Euro-Asian trade was for a long time by far the weakest link in the triadic chain of economic relationships between Europe, North America and Asia. The development of the EC towards the single market, the opening up of Eastern Europe and the growth of trade within the Asia Pacific region itself...

The Hamburg Institute for Economic Research, the Institut für Iberoamerikakunde, Hamburg, and the Institute for European-Latin American Relations, Madrid, on the occasion of the 1993 Annual Assembly of the IDB/IIC Board of Governors in Hamburg, organized a seminar on "Latin America's...

During the 1980s foreign direct investment (FDI) expanded remarkably. Simultaneously, the regional structure of foreign direct investment changed. This relationship is discernible among industrial countries, as well as between industrial and developing countries. Of particular importance is the...

In view of the ever greater demands placed on the environment worldwide and the limited resources available to meet this demand, cross-border environmental problems are expected to become an increasingly contentious issue in the next few decades. A case in point are international rivers and the...

Today, the telecoms sector is not only one of the fastest growing sectors in the world but also one of the most rapidly changing sectors. In Western Europe different strategies under different regulatory frameworks are being pursued in the effort to meet the challenges posed by this. In Central...

In Western Europe in the last two decades the unemployment rate has increased during cyclical downturns only to persist at or around the higher level in the following phase of economic recovery. One of the most notable exceptions to this pattern of unemployment persistence, often termed...

In view of high and persistent unemployment in the European industrialised countries there is growing consensus that more flexibility is needed with regard to both the legal and institutional conditions governing the labour market (external flexibility) and the management of human resources...

Not least due to the change in overall economic conditions, the employment of foreign workers in Western Europe has in recent years become increasingly controversial. The following two articles deal with different aspects of labour migration. Heinz Werner presents a survey of policies towards...

The growing importance of Japan on the world market has brought with it changes in the international division of labour and a shift in the focus of the expansion in world trade away from the EC and the USA. What factors determine the shares of the EC, the USA and Japan in international trade?...