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The purpose of this paper is to examine the behavior of governments in terms of trade policy design when they experience a lack of foreign resources from international trade after ensuring the sustainability of their external debt. To do so, the paper defines two concepts of trade space: “De Facto Trade Space” and “De Jure trade space.”

To conduct this study, the author relies on a panel data set comprising 109 countries over the period 1998–2014. To perform the empirical analysis, the author has mainly used the system generalized methods of moments approach.

The empirical analysis suggests evidence that trade space matters significantly for trade policy. Indeed, “De Facto Trade Space” is consistently associated with greater trade policy liberalization, with this positive effect being higher, the higher the development level – proxied by the real per capita income – of the concerned country. “De Jure Trade Space” tends to lead to greater trade policy liberalization in less advanced developing countries, but is associated with the adoption of trade restrictive measures in more advanced countries. Additionally, results suggest different impacts on trade policy of “Positive De Jure Trade Space” and “Negative De Jure Trade Space.”

These findings suggest that the trade space, as defined in this study, plays a key role in trade policy design by policymakers.

The current study shows that trade space could significantly matter for trade policy design by policymakers.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the study dealing directly with the “trade space” concept as well as its impact on trade policy.

This study aims to use a quantitative measure of trade policy space to investigate empirically whether trade policy space influences foreign direct investment (FDI) flows to countries.

The empirical analysis covers an unbalanced panel data set of 158 countries, over the period 1995–2015 and uses the two-step system generalized methods of moments approach.

The results suggest that the impact of trade policy space on FDI inflows is positive and increases as countries enjoy greater trade policy space. Furthermore, advanced economies tend to experience a higher positive impact of trade policy space on FDI inflows than less advanced economies.

These findings highlight the relevance of trade policy space for countries’ FDI inflows.

The analysis shows that non-trade related constraints to trade policy could reduce trade policy space and adversely influence FDI inflows, which are critical for countries’ economic growth and development.

To the best of the knowledge, this topic has not been addressed in the literature.

The paper aims to introduce a trade-off method for selecting a mission concept for an asteroid mining mission. In particular, the method is applied to the KaNaRiA mission concept selection. After introducing the KaNaRiA project, the KaNaRiA mission concept selection and reference scenario are described in detail.

The paper introduces past relevant asteroid missions in general and the previous studies on asteroid mining in particular. Based on the review of past mission concepts to minor planets, the paper discusses the operational phases of a potential industrial and commercial space mining mission. The methodology for selecting a mission reference scenario is explained and the selected KaNaRiA mission scenario is described.

The key technology driver for a space mining mission is the autonomous on-board capability related to navigation, guidance and handling of hardware/software anomalies or unexpected events. With the methodology presented here, it is possible to derive a mission concept which provides an adequate test-bed for the validation and verification of algorithms for enhanced spacecraft autonomy. This is the primary scientific and engineering goal of the KaNaRiA project.

The mission concept selection method presented here can be used as a generalized approach for mining missions targeting asteroids in the solar system.

The availability and usage of space resources is seen as a possible solution for the imminent problem of diminishing terrestrial materials in the foreseen future. This paper explains a methodology to select mission concepts for asteroid mining missions.

Incorporating local space, matter, and society into our concepts of the global in analytically compatible ways poses a major challenge for contemporary scholars of both world systems and globalization. Many analysts ignore both materiality and locality of production. They assume the global as their point of departure, and attempt to incorporate the local into it. In this chapter, we aim to reverse that logic. We will take into account and theorize the interaction of natural and social processes. In other words, we will integrate ecologic or materio-spatial logic with sociologic within the economic logic of global markets.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the reasons behind a decade long contestations between the Georgian government and the petty traders over the access to the public space for commercial use.

The paper relies on the repeated ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Tbilisi in 2012 and 2013. The ethnographic interviews with legally operating traders and illegal street vendors are supplemented by the in-depth interviews with the representatives of the city government and secondary literature on Georgia’s post-revolutionary transformation.

Bridging the critical literature on the politics of the public space with Polanyi’s theory on commodification of fictitious commodities as a precondition of establishment of a market economy, the author argues that for the Georgian government control of the public space was necessary to pursue neoliberal marketisation policies. These policies required removal of the petty traders from public spaces because the state needed to restrict access to public space and limit its commercial usage to delineate public and private property and allow commodification of the urban land and property. As the commodification intensified and the rent prices started growing and fluctuating, the access to the public space became even more valuable for the petty traders. Therefore, the traders developed subversive tactics undermining the division between public and private space and property.

The paper demonstrates the importance of enforcing the public-private divide in the process of establishing a market economy in transitional settings. Moreover, it illustrates little discussed social costs of establishing such a divide.

Considers the potential impact of seven‐day trading on the spatial pattern of retail rents. Notes that the Institute of Fiscal Studies predicts that Sunday trading will have no appreciable effect on the overall level of turnover in the retail sector resulting in a decline in the real value of retail rents. Concludes that shopping areas in large town centres are most vulnerable to a decline in retail activity.

