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This paper analyses how logistics performance affects international trade volume and compares the different effects between developing and developed countries by employing a gravity model with panel data from 43 countries in 2010, 2012 and 2014. The findings show that an improvement of logistics performance index (LPI) has more impact on export volume than on import volume. And it has a more powerful influence on developed countries' trade volumes than on developing countries' trade volumes. To improve the competitiveness of developing countries' exports in a global economy, developing countries should first and foremost prioritise improvement in procedural sectors like the customs process, tracking, and infrastructure.

This study examines the causal relationship between the Internet and economic factors in Asian economies between 1997 and 2017. The economic factors consist of gross domestic product (GDP), foreign direct investment (FDI), imports, and exports. A comparative analysis of East, South, and Western Asia was conducted using a panel vector autoregressive model. The findings show bidirectional causality between FDI and Internet use in South Asia, unidirectional causality from Internet use to FDI in East Asia, and unidirectional causality from FDI to Internet use in Western Asia. Moreover, the findings indicate unidirectional causality from exports to Internet use in East Asia and unidirectional causality from Internet use to exports in South Asia, but no impact in Western Asia. Finally, the results show unidirectional causality from Internet use to GDP in Western Asia. As these results suggest that Internet use has boosted economic performance in Asia, policy makers in the region should improve Internet use with a focus on economic growth, improving transaction efficiency, and facilitating foreign investment.

This study examines the effects of China’s cross-border e-commerce (CBEC) on its goods and services exports to ‘Belt and Road’ (B&R) countries for the period 2000–2018 using a gravity model. We find that CBEC has a greater positive impact on trade in services than on trade in goods, especially after the implementation of the B&R initiative. Furthermore, as the level of CBEC rises, distance tends to have a lower (higher) impact on services (goods) trade, whereas the impact on services (goods) trade increased (decreased) annually. Hence, promoting the sustainable development of CBEC can lead to increased export volumes.

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In this paper, we present the design of a cable-driven servomanipulator with motion-decoupled joints. The cable transmission connecting the actuators to the joints remotely, causes a motion coupling problem where the length or tension of the cable is changed due to an unwanted motion interference at joints. To maintain the cable length constant regardless of the rotation of the arm, we used three different schemes such as a motion-decoupled structure for a shoulder joint, a novel motion decoupling mechanism for an elbow joint, and an optimization of the geometric parameters for a wrist joint. Experimental results show that the overall cable length variation at the cable-driven joints is less than 0.01 mm. Therefore, we expect that the suggested decoupling methods could assure a more accurate motion control for a cable-driven servomanipulator.