The level of financial development is an important determinant of the performance of capital markets. We examine stock returns in a cross section of emerging and mature markets (49 countries) over 1980-99. Returns in financially underdeveloped countries have been somewhat lower, but...

Understanding and conceptualizing the complexities of the contemporary global economy is a challenging but vitally important task. In this article, we critically evaluate the potential of one interpretive framework the global production networks (GPN) perspective for analysing the global economy...