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The banking industry plays a crucial role in any economy by providing diverse services aimed at enhancing economic growth. In recent decades, this sector has been transformed due to financial liberalization and new regulatory rules. Therefore, measuring the efficiency of banking institutions is critically important to identify the evolution of efficiency drivers for banks. Based on a sample of 90 individual banks from four different world regions (Europe, US, China, and India), this paper conducts data envelopment, stochastic frontier and anova analyses to measure cost efficiency over a 15-year period (2002–2016). While the overall liberalization of financial markets seems to induce a convergence among efficiency strategies privileging cost minimization to improve efficiency, the existence of state intervention in China and India nuances our results. State owned banks base their efficiency more on maximization of their potential revenue than on controlling costs. On the contrary, their private peers are more similar to Western peers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As low income societies are aging rapidly, government and families face challenges to support the seniors, who are already at greater risks of being negatively affected by many other social, cultural, and global changes occurring around them. This paper reviews some of the major challenges faced by seniors in China, India, Mexico, and African countries. It also examines some of the sustainable solutions to these challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that existing categories defining the geography of the world's wine industry, principally the Old World/New World dichotomy, are flawed. Not only do they fail to represent adequately the complexity of production and marketing in those two broad regions but also, crucially, they do not acknowledge the significant and rapidly expanding production and consumption of wine in 'Third World' developing countries. Rather than argue for the addition of a 'Third World' category, we instead use the lens of recent work on globalisation to argue that such production requires us to re-examine the dichotomous Old/New distinction which structures much of the thinking around the global wine industry. It also requires us to more closely link changes in patterns of global wine consumption with developments in global production. Changing geographies of wine production have been driven, to a large extent, by the rapid expansion of both local wealthy elites and burgeoning middle classes in countries such as China and India. This has resulted in the development of local wineries, large and small, throughout the developing world. It has also seen new flows of investment both from established wine regions to these new sites of production and from companies and individuals in the developing world who have invested in established wine regions, whether in France or Australia. Increasingly, the various worlds of wine will become more complex, accommodating new regions and also different forms of production and marketing, from traditional and modern artisanal production, closely tied to place and vintage, to large-scale industrial production for a mass market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) emerged under the Kyoto Protocol to facilitate collaboration between developed and developing countries in order to mitigate greenhouse gases. The CDM allows developed countries to receive credits towards meeting their obligatory targets by investing in emission reduction projects in developing countries. The countries are required to set up a Designated National Authority (DNA) to approve the CDM projects. This paper examines the role of the DNA in ensuring sustainable development, using the empirical case of China and India. Three aspects of the DNA's role are examined: the institutional structure, the policy context and the CDM project market. All three aspects highlight the important role of the DNA in meeting the countries' sustainable development priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jointly with the Global North, the rise of the Global South has come at a high cost to the environment. Driven by its high energy intensity and the use of fossil fuels, the South has contributed a significant portion of global emissions during the last 30 years, and is now contributing some 63% of today's total GHG emissions (including land-use change and forestry). Similar to the Global North, the Global South's emissions are heavily concentrated: India and China alone account for some 60% and the top 10 countries for some 78% of the group's emissions, while some 120 countries account for only 22%. Without highlighting such differences, it makes little sense to use the term 'Global South'. Its members are affected differently, and contribute differently to global climate change. They neither share a common view, nor do they pursue joint interests when it comes to international climate negotiations. Instead, they are organised into more than a dozen subgroups of the global climate regime. There is no single climate strategy for the Global South, and climate action will differ enormously from country to country. Furthermore, just and equitable transitions may be particularly challenging for some countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite strong advocacy, the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety (2011-2020) is ending with most low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) no closer to the Sustainable Development Goals target of reducing traffic mortality by half. In contrast, most high-income countries (HICs) have seen large benefits in recent decades from large-scale safety interventions. We aimed to assess how much LMICs would benefit from interventions that address six key risk factors related to helmet use, seatbelt use, speed control, drink driving, and vehicle design for safety of occupants and pedestrians. We use a comparative risk assessment framework to estimate mortality and health loss (disability adjusted life years lost, DALYs) that would be averted if these risks were reduced through intervention. We estimate effects for six countries that span all developing regions: China, Colombia, Ethiopia, India, Iran, and Russia. We find relatively large benefits (27% reductions in road traffic deaths and DALYs) from speed control in all countries, and about 5%-20% reductions due to other interventions depending on who is at risk in each country. To achieve larger gains, LMICs would need to move beyond simply learning from HICs and undertake new research to address risk factors particularly relevant to their context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite political, technological, and economic constraints, Pakistan is considered an aspiring space power with a relatively modest space program compared to the larger, more successful ones of China and India. Innovative leadership, smart allocation of national resources, and political will are all necessary for any country to progress in such a high-technology field. The Chinese and Indian space programs pose unique challenges and opportunities for Pakistan. Rivalry with India over its regional and extra-regional ambitions means that Pakistan would have to give serious thought towards bolstering its space program as part of its national outlook in the twenty-first century. Pakistan can utilize cordial relations with China to improve its nascent space infrastructure through collaborative efforts to gain eventual self-sufficiency for socioeconomic and strategic purposes in the South Asian region. While Pakistan may not have the economic clout of a bigger power, it can utilize the "Space 2.0" concept of multilateral and public-private partnerships to empower its space program, enhance its domestic scientific and technological base, and build an indigenous space industry that can reap dividends at home and abroad. This can also benefit Pakistan's needs to maintain strategic parity with India and stake its own claims as an emerging space nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community-building is studied as a multidimensional process that leads to sustainable improvements in the well-being of individuals, families, communities, and society as a whole. The study looks at the role organizations play in developing countries as an integral function of inter-connectedness between organizations and community. A total of 100 Indian and Chinese organizations were analyzed for the available corporate social responsibility (CSR) information and initiatives using quantitative content analysis. The sample was drawn from the 2011Forbes Global2000 list. Significant differences were found between Indian and Chinese organizations in the levels of community-building. Findings also revealed information on the most common CSR terms, issues, and modes used by the organizations and how those differ culturally. Cultural scores on collectivism were also looked at for each country to analyze the relationship between organizations and community-building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the authors document evolving attitudes, policies and roles of stakeholders in wastewater and faecal-sludge management in India, China and Ghana. In each country there is momentum for expanding not just access to sanitation at the household/community levels, but also for greater treatment and safe end-of-life management of human excreta. Governments are increasingly looking to engage the private sector, but models of engagement that make a compelling business case and instil confidence in cost recovery will have to emerge before the private sector takes an active role in wastewater and faecal sludge treatment in low-income countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea that a single group of emerging powers, principally the BRIC states, are reshaping global politics is now prevalent. However, the basis of their newfound power is not well understood. Their influence is primarily a function of their regional clout, and their outsized weight in multilateral institutions; but also because the goals of US policy frequently play to emerging-power advantages. Investigation of how the emerging powers are choosing to wield this influence in the economic, financial, and security realms finds that, although they have some blocking power, the most prevalent strategies thus far have been to bargain hard to protect their own interests and national space, and to balance the growing influence of their BRIC counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article unravels an array of possibilities about the much-hyped Post-American World. Notwithstanding the current Wall Street financial meltdown, war against terrorism, globalization and echoes of the new Cold War, the developing nations, including India and China, continue to muddle through a schizophrenic phase of social development that warrants dispassionate analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]