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Liner shipping plays a crucial role in facilitating the movement of manufactured goods around the world. While previous literature has shown that liner shipping is an important trade driver, potential differences across trade routes and world regions have not as yet been explored. This paper examines whether the impact of liner shipping on bilateral trade flows differs significantly across world regions, as well as exploring other geographical patterns.

Using state-of-the-art gravity modelling, this paper investigates the impact of the UNCTAD's Liner Shipping Bilateral Connectivity Index on bilateral trade in manufactured goods using a comprehensive database of disaggregated trade data for the period from 2006 to 2019.

The results show that the trade effect of liner shipping is greater in long-distance and interregional bilateral flows. For some regions, such as North America and Oceania, the effect is greater than the world average, while for others, such as Africa and South America, the effect is significantly smaller. The trade effects of liner shipping connectivity on the main east–west routes are average, but clear asymmetry emerges when analysing China's inward and outward trade flows separately.

The results of this paper show that the major east–west routes determine the baseline trade effects of liner shipping, demonstrate that some north–south trades such as those involving Oceania generate larger trade effects and confirm that the trade effects of liner shipping can be improved for some world regions such as South America and Africa.

This article provides an overview and analysis of 50 years of European policies, actions, and challenges to align its higher education and research, as well as lessons learned from this for similar initiatives elsewhere.

The study builds on a comprehensive overview and study of policy documents and scholarly literature to identify by decade the main policies and actions and the related challenges towards a European Higher Education and Research Area.

The findings make clear the key rationales, challenges, shifts and lessons to be learned from 50-year European policies for the alignment of higher education.

Its value lies in the historical overview and analysis of current initiatives, in particular the European Universities Initiative (EUI), to provide a historical and geographical context, which might give insight for similar initiatives elsewhere.

In this paper we examine the validity of the J-curve hypothesis in four Southeast Asian economies (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand) over the 1980–2017 period.

We employ the linear autoregressive distributed lags (ARDL) model that captures the dynamic relationships between the variables and additionally use the nonlinear ARDL model that considers the asymmetric effects of the real exchange rate changes.

The estimated models were diagnostically sound, and the variables were found to be cointegrated. However, with the exception of Malaysia, the short- and long-run relationships did not attest to the presence of the J-curve effect. The trade flows were affected asymmetrically in Malaysia and the Philippines, suggesting the appropriateness of nonlinear ARDL in these countries.

The previous research tended to examine the effects of the real exchange rate changes on the agricultural trade balance and specifically the J-curve effect (deterioration of the trade balance followed by its improvement) in the developed economies and rarely in the developing ones. In this paper, we address this omission.

Using a decolonial framework for thinking about knowledge, education and internationalisation, this chapter critically unpacks the historical and contemporary complexities in South African higher education, including the colonial roots of higher education and internationalisation, the Eurocentric hegemony and white domination during colonialism and apartheid, and the lack of epistemic decolonisation in post-apartheid South Africa. The chapter shows how the way internationalisation has been practiced by universities since the end of apartheid has contributed to the maintenance of Eurocentric hegemony and coloniality of knowledge. The chapter highlights the need to rethink, reconceptualise and redefine internationalisation, and unpacks a new definition of internationalisation which takes into consideration historical complexities, contemporary realities and challenges, and the need for epistemic transformation and decolonisation in South African higher education. This is in line with Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s decolonial ‘quest for relevance’ of education and knowledge to the people, places and regions in which universities operate, while looking outwards at the world and critically engaging with the plurality of worldviews, ideas, knowledges and ways of knowing. Such a quest could allow students to critically interrogate and understand their being and place in the world, as well as their relationships and linkages to others around the globe.

This paper aims to explore the value of geographic diversification in the context of deglobalization, drawing evidence from a quasi-natural experiment – the Brexit referendum that took place on 23 June 2016 in the UK.

This study applies an event study methodology to estimate the impact of the Brexit vote on a cross-section of firms with varying levels of geographic diversification – undiversified UK firms, UK firms with significant operations in the European Union (EU) and globally diversified UK firms. This study deploys a Heckman two-stage regression approach to address sample selection bias.

This study finds that undiversified UK firms experienced negative cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) around the Brexit referendum. The value of UK firms with majority sales within the UK declined by 0.9 percentage points, on average, in the three days centred on the Brexit referendum. In contrast, UK firms that are globally diversified, with the majority of sales within the EU are unaffected, while diversified firms in the rest of the world generated positive CARs of 1.8 percentage points over the same period. These results are robust to firm characteristics, selection bias and alternative measures of CARs and diversification.

This study is subject to some limitations that open avenues for future work. There are a few available proxies of diversification and further work on developing other proxies is much needed. Further work may also examine the long-term impact of diversification on UK firms. This study considered Brexit as a quasi-natural experiment, and this study could be applied to other deglobalization events like COVID-19 and can enhance the generalizability of diversification strategy in the deglobalized world. Findings may stimulate future work to explore how another form of diversification – product diversification has affected firm returns around Brexit. Finally, this study has focused on the UK as its base case. It may be interesting to corroborate the findings by exploring the impact of Brexit on European firms, who hitherto Brexit, had some operations in the UK.

This work offers some insights for policymakers and regulators around the impact of deglobalization on local firms. Findings suggest that these trends significantly negatively impact the most vulnerable firms (smaller firms with less global reach), while their larger counterparts with significant global reach might be insulated. This finding is important for determining the nature of support needed by different firms in times of deglobalization. The work also offers insights to managers of firms operating in countries where there are real prospects of deglobalization. Specifically, the work highlights the importance of geographic diversification when free movement of goods, services and people is restricted.

