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Country Governments (country + government)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting50%
Humanities and Social Sciences33%

Selected Abstracts

Citizen Response to Disasters: a Survey of Literature and Some Practical Implications

JOURNAL OF CONTINGENCIES AND CRISIS MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2004
I. Helsloot
It is most likely that the modern citizen responds to disasters in the same fashion as his ancestor. Contrary to widespread belief, citizens do not panic in disaster situations. In fact, research into different aspects of citizen response shows that most citizens act in a rather rational way. Indeed, citizens often prove to be the most effective kind of emergency personnel. Disaster evaluations invariably show that most lives are actually saved by the ,average' citizen. On the other hand, it seems little can be done to improve citizen preparedness. A modern western citizen is not likely to invest time or money in preparing for ,acceptable' risks. The above results stem for the greater part from research already conducted as long ago as the nineteen-eighties. Limitations and implications however seem as yet unclear. One important limitation is the cultural bias in most studies. One important implication is that in western countries government should step in to improve citizen response by preparing to facilitate it in times of disaster. [source]

Multinational Corporations and Patterns of Local Knowledge Transfer in Costa Rican High-Tech Industries

DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 3 2008
Elisa Giuliani
ABSTRACT Over recent decades, governments in industrializing countries have promoted policies to attract foreign investors, anticipating the benefits of technology transfer to host economies. During the 1990s, Costa Rica adopted an industrialization strategy based on attracting high-tech multinational companies (MNCs). Using an original survey of a sample of high-tech MNC subsidiaries, this article shows that the new wave of efficiency-seeking subsidiaries tend not to transfer knowledge to domestic firms even when they establish backward linkages with them. Instead, most of the knowledge transfer occurs between high-tech foreign subsidiaries. This has clear policy implications for host country governments. [source]

Creating Securities Markets in Developing Countries: A New Approach for the Age of Automated Trading

INTERNATIONAL FINANCE, Issue 2 2001
Benn Steil
The past decade has been one of enormous change in the securities trading industry. Automation of trading systems, led by the continental European exchanges and US ,electronic communications networks' (ECNs), has resulted in significant declines in trading costs, massive increases in turnover, internationalization of trading and settlement system operations, and major reforms in exchange governance. Yet the policy advice given to developing country governments looking to create or expand securitized finance in their markets has been largely unaffected by these developments. This is unfortunate, as developing countries now have the opportunity to leapfrog the evolving infrastructure of the mature markets and to define the global efficient frontier in trading technology, exchange governance, investor access and market structure regulation. This paper analyses the technological and economic forces driving change in the securities trading industry, and examines the implications for developing markets. [source]

Conditionality, coercion and other forms of ,Power': international financial institutions in the Pacific

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION & DEVELOPMENT, Issue 3 2002
Peter Larmour
Research on conditionality has cast doubt on its effectiveness. Nevertheless, international financial institutions have continued to apply policy conditions to loans to developing country governments. The article aims to contribute to the current debate about conditionality in two ways. Empirically, it introduces recent evidence from countries and institutions not included in earlier studies (the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Papua New Guinea, and the Asian Development Bank in the South Pacific). Conceptually, it introduces arguments from political science to extend our understanding of the power relationships involved. Some conditions have clearly been applied coercively, particularly on ,Green' issues. Donors have also controlled the agenda of negotiations. But more productive and disciplinary forms of power are shown to be at work in conditionality, as in other forms of aid. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Seven Challenges in International Development Assistance for Health and Ways Forward

THE JOURNAL OF LAW, MEDICINE & ETHICS, Issue 3 2010
Devi Sridhar
This paper outlines seven challenges in development assistance for health, which in the current financial context, have become even more important to address. These include the following: (1) the proliferation of initiatives, focusing on specific diseases or issues, as well as (2) the lack of attention given to reforming the existing focal health institutions, the WHO and World Bank. (3) The lack of accountability of donors and their influence on priority-setting are part of the reason that there is "initiavitis," and resistance to creating a strong UN system. (4) Other than absolute quantity of aid, three other challenges linked to donors relate to the quality of aid financing particularly the pragmatic difficulties of financing horizontal interventions, (5) the marginal involvement of developing country governments as aid recipients, and (6) the heavy reliance on Northern-based organizations as managers of funds. (7) The final challenge discussed focuses on two unintended consequences of the recent linking of health and foreign policy for international development assistance. The paper then provides three suggestions for ways forward: creating new mechanisms to hold donors to account, developing national plans and strengthening national leadership in health, and South-South collaboration. [source]

Stock Market Liberalization, Economic Reform, and Emerging Market Equity Prices

THE JOURNAL OF FINANCE, Issue 2 2000
Peter Blair Henry
A stock market liberalization is a decision by a country's government to allow foreigners to purchase shares in that country's stock market. On average, a country's aggregate equity price index experiences abnormal returns of 3.3 percent per month in real dollar terms during an eight-month window leading up to the implementation of its initial stock market liberalization. This result is consistent with the prediction of standard international asset pricing models that stock market liberalization may reduce the liberalizing country's cost of equity capital by allowing for risk sharing between domestic and foreign agents. [source]