Economists assume increased producer flexibility creates production advantages. So why do inefficient French quality wine producers dominate their flexible, efficient Italian counterparts? French AOC wine producers created "corporatist" producer organizations which served three purposes:...

European beer markets are characterized by major changes that are forcing breweries to redesign their competitive strategies. In this paper, we analyze the changes in the German and Croatian brewing industries by referring to Porter’s five forces model and generic strategies framework. The...

Despite the reunification of Germany more than 15 years ago, substantial differences remain between the regions that once comprised the market-driven West and the socialist, centrally planned East. Although today’s Eastern German economy is less competitive than the Western German economy,...

The behavioral equilibrium exchange rate (BEER) and the Penn effect models are compared via their applications on the valuation of the Renminbi (RMB). Considering the two models’ bases and applications, I conclude that, in time-series and cross-section data settings, the Penn effect model is...

In this paper we investigate the size of health differences that exist among men in England and the United States and how those differences vary by Socio-Economic Status (SES) in both countries. Three SES measures are emphasized - education, household income, and household wealth - and the...

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...

The adequacy of household saving for retirement has become a policy issue all around the world. The UK and US have been in the vanguard of those countries that have tried to encourage retirement saving by providing tax-favoured treatment for particular savings accounts. We consider empirical...