One of the burning issues at the moment relates to increasing the “voice†or representation of emerging-market economies in international financial institutions such as the IMF and World Bank. There are many issues and challenges facing the monetary policy in emerging markets. In the...

Within the past decade, national levels of labour productivity in CEECs have converged significantly towards the levels predominant in the EU. Yet, levels are still significantly lower, large gaps are still prevalent. Needless to say, levels within the EU also differ greatly; comparisons with...

This paper examines the question if the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) Initiative provides a good basis for the HIPCs to exit from repeated debt rescheduling. Building on other reviews of the HIPC Initiative, the paper begins with a short summary of some key problems of the HIPC...

The ambitious development plans for the Lancang-Mekong River Basin (LMRB) could have serious environmental, social, cultural and even geopolitical ramifications that could in turn destabilise the Mekong Subregion (MS). On the premise that frameworks for regional cooperation offer a viable route...

In this context, higher education as well as research and development (R&D) have long since ceased to be purely the domain of the developed Western economies. Numerous regions of the world, some in the emerging markets in particular – the often-cited BRIC countries – are catching...

This paper develops an index for measuring the economic power of governments viewed as entities in themselves. The basic idea is to encapsulate the economic representative power of a nation’s government in the international arena in as simple and parsimonious a manner as possible. For...

Measuring progress towards Millennium Development Goal 6, including estimates of, and time trends in, the number of malaria cases, has relied on risk maps constructed from surveys of parasite prevalence, and on routine case reports compiled by health ministries. A critique of both methods are...