第二轮志书商业(贸易)篇编纂琐谈

商业(贸易)是第二轮志书记述时限内发展变化最大的事物之一,是第二轮志书需要记述的重要内容。编纂第二轮志书商业(贸易)篇,应把握好其篇名、设置、记述三个方面的问题。

Jordanian Horticultural Export Competitiveness from Water Perspective

The main objective of this paper is to analyze the relationships between the productive process and the commercial trade with water resources used by them. For that the goal is to find out, by means of the estimation of water embodied in the exported crops which have the highest export competitiveness and lower water consumption. The finding contradicts not only the comparative advantages theory but also the resources sustainability logic. This conclusion is derived from the great exports of water via tomatoes and low profitable vegetables from producers＇ perspective but not economical from social perspectives as shown in domestic resource coefficient. The diversion between financial and economic profitability is due to heavily irrigation water subsidy. The results confirm that Jordan utilizes large amounts of water in its exports, and in turn, it does not export goods with low water requirements. The potential saving would be very significant and agricultural sector need to modify the use of water to a great extent in order to reach significant water savings and an environmental sustainability. Jordan has to implement policies that reduced, or even abandoned, the export and the production of water-intensive crops. Therefore, they have to be replaced with either imports or crops that optimize the water resources.

The Concept of Helping in Counseling： An Islamic Perspective

Helping is the cornerstone in counseling practice. Helping in Islamic perspective is grounded upon the concept of hisbah. Since this concept is purposely design as a mechanism in business trade and transaction, this article extricates how hisbah aligned in counseling practice. The first section of this article will discuss on the concept of hisbah in terms of its definition, models, and roles. The second section will outline the nature of human beings and the techniques, which are amongst the important aspects in Islamic counseling point of view. The discussion in this respect will considered characteristics of helping behavior and the notions of Islamic values.

Approach to Enterprise Application Integration with Web Services

Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) would be linking diverse systems and applications across the enterprise to enable the enterprise IT systems to adapt to the dynamic business environment and automate any business practices. Whereas, with traditional EAI solution, it is difficult to efficiently link the different proprietary applications and data sources, and difficult to enable the system to rapidly identify and respond to changes in the dynamic business environment. In order to solve these problems, this paper uses the Web Services technology for EAI. This paper discusses the traditional EAI technologies and the bottlenecks for applications integration, also elaborates the Web Services technology and the advantages suited for applications integration. Therefore, the model of EAI with Web Services (EAIWS) is proposed to efficiently implement the integration of diverse applications and systems within or between the enterprises. With EAIWS, this paper provides an example to show how the application system works. This paper also discusses the advantages of EAIWS.

Asian Trade Integration and the Decoupling Debate of Business Cycles

＂Decoupling＂ refers to the divergence of business cycles among different countries, while ＂re-coupling＂ corresponds to the convergence or the synchronization of business cycles among different countries. The decoupling debate is popular in the field of economics, especially after global financial crisis. As trade integration increased among Asian countries, business cycle synchronization among these countries was expected to increase through trade transmission. The aim of this study is to discover whether there has been decoupling or convergence of business cycles through various trade channels. However, theoretically, increased trade can lead to business cycle synchronization either rising or falling. Inter-industry trade resulting in higher specification will induce less synchronized business cycles, while intra-industry trade could lead to increased business cycle synchronization. Thus, it is important to distinguish between intra- and inter-industry trade flows. Both correlation and dynamic factor models are utilized to study the evolution of global business cycle linkages. Results indicate that the world factor has become less important in explaining macroeconomic fluctuations from sub-period 1961-1984 to sub-period 1985-2007, while regional factors do not play an important role in explaining aggregate volatility, with the expectation of consumption. Overall, the explanatory power of country factors increases. Domestic consumption and domestic investment variances are more driven by country and idiosyncratic factors than by the world factor, contrary to the output growth fluctuations. Regional factors and country factors also play a more prominent role in explaining gross import fluctuations than in explaining gross exports. Results cast doubt on the strong forms of both the decoupling and the re-coupling hypothesis.

Palestinian Commercial Networks in Transformation, 1750-1900

Just as in the eighteenth century cotton trade pulled Palestine＇s economy into the orbit of the world economy, so it also enabled Palestine, through its ruler shaykh Zahir al-＇Umar, to instigate a process of urbanization, However, the Ottoman households that governed Galilee and Palestine＇s coastal areas did not help local merchants （tujjar） to develop inter-regional or intra-regional trade networks, as was the case in central Palestine. The disappearance of the main two obstacles to these networks--the dominant local leaders and the monopoly system--ushered in a new era in Palestine＇s trading and commercial history. Jaffa became Palestine＇s main transit port and gradually attracted wealthy merchants from far and wide. Besides their importing and exporting activities, these merchants invested heavily in citrus plantations, transforming the citrus fruit trade into Palestine＇s largest economic sector. Palestine＇s most powerful merchants played an important role as ＂the modern agents of change＂, as they did elsewhere in the Middle East. This development found expression in many aspects of their lifestyle： in the ornate architecture of their houses, in their patterns of consumption, and in their elevated living standards. These powerful merchants were also the first actors to import new technologies to Palestine, in order to develop their businesses. In short, this paper argued that the Palestinian entrepreneurial and mercantile classes, but not members of the old elite and the traditional leadership, emerged as models for imitation by society at large. In many respects, this shift in influence constituted a revolutionary change.

NEWS FROM CCPIT

On June 26,co-sponsored by CCPIT/CCO- IC Mediation Center and CEDR（The Center for Effective Dispute Resolution）,the International Commercial Mediation Seminar was held in Beijing.Before the seminar,CCPIT Vice Chairman and Director of CCOIC Mediation Center,

Trade Credit in the Crisis： Selling or Financing？

The work investigates the use of trade credit in Italy for reasons of a financial nature. The analysis considers Italian small and medium-sized enterprises （SMEs） and investigates, over the years of 2009-2011： the existence of functional relationships between the incidence of trade receivables and payables and corporate profitability; the existence of interdependencies between trade credit policy and trade debt policy; and the coexistence of interchangeable and complementary conditions between trade debts and bank loans and other sources of funding. To verify the research hypotheses, linear regression models on a yearly basis are used and these models are put under observation over the years of 2009-2011. We can conclude that there are interdependencies between trade credit policy and trade debt policy and that trade credit is a source of flexible way of financing, also available in periods of crisis, which has a positive effect on the profitability of SMEs and can be utilized as a complementary and substitute source of financing to bank loans.