Building Resilient Value Chains After the Impact of the COVID-19 Disruption: Challenges for the Coffee Sector in Central America

Coffee is an important agricultural sector in Central American, directly employing over 1.2 million people in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. Although export revenues from coffee trade have an overall positive effect on the gross domestic product (GDP) of these countries, poverty still prevails. The COVID-19 pandemic has placed additional pressure on the sector which is vulnerable to fluctuations in the international coffee prices, low productivity levels, and climate change effects and damages caused by pest and diseases. This paper examines the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and analyzes if the sector is resilient to withstand unexpected external shocks such as the pandemic and the hurricanes which impacted the region in the last months of 2020. The capacity to absorb, adapt, and/or transform to these shocks was assessed from the perspective of small-scale coffee farmers, traders, exporters and the entire sector in two time periods—immediately after the start of the pandemic and after the coffee harvest. Although the actors in the coffee value chain absorbed these shocks and could withstand them, adaptation to the disruptions has been challenging for small-scale farmers. Despite the vulnerability to unexpected external shocks, results indicate that a long-term transformation of the sector to build resilience is likely to be slow.

Determinants of Regional Economic Resilience to Economic Crisis: Evidence from Chinese Economies

The severity of the 2007–2008 economic crisis and the spatial heterogeneity of its impact have accelerated the study of regional economic resilience. The economic crisis has affected most parts of the world, and its impact is highly heterogeneous within China. The aim of this study was to explore the determinants of regional economic resilience across 284 Chinese cities from 2003–2018. Both nation-based and province-based regional economic resilience were examined. A multilevel logistic regression model was established, finding a disparity of provincial effects on regional performance during the economic crisis. Regional economic resilience is significantly affected by provincial trajectories, economy size, and resources. There are five significant determinants of economic resilience: income inequality, innovation, government intervention, human capital, and financial development. The results provide evidence for the government to design region-based policies, taking into consideration the size and the resources of the region’s economy to build a resilient wall to defend against external shocks and to form a basis for sustainable development.

External Shocks and Their Transmission Channels in Nigeria: A Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium Approach

The study examines the sources of external shocks and investigates their transmission channels in Nigeria using the trade-weighted variables from the country’s five top trading partners. Based on the assumption of the small open economy model, the study adopts the New Keynesian Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium Model on quarterly data between 1981 and 2018 using the Bayesian estimation technique. Findings from the study reveal that external shocks have a temporary and short-lived effect on the Nigerian economy. In addition, the article shows that oil price, foreign output, and foreign inflation shock have positive impacts on output gap and inflation, while the impact of foreign interest rate shock on the output gap and inflation is negative and not significant. The study also reveals that external shocks collectively explain 86% and 39%of total fluctuations in the output gap and inflation, respectively. Lastly, the study finds that external shocks transmit to the Nigerian economy via different channels. The study, therefore, concludes that terms of trade and exchange rate channels are the dominant transmitters of external shocks in Nigeria. Based on the findings from the study, important policy implications are highlighted.

On the Safe-Haven Ability of Bitcoin, Gold, and Commodities for International Stock Markets: Evidence from Spillover Index Analysis

Stock market is susceptible to various external shocks for its tight dependence on economic fundamentals, financial speculation, and fragile emotions in massive traders, making it a very risky market for investors. In this paper, we aim to identify whether commonly recognized safe-haven assets, that is, bitcoin, gold, and commodities, can provide investors with effective hedging utility in international stock markets, especially during periods of extreme market turbulence. By using the spillover index method based on the TVP-VAR model, we find that firstly, bitcoin, gold, and commodities can only offer weak hedging effects on stock markets. Furthermore, their abilities to act as a safe haven are ranked as: commodities > gold > bitcoin. Secondly, in general, we have observed the increasing hedging ability of these safe-haven assets in times of extreme market turmoil. Thirdly, among international stock and safe-haven asset markets, the world and the developed stock markets act as the net spillover transmitters, while bitcoin, gold, and commodities are the net recipients. Lastly, the total spillover effects are time-varying and increase significantly after the outbreak of extreme events.

External and Internal Shocks and the Movement of Palm Oil Price: SVAR Evidence from Malaysia

Movements in palm oil price give important signals to various stakeholders of the palm oil industry in Malaysia. Thus, understanding external and internal factors that may affect the palm oil price is vital to the industry players for sustainability of their activities. This study investigates relative importance of external and internal shocks on the movement of palm oil price in Malaysia. Employing a structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model on quarterly data from 1990 to 2019, the findings reveal that external shocks are more dominant in affecting the palm oil price. Shocks to the crude oil price, the prices of substitution goods (soybeans oil, rapeseed oil, and sunflower oil), the world palm oil price, and foreign income significantly affect the palm oil price in the short and medium run. The results also indicate that a shock to soybean oil price has a more profound effect on the palm oil price than a shock to rapeseed oil or sunflower oil prices, respectively. Likewise, shocks to incomes from India as well as from Netherlands create greater impacts on the palm oil price than a shock to income from the other trading partners, respectively. The study has shown the importance of external factors in affecting the palm oil industry.

Preprints & Pandemics: Interventions into the Dynamic Scholarly System of Scholarly Communication

The COVID-19 pandemic is an exemplar of how scholarly communication can change in response to external shocks, even as the scholarly knowledge ecosystem is evolving rapidly, and many argue that swift and fundamental interventions are needed. However, it is much easier to identify ongoing changes and emerging interventions than to understand their immediate and long term impacts. This is illustrated by comparing the approaches applied by the scientific community to understand public health risks and interventions with those applied by the scholarly communications community to the science of COVID-19. There are substantial disagreements over the short- and long- term benefits of most proposed approaches to changing the practice of science communication, and the lack of systematic, empirically-based research in this area makes these controversies difficult to resolve. We argue that the methodology of analysis and intervention developed within public health can be usefully applied to the science-of-science. Starting with the history of DDT application, we illustrate four ways complex human systems threaten reliable predictions and blunt ad-hoc interventions. We then show how these four threats apply lead to the last major intervention in scholarly publication -- the article publishing charge based open access model -- to yield surprising results. Finally, we outline how these four threats may affect the impact of preprint initiatives, and we identify approaches drawn from public health to mitigate these threats.

Transformation of the Cosmetic Industry Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic that occurred caused external shocks to every company, without exception, companies engaged in the cosmetic sector. This study aims to analyze the company's external factors that affect the strength of the company's external side and assess whether there is a potential for market development. This study uses a qualitative approach using PESTEL analysis. Data were obtained from interviews with resource persons related to cosmetic products (facial serum) and also from literature in the Jabodetabek area. This study resulted in a key success factor that can be adopted by businessman, namely understanding the behavior of cosmetic consumers, especially facial serum. By understanding consumer behavior, businessman can determine appropriate strategies according to each consumer group and can also improve the trademark performance of each facial serum business actor. In addition, the importance of innovating, transforming, and adapting quickly to a phenomenon (in this case the Covid-19 pandemic) makes business not stagnant, continues to grow and is able to capture new market potential. Keywords: cosmetic, Covid-19, facial serum, key success factor, PESTEL analysis.