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To properly assess the relative places of China and the United States in the world system, the fact of the transformation of old, and the emergence of new, centers of capital accumulation needs to be established, and some attempt made to develop means of measuring these developments. This paper, working within the framework of Uneven and Combined Development, will suggest a new metric by which we can assess the geography of capital accumulation in the world economy, a metric with three components. The first component examines national income, both per capita and as shares of the world total. The second component refines the latter to an examination of share of world manufacturing, with a specific examination of distribution of the key sector of high-technology manufacturing. The third and final component examines the distribution of large corporations through the world economy, and introduces a new term – the relative weight of large corporations. All components of this metric suggest that key aspects of the modern economy remain “territorially bound” and clearly reveal the steady, long-term decline of the United States as the dominant center of capital accumulation, and the simultaneous emergence of new centers of capital accumulation in an increasingly multi-polar world economy.

The investment development path of emerging markets’ MNEs is significantly different from the developed (TRIAD) world’s MNEs; BRIC MNEs seem to have taken a different trajectory on account of various political and economic reasons, ranging from the ‘forms of entry’ to ‘country-specific advantages’ (Tulder, R. V. (2010). Toward a renewed stages theory for BRIC multinational enterprises? A home country bargaining approach. In K. P. Sauvant, G. McAllister, & W. A. Maschek (Eds.), Foreign direct investments from emerging markets: The challenges ahead (pp. 61–74). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan). Yet, some believe that in the long run the internationalization strategy of the developed world MNEs and BRIC MNEs will converge. Internationalization strategies as measured by OFDI depend on various macroeconomic determinants such as income, interest rate, openness of the economy, etc. The chapter intend to highlight, the significant difference between these two groups of countries on account of diverse political reforms towards internalization of firms, yet see if these different countries might converge.

Regression analysis examines the significance of the role of home government by testing the effect of governance indicators; that is voice and accountability, on OFDI. It further, tests for convergence of internationalization strategies of the two historically divergent groups, also, it tests convergence amongst the BRIC nations. Along with forecasting, time series analysis is also employed to examine convergence using univariate sigma convergence techniques.

Impact of voice and accountability is significant but it hinders OFDI for BRIC nations, while it promotes OFDI for TRIAD & ALL. Moreover, the analysis found the existence of convergence, that is BRIC will catch up with TRIAD, but though convergence exists amongst BRIC if we take a long span of time (45 years), it is absent in short span of time (19 years), as lately BRIC have shown divergent tendency.

Small sample size in multivariate regression analysis. Also, the governance indicator, that is voice and accountability, is perception based, and missing gaps in data for governance indicator is filled using interpolation.

Empirically testing the convergence of BRIC nations with the developed world. A univariate time series analysis is undertaken to understand each country’s heterogeneous FDI outflows and to address the research gap in existing forecasting literature. In addition, the comparison specifically between the Emerging Market Economies, that is the BRIC nations and the developed world gives some useful insights. This chapter ascertains the impact of governance indicator on OFDI; empirical literature shows such analysis for IFDI & FDI, but OFDI is rarely been dealt with.

The recent political crisis in the Middle East, coupled with several banking failures, have raised concerns about the safety of this region's banks among potential customers and investors in the international market. This paper presents an analysis of the safety of Middle Eastern banks, using capital strength as a measure of safety. A comparison of the capital strength of Middle Eastern banks with a sample of the world's largest banks and the largest U.S. banks (based on capital) is conducted for the period 1988 to 1992. The results of this study indicate that Middle Eastern banks possess significantly higher capital to assets ratios than both world and U.S. banks, and very few Middle Eastern banks failed to meet the Basel minimum capital ratio during this period.

This paper focuses on the World Bank's emerging experience with a promising application of performance-based contracts: Output-Based Aid (OBA) subsidies. OBA is the provision of subsidies for the delivery of and access to social or infrastructure services. Under OBA, subsidy payments are tied to measurable performing outputs, leaving the specific methods of achieving these outputs to the service provider's discretion. While creating better risk allocation, more value for users and contracting agencies, and fewer opportunities for corruption than traditional methods, OBA schemes raise new procurement issues that need to be reconciled in order to achieve optimal results. An issue this paper explores is the tension between the need that contracts be "expenditure-based" with the "performance-based" nature of OBA subsidies.

