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PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of international remittances on different household welfare indicators including child education, assets, durable goods, and reservation wages of other working age household members. It examines how international remittances are spent for production and consumption by receiving households.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses fixed‐effect regressions to estimate the impact of international remittances on household spending in Vietnam using Vietnam Household Living Standard Surveys 2006 and 2008.FindingsIt is found that most of international remittances are spent on housing and land, debt repayment and saving. A small proportion of remittances are used to buy durable goods. Remittances are not spent in production as well as living consumptions. The effect of international remittances on consumption‐based poverty is very limited.Originality/valueThe findings from this paper suggest that current international remittances are not an effective measure for poverty reduction in the short‐run in Vietnam.

The tax burden on investment or companies is an important factor for the attractiveness of a country or a region. In particular, business location and investment decisions are influenced by the relative tax burdens encountered in different regions. This study presents estimates of the effective average and marginal tax rates on company investment for 143 regions in Europe and the USA. Using the approach pioneered by Michael Devereux and Rachel Griffith, it is shown that companies face a wide variation of effective tax burdens across European regions. The results are explained by analysing the importance of specific tax provisions for the tax burden at the various locations.

In den 1980er und den frühen 1990er Jahren waren japanische Banken die weltweit größten Finanzinstitute und galten als Inbegriff "globaler" Banken. Der Crash der japanischen Wertpapier- und Immobilienmärkte Anfang der 1990er Jahre und die nachfolgende Rezession waren Anlass zu tiefgreifenden Reformen im japanischen Finanzsystem. Die japanischen Banken waren gezwungen, ihre internationalen Strategien zu reformulieren. Als Konsequenz zogen sie sich aus vielen Märkten zurück und strukturierten ihre internationalen Netzwerke um. Vor dem Hintergrund theoretischer Überlegungen zu der Bedeutung von "Globalität" und einer empirischen Untersuchung der Entwicklung der Auslandsstellennetze japanischer Banken in den 1980er und 1990er Jahren stellt der vorliegende Beitrag die Globalität japanischer Banken in Frage. ; In the 1980s and early 1990s Japanese banks were the world's largest financial institutions and seen as prototypes of global banks. With the asset market crash and following economic recession hitting Japan and giving rise to deep structural reforms in the Japanese political economy in the 1990s, Japanese banks had to rethink their strategies. As a consequence they started withdrawing from certain markets and, more generally, restructuring their international networks. Based on conceptual considerations regarding the globality of banks and empirical evidence on Japanese banks' strategies in the 1980s and 1990s, the paper challenges the notion of Japanese banks as truly global actors.

Partial contents: National macroeconomy policy preferences and international coordination issues, by Thomas D. Willet; From neglect to activism: American politics and the 1985 Plaza Accord, by C. Randall Henning and I. M. Destler; Obstacles to international macroeconomic policy coordination, by Jeffrey A. Frankel.

The information flow about crises and conflicts is highly selective, the media only focus on a few major conflicts at a time. Many conflicts are neglected, others soon forgotten after the fighting ends. This book fills the gaps and offers a systematic overview of all crises and conflicts in and among states since 1945 and traces the global trends of conflict development. Based on the broad empirical basis of the Conflict Simulation Model KOSIMO, Pfetsch and Rohloff use an integrated approach to cover many forms and types of political conflicts, both peaceful and violent.

Doing business sheds light on how easy or difficult it is for a local entrepreneur to open and run a small to medium-size business when complying with relevant regulations. It measures and tracks changes in regulations affecting 10 areas in the life cycle of a business: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and resolving insolvency. In a series of annual reports doing business presents quantitative indicators on business regulations and the protection of property rights that can be compared across 183 economies, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, over time. This regional profile presents the doing business indicators for Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS). To allow useful comparison, it also provides data for other selected economies (comparator economies) for each indicator. The data in this report are current as of June 1, 2011 (except for the paying taxes indicators, which cover the period January-December 2010).

Using a comparative approach to international relations theory, this article examines how ancient ideas are being recycled to describe world order in the 21st century. In particular, it provides a thick description of three models of utopia in global politics — Great Harmony and Harmony with difference from China, and Empire from Hardt and Negri. Using an unexplored set of Chinese-language texts, the article first excavates how Communist Party intellectuals in China have been writing about the ancient Confucian ideal of Great Harmony as a way of promoting the People's Republic of China's role as a Great Power in the 21st century. Second, it uses Hardt and Negri's deterritorialized concept of Empire to criticize Great Harmony discourse as a transcendent and state-centric model of world order. Hardt and Negri's notion of immanent utopia is elaborated in the third section using another set of Chinese texts that describe the flexible methodology of 'Harmony-with-difference'. The article concludes that Harmony-with-difference provides a practical logic for achieving Hardt and Negri's immanent utopia. The article contributes two things to international relations theory — (1) using Chineselanguage texts, it broadens the reach of comparative international relations theory and (2) it uses the concept of Empire to challenge Chinese concepts of harmony, while using Chinese theory to elaborate on Hardt and Negri's utopia. In this way, the article shows how key texts have productively recycled the classical concepts of utopia, empire, and harmony as a way of remembering the future for the 21st century.