The composition of foreign direct investment and protection of intellectual property rights : evidence from transition economies

While existing literature has examined the impact of intellectual property protection on the volume of foreign direct investment (FDI), little is known about its effect on the composition of FDI inflows. The author addresses this question empirically, using a unique firm-level data set from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. She finds that weak protection deters foreign investors in technology-intensive sectors that rely heavily on intellectual property rights. The results also indicate that a weak intellectual property regime encourages investors to undertake projects focusing on distribution rather than local production. The latter effect is present in all sectors, not justthose relying heavily on intellectual property protection.International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Economic Theory&Research,Labor Policies,Environmental Economics&Policies,Legal Products,Trade and Regional Integration,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Legal Products,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research

Romani Minorities and Uneven Citizenship Access in the Post-Yugoslav Space

This paper discusses the position of Romani minorities in the light of the state dissolution and further citizenship regime transformations after the disintegration of the former Socialist Yugoslavia. While observing closely the repositioning of the Romani minorities in the post-Yugoslav space, it explicates that in the case of state dissolution, the unevenness of citizenship does not only manifest in the rights dimension, but also in uneven access to citizenship with regard to new polities.status: publishe

THE WTO NEGOTIATIONS ON FINANCIAL SERVICES: CURRENT ISSUES AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS

Trade in financial services is a major item on the agenda of the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations stalled since the ministerial meeting in Cancun in September. This paper reviews trends in such trade and major issues which have been raised in these negotiations so far. The WTO agreement on financial services reached in December 1997 is generally regarded as having contributed more to transparent policy regimes in the organization´s member countries than to the opening of markets to foreign suppliers. The paper reviews statistical data bearing on trends in the market access of foreign banks since 1997, and finds no increase in the presence of banks from developing countries in the markets of developed countries but a large rise in the presence of banks from the latter in the markets of the former. However, the latter increase is likely to reflect less the impact of the 1997 agreement in the WTO than a more general movement in the direction of financial opening which was taking place anyway and helped to shape the agreement. Watchwords in the submissions of major developed countries to the new round of negotiations include expanded market access and the removal from countries´ commitments of limitations affecting several different financial activities (horizontal limitations). Moreover attention has been drawn to the need for greater regulatory transparency in the treatment of foreign banks. Similar objectives were also pursued on the developed-country side in the negotiations which ended in 1997. In the WTO - as in many policy fora - developing countries continue to express their concerns about vulnerability to destabilizing capital movements. Although the rules of the GATS were designed to decouple liberalization of trade in financial services from that of capital-account transactions, they have not succeeded in alleviating several developing countries´ misgivings. Other matters to which developing countries have drawn attention are the need for greater harmonization of different limitations in countries´ commitments at the levels of national and local Government, and greater participation of developing countries in the setting of international standards with a bearing on market access and national treatment. Some subjects have been raised by both developed and developing countries but from divergent points of view. Thus both developed and developing countries have raised the need for clarification of the distinctions between the modes of delivery of financial services specified in the GATS where these have been blurred by recent technological change, though concerns on the two sides are motivated by differences of perspective. Moreover both have also focused on the connections between work on financial services in the WTO and that on different aspects of the international financial system elsewhere. But whereas the thrust of developed countries´ interventions here favours managing these connections in a mutually reinforcing way, developing countries are more circumspect owing to apprehensions as to the multiplication of factors incorporated in IMF surveillance and conditionality and of consequent constraints on national policy autonomy. Similarly the question of the scope of the prudential carve-out of the Annex on Financial Services developed countries appear to favour a tighter definition of its permissible scope, while many developing countries prefer to keep the carve-out broad and unconstraining. Both developed and developing countries have expressed support for more uniform classification of financial services in countries´ commitments but there has been less consensus as to problems linked to statistics for different modes of delivery.

Banking and Financial Sector in South-eastern Europe

Financial and banking systems play a crucial role for the reconstruction of war-worn countries, for the completion of the transition process and for the economic development. Financial systems in transitino countries had to be build from the scratch, often without any consolidated experience in Western-styly financial activities. Notwithstanding considerable efforts on the legal and institutional fronts, financial systems usually remain fragile and too thin in order to fulfill their economic functions. Financial and banking sectors are usually the weakest component of the economic setting through which domestic and external shocks could be exacerbated and became pervasive. Aim of this paper is to summaries the reform efforts and the structural evolution of financial system, particularly of the banking secto in Europea south-east countries (Albania, Bosnia H., Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Romania, Yugoslavia plus Slovenia. Reforms and economic development in this area are at a very different stage but it could be of some interest to summaries some common regional features such as development patterns in the last decade, banking reforms, size and role of financial and banking crisis. This could be done in the first part opf the paper; country specific profile could be added in a second part.

Institutions Matter: Financial Supervision Architecture, Central Bank and Path Dependence. General Trends and the South Eastern European Countries

We propose a path dependence approach to analyze the evolution of the financial supervisory architecture, focusing on the institutional role of the central bank, and then apply our framework to describe the institutional settings in a selected sample of countries. The policymaker who decides to maintain or reform the supervisory architecture is influenced by the existing institutional setting in a systematic way: the more the central bank is actually involved in supervision, the less likely a more concentrated supervisory regime will emerge, and vice versa (path dependence effect). We test the path dependence effect describing and evaluating the evolution and the present state of the architecture of six national supervisory regimes in South Eastern Europe (SEE): Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Serbia and Turkey. The study of the SEE countries confirms the postulated role of the central bank in the institutional setting. In five cases the high involvement of the central bank in supervision is correlated with a multi–authority regime, while in one case a high degree of financial supervision unification is related with low central bank involvement.Financial Supervision; Central Banks; Path Dependence; Political Economy; South Eastern Europe.