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The development economics of large countries is a subject that studies how large developing countries evolve into developed countries through industrialization and structural transformation. By looking into the economic development of large developing countries in a systematic way, the purpose of this paper is to propose a logical system consisting of research objects, main issues, key principles and development strategies.

A large developing country refers to a country with a dual economic structure; it has a large population, vast territory and great market potential, but is low in labour productivity and per capita income.

The key issue of the large country’s economy is the issue of the size, while the key issue of the developing country’s economy is the issue of the economic structure. Therefore, the key issue of the economy of large developing courtiers lies in both the size and economic structure.

The endogenous capacity of a large country depends on the size of factors and the balance of supply and demand, while the comprehensive advantage of a large country depends on its diversified industrial structure and integration of factors. Based on the basic characteristics and key economic principles, large developing countries should seek endogenous, stable, coordinated and innovative development.

Since 1988 Russia and Korea have been developing bilateral economic relations. After the conclusion of, the first trade agreement, Korea has become one of the largest trading and investment partners of the Russian Far East. Annually, Korea has increased trade and investment flows to the Russian Far East, a region with high growth potential. By the 2000s Korea has become the Russian Far East’s third largest trading partner. This article considers trade and investment flows from the 1990s to the present, analyses the prospects of achieving goals, and the problems of developing further bilateral cooperation between Russia and Korea.

The paper investigates if the process that led to the birth of the Euro Area had a significant impact in homogenizing the capital structure decisions of European firms since the first introduction of the common currency.

A large sample of firms was constructed, and a Tobit-censored regression model was utilized to investigate the determinants of firms' observed capital structures. The Black–Scholes–Merton model was used to infer market values of assets, as well as the volatility of those values, from the observed market values of equity and the corresponding volatility. The existing differences in national tax rules were considered for estimating firm-specific marginal tax rates.

It was found that, despite the currency union and the institutional harmonization process, certain factors still play a different role. In particular, the impact of profitability is consistent with the pecking order view in some countries, and with the trade-off theory in others. Assets risk, measured as the annualized volatility of the market enterprise value, is the best predictor of observed leverage ratios. The sector of activity is significant in determining leverage decisions even when assets' risk is taken into account. Despite the monetary union and the increased financial and institutional integration in the Euro Area, the country of origin still plays a significant role in capital structure decisions, suggesting that other country-level factors may affect firms' financing behaviour.

The paper indicates that, despite the long harmonization process of institutions, regulations and public budget required to join the Euro, firms' financing decisions are still affected by country-specific factors once the common currency is introduced. Therefore, new entrant countries in the Euro area should not expect their companies to immediately conform with those located in other countries within the common currency area.

This article investigated the impact of the currency change from national currencies to the Euro on the determinants of capital structure choices. It was shown that, despite the long harmonization process that led to the birth of the Euro Area, national factors still affect firms' financing decisions. This provides guidance for policymakers in countries that are planning to join the Euro about the impact this will have on firms' financing decisions in the entrant country.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an early assessment of India’s South-South cooperation for trade and technology (SSTT) with East Africa, focusing on Ethiopia, Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. It aims to analyse the role of SSTT in providing support to targeted sectors.

The paper examines SSTT, focusing on India and East Africa over a specific period (2000–2016) of its emergence, and extends the public sponsorship literature in international business (IB) to better understand the relationship between SSTT and value addition – applying to a particular case study of SSTT interventions in spices.

The paper highlights SSTT as a pathway to support value addition in global value chains (GVCs). Trade between India and East African countries has grown, with three developments over the period of analysis in particular: shifting trade patterns, growing share of intermediate goods trade and differences in GVC insertion. However, East African exports are largely of lower value. Capacity building to support processing capability and thriving markets can encourage greater value addition. Preliminary findings suggest early gains at the margins, as SSTT interventions have been focusing on capacity boosting with buffering and bridging mechanisms for increased volume of trade. Moving up the value chain however requires that specific value-enhancing activities continue to be targeted, building on regional capacities. Our high-level case study for spices suggests that activities are starting to have a positive effect; however, more focus is needed to specifically target value creation before export and in particular higher levels of processing.

While findings are preliminary, policy implications emerge to guide SSTT interventions. There is capacity for building higher value-added supply chains as is evident among East African countries that trade with each other – future SSTT programmes could tap into this and help build capacity in these higher-value value chains. Future SSTT programmes can take a comprehensive approach by aiming at interventions at key points of the value chain, and especially at points that facilitate higher value addition than initial processing. An example is that Ethiopia and Rwanda are likely to benefit from an expanded spice industry, but the next phase should be towards building processing for value-addition components of the value chain, such as through trade policies, incentivising exporters to add value to items before export. From a development perspective, more analysis needs to be done on the value chain itself – for instance, trade facilitation measures to help processers engage in value chains and to access investments for increasing value add activities. (iv), Future research should examine more closely the development impacts of SSTT, namely, the connection between increased trade, local job creation and sustained innovation, as it is these tangible benefits that will help countries in the Global South realise the benefits of increased trade.

The paper underlines how the SSTT approach can contribute to the critical IB and GVCs literature using a theoretical grounded approach from public sponsorship theory, and with a unique lens of development cooperation between countries in the global south and its emerging impact on development outcomes in these countries.

