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With the expansion of social economy, there is an urgent need for innovative talents, especially college students with innovative thinking and innovative consciousness, which is an important intellectual support and source of social progress and economic and industrial transformation and upgrading. However, college students’ innovation and pioneering are faced with many challenges. The integration of big data analysis and innovation and pioneering helps to realize their complementary advantages. Based on this, this paper first analyses the concept and connotation of college students’ innovation and pioneering from the perspective of economic transformation, and then gives the cultivation strategy of college students’ innovation and pioneering based on big data analysis.

In the economic history of twentieth-century Poland, two periods merit particular comparison: the interwar years and the time of systemic transformation. In 1918 and 1989, the Polish economy faced the formidable challenge of constructing a competitive economic order. Despite the temporal distance and substantial differences separating these two turbulent historical episodes, they share a common feature – strong destabilizing tendencies in the monetary sphere. The article aims to compare these two periods through the lens of the ordoliberal principle of stable money. Ordoliberalism regards this principle as necessary for establishing and maintaining a competitive economic order. The article employs a comparative analytical method, drawing on an institutional approach and the theoretical framework of the ordoliberal competitive order. The analysis reveals that in both cases, monetary policy played a fundamental role in overcoming inflationary crises and restoring confidence in the state and the market. In both periods, efforts were made to ensure financial stability through the institutional establishment of independent central banks. Despite elements aligned with ordoliberal thinking, both cases lacked the complete embedding of monetary policy within a long-term, normative vision of economic order.

The article engages in the debate between the big-bang and grad-ualist approaches to economic transformation in Poland after the collapse of communism. It presents the major arguments behind both strategies and reviews the empirical evidence, finding that countries that adopted the big-bang strategy performed better in the long-run. The paper challenges two main grad-ualist’s criticism of radical reforms in Poland, i.e., that the costs in the form of the so-called transformation recession were excessive, and that the big-bangers neglected institutions. In reality, in countries with radical reforms more institutional changes happened and the welfare costs were lower than in countries with gradual reforms, and these costs were also lower than commonly believed. Last but not least, the article argues that the main problem of gradualism is its “institution first” approach, which does not stand up to scrutiny.

At present, China’s economic development has entered a “new normal.” Exploring industrial ecological efficiency (IEE) in the background of economic transformation is of great significance to promote China’s industrial transformation and upgrading and achieving high-quality economic development. Based on the super-efficiency DEA model, this study evaluated the IEE of cities in the Yellow River Basin from 2008 to 2017. Exploratory spatial data analysis methods were used to explore the spatial-temporal evolutionary characteristics, and a panel regression model was established to explore the influencing factors of IEE. The research results showed that the IEE in the Yellow River Basin exhibited an elongated S-shaped evolutionary trend from 2008 to 2017, and the mean IEE of cities presented a trend, whereby Yellow River Basin’s regions could be ranked in the following order: lower reaches > middle reaches > upper reaches. There was significant spatial autocorrelation of the IEE in the Yellow River Basin, and the hot and cold spots showed an obvious “spatial clubs” phenomenon. The results of panel regression show that the influence factors of IEE in the Yellow River Basin showed spatial heterogeneity in their effect.

