Standards perform some fundamental economic functions and their relevance for ICT is acknowledged by firms, researchers and policy-makers. This paper investigates the driving forces of formal ICT standards setting (i.e. standardization). Previous quantitative studies have neglected that ICT...

The purpose of this paper is to inspect whether Financial risk influence FDI in Pakistan economy. In order to achieve the study objective and to answer the question, the Unit root test, Co integration test, OLS methodology and Granger causality test has been used. Time series data for the year...

In the context of rising government debt levels in advanced economies and the ongoing euro zone debt crisis, there has been a revival of academic and policy debate on the impact of growing government debt on economic growth. This data-rich study offers an econometric investigation of the...

Central Asia is a region strategically located in a part of the world which had attracted constantly the attention of superpowers of the world as evidenced by the term the Great Game. The term usually attributed to Arthur Conolly, was used to describe the rivalry and strategic conflict between...

We study a symmetric free entry oligopoly in which firms produce differentiated goods so as to maximize their relative profits. The relative profit of each firm is the difference between its profit and the average of the profits of other firms. We show that whether firms determine their outputs...

The main research question is “Will political maneuvering between China and Russia result in higher export price for Uzbek gas?” In 2008, the price of gas exports from Uzbekistan was US$160 per 1,000 cubic meters. On the other hand Gazprom used to charge its European customers an average of...

In our paper we analyze the heterogeneity between various business models among systemically important banks in 65 countries over the period of 2000-2012. For the first time, we are able to identify true banking strategies consisting of different combinations of bank asset and funding sources...

In this paper, we examine the financial integration process amongst 17 EMU countries from January 2002 to June 2013 over a normal period as well as for the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and Eurozone Debt Crisis (EDC) periods. We classify the economies in three groups (A, B and C) based on their...

The UNDP (2005) argued that developing a consensus and implementing follow-up action for regional cooperation and integration cannot happen overnight. In view of the many obstacles of history, current politics and institutional weaknesses, and bearing in mind the slow progress with similar...

The effect of the competition among self-regulatory organizations (SROs) on the efficiency of the corresponding goods and services markets is studied. It is shown that under certain conditions the competition among SROs worsens the quality of the goods and services and leads to decreasing...