France and the Changing Face of Economic Power

The recent statement by France’s minister for industrial Recovery is not going to help France to continue to attract investment from the growth economies. Minister Arnaud Montebourg told French business daily Les Echos that, “We no longer want Arcelor Mittal because

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UN Security Council Urges Wider Role for Women’s Groups in Peace Efforts

The Security Council has called on the international community to give women’s civil society organizations a prominent role in the negotiation, planning and implementation of peace processes and post-conflict development programmes. “The Security Council takes note of the important role

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IMF | Gulf Cooperation Council: Economic Prospects and Policy Challenges for the GCC Countries

Executive Summary The already sluggish global recovery has suffered new setbacks and uncertainty weighs heavily on prospects. The euro area crisis intensified in the first half of 2012 and growth has slowed across the globe, reflecting financial market tensions, extensive

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Pier Carlo Padoan, OECD: A New Era for the Euro Area

The euro area is entering a new era. The importance of [approval by the German constitutional court of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM)] and the European Central Bank’s (ECB) new Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) programme set out recently cannot be

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European Environment Agency: Greening Our Economy

By Professor Jacqueline McGlade At first sight, the fate of threatened species might seem a world apart from the economy. Upon closer examination, however, we start to understand the connections between the two. The ‘good health’ of natural systems is a

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Frugality, Education, Infrastructure and Attitude Change is Needed in the West: We Should Not Rely on Keynesian Nostrums to Pull Us Through

By Jon Moynihan The West’s economic dilemma will not be solved until those countries have not just restructured their balance sheets, by significantly lowering expenditure, but have also significantly changed the mix of that expenditure. In the UK and the

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DESERTEC: Clean Power From Deserts

By Michael Düren Solar power from deserts can contribute significantly to a future renewable energy system. The technically accessible solar potential in deserts exceeds the global energy demand by a factor of 20. In the DESERTEC concept, a smart super

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World Bank Group’s PREM: Harnessing Trade Opportunities for Growth and Development

The pace of global trade integration over the past two decades has been extraordinary. Trade has been a key driver of global growth, convergence, and poverty reduction. During 1983–2010, global trade grew twice as fast as gross domestic product (GDP).

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“The Entrepreneur” – A Sense of Balance

By Mona Vyas From the moment of conception to the surrender of the last breath, entrepreneurs have to fight innumerable battles: political, cultural, economical, sociological, psychological, metaphysical, geopolitical, hereditary and biological. The world today reflects a complex, unpredictable and incalculable

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European Investment Fund (EIF): EUR 180m of Loans for Microbusinesses Across Europe Under Progress Microfinance

After completing his 26-month military service, Andronikos (23) set up his own car wash business on his parent’s land. The land in Episkopi had been unused for a few years and even though he had thought of opening a carwash

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