International Journal of Business and Economic Development

Attracting foreign direct investment for a developing country such as Romania is a key driver for economic growth and, thus, for development. But what factors determinates the FDI in Romania? To answer this question, our paper investigates in which extend the country risk influence the foreign direct investment flows in Romania. We had chosen country risk because it gathers in one composite rating the most important variables that asses the political, economic and financial environment of a country. Using data from UNCTAD for foreign direct investment, economic growth, as control variable, and International Country Risk Guide Composite Rating for a period of 21 years, our study shows that country risk ratings have a strong negative impact on FDI in case of Romania

Increased global economic integration, global forms of governance, globally inter-linked social and environmental developments are often referred to as “globalization”. The target of this article is to prove the dependency of globalization on human development. The first part provides the methodology of measuring overall globalization with emphasis on the KOF Index of Globalization 2007. The Index of Globalization includes economic, social, and political contexts. The second part introduces one of the parameters of institutional quality – HDI (or rather IHDI as the real indicator of the level of human development) and its methodology. The Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index combines three dimensions: A long and healthy life, access to knowledge, and a decent standard of living. The third part compares indices and scores together, analyzes them, and confirms or refutes the empirical relationships between the Index of Globalization and its parts and the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index. It is possible to conclude from the results achieved in the study that globalization remains primarily, a very strong and powerful economic phenomenon. But spurring growth rates and reducing poverty in countries with poor institutions cannot be done simply by globalizing their economies

Over the past few decades, Sudan has witnessed more involuntary movement of its population, to Arab oil-rich countries since 1973. The movement of the most qualified and trained personnel from Sudan can be best described as (selective migration) made Sudan loose a great number of highly equipped and trained manpower, which in turn the successive governments of Sudan exhausted generously huge sums on their education, qualification and training. What is more unfortunate is that the substitute manpower lacks due experience and is characterizes by incompetency, and that the country remains in dire need of the influential manpower that immigrated for the construction of giant projects. This study tackles a number of questions such as: What are the problems and incentives that make this academically qualified and experienced manpower to prefer immigration to work abroad despite the fact that they know the country is in dire need of their service? Did the policies followed by the state play a role in encouraging such qualified sector of manpower to immigrate? What is the future of the economic development in Sudan within the framework of the incessantly growing immigration wave?

There has been a longstanding debate on whether foreign direct investment (FDI) benefits developing countries, particularly those that are small and poor with a limited market size. The paper explores this issue in Swaziland, a country that has attracted a great deal of FDI in the past, but is still struggling economically to grow. The benefits of FDI to Swaziland have been mixed, but research has not explored the less obvious drawbacks, as it is normally assumed that FDI is beneficial. The paper concludes that it is not FDI that is the problem, but rather how it is managed and balanced with the needs of the indigenous firms.

The coconut vodka, popularly known as a lambanog and primarily produce in Quezon Province, the lambanog capital of the Philippines, is on the threshold as a dollar-earning industry. It is considered for product development being one of the primary produce of the country. The current study is an initial step in establishing a development plan for the industry. This study uses the Gender Responsive Value Chain Analysis (GR-VCA) to determine the current status of the lambanog industry in the Philippines. Descriptive and participatory approaches were used to answer the following queries: (1) condition of lambanog industry players who are producer/distiller, distributors/retailers, and customers; and (2) identification of constraints and opportunities. The current status of the industry was revealed by the 12 distillers endorsed and highly-recommended by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) Quezon, 60 distributors/retailers and 100 consumers all dispersed in the different towns and city of the province. Results of the study reveal that the conditions of lambanog industry players, both distillers and distributors, were assessed as small-scale in production, marketing and sales. The customers include local small-time drinkers and a very limited export market. Constraints identified include: high worker turn-over including gender issues on the selection, training and nature of work; sustainability of supply due to weather condition and seasonality of sap collection; poor p

