Giampaolo Vitali (p), Greta Falavigna, Gianluca Toschi

Ricardo Bustillo

The textile industry, one of the most important industries in Italy, is dealing with a deindustrialization process due to imports from extra-UE countries, the advent of new retail organizations, relocation of production processes to extra-EU countries with lower production costs, and competition from big EU companies.
In addition, the EU Green New Deal approach asks for a new stringent environmental regulation, such as reduction of non-renewable resources (water, raw materials, energy, etc.), circular transition and traceability of production processes, and reduction of CO2 emissions.
Because of that, globalization and sustainability play a major role in affecting the Italian textile industry.
The industry tries to be resilient by exploiting its traditional competitive advantage, based on the external economies that positively affect firms within the textile clusters. Specialization, quality-oriented production, flexible production, and export-oriented markets are the ordinary strategies of Italian firms, which must be integrated with the new green strategies requested by institutions (Green New Deal) and markets (top-level consumers).
Our hypothesis is that such cluster economies support not only the economic performance of the firms but also their growth strategy based on green investments.
Our research questions are as follows: to what extent do international growth and cluster economies foster the green strategies of textile firms? Are the export-oriented companies more involved in green strategies than the home market-oriented firms? Are the firms of the textile clusters more involved in the green strategies than the non-cluster firms?
We use a firm-level dataset containing a set of variables about economic performance, financial structure, exports, and characteristics of green strategies of each firm.
We estimate the green strategies of a firm by its green certifications and standards, such as ISO14000 and EMAS regulations. In addition, we use a web scraping tool to check if the firm website declares some green keywords, such as circular, CO2, traceability, ESG, sustainability, and so on.
We combine this microeconomic dataset with other variables and process all the data about economic performance, green strategies, location, and exports to understand which are the main variables that affect the green strategies of textile firms.
We consider the textile districts of Prato, Biella, Brescia and Bergamo, and we compare their structure and growth strategies with the rest of the country.
We manage data time series from 2015 to 2022.

Kirill Sablin (p), Elena Goosen, Sergey Nikitenko

Giampaolo Vitali

For three decades the world has witnessed the active development of international fragmentation of production processes in the format of global value chains (GVCs). GVCs are a key element of economic activity both at the global and national levels. This paper examines the role of the state in the creation and transformation of GVCs in the extractive industries. GVC is understood as the sequence of all stages of activity in the chain of production of the final product. GVC includes the following elements: technological chain, organizational structure and management system, amount of added value at each stage of production and external supporting environment.
Up-to-date studies recognize the fact that states play an important role in GVC creation and maintaining stability despite their global nature. This is especially evident in the countries with emerging markets. The role of the state as a regulator of GVCs in manufacturing industries is the most studied in the scientific literature. Researchers recognize that although GVCs are understood as a set of connections between various firms involved in the production of goods and services, they do not operate in an institutional vacuum.
The purpose of the paper is to identify current trends in the transformation of GVCs in the extractive industries, and to identify the role of states in increasing their resilience. The GVCs that have developed in the extractive industries of India and China are selected as the object of analysis.
The paper has the following structure. The first part provides an overview of up-to-day approaches to studying the role of the state in the creation and management of GVCs. The second part highlights typical GVCs that have developed in the extractive industries, it shows their features, sources of instability and risks. Specific forms of state participation in the management of GVCs are presented separately. The third part of the paper is devoted to the case analysis. The paper presents four cases highlighting the transformation of GVCs with the participation of Chinese and Indian mining companies (Coal India Ltd., NTPC Limited, China Shenhua Energy, Shaanxi Coal and Chemical Industry Group Co., Ltd). The cases reveal the directions and possible consequences of state participation in the modification of GVCs using the example of the mining industry of these countries.

Cibele Souza (p), Clarice Souza

Kirill Sablin

The article investigates the representation of sustainability on social media, focusing on how discussions about the topic influence public opinion and business practices. The research conducts a case study on tweets from Twitter (X), utilizing methodologies to understand how sustainability is mentioned and which terms are associated with it. The empirical results reveal that discussions center around three main areas: future visions, which address emerging trends; environmental issues, emphasizing the impact of practices and technologies on the environment; and innovation, highlighting new approaches to tackle environmental challenges.The study justifies its relevance by the growing importance of sustainability in social, economic, and environmental spheres, as well as the role of social media in disseminating sustainable concepts. The results of the tweet analysis aim to provide insights into emerging trends and how these discussions can impact corporate strategies and policy formulation. From this perspective, concludes that social media serves as a strategic tool for organizations, enabling them to connect with the public and promote their sustainability initiatives while also helping to shape public perception of the topic.

Mauricio Sabogal Salamanca (p), Pablo Collazzo

Cibele Souza

Certifications are quality standards that allow farmers to add greater value by accessing international markets, inserting themselves into global value chains. In the particular case of cocoa, a crop that has broad growth prospects given its high consumption in developed countries, its use has spread in several exporting countries, such as Ecuador in Latin America or Ghana and the Ivory Coast in Africa. Its implementation involves several challenges, since, since production occurs in developing countries, the farms are cultivated by low-income farming families. In the particular case of Colombia, its cocoa sector has grown in recent years primarily to serve a domestic market, but it has great potential to grow for export. Exporting faces several challenges, one of them being to position the grain in specialized markets that require certifications. However, there are no studies in the country currently that examine the challenges that cocoa farmers face in implementing certifications in their crops. This article will explore the main factors that can explain the challenges that cocoa farmers face in adopting certifications. To achieve this, it will use the Q methodology, a qualitative method that seeks to understand the different perceptions of national expert actors in the value chain (academics, researchers, growers, members of the government, among others), to group the main challenges through factor analysis. that cocoa farmers face to implement certifications in their crops. The findings will make it possible to better guide public policies and interventions carried out by support and technical assistance organizations in the country.

Ricardo Bustillo (p), Mubinzhon Abduvaliev

Mauricio Sabogal Salamanca

This paper focuses on the model of regionalism exhibited by the Europe-Caucasus-Asia (ECA) cooperation in Eurasia with the main focus on Central Asia. The countries in the region follow multi-vector foreign policies by seeing to balance relations with the EU, Russia, China, the US, but also Turkey and Iran. Thus, ECA provides a unique case study of overlapping regionalisms pursued by different core actors, among which we consider China, Russia, and the EU. This article will seek to answer the following research question: What are the distinctive roles of the core powers - EU, Russia and China - in re-shaping the region? The result of our analysis seems to confirm that the different foreign powers have hindered regional economic integration among Central Asian Countries