International financial services in their most basic conceivable forms have been provided, in one form or another, for at least two millennia. The growth of international finance as we know it (financial services, institutions and markets) has been shaped by history in response to requirements...

Water, like many natural resources, has been conceptualized — and managed — as either a public good or a commodity.The United Nations Committee on Economic, Cultural and Social Rights issued a statement declaring access to water a human right and stating that water is a social and cultural...

Many are the concepts that are one way or another associated with sustainability. Among these, economy, ecology, equity, education and evaluation have been brought together as the five E’s of sustainability. The purpose of this paper is to look into these five concepts and enlarge upon their...

Offshore Financial Centers (OFCs) have emerged as a rather recent and quite debatable reality in the world of international finance. So debatable is the issue that it does not even have a precise generally-accepted definition. Moreover, quite often confusion arises from the use of the more...

Sustainability is like a visionary road map to guide our actions, as individuals, and in relation to the institutional structures with which we have contact. Over the past few decades, it has been widely recognized that sustainability cannot be reached without a strong science base, which is...

Mainly known as a pioneer of the general equilibrium theory, French economist Leon Walras was also a thinker on human nature, mores, scientific inquiry and knowledge and a great defender of human freedoms and social justice. His normative economic ideas on the distribution of social wealth were...

Definitely one of the most controversial terms in recent history, globalization (also spelt globalisation) was called “the most abused word of the 21 st century” by The Economist. Many authors fear that it is bound to become the cliché of our times. The concept behind the word radiates such...

Bureaucracy is not a recent phenomenon. Its beginnings go a long way back in history. Looking into the issue of bureaucracy is a good starting point for the study of two social systems – capitalism and socialism. Such an analysis must be built onto the comparison between profit based...