policies and in particular the Torch Program. In addition, it develops a case study of the Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP) by analyzing documents, bibliography and presenting data. It ends with a case study of the role of SIP in the Belt and Road Initiative analyzing the Great Stone Park in Belarus.

This article highlights that: China's experience clearly shows that the "visible hand" of the State plays a very important role in economic development and technological catch-up. All of them are implemented from a strategy linking the national objectives with the local ones, this is done from a top-down perspective. As an important aspect of economic and social development, China's experience in promoting indigenous innovation in science and technology provides a relevant example for developing countries.

There are few academic literature on Great Stone Industrial Park.

The international cooperation of the SIP with the technology parks throughout the BRI-countries provides relevant information to deepen collaboration in this field and could contribute to closing the technological gap in developing countries.

The role of the SIP in the Belt and Road initiative is an under research topic. There is few bibliography discussing the impacts of the cooperation in science and technology in the framework of the BRI.

This paper aims to explore the aging society situation, long-term care (LTC) policy preparation, COVID-19’s impact on older people, and post-pandemic preparations in Thailand and the implications for The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries.

Online databases from international, national, academic agencies and SCOPUS database from January 2019 to July 2021 were utilized for analysis. Relevant literature and data were selected for review.

The evidence suggests that the proportion of the aging population is increasing due to declined fertility and rising life expectancy. Current and future demand for effective healthcare in ASEAN will be better achieved with policies like the Universal Health Coverage and Primary Health Care system. While some countries, specifically Thailand, are developing and expanding their LTC policies, some concerns regarding the active aging policy remain. Most ASEAN countries are using public domain for LTC policies. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has posed a major challenge in implementing LTC and affected the vulnerable aging population in many aspects, including social protection issues in Thailand.

With the support from international organizations, ASEAN countries have framed several policy strategies in response to the increasing aging population, such as providing more LTC in the community. The unexpected challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic compel policymakers to consider resource allocations and community-based services. On the positive side, as the pandemic has made the vulnerable group exposed, social protection issues have been brought to the forefront of the political debate and called for an appropriate policy response.

Targets set out by state institutions, with respect to supplying water to deprived communities, seem to be idealistic and not realistic. Study envisioned to assess challenges of financing water infrastructure projects, and determines the role of the state towards infrastructure development by holistically planning and engaging with the private sector.

The study adopted a quantitative approach, whereby a questionnaire survey was conducted among different stakeholders involved in water infrastructure projects in South Africa. Data gathered were analysed using percentages, mean item score and standard deviation.

The study revealed that most challenges affecting the success of the financing of water infrastructure projects in South Africa are corruption, hostility towards private participation, cost recovery constraints, high fiscal deficits by state government, unreliable planning and procurement processes, and a rapid increasing number of municipalities that lack technical and administrative capacity to plan implement, operate and maintain water assets.

This research paper investigates projects’ financing challenges with a broad inspection on the role of the public sector. The apparent role of the international structures such as OECD, IMF and World Bank had no influence in the study. From the findings, it is clear that the central government and state institutions lack the necessary resources to accelerate infrastructure development, water infrastructure in particular. The study, thus, recommends a complete expansion and development of state capacity as well as improved collaborations with the private sector to drive the success delivery of services to the public.

Improved and flexible regulations and legislative guidelines are required to ensure that both sectors fulfil their side of the bargain, with an ultimate goal of meeting the predetermined targets of supplying adequate water to the deprived communities.

Over the past 20 years, China's infrastructure has developed at an extraordinary speed. The current literature mainly focuses on the effects of political incentives on the infrastructure. However, this paper indicates that the structural change of China's land regime is an important clue and that the supernormal development of China's infrastructure is an explicable result for that.

This paper theoretically proves that in a politically centralized and economically decentralized economic entity with a public land-ownership regime, the self-financing mechanism formed by local officials through regulation of the land-grant price is the primary factor that influences the optimal supply volume of infrastructure in a region, in addition to political and economic incentives, and whether the self-financing mechanism can be formed or not depends on the structure of a country's land regime, which can help to explain the difference between the development of infrastructure in China and that in other developing countries from a theoretical angle.

The paper suggests that the mode is facing an important transformation toward land reform and new-type urbanization construction, and the replication and promotion of China's experience in infrastructure construction are of further significance under the Belt and Road Initiative as it provides a method for helping developing countries to eliminate infrastructure bottlenecks.

Through the test of multinational panel data, the paper indicates that the structural change of China's land regime around 1990 had an overall effect on the supernormal development of infrastructure in China. The paper indicates that the “land-based development mode” of China's infrastructure indeed contributed to the supernormal development of infrastructure in China, but there are still some shortcomings in this mode.

In developing countries like Tanzania, gems and jewellery industry mainly consists of disintegrated and unstable micro and small workshops which operate in a way that misalign value addition processes. This study is aimed to bridge gap by focussing on exploitation of industrial clusters in social normalisation and economic resilience to developing countries. The world economic shocks has been not only individually experienced but also globally shared while disrupted lives across all countries and communities and negatively affected global socio-economic growth.

Furthermore, the explorative design was adopted in this study in order to explore needs of respondents, and with the aim to direct the study towards a descriptive design. The sample frame consists of participants in gems and jewellery activities in Tanzania whereby sample was drawn from Dar es Salaam and Arusha. Semi-structured interview was used to collect quantitative data to establish evidence of Tanzanians’ SSJs linked to global value chains (GVCs).

Results revealed the benefits of exploitation of artisanal industrial clusters to Tanzanians’ SSJs when linked to global value chains (GVCs). Findings of the study demonstrate the importance of artisanal industrial clusters in facilitating Tanzanians’ SSJs to access GVCs. Further, insufficient education, trust and social protection directly affects inclusive GVCs, inferring that the impact of artisanal industrial clusters on inclusive GVCs in social normalisation and economic resilience.

Study findings reveals shortcomings in existing regulatory framework of linking Tanzanians’ SSJs to artisanal industrial clusters, for improvements to better support the inclusiveness in GVCs. Findings of this research invite interventions on institutional capabilities and entrepreneurial competencies to enhance the capabilities of small-scale jewellers (SSJs). Like other studies, this study involved cross-sectional data, limit targeted study population as representative of SSJs in industrial clusters and GVCs in economic crises at limited time.

The study findings makes important practical contributions to the Tanzania’s SSJs by examining mediating role of artisanal industrial clusters hence informing policymakers of mining sector how to improve accessibility on GVCs by focus on offering great institutional capabilities and entrepreneurial competencies. These findings will help SSJs and policy makers to get better understanding of the relationships in exploitation of artisanal industrial clusters when accessing GVCs. Therefore, they can make better decisions on implementing artisanal industrial clusters as well as management accessing GVCs, so that SSJs will attain the best possible performance.

This emphasises the importance of community empowerment in the GVCs process through artisanal industrial clusters. Study findings indicate the influence of industrial relations to social dynamics which are previously inadequately addressed and scantly researched. In actual fact study propose initiatives that ensure local communities benefit socially from the integration of SSJs into GVCs through artisanal industrial clusters. Findings suggest local communities that take into account inter-sectionality of artisanal industrial clusters and inclusive GVCs, by considering how factors like education, trust and social protection status intersect to influence the social inclusiveness of SSJs.

There is limited evidence of linking Tanzanians’ SSJs to GVCs in social normalisation and economic resilience and few researchers have explored this topic. This article leverages exploitation of industrial clusters in normalisation and economic resilience to developing countries such as Tanzania as way of improving shared prosperity, sustainability, inclusive growth, cohesion, value chain upgrading and financial inclusion to SSJs.