The euro and developing country finance: A survey

More than eight years after the introduction of the euro, impacts on developing countries have been relatively modest. Overall, the euro has become much more important in debt issuance than in official foreign exchange reserve holdings. The former has benefited from the creation of a large set of investors for which the euro is the home currency, while demand for euro reserves has been held back by the dominance of the dollar as a vehicle and intervention currency, and the greater liquidity of the market for US treasury securities. Fears of further dollar decline may fuel some shifts out of dollars into euros, however, with the potential for a period of financial instability.     

高职院校学生中发展党员工作的思考

高职学生是伴随着高等职业教育的蓬勃发展而出现的一个新群体,有其鲜明的特点。高职院校党组织要充分认识在学生中发展党员工作的重要意义,认真分析高职学生的特点及发展学生党员工作中存在的问题,积极做好在高职学生中发展党员工作。     

Efficiency of research investments in the presence of international spillovers: wheat research in developing countries⋆

Expenditures on agricultural research in the public sector, including the International Agricultural Research Centers (IARCs) have stagnated and in some cases, declined sharply in recent years. This has focused attention on issues of efficiency of agricultural research systems, especially the number, size, scope, type, and locations of their programs. This paper examines the issue of research efficiency through a case study of wheat improvement research in developing countries. The basic premise of this study is that the optimal level of research investment should be determined in a global model that incorporates direct research spill‐ins. An analytical framework is developed to determine the threshold levels of crop production in a country (or a region within a country) needed to justify crop improvement research programs of different sizes in the presence of spill‐ins from abroad. Spill‐in coefficients are estimated from yield performance of varieties of different origins grown across a range of environments. The model is then applied to analyze the efficiency of current investments in 69 wheat improvement research programs in 35 developing countries. A major conclusion of the paper is that given the magnitude of potential spill‐ins from the international research system, many wheat research programs could significantly increase the efficiency of resource use by reducing the size of their wheat research programs and focusing on the screening of varieties developed elsewhere. ©2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.     

Agroindustrialization, globalization, and international development: An overview of issues, patterns, and determinants

This paper offers an overview for a special issue on agroindustrialization, globalization, and international development. It sets out a conceptual framework for understanding the links among these three broad phenomena and then discusses emerging issues and evidence concerning the factors conditioning agroindustrialization in developing countries and the subsequent effects on employment, poverty, and the natural environment. We conclude with a research agenda.     

如何开展产品研制中的“三化”工作

阐述“通用化、系列化、组合化（模块化）”的概念,共同点,联系与区别,就如何开展产品研制中的“三化”工作提出见解。     

Global value chain linkages: An integrative review of the opportunities and challenges for SMEs in developing countries

This study reviews the literature on the challenges and opportunities of the global value chain (GVC) participation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries. A three-step approach to the literature review is used for synthesizing the relevant research works. In the end, we retain that SMEs are drivers of economic growth and despite the many challenges they face, the opportunity for developing country SMEs to benefit from their GVC linkages does exist, notably the high-quality information that they would otherwise not have access to. However there are necessary preconditions, resources and strategies that need to be put together to ensure the successful integration and growth (upgrading) of these SMEs within GVCs. The findings and proposed model contribute to enrich existing GVC research and offer a theoretical guide for possible practical measures to be adopted by SMEs and governments in developing countries.     

The tax burden on mobile network operators in Africa

We estimate the tax burden on the mobile telecommunication sector in twenty-five African countries. This tax burden encompasses not only standard and special taxes under the control of the Ministry of Finance (MoF) but also fees raised by the national telecommunication Regulatory Agency (RA). Given the lack of financial data at the country level, we build a representative mobile network operator named TELCO, using the GSMA Intelligence database. We compute the Average Effective Tax Rate (AETR) for this firm considering general and special taxes and fees levied only on the telecommunication sector. We develop a web application (https://data.cerdi.uca.fr/telecom/), allowing the reader to replicate our analysis or modify TELCO and tax parameters. The AETR varies significantly across countries, ranging from 33 percent in Ethiopia to 118 percent in Niger. Special taxes and fees represent a large share of the AETR, illustrating some taxation by regulation and a potential tax competition (a race to the top) between the MoF and the RA. We compare TELCO's AETR with that of a representative gold mining plant and a standard company with a similar gross return. The tax burden of the telecommunications sector is higher than that of the mining sector in 15 of the 19 countries for which we have data on the gold mining sector.     

Can inflation targeting reduce price information asymmetry and alleviate corruptive behavior? Evidence from developing countries

This paper examines the role of inflation targeting as a price signaling mechanism reducing price information asymmetry and potentially reducing incentives for corruptive actions through its direct control on the inflation rate, thus simultaneously increasing institutional quality. The obtained evidence suggests that adopting inflation targeting lowers corruption in a sample of 61 developing countries for the period between 1990 and 2018. Countries that have adopted inflation targeting experience lower corruption levels, as measured by the corruption perceptions (CP) index, controlling for other relevant determinants of corruption identified in the empirical literature, such as inflation, level of income, income distribution, trade openness and the rule of law. This result is sensitive to the type of inflation targeting adopted. Soft (unofficial) inflation targeting has no significant effect on the corruption level, giving support to the claim that strong institutional commitment, accompanied by transparency and constant communication with regards to inflation targets by the central bank, provides an adequate price signaling mechanism. In addition, the analysis provides evidence that an efficient rule of law reduces corruption levels significantly, although its effects are rather modest to support the claims that it can solely lessen corruptive behavior in the sample of developing countries.     

Taking the rough with the smooth: A qualitative inquiry into social and cultural practices of knowledge-sharing work in international consultancy alliances

Knowledge sharing in inter-organizational alliances has been predominantly studied by investigating causal influencing factors in tightly-coupled alliances. In contrast, we empirically study how individuals accomplish knowledge sharing activities in the context of various social and cultural differences within a loosely-coupled international business-consultancy alliance. Through an in-depth qualitative case-study approach, we find that the local knowledge-seeking and -accessing partners socially and culturally deal with various influencing factors, through two broad sets of ‘knowledge-sharing work’. This includes harmonization development work, and disharmony mitigation work, that are both supported through an accompanying mode of work: auto-learning. These forms of work at the micro (individual and interactional) level, are enabled through modes of communicative interaction, not just strategic action. Further, this work mediates between the influencing factors and the knowledge sharing of the alliances in an iterative and recursive manner. Our findings thus contribute to showing how knowledge sharing is enacted in inter-organizational alliances, by highlighting the significance and dynamics of the micro-level social and cultural practices of knowledge-sharing work.     

The effect of economic policy uncertainty on China’s housing market

This study examines the relationship between economic policy uncertainty (EPU) and housing price at the macro-level in China as a developing country. The empirical evidence indicates that EPU has a leading effect on China’s housing market. In general, the housing market is prosperous when economic policy is stable and there is a positive relationship between housing price variation and EPU, which means housing market risk grows under unstable economic policies in this developing economy. Moreover, economic policy variation affects low-amplitude changes in housing prices. A variation of policy uncertainty enhances the risk premium of the housing market. By contrast, the level of EPU influences high-amplitude changes in housing prices, which reflects the trend of EPU dominating China's housing market.