What are the borrowing strategies and practices of European members of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA)? The authors had extensive discussions with bankers in the leading financial centres in Europe. Some of their findings are presented in the following article.

Much concern has been expressed in recent years over the mounting debt burden of developing countries. The increasing amounts of loans and their hardening terms have in many cases led to external debt servicing problems of alarming magnitudes. The following contribution addresses itself to...

The Federal Republic of Germany, together with the United States of America, is one of the most determined opponents to the developing countries' demand for a general debt moratorium (and also the UNCTAD integrated programme on commodities). However, the outcome of recent international...

Latin America's foreign debts have been mounting fast in the last ten years. The following article shows that it would nevertheless be wrong to suggest that Latin America has generally run up excessive debts.

Given the chronic and crippling impact which their mounting international indebtedness exerts on the economies of many developing countries, cancellation on a fairly comprehensive basis seems the only realistic way of coping with this problem. According to the author, the existing objections to...

In this paper we assess the current relevance of Ricardian theory. Relative prices, labor costs, and productivity are evaluated as determinants of a country's international competitiveness at the industry level. Working with detailed data on unit values and with industry data on productivity, we...

Viele nordamerikanische multinationale Unternehmen versuchen, standardisierte Verhaltenskodices in ihren europäischen Tochtergesellschaften zu implementieren, um Verhaltenweisen zu kontrollieren und um eine homogene Unternehmenskultur zu entwickeln. Durch die starke nordamerikanische...

Positive effects of employee participation on organizational performance are closely linked to the implementation of a specific corporate culture always referred to as 'ownership culture'. This issue can be stimulated through employee share purchase plans (ESPP). This article will investigate...

Recent attention has focused on the UK's productivity gap in the retail sector. Figure 1 shows an estimate of labour productivity in retail across countries, using output per hour worked. The UK lies well behind the US, France and Germany. Reynolds at al (2005) contribute to this debate by...