•Past pandemic crises operated mostly through idiosyncratic shocks' channels.•Expose domestic tourism sectors to large adverse shocks.•Private and public policy support must be coordinated to ...capacity building.•Corona vouchers, nautical tourism, social distance hospitality services, automation.•Recovery of the tourism industry worldwide will take more time than the average expected recovery.
Our paper is among the first to measure the potential effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the tourism industry. Using panel structural vector auto-regression (PSVAR) (Pedroni, 2013) on data from 1995 to 2019 in 185 countries and system dynamic modeling (real-time data parameters connected to COVID-19), we estimate the impact of the pandemic crisis on the tourism industry worldwide. Past pandemic crises operated mostly through idiosyncratic shocks' channels, exposing domestic tourism sectors to large adverse shocks. Once domestic shocks perished (zero infection cases), inbound arrivals revived immediately. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, is different; and recovery of the tourism industry worldwide will take more time than the average expected recovery period of 10 months. Private and public policy support must be coordinated to assure capacity building and operational sustainability of the travel tourism sector during 2020–2021. COVID-19 proves that pandemic outbreaks have a much larger destructive impact on the travel and tourism industry than previous studies indicate. Tourism managers must carefully assess the effects of epidemics on business and develop new risk management methods to deal with the crisis. Furthermore, during 2020–2021, private and public policy support must be coordinated to sustain pre-COVID-19 operational levels of the tourism and travel sector.
•Firms’ agility is a function of county/industry level of digitalization and investments in intangible assets.•Family firms are more agile in relation to non-family firms.•Private and public policy ...support must be coordinated to national/industry digital capacity building.•Family firms must invest in own-organizational capital and human capital to increase agility.•Non-family firms must invest in human capital and desing, creation of new product development to raise agility.
Firm agility today is not a factor of competitiveness or success but a survival instrument on the market. Disruptive innovations and technological advancement, together with digitalization, change the role of firm agility. We show that the link between the national/industry level of digitalization and firm agility is statistically robust and essential. We study the link on data from 2009 to 2018 in fifteen EU advanced economies using dynamic panel data modeling. The digitalization impact level differs across firms by ownership type (family to non-family firms). Agility in family firms is strongly influenced by the national/industry level of digitization and investments in intangible assets (particularly the creation of own-organizational capital). Non-family firms' agility depends on investment in human capital, design, and creation of new products and minorly on national/industry digitalization level. Digitalization and gross investments in intangible assets can increase family firm agility exponentially (elasticity coefficient of 85 for-profit margins). Policymakers using policy supporting national/industry digitalization can boost economic growth significantly. Managers and practitioners targeting specific investments in intangible assets can improve and increase firm agility to large extents.
This paper examines how globalization influences the adoption of digital technologies. The purpose of the paper is to explain how globalization affects new technology adoptions. We use country-level ...data from the globalization index (KOF), digital adoption index (DAI), global competitiveness index (GDI), and total factor productivity (TFP) on 183 countries and using advanced panel data modeling. Empirical findings show globalization can significantly affect technology adoption in all countries. The study's findings show globalization positively affects technology transfers and spillovers; here, using digital technology. Countries undergoing significant technological changes achieve ever-growing digital technology adoption convergence. In our study, the evidence comes from an international perspective, with an extensive sample of 183 countries that explain about 80 percent of the transfer process.
Technology diffusion is a necessary but not sufficient condition for knowledge diffusion. Technological waves' impact on education differs across educational levels. We use data for 104 countries on ...technology diffusion and education from 1870 to 2019. We find six technology waves from 1870 to 2019 had a substantial and statistically significant educational attainment impact using fixed panel data modeling. The impact differs across time and regions, with the most noticeable impact in Advanced economies and Eastern Europe. Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, Middle East, and North Africa are catching up with lagging Sub-Saharan Africa. The transportation revolution increased the average years in primary and secondary education. Telecommunications affects college and graduates' schooling. IT waves show a focused impact on tertiary education, like the health technology revolution (health wave having a significant impact on secondary education). Steel production (oxygen blast furnaces) shows no knowledge spillover effect. The invention of electricity is the one to spark knowledge diffusion by increasing average primary schooling by 3.47 months (1930–1950).
•Technology diffusion is a necessary but not sufficient condition for knowledge diffusion.•Technological waves' impact on education differs across educational levels.•Knowledge diffusion depends on many endogenous and exogenous determinants, with technology diffusion as the most important.•Technology diffusion impact is most prominent in advanced economies and Eastern Europe.•Asia and the Pacific follows with Latin America and the Caribbean catching up.•Technology diffusion will have only a limited effect on knowledge diffusion if other required conditions are not met.
The impact of COVID-19 on the economy and business is a major issue. We define convergence clubs as countries with the same impact of COVID-19 on service turnover by using a convergence algorithm for ...testing and clustering. We repeat the procedure in the hospitality and food industry, information and communication, transport, and storage. The impact of COVID-19 on each convergence club identified in the study varies empirically. The findings suggest that the impact of COVID-19 varies between countries and industries depending on the firm’s agility, innovation, ownership, digital adoption, customer perception, pandemic status, and state financial assistance of companies.