With decentralization and urbanization, the debts of state and local governments and of quasi-public agencies have grown in importance. Rapid urbanization in developing countries requires large-scale infrastructure financing to help absorb influxes of rural populations. Borrowing enables state...

Fiscal responsibility laws are institutions with which multiple governments in the same economy -- national and subnational --can commit to help avoid irresponsible fiscal behavior that could have short-term advantages to one of them but that would be collectively damaging. Coordination failures...

This note focuses on the impact of the global financial crisis on subnational debt financing. We approach the following questions: Why is subnational debt financing important? What are the impacts of the crisis on the fiscal balance and financing cost of subnational governments (SNGs)? What...

In the present paper, a five-column heat integrated methanol distillation scheme is proposed with the aid of process simulation and pinch analysis. Unlike the popular four-column (or 3 + 1 column) scheme, a medium-pressure column is added after the light ends column in this novel scheme. The...

This paper presents a significant method and a basic idea of waste heat recovery from high temperature slags based on Time Temperature Transformation (TTT) curves. Three samples with a fixed CaO/SiO₂ ratio of 1.05 and different levels of Al₂O₃ were designed and isothermal experiments were...

Waste heat recovery from high temperature slags represents the latest potential way to remarkably reduce the energy consumption and CO₂ emissions of the steel industry. The molten slags, in the temperature range of 1723–1923 K, carry large amounts of high quality energy. However, the heat...

The enormous leaps of growth and development experienced by Eastern and Southeast Asian states since the 1960s on account of their astonishing industrial development have led to concerns that a resulting global economic and political shift might favour the Pacific region at the expense of the...