This book offers a strategic analysis of current and future perspectives of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows into the South East European media market. The author develops a hybrid FDI business model strategy to guide media companies wishing to more effectively position and leverage their media infrastructure within the increasingly globalized and expanding media market. By conducting sixteen comparative and exploratory case studies of the South East European media market, the author explores how specific microeconomic factors influence spillover effects, absorption capacities and investment incentives between local and foreign firms through FDI inflows. The book is directed towards researchers and students, as well as practitioners/professionals involved with media organizations.

This collection of state-of-the-art essays explores conspiracy cultures in post-socialist Eastern Europe, ranging from the nineteenth century to contemporary manifestations. Conspiracy theories about Freemasons, Communists and Jews, about the Chernobyl disaster, and about George Soros and the globalist elite have been particularly influential in Eastern Europe, but they have also been among the most prominent worldwide. This volume explores such conspiracy theories in the context of local Eastern European histories and discourses. The chapters identify four major factors that have influenced cultures of conspiracy in Eastern Europe: nationalism (including ethnocentrism and antisemitism), the socialist past, the transition period, and globalization. The research focuses on the impact of imperial legacies, nation-building, and the Cold War in the creation of conspiracy theories in Eastern Europe; the effects of the fall of the Iron Curtain and conspiracism in a new democratic setting; and manifestations of viral conspiracy theories in contemporary Eastern Europe and their worldwide circulation with the global rise of populism. Bringing together a diverse landscape of Eastern European conspiracism that is a result of repeated exchange with the "West," the book includes case studies that examine the history, legacy, and impact of conspiracy cultures of Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Ukraine, the former Yugoslav countries, and the