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What are the causes and consequences of Turkey’s intervention in Syria? The purpose of this paper is to explore this question by focusing on the time frame from 2011 to 2016, i.e. prior to Turkey’s strategic U-turn from uncompromising enmity toward Russia and Iran.

Process tracing is used as the main methodological guideline.

Turkey’s intervention in Syria has been driven by a mutually reinforcing interaction of geopolitical, geo-economic and geo-cultural factors. Turkey’s neo-Ottomanist geo-strategy has been militarized in the context of the Arab Spring, perceived decline of US hegemony, increasing Kurdish autonomy and Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi’s (AKP) electoral setbacks. Second, Turkey’s intervention has been triggered by the converging motivations for energy security, easily gained profits from the black energy market and economic integration with Arab-Gulf countries in the face of a stagnating Western capitalism. A third set of factors speaks to the AKP’s instrumental use of Sunni sectarianism and Kurdish ethnopolitics.

The research aim is to provide a systematic and multi-causal explanation of Turkey’s involvement in Syria.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of biomimicry to inspire sustainable development in economic systems. The research purpose is to explore the link between ecological systems and economic systems to highlight applied environmental solutions. The goal is to propose some driver to develop sustainable business practices inspired on the principles of biomimicry.

This paper provides a theoretical approach that builds the basis for a better understanding of the relationship between nature and sustainable economic decisions. The premise is that in the field of sustainable development, strategies based on “learning from nature” are useful. Furthermore, the concept of biomimicry provides principles and tools specifically aimed at design practice.

The complexity of economic systems has shown that high levels of abstraction are required when conceptualising problems and explanations related with nature-inspired solutions. Stakeholder engagement and transdisciplinary collaboration are required to face long-term environmental challenges. Moreover, the exploratory analysis applied in this paper appeared suitable to compile existing literature.

The study provides some general guidelines and empirical approach through case studies that could help decision makers convert nature-inspired alternatives into valuable strategic business opportunities. Although presented practical cases are framed in the local sphere (i.e. the Basque Country), they can serve as references in other international contexts.

New business models should recognize the positive synchronization between well-managed social, environmental and economic systems.

The proposed ideas deepen the understanding on the sustainable development and the link between ecological and economic systems. In fact, the concept of biomimetic economy has not been dealt with or developed in depth in previous academic works, nor has it been published thoroughly in the field of research.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide legal certainty in developing a special economic zone (SEZ) in order to build the national and regional economy. Besides that, an other purpose is to push the Central Government, the Provincial Government, the Regional Goverment, and the Management Institution to complete the infrastucture and also harmonize the policies and regulations regarding the SEZ in Indonesia, especially in Sei Mangkei.

Design/Methodology/Approach – The research method that authors used is the sociological legal research and the normative legal research which approach the economic development in social economic zone in Sei Mangkei, the issues that happened in reality, and they analyze the related regulation in SEZ.

Findings – The result thus obtained shows that legal certainty has not been realized completely which caused undevelopment of SEZ in Sei Mangkei. Besides the legal certainty factor, the unfinished infrastructure also caused the undevelopment, even though according to Act number 39 of 2009 regarding SEZ, an operated SEZ has fulfilled the needs and appropriateness of the infrastructure. In reality, Sei Mangkei SEZ, which has been operational, is not supported by the appropriateness of the infrastructure such as the port, train rail, hazardous waste material management facility, final disposal vessel, and also the issue of electricity and gas.

Practical Implications – This result can help Central Government or Provincial Government in establishing the regulations that can provide the legal certainty in developing the SEZ in Sei Mangkei.

Originality/Value – In addition to increasing the role of law in economic development understanding, this paper can be of legal and economic relevance.

The purpose of this study is to investigate librarians' level of responsiveness in an era of policy change and reform.

The approach adopted was to introduce and describe the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) as a major policy framework in Nigeria. A purposive sampling approach was used to survey librarians' familiarity and knowledge of the NEEDS concept. In all 54 questionnaires were distributed and 36 were returned. Descriptive statistics were used to generate data for discussion.