The article addresses the issue of assessing the potential for applying the conception of smart specialization in Ukraine, using the Cherkasy Region as an example. This study involved the use of methods such as generalization, systematization, analysis, synthesis, as well as monographic and tabular methods, along with the application of artificial intelligence (AI) tools. It is highlighted that smart specialization is an efficient tool for regional development, actively used in the design and implementation of the EU regional policy. The main goal of smart specialization is the economic transformation of a region based on «entrepreneurial discovery», which entails identifying unique opportunities to combine existing resources and the region’s competitive advantages. It has been determined that the «cornerstones» of this process are localization, prioritization, and the involvement of stakeholders – the State, business, academia, and civil society. Based on a synthesis of research results on the assessment of the implementation of smart strategies by the EU regions, it was concluded that these strategies are relevant and effective. Emphasis was placed on the fact that the most active role in implementing a smart specialization strategy belongs to government institutions and academia. It was noted that the process of developing and implementing smart strategies needs improvement, primarily through increasing the involvement of stakeholders such as civil society and business. It was stressed that when applying smart specialization as part of the regional development planning methodology, the Ukrainian context must be taken into account. Based on the available data for 2021–2023, it was concluded that the level of implementation of project ideas in the defined areas of the Cherkasy region’s smart strategy – «Innovative Agrotechnologies» and «IT Industry Development» – is low. Using the AI tool (Gemini), potential directions for smart specialization were identified that would prevent the «freezing» of the existing economic structure of the Cherkasy region and, instead, promote the pursuit of «entrepreneurial discovery». For the Cherkasy region, the following smart directions were determined: «Agro-Innovations and Biotechnology», «Information-Computer Biotechnology», «Industrial Leadership», and «Tourism and Creative Industries». It is recommended that further research focus on a more in-depth analysis within a specific direction of the Cherkasy region’s smart specialization, which involves using up-to-date data on the performance of economic entities.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to propose and verify the influence mechanism of various kinds of infrastructure investment on farmers' income in rural China. It further analyzes the effect of rural infrastructure investment on rural economic transformation.Design/methodology/approachThis research is used to GMM model to verify the relationship between infrastructure investment and farmers' income; furthermore, the mediating effect model is used to verify the linear conduction mechanism, and panel threshold model is used to verify the nonlinear conduction mechanism.FindingsThe results show that: (1) Rural infrastructure investment can indirectly affect farmers' income by changing land efficiency and land use structure; (2) The impact of infrastructure investment on farmers' income is nonlinear; (3) Increasing infrastructural investment of productivity and transportation will contribute to accelerating the transformation of rural economy.Originality/valueThis paper expands the research on the impact of rural infrastructure investment on farmers' income; it analyzes the inner mechanism and enriches the research contents in this field; the influence of various infrastructure investment on rural economic transformation is further discussed; it provides policy suggestions and theoretical basis for accelerating the transformation of China's rural economy.

We study the relationship between educational inequality, income inequality and economic transformation using data of 20 OECD countries from 1870 to 2016. Our results show that educational expansion policies increase income inequality in the long run, while having no significant effect on the short run. The structural transformation suggested by Kuznets (1955) explains this potentially counter intuitive result, where contemporary policy, given its focus on the importance of increasing participation and expanding education, must be predicated on the notion that education expansion should decrease income inequality. We quantify the impact of educational inequality on employment in different sectors and find that education expansion promotes the structural transformation towards a higher wage disparity sector. Particularly, expanding education increases the employment in the service sector and reduces the employment in the agriculture sector. Overall, our findings suggest that educational expansion policies play an important role in economic development via promoting the structural transformation, though this leads to higher income inequality. That education expansion is ineffective in reducing income inequality, and instead exacerbates it in the long run, requires significant policy revision despite the popularity of such policies.

This paper discusses the regional economic development of Yogyakarta, a former Indonesian capital city carrying dynamic change over the past forty years. Government policy to build massive infrastructure was crucial to starting the agglomeration of Yogyakarta as a central city. According to the New Economic Geographic perspective, this paper shows that Sleman, as a medium-level suburban area becomes a shadow urban for Yogyakarta, whereas the urban Yogyakarta and Sleman suburban have become indifferent and borderless over recent years. Spatially, this economic transformation indicates a shifting perception of economic power among the regions. This paper examines the economic development in urban Yogyakarta using data triangulation in analysis. The finding shows that their Gross Regional Domestic Product (GRDP), economic activities, and regional populations were increasingly dispersed into its suburban areas. Thus, distributing potential markets all over regions should be concerned in planning and regional development in Yogyakarta. This argument is consistent with the spirit of inequality alleviation between urban and suburbs toward a convergent economy.