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The growing number of studies shows that government policies and measures are critical in determining entrepreneurship levels of regions. Any changes in the government policies and measures are, therefore, expected to bring significant changes at the entrepreneurship levels. This paper aims to explore the importance of the government policies and measures, along with supply and demand-side determinants in regional entrepreneurship in Turkey and explains the convergence of entrepreneurship among two distinct periods corresponding to changes in the government policies and measures concerning entrepreneurship.

Looking at a study on 81 NUTS-III regions of Turkey, this paper focusses on regional determinants important in the separation of regions with different entrepreneurship trajectories (based on the initial level and the rate of increase in entrepreneurship). Using discriminant function analysis, this paper tries to show how far government policies are important in distinguishing regions with different entrepreneurship levels.

The outcomes of the analysis show that certain policies and measures recently introduced have become instrumental in triggering higher entrepreneurship levels in regions with already higher levels of entrepreneurship, but not in regions with initially lower levels of entrepreneurship.

This study contributes to the existing regional entrepreneurship literature through introducing the research findings on the importance of government policies and institutions on regional entrepreneurship, besides the role of regional capacities and assets.

The global economic crisis triggered by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused the closure of countless ethnic minority businesses (EMBs) worldwide, partly due to the public policy responses. This paper investigates whether EMBs’ entrepreneurial orientation (EO) mediates the impact of public policy responses to COVID-19 on their survival.

Utilizing institutional theory, the authors developed a novel conceptual framework that divides policy responses to COVID-19 into aggressive (imposing restrictions on movement, e.g. lockdowns) and less aggressive policy responses (not imposing restrictions on movement, e.g. social distancing). The authors then surveyed intra-regional EMBs, specifically businesses owned by ethnic minorities in the Kano and Katsina provinces of Nigeria, and analysed the data using structural equation modelling and analysis of variance (ANOVA).

The authors found that intra-regional EMBs in developing countries are very vulnerable to the public policy responses imposed by governments to curb COVID-19. Aggressive policy responses have a more significant negative effect on the survival of intra-regional EMBs than their less aggressive counterparts. Furthermore, the authors found that EO as a crisis response strategy significantly supports intra-regional EMBs in managing their vulnerability to the hostile institutional environment, reduces the adverse effect of public policy responses and stimulates their survival during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper contributes to the institutional theory of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)/entrepreneurship and the literature on EMBs by showing the role of EO in mediating the effects of COVID-19 institutional policies on the survival of intra-regional EMBs.

The purpose of this paper is to quantify the implications of China's recently adopted agricultural policies on domestic and international commodity markets.

A systematic, quantitative analysis is applied to address whether China's recent trade and production policies distort China's domestic and international commodity markets. The paper provides a clear picture of how trade‐restricting policies affect markets using a 42‐country partial equilibrium global dynamic agricultural simulation model.

The paper shows that recent agricultural policy reforms increase China's production slightly, causing imports to decrease while exports decline because of input subsidies, export taxes and the reduction of export value added tax rebates. Domestic prices to consumers decrease in real terms. The effects on world markets are small as the set of policies adopted partially offset each other in the international arena.

The paper indicates that the adoption of the policy reforms lower price levels domestically and benefit lower income urban and rural households, whose diets are largely based on rice and wheat as staple foods. Future model enhancements should include measures of producer and consumer welfare in order to capture the total impacts of policies and policy changes in China.

The paper quantifies the potential implications of the recent agricultural policy reforms in China. This contributes to the investigation of the effects of these policies implemented by the Chinese Government to achieve the country's policy objectives. Owing to the dynamics of China's policy implementation an in‐depth analysis sheds light and contributes to capturing the impacts of policy reforms on the domestic and international markets.

Investigates what is happening in North America with regard to labour relations law. Examines, first, collective labour relations and labour law and, second, focuses on the legal regulation of the individual relationship, also known as employment law. Goes on to cover these two separate, but intertwined, entities in depth and as they are interpreted in both Canada and the USA. Concludes that labour law is changing and moving toward contractualization and proceduralization. Wonders whether labour law will be able to continue to play the role of protecting wage earners for which it was originally developed.

In the absence of new policies, global trends in energy supply and consumption are unsustainable all around. Today, roughly 2.6 billion people use fuelwood, charcoal, agricultural waste and animal dung to meet most of their daily energy needs for cooking and heating. There are 1.6 billion people in the world without electricity, equal to over a quarter of the world population. The purpose of this paper is to present pro‐poor solutions for addressing the crippling impacts of current global energy use on the world's poorest people.

The paper lays out scenarios for global energy demand and greenhouse‐gas emissions and highlights the impact of these trends on developing countries. Based largely on publications and research from the International Energy Agency, it shows that better targeted subsidies, capacity building, integrated policy approaches and improvements in data collection can help to alleviate the impacts of current energy use on health and the environment.

Decisive action is needed to expand energy access and to arrest the potential impacts of climate change in poor countries. It is demonstrated here that investments in programs that are tailored to promoting development and addressing climate change simultaneously can be successfully deployed.