As the US-China conflict intensifies, the United States is pursuing a ‘decoupling’ strategy to build a new world trade order, arguing that the current World Trade Organization (WTO) system does not properly regulate China's non-market economic system. The WTO provides special and differentiated treatment (S&DT) for developing countries. The United States argues that China should give up its developing country (DC) status. Sufficient research on the DC status and S&DT has not been conducted as a means of resolving the US-China conflict. Decoupling means the collapse of the global supply chain (GSC), which will bring substantial shock to the global economy and a catastrophe for China. This paper examines the re-classification of DC status and S&DT in the context of US-China conflict and seeks an approach for China to avoid decoupling and coexist with the United States. It would be an optimal way for China to revive the WTO first and to improve its economic system through negotiations under the WTO.

Additive manufacturing (AM) has been increasingly used in various applications in recent years. However, it is still challenge when it comes to selecting a suitable AM process. This is because the outcome may vary due to not only different materials and printers but also different parameters and post-processes. This paper aims to develop an efficient method to help users understand trade-offs and make right decisions.

A hybrid method is proposed to help users select appropriate options from a large-scale and discrete option space in an interactive way. First, the design-by-shopping approach is applied to allow users exploring and refining the option space. The analytical hierarchical process method is then used to capture customers’ preferences. After analyzing the results of different normalization methods, a modified Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) approach is proposed to rank solutions and provide suggestions.

The usefulness of proposed method is illustrated in a case study. The results show that it can help customers understand performance distributions and find most suitable options accurately. The ranking of the modified TOPSIS method is more reasonable.

Due to the complexity of AM technologies, the process selection is considered at the parameter level. A new system framework is proposed for decision support. The TOPSIS method is modified to achieve a stable performance.

The paper aims to focus on how the dualism “petty trading and traffic” exacerbates the development of a social bond among traders from various communities and ethnic groups in Ghana. As understood in their normal innocuous sense, “traffic and petty trading” independently mark off two generally distinguishable exclusive partners. However, both petty trading and traffic now denote essential aspects of contemporary Ghana’s new social order shared uniquely among informal traders. The paper dilates on this phenomenon.

The theory underpinning this study is social constructionism. Social constructionism is part of a post-modern understanding of the nature of reality. It is a strand of sociology, pertaining to the ways in which social phenomena are created, institutionalised and made into tradition by humans. The core idea of constructionism, therefore, is that some social agent produces or controls some object. ’s (1967) situational constraints thesis also provides an important element to this paper. The thesis maintains that the poor in society are constrained by the facts of their situation; hence, the poor are unable to translate many of their ideals into reality in view of the considerable poverty that engulfs them. The thesis, reiterates that once the constraints of poverty are removed, the poor would have no difficulty adopting mainstream behavioural patterns and seizing available opportunities. The thesis is significant in exploring the objectives of this paper.

The paper finds that petty trading has given its adherents a new wave of life. The picture that emerges is that, although street hawkers are seen as a nuisance, a failure in society and lacking knowledge, they have become mindful of what society thinks about them. As a result, some have devised means to cope with what they do and also to find new ways to address the challenges facing them. The findings confirmed that people are self-reflexive beings and that they shape their own behaviour despite the influence of a variety of social factors that may constrain them. The study found that street hawkers have found a way to make life more meaningful for themselves than are actually perceived.

The paper seeks to discover the daily lives of petty traders, which have been stealthily tied in to urban development and planning. It brings a new dimension to the issue of petty trading. The fundamental argument of the paper is that the multidimensional nature of poverty is leading petty traders to a new consciousness which bodes well for them. These traders are shaping their own behaviour despite the influence of a variety of social factors that may constrain them. The social bond and interrelationship that permeate their working relationship has created a basis for which they now forge close ties that promote an inclusion from the exclusion that they are generally enjoined to.

Advanced design strategies supported by iterative engineering performance calculations expand the number of alternatives designers can analyze by orders of magnitude. Yet, in the face of vast, under‐constrained design challenges with wide ranging and sometimes ill‐defined implications related to sustainability, it is not possible to replace building design with automated search. The purpose of this paper is to assist designers in their selection of strategies that have been shown to be effective in promoting sustainability.

This paper applies and extends the design exploration assessment methodology (DEAM) to compare the value of distinct design strategies. The authors use DEAM to demonstrate that designers face non‐trivially distinct challenges, even in the well‐defined arena of design for energy efficiency. They next evaluate and compare the effectiveness of strategies such as point‐analysis, screening, trend analysis, and optimization. They identify associated process costs, and extend DEAM to assess the relative value of information that each strategy provides for a given challenge.

Findings empirically rank six strategies for two challenges and demonstrate the relatively high value of trend analysis for energy‐efficient design.

The implication of the findings is that advanced computer analysis strategies should be pursued to support high performance, energy‐efficient design. Such conclusions motivate future research to assess the value of various strategies in the context of the broad and qualitative fields of sustainable design and development.