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In terms of the number of its patent applications, in 2012 China has emerged as the country with the largest IP office in the world. The performance of the Chinese IP system is thus increasingly in the spotlight. While significant economic studies have been devoted to the rise of domestic patenting in China, hardly any study has focused on Chinese patent filings in foreign countries. This paper analyzes Chinese patenting abroad by using WIPO’s foreign-oriented patent family dataset and a respective enterprise questionnaire. It finds that by the turn of the century China emerged as major actor in terms of international patenting. While this is changing rapidly, the share of Chinese patents which get filed abroad is still a fraction of total patents filed at home and most patents still also only target one foreign IP office. Chinese foreign-oriented patent families are concentrated in a few technology fields, notably those related to the ICT sector, “Digital communication”, followed by “Computer technology”, “Nanotechnology”, and similar fields. A few Chinese firms are responsible for a large share of total Chinese patents filed abroad. The paper however also highlights that some of these trends are changing rapidly towards more intensive and broad-based filing abroad. Initial results from a selective firm survey also show a shift from the desire to protect technologies abroad to more strategic motives: (i) the desire to build patent portfolios avoiding litigation, (ii) facilitating collaboration with other firms, but also to (iii) license and sell IP abroad, and to (iv) further the firm’s reputation as true innovator.

Summary.: We show that for international economies with two countries, in which agents have additively separable utility functions, the existence of sunspot equilibria is equivalent to the occurrence of the transfer paradox. This equivalence enables us to provide some new insights on the relation of the existence of sunspot equilibria and the multiplicity of spot market equilibria

Merchanting is goods trade that does not cross the border of the firm's country of residence. Merchanting grew strongly in the last decade in several small open economies, particularly in Finland, Ireland, Sweden, and Switzerland, and has become an important driver of these countries' current account. Because merchanting firms reinvest their earnings abroad to expand their international activities, this practice raises national savings in the home country without increasing domestic investment. This results in a significantly large current account surplus. To show the empirical links between merchanting and the current account balance, two exercises are performed in this paper using a sample of 53 countries during 1980-2011. The first exercise estimates the savings impact of merchanting countries in empirical models of the medium-term current account and shows that the presence of merchanting activity in a country indeed increases its current account balance by 3% on average. The second exercise shows that merchanting's impact on the country's current account is sensitive to firm mobility.

In this article the author discusses the problem relating to the tax competition in the context of relocation as a process resulting from the ongoing globalization of economic activity. For this purpose the author discusses the essence and causes of tax competition and relocation. The conclusion is that relocation leads usually to an increase in the competitiveness of enterprises, their development, and thus to the development of the economies of individual countries. Healthy competition leads to streamlining the fiscal policies of competing countries and to the creation of a business-friendly atmosphere. Therefore, the role of governments, particularly in the developing countries, is such action, including the use of fiscal instruments, that would enable the achievement of competitive advantage in the international market and socio-economic development.

This paper is a sequel to the previous one (HMM, Volume 5, Issue 2, 2015) evaluating possible improvements in the management of companies and national economic affairs. It extends the analysis to consider international problems which have now come to dominate the world scene.

The technological progress that arose in areas such as transportation, communication and information exchange has led to a series of consequences that forced national economies to converge into a global, market based economy. In addition to the aforementioned causes, increased liberalisation amidst financial markets has supplemented the initiation of this metamorphosis that had several benefits in terms of general commercial exchange (trade), capital flows, and investment opportunities for business organisations. Simultaneously with the financial leverage resulted from the expansion of these interconnections, a series of channels that are detrimental to the financial welfare of entities has emerged, which, in consequence elevated the vulnerability and susceptibility to external economic shocks. The major debate elicited by this trade-off mainly concerns the costs and benefits of the international liberalisation of capital flows and trade. The purpose of this article is to examine the methods through which globalisation has affected the expansion of the international financial crisis back in 2008, by identifying and assessing the subsequent transfer routes, to and from the United States, where it was initially triggered. This article also aims to evaluate the repercussions experienced by Central and Eastern Europe and how they re-established economic growth following the financial crisis.

