With the gradual decline in the country’s working-age population and the rapid increase in the wage levels for its blue-collar workers, it is increasingly important for manufacturers in China to improve human resource management for migrant workers to enhance their embeddedness and commitment to the workplace and reduce turnover. To examine migrant workers’ attitudes toward their jobs, we conducted a survey of factory employees in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province. Our results show that job embeddedness significantly enhances these employees’ organizational commitment to their workplaces, and that greater organizational commitment significantly reduces turnover intentions. Meanwhile, when migrant workers are divided into two age groups (younger than 25 years and 25 years or older), we find that job embeddedness has significant positive effects on organizational commitment for only the younger group.

Capital control policies in China have significant and varied impacts on gross domestic product (GDP) growth distribution, particularly in mitigating downside risks. This column examines the heterogeneous effects of China's capital control indices on GDP growth distribution. The findings indicate that although aggregated capital control policies reduce the downside risks in the medium term, they may constrain the upswings of GDP growth in the short term. Notably, outflow control and resident transaction control indices exhibit pronounced short-term heterogeneous effects. The implications show that policymakers should strategically implement capital control measures to balance the benefits of reducing the downside risks with the potential costs of constraining economic growth during upswings.

We present new reference statistics for the degree of supply chain’s exposure to geographic concentration risk. The study’s net contribution is developing a metric that indicates network concentration in terms of the frequency of supply chain engagement with regions of analytical interest, in addition to the traditional approach of measuring value-added concentration by volume. The traditional input–output analyses are largely based on the volume concept, such as the trade in value-added indicator, whereas the current model explores a novel dimension of “frequency” in this analytical space.

In 2018, China disrupted global trade in waste plastic by banning imports. Exporters were forced to seek new destinations. The waste haven hypothesis says that net exports will grow to countries that are poorer and/or have weaker environmental regulations. In this research we ask whether plastic waste trade exhibits such a pattern, and how trade changed following China’s ban. Empirical analysis supports the waste haven hypothesis and shows that the ban exacerbated this pattern. It is likely that post-ban trade increases exceeded demand for waste as feedstock to recycled plastic production, thereby increasing likelihood of disposal in importing countries. Therefore, because importers generally have weaker environmental regulations, the new trade pattern may worsen the global plastic pollution crisis.

Birth spacing is essential for the physical health and socioeconomic outcomes of children and mothers. This study demonstrates that an experience of pregnancy loss, including miscarriage and stillbirth, can affect fertility behaviour and significantly shorten spacing intervals throughout the reproductive period. This study hypothesises that such a behavioural response is caused by a change in the probabilistic belief—how likely the mother perceives she is to lose a pregnancy—based on her fertility history and finds consistent results with the theoretical predictions. This study builds on a unique combination of several strands of literature to develop analytical frameworks. The results suggest that pregnancy loss can be a behavioural risk factor for maternal and infant health in high-fertility settings such as sub-Saharan Africa.

Researchers have recently become interested in the close associations between trust and subjective well-being (SWB) and the unique trends characterizing such connections. However, these relationships remain insufficiently understood in transition countries. The present study investigated the nuanced affiliations between trust and life satisfaction in transition countries. The analysis revealed that community-level trust enhances life satisfaction. Thus, the present study highlighted that trustworthy societies were important for superior SWB. Moreover, interpersonal trust was found to exert a greater influence on life satisfaction than institutional trust, and both effects were found to be higher in the former Soviet Union nations than in Central and Eastern European countries. These results indicate that regional characteristics could govern the effects of trust on life satisfaction. They also underscore the significance of understanding SWB and its determinants in specific contexts.

How does trade affect formal and informal jobs in developing economies? We estimate the impact of exports on employment in the formal and informal sectors by exploiting the European Union (EU)’s reform in rules of origin for duty-free market access, which produced a large positive shock to Cambodia’s garment exports to the EU (Tanaka and Greaney 2024). We find that the export shock caused large employment growth in formal garment establishments but had little effect on employment in informal garment establishments. The positive effect is pronounced for incumbent establishments and female workers. Thus, trade promotes employment disproportionately in the formal sector.

