Medical tourism is an industry that has been experiencing continuous growth in recent years. It is an area of interest not only for the host countries (the suppliers), but also for countries with high medical costs (the consumers), which are typically industrialized countries. There is a need to...

Despite being a fixture of everyday life in the Arab world, wasta, which may be thought of as special influence by members of the same group or tribe, has received little attention from social scientists. Our casual empiricism suggests that wasta is an important determinant of how economic...

This paper looks at the impact of the rise of China on the geopolitical configuration and international relations in the East Asian region the main flashpoints of which include the high-profile disputes over the ownership of the islands, atolls, reefs, cays and islets in the South China Sea...

Retrospective amendments have always been a bone of contention in taxation laws. Sometimes to cure the defects pointed out by courts in the fiscal legislation and sometimes (by being accompanied by validation laws) to take away vested rights of the citizens, retrospective amendments are not...

This paper employs an economic approach to analyze the influence of Confucian filial piety on economic growth in ancient China. In the highly imperfect credit market of the time, filial piety, as a unique mechanism for fulfilling intergenerational contracts, could to some extent solve problems...

The Quran is the primary source for the teachings and tenets of Islam. There are two to three other sources of Islamic doctrines to which one may also refer. As times change, the community may change social and economic policies rooted in Islamic values in order to meet a society's shifting...

On December 18, 2009, Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court issued a ruling in favor of Baidu, Inc., a leading search engine provider in China, in an abuse of a dominant position case brought by Tangshan Renren Information Services Co., an operator of a medical information consulting...

India has traditionally been perceived, both domestically and globally, as an important aid receiver. But it has also had a foreign aid programme of its own which can be traced to the 1950s and 1960s. India's aid programme was small, focused on building local capacities and viewed as benign. In...

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, when Japan experienced a period of rapid economic growth comparable to that of many other Asian countries today, government fiscal policy was largely facilitated by the Fiscal Investment and Loan Program ("FILP"). This paper examines whether it would be...