This study analyses the impact on France’s balance of payments and international investment position data of the new international methodology developed by the IMF, which better reflects international trade in goods and services.

[No abstract available]

It is found that commodity price shocks largely affect the mining, construction and manufacturing industries in Australia. However, the financial and insurance sector is found to be relatively unaffected. Mining industry profits and nominal output substantially increase in response to commodity price shocks. Construction output is also found to increase significantly, especially in response to a bulk commodities shock, as a result of increased demand for resource related construction. Increased demand for construction has a positive spillover effect to parts of the manufacturing industry that supply the construction sector with intermediate inputs, such as the non-metallic mineral sub industry. In contrast, other manufacturing sub industries with only tenuous links to the resources sector such as textiles, clothing and other manufacturing, are relatively unresponsive to commodity price shocks.

This paper deals with economic diplomacy, which is the activity of managing economic relationships between countries, in the case of Slovenia. Additionally, it also deals with economic promotion (especially trade and investment promotion), which is one of the main tasks of economic diplomacy, in the same case. Nowadays, economic diplomacy plays a very important role in restoring economic stability, which is, in addition to political stability, essential for peace and prosperity, both in Slovenia and elsewhere in the world.

The implementation and expansion of internet networks around the world had a huge impact on the development of the social-welfare of citizens, where the attendance of internet networks are present, and especially on the development of the economic environment at a local, regional and national level. The paper presents an insight of how internet networks expand in different rates around the world but especially in the European Union (EU) by analyzing data available to the general public and interpreting different researches we conducted so far. The complex and dynamic approaches that involves studding the expansion of internet networks plays an important part on further developing new strategies on how to expand new networks at a global level and most importantly how to “standardize” all internet connections worldwide..

This paper proposes an overview of the evolution in the automotive sector in the process of regional development. The fundamental changes made by the component supplier sector improved the regional development and manufacturing process. Automotive industry is one of the modern sectors in many countries that benefits of a high technology impact and creates jobs that reduces unemployment across Europe. The auto industry changed cities, regions and countries into poles of development and it becomes more and more efficient. The high foreign direct investments from the automotive sector play an important role in regional development process. Continuous changes are being made in the economy, society, and company; in conclusion the automotive clusters will always be a subject of analysis.

La balance des paiements et la position extérieure de la France sont établies depuis cette année selon une nouvelle méthodologie internationale élaborée par le FMI. Cette étude en analyse les impacts sur les données françaises, et montre comment elle permet de mieux refléter la chaîne mondiale des échanges de biens et services.

The article intends to show how multinational companies gain market share and visibility by using the appropriate strategic communication. The study evaluate the base framework, analysis, tools, data sources, sets of improvement plans and results that some multinational companies obtain by using strategic communication. The analysed companies are American based mainly communicative corporations and it will be underlined the importance of communication in the current economic environment. The results will show how important strategic communication is along the information used and the strategic management in targeting the position in the market.

This paper challenges the conventional academic view that international outsourcing is just another form of gainful trade. Contrary to that view, we show that labour-service outsourcing can reduce the high-wage country's welfare even when product-market trade is beneficial, within a model that combines involuntary unemployment and monopolistic competition. Outsourcing's impact on welfare is worsened by a definite loss of jobs and a possible contraction in the range of varieties produced worldwide. While owners of capital benefit from outsourcing under certain conditions, labour's welfare always falls. Resume Consequences de la sous-traitance internationale sur le chomage et le bien-etre en regime de concurrence monopolistique. Ce texte remet en question le point de vue conventionnel des universitaires pour qui la sous-traitance internationale n'est qu'une autre forme de commerce porteur de gains. En opposition a ce point de vue, on montre que la sous-traitance de services de travail peut reduire le niveau de bien-etre du pays a hauts salaires meme quand le commerce dans le marche des produits est benefique – dans un modele qui combine chomage involontaire et concurrence monopolistique. L'impact de la sous-traitance sur bien-etre est rempire par une perte d'emplois et une contraction possible de la variete de produits au plan mondial. Alors que les proprietaires de capital beneficient de la sous-traitance dans certaines conditions, le bien-etre du travail decline toujours.