Xi Jinping’s administration strongly encourages judges to be professionalized under the political slogan of the “rule of law.” Thus, the question arises, are judges in China professionalized in the context of political science? Naito (2020) argues that the aim of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), as the CCP is the most highly-educated organization with a meritocratic political system, behind professionalization is the unification of the judges’ quality and their integration with the CCP. However, despite the CCP's promotion of legal professionalization, this study revealed that judges and the local people's court controversially maintained conservative behavior. More precisely, they prefer to maintain the status quo, whereas the CCP's policy and the law attempt to change the interest structure in which they participate.

Our recent study provides evidence based on economic modeling that in Indonesia, the negative economic impact of COVID-19 fell more heavily on rural households than is generally supposed. After the pandemic’s initial negative impact on urban employment, a second-round impact involved the temporary relocation of urban-based workers to rural areas in search of agricultural employment. We call this de-urbanization. It depressed agricultural wages and thereby harmed rural households, especially the poorest. These conclusions are supported by recent labor market data.

Many nations, especially the least developed countries, have taken significant efforts to align their legislation with the Intellectual Property (IP) rules set by the World Trade Organization under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). This Agreement establishes the minimum standards for protecting creations of the mind, such as inventions, literary and musical works, designs, and trademarks. Following these rules can increase the innovation, economic growth, and foreign investment. This article reviews how Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar are making changes to their IP systems to meet the TRIPS requirements. It focuses on recent developments and challenges associated with the TRIPS compliance.

In recent years, Ukraine has implemented a decentralization reform to rearrange the relationship between the central government and regional/local authorities. The core component of the reform was local amalgamation. Using analytical tools from the field of territorial politics, Romanova (2022) explores the impact of the reform on the congruence between the outcomes of parliamentary elections, regional (state) council elections, and local (city) council elections. The book compares the electoral performance of parties in these three types of elections, held before and after the reform implementation. It finds that the national and subnational electoral maps became increasingly dissimilar once the reform was finalized, but their increased incongruence did not undermine Ukraine’s political cohesion.

Since 2015, the Chinese government has actively promoted the Chinese Dietary Guidelines (CDGs), which target public health and sustainable food consumption and production. This research column shows that Chinese people’s dietary patterns still deviate from the CDGs. It also explores how reducing these deviations will influence environmental sustainability. Finally, it investigates the key driving factors behind the deviations. The results show that reducing deviations will positively affect the overall diet quality. However, the impact on environmental sustainability is complex. How to improve environmental costs should be discussed.

The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), unanimously endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in 2011, are a set of guidelines for states and companies to address human rights abuses in business activities. Governments are expected to formulate their National Action Plans (NAPs) to implement the UNGPs. This column discusses how and why Thailand became the first Asian country to launch its NAP in 2019. Criticized in a Universal Periodic Review by the UNHRC for its human rights abuses, the then military-led government of Thailand took the development of its NAP as an opportunity to address such criticism through strategic use of its international exposure.

Extreme weather shocks have occurred frequently owing to global climate change. Weather shocks deteriorate household welfare, such as poverty, food security, and health. Farmers often diversify their crops or incomes to cope with weather shocks. We find that weather shocks induce livelihood diversification. Moreover, livelihood diversification can improve household food security, but its effect is small, especially for poor households, implying that poor households have limited capacity to benefit from livelihood diversification.

Uganda implemented Universal Primary Education (UPE) in 1997, which eliminated primary school fees. Studies have found that the reform has improved education outcomes, particularly for girls, those in rural areas, and those from poor households. This study extends the existing findings by demonstrating that the reform also affected the brideprice practice. Our survey data reveal that longer UPE exposure is associated with a smaller likelihood of having a brideprice agreed upon at marriage. We conjecture that UPE increased female education and enhanced their economic opportunities, leading to greater bargaining power and reduced brideprice payment. The reduction can improve women’s welfare in Uganda, where brideprice is supposed to be returned to men upon divorce, thus making it difficult for women to choose marital dissolution even when their relationship turns sour.

