business sector

This overview of the research sector in the Western Balkans is a companion piece to the Western Balkans regional research and development (R and D) strategy for innovation. The strategy aims to strengthen the region's research capacity, enhance intraregional cooperation, promote collaboration with business sectors, explore possibilities for financing R and D from European Union (EU) funding schemes and other external sources, and help integrate the region into the European research area (ERA) and innovation union. This overview provides the background and analysis that informed the development of the strategy. The background work includes four studies on the different components of the research sector, a policy questionnaire, and seven country studies reviewing key policies, institutions, and performance of the national research sectors. This overview outlines the performance of the research and innovation sector, and describes the major drivers of this performance. It starts by...

We examine PME trade credit use across industry sectors in France between 2001 and 2010. Our main results provide evidence that suppliers efficiently deal with informational problems. First, we notice that trade credit is more important in firms total funding in sectors where standard deviations of the default probability predicted through Altman Z-score analysis is higher than the rest. Second, we notice that trade credit is less important in sectors which will suffer a higher proportion of default than the others the following year. These results take into account the effect of the 2008 shocks in regulation and economic conjuncture which globally limit trade credit use.

Indonesia is the world largest archipelagic country consisting of more than 17,000 islands spread over more than 5,000 kilometers from west to east. The land area is 1,860,360 km² and the sea area 5,800,000 km² with a total of 81,000 km of coastal line. The population is more than 237 million (2010). The population density is 124 inhabitants per km². The population is very uneven distributed over the islands. Java has 58 percent of the population with only 7 percent of the total area. The population density in Java is 1,055 inhabitants per km². Maluku and Papua and Kalimantan have much lesser population densities with 11 and 25 inhabitants per km², respectively. The geographical nature of Indonesia with its many islands and the uneven distribution of the population put enormous challenges in developing infrastructure and tackling regional disparities. Lack of infrastructure has hampered the effort to develop and realize the national and regional economic potentials. The organization...