Review of emergent behaviours of systems comparable to infrastructure systemsand analysis approaches that could be applied to infrastructure systems

This paper makes contributions to the understanding of emergent failure in economic infrastructure by considering case studies and approaches from sectors comparable to infrastructure. The review starts by identifying existing ways of thinking about emergent failure and narrows down the scope to system-of-systems’ failures which are unexpected and arise when systems appear to be working normally. In order to target sectors similar to infrastructure, the characteristics of infrastructure sectors were characterised

Information transfer between stock market sectors: A comparison between the USA and China

Information diffusion within financial markets plays a crucial role in the process of price formation and the propagation of sentiment and risk. We perform a comparative analysis of information transfer between industry sectors of the Chinese and the USA stock markets, using daily sector indices for the period from 2000 to 2017. The information flow from one sector to another is measured by the transfer entropy of the daily returns of the two sector indices. We find that the most active sector in information exchange (i.e., the largest total information inflow and outflow) is the {\textit{non-bank financial}} sector in the Chinese market and the {\textit{technology}} sector in the USA market. This is consistent with the role of the non-bank sector in corporate financing in China and the impact of technological innovation in the USA. In each market, the most active sector is also the largest information sink that has the largest information inflow (i.e., inflow minus outflow). In contrast, we identify that the main information source is the {\textit{bank}} sector in the Chinese market and the {\textit{energy}} sector in the USA market. In the case of China, this is due to the importance of net bank lending as a signal of corporate activity and the role of energy pricing in affecting corporate profitability. There are sectors such as the {\textit{real estate}} sector that could be an information sink in one market but an information source in the other, showing the complex behavior of different markets. Overall, these findings show that stock markets are more synchronized, or ordered, during periods of turmoil than during periods of stability.Comment: 12 pages including 8 figure

Industry Herding in Crypto Assets

Peer reviewedPostprin

Complexity in Economic and Social Systems

There is no term that better describes the essential features of human society than complexity. On various levels, from the decision-making processes of individuals, through to the interactions between individuals leading to the spontaneous formation of groups and social hierarchies, up to the collective, herding processes that reshape whole societies, all these features share the property of irreducibility, i.e., they require a holistic, multi-level approach formed by researchers from different disciplines. This Special Issue aims to collect research studies that, by exploiting the latest advances in physics, economics, complex networks, and data science, make a step towards understanding these economic and social systems. The majority of submissions are devoted to financial market analysis and modeling, including the stock and cryptocurrency markets in the COVID-19 pandemic, systemic risk quantification and control, wealth condensation, the innovation-related performance of companies, and more. Looking more at societies, there are papers that deal with regional development, land speculation, and the-fake news-fighting strategies, the issues which are of central interest in contemporary society. On top of this, one of the contributions proposes a new, improved complexity measure

U.S. Trade in Services: Trends and Policy Issues

[Excerpt] This report provides background information and analysis on U.S. international trade in services. It analyzes policy issues before the United States, especially relating to negotiating international disciplines on trade in services and dealing complexities in measuring trade in services. The report also examines emerging issues and current and potential trade agreements, including the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA), and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP)

Sectoral dynamics of financial co-integration between BRICS and developed stock markets

This study examines the sectoral dynamics of co-integration between the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India China and South Africa) and developed stock markets, represented by Germany, Japan, the UK and the US, during the four phases of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), the three phases of the European Sovereign Debt Crisis (ESDC) and the UK Brexit crisis. The sample includes daily sectoral equity indices over the period January 2006 to December 2017. The study applies the ADCC GJRGARCH model to estimate the time-varying correlations across the nine countries within each sector and across sectors within each country, and assesses the conditional correlation dynamics during each of the phases of the three crisis periods. The results support the existence of financial co-integration across sectors and among all the nine countries during the GFC and ESDC. Only developed countries exhibit co-integration during the UK Brexit crisis. While some sectors were less affected during some of the crisis periods, on average, financials were the most affected during the GFC, ESDC and UK Brexit crisis. Further analysis on a crisis phase level reveals that most country pairs and sector pairs exhibit significant increases in conditional correlations in phase two of the GFC and ESDC, limiting the effectiveness of international diversification during this period. The results provide useful insights for policy makers and investors

Financialising the State : Recent development in fiscal and monetary policy

Understanding the nature of state financialisation is crucial to ensure definancialisation efforts are successful. This paper provides a structured overview of the emerging literature on financialisation and the state. We define financialisation of the state broadly as the changed relationship between the state, understood as sovereign with duties and accountable towards its citizens, and financial markets and practices, in ways that can diminish those duties and reduce accountability. We then argue that there are four ways in which financialisation works in and through public institutions and policies: adoption of financial motives, advancing financial innovation, embracing financial accumulation strategies, and directly financialising the lives of citizens. Organising our review around the two main policy fields of fiscal and monetary policy, four definitions of financialisation in the context of public policy and institutions emerge. When dealing with public expenditure on social provisions financialisation most often refers to the transformation of public services into the basis for actively traded financial assets. In the context of public revenue, financialisation describes the process of creating and deepening secondary markets for public debt, with the state turning into a financial market player. Finally, in the realm of monetary policy financial deregulation is perceived to have paved the way for financialisation, while inflation targeting and the encouragement, or outright pursuit, of market-based short-term liquidity management among financial institutions constitute financialised policies

What are the determinants of producer services FDI in China? Aggregate and sub-sectoral data analyses

This PhD thesis joins a vibrant conversation in a vastly under researched area pertaining to the determinants of producer services foreign direct investment (FDI). It begins by extensively revisiting the existing literature and discussing critically gaps from past study to then adopt a quantitative research method assisted by secondary data collected from various databases. The research question that this thesis addresses is: “What are the determinants of producer services FDI in China? Aggregate and sub-sectoral data analyses”. With this aim in mind, this thesis employs aggregate as well as provincial and sub-sectoral data obtained from the CEIC Data’s China Premium Database, National Bureau of Statistics of China, Provincial Statistical Yearbooks, Ministry of Commerce of China, Ministry of Transport of China, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology as well as a range of other relevant data drawn from national and provincial sources.China is exhibiting an enormous amount of economic and urban development accompanied by a transformation from its past manufacturing-focused economy towards one based on producer services. The conceptual framework developed for this research is guided by the identified research gap found in the literature on the determinants of FDI. The methodology employed is the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) cointegration approach and panel data regression techniques to quantitatively investigate the determinants of Chinese producer services FDI at the aggregate and sector-disaggregated level.This research has revealed that there is a significant difference between the determinants of aggregate FDI and Producer Services FDI (PSFDI). The empirical evidence demonstrates that in contrast to the general influencing factors determining aggregate FDI (e.g., GDP, trade openness, low wages and environmental quality), high wages and research intensity are strikingly discovered to have a notable influence on determining PSFDI inflows to China. The evidence captured contends that following appropriate strategies and policies to specifically foster the attraction of PSFDI is of paramount importance for Chinese regulators. Collectively, the main novel findings of this research that make a significant contribution to knowledge rest with a broader understanding of the newly identified determinants of PSFDI inflows in China through a rigorous, evidence-based scientific process of inquiry. The thesis’ contribution adds to ongoing literature by accentuating that China’s aggregate FDI attraction differs from PSFDI’s attraction and that stimulating PSFDI inflows requires different policy measures. The pivotal implication for Chinese policymakers is to develop appropriate policies specifically targeted at attracting inward PSFDI and to implement sub-sector specific policies to encourage PSFDI in those sub-sectors most susceptible to attract PSFDI