The growth of efficiency and profitability are basic goals of every bank management. The prevailed opinion is that these aims can be realised through the growth in scale and scope of their business operations. This growth can be internal – by increasing the scope and the number of own...

We study the role of the banking competition and of the banks' efficiency scores in the transmission of monetary policy in the 10 new European Union member-states. The banking competition is measured by H-statistics of Panzar and Rosse, and the efficiency scores are estimated by non-parametric...

South Africa, Brazil and Turkey (SABT) are among those countries that not only to continue to converge towards the per-capita income levels of highly developed nations but also to be the best candidates next to China and India of serving as the locomotives of world GDP and trade growth after the...

Corporate governance has become an increasingly important issue in recent years, both as a result of corporate scandals and because more than 20 transition economies in the former Soviet Union, Eastern and Central Europe are in the process of converting their economies from a central planning...

Capital mobility and absence of direct taxation have made Vanuatu, an attractive Offshore Financial Centre (OFC) in the Pacific, since its independence in 1980. Consequently, Vanuatu has been depending on trade taxes. As Vanuatu would become part of a Pacific free trade area by 2015, policy...

This paper observes rising unit values, prices per kilogram, of Central and Eastern European exports and argues that it is an evidence of actual rising product quality during the transition period. We arrive at this conclusion by applying a number of methods on a best available dataset for the...

The conventional measure of the Human Development Index (HDI) is a linear average in three dimensions, HDI<SUB align="right"><SMALL>1</SMALL></SUB>. This is indifferent to uniformity in attainment across dimensions. An alternative, HDI<SUB align="right"><SMALL>2</SMALL></SUB>, based on the shortfall from the ideal using Euclidean distance, addresses the above anomaly. These...</small></sub></small></sub>

The analysis of Russia's external economic relations reveals a paradox: while Europe is its main trade and direct investment partner, its currency's role in the Russian financial sphere is lower then that of the US $. This paper analyses this phenomenon by separating the currencies' use for...

This study examines, within the context of Greece, the relationship between the four attributes (importance, behavioural uncertainty, firm specificity and spread) of Strategic Human Capital (SHC), the design/use of Management Control Systems (MCSs) and organisational performance. It utilises...

The paper focuses information asymmetry suffered by the borrowers in consumer credit contracts. It analyses the impact of Poland's Consumer Credit Act of 2001 on the information asymmetry. Information available to borrowers has been enhanced under the new law. Banks publish their effective...