Main drivers of regional value chains in CAFTA: Does trade facilitation matter?

In the last decades, economic globalisation and the progress of ICT have promoted the international division of labour and optimisation of the global value chain. Moreover, improvements in incentives such as lower tariffs and more efficient border crossings have boosted international trade. Under this background, regional and sub-regional economic cooperation organizations, such as free trade area (FTA), have been developing rapidly and attracting many academic attentions. As the fastest growing FTA in the world, CAFTA is now the largest FTA in developing countries. This study focuses on the value-added network of various industries in the trade process inside CAFTA, and tries to explore the impact of trade facilitation on the DVA trade network of CAFTA. The results show that in the trade network of CAFTA, the proportion of added value of domestic trade in total exports keeps increasing, and the returned added value (RDV) increases significantly. Singapore, Vietnam, and Thailand hold relatively high positions in the production network, while China has a relatively low position. On the other hand, China and Thailand become the main beneficiaries after the establishment of CAFTA, while Singapore and Malaysia play a lesser role in trading networks. The results also show that trade facilitation has a significant positive effect on the DVA-INTrex and RDV trade networks, indicating that trade facilitation can significantly increase the domestic indirect value added and returned value added in the trade process. Moreover, the business environment (bus) is the most important factor, with efficiency and transparency of border administration (cus), availability, and use of ICTs (ict) contributing to the improvement.

Dynamic Impacts of External Uncertainties on the Stability of the Food Supply Chain: Evidence from China.

The food supply chain operates in a complex and dynamic external environment, and the external uncertainties from natural and socio-economic environment pose great challenges to the development of the food industry. In particular, the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia-Ukraine conflict have further exacerbated the vulnerability of the global food supply chain. Analyzing the dynamic impacts of external uncertainties on the stability of food supply chain is central to guaranteeing the sustainable security of food supply. Based on the division of food supply chain and the classification of external uncertainties, the TVP-FAVAR-SV model was constructed to explore the dynamic impacts of external uncertainties on food supply chain. It was found that the impacts of external uncertainty elements were significantly different, the combination of different external uncertainty elements aggravated or reduced the risks of food supply chain. And some uncertainty elements had both positive and negative impacts in the whole sample period, as the magnitude and direction of the impacts of various uncertainties in different periods had time-varying characteristics.

Size-Controlled Synthesis of Pd Nanocatalysts on Defect-Engineered CeO2 for CO2 Hydrogenation.

The size effects of metal catalysts have been widely investigated to optimize their catalytic activity and selectivity. However, the size-controllable synthesis of uniform supported metal nanoparticles without surfactants and/or additives remains a great challenge. Herein, we developed a green, surfactant-free, and universal strategy to tailor the sizes of uniform Pd nanoparticles on metal oxides by an electroless chemical deposition method via defect engineering of supports. The nucleation and growth mechanism suggest a strong electrostatic interaction between the Pd precursor and low-defective CeO2 and a weak reducing capacity for low-defective CeO2, resulting in small Pd nanoparticles. Conversely, large Pd nanoparticles were formed on a highly defective CeO2 surface. Combined with various ex situ and in situ characterizations, a higher intrinsic activity of Pd for the CO2-to-CO hydrogenation was found on large Pd nanoparticles with higher electron density owing to their stronger H2 dissociation ability and H-spillover effects, as well as the larger number of oxygen vacancies generated in situ for CO2 activation under hydrogenation conditions.