In many developing countries, the revenue from crop sales serves to improves the rural household’s nutrition quality. However, depending on who controls agricultural income, the desired impact may not be realized. Using data collected in rural Burkina Faso, Nikiema and Sakurai (2021) showed that increasing the wives’ share of farm revenue increases food demand and dietary quality. Furthermore, the result shows that the effect size of wives’ share of farm revenue on the quality of nutrition is greater than the household’s per capita income. This suggests that women’s control over agricultural income is important for rural household food and nutrition security.

For Southeast Asian countries, the impacts of exporting fresh fruit to China appear to be different than exporting to Europe and North America. In fruit production networks centered on China, the weak power of supermarket retailers and the diminished weight of private standards yield more power to wholesalers and brokers. These characteristics of production networks provide smallholders access to export opportunities. Moreover, the spot-transaction nature of the networks encourages diverse Chinese entrepreneurs to invest individually in various network segments, and their repatriation may hinder capital accumulation in Southeast Asian production regions.

The Impact of Agglomeration Economies on Different Types of Firms in Vietnam

The rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is a Hindu nationalist party in India, over the last decade has been phenomenal. My research shows the process of the rapid expansion of the BJP in the most significant northern state, Uttar Pradesh, based on the aggregate data of elections and population data. The result confirms that the BJP’s phenomenal growth in the state has been due to its absorption of various peripheral castes/communities, which were traditionally support bases of the rival parties, into the BJP hold. Moreover, this change is observed more clearly in the areas where socioeconomic modernization is advanced.

National economic and technological development zones (NETDZs), an important innovation policy in China, play a significant role in promoting innovation. However, there are few empirical studies on their impact on innovation, especially green innovation. This study uses highly disaggregated micro-level data, including patent data, industrial firm data, and customs data to examine the impact of NETDZs on green innovation. The results showed that (1) NETDZs significantly promote green innovation, as measured by both patent quantity and quality; (2) the binding environmental indicators in China’s five-year plan enhance the promotional effect of NETDZs on green innovation; and (3) learning by importing, via both foreign direct investment and importing capital goods, is an important mechanism in the nexus between NETDZs and green innovation.

In many African countries, state power over land management does not always extend to every corner of its territory. Moreover, the state often acknowledges that customary laws govern rural common lands. This was the result of strategy of the ruling party in charge of running the state to garner political support in rural areas. How does the local political environment influence the implementation of land laws? My study of the case of Mozambique (Aminaka 2022) demonstrates that implementing land laws is heavily influenced by the political context.

This article overviews recent changes in the political elites of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China. Chen Quanguo, who led the detention of Uyghurs and other Muslims as secretary of the Party Committee of Xinjiang, was removed from office in 2021. Since Ma Xingrui’s appointment as secretary, repression in Xinjiang has eased. However, Ma also points to the continuation of “anti-terrorism” policies. Various re-education, work, and birth control measures—known in the West as forced incarceration, forced labor, and forced sterilization—are expected to continue under the new secretary.

Economic growth that exploits the benefits of globalization is the strength of the Turkish governing party, the Justice and Development Party (AKP). The AKP has deepened economic ties in globalization as an important tool of its foreign policy, which follows a free market economy and harmonization with the EU criteria. This study focuses on business associations, which have played important roles in the economic aspects of Turkish foreign policy, under the AKP administration.

In this study, we estimate the impact of decoupling on the global economy with the Institute of Developing Economies-Geographical Simulation Model (IDE-GSM), a computable general equilibrium model that was developed for both sectoral and within-country regional analysis. Depending on the extent of decoupling, the global economy would suffer from substantial income decreases. Moreover, there would be significant negative impacts on the gross domestic product for the Eastern (including China and Russia) and Western (including the United States) camps, while neutral countries, such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations countries and those in South America, would profit from the others’ disputes. The implication of the findings is that the more profound the conflict between the two camps, the greater the advantages of being neutral.

