Iran's Third Development Plan: an appraisal.
At 4:03 p.m., March 20, 2005--the beginning of the Iranian New Year--the five-year odyssey of Iran's Third Development Plan came to an unceremonious end in sharp contrast to its much-trumpeted start. Sending the bill for the plan to the Majlis in September 1999 subsequent to his stillborn 1998 Economic...

Deposit insurance and banking crises in the short and long run.
There has been a rising global trend for countries, especially in the emerging economies, to institute explicit deposit insurance schemes in the last two decades. During this period, financial markets in the world have been frequently plagued by instabilities and banking crises, notably the Mexican crisis in 1995 and...

Public-private dialogue takes another step forward in the Commonwealth; W. David McIntyre reports on the 5th Commonwealth Business Forum and 45th Commonwealth Finance Ministers' Meeting, held in London from 23 to 26 September 2002.
To mark the golden jubilee of her role as Head of the Commonwealth, the Queen was invited to open the 45th Commonwealth Finance Ministers' Meeting. In her speech, at the opening ceremony, she referred to the consultations with representatives of civil society, which, for the first time, had preceded...

Determinants of the Venezuelan banking crisis of the mid-1990s: an event history analysis.
Resumen: Este trabajo utiliza un análisis de historia de eventos para evaluar empíricamente qué variables macroeconómicas y bancarias pueden explicar las quiebras bancarias que se produjeron durante la crisis de la segunda mitad de la década de 1990 en Venezuela. Una baja rentabilidad, medida por el margen financiero neto,...

Back-Alley Banking: Private Entrepreneurs in China.
Kellee S. Tsai Ithaca, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 2002, 316 pp. There is a popular saying in China: "Whenever there are policies from the top, the bottom produces counterstrategies" (shangyou zhengce, xiayou duice). According to Kellee Tsai, that has certainly been true of China's informal network for...

US ISLAMIC FINANCE INITIATIVES TAKE OFF.
Leslie Goffe reports from New York Islam is, with an estimated six million followers in the United States, one of the fastest growing religions in the country, by 2010 it will become America's second largest faith after Christianity. As a result of this enormous growth in numbers,...

Money laundering and terrorism: informal value transfer systems.
We will direct every resource at our command to win the war against terrorists, every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence. (1) As a result of the September 11th terrorist attacks, policymakers, regulators, and law enforcement officials are...

The American railroad network during the early 19th century: private versus public enterprise.
At the founding, the United States were a bunch of experiments in self-government (note the use of the plural). Each state was very much free to determine its own destiny. Many states directed economic development through state enterprises, loan guarantees, and direct subsidies, mostly in banks and in canals...

A Threat of 'World War Web'. (Special Report: E-Commerce).
FBI warnings about cyber-terrorism have heightened awareness of the possible vulnerabilities the Internet brings to a company. Security firms are taking the possibility of cyber-terrorism seriously, and they are advising companies to do the same. While hackers have gained the lion's share of press, cyber-terrorists have quietly...

The Editor: James Kristie; Even to a journalist's eye, the board was in the deep background.'. (A Life in Governance).
WHEN I CAME to DIRECTORS & BOARDS in 1981, I had never written a single word about a board of directors. I had spent my first five years as a journalist writing for and editing several different types of business publications -- employee newsletters for a supermarket company, a...