Theory makes ambiguous predictions about the effects of bank market structure on access to external finance. Using a unique database for 74 countries and for firms of small, medium and large size we assess the effect of banking market structure on the access of firms to bank finance. We find that bank concentration increases financing obstacles, but only in countries with low levels of economic...

Although the risk of expropriation for foreign direct investment (FDI) has fallen substantially since the 1970s, political risk continues to be of concern to MNCs in many countries. I ask whether domestic political checks and balances and international legal instruments that aim to protect FDI enable governments to commit credibly to avoid future policies that diminish the value of sunk FDI. Ut...

At the moment, we are facing great expectations of having more effective social politics to combat poverty. Once the inefficiency of the assistance model of the 90’s was recognized, governments and third sector organizations developed many innovative projects. They opened new ways for effective interventions aimed to mobilization of the communities and the development of the social capital.

a r t i c l e i n f o The study explores Israel's Silicon Valley style of entrepreneurial financing and venture capital (VC) management. Israel is known as the most successful Silicon Valley-style economy, similar to the US Silicon Valley. The high-tech economy of Israel presents an interesting case of effective institutional setting and policies that transform the country into the innovation n...

The article highlights the role played by São Paulo's Pasteur Institute (1903-16) in the development of microbiological science in Brazil and in the emergence of a pharmaceutical industry owned by Brazilian capital.

Available evidence about the government responses to World Trade Center attack indicates that information technology played a critically important role. Effective use of a variety of information technologies helped government agencies to better cope with and respond to the multiple crises, and ongoing recovery demands, resulting from the attack. At the same time, the severity of the crisis was ...

The higher resources needed to provide a service portfolio that responds to the rapid growth of an ageing population is a concern for many governments in the developed countries. The paper explores the convergent insights of three conceptual frameworks to identify where age-aware eGovernment is more likely to be developed effectively. The paper shows how the social and relational capital of the...

This paper investigates the relationship between firm heterogeneity and a firm’s decision to export, using the annual survey of Thai manufacturing firms from 2001 to 2004. A significant contribution of this paper is that we are, for the first time, able to break down FDI by country of origin to observe whether the behavior of MNEs differs by region of origin. We find that entry sunk costs and f...