Demand for plastic products in China is increasing rapidly. Yet China has neither the productive capacity to keep pace with demand, nor the management systems to adequately deal with the increasing burden of plastic waste. These problems highlight the potential role for recycling in the...

This study investigates the patterns and trends of e-commerce activities as well as their impact on labour productivity growth in a group of European countries. At hand for the exercise is a unique panel of micro-aggregated firm-level data for 14 European countries spanning over the years 2002...

The discussion on exchange rate policy is dominated by the so-called “impossible trinity”. According to this principle an autonomous monetary policy, a control over the exchange rate and free capital movements cannot be achieved simultaneously. In this paper, a strategy of managed floating...

Many economists and policy makers advocate a fundamental shift towards “green growth” as the new, qualitatively-different growth paradigm, based on enhanced material/resource/energy efficiency and drastic changes in the energy mix. “Green growth” may work well in creating new growth...

Economic growth strategies of developing countries have focused in the last decades on expanding their exports. In that scheme, wage compression seems necessary in order to compensate the observed slow productivity pace achieving, therefore, “competitiveness”. The core of this discussion is,...

We present a Structuralist-Keynesian theoretical approach on the determinants of the real exchange rate (RER) for open emerging economies. Instead of macroeconomic fundamentals, the long-term trend of the real exchange rate level is better determined not only by structural forces and long-term...

This paper is concerned with the following aspects of Basel 2, the new internationally agreed framework for assessing the capital adequacy of banks: (1) its rationale and origins; (2) the process leading to the agreement, including the way in which problems and criticisms which emerged during...