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Numerous papers have shown that developing economies are more volatile. We show that, despite greater aggregate and industry stability, performance and size of individual firms in developed countries are more volatile. In developing countries, market imperfections insulate incumbent firms from competition. Consistent with this, firms in developing countries have higher profit, higher market concentration, and less capital raising. Cross-country differences in operating risk and competition intensity are greater in industries that are dependent on external finance, where we expect higher impacts of capital-market imperfections. We show the inverse relation between aggregate and firm-level volatilities has important implications for international studies of cash holding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the role of country characteristics on the competition-governance relation. We find that competition is associated with higher ratings in corporate governance, but only in developing countries. Further, corporate governance is associated with greater firm value, but only in less competitive industries from developed countries. For developing countries, the evidence suggests that corporate governance is valuable mostly in competitive industries. Additional tests show that corporate governance increases labor productivity and cost efficiency, mostly in less competitive industries in both developed and developing countries. Furthermore, in developing countries, corporate governance increases investment in capital, but primarily in competitive industries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyzes the impact of changes in monetary policy regimes on the relation between stock returns and changes in expected inflation. Post-war evidence from four countries reveals a direct link between these relations and the central banks' operating targets (i.e., money supply or interest rates). Specifically, the post-war negative relations between stock returns and changes in expected inflation are significantly stronger during interest rate regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review article examines the development of state capacity—the extractive and productive power of states— in European history. To explain the historical evolution of state capacity, I focus on the role of political innovations. I relate state capacity improvements to long-run economic growth and the establishment of twentieth-century welfare states. The article concludes with historical lessons for developing nations today. “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”James Madison (1788, p. 257) [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article seeks to measure and explain interprovincial differences in inequality and poverty reduction since the 1980s for non-elderly Canadian families. These variations are compared with dissimilarities among the advanced capitalist welfare states, where they are large. Interprovincial discrepancies are shown to be ample by this international standard. The article also finds that power resources theory, which draws attention to the role of union strength and partisan incumbency in explaining welfare state variations, accounts for an important part of these interprovincial differences. These findings suggest that sub-national jurisdictions can be more consequential for welfare state outcomes than comparative research has acknowledged, and that power resources accounts deserve more attention in Canadian social policy scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the globalization in context of financial economy and economic morality across the world. It mentions gap in economic performance and social progress of developed and developing countries. It highlights the history of global financial depressions, attenuation of labor theory of value and gradual decline in employment opportunities due to mechanization, automation and computerization.

This article analyzes the significance of Romantic idealism within the Wilhelmine consumer capitalism in Germany. Previous analyses of the critics of Wilhelmine consumer capitalism have overlooked the significance of Romantic idealism. Historians have been preoccupied with several outstanding critiques of capitalism that emerged during the Wilhelmine period. The most prominent in both the period and subsequently was the socioeconomic critique popularized by both the followers of philosophers Karl Marx and Kevin Repp. This tradition focused on the clear disparities in wealth and opportunity in German industrial society. Other critiques centered on the moral implications of capitalism and consumerism. The decline in social cohesion as well as the temptations of individualism and materialism, it was argued, posed a grave threat to the norms and structures of established Christian society. There was also a bourgeois liberal version of this discursive tradition, perhaps best exemplified in the opening of Max Nordau's book Degeneration, that emphasized the ambivalent relation of luxury and consumption to the norms of middle class life such as the ethics of work, savings, and rational self-control.

Discusses the uniform fluctuation of export prices in both developing and developed countries. Claims of developing countries that instability in export prices hinder their economic development; Occurrence of export price instability in the international markets of developed countries during their economic development process; Assessment of the appropriateness of the suggestion of developing countries to establish a network of international commodity agreements.