There is an urgent need for policymakers in rich and poor countries to join together and tackle the global energy and climate challenges, and, as this paper shows, pro‐poor foresight is needed to ensure that these challenges are met in an equitable and sustainable way.

Covid-19 sparked new interest in consumer financial resilience (CFR) amongst regulatory authorities, financial institutions, policymakers and the academia. No financial and health crisis has been worse than Covid-19, erasing the growth momentum of nations at all development stages. This study measures consumers' current financial resilience and future expectations within India's emerging market and its likely response to policy measures.

CFR is investigated using individual household data on economic state, employment, income and savings from the Reserve Bank of India's consumer confidence survey. The empirical approach is based on the temporal time-series data with mixed frequency regression. Consumers' current and future expectation indices appear as the regressand, whereas credit-deposit ratio, credit outstanding, number of bank accounts and digital transactions act as main regressors.

The response of consumers' current situation is 3.50 times higher than that of their future expectations. This implies that a rise in the credit-deposit ratio and credit line positively affects CFR. In contrast, a higher number of bank accounts, a proxy for financial inclusion, adversely affect consumer's well-being possibly owing to the government's failure to provide financial support through banking networks. Digital payments (value) positively affect consumers' current situation and future expectations.

The results of this study inform policy formulation for enhancing financial resilience. Consumer sentiment index acts as a proxy for CFR.

Financial resilience is a concern for policymakers. This study is one of the first studies linking CFR with financial inclusion, credit creation and digital financial capability.

Buildings contribute significantly to CO₂ production. They are also subject to considerable taxation based on value. Analysis shows that while similar attributes contribute to both value and CO₂ production, there is only a loose relationship between the two. If we wish to use taxation to affect policy change (drive energy efficiency behaviour), we are unlikely to achieve this using only the current tax base (value), or by increasing the tax take off this current tax base (unlike extra taxation of cigarettes to discourage smoking, for example). Taxation of buildings on the basis of energy efficiency is hampered by the lack of current evidence of performance. This paper aims to model the now-obligatory (at sale or letting) energy performance certificate (EPC) data to derive an acceptable appraisal model (marked to market, being the EPC scores) and deploys this to the entire population of properties. This provides an alternative tax base with which to model the effects of a tax base switch to energy efficiency and to understand the tax incidence effects of such a policy.

The research uses a multiplicative hedonic approach to model energy efficiency utilising EPC holding properties in a UK jurisdiction [Northern Ireland (NI)] as the sample. This model is then used to estimate discrete energy assessments for each property in the wider population, using attributes held in the domestic rating (property tax) database for NI (700,000+ properties). This produces a robust estimate of the EPC for every property in its current condition and its cost-effective improved condition. This energy assessment based tax base is further used to estimate a new millage rate and property tax bill (green property tax) which is compared against the existing property tax based on value to allow tax incidence changes to be analysed.

The findings show that such a policy would significantly redistribute the tax burden and would have a variety of expected and some unexpected effects. The results indicate that while assessing the energy performance of houses can be a complex process involving many parameters, much of the explanatory power can be achieved via a relatively small number of input variables, often already held by property tax jurisdictions. This offers the opportunity for useful housing stock modelling – such as the savings possible from power switching. The research also identifies that whilst urban areas display the expected “heat island” effect in terms of energy consumption, urban properties are on average more efficient than suburban/rural properties. This facilitates spatial targeting of policy messages and initiatives.

Analogous with other studies, data deficiencies introduce the risk of omitted variable bias. Modelling of the energy efficiency in the sample is limited to property attributes that are available for the wider population of properties. While this limits the modelling exercise, it is a perennial issue facing mass appraisal worldwide (where knowledge of the transacted sample attributes generally exceeds knowledge of the unsold properties). That said, the research demonstrates the benefits of sharing data and improving knowledge of the housing stock, as taxation databases would be stronger, augmented with EPC-derived property attributes for example.

The EPC lead in time for wide residential coverage is likely to be considerable. The paper contributes to emerging literature and policy debate surrounding the effect, performance measurement and implementation of energy efficiency certification, through a greater understanding of the sectorial and geographical dispersion of energy efficiency. It provides high level research to help guide policy and decision-making, identifying key locales where there is more of a physical problem and locations where there is more to gain in terms of targeting energy improvement and/or encouraging behavioural change. The paper also allows a glimpse of the implications of a change towards a taxation regime based on energy efficiency, which contributes to the debate surrounding the “greening” of property based taxes.

This paper aims at reflecting on the role of accounting and accountability mechanisms in pre-COVID-19 conditions and how it may evolve in “new normal”, post-COVID-19 conditions.

Moving from the papers in this special issue, the authors draw on the literature on the social construction and reflective approaches to understand pre- and post-COVID-19 events and the role of accounting therein.

The “new normal” may exacerbated the difficulty of public sector organizations to manage the uncertainties and risks associated to the new context. While “old” wicked issues remain, such as social inclusion, poverty and corruption, new ones come. The authors speculate on the “new” and “old” roles accounting and accountability can play to support governments.

The paper contributes by setting new research avenues for future studies in a post-COVID-19 era.