European Commission: Helping SMEs Seize Global Opportunities

The priority for Europe now is to overcome the crisis boosting competitiveness and growth. Fast growing emerging markets such as China, India, Russia and Brazil, with strong growth rates and potential represent significant opportunities for EU companies. Exports outside the

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Janamitra Devan: The Innovation Imperative

Overcoming the Myths and Recognizing the Realities of Innovation, Job Creation and Prosperity By Janamitra Devan Innovation drives competitiveness, and maximizing competitiveness is indispensable to achieving sustainable job creation. Any economy with a weak innovation capacity will see its competitiveness

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Hitting the Middle Classes by Taxing the Rich

The Paradox of Taxation The latest tax figures from Britain make interesting reading. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs reported a 60% fall in the number of taxpayers declaring an income of over £1 million a year during the 2010-2011 tax

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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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