To increase inter-region connectivity, the Indonesian government initiated infrastructure projects such as toll roads, airport, highways, as well as agriculture ones throughout the countries. One of the big projects in road infrastructure was the Cikampek–Palimanan (Cipali) toll road in West Java with a budget of more than USD1 billion which started to operate in July 2015. This paper is aimed to evaluate the impact of the toll road on accessibilities, trades, and investments in the region it traverses. To carry out the analysis, we used qualitative approach, difference-in-difference approach, and ANOVA, utilizing three kinds of data. The first data is collected from a survey of 331 small-medium enterprises (SMEs) in the logistics and the hotel and restaurant industries. The second one is bank loan data sourced from Bank Indonesia, while the third one is investment data from Investment Coordinating Board of Indonesia (BKPM).
After two years of its operation, Cipali toll road has increased accessibility, mobility, trade, and investment in the region it traverses. The travel time was reduced by 39%, while the cargo volume of the local businesses increased by 30% to 40%. These led to an improvement of wholesale trade volume in almost all regencies. However, SMEs in the hotel and restaurant industry along the traditional northern coastal highway in Subang, Indramayu, and Brebes experienced a decline due to the traffic shifting. Meanwhile, investments from national companies especially those of labor-intensive manufacturing industries flowed significantly especially to Subang and Majalengka, which reflected a “sorting effect”. However, investments from local and foreign businesses did not increase significantly yet after 2.5 years of toll operation.
To reap the benefit from the presence of Cipali toll road, the local governments should improve the ease of doing business to attract investments that boost employment in return. In addition, given a better accessibility from Greater Jakarta and a large number of potential visitors passing through the toll road, local businesses in the trade sector would benefit if they could promote the local attractions such as in tourism activities supported by the local government. The latter strategy should also be implemented by the local governments and local businesses in the northern coastal traditional route to minimize the negative impact of the toll road due to the traffic shifting. This strategy should be strengthened through increasing connectivity from the toll exits to local business areas and through increasing the ease of doing business.

Using a newly-developed data set for Portugal, we analyze the industry-level effects of infrastructure investment. Focusing on the divide between traded and non-traded industries, we find that infrastructure investments have a non-traded bias, as these shift the industry mix towards private and public services. We also find that the industries that benefit the most in relative terms are all non-traded: construction, trade, and real estate, among the private services, and education and health, among the public services. Similarly, emerging trading sectors, such as hospitality and professional services, stand to gain. The positive impacts on traded industries are too small to make a difference. These results highlight that infrastructure-based strategies are not neutral in terms of the industry mix. Moreover, with most of the benefits accruing to non-traded industries, such a development model that is heavily based on domestic demand may be unsustainable in light of Portugal’s current foreign account position. 

The People's Republic of China (PRC) wants to become a key regional actor in the Arctic. PRC's underlying priority in the region is gaining access to commercial opportunities from trade and natural resources. To this end, PRC is building its domestic capacities for research and commercial development in the Arctic, increasing its involvement in multilateral forums on Arctic governance and deepening ties to Arctic nations, especially Russia.

Attitudes towards PRC among Arctic nations are diverging, but Beijing generally faces high levels of skepticism and opposition to its Arctic involvement, explicitly grounded in perceptions of PRC as a state undermining the rules-based international order and potential military build-up in the high north.

The analytical framework in this article builds on an outline authored by Exner-Pirot in 2012 (Exner-Pirot, 2012) to detail the current schools of thought within Arctic governance, and builds on it by including more recent developments in Arctic governance, incorporating the updated Arctic policies of most Arctic countries and connecting it to PRC.

This article contends that Beijing wants to change the status quo of Arctic governance and shift it towards a more accommodating approach to non-Arctic states. This article finds, based on the stated Arctic strategies of the eight Arctic states and PRC, that there are different views on Arctic governance where Arctic countries for the most part indicate an openness to a Chinese entry into the Arctic, albeit in diverging ways. This creates a complex governance scenario for PRC to navigate as it seeks to become a key Arctic player

Cross-border infrastructure projects offer significant economic and social benefits for the Asia-Pacific region. If the required investment of $8 trillion in pan-Asian connectivity was made in the region’s infrastructure during 2010–2020, the total net income gains for developing Asia could reach about $12.98 trillion (in 2008 US dollars) during 2010–2020 and beyond, of which more than $4.43 trillion would be gained during 2010–2020 and nearly $8.55 trillion after 2020. Indeed, infrastructure connectivity helps improve regional productivity and competitiveness by facilitating the movement of goods, services and human resources, producing economies of scale, promoting trade and foreign direct investments, creating new business opportunities, stimulating inclusive industrialization and narrowing development gaps between communities, countries or sub-regions. Unfortunately, due to limited financing, progress in the development of cross-border infrastructure in the region is low.

This paper examines the key challenges faced in financing cross-border projects and discusses the roles that different stakeholders—national governments, state-owned enterprises, private sector, regional entities, development financing institutions (DFIs), affected people and civil society organizations—can play in facilitating the development of cross-border infrastructure in the region. In particular, this paper highlights the major risks that deter private sector investments and FDIs and provides recommendations to address these risks.

The landlocked and fragile countries’ ability to create a sustainable path to economic growth and poverty reduction is inextricably linked to their export diversification potential, itself related to their connectivity within themselves, in the region, and other external markets. Mali, Chad, and Niger are first challenged by their geography—their landlocked nature with their vast and thinly populated space serves to isolate the most vulnerable communities from external and internal markets. Adding to these geographic disadvantages non-landlocked is incentive environment—defined by high and variable customs common external tariff regimes resulting from multiple overlapping regional trade arrangements—places a wedge between domestic and international prices, provides a disincentive to exports in favor of non-tradable and domestic-oriented sectors. By bringing greater coherence and convergence between the many common external tariff regimes in operation and the rationalization of their structures, and improving connectivity within and between markets, Mali, Chad, Niger, and Guinea can better promote the reallocation of resources toward tradable goods and services, putting the countries on a path toward greater economic inclusion and sustainable growth.

Facing the digital economy era, considerable attention is paid to the importance of understanding the fundamental impact on the information and development of blended teaching methods regarding the higher education. For this reason, the purpose of this study is to answer the challenges brought by the digital economy era, identify the effective teaching methods which would be used in English Correspondence course in the era of digital economy, aiming to form the patterns of learning, provide high motivation, strength and knowledge, and most importantly contribute to the complex competences of future working. For further research, it is expected to be able to prove that using the blended teaching methods will effectively improve students’ communication skills and learning efficiency, enhance students’ learning experience and critical thinking skills.