Project Management Learning: A Comparative Study Between Engineering Students’ Experiences in South Africa and the United Kingdom

This study explores how engineering students studying project management perceive their learning experiences. To facilitate an understanding of the constituent components of engineering students’ experiences and to understand how these experiences influence preferred learning styles, a comparative study of university students studying engineering in South Africa and the United Kingdom is conducted. The study finds no significant demographic differences in learning experiences across the two student cohorts. However, the South African cohort reports higher levels of overall experiences. They also report higher usage of online learning materials but lower levels of blended learning and individual critical evaluation skills experiences.     

Educational Development in South Sudan: Conscious Design or Spontaneous Order?

Educational development is key to the future prosperity of South Sudan. Officially the situation appears bleak with up to 50 per cent of primary‐aged children out of school, high reported dropout rates and poor attainment. Those involved in the development of education, government departments, international agencies, individuals and communities are each following one of two different approaches as they seek to extend the reach of education. The article suggests that these different approaches arise because those involved hold to either a conscious‐design or a spontaneous‐order model for educational development. The article looks at the recent development of schools in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, in the light of these two theories and finds, despite the rhetoric of the official reports, that most growth is organic and that most recent educational development is emerging spontaneously.     

新冠肺炎疫情对消费者信心的冲击效果与作用机制 ——基于中国35个城市居民问卷调查的分析

本文基于2018—2020年“中国城市生活质量调查”数据,以新冠肺炎疫情为一次准自然实验,利用双重差分法,检验新冠肺炎疫情对消费者信心的影响。研究发现：新冠肺炎疫情在一定程度上降低了消费者信心,但收入较高人群的消费者信心非但没有降低,反而升高了。另外,从政府信息公开角度进行机制检验发现,政府关于新冠肺炎疫情方面的信息公开会在一定程度上缓解疫情对消费者信心的负面影响。因此,应当理性地看待新冠肺炎疫情对消费者信心的影响,针对特定群体制定相应的政策措施;同时,充分利用各种信息公开渠道,缓解疫情对消费者信心的负面影响,提振消费者信心,激发市场活力。     

Agility,adaptability, and alignment: new capabilities for PSM in a post-pandemic world

Purchasing and Supply Management (PSM) was overwhelmed by a perfect storm during the Covid-19 emergency, in both the public and private sectors. Many organizations were caught unprepared, and it became evident that they did not have the capabilities needed to quickly react and respond to changes caused by the pandemic. This poses the questions of where and how PSM systems should evolve to better contribute to organizational responsiveness to crisis events in the future. In this Editorial, which introduces the “PSM learning from the pandemic: transforming for better crisis management” Notes and Debates special issue, the six contributions included in this issue are discussed. We relate the evidence included in the contribution to three critical capabilities of supply chains in the post-Covid-19 business environment – agility, adaptability, and alignment – and, in this editorial, we discuss how they can be conceptualized from a PSM perspective. From a theoretical perspective, we provide a starting point for future studies that want to focus on how these capabilities can be deployed in PSM, and how they impact the supply network design. From a managerial perspective, these definitions provide preliminary points of discussion on what organizations can do to enhance these capabilities in the future.     

The socio-economic determinants of COVID-19: A spatial analysis of German county level data

The study explores the association of socioeconomic, demographic, and health-related variables at the regional level with COVID-19 related cases and deaths in Germany during the so-called first wave through mid-June 2020. Multivariate spatial models include the 401 counties in Germany to account for regional interrelations and possible spillover effects. The case and death numbers are, for example, significantly positively associated with early cases from the beginning of the epidemic, the average age, the population density and the share of people employed in elderly care. By contrast, they are significantly negatively associated with the share of schoolchildren and children in day care as well as physician density. In addition, significant spillover effects on the case numbers of neighbouring regions were identified for certain variables, with a different sign than the overall effects, giving rise to further future analyses of the regional mechanisms of action of COVID-19 infection. The results complement the knowledge about COVID-19 infection beyond the clinical risk factors discussed so far by a socio-economic perspective at the ecological level.     

Adaptive market hypothesis: The story of the stock markets and COVID-19 pandemic

Since the level of markets’ information efficiency is key to profiteering by strategic players, Shocks; such as the COVID-19 pandemic, can play a role in the nature of markets’ information efficiency. The martingale difference and conditional heteroscedasticity tests are used to evaluate the Adaptive form of market efficiency for four (4) major stock market indexes in the top four affected economies during the COVID-19 pandemic (USA, Brazil, India, and Russia). Generally, based on the martingale difference spectral test, there is no evidence of a substantial change in the levels of market efficiency for the US and Brazilian stock markets in the short, medium, and long term. However, in the long term, the Indian stock markets became more information inefficient after the coronavirus outbreak while the Russian stock markets become more information efficient. Intuitively, these affect the forecastability and predictability of these markets’ prices and/or returns. Thereby, informing the strategic and trading actions of stock investors (including arbitrageurs) towards profit optimization, portfolio asset selection, portfolio asset adjustment, etc. Similar policy implications are further discussed.     

The impact of COVID-19 on the G7 stock markets: A time-frequency analysis

We examine the co-movement of the G7 stock returns with the numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases and causalities based on daily data from December 31, 2019 to November 13, 2020. We employ the wavelet coherence approach to measure the impact of the numbers of confirmed cases and deaths on the G7 stock markets. Our findings reveal that both the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases and the number of deaths exhibit strong coherence with the G7 equity markets, although we find heterogeneous results for the Canadian and Japanese equity markets, in which the numbers of COVID-19 cases and the deaths exhibit only a weak relationship. This evidence is more pronounced in the long-term horizon rather than the short-term horizon. Moreover, the lead-lag relationship entails a mix of lead-lag relations across different countries. We present the implications of these findings for both policymakers and the international investment community.     

转变方式完善体制 加快现代市场发展——论学习中共十七大报告

党的十七大在我党历史上第一次郑重地、鲜明地、完整地提出了高举中国特色社会主义伟大旗帜,并将其载入党章,强调中国特色社会主义伟大旗帜,是当代中国发展进步的旗帜,是全党全国各族人民团结奋斗的旗帜。文章通过学习中共十七大报告,从广西农垦的实际情况出发,论述了当前转变方式完善体制,加快现代市场发展的方向。     

后疫情时代我国数字经济高质量发展战略对策

数字经济是有效统筹疫情防控和经济社会发展的重要路径.目前,我国数字经济总体规模不断扩大,产业数字化成为我国数字经济的主引擎,我国数字经济有望呈现快速且高质量发展态势.我国数字经济之所以取得巨大成就,主要归因于国家高度重视与审慎包容支持、数字经济综合市场优势显著以及拥有一批能力较强的数字企业等.但我国数字经济领域仍存在产...