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Eastern Europe and, perhaps most importantly, the Soviet Union are becoming increasingly accessible to the West. With glasnost taking hold and trading relations beginning to thaw, this article examines the opportunities for trade that COMECON present.

Unlimited quantitative easing (QE) is one of the monetary policies used to stimulate the economy during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. This policy has affected the financial markets worldwide. This empirical research aims at studying the dependence among stock markets before and after unlimited QE announcements.

The copula-based GARCH (1,1) and minimum spanning tree models are used in this study to analyze 14 series of stock market data, on 6 ASEAN and 8 other countries outside the region. The data are divided into two periods to compare the differences in dependence.

The findings show changes in dependence among the volatility of daily returns in 14 stock markets during each period. After the unlimited QE announcement, the upper tail dependence became more apparent, while the role of the lower tail dependence was reduced. The minimum spanning tree can show the close relationships between stock markets, indicating changes in the connection network after the announcement.

This study allows the dependency to be compared between stock market volatility before and after the announcement of unlimited QE during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, the study fills the literature gap by combining the copula-based GARCH and the minimum spanning tree models to analyze and reveal the systemic network of the relationships.

Reflects on a three‐year project examining the evolving nature of “best practice” benchmarking in UK‐based organisations. The findings describe the current state of benchmarking and some of its advantages across a wide variety of public and private sector organisations. Also investigates the disincentives to benchmarking activity experienced by practising benchmarkers, as well as the factors which inhibit the initial take‐up of this technique. In addition, the notion that a maturity curve exists for organisations engaged in benchmarking is explored.

This paper presents a new discretization technique of the hydrodynamic energy balance model based on a finite‐element formulation. The concept of heat source lumping is introduced, and the thermal conductivity model includes the effect of varying both carrier concentrations and temperatures. The energy balance equation is formulated to account for kinetic energy as a convective flow. The new discretization method has the advantage that it allows for assembling the functions out of elementary variables available over elements instead of along element links. Therefore, theoretically, calculation of the Jacobian should be three times faster than by the classic method. Results are given for three examples. The method suffers from mathematical instabilities, but provides a good basis for future work to solve these problems.

Presents an updated version of a paper given by the author at an international conference in Athens 2000. Briefly outlines the development of the internet and e‐commerce and the effect of globalization. Considers the potential for the EU to standardize rules and advance its economic integration agenda. Looks at present EU laws in this area. Covers the unicitral model law on electronic commerce, its merits and its problems. Discusses personal jurisdiction under traditional rules and cyberspace transactions. Concludes that existing legislation must be re‐evaluated in the light of technological advances, the need for a more mobile kind of legal person and the worldwide nature of transactions across territorial boundaries, paperless contracts and digital signatures and the use of self‐regulation are also covered.