This paper investigates the welfare effects of an increase in location subsidy by constructing a general equilibrium linear space model, including transport costs and the cross-border ownership of equities. We assume a market structure with monopolistic competition in which entry is restricted and where fixed costs are not necessary. These model characteristics allow us to obtain the analytical welfare effects that have yet to be examined. We find that the subsidy increase improves (reduces) the domestic (foreign) welfare, regardless of the size of transport costs. However, closer economic integration magnifies the impacts of the location subsidy.

This article addresses the issue of national and corporate competitiveness and its increase, presenting the factors and the mechanisms of its achievement, with a detailed case study on American Nautics SRL in Bucharest. This company managed to obtain a series of spectacular economic and financial results, decisively increasing their competitiveness as a qualitative global indicator, by the development and intelligent use of its intangible long-term assets. Their performance is especially commendable as it was obtained in the current economic and financial crisis faced by the entire world, and that affected Romania more than other countries.

Among emerging economies, the Russian Federation is the second largest outward investor, surpassed only by China, but ahead of Brazil, India and South Africa. Alongside other multinationals from BRICS countries, TNCs from Russia started to emerge in the international rankings of global companies. The propose of the paper is to present the importance of developing and transition economies as investors, to provide background information and new trends of OFDI from BRICS countries, pointing out the outward expansion of Russian multinational corporations in recent years. The paper basically investigates the main patterns of Russian outward foreign direct investment (OFDI), including its dynamics and geographical destinations.

China is an important emerging country; has transferred from planned economy to market economy after strong and strict experience of communism, which is still reforming Chinese public companies. After 1979 China applied reform and open policy and become half communist and half capital society, since that time several decades of development China has achieved through making great successful on economy development, replied on strategic management. In this paper we will present briefly historical view on Chinese Strategic Management, which is considered as a significant realistic example for former communist countries around the world and certainly in Europe such countries as Romania.

This paper evaluates the time series factor estimators using autoregressive model for the short-term forecasting of Ghana’s GDP growth based on the exploitation of early releases of monthly real sector indictors. The principal component analysis was performed using forecast equation on monthly datasets through a regression on factor estimators extracted from a small set of monthly real sector indictors. In general, the study revealed that factor models via principal component analysis performed pretty well in predicting the conditional expectations of the domestic economic activity. This study opens new insights for policy makers in Ghana.

The objective of this study is to determine the impact of manufacturing performance, which is created by the manufacturing strategy in textile and automotive supply industries, on business performance. The research was applied to small and medium-sized enterprises operating in textile and automotive supply industries in Turkey. The effect of manufacturing performance to business performance is investigated through the manufacturing performance index based on competitive priorities and advantage manufacturing technologies which are named as manufacturing forces and strategic fit which is alignment between business strategy and manufacturing strategy.

Over the past few years, large multinational companies originating from Russia have shown outstanding performances alongside their road from regional dominance to global leaders. Taking stock of recent approaches in the literature and statistical data released by well-known international organizations, our papers aims to provide some new insights from the amazing universe of Russian multinationals, following the 2008-2009 global economic crisis. The list of the largest multinationals from Russia shows that corporations from oil & gas and metallurgical sector are prevailing, as a consequence of the resource – based character of the Russian economy. Although Russian giants represents a quite heterogeneous class of companies, they do share several common features such as their propel mechanism of expansion on the global business stage (leveraged by the resource-based nature of their home economy), their tendency to invest in the neighboring countries (like Commonwealth of Independent States or East European countries), their modes of entry (through brownfield projects) etc.

The article presents the results of a multidimensional comparative analysis carried out on 29 European countries. The analysis aims at grouping these countries according to features including the level of Corruption Perception Index, time required to start a business, paid taxes, inflow of foreign direct investments, level of KOF Index of Globalization, PKB per capita and the level of Human Development Index. The analysis of time series of mentioned-above indicators in years 2001–2011 was used also in the article.

