This article analyses IMF estimates of economic growth in 180 countries (IMF, 2009), and inks the results to the Re-orient approach, put forward by Frank, 1998. With global economic gravitation shifting to the Indian Ocean/Pacific region, the article also analyses the role of MNC (foreign...

This article reflects the renewed interest of economics and the social science discipline in value systems and religion. The World Values Survey provided a data framework of global value change, whose quantitative results led Barro (2004) to analyze the connections between some dimensions of...

In this article, we present a first empirical reflection on 'smart development', its measurement, possible 'drivers' and 'bottlenecks'. We first provide cross-national data on how much ecological footprint is used in the nations of the world system to 'deliver' a given amount of democracy,...

For some years now, the Happy Planet Organization presents the so-called ‘Happy Planet Index’ (HPI), which is an index of measuring the trade-off between ecological footprint data and life quality (Happy Life Years, HLYE). Costa Rica emerges from these comparisons as the world’s ‘best...

This article looks at the long-term, structural determinants of environmental performance in the world system. In multiple standard OLS regression models, we test the effects of 26 standard predictor variables, including the ‘four freedoms’ of goods, capital, labor and services, on the...

Ever since the path-breaking empirical studies by Schott (1998) world systems scholars start from the well-established assumption that world science is a single gigantic center-periphery relationship. The strategic and tactical practical conclusions for individual scholars and their agenda in...

In this publication, we draw some optimistic, socio-liberal conclusions about Islam in the world system. Countering some alarmist voices in the West, neither migration nor Muslim culture are to be blamed for the contemporary crisis, but the very nature of unequal capitalist accumulation and...

This article first investigates the determination of 14 indicators of development in 109 countries with complete data based on MNC penetration on development in the 1990s and beyond, with such 'new' indicators as 'Islamic culture' or 'adherence to the Washington consensus'. A consequence of the...