At the end of 1982 Brazil was close to declare its international insolvency. After Mexico stopped to repay its external debt in autumn of that year the commercial banks confidence also in Brazil's creditworthiness declined rapidly. Within not quite a decade the country's external debt had...

This paper discusses the issue of competitiveness and environmental regulation in a dynamic framework. It presents an example and a general model. It is shown that the dynamic framework cannot lend general support to the hypothesis that strict environmental policies result in an increase in...

In the contemporary world the development of every country is based not only on the utilization of domestic factors but also, on a larger and larger scale, on external factors. The basic prerequisites for their effective use are the openness of a given economy and its competitiveness. In the...

Economic restructuring in the transition from plan to market concerns the way enterprises try to achieve competitive advantage. Therefore, enterprises have to decide where to compete, that is to say with which product they should enter which markets, and how to compete, that is by which strategy...

Which factors determine the prices of West German expörts and imports? To answer this question, two single equation error correction modeis are applied. Export prices turn out to be mainly determined by prices for concurrent goods proiduced abroad, whereas unit labor costs and the nominal...

More than thirty years after Ludwig Erhard suggested a breathing spell for European textile/clothing (T+C) industries to adjust to new market conditions, the Final Act in Marrakech foresees yet another transitional period before liberalization is achieved. During the breathing spell factors...

Issues in high-technology development, production and trade have been a major cause for frictions in international economic relations in recent years. A future change for the better is not yet in sight, notwithstanding the accomplishments of the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations,...

This paper discusses the issue of competitiveness and environmental regulation from the viewpoint of strategic environmental policy models. It demonstrates that the incentive for strategic policies is determined only by the reaction of the opponent. Furthermore, it shows that the conditions...