Basic education (primary and junior secondary schooling) in China has experienced phenomenal development in the reform era from the late 1970s. The most important reform policies; namely, decentralization of governance and diversification of finance, have been translated into an unprecedented scale of resource mobilization for schooling expansion. This article examines China’s education finance reform and basic education development. It analyzes international aid and assistance, particularly major basic education projects financed by the World Bank and other international organizations. The article argues that China is not necessarily “in the driving seat” in cooperation with the World Bank, and that the bank does not play purely “a pivotal positive role” in helping develop Chinese basic education. In spite of its huge aid and assistance in China, the bank, to a certain extent, also contributes to the formation of China’s bifurcated schooling system.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss and provide new data and measures of bank regulatory and supervisory policies in 180 countries from 1999 to 2011.

The authors' approach is based upon the quantification of hundreds of questions, including information on permissible bank activities, capital requirements, the powers of official supervisory agencies, information disclosure requirements, external governance mechanisms, deposit insurance, barriers to entry, and loan provisioning, to form indices of key bank regulatory and supervisory policies.

It is found that the regulation and supervision of banks varies widely across countries in many different dimensions. Furthermore, there has not been a convergence in bank regulatory regimes over the past decade despite the worst global financial crisis since the Great Depression.

The data are based on survey responses and this requires that the answers be accurate. To better ensure this is the case, several checks were made to ensure greater accuracy in all the answers. Using this database one can perform various statistical analyses in attempt to determine which bank regulatory regimes work best to promote well‐functioning banking systems.

The authors' data and measures are new and unique so as enable policy makers and researchers to examine cross‐country comparisons and analyses of changes in banking policies over time.

The core objective of this study is to examine the impacts of various modes of financing on investment in industrial assets, fiscal resources in public sector, and GDP growth. The main focus of this study is the countries that belong to Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) and Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO). For identification of the determinants of investment, fiscal resources, and GDP growth, the methodology is based on three simultaneous equations, estimated by the Pooled Ordinary Least Square (OLS) technique. The most important result is the significant positive impact of domestic credit to private sector on public sector fiscal resources, while it negatively affects the GDP growth and investment in non-financial assets. The significant betas associated with this variable indicate that bridge financing can improve the fiscal position of a government as it ensures the higher tax collection. This relation may be based on the survival and perpetuity of businesses through credit financing facilities during difficult period which ultimately ensures the higher tax collections by the governments. It justifies the significant role of credit financing to support the economic and business activities during the lock down period.

Similar to other developing nations, Egypt is experiencing a “youth bulge,” or increase in the proportion of young persons in the population. Individuals aged 29 years or younger compose approximately 62 percent of the Egyptian population; persons aged 10–29 years, nearly 40 percent (Population Council, 2011). Based on these statistics, the development and well-being of this segment of the population have become central topics during discussions of the future prosperity of Egypt (Population Council, 2010b). This chapter provides an overview of the ecology and political economy of Egyptian youth’s development during the transition from the twentieth to the twenty-first century. The chapter also examines issues related to education, poverty, health, opportunity structures, and challenges associated with social mobility.

In this chapter, I analyze the behavior of banks in Chile, Colombia, and Mexico between 2005 and 2014. With data from the regulatory institutions of these countries, I show the influence of their institutions on the performance of banks. The World Bank provides two main datasets that measure the institutional characteristics of each country. Their doing business data set computes the ease of doing business while the governance data set measures the effectiveness of government and the perception that people have of their own governments. The results show that voice and accountability, which is a variable that measures the ability of citizens to select their government and participate in society, has a strong effect in the performance of loans. However, these institutional variables seem to have little effect on the volatility of profits.

This chapter discusses the positioning of Belarus in the international context of socioeconomic development based on an assessment of the country's dynamics in world rankings. The country's presence in the recognized world rankings and its holding high positions in them is an obvious advantage for achieving a favorable investment image. Ratings characterize the country's comparative position at the international level in a number of areas: from credit capacity to human capital development.

There has been analyzed the position of the Republic of Belarus in several recognized international comparisons, such as Human Development Index, Doing Business, ICT Development Index, Global Innovation Index, Sustainable Development Goals Index, Corruption Perceptions Index, Rule of Law Index, Worldwide Governance Indicators, and others.

However, Belarus is not yet participating in the international competitiveness assessment through such popular international ratings as Global Competitiveness Index and Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. The research findings show that the strongest aspects of the socioeconomic development of Belarus are in place due to the high educational level of the human capital development, gender equality, and the implementation of the UN sustainable development goals. The analysis also shows that the weaknesses of institutional environment and public administration do not enable the full implementation of the planned goals of socioeconomic development.