infonet-economy

The past five decades have witnessed an unprecedented growth in population. This has led to an ever-growing housing demand. It has been proposed that the use of bio-based materials, and specifically bamboo, can help alleviate the housing demand in a sustainable manner. The present paper aims to assess the environmental impact caused by using four different construction materials (…

The use of small diameter whole-culm (bars) and/or split bamboo (a.k.a. splints or round strips) has often been proposed as an alternative to relatively expensive reinforcing steel in reinforced concrete. The motivation for such replacement is typically cost—bamboo is readily available in many tropical and sub-tropical locations, whereas steel reinforcement is relatively more…

Contrary to widespread presumption, a surprisingly large number of countries have been able to finance a significant fraction of their investment for extended periods using foreign finance. While many of these episodes are in countries where official finance is important, we also identify episodes where a substantial fraction of domestic investment is financed by private capital…

Über Nachhaltige Entwicklungshilfe

Angesichts des Gezerres um die Auslieferung von Carles Puigdemont setzt sich in der europäischen Öffentlichkeit immer mehr das Narrativ durch, dass Katalonien ein Opfer des spanischen Imperialismus sei. Dabei erzählen die politisch demokratischen Realitäten mit Autonomierechten für die Regionen eine andere Geschichte.

In this double issue of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy we publish a set of papers concerned with the mobilization of domestic and foreign capital in support of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals that were launched in September 2015. The papers were originally presented at a conference on 'Financing for Development' organized by the International Monetary Fund and…

In response to the unusually high levels of price volatility during the world food price crisis of 2007/2008, US and EU regulators have introduced position limits that aim to protect commodity markets from exposure to excess speculation. Such regulatory initiatives presuppose that excess speculation is indeed responsible for excess volatility. Our results debunk this presupposition…

Online communities are attractive sources of ideas relevant for new product development and innovation. However, making sense of the ‘big data’ in these communities is a complex analytical task. A systematic way of dealing with these data is needed to exploit their potential for boosting companies' innovation performance. We propose a method for analysing online community data…