Many studies produced after the seminal work of Durkheim (1897) have documented a decline in suicide rates during wartime due to increased social integration. However, there remains a need to apply a rigorous statistical approach to determine whether this theory is valid in a modern context. Aida (2020) revisited this issue in the context of the Sri Lankan Civil War. The results showed that during wartime, suicide rates in the target districts were 43% to 52% lower than baseline rates. This finding suggests that even in the modern era, significant social upheavals lead to a decline in suicide rates.

As proposed by economist Mushtaq H. Khan, political settlements have widely been applied to political economy analyses of countries in sub-Saharan Africa (hereafter, Africa). By reviewing the original concept and causal mechanism of political settlements, this column suggests that several factors, which were excluded from the mechanism but nevertheless influence institutional outcomes, should be also considered to elucidate the development outcomes of African countries. Certain case studies that apply political settlements have seemingly shifted away from the causal mechanism of institutional outcomes at the country level, which was proposed in the original framework of political settlements by Khan. However, the latest development of the Political Settlements Dataset has revealed the potential to refocus on country-level outcomes and strengthen the causal mechanism.

Aside from the serious impact of the coronavirus pandemic, the Japanese economy has been experiencing sluggish growth for several decades, and its prospects are not favorable mainly due to its declining population. One effective way for Japan to revive its economy and achieve growth is to expand and intensify its economic relationship with fast-growing East Asian countries. Japan succeeded in establishing two regional free trade agreements—Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)—with these countries. Japan needs to play a role in setting up an effective monitoring system to ensure the implementation and enforcement of commitments by CPTPP and RCEP members. Due to the increased uncertainty in the world economy, Japan is expected to contribute to the reform of the World Trade Organization (WTO) for establishing a rule-based free and open trade environment at the global level so that WTO members can conduct business efficiently and achieve economic growth.

Historically, Egypt has enjoyed a long-standing hydro-hegemonic position in the Nile basin. However, major shifts in regional power structures have challenged Egypt’s domination over the Nile. This is particularly true for Ethiopia, as it began building the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) in 2011 without prior consultation with Egypt. The GERD resulted in a major dispute between the two countries. However, news coverage of the dispute almost entirely overlooks Sudan’s influence on shifting the balance of power within the Nile basin. This research aims to investigate the decline of Egypt’s hydro hegemony, the factors that resulted in the waning of the decades-long Egyptian Sudanese alliance, and Sudan’s role in the reconfiguration of the hydro political landscape in the Nile Basin.

Taiwan is not an official member of the United Nations but has been actively addressing climate change along with the United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It announced its official target in 2015, following the Paris Agreement, and submitted it to the secretariat of the UNFCCC. In March 2022, it further released its Net-Zero Emissions Roadmap and Strategy. Thus, the question emerges: why is Taiwan eager to address these issues? This article outlines three possible motivations, namely, climate impact, international participation, and economic development.

International nurse migration has increased recently in response to the growing global demand for nurses. India is among the major nurse-sending countries, and it fills the shortages in destination countries. However, the country itself is experiencing the shortage of nurses. Emigration from India is mainly explained by the gap between the private and public sectors in terms of remuneration, working conditions, and workplace environment in the country. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has further increased the demand for nurses. Unless the working conditions of nurses are improved and decent work is created in India, the country will continually remain a major nurse-supplying country and will present with shortages.

How can we map the zones of armed conflicts? Kikuta (2021) applied a machine learning method that flexibly accounts for various shapes of conflict zones and made a new open dataset—wzone—available for all countries for 1989–2019. The new dataset helps us better answer important questions about armed conflicts such as what their environmental impacts are. In fact, while Daskin and Pringle (2018) suggest that armed conflicts have devastating impacts on biodiversity, I do not find such a large impact with the wzone dataset. This finding implies that we need to understand “where” armed conflicts occur to answer “why” they occur. Moreover, the new method can potentially be applied to other mapping exercises such as for crime zones and the spread of infectious diseases.

