Success of recent developments in Asian economic regionalism and free trade agreements depends to some significant extent on the continuing role and importance of trade of these economies with themselves and also with the world's major trading blocs. The paper reviews especially the case of...

Early-age enlistment increases a small country's potential army size and thereby its attack-deterrence capacity. However, physical and psychological injuries and, ultimately, death generate a loss of quality-adjusted life-years that reduces the net benefit from early-age enlistment. The net...

Peer assisted study sessions (PASS) are a type of supplemental instruction (SI) that provide students with out-of-class study review sessions with a group of peers. A student, who has successfully completed the subject and acts as a mentor, facilitates the voluntary sessions. Results of the PASS...

Although economic growth is inherently linked with the structure and nature of SMEs (e.g. their number, industry concentration, size, degree of outsourcing, etc), as this has been shown in the existing literature, OIs, more generally, are the context in which SMEs operate and hence OIs ought to...

This paper deals dynamically with macroeconomic aspects of widespread substance abuse with a reference to illicit drugs as an example. Substance-abuse impedes the productivity of the labour force and subsequently economic growth. The labour force is divided into non-using and therefore fully...

This paper surveys the literature on the performance of Export Processing Zones (EPZs) that have used benefit-cost analytical framework. Survey reveals that as industrial development proceeds, the gap between market and opportunity cost of labour narrow and the interest on EPZs tends to...

In this paper we examine regulatory issues relating to electronic money. The discussion proceeds along three main lines. Firstly, the focus of attention on the potential risks to the financial system is typically on the systemic risk arising from the payments system. Since issuers of electronic...

The introduction of efficiency improvements and enterprise bargaining into local authorities has been severely hampered by a failure to agree on a method of measuring service productivity. This paper develops an outcomes measure of productivity which, it argues, meets both externally imposed...