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The extractive industries (EI) sector occupies an outsize space in the economies of many developing countries. Economists, public finance professionals, and policy makers working in such countries are frequently confronted with issues that require an in-depth understanding of the sector. The objective of this volume is to provide a concise overview of EI-related topics these professionals are likely to encounter. The volume provides an overview of issues central to EI economics; discusses key components of the sector's governance, policy, and institutional frameworks; and identifies the public sector's EI-related financing obligations. Its discussion of EI economics covers the valuation of subsoil assets, the economic interpretation of ore, and the structure of energy and mineral markets. The volume maps the responsibilities of relevant government entities and outlines the characteristics of the EI sector's legal and regulatory frameworks. Specific key functions of the sector are briefly discussed, as are the financial structures that underpin environmental and social safeguards; investment of public revenues generated from oil, gas, or minerals; as well as extractive-based economic diversification. The authors hope that decision makers in ministries of finance, international organizations, and other relevant entities will find the study useful to their understanding and analysis of the EI sector.

This paper examines the effect of skill-biased technological change as measured by computerization on the recent widening of U. S. educational wage differentials. An analysis of aggregate changes in the relative supplies and wages of workers by education from 1940 to 1996 indicates strong and persistent growth in relative demand favoring college graduates. Rapid skill upgrading within detailed industries accounts for most of the growth in the relative demand for college workers, particularly since 1970. Analyses of four data sets indicate that the rate of skill upgrading has been greater in more computer-intensive industries.

Decarbonisation is an essential response to the threat of climate change. To achieve Europe’s net-zero 2050 climate targets, radical technological and social changes are required. Lifestyle changes for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are an important component of complex systemic transformation. The typical behaviour of inhabitants in ecovillages is potentially more conducive to sustainable lifestyles than the current European standard lifestyle. This study explores the potential of ecovillagers' lifestyles to contribute to decarbonisation using the Multilevel Perspective (MLP) theoretical framework. The research data were obtained through the model tool EUCalc and an online survey of 73 ecovillage residents in 24 European countries. The results indicate that current ecovillagers’ lifestyles, regarding home, consumption, diet, and mobility, would continue to produce 40% fewer emissions per capita than the standard European lifestyle by 2050. The study identifies which ecovillage behaviours would produce the largest reductions in per-capita CO2eq emissions if adopted by society more broadly.

The revolution of 2020 in Belarus has often been described as a new 1989 and there is no doubt that the emancipatory appeal of the Belarusian protests is similar to the one that sustained the 1989 revolutions. But will building the democratic system—the major aspiration of the Belarusian protesters—follow the scripts of liberalization and westernization in evidence in other eastern and central European countries? Will self-determination in post-Lukashenka Belarus follow a scenario modelled on the patterns adopted by other east European and post-Soviet states, where ethnocentric national identities and the memory of victims of communism became distinctive markers of east European post-communism? Examining the symbolic dimension of the protest repertoire, this article demonstrates how the protests re-arranged the system of historical and cultural references that shaped the foundation of Belarusian collective memory and identity discourses since 1994. It reveals how a broad variety of actors engaged in contention activated a process of re-signification of cultural and political symbols and ideas and led to the formation of a blended socio-cultural imaginary, which integrates previously disconnected and competing projects and ideologies.

Traditional delivery route planning faces challenges in reducing logistics costs and improving customer satisfaction with growing customer demand and complex road traffic, especially in uncertain supply chain environment. To address these challenges, we introduce an innovative two-phase delivery route planning method integrating edge intelligence technology. The novelty of our approach lies in utilizing edge computing devices to monitor real-time changes in road conditions and dynamically adjust delivery routes, thereby providing an effective solution for efficient and flexible logistics. Initially, we construct a mixed-integer programming model that minimizes the total cost under constraints such as customer destinations and time windows. Subsequently, in the cloud-edge collaborative mode, edge computing devices are utilized to collect real-time road conditions and transmit it to the cloud server. The cloud server comprehensively considers customer demand and road condition changes and employs adaptive genetic algorithms and A-star algorithms to adjust the delivery routes dynamically. Finally, comprehensive experiments are conducted to validate the effectiveness of our method. The results demonstrate that our approach can promptly respond to changes in customer demands and road conditions and flexibly plan the optimal delivery routes, thereby significantly reducing overall costs and enhancing customer satisfaction.