When enterprises enter a new country they face the challenge to develop their acquisition and distribution systems. In this way modern management concepts are exported. Today, managers of multinational companies are more specialized in segmenting their activities and in finding optimal location for increasingly specialized forms of activity being able to adopt their products to local markets. These technological and managerial efforts have been extended by political that provided a larger opening than in previously closed economies. FDI is one of the most efficient means by which emerging markets become integrated to the global economy while FDI provides capital, technology and management know-how required by the restructuring of firms in the host economies. The propose of the paper is to analyze the growing importance of OFDIs from emerging markets underlining the fact that, in recent years, middle and low income countries, such as Brazil, China, India, Nigeria, Malaysia, Russia and South Africa, have become important in the global geography of capital flows. From among the BRIC countries, our paper will provide insights into the Russian economy, focusing on its goal of becoming a major outward investing country on a global scale. The expansion of Russian corporations to abroad, and particularly to Europe, raised many questions regarding the motivations behind their internationalization and led to a common acknowledged belief that they were tools of regaining political hegemony rather than pure economic entities. Given the complexity of the subject, the main objective of our paper is to explore trends for Russian OFDI and their impact upon the new balance of the global economic power.

Koncept národnej konkurencieschopnosti patrí medzi najdôležitejšie koncepty v súčasnej globálnej ekonomike. Cieľom tohto článku je preskúmať vývoj konkurencieschopnosti štátov V4 (Slovensko, Česká republika, Maďarsko a Poľsko) na základe skúmania ich pozície v medzinárodných rebríčkoch konkurencieschopnosti. Túto vzorku štátov sme vybrali preto, lebo tvoria pomerne blízku skupinu a často súperia o priame zahraničné investície prichádzajúce do regiónu strednej a východnej Európy. Vzorku vybraných štátov budeme skúmať na horizonte jedného desaťročia (2001-2011), keďže zmeny v tomto horizonte už majú vážnu vypovedaciu hodnotu. Skúmanie v rámci tohto príspevku sme založili na dvoch hlavných indexoch konkurencieschopnosti (Global Competitiveness Index and World Competitiveness Index), ktoré sú najuznávanejšie na medzinárodnej úrovni a ktoré spracovávajú aj konkurencieschopnosť všetkých štyroch štátov V4.

Jelen tanulmány a külföldi működőtőke magyar gazdasághoz való hozzájárulását vizsgálja. A külföldi érdekeltségű vállalatok beruházásokból, foglalkoztatottságból, külkereskedelmi áruforgalomból, valamint GDP-ből való részesedésének számbevételén túl a tanulmány számszerűsíti a bruttó nemzeti jövedelemre (GNI) gyakorolt hatást, és összeveti azt az alternatív külső finanszírozási formák behelyettesítésével kapott eredményekkel. Bemutatja, hogy az elmúlt 15 évben mért átlagos 2,3 százalékos GDP-növekedésből 0,69-0,89 százalékos évi dinamika származott a külföldi működőtőke beáramlásából. Ugyanakkor a számítások azt is megmutatják, hogy a működőtőke implicit kamata meghaladta az alternatív finanszírozási forrásokét. A kettő erő eredője azonban pozitív hatást eredményez: amennyiben a külföldi működőtőkét hitellel vagy portfóliótőkével helyettesítettük volna, úgy a nemzeti jövedelem 6-14 százalékkal lett volna alacsonyabb 2009-ben. A működőtőke-beáramlásból származó előnyök emellett tovább növelhetők az abszorpciós kapacitás bővítésével, ami az emberi tőke rendelkezésre álló mennyiségének, a fizikai és pénzügyi infrastruktúrának, a makrogazdasági stabilitásnak, valamint az intézményrendszernek a függvénye. Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) kód: F20, F21, F43., The study examines the contribution of foreign direct investment to the Hungarian economy. After noting the weight of foreign-owned companies in investment, employment, exports, imports and GDP, the study presents the effect of such FDI on gross national income (GNI), and compares that to alternative flows of finance. Over the last 15 years, FDI inflows have been responsible for 0.69-0.89 percentage points of an annual average GDP growth of 2.3 per cent. However, the authors calculate that the implicit interest rate of the FDI was higher than that of the alternative financial flows. The study concludes that the net effect of FDI inflows on GNI is positive: if the flow of direct investment had been in loans or portfolio investment instead, GNI would have been 6-14 per cent lower in 2009. Enhancement of the positive effect of FDI calls for increasing the capacity for its absorption, which is a function of human capital, physical and financial infra-structure, macroeconomic stability, and the institutional system.

