In this paper, we investigate the presence of economies of scale in the global iron-making industry for integrated steel plants, iron-making being the first stage in the steel-making process. Iron-making depends on basic commodities, such as iron ore, coke and various forms of energy, required...

Sustained economic growth in China has triggered a surge of energy imports, especially oil imports. This paper investigates the determinants of China’s energy import demand by using cointegraiton and VECM techniques. The findings suggest that, in the long run, growth of industrial production...

When attempting to identify empirical regularities in consumption patterns, their tremendous diversity across countries represents both a major opportunity and challenge. For example, consumers in rich countries devote less than 20 percent of their budget to food, while this rises to more than...

China and India have recently achieved spectacular economic growth. However, services in these two Asian giants have played a very different role. In India, the service sector contributes to more than 54 per cent of GDP while its GDP share in China is much smaller (below 41 per cent in 2004). To...

International food consumption has attracted a lot of attention in the literature. In particular, a series of studies have been conducted using the popular International Comparison Project (ICP) databases (released in the 1970s and 1980s). This paper adds to the growing literature by presenting...

China has enjoyed high economic growth for three decades since the initiative of economic reform in 1978. This growth has however been driven mainly by labour-intensive, export-oriented manufacturing activities. Has innovation played a role in China’s economic growth? What are the determinants...