This study shows that a certain group of globally diversified firms earned significantly higher returns from the prospect of the UK leaving the EU, thereby highlighting the value of geographic diversification in a time of deglobalization.

Introduction: Today the ability of nations to develop and implement innovations is core for their international competitiveness. Ukraine is striving for innovation progress; however, its innovation performance is relatively low. The research problem is to find the bottlenecks, affecting Ukraine’s innovation capability.

Purpose: This study aims to research the national innovation capability profiles, based on cluster analysis, to develop an understanding of drivers and threats for the innovation capability of Ukraine.

Need of the study: The knowledge-based economy, which had already turned into one of the most efficient developmental models of the 21st century, became a key driver of international competitiveness for the leading developed countries due to their progressive structural shifts towards the growth of high-technology manufacturing and knowledge-intensive sectors. These trends are significant to capture for the sake of increasing the innovation capability of the economy of Ukraine.

Methodology: The study is based on the K-means clustering method, which is employed for identifying 10 country clusters based on the indicators of their R&D and innovation activities, which allowed us to assess the innovation capability of Ukraine in comparison with 140 countries of the world. Data selection and normalisation were based on the 2019 Global Competitiveness Report indicators.

Findings: The study showed that Ukraine’s innovation capability problems are typical for most developing countries and are prevalently connected to low R&D expenditures, patent applications, and international co-invention activities. Most countries, except for the technologically developed ones, follow the so-called ‘passive technological learning’ strategies, which usually result in low economic productivity.

Practical implications: Several innovation policy implications have been developed for the government of Ukraine based on the cluster analysis results and accounting for the problems of the national innovation system (NIS).

This paper aims to offer insight into how strategies within the accounting profession, which has been becoming more global, might be changed by the recent outbreak of the Second Cold War between the West and the Rest of the World.

We explore the strategies of those who called themselves “Confucian accountants” in China, a country which has recently discouraged its state-owned enterprises from using the services of the Big 4. We do this by employing qualitative research methods, including reflexive photo interviews, in which Big-4 accountants, recognised as the most Westernised accounting actors in China, and Confucian accountants are asked to take and explain photographs representing their professional lives. Bourdieu’s notions of “economy of practices” and “vision-of-division strategy” are drawn upon to understand who the Confucian accountants are and what they do strategically in their pursuit of a higher revenue stream and improved social standing in the Chinese social space.

The homegrown Confucian accountants share cultural-cognitive characteristics with neighbouring social actors, such as their clients and government officials, who have been inculcated with Confucianism and the state’s cultural confidence policy in pursuit of a “socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics”. Those accountants try to enhance their social standing and revenue stream by strategically demonstrating their difference from Big-4 accountants. For this purpose, they wear Confucian clothes, have Confucian props in their office, employ Confucian phrases in their everyday conversations, use Confucian business cards and construct and maintain guanxi with government officials and clients.

This paper is the first attempt to explore Confucian accountants’ strategies for increasing their revenue and social standing at the start of the Second Cold War.

The Ireland-Northern Ireland Protocol has been one of the most contentious aspects of the EU-UK post-Brexit trade relationship. By requiring the UK to comply with EU customs and internal market rules in relation to Northern Ireland (NI), the Protocol has created a hybrid trade regime where NI is subject to multiple, overlapping and often conflicting rules. This paper aims to examine one area in which this hybridity manifests itself. It focusses on the interplay between the Protocol and post-Brexit UK trade agreements. It examines potential areas of conflict between Protocol obligations and obligations derived from UK trade agreements. In doing so, it sheds light on the extent to which compliance with the Protocol may undermine NI’s ability to export and import goods under the preferential terms negotiated under UK trade agreements. It further discusses the consequences of these incompatibilities between the Protocol and these agreements for NI and, more widely, the functioning of the UK internal market as whole.

Doctrinal legal research

The paper examines potential areas of conflict between Protocol obligations and obligations derived from UK trade agreements. In doing so, it sheds light on the extent to which compliance with the Protocol may undermine NI’s ability to export and import goods under the preferential terms negotiated under UK trade agreements. It further discusses the consequences of these incompatibilities between the Protocol and these agreements for NI and, more widely, the functioning of the UK internal market as whole.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge this is the first paper carrying out a comprehensive legal analysis of the interaction and potential conflicts between the Protocol on Ireland-Northern Ireland and the UK’s post Brexit trade agreements.

This chapter aims to discuss the challenges facing these countries building productive capacity for development. This chapter makes use of data published by international organizations as indicators for measuring the state of development in the Arab region. Several indicators are presented to compare Arab countries with other world regions. The use of data identifies some of the gaps that countries in the Arab region need to close to strengthen capacity building for development and fostering economic growth. The findings from the data presented reveal that the productive structure in most Arab countries remains weak to generate production linkages and provide incentives for investment in nonenergy sectors. The failure of the export-led growth model to diversify output and promote development in energy producing countries has increased the dependence of these countries on global trade. Fluctuations in commodity prices and uncertainty about global demand for energy have influenced the ability of the state to construct strategies for rapid transformation. Except for the energy sector, the productivity of nonoil sectors remains low reflecting inadequate incentives and ineffective entrepreneurial capabilities. The study examines the challenges for building productive capacity in the Arab world. It illustrates the failure of the led-export model and its inability to prompted economic diversification, especially in the Gulf countries. The study contributes to the literature on capacity building in the Arab world so that to encourage researchers and students of development conducting studies concerning the main development challenges facing these countries.