The eighth edition of the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) 1996-2008 reveals that many countries have made progress in areas of governance and anti-corruption over the past decade. However, it also shows that many countries around the world failed to make such improvements.
The indicators cover 212 countries and territories, drawing together hundreds of variables [...]
UNCTAD has just published the Economic Development in Africa 2009 report. The study concludes that Africa should deepen regional integration to build stronger and more resilient economies, especially within the context of the current crisis.
Africa currently has the world’s lowest shares of regional trade and investment. However the report recognizes that over the last two [...]
Jim Collins’s latest book examines the well-founded hope that leaders can learn how to stave off decline and, if they find themselves falling, reverse their course – in part by understanding the five-step stages of decline uncovered in the 4-year research project behind the book.
Every institution, no matter how great, is vulnerable to decline. Anyone [...]
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) have just released a joint report on Trade and Climate Change. The study examines, for the first time, the intersections between trade and climate change from four different perspectives:
-The science of climate change
-Trade theory
-Multilateral efforts to tackle climate change
-National climate change policies and [...]
This working report by R. Casadeus-Masanell and F. Zhu analyzes the optimal strategy of a high-quality incumbent that faces a low-quality ad-sponsored competitor. In addition to competing through adjustments of tactical variables such as price or advertising intensity, the authors allow the incumbent to consider changes in its business model. They consider four alternative business [...]
Wine investment houses have, in the past 6-9 months, offered investors the flexibility of choice and an opportunity to take cover in the tax-free asset class of Bordeaux wines during a period when traditional investment products have failed to perform.
As the economic crisis worsens, many investors are seeking out alternative methods of spreading their portfolio [...]
The OECD’s latest Economic Outlook analyzes the major trends and examines the economic policies required to foster high and sustainable growth in OECD member countries, covering the outlook to end-2010 for both OECD countries and selected non-OECD economies. In addition to the themes featured regularly twice a year, this issue contains a special chapter entitled [...]
The current crisis is the first of this severity to hit OECD countries, since they shifted to knowledge-based service economies. A new OECD report, “Policy Responses to the Economic Crisis: Investing in Innovation for Long Term Growth,” warns that innovation risks being hit hard by the economic crisis as the capital to finance it grows [...]
In 2008 the confectionery market in Europe and the US was worth $99.7bn, with a projected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 2.9% to 2012. Volume growth is projected at even lower levels, with a CAGR of just 2.3% over the same period. In the West the confectionery market is a mature and well-established market [...]
The World Economic Forum today released “The Mexico Competitiveness Report 2009″, the first ever study of its type for Mexico. Using the Global Competitiveness Index’s methodology and the latest thinking in competitiveness research, The Mexico Competitiveness Report 2009 provides a comprehensive overview of the country’s current competitiveness landscape, highlighting strengths and problematic areas.
To find out [...]
