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In the post-WTO era, the volume of international trade has grown in a good amount in India. At the same time, the continuous lowering and removing of the trade barriers of different forms create several impacts on poverty and inequality. In this chapter, we tried to capture the issues of inequality, specially the gender inequality, which has worsened a lot in the last two decades. In one side, trade openness enhanced the growth, but at the cost of increasing inequality. Theil index and Atkinson index both show an increasing trend of inequality. The Gender Inequality Index (GII) and the Inequality-adjusted Human Development or Gender Development Indices are also showing increasing inequality. The state-wise analysis of such inequality indices is varying a lot over the study period. This chapter throws some insight into these issues and concludes that in the post-WTO era income inequality has increased a lot with a very few exceptions. In some states (like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, and Punjab) only export have increased the employment in the unorganized sectors. The study concludes that exports have generated additional employment and incomes in the economy, but these gains have not trickled down to the poor. The study is confined to Indian cases only and covers the time period 2000–2001 to 2018–2019.

China is one of the fastest-growing countries; it holds important positions in many product markets, including the global automotive market. The objectives of this study are as follows: to assess the position of China in the global automotive production, global automotive exports and imports; and also compare the position of China on these indicators with the main competing countries. In this regard, the method of comparative analysis has become the main research method. Based on the analysis and calculations performed, the authors came to some conclusions. China came out on top in the production and export of automotive products, overtaking key competitors, including the United States, Japan, Germany and India. This was achieved through an effective combination of trade, investment and industrial policy instruments. The decline in production and export of cars during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic was minimal in China compared to competitors, which is explained by an efficiently formed supply chain, as well as the presence of transport hubs (7 of the 10 largest sea container ports are located in China). The authors believe that future trends in the development of the Chinese automotive industry will be associated with the renewal of production to reduce environmental pollution and restructuring of supply chains to further localize the production of intermediate components for the automotive industry.

The US-China trade war has brought forth the problem of balance of trade not only for them, but also for many other economies in the world. However, all the commodity segments are not equally affected and thus, the segment-wise trade analysis of commodities can bring up many valuable insights, vital for policy formulation process. Despite this, existing literature barely covered this aspect as a focal research. Therefore, this chapter has carried out segment-wise analysis of commodity classes popular in international trade discussions for the United States and China since the trade dispute intensified between them. In this chapter, we have built an argument around three commodity-segments which are popular in international trade studies namely, the raw material segment, semi-finished goods segment, and finished goods segments. While doing this analysis, we majorly focused on monopolistic power of economies in different commodity segments. We found that while in the segment of raw material, mostly cost is driving the trade, in the finished goods segment, variety and innovations are the key drivers that can boost trade by discovering new consumption spaces.

The fight between two nations on each other’s exportable on the basis of tariff is known as tariff war. Although an economic policy, very ­often ­motivated by nationalism and politics, a nation imposes tariff on the ­exports of another nation which, in retaliation, again imposes tariff on the exports of its trading partner. The prime cause of such war is certainly to enhance employment opportunities in the home nation. But politics and nationalism provoke the opposite nation to follow the same policy. Effects of such tariff war, whether beneficial or harmful, are yet to be seen. In this context, we have adopted a general equilibrium model to illustrate the probable effect of the above-stated trade war in a structure consisting both H–O nugget and export sector dualism. The effect of imposition of tariff on multinational corporation (MNC) that has its own origin nation and production activities in other nation as well where it faces the war of tariff is considered. But it gets relief in the form of tax reduction in its origin nation. Under such a scenario, the study has shown the effect of tariff in the presence of full employment in the economy as well as in the presence of unemployment. It is seen that the MNC will continue its production procedure in both nations and enjoy profit, under some conditions. Further, in the presence of unemployment it is seen that if rate of tax on the MNC rises, unemployment may fall and welfare can increase under certain conditions.

China's defense industry is analyzed by comparing the technical level of the military and civilian products manufactured by China's nuclear, space, aviation, shipbuilding, ordnance, and electronics industries with their advanced counterparts. Generally, China's defense industry is about 20 years behind the global leaders. Thus, it is inappropriate to declare China's emergence as the world’s second military power. However, if it continues on its current development trajectory, it will attain that status in the near future.

The higher education world around us is changing fast. Mobile learning (M-learning) and apps in education are new and exciting. However, this does not mean that the faculty is less relevant. On the contrary, the faculty are an ever-important factor that is needed to increase student engagement. Disengaged students are in fact more problematic than low achieving students. This is because of the disruption disengaged student bring in the classroom. Therefore, increasing student engagement is a key challenge in higher education today. Research suggests that active learning, value and expectations are important factors that determine student engagement. Some of these factors can be indirectly influenced by the faculty and course designers. Against this background, the objective of this chapter is to examine if dwindling student engagement in higher education can be addressed with CURPA, i.e. a CURriculum and course planning (CURP) App. CURPA is the result of our efforts at Utrecht University to help design courses and curricula by using cards to account for different activities, with the strategic aim being to stimulate student engagement in higher education. Our expert interviews resulted in a MoSCoW-prioritised list of requirements that can be implemented over time, structured in line with Becker's student engagement model.

Business cycle theory is normally described as having evolved out of a previous tradition of writers focusing exclusively on crises. In this account, the turning point is seen as residing in Clément Juglar's contribution on commercial crises and their periodicity. It is well known that the champion of this view is Schumpeter, who propagated it on several occasions. The same author, however, pointed to a number of other writers who, before and at the same time as Juglar, stressed one or another of the aspects for which Juglar is credited primacy, including the recognition of periodicity and the identification of endogenous elements enabling the recognition of crises as a self-generating phenomenon. There is indeed a vast literature, both primary and secondary, relating to the debates on crises and fluctuations around the middle of the nineteenth century, from which it is apparent that Juglar's book Des Crises Commerciales et de leur Retour Périodique en France, en Angleterre et aux États-Unis (originally published in 1862 and very much revised and enlarged in 1889) did not come out of the blue but was one of the products of an intellectual climate inducing the thinking of crises not as unrelated events but as part of a more complex phenomenon consisting of recurring crises related to the development of the commercial world – an interpretation corroborated by the almost regular occurrence of crises at about 10-year intervals.

This chapter presents research to assess the impact of the recent financial crisis on technology-based small firms (TBSFs) in the United Kingdom based on findings from an extended telephone survey with the owner-managers of 49 young and 51 more mature TBSFs, undertaken in 2010. Even before the onset of the global financial crisis in 2007, it was generally acknowledged that TBSFs faced greater obstacles in accessing finance than conventional SMEs. This is because banks have difficulty assessing the viability of new technology-based business ventures due to information asymmetries, whilst risk capital providers may have difficulty providing appropriate or sufficient funds on terms acceptable to entrepreneurs. Given the recent difficulties that SMEs, in general, have faced in obtaining external finance, we would expect TBSFs to have been particularly adversely affected by the financial crisis. Our evidence showed that TBSFs exhibited a strong demand for external finance between 2007 and 2010, related to their growth ambitions and achievements. They sought finance mainly from banks but also with younger TBSFs seeking business angel finance and more mature TBSFs seeking venture capital finance. However, our evidence indicates that both debt and equity finance became harder to access for TBSFs, particularly for early-stage and more R&D-intensive firms. Where funding was offered, it was often on unacceptable terms with regards to the levels of collateral or equity required. The chapter provides evidence of a growing funding gap and concludes that the ability of TBSFs to contribute to economic recovery is hampered by ongoing problems in obtaining external finance.