Recent debates about the state of Japan's financial system focus on the weakness of Japanese banks. But, in the complex financial relations of an advanced economy bank finance cannot be seen separate from other forms of financial intermediation. Despite the reform efforts under the Big Bang...

In this paper, we investigate internationalization strategies of German manufacturing firms in the European Union. We give reasons for the hypothesis that traditional market strategies had been replaced by border-crossing production networking based on the comparative advantage of host countries...

The financial services industry is "special" in a variety of ways, including the fiduciary nature of the business, its role at the center of the payments and capital allocation process with all its static and dynamic implications for economic performance, and the systemic nature of problems that...

Japan and Korea are close countries in terms of economic interaction as well as geography. To quantify the impact of changes in the yen-dollar exchange rate on the Korean economy before and after the crisis in 1997, the sample period has been divided into two sub-periods and the causal...

After Future climate policy regimes may be based on the Kyoto-Protocol or on other policy instruments such as carbon-taxes. Any effective regime based on the Protocol requires the determination of the concrete contributions by each Party. This involves namely the time of contribution and the...

International climate negotiations have specified that projects under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) should not lead to a "diversion" of official development assistance (ODA). It is however unchallenged that ODA can be used in capacity building for the CDM. Diversion can be interpreted in...

Many believe that multinational enterprises insensitively ignore political rights and civil liberties in the countries of their investments. Frequently, non-governmental organisations accuse multinationals of fostering repressive regimes in developing countries and consider foreign direct...

Afforestation and reforestation (AR) projects in the Clean Development Mechanism are able to create emission permits that can be accounted against the industrialized countries' commitments for limiting their greenhouse gas emissions, as agreed under the Kyoto Protocol. The discussion of how to...

The paper explores the interaction between the proposed monetary union for ECOWAS and structural reforms of fiscal policy. The effects depend to a large extent on the degree of similarity of member countries. In a monetary union of similar countries, member states run a more distortive fiscal...

Does official aid pave the road for private foreign investment or does it suffocate private initiative by diverting resources towards unproductive activities? In this paper we explore this question using data for a large number of developing and emerging economies. Controlling for countries'...