The competitiveness of a nation is ensured by the profitable activity of firms. They strengthen their position in the domestic and international markets through global strategies whose purpose is to increase productivity and maintain it at a high level. For this, the company must take into account both the internal economic environment which ensures operating conditions and the external economic environment’s development. The five competitive forces determine the industry’s profitability because they configure firms’ selling prices, production costs and investments needed to be competitive in the field. The threat of new competitors limits the potential profit since they involve new production units and the opportunities for market expansion. Economic strength of the buyers and bidders attracts profits to them. Rivalry among existing competitors erodes profits by increasing costs of competition (like advertising, selling expenses or those required for research and development). The presence of substitutive goods or services limits competitors’ prices through buyers’ transfer phenomena limiting and eroding market share of industry / firm in the total production output.

The complete operating cycle of the organisational economic entity provides a connection between its actions and those actions that take place in the environment where it operates, which are deemed to be natural reactions of the environment to the operation of the organisational economic entity. The way in which the environment reacts to its operation must be understood as being the nature of the relations between events, factors and structures of the environment and not as an answer to what the organisational economic entity does. The same action of the organisational economic entity could therefore determine different environmental reactions to various moments and various actions. This is because organisational economic entities act under the conditions of the restrictions imposed by the environment. There are few cases where these restrictions are not observed and the environment reacts unambiguously. But, most of the time, the operating range is relatively tight, and inside of it only a very low part of it can be assigned to the actions taken by the organisation.

I. Introduction : In the Post Cold War Era, no other region has shown such a high level of economic dynamism as Northeast Asia. This can be ascribed to China’s economic rise and a rapid expansion of intra-regional economic exchanges and cooperation, i.e., there has been continued expansion and deepening in the division of labor among Northeast Asian countries, particularly with the explosive growth of the Chinese economy. In spite of its proximity to China, however, North Korea has been forgoing all economic possibilities as a consequence of its own political decision to shun globalization and regional cooperation. It is astonishing that North Korea still remains as a poverty pocket in the dynamic Northeast Asian region. Being an enclave right in the middle of the most dynamic region in the world, North Korea cannot maintain its present position for an extended period. Its internal outcry and external demand to open its gate can hardly be suppressed with a political oppression and reclusive policy. At the same time, it is still an open question what path North Korea will take in the event of its escape from the poverty pocket and join the international division of labor. The prospects for a unified Korean economy is diverse, ranging from a gloomy picture of double collapse as a consequence of the huge burden of unification to a rosy picture of becoming a global middle power in several decades. In fact, Korea's reunification involves a variety of risk factors as well as diverse opportunities, depending upon the path taken by the two Koreas during the course of actual reunification. We can imagine a variety of unification scenarios depending upon its final outcome, such as the best scenario, the worst scenario, and the most probable one. All these different scenarios entail specific preparations in the future. While the worst scenario would require the construction of a contingency plan, the best scenario, a visionary one and the most probable one, would compel a depiction of a desirable environment in the future. For the following discussion, we would adopt a hybrid of the best scenarios and the most probable ones. Also, in order to make our discussion simple, a unitary state is assumed to be the final governmental structure of the unified Korea even if the final outcome would be path-dependent and the process will substantially determine the end-point state.

The present study aims to present strategies of improving the competitiveness for corporations operation in the market of precious metals in the context of global economic crisis. This is a difficult period for all the corporations regardless of the sector in which it operates. The increasing prices for the raw material, the bigger cost of the rent paid by all the tenants, purchasing power increasingly lower there are only some fact that are increasingly more difficult to existing companies on the market. The existence of the companies operating in the market of precious metals is even more difficult taking into consideration the increasing prices of the precious metals. In order to improve the competitiveness of the corporations operating in the market of precious metals the strategy must take into account the following: always in change price of precious metals, the payment terms of the suppliers, the best quality at the best price products, the best prices for the rent of the selling price.

