The European welfare regimes face two sets of challenges. One internal, specific for the welfare state itself, and the other external, imposed by changing economic, political and economics conditions. The first challenge lies in the growing gap between the rigid welfare state design and flexible...

When the source of external capital for Continental European firms is examined, debt markets have historically supplied a much larger percentage of the external capital than equity markets, and firms rely much more on bank debt than bonds for their external funds. In this environment banks have...

This article analyses the relationship between the main antecedents of and imports/GNP ratio as a subtle reflector of macro-level consumer ethnocentrism (CE). We constructed a model that reflects the macro level ethnocentrism in a domestic country. This ratio expresses the economy openness of a...

The compensation hypothesis predicts a positive causation from international economic openness to the size of the public sector, as governments step in to perform a risk mitigating role to counterbalance the increasing exposure to external risk and the economic dislocations caused by growing...

We examine some controversial country-specific factors influencing vertical and horizontal intra-industry trade including foreign direct investment and income distributions. As concerns, the effect of differences in countries’ levels of economic development (richness), both theories and...

This article provides an in-depth study of Canada's financial services sector policy network in light of the failed 2011 merger attempt between the London Stock Exchange and the Toronto Stock Exchange. The Canadian network is often presented as cohesive, yet the network was highly divided on the...

This paper provides evidence of how national and linguistic borders affect the structure of policy networks. Our analysis of the Basel metropolitan region located across Switzerland, France and Germany considers the case of cross-border public transportation. Using a social network approach...

This paper investigates the significance of networks in regional rail planning and how these networks can help regional planners meet the needs of local stakeholders. The research question focuses on the identification of the relative importance of three core factors in regional planning –...

Food standards are jointly regulated in Australia and New Zealand under the Food Standards Code. However, country of origin labelling (CoOL) is one of the few divergences in these trans-Tasman food regulations. Australia has mandatory CoOL on many food products, while New Zealand does not. This...