Macroeconomic determinants of bank spread in Latin America: a recent analysis with special focus on Brazil

Latin America has one of the highest interest margins in the world; furthermore, credit to private sector and bank spread are negatively correlated. Brazil, in particular, has one the highest bank spreads in the world – it is even so far the highest one among the Latin American economies. Indeed, despite of the decline in interest rates since mid‐1999, bank spread in Brazil continues to be extremely high in international terms, and in recent years has stood at around 40 percentage points. This paper intends to explore the discussion in the recent literature on bank spread about what determines bank spread in Latin America, with special focus on the Brazilian case, seeking in particular but not exclusively to analyze the macroeconomic determinants of bank spread in recent times.     

Managing MNC-Government Negotiations in Saudi Arabia: The Key Role of Elites

This article explores the relationships between multinational corporations (MNCs) and a host country, in this case Saudi Arabia (the Kingdom). The interests of Saudi businesses and the political elite, along with the evolution of their relationship are surveyed. Furthermore, the validity of traditional and two-tier models of bargaining between MNCs and developing countries are assessed in the context of the Kingdom. It is argued that while both models may be useful, the two fail to capture the nature of MNCs-Saudi Arabia bargaining process. These two models are revised and enriched to adequately reflect the Kingdom's specific advantage, the nature of its national firms, and the unique relations it has with MNCs and their home countries. The study concludes that under current global political and economic conditions, the elite and MNCs interests appear to converge around business objectives.     

Joint Implementation: Strategic Reactions and Possible Remedies

This paper investigates the promising proposal of Joint Implementation (JI) to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. This was ultimately the only concrete outcome of the Conference on Climate Change in Berlin, albeit restricted to a pilot phase. The basic idea, given the public's awareness of global warming, sounds economically plausible: The industrialized countries, the only ones required to stabilize and lower carbon emissions, can search for cheaper reductions of greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries and economies in transition. However, this proposal leads to strategic reactions by developing countries reinforced by the fact that this cheating coincides with the interest of the industrialized country. In short, this proposal will lead to cheating (given asymmetric information) and will thus produce largely faked reductions in emissions. On the constructive side, an efficient mechanism retaining the spirit of JI is derived, which deters strategic reactions. This differs from a usual principal-agent problem through an additional hierarchical layer: a global authority (e.g. the Conference of Parties on Climate Change), an industrialized country and a developing country. The unavoidable loss that is even associated with an optimal scheme due to strategic, behavioural reality (the first best optimum is unattainable, except at the top) leads, of course, to much less glamorous predictions in emission reductions. Moreover, the implicit subsidization scheme focuses and favours on already 'efficient' partners.     

Information advantages of large institutional owners

We study the relation between the percentage of outstanding shares held by a firm's largest institutional owner and the bid–ask spread on that firm's shares, a measure of information risk. We find that the greater the percentage of shares held by the largest institutional investor, the greater the bid–ask spread in share prices. In contrast, the percentage of shares held by smaller institutional owners is related to lower bid–ask spreads. The results imply that only the largest of a firm's institutional owners—and no other institutional owner—is perceived to hold an information advantage. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

全球生产网络治理模式研究

全球生产网络是一种新型资源配置方式。本文首先介绍了全球生产网络的产生背景和组织结构。在分析传统的企业和市场治理模式缺陷的基础上，指出全球生产网络由于其网络信用和特异资产的存在，而具有有效克服企业和市场缺陷的优越性。文章建立了完全信息静态博弈模型并对其稳定性进行解释，得出有启示意义的结论。     

全球价值链视角下的银行卡产业升级

我国银行卡业处于产业的初级阶段,存在诸多问题,对产业升级和结构调整具有不利影响.依据全球价值链及产业升级的理论,嵌入全球价值链可为升级换代创造有利环境,保证银行卡业升级的顺利进行.我国银行卡业处于GVC低端,应利用好GVC带来的升级机会,加快自主创新,创建民族银行卡品牌,打造竞争优势,规避升级中的风险.     

加入世贸组织10年:中国市场化进程演进轨迹

《中国加入世贸组织议定书》的签订,意味着中国改革开放进入了一个新阶段。加入世贸组织是党中央、国务院根据国际国内经济发展形势,高瞻远瞩,总揽全局作出的重大决策,对中国经济和社会各方面产生重大而深远的影响。10年来,中国通过更深更广地融入全球市场经济体系,提高了自身的资源配置效率,综合国力和国际竞争力迅速增强。通过履行加入世贸组织的承诺,中国的市场化改革不断深化,各领域市场化程度稳步提高,社会主义市场经济体制得到了进一步的完善。     

Green Agriculture: foundations for biodiverse,resilient and productive agricultural systems

There are many visions on how to achieve a sustainable agriculture that provides enough food and ecosystem services for present and future generations in an era of climate change, increasing costs of energy, social unrest, financial instability and increasing environmental degradation. New agricultural systems that are able to confront the challenges of a rapidly changing world require a minimum of ten attributes that constitute the defining elements of a Green Agriculture. A major challenge is to identify a set of thresholds that any agricultural production strategy must meet, beyond which unsustainable trends caused by the farming technologies would lead to tipping-point phenomena. Only those styles of agriculture that meet the established threshold criteria while advancing rural communities towards food, energy and technological sovereignty would be considered viable forms of Green Agriculture. Considering the diversity of ecological, socio-economic, historical and political contexts in which agricultural systems have developed and are evolving in, it is only wise to define a set of flexible and locally adaptable principles and boundaries of sustainability and resiliency for the agroecosystems of the immediate future.     

对长江三峡英文导游词的文体学分析

导游词是导游同游客交流思想，指导游览，进行讲解，传播知识并与旅游活动密切相关的一种语言，堪称旅游的第二风景。所谓“景点美不美，全靠导游一张嘴”，导游词的研究具有重要的理论和现实意义。本论文中，笔者选择长江三峡英文导游词作为语料，从文体学视角进行宏观和微观分析，包括语篇语境、语篇整体结构以及语音、字位、词汇、句法和衔接机制的分析。通过该分析加深对文体学的理解应用，同时对英文导游词质量的提高起到一定的指导作用。