Timor-Leste is among the youngest nations in the world. It started its independence under difficult circumstances: poverty is widespread, education is poor, the industrial sector is non-existent, and political turbulence is on the rise. On the positive side, future oil revenues are predicted to...

Bosnia and Herzegovina has experienced a turbulent post-independence transition. It can be argued that the level of trust is likely to have been negatively affected by this turbulence and that it is important to restore trust to achieve sustainable political and economic development. This paper...

Equitization (privatization) has been at the core of the policy debate in Vietnam over the last decade but the government’s attitude seems ambivalent. On the one hand, equitization is emphasized in policy statements. On the other, the progress on equitization has been relatively modest and...

A substantial literature has grown up around the issue of how inward direct investment affects host countries. On almost every aspect of this question, there seems to be a wide range of empirical results in academic literature, and little sign of convergence. It is our purpose here to try to...

Wages in domestically- owned Indonesian manufacturing plants taken over by foreign firms increased sharply between the year before takeover and two years after takeover, relative to plants remaining in domestic ownership. Blue- collar wage levels in these plants had been less than 10 per cent...

Timor-Leste began its independence as one of the poorest nations in the world. Substantial progress has been made thereafter but the challenges for future development are numerous. High population growth and modest growth of GDP means that per capita income is declining and that the extent of...

Multinational firms pay relatively high wages. Less is known about the wage structure within multinational and non-multinational firms. We examine the impact of acquisitions on wage dispersion in Sweden using a large matched employer-employee data set. Foreign acquisitions of Swedish firms...

Timor-Leste is among the world’s poorest countries and poverty reduction is high on the country’s policy agenda. The National Development Plan emphasizes a poverty reduction strategy based on economic growth and a focus on improvements in the health and education sector. This paper describes...

Technical progress is at the heart of economic growth and development. New or improved technology can be achieved through own research and innovations or through the absorption and adaptation of foreign technologies. To facilitate such technical progress requires a complex system of supporting...

Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) have been important for Vietnam’s rapid economic development. However, the context in which SMEs operate are rapidly changing with the current internationalisation of the Vietnamese economy. The question posed in this paper is “How are Vietnam’s...