The study forms a relationship between the perceived stringency of environmental policy and the location decision of firms. We use data from 3,785 firms operating in 7 OECD countries to show that strict environmental regulation in the OECD may not necessarily discourage foreign firms. Rather, foreign owned firms perceive environmental regulations in the OECD as stricter when comparing to other non-OECD markets in which they operate in. We also find that firms who have foreign headquarters are relatively newer, are listed on a stock exchange and tend to have a better business performance. - Questo studio esamina la relazione esistente tra il rigore delle politiche ambientali – percepito dalle imprese – e le decisioni di localizzazione delle imprese. I dati utilizzati si riferiscono a 3785 imprese in 7 paesi OCSE e mostrano come una legislazione ambientale severa in quest’area non necessariamente scoraggia le imprese straniere. Piuttosto, le società a capitale estero percepiscono le leggi ambientali nell’area OCSE come maggiormente restrittive rispetto a quelle di altri paesi dell’area non-OCSE nei quali esse già operano. Viene inoltre trovata evidenza che società aventi sede all’estero sono relativamente più giovani, sono quotate in borsa e tendono ad avere migliori performance economiche.

This paper analyzes the economic effects of content-based import tariffs China imposed on imported auto parts. While China's policy penalized any firm that assembled cars with less than 60% Chinese content, the policy was most likely to affect foreign-affiliated firms who were more likely to exceed the content ceiling. To assess whether foreign-affiliated firms differentially changed their input sourcing this paper uses Chinese product trade data for 1997--2009 which report trade transactions by firm ownership type. Compared with import transactions for other firms, the data show that foreign-affiliated firms appear to have mitigated the effects of the policy by reducing import transaction prices, and by reducing their import quantities on the extensive margin. While China's content-based auto import trade policy was repealed in 2009 after China lost its dispute case at the WTO, the extraordinary growth in China's global export of auto parts since 2005 suggests that China's short term trade policy may have contributed to enduring effects in global supply chains. (JEL codes: F1 and F2) Copyright The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Ifo Institute, Munich. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com, Oxford University Press.

Proponents of Asian monetary integration have always looked to Europe for inspiration. This paper reconsiders the cas in light of the eurozone crisis. I ask what aspects of the earlier consensus remain intact in the wake of the crisis and what aspects must now be rethought. Is there a danger of “throwing out the baby with the bathwater” – a danger, in other words, that Europe’s negative experience since 2009 will cause Asia to turn away too quickly and completely from monetary integration? Or is it in fact appropriate to “throw out the baby” – to conclude in light of Europe’s example that Asian monetary integration is not an appropriate and desirable goal?

The article deals with the income differential analysis of the United States in a context of its hegemonic position. In the second half of the 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st century the USA plays a dominant role in the world. This position brings a lot of advantages for it but also some costs. One of the advantages is the constantly positive income differential as the USA has higher gains from its assets abroad than foreigners from their assets in the United States. This “exorbitant privilege” is given by lots of factors. The US income differential had different structures in time, and although it is generally stable there were also some decreases.

This paper draws a picture of the Indian vision of globalization, along with the advantages and risks for Indian economy and society. From a long term perspective, current globalization does not appear as either unique or irreversible. Political considerations could call it into question if the advantages obtained in some countries do not compensate for the harmful social consequences, such as the abolition of jobs in developed countries. Over and above the exchange of non-financial goods and services, the question of the risks engendered by financial liberalization is also posed. The latter can contribute a lot to an economy such as India?s, but this implies the implementation of a complex monetary policy by the Reserve Bank of India if rapid growth, beneficial for society as a whole, is to be achieved. Classification JEL: E58, F20, F43, O53.

Globalization is deploying currently in a variety of forms and manifestations many of them unknown and beyond analysis. The paper attempts to build a comprehensive picture of this dimension explaining the linkages between a number of factors and how these linkages determine the nature of the effects for a nation-state. Globalization’s magnitude is the one of a phenomenon, and many nation-states are unable to influence the process itself. Nevertheless, the analysis revealed that there are a number of factors that could influence the effects of economic globalization for a nation-state.