Majority of the respondents did not understand fully the NEEDS concept; were not familiar with the NEEDS document, institutional and macroeconomic frameworks, NEEDS vision, values and principles. Less numbers were very correct or correct as to whether their libraries had a copy of the NEEDS document. Many of the librarians had neither seem or read the document; less than 50 per cent of the respondents knew where to obtain the NEEDS document; knew that the NEEDS document can be accessed online and downloaded from the web. Majority did not know that the NEEDS secretariat is located at the National Planning Commission.; confessed that they can not answer reference question on NEEDS. Only five indicated that they responded to the invitation for comments and suggestions during the formulation of the NEEDS document.

It is critical for the Nigerian Library Association to heighten its information advocacy role in an environment of change and reform. Librarians must be proactive in an environment of change and reforms.

A fundamental study that challenges librarians to relate to the change and reforms occurring in the organizational, transactional and contextual environments of their work.

This paper aims to provide new perspectives on the integration of East Asian stock markets and the dynamic volatility transmission to the Bitcoin market utilising daily data from 2014 to 2020.

The authors undertake comprehensive analyses of the dependency dynamics, systemic risk and volatility spillover between major East Asian stock and Bitcoin markets. The authors employ a vine-copula-CoVaR framework and a VAR-BEKK-GARCH method with a Wald test.

(a) With exception of KS11 and N225; HSI and SSE; HSI and KS11, which have moderate dependence, dependencies among other markets are low. In terms of tail risk, the upper tail risk is more significant in capturing strong common variation. (b) Two-way and asymmetric risk spillover effects exist in all markets. The Hong Kong and Japanese stock markets have significant risk spillovers to other markets, and quite notably, the Chinese stock market is the largest recipient of systemic risk. However, the authors observe a more significant risk spillover from the Chinese stock market to the Bitcoin market. (c) The VAR-BEKK-GARCH results confirm that the Korean market is a significant emitter of volatility spillovers. The Bitcoin market does provide diversification benefits. Interestingly, the Chinese stock market has an intriguing relationship with Bitcoin. (d) An increase in spillovers in East Asia boosts spillovers to Bitcoin, but there is no intuitive effect of Bitcoin spillovers on East Asian spillovers.

For the first time, the authors examine the dynamic linkage between Bitcoin and the major East Asian stock markets.

With oil prices hovering around historically low levels, it would be comforting to think that energy shocks are a thing of the past. However, energy markets have never been driven by economic factors alone: technology, policy and international relations all have to be taken into account.

During the past decade, the market for consumer and industrial goods in South‐East Asia has grown at a rapid rate and industrial countries in this region have been trying to advance their national plans to stimulate economic take‐off. However, in the middle of 1997, the ASEAN bubble economy started to collapse after devaluation of the baht. In this paper the current status and future direction of Japanese manufacturers in Thailand are discussed through facts investigations and a survey execution. The results from this investigation indicate that the Japanese offshore manufacturers in Thailand are at an earlier stage than their domestic counterparts in Japan, in terms of manufacturing strategies and action programmes. Therefore, offshore manufacturers are in a much more severe situation than domestic firms, although one of their major reasons for joining the Thai manufacturing industry was to recover from the ending of Japan’s own bubble economy.

The hypothesis is that social inequalities tend to increase in the historical phases characterized by a high level of integration of the international economy, generating protectionism-oriented pressures. The analysis of the capitalistic evolution in the last centuries is oriented to outline the strict connection between deep international economy integration and high level of social inequalities in advanced economies.

Recent deep integration in international economy generated, in advanced economies, a significant increase in socio-economic inequalities, with negative effects on social cohesion and democratic dynamics. The paper, examining the historical evolution of capitalism, analyses the consequences generated by the deep integration, achieved by the international economy, on social inequalities in advanced countries. The discussion is focussed on three models of capitalism: competitive capitalism, Fordist capitalism and cognitive capitalism.

As a result, for governments, two alternatives open up in the hyper-globalization phases: to preserve deep international economic integration, with risks for democracy; to preserve internal social cohesion, with risks of protectionism and closure to the international economy.

The article is oriented to underline the intrinsic incompatibility between hyper-globalization and democracy, for the strong negative effects generated by hyper-globalization on social inequalities and on social cohesion.