The creation and development of micro-credit programs are attributed to be an important aspect of a developing country like Bangladesh. Grameen Generalized System emerges as a new system for the creation and development of micro-credit program in Grameen Bank (GB). The paper aims at examining the performance of women entrepreneurs under Grameen Generalized System in Grameen Bank. Primary & secondary sources of data are used in conducting the study. The primary data have been collected through structured questionnaire of 85 women entrepreneurs from five branches of GB under Rajshahi Zone namely Banesher, Damkura Paba, Naohata Paba, Yusufpur Charghat & Basudebpur Godagari. The paper discussed on the basic characteristics of Grameen Generalized System (GGS) and its implementation. During analysis it is clarified that GGS has positive contribution to the performance of women entrepreneurs. Persons working under the system feel proud to be associated with GB and get more importance in the family for taking decisions about income & expenditure. GGS provides opportunities for the respondents in reducing their dependency on the family income. Involvement of the respondents with GB is also considered to be an effective tool for their family survival. The present capital of the respondent’s business has gradually been increased due to effective business activities. The respondents try to save more money as GB declares dividend each year the inception of the GGS. Lastly the present re

Indias hinterland is the new goldmine for marketers. More than 50 percent of Indias overall consumption comes from rural areas, which account for about 70 percent of Indian population. Indian rural market with its vast size and demand base offers a huge opportunity that companies cannot afford to ignore. Delivering products and services into these rural markets present unique challenges and enormous opportunities for companies. Along with opportunity to expand top line, the distinctive behaviors of rural marketing present challenges which have to be met by new innovations. Companies successful in rural markets are innovating in all the aspects of marketing. They are changing features in design of new products, prices offered to customers, places to sell the products and their expenditure on advertising. There are many innovations to explore the customers in rural India keeping the rural environment and constraints. This paper explores the recent innovations for Indias hinterland

The Palestinian economy is primarily affected by internal and external exogenous political constraints, structural limitations and foreign aid, rather than by endogenous economic free market factors. Underemployment of labor and limited viable opportunities for capital are largely due to limitations on exports and the free flow of goods, services and labor that are imposed by Israel and other neighboring countries, as well as on the shortage of arable land and water. Through theoretical considerations and empirical investigation, this paper claims that the constraints on the Palestinian economy as well as foreign aid result in the symptoms associated with an economy infected by Dutch Disease

It is said that, ‘Profit is the lifeblood of business.’ In this cut-throat competition, therefore it is more about managing the business profitable way. The very importance of ethics and values, i.e. quality gets lost in this endless race. This gives rise to earnings manipulation by the corporate. The present paper discuses the earnings management behavior of the corporate and draws out attention to the short-sightedness of the poor quality corporate earnings. ‘Earnings management’ is a management practice to manipulate the earnings for specific motives.

A consideration of emotion has been traditionally neglected in the context of family business. In this study, the Lebanese family businesses were explored to examine all the dimensions and the specificity of the emotional intelligence (EI) of teams™ leaders. Multiple regressions were applied to investigate the impact of EI on employees job performance, job satisfaction and turnover. The results showed that there is a significant and positive impact of leader EI on employee job performance and job satisfaction. Moreover, the findings indicate that the implication of the family member as a team leader increases the positive relationship between EI and employee job performance and satisfaction. The family managers feel more dependent to their organization which can lead to create a general emotion affecting positively the job performance and the satisfaction. However, our results have not support any relation between Leaders EI and employees™ turnover level

In business-to-government (B2G) relationships, companies managers need to consider the national price law when they price products. In Germany, legal regulations on pricing were set to limit the corporate profit. Their compliance is ensured by price audits. Due to the absence of national price regulations in several NATO states, many procuring authorities apply the German regulations to their contracts and request German administrative assistance for auditing prices. In this paper we outline how the German legal framework allows for the application of different strategies and scenarios of how to price automotive industry products. The scenario technique is used to simulate a price audit on a real-life governmental customer project. We report on our experience about whether there is a possibility to simulate price audits on pricing scenarios. The result of the price audit simulation clearly shows the influence of the chosen strategy on the contribution margin as well as on the corporate profit for each price auditing scenario that was tested