The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the everyday ways of life across the world. The objective of this study is to understand the impacts of nationwide lockdown restrictions on female workforce of New Zealand. To conduct this study three subsets were selected: working mothers, essential workers and women in high-risk industries. New Zealand has a gender segregated workforce, and more women on the frontline as essential workers who faced risks from COVID-19. A quantitative approach based on secondary data published by the Government of New Zealand was employed in this study. The analysis was carried out under three themes: family wellbeing, essential workers and women in high-risk industries. All the themes point to the fact that the working women of New Zealand indeed have been critically impacted compared with working men.

In China, the land arrangement behavior of over 160 million rural-urban migrant workers is closely related to the optimal allocation of rural land resources and sustainable development of urban and rural areas. Although previous studies show that social capital affects migrant workers’ land arrangement behavior, few empirical studies reveal the relationship between them, and the corresponding interventions remain unclear. Using survey data collected in Henan Province, China, and a multinomial logit model, this study empirically analyzes the mechanism behind the impact of social capital on migrant workers’ land arrangement behavior from the perspective of social capital. Results illustrate that social capital has a significant impact on the land arrangement behavior of migrant workers. The behavior is significantly correlated with the scale of migrant workers’ urban social networks, the degree of urban social trust, and urban belonging. More social capital in urban areas indicates a higher tendency for migrant workers to abandon their land contracting rights and become permanent urban residents. This study reveals the mechanism of social capital affecting migrant workers’ land arrangement behavior and provides a reference for decision-making with respect to guiding migrant workers’ land management behavior for other countries facing similar social problems.

The paper addresses the alternative policy options available to address the question of lives versus livelihood in an SIRD model augmented with a macroeconomic structure. An important contribution of the paper lies in designing the policy of lockdown dependent on the extent of the constraint on the health facilities. The paper supplements the literature with a less stringent version of the lockdown policy, viz. soft lockdown policy which is shown to be more attractive from a public policy standpoint and has actually been practised in many countries across the globe during the recent pandemic. Finally, the optimal policy derived on the basis of the level of lockdown and adjustment of the binding constraint on health facilities depends on the objective of policy makers contingent on the relative weights of lives versus livelihood.

Part of the present inflation is caused by the breakdown of globalization, in particular supply chains, part is caused by the Corona Pandemic, in particular lockdowns, part is caused by the Ukrainian War, part is caused by European sanctions, and part – and not the smallest one – is caused by the European Central Bank’s printing money by hook or by crook in the past and in the presence. This paper attributes inflation decisively to the overwhelming money creation by the European Central Bank.

The paper focuses on younger online viewers’ motivation to watch video game live streaming on live streaming platforms. Unlike existing scholars, it analyses younger online viewers’ watching motivation through a positive perspective and draws on the Play-Others-Downtime theory (P-O-D theory) and the motivation theory to establish the research model. By analysing 397 samples based on the variance-based structural equation modelling and partial least squares path modelling (SEM-PLS), the results present that younger viewers’ entertainment, social and leisure purposes positively affect their watching motivation. Control variables (i.e., gender, education background, and income level) demonstrate insignificant effects across the model. Considering the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic, watching video game live streaming is essential entertainment and social activities for younger adults. Future studies should identify the positive impact of video game live streaming and guide younger viewers to participate appropriately in this activity.

Objective: The paper, specifically examines whether the recently formed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) can potentially facilitate minimising the constraints to renewable energy goods exports at the regional level in Asia. Data, Methodology and Findings: Using the panel data from 11 RCEP members from 2006 to 2014, this study has applied the ‘meta frontier stochastic gravity frontier’ methodology and confirms that the establishment of RCEP has the potential to improve trade in renewable energy commodities within the RCEP region. Policy Implications: The policy implication is that when countries work together, it will lead to enormous benefits for national, regional, and worldwide prospects of a more sustainable energy future. Practical Policy Implications: In terms of practical policy implications, the developed RCEP member countries should actively engage in promoting R&D activities and protecting intellectual property rights concerning renewable energy production, which are essential for countries to integrate with the world market and to lift the export frontiers of both the developed and developing RCEP member countries to reach the unrestricted export of renewable energy technology.

Digitalization is nowadays one of the fastest developing processes. The adoption of digital technologies can provide innumerous opportunities for the organizations to evolve and gain competitive advantage by leveraging of technologies to respond to dynamic expectations and demands. Information about the country digitalization level is essential to decision makers in both public and private organizations. It can present insights on which areas need the most investment, and furthermore to gain feedback on the outcomes of these investments. For companies, it can create a certain predictability on which products and services will be required the most. To assess the evolution of this process in different countries, various indexes were proposed and employed by different corporations. The Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) and ICT Development Index (IDI) are used by public organizations. Digitalization Index (DiGiX) and Cisco Digital Readiness Index (CISCO) are used by private companies. Comparing two sectors highlights the most common factors of digital evaluation. Indexes are analyzed thoroughly by their structure, coverage, weights, methodology and ranking. The result of the practical work is a equivalence table which shows the percentage of their similarity. Additionally, a new digitalization index is proposed, based on the result of the previous comparison, which can be applied to analyze both public and private sector of the country’s digitalization level.