We develop a methodology to construct nonparametric counterfactual predictions, free of functional form restrictions on preferences and technology, in neoclassical models of international trade. First, we establish the equivalence between such models and reduced exchange models in which countries directly exchange factor services. This equivalence implies that, for an arbitrary change in trade costs, counterfactual changes in the factor content of trade, factor prices, and welfare only depend on the shape of a reduced factor demand system. Second, we provide sufficient conditions under which estimates of this system can be recovered nonparametrically. Together, these results offer a strict generalization of the parametric approach used in socalled gravity models. Finally, we use China's recent integration into the world economy to illustrate the feasibility and potential benefits of our approach.

The Belarusian protest movement that started in August 2020 has been discussed from the point of view of strategy and objectives, and as the cradle of a new subjectivity. This essay goes beyond those two perspectives by looking at the regimes of engagement, developing in interaction with the material and technological environment, that have given the protests their distinctive style. The first part looks at coordination and representation at protest events and in producing protest symbols such as flags. The second part discusses the role of Telegram and the emergence of local protest groups. Even though the movement did not grow organically out of everyday concerns, there are some signs that it has begun to reassemble local communities from above. Yet there are also indications that politics continues to be seen as distinct from everyday life, making it uncertain that the movement will lead to a deeper transformation of society.

Belarusian women stand at the forefront of post-election protests. Their participation is seen as unprecedented and is often perceived as a “revolution with a female face.” It did not start as a feminist project, however, but rather as a reaction to mass-scale arrests of male participants during the first days of protests. At the same time, is it possible to characterize female involvement in women's chains of solidarity and then regular Saturday demonstrations as a “feminist project” when one takes into account the usage of traditional feminine images and feminine aesthetics during the protests? On the other hand, even the symbolic subversion of patriarchal stereotypes present on the posters seems to have its limits when violence is inflicted by the representatives of special military forces. This essay will examine the agentic nature of female protests and the ways of expressing dignity in times when a basic sense of security is lacking. I will look at situational individual acts of agency and how these acts characterize female participants of the protests as a group that is aware of its resources and power. The text will be based on the analysis of media discourse and visual materials.

Biochar is the carbon-rich organic matter that remains after heating biomass under the minimization of oxygen during a process called pyrolysis. There are a number of reasons why biochar systems may be particularly relevant in developing-country contexts. This report offers a review of what is known about opportunities and risks of biochar systems. Its aim is to provide a state-of-the-art overview of current knowledge regarding biochar science. In that sense the report also offers a reconciling view on different scientific opinions about biochar providing an overall account that shows the various perspectives of its science and application. This includes soil and agricultural impacts of biochar, climate change impacts, social impacts, and competing uses of biomass. The report aims to contextualize the current scientific knowledge in order to put it at use to address the development climate change nexus, including social and environmental sustainability. The report is organized as follows: chapter one offers some introductory comments and notes the increasing interest in biochar both from a scientific and practitioner's point of view; chapter two gives further background on biochar, describing its characteristics and outlining the way in which biochar systems function. Chapter three considers the opportunities and risks of biochar systems. Based on the results of the surveys undertaken, chapter four presents a typology of biochar systems emerging in practice, particularly in the developing world. Life-cycle assessments of the net climate change impact and the net economic profitability of three biochar systems with data collected from relatively advanced biochar projects were conducted and are presented in chapter five. Chapter six investigates various aspects of technology adoption, including barriers to implementing promising systems, focusing on economics, carbon market access, and sociocultural barriers. Finally, the status of knowledge regarding biochar systems is interpreted in chapter seven to determine potential implications for future involvement in biochar research, policy, and project formulation.

Research summary: Entry into dynamic environments can be challenging for firms. We study if, and under which circumstances, firms can use strategic flexibility to enter markets with variable demand. In the airline industry, we find broad support for our hypotheses. We observe less entry with more demand variation, more entry of more flexible firms, and that more flexible firms are more likely to enter markets with greater variation in demand. Furthermore, we find that this relationship is especially strong when variation in demand is harder to predict, which suggests that strategic flexibility is most valuable in unpredictable turbulent environments. Managerial summary: We show that firms in the airline industry that choose strategic flexibility over operational efficiency are more likely to enter volatile markets. This finding is especially true when future demand is difficult to forecast using historical data. We conclude that strategic flexibility can be a useful complement to investments in business analytics.