The purpose of this paper is to emphasize the importance of oil on the international market, its role and influence on the world economy. If oil had a remarkable continuity of its use in history, we see that today all modern industry depends on this "black gold", as it is rightly named. Hydrocarbons in the form of oil and its derivatives have become the main source of energy for most of the countries. It is a product that cannot be ignored neither in politics, nor in industry or economy. We can say that it is the product with the strongest influence in these sectors.

Global economy generates conflicting issues regarding timeliness and relevance of the protectionist theory and also on interpreting country risk. Forasmuch, protectionism is seen as a tool for stimulating domestic industry and a means of defense against foreign competition, while economic globalization is assessed in terms of free movement of capital. Analysis of concepts like protectionism, globalization, economic patriotism and country risk, and also the eco-socio-political correlations arising from the dynamic evolution of these dimensions, requires updated interpretation of the Romanian economist Mihail Manoilescu’s ideas. Therefore, his question: “Do we have the right to force nature and make it enter into certain intellectual aesthetic frameworks like the “Procustean bed”?” leads us to conclude that it requires constant adaptation of theories to reality. Without taking any scientific risk, we consider that, so far, the development of economic science was within this trajectory. It remains for the future to confirm further this trend

The article summarises the main lessons of the Bank’s 2010 conference which focused on international trade and foreign direct investment. The research is based on a microeconomic approach to the behaviour of Belgian firms, with reference to developments in the scientific literature on the subject. Firms active internationally have specific characteristics : they are larger and more productive than firms concentrating on the home market. The costs of entering international markets determine their globalisation strategies, be it in terms of timing, the number of markets canvassed, or the choice between exporting and foreign direct investment. Information technologies have a key role in the development of trade in services, especially for analytical work. It is also shown that, in the face of increased competition from Asian products, firms are tending to concentrate their exports on their leading products and to upgrade quality. The international activities of some firms also have positive repercussions on the productivity and globalisation decisions of firms active solely on the home market. Finally, the impact of globalisation on employment is analysed from various angles. In general, trade with low-wage countries tends to increase demand for skilled labour in Belgium and to reduce demand for unskilled labour. The effects of offshoring are comparable. Finally, while multinationals manage their workforce more flexibly than domestic firms, they have nevertheless been the source of substantial job creation, particularly where the subsidiaries of foreign multinationals are concerned.

China has emerged as a major player on the global scenario, having lead, during the last three decades, a great magnitude process of economic and social transformation. Nevertheless, selling Western produce -mainly, food products- in China is, the most complicated challenge which companies that decide to operate in this market should face. This paper aims to offer a panoramic vision of several China particularities with the purpose of reviewing its potential for Western business development. Hence, a number of cases studies of companies that have succeeded to enter the Chinese market and different examples of wrong decisions or failure cases are presented, trying to provide an analytical evaluation and managerial guidelines.

We study economic growth and inflation at different levels of government and external debt. Our analysis is based on new data on forty-four countries spanning about two hundred years. The dataset incorporates over 3,700 annual observations covering a wide range of political systems, institutions, exchange rate arrangements, and historic circumstances. Our main findings are: First, the relationship between government debt and real GDP growth is weak for debt/GDP ratios below a threshold of 90 percent of GDP. Above 90 percent, median growth rates fall by one percent, and average growth falls considerably more. We find that the threshold for public debt is similar in advanced and emerging economies. Second, emerging markets face lower thresholds for external debt (public and private) - which is usually denominated in a foreign currency. When external debt reaches 60 percent of GDP, annual growth declines by about two percent; for higher levels, growth rates are roughly cut in half. Third, there is no apparent contemporaneous link between inflation and public debt levels for the advanced countries as a group (some countries, such as the United States, have experienced higher inflation when debt/GDP is high.) The story is entirely different for emerging markets, where inflation rises sharply as debt increases.