The chapter discusses the characteristics of audiovisual (AV) media sectors in the Baltic Sea region. Therein it focuses on the specifics of media industries in small countries in the region as they are challenged in ways notably different from large countries with large domestic markets for media content. It discusses the differences between the AV media industries in the Nordic and Baltic countries and suggests that while in the first case long-term welfare society policies and conscious policy-driven system building have conditioned growth and international success then also in the second case innovation policy rationales have facilitated recent growth and dynamics. It then discusses the specific challenges, especially platformisation to small media industries in contemporary globalising media markets, and suggests that opportunities to resist these challenges may be in local inter-sectoral cooperation, that is, in building cross-innovation systems.

While the Olympic Games are always under the spotlight, the Paralympic Games are somehow ignored. This paper aims to invite the general public to think about the para-athletes and the differential treatments they received.

Among the participating countries, many of them were unable to win a single Olympic or Paralympic medal. When the dependent variable is left-censored, ordinary least squares regression is asymptotically biased downwards. In the literature, researchers typically employ the maximum likelihood Tobit model to take care of the censoring problem. However, some researchers argue that the Hurdle model has an advantage over the Tobit model in identifying the determinants of winning Olympic medals. Following their wisdom, this paper employs both the Tobit and Hurdle models in analysis.

The empirical evidence gathered in this paper suggests that population size, host status and average years of schooling are the big three socio-economic determinants when it comes to winning medals at the Paralympic Games and Olympic Games. The findings support the hypothesis that sports talent is randomly distributed and a large country has a higher chance to have talented athletes or para-athletes winning the Olympic medals. The strong host advantage also showed up in the following Paralympics but was not so strong at the next Olympics.

This paper not only examines the relationship between various social, economic and political factors in determining the success of a nation in the Paralympic Games but also attempts to identify possible non-traditional determinants.

This paper contributes to the theory of the relationship between human resource management (HRM) and innovation at small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by conducting a conceptual analysis of the question why Germany boasts by far the highest number of “Hidden Champion” SMEs. This is done by case studies from the army and public financial management of aid disbursal in developing countries. Implications for HRM at SMEs are discussed.

Conceptual analysis using case studies.

Contributing towards filling the gap concerning theoretical underpinnings of the link between HRM and innovation, we suggest that interdisciplinary work from relevant organisational case studies indicates that the concept of institutional design to provide motivational incentives may be relevant, especially concerning high performance systems with bundles of HRM practices. Specifically, the fundamental principle of subsidiarity is found to be important.

The research is broadly applicable to organisations of all kinds, as the diverse case studies indicate. We point towards tentative implications for the firms that account for the majority of the work force, namely SMEs, and among them the most successful ones, the so-called “Hidden Champions”.

HR managers can improve motivation, performance and innovation by decentralising decision-making as far as possible, while ensuring the overall organisational goals are well understood and shared, and resources are dedicated to train and educate staff. Additionally, the conception of rank-order competitions complements the institutional design.

Greater productivity and material performance as well as greater job satisfaction via larger autonomy and decision-making power on the local level can be achieved by the application of subsidiarity as key HRM configuration. This can be employed at SMEs, as discussed, but also other organisations. Further, the principle of subsidiarity and the greater emphasis on staff training and education may help reduce inequality.

Our paper contributes towards filling the gap in the literature on the link between HRM and innovation, by identifying the role of subsidiarity. We introduce an interdisciplinary perspective, with contributions from economics and psychology, among others. We also contribute to the history of HRM.

Services trade has registered a dynamic evolution in almost all developing countries. Despite the rising share in world services trade by developing countries, the gap between developed and developing countries in service exports have been widening. Developed economies have become service exporters, while developing economies are found to be more receptive towards service imports. This paper attempts to gain some insight into the actual nature and extent of exports of services from developing countries, and examines their emergence as significant players of services trade as well as the underlying factors and broader implications. One of the conclusions of this paper is that developing countries successfully export a variety of services to both developed and developing countries, whereas a relatively limited number of developing countries seem to be heavily involved in services exports trade across a range of sectors. This, alternatively, indicates that services exports, on a large international level, are associated with higher levels of development and that not all developing countries are yet in a position to be large-scale exporters.

Disasters and armed conflict often co-occur, but does that imply that disasters trigger or fuel conflict? In the small but growing body of literature attempting to answer this question, divergent findings indicate the complex and contextual nature of a potential answer to this question. The purpose of this study is to contribute a robust cross-country analysis of the co-occurrence of disaster and conflict, with a particular focus on the potential role played by disaster.

Grounded in a theoretical model of disaster–conflict co-occurrence, this study merges data from 163 countries between 1990 and 2017 on armed conflict, disasters and relevant control variables (low human development, weak democratic institutions, natural resource dependence and large population size/density).

The main results of this study show that, despite a sharp increase in the co-occurrence of disasters and armed conflict over time, disasters do not appear to have a direct statistically significant relation with the occurrence of armed conflict. This result contributes to the understanding of disasters and conflicts as indirectly related via co-creation mechanisms and other factors.

This study is a novel contribution, as it provides a fresh analysis with updated data and includes different control variables that allow for a significant contribution to the field.

This paper aims to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on the trade of goods and services in Spain.

This paper uses monthly trade data at the product, region and firm level.

The COVID-19 crisis has led to the sharpest collapse in the Spanish trade of goods and services in recent decades. The containment measures adopted to arrest the spread of the virus have caused an especially intense fall of trade in services. The large share of transport equipment, capital goods, products that are consumed outdoors (i.e., outdoor goods) and tourism in Spanish exports has made the COVID-19 trade crisis more intense in Spain than in the rest of the European Union.

The nature of the collapse suggests that trade in goods can recover swiftly when the health crisis ends. However, COVID-19 may have a long-term negative impact on the trade of services that rely on the movement of people.

It contributes to understand how COVID-19 has affected the trade in goods and services in Spain.