This article overviews the patterns of technology accumulation by firms in the industrial robotics industry in China. To analyze the technological characteristics of the firms, I measure technological distances between the firms based on their patent applications. First, I find that Chinese firms move technologically closer to a first-mover firm to some degree. Second, they tend to develop both core and peripheral technologies to enhance the basic functions of technologies and product sophistication, respectively. These patterns represent the process through which the firms specialize in their new business.

When countries face adverse economic shocks, economic agencies (i.e., firms and governments) are expected to mitigate the negative impact. This study (Hashiguchi et al. 2021) examines how countries’ production and demand patterns change when tackling shocks, arguing that the answer depends on their resilience to economic shocks. This study uses the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s annual Inter-Country Input–Output tables from 1995 to 2011 to investigate how country-level final demand shocks relate to production and demand patterns changes. We found that, during the 2009 global economic crisis triggered by the burst of the US housing bubble, countries were more resilient to negative shocks if they could prop up the economy through the domestic service sectors instead of domestic goods and foreign sectors. The substitutability between goods and service sectors and domestic and foreign sectors is essential for understanding the potential risk to a country’s domestic economy from shocks abroad, including economic, environmental, health-related, or political.

More than a hundred countries have implemented a minimum wage. In developed countries, proponents and opponents of the policy have debated the issue of the minimum wage's effect on employment using a large amount of evidence and high-quality data. However, we do not have much evidence for developing countries. After reviewing the issue's background, we will examine a recent study in Indonesia that used longitudinal manufacturing firm data from 1994 to 2015. The study finds a negative effect of minimum wage increases on employment in the formal sector by comparing manufacturing firms with higher minimum wages after unexpected decentralization in 2001 to firms with lower ones.

Dowry is the transfer of cash, jewelry, and other valuable assets from the bride’s family to the groom’s family at the time of marriage. Dowry is prohibited in India and Bangladesh and restricted in Pakistan. However, these legal measures are not effective; in fact, the practice of dowry is widespread in South Asian countries. It is my argument that people are incentivized to continue observing the seemingly gender-discriminatory practice of dowry, despite its illegality. Simply banning dowry may lead to unexpected negative effects on women’s welfare. Dowry will likely only disappear when it is viewed as unnecessary. Women’s empowerment, specifically through participation in paid-work and guarantees of property rights, may be the key to discouraging the practice.

Predominant party systems (PPSs) are quite common, but relatively little attention has been paid to this type of democracy. Nearly half of consolidated democracies have had a predominant party system (Nwokora and Pelizzo 2014). To consolidate a　PPS, some political theories assume that an incumbent party will attempt to anchor voting behavior by ideological polarization. However, does this strategy actually work? In Turkey, the incumbent Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi: AKP) government led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan has campaigned with a focus on conservatives and nationalist voters. My analysis of the 2018 post-election survey reveals that the ideological polarization strategy was successful with conservatives, but not with nationalists (Hazama 2021). While conservatives who supported the incumbent party replicated their support, nationalists were less likely than other groups to repeat their support for the incumbent. Nationalists tended to punish the incumbent party more severely than conservatives for its poor economic performance.

Individuals who believe that their job is interesting work harder, have greater job satisfaction, and are less likely to quit their job. Job interestingness, i.e., how much one finds his/her job interesting, is expected to enhance voluntary learning in the workplace. Despite the importance of job interestingness, empirical studies on its determinants are scarce. This article explores this issue and indicates that the key determinants of job interestingness vary between countries or country groups in terms of their weight. A good relationship with management and colleagues is a very important determinant in Japan, whereas job autonomy is more significant in other high-income countries. A job’s economic meaning has much more influence in middle- and low-income countries. These results imply that the effective ways to make a job interesting are likely to differ across cultures, work organizations, and developmental stages.

