Article history: Received 26 August 2013 Received in revised form 5 September 2013 Accepted 23 September 2013 Available online 29 September 2013 While many studies have looked into the determinants of yields on externally issued sovereign bonds of emerging economies, analysis of domestically issued bonds has hitherto been limited, despite their growing relevance. This paper finds that the exten...

This paper first examines various definitions of Kornai’s soft budget constraint (SBC) and the difficulties involved in interpreting data on losses, subsidies and financing, and then considers selective evidence from transition economies. Stocks of overdue trade credit are no larger than in Western economies and firms in transition economies (TEs) typically impose hard budget constraints on eac...

This study examines the impact of globalization on cross-country inequality and poverty using a panel data set for 65 developing counties, over the period 1970-2008. The role of globalisation in increasing inequality in economies with financial markets imperfections has been highlighted in the theoretical literature but has not been systemically tested empirically. We provide a first pass at te...

This paper looks at the importance of scale economies – defined in terms of the benefits from innovation – from both a theoretical and an empirical perspective. We argue that one can only gauge the degree of scale economies at the industry level by taking account of the degree of specialization – hence the reliance on international trade – as well as the size of an economy. We show that in Icel...

Nowadays, the world economies are rapidly moving towards being more Knowledge-based Economy (KBE) and supporting the force of knowledge as a vital component of economic growth. This recent acceleration in the transition to Knowledge-based Economy in the world, has affected regional economic performance. In this paper, we surveyed the regional convergence in Knowledge-based Economy for selected ...

This paper examines the debate on the East Asian model of economic development in light of the different approaches undertaken by different groups of countries (economies) in Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia. The common strengths and weaknesses shared by the East Asian countries (economies) have helped to reinforce the misconception that there is a single East Asian model of economic developme...

Today, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play a key role in both developing and developed economies. However, the uncertainty of macroeconomic indicators, such as economic growth, may affect financing and investment of the SMEs in an economy. The present study explores the effect of the economic growth rate uncertainty on financing SMEs in Iran. To this end, the study has applied the Br...

This paper further tests Romer’s (1993) extension of Kydland and Prescott’s (1977) predictions for dynamic-inconsistency problems in open economies. In a panel data set of developed and developing countries from 1973 to 1998, I find that openness does not play a role in restricting inflation in the short-run. On the other hand, a fixed exchange-rate regime plays a significant role. The results ...

 As the number of independent countries increases and their economies become more integrated, we would expect to observe more multi-country currency :::union:::s. This paper explores the pros and cons for different countries to adopt as an anchor the US Dollar, the Euro or the Yen. In addition, it addresses the question of how co-movement of outputs and prices would respond to the formation of ...

The recent 199798 Asian economic crisis has thrown Asia’s divergent pathways to development into serious question. Protagonists of neoliberalism argue that their agenda is now becoming a global orthodoxy when several ailing Asian economies have accepted IMF packages which come with neoliberal economic programmes. Drawing on lessons from Singapore’s regionalization programme, this article conten...