This study examines the impact of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which began on February 24, 2022, on natural gas prices and supply security in major global markets. Six months after the conflict's onset, natural gas prices surged by an average of 78.65% across international markets. Notably, prices in the European Union, Russia, the United Kingdom, Japan, and South Korea saw substantial increases, while price hikes in China, the United States, and Australia were comparatively smaller. Despite these price fluctuations, the security of natural gas supply in key international markets remained largely unaffected. Using the Differences-in-Differences (DID) method, the study analyzed the conflict's impact on supply security, employing a mediation effects model to examine the roles of supply, demand, and price. The findings reveal that the conflict significantly reduced natural gas supply security, with negative effects on both supply and demand, although price changes did not mediate this reduction in supply security. Furthermore, the regional impact on supply security was minimal, likely due to the high integration of the global natural gas market. Overall, the Russia-Ukraine conflict notably influenced natural gas supply security by affecting supply and demand factors.

Forty-five UK universities were approached, drawn from 21 universities whose client technology/knowledge-transfer firms perform consistently well (category 1 universities), and 24 universities whose client technology/knowledge-transfer firms perform consistently poorly (category 2). Contact was established with staff in the Technology Transfer Office (TTO) or similar department, resulting in 72 persons identified as either “leading” TTO staff or “operational” TTO staff. These individuals were subject to semi-structured interviews around a 10-point questionnaire to arrive at consensus opinions. Results indicate that independently of whether the university is regarded as “entrepreneurial” or not, the TTOs of category 1 universities are more ambidextrous than those of category 2 universities.

Using data from the Japanese government bonds and stock markets, this study examines the predictability of Japanese recessions based on a probit model with instrument variables. By decomposing the term spread into the expected short-term interest rate and the term premium, this study analyzes the relationship between the components of the term spread and recessions. The results show that the predictive power of the term spread for recessions has declined since 1999—when Japan began employing an unconventional monetary policy. Additionally, stock market capitalization relative to nominal GDP is a useful predictor of recessions.

The use of digital technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics, or smart devices can be expected to go hand in hand with higher productivity and lower trade costs, and, therefore, to be positively related to export activities. This paper uses firm level data for manufacturing enterprises from the 27 member countries of the European Union to shed further light on this issue by investigating the link between the digitalization intensity of a firm and extensive margins of exports. We use a new machine-learning based regression method, Kernel-Regularized Least Squares (KRLS), which effectively handles non-linear relationships in models and does not impose any restrictive assumptions for the functional form of the relation between margins of exports, digitalization intensity, and any control variables. We find that firms which use more digital technologies do more often export, do more often export to various destinations all over the world, and do export to more different destinations.

We propose an open-access innovation index for the U.S. states. This index was built by classifying into four core areas the twelve more important indicators, inputs, and outputs, that are widely accepted in the literature as the most relevant for measuring innovation. We consider the indicators aggregated in the areas of human capital and business environment as the inputs that create knowledge and influence the promotion of innovation, while those in areas of engagement and efficiency as the outputs that are all those outcomes and improvements related to the innovation process. As an example of potential uses of our index, we ran a basic econometric experiment using the economic growth rate as the dependent variable. Despite the results being qualitatively consistent with the literature, we suggest further research using our index and other methodologies. We included in the appendix the overall index score and ranking from 2000 to 2015.

This study documents the relationship between economic freedom and unauthorized immigration to the U.S.A. and tries to answer a still-in-debate question, what motivates people to unauthorizedly migrate? Using the generated instrument variables methodology, and a data panel of 15 countries and 16 years, the endogenous variable is the gap in economic freedom between the country of origin and the U.S., and the dependent variable is the unauthorized immigrant’s growth rate. The results show that for each 10% improvement in economic freedom in the country-of-origin unauthorized immigration decreases around 7%. Estimations are robust even after using other covariates and external instruments. The main conclusion is that economic and social factors play a significant role in shaping migration patterns and that the difference in economic freedom between the country of origin and the U.S. plays a fundamental role in deciding to unauthorizedly migrate

This paper shows mainly the following results. 1) The debt to GDP ratio cannot diverge to infinity, that is, fiscal collapse is impossible. The necessary condition for this result is that the propensity to consume from the asset is positive. 2) The divergence of the debt to GDP ratio is prevented by inflation when the interest rate on government bonds is considerably higher than the real growth rate, and the inflation rate which is sufficient to prevent divergence of the debt to GDP ratio is smaller than the interest rate on government bonds. Only an inflation rate slightly greater than the difference between the interest rate on government bonds and the sum of the real growth rate and the propensity to consume from the asset is required. This inflation is not caused by policy but occurs naturally.

Nigeria, as an import-dependent economy, has seen its inflation rate rise over the years, which might be ascribed to structural causes and imported consumer products. The Autoregressive distributed lag model was used to determine the competitiveness of domestic and foreign prices. In the short run, domestic and international pricing complement each other, but in the long run, they may achieve some level of competitiveness. The currency rate has a considerable and beneficial impact on consumer spending. The result could also be explained by customers' high desire for foreign items.

We examine the relationship between labour market flexibility, as measured by employment protection legislation (EPL), and long-term economic growth in developed economies from 1995 to 2022. We consider conflicting viewpoints on whether rigid labour market regulations hinder or promote economic growth. Employing a cross-country regression model, controlling for factors including initial GDP per capita, capital formation, human capital, research and development, and indicators of macroeconomic performance, we find that only initial income level and capital formation significantly influence long-run growth in real per capita GDP. EPL has no significant impact in the long run, challenging the pre-2000 advocacy of labour market deregulation by major international organisations. We conclude that policy should focus on supporting the investment decisions of the private sector without distorting market mechanisms.

Recently, some authors have found derivations and applications of the golden ratio in economics science. Based on previous models of Financial Gravity (FG) and generalizing them, this paper proposes the maximization of pure flows after charges as a way for applying the golden ratio in the sales-costs of production ratio in competitive equilibrium, leading to an optimal unitary charge of 0.2361… with many economic applications in monetary economics as well as in finance, public economics and taxation, migration flows, VAT on goods and services and commercial trading. Other applications are also suggested for further research. This paper can be useful for mathematical and applied economists, public financiers, bankers and policy and lawmakers.