The Geographical Simulation Model of the Institute of Developing Economies (IDE-GSM) estimates the following economic impact of the US-China trade war: −0.4% (of GDP) for the US, −0.5% for China, and +0.1% for East Asia (excluding China). Moreover, the electronics and electrical machinery sectors in both the US and China will suffer significantly. By contrast, the electronics and electrical machinery sectors in East Asia could benefit from this trade war. Although the US-China trade war benefits East Asian countries, for the time being, they are more vulnerable to US tariff increases than China, and it would be preferable to bring the US back into multilateral trade negotiations in a concerted effort.

Peru is an emerging international exporter of fresh fruits and vegetables (FFVs), with exports expanding rapidly in the past two decades. FFVs are primary products that have little value-added. However, delivering high-quality FFVs to the market at the right moment can add value to these products. Creating value chains to accommodate demand was key to industrial development based on the export of primary products. Counter-season production is necessary but not sufficient for Peruvian FFV exporters to be competitive. Individual efforts of Peruvian agribusiness companies combined with their collective actions to build the country’s solid phytosanitary capacity have made the country one of the world's emerging FFV exporters.

The development of information technology has enabled the digitalization of economic activity worldwide, and the recent COVID-19 pandemic has boosted this trend. Consequently, it becomes increasingly important to establish widely accepted international rules on e-commerce. This article discusses how the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement was reached among diverse member countries and draws implications for the ongoing competition for a global rule on e-commerce.

Increases in the international trade of secondhand goods are attributable to the mainstreaming free trade regime since the early 1990s and advancements in technology, especially the development and diffusion of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). The international trade of secondhand goods for reuse has the potential to conserve natural resources. However, many developing countries have prohibited the import of secondhand goods because of the possible negative impacts on the environment, such as recycling of nonreusable parts without pollution control, and on industrial development.

Sustainability standard schemes have been used globally to promote sustainable agricultural consumption and production for more than decades. Nongovernment organizations in Europe and the United States have created these globally recognized standards driven by the need for sustainable consumption. Furthermore, both public and private sectors in various countries have subsequently introduced local standards enhancing sustainable production. Consequently, growers, firms, and consumers have choices among multiple standards with different characteristics. Is the proliferation of standards beneficial or harmful to enhance sustainability? Previous studies do not fully address the roles of local standards. This study investigated the case of palm oil sustainability standards through a focus on a global standard and the counterpart local standards. Complementary roles of global and local standards depending on the market and producers are shown.

The governance of fertilizer quality is important to food policy because the prevalence of low-quality fertilizers discourages fertilizer use and stagnates agricultural productivity growth. This column discusses the current condition of fertilizer quality and describes the initiatives taken against the problem in Vietnam. We report that average fertilizer quality is fair, and farmers expressed no concerns over fertilizer quality—contrasting what has been reported for sub-Saharan Africa. Vietnam’s fertilizer market is governed by three initiatives: government regulations and controls through licensing, mandatory quality labeling, and random inspections; producers’ effort to maintain quality and brand through warranty and dealer certifications; and hierarchical social learning through which a farmer’s quality assessments about fertilizer quality are aggregated to retailers who then update product assortments on the basis of reputations. The importance of public regulations is highlighted through a discussion on how government and market initiatives interact and complement each other.

As developing countries join the global value chain, rising incomes make it easier for households to send children to school. However, rapid blue-collar job growth also reduces incentives for students to remain in school after reaching working age. In a new paper using data on children’s participation in the exam governing admission to upper-secondary schooling in Vietnam, we find that a more active labor market reduces propensity to continue schooling after Grade 9. The data come from some of Vietnam’s poorer and more remote provinces and so illuminate the challenges of educational development outside of major cities.

