Country risk has become a topic of major concern for the international financial community over the last two decades. The importance of country ratings is underscored by the existence of several major country risk rating agencies, namely the Economist Intelligence Unit, Euromoney, Institutional Investor, International Country Risk Guide, Moody’s, Political Risk Services, and Standard and Poor’s...

Toxicity testing of whole sediments was conducted as part of the Bremerhaven Workshop designed to test various methods (chemical and biological) for assessing the status of North Sea waters, sediments and biota. Six investigators from 4 countries were involved; laboratory testing was conducted after transporting field-collected sediments distances varying from tens of miles to thousands of mile...

Technology transfer (TT) is a way of obtaining advanced techniques to enhance a country’s technological development. The International Technology Transfer (ITT) projects involve the cross-border transfer of technology to develop the local technology capabilities. In this work, a survey on valuable ITT studies and deep analysis of the most reliable ITT models have been presented. The aim is to i...

ally access vehicles by joining an organization that maintains a fleet of cars and light trucks in a network of locations (1, 2). Vehicles are most frequently deployed from lots located in neighborhoods, at transit stations, or at businesses. Carsharing members typically pay for use through hourly rates and subscription-access plans. Most carsharing operators manage their services with advanced...

This paper analyzes the effects of mergers around the world over the past 15 years. We utilize a large panel of data on mergers to test several hypotheses about mergers. The effects of the mergers are examined by comparing the performance of the merging firms with control groups of nonmerging firms. The comparisons are made on profitability and sales. The results show that mergers on average do...

We construct a measure of the private benefits of control in 39 countries based on 393 control transactions between 1990 and 2000. We find that the value of control ranges between –4% and +65%, with an average of 14 percent. As predicted by theory, in countries where private benefits of control are larger capital markets are less developed, ownership is more concentrated, and privatizations are...

BACKGROUND C-peptide measurement has been widely used as a marker of insulin secretion in patients with diabetes. We assessed the comparability of C-peptide results obtained with different methods and by different laboratories and determined whether C-peptide results could be harmonized by normalization with a WHO reference reagent or with plasma. METHODS We sent 16 different heparin plasma s...

In this paper we analyze the trends in polarization in the US and other developed and transitional economies. Many studies have stressed the break in equalizing trends in income distributions in these countries. As polarization has emerged in the literature concerning the issue of income distribution, we here apply new contributions to the measurement of polarization proposed in Esteban, Ray an...

Objective To investigate international variations in smoking associated with educational level. Design International comparison of national health, or similar, surveys. Subjects Men and women aged 20 to 44 years and 45