In principle, the sovereign credit rating industry could help mitigate the congestion externalities common to world capital markets that arise from the failure of market participants to internalise the social cost of external borrowings. This would require that modifications in ratings on...

Egypt, the oldest and most populous country in the Arab world, and one of its most influential in the Southern Mediterranean region, is now moving into the global economy. During the 1990s the country has pursued successful macroeconomic stabilisation policies and has also begun the structural...

While the world has been mesmerised by China’s emergence as a major player in international trade, now being one of the world’s top ten traders, and also as an absorber of international capital (second only to the United States), China’s state-owned and other public sector enterprises have...

This paper sets out a framework within which the problem of corruption may be analysed in any specific country. It does not seek to establish the importance of such activity in a general sense, or seek to propose particular economic policy or institutional programmes that should be pursued in...

The developing countries of the Southern Mediterranean (SOM) have missed the extraordinary surge of private international investment in recent years. Although the SOM region was an important destination for foreign direct investments, its share of world FDI has declined. In 1994, private capital...

The paper evaluates the economics of foreign investment regulation for pension funds, with a focus on developing countries, where fully-funded pension systems are being started de novo. The analysis produces three observations. First, the benefits of global portfolio diversification apply...