Since the 1970’s, countries of the sub-Saharan African region have experienced slow economic growth and development in comparison to other regions of the world. This paper studies the role of perceived financial risk in explaining the anemic economic growth among sub-Saharan African countries by employing regression techniques on panel data for the period of 1984 to 2000. Our findings suggest that higher ratings of a country’s investment environment (used as a proxy for reduced perceived financial risk) tend to make the flow of external funds more accessible to African countries and spur their economic growth.- Negli anni ’70 la crescita economica e lo sviluppo dei paesi dell’area subsahariana sono stati inferiori rispetto al resto del mondo. Tramite applicazioni di regressioni panel data per il periodo 1984-2000, questo studio analizza il ruolo che il rischio finanziario percepito può aver giocato ai fini della divergenza della crescita economica dei paesi dell’Africa sub-sahariana. I risultati suggeriscono che rating più alti attribuiti all’investment environment (utilizzati come indicatori di un minor rischio finanziario percepito) tendono a rendere più accessibili i finanziamenti stranieri ai paesi africani in questione, stimolandone la crescita economica.

Foreign Inflow plays an important role in country’s development. The importance of foreign inflows is not limited to developing countries; developed and emerging economies also attract foreign inflows to supplement their resources to sustain growth. The importance of foreign inflow in Pakistan is very well acknowledged and documented, however the affect of these inflows on poor people of Pakistan remains unanswered. This paper is an attempt to fill this gap by studying the impact of foreign inflows on poverty reduction in Pakistan through the channel of health, education and other indicators related to human development. Our foreign inflow variable consists of Foreign Direct Investment, Remittances and Foreign Assistance. Using ARDL approach to co-integration on time series data for the period 1972 to 2008, we found that foreign inflows as a whole have increased poverty levels in Pakistan. At disaggregated levels, we found that foreign assistance is the major component of inflows which is responsible for the positive relationship between inflows and poverty. We also found positive relationship between poverty and infant mortality and foreign inflows and female enrolment. The relationship suggests that increase in foreign inflows would not only increase poverty but also would increase infant mortality through indirect channel. The impact of inflow on female enrolment was however found to be positive. JEL classification: E00, F20, F21, F34, F35, I30 Keywords: Poverty, Economic Growth, Pakistan, Foreign Capital, Foreign Debt, Aid, Remittances, Foreign Direct Investment

In this paper, we examine the discrimination of emission taxes between the export and nontradable sectors in a small country. A few articles indicate that there should be no differentiation of environmental policies between sectors in a small country if the government uses indirect instruments as emission taxes. However, we show that the discrimination of emission taxes may occur in a small country that imposes foreign investment quotas. In particular, the possibility that ecological dumping occurs is higher if export goods are more labor intensive than import goods, as in developing countries. Moreover, in the case where imported goods are most capital intensive, both emission tax rates may be lower than marginal environmental damage, and ecological dumping may occur. It is also shown that easing foreign capital quotas may deteriorate the small country fs welfare.

The actual paper comes with an approach regarding the sustainable development in today’s world and the global economy. The way of proceeding is the following: the main causes of the current economic crisis are analyzed and it is demonstrated that applying

Structural changes in Russia's economic space are caused mainly by processes in the global economy. The world crisis has changed the Russian spatial mode of development since financial resources were dramatically reduced. Trends of spatial development during the period of economic growth and at the initial stage of crisis are considered.

This paper focuses on finding out the leading sectors with high potential to maintain and consolidate the comparative and competitive advantages of the Romania’s exports and analyses the change in the pattern of Romanian export specialisation by estimatin

The emigration of skilled individuals from Turkey attracted greater media attention and the interest of policymakers in Turkey, particularly after the experience of recurrent economic crises that have led to an increase in unemployment among the highly educated young. This study estimates a model of return intentions using a dataset compiled from an Internet survey of Turkish students residing abroad. The findings of this study indicate that, as expected, higher salaries offered in the host country and lifestyle preferences, including a more organized environment in the host country, increase the probability of student non-return. However, the analysis also points to the importance of prior return intentions and the role of the family in the decision to return to Turkey or stay overseas. It is also found that the compulsory service requirement attached to government scholarships increases the probability of student return. Turkish Student Association membership also increases return intentions. Longer stay durations, on the other hand, decrease the probability of return. These findings have important policy implications.