Infodemic now: how do we know when the news is fake?

The COVID-19 crisis is exacerbated by the infodemic that ensued – false information about the virus is spreading rapidly worldwide. But how do we know when the news is fake, ask Darrin Baines (Bournemouth University) and Rob Elliott (Birmingham Business School)

A measure of trade induced adjustment in volume and quality space.

In this paper we contribute to the literature on the measurement of international trade flows. Specifically, we combine changes in the volume and quality in matched trade changes to present a simple new index together with a geometric framework that can be used to visualise changes in quality and volume simultaneously. We illustrate the usefulness of our simple extension with data for trade between Malaysia and China between 1994 and 2004

Intra-Industry Trade and Labour-Market Adjustment: A Reassessment Using Data on Individual Workers

We re-examine the relationship between intra-industry trade and labour reallocation, using individual-level data on manufacturing worker moves in the United Kingdom. The contribution of this analysis is twofold. First, we estimate the impact of intra-industry trade on worker moves between occupations as well as between industries. Second, we run individual-level regressions that allow us to control for worker heterogeneity. Our results suggest that intra-industry trade does have the stipulated attenuating effect on worker moves, both between occupations and between industries, but that this effect is relatively small compared to other determinants of labour reallocatio

Constructing a county-level environmental events dataset for China during the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368–1911)

This article builds on China’s rich recorded history to present a newly constructed dataset of environmental events at the county-level for the period 1368 to 1911. Essential to the dataset construction is the use of recently developed AI techniques, including new optical character recognition, lexical analysis based on machine learning, and word frequency analysis. The result is that environmental information was extracted from different sources, comprised of structured collections of printed historical records, and then combined and parameterized to construct a county-level environmental dataset that includes information on the incidence of cold spells, droughts, floods, and wind events. The dataset is validated and Geographic Information Systems are used to manage and present the spatially disaggregated data. The new data are expected to benefit future researchers looking to study historical environmental extreme events, or examine their impact on other aspects of Chinese economy and society.<br/

Cross-country risk quantification of extreme wildfires in Mediterranean Europe.

We estimate the country-level risk of extreme wildfires defined by burned area (BA) for Mediterranean Europe and carry out a cross-country comparison. To this end, we avail of the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) geospatial data from 2006 to 2019 to perform an extreme value analysis. More specifically, we apply a point process characterization of wildfire extremes using maximum likelihood estimation. By modeling covariates, we also evaluate potential trends and correlations with commonly known factors that drive or affect wildfire occurrence, such as the Fire Weather Index as a proxy for meteorological conditions, population density, land cover type, and seasonality. We find that the highest risk of extreme wildfires is in Portugal (PT), followed by Greece (GR), Spain (ES), and Italy (IT) with a 10-year BA return level of 50'338 ha, 33'242 ha, 25'165 ha, and 8'966 ha, respectively. Coupling our results with existing estimates of the monetary impact of large wildfires suggests expected losses of 162-439 million € (PT), 81-219 million € (ES), 41-290 million € (GR), and 18-78 million € (IT) for such 10-year return period events. SUMMARY: We model the risk of extreme wildfires for Italy, Greece, Portugal, and Spain in form of burned area return levels, compare them, and estimate expected losses

Green growth and electric vehicles: the role of recycling

The UK needs an electric vehicle (EV) battery recycling industry. This could strengthen the British EV supply chain and support the future development of UK-based gigafactories (large-scale battery factories) and electric vehicle production. Viet Nguyen-Tien, Robert Elliott, Gavin Harper, and Laura Lander discuss how a new clean tech industry can contribute to net-zero targets

The mammary gland spreading factor

Report on Department of Dairy Husbandry Research Project No. 28 Entitled 'Hormone-Enzyme Interrelations in the Mammary Gland'--P. [2].Digitized 2007 AES.Includes bibliographical references (pages 46-52)

Green roof seasonal variation: comparison of the hydrologic behavior of a thick and a thin extensive system in New York City

Green roofs have been utilized for urban stormwater management due to their ability to capture rainwater locally. Studies of the most common type, extensive green roofs, have demonstrated that green roofs can retain significant amounts of stormwater, but have also shown variation in seasonal performance. The purpose of this study is to determine how time of year impacts the hydrologic performance of extensive green roofs considering the covariates of antecedent dry weather period (ADWP), potential evapotranspiration (ET0) and storm event size. To do this, nearly four years of monitoring data from two full-scale extensive green roofs (with differing substrate depths of 100 mm and 31 mm) are analyzed. The annual performance is then modeled using a common empirical relationship between rainfall and green roof runoff, with the addition of Julian day in one approach, ET0 in another, and both ADWP and ET0 in a third approach. Together the monitoring and modeling results confirm that stormwater retention is highest in warmer months, the green roofs retain more rainfall with longer ADWPs, and the seasonal variations in behavior are more pronounced for the roof with the thinner media than the roof with the deeper media. Overall, the ability of seasonal accounting to improve stormwater retention modeling is demonstrated; modification of the empirical model to include ADWP, and ET0 improves the model R 2 from 0.944 to 0.975 for the thinner roof, and from 0.866 to 0.870 for the deeper roof. Furthermore, estimating the runoff with the empirical approach was shown to be more accurate then using a water balance model, with model R 2 of 0.944 and 0.866 compared to 0.975 and 0.866 for the thinner and deeper roof, respectively. This finding is attributed to the difficulty of accurately parameterizing the water balance model

Is flood risk capitalised into property values?

Economic theory suggests that, other things being equal, properties located within a floodplain should suffer a price discount. A survey of the existing evidence nonetheless reveals that this price discount lies anywhere between − 75.5% to a + 61.0% price premium. In this paper we summarise and explore the wide variation in the results to obtain ‘best’ estimates with which to guide policy. Results from our meta-analysis comprising 37 published works and 364 point estimates indicate marked differences between studies according to when and where they were conducted. For coastal regions the results show that properties located in the floodplain command higher prices; this finding is however likely to be caused by a high correlation between omitted coastal amenities and flood risk. There is moreover, evidence that publication bias affects the coastal flooding literature. Results from meta-regression analyses intended to uncover sources of heterogeneity confirm that controlling for time elapsed since the most recent flood is especially important. For inland flooding the price discount associated with location in the 100-year floodplain is − 4.6%. Although other estimates are defensible, we suggest this figure be used as a rule of thumb to determine the benefits of flood relief projects to household

Economic integration and the evolution of trade: a geometric interpretation of trade measures

The increase in global trade and the ongoing erosion of trade barriers makes the analysis of trade patterns one of the key areas in international economics. Much of the post-war expansion of trade took the form of intra-industry trade (IIT). This paper presents a simple geometric tool to analyse trade patterns specifically inter and intra-industry trade and the compatibility between levels and measures of IIT. The applicability our methodology is demonstrated using the UKs trade experience during the critical period of EU integration 1988-1997