Legal prohibition is considered an indispensable first step for eradicating discriminatory cultural practices against women. However, game-theoretical analysis of the cultural practice of levirate marriage indicates that criminalizing it may in fact reduce quality of life among women. Levirate marriage stipulates widows should marry the male relative of their deceased husband; otherwise, deceased husband’s extended family would expel them. Therefore, when legally prohibiting discriminatory cultural practices, it is important to deliberate upon why those practices exist and whether criminalizing them would indeed improve women’s lives, given the existing legal, social, and cultural contexts. Other complementary policies should also be implemented to mitigate the possible negative consequences of legal prohibition.

As the Biden administration enters its second year, frictions between the US and China show no sign of abating and may even deteriorate further. Prospects for restoration of pre-trade war economic relations between the world’s two largest economies remain dim. Other Asia-Pacific economies are involuntarily affected by the policies of their largest trading partners. This note provides context by summarizing relevant aspects of the US-China conflict, and explores short and long run implications for trading partners with particular focus on spillovers to ASEAN economies.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused serious disruptions in education, potentially complicating industrialization, a long-standing challenge for developing countries. This column presents the risk of industrialization stagnation in developing countries due to poor education systems and the consequent low social mobility. Manufacturing automation, which may be accelerated further as a result of the pandemic, can assist developing countries in industrial upgrading. However, poor education systems limit the supply of labor with appropriate skills and make the welfare effect ambiguous, thereby widening the wage gap between skilled and unskilled labor. The growing fiscal burden caused by the COVID-19 crisis may leave small policy room, but improving education systems should be prioritized.

I believe that nothing is more problematic than empirical studies of the impact of FDI on the development of local industries in developing countries. Although the issue is of utmost practical importance, there are at least two major defects in most existing studies. As discussed by Murakami and Otsuka (2020), those studies statistically analyze the productivity effects of FDI on local firms. Researchers commonly assume, without testing, that the presence of foreign firms enhances the productivity of local firms, because of the spillover effect of the advanced knowledge of production from foreign firms. The spillover effect is the external effect, which is assumed to affect the level of productivity without conscious transaction of knowledge. Visual inspections of improved products manufactured by foreign firms, learning by reverse engineering of such products, and stealing ideas by poaching workers from foreign firms are examples of the spillover effects. The following questions arise: (1) Does the common statistical analysis make sense? and (2) Is the spillover effect really important?

Currently, one out of five women ages 20-24 has experienced child marriage globally. Child marriage is a phenomenon mostly found in Sub-Saharan African and South Asian countries: 28% and 34% of women ages 20–24 are married below the age of 18 in Sub-Saharan African and South Asian countries, respectively (UNICEF 2021). Child marriage is believed to have a detrimental impact on girls, such as depriving them of educational opportunities and making them vulnerable to intimate partner violence (Jensen and Thornton 2003; Field and Ambrus 2008). Child marriage is closely related to early pregnancy, which often causes severe health problems for mothers and babies (Barua and Kurz 2001). Due to these alleged detrimental effects, global efforts have been made to eliminate child marriage. Typically, many countries legally ban child marriage, but these legal measures are known to be ineffective.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has spread worldwide since 2020. Although the global economy has suffered from various types of negative shocks, such as financial crises or natural disasters, one of the most distinctive features of the COVID-19 pandemic is the forced adoption of infection prevention measures, such as lockdown and social distancing.

As of January 5, 2022, 12,480 satellites had been put into orbit, out of which 7,840 are still in space, and 5,000 are active.i About 63% of active satellites are for communication, 25% for earth and space science (e.g., weather), 9% for research, and 3% for navigation. Since the 1990s, the number of newly launched satellites has grown, but it jumped to more than 1,000 in 2000 and 2021, most of which belong to the USA (Figure 1). The Global Positioning System (GPS), which comprises about 30 satellites in orbit, is an indispensable part of the global IT business and almost any other business that claims to be smart. Authorities in the EU have started using satellites to monitor crop production and to check the validity of farmers' applications for subsidies.

Given the rapid development of GVCs over the past three decades, the “made in” label, which is typical of manufactured goods, attributing them to a specific economy, has become an archaic symbol of a bygone era, as most manufactured goods are now “Made in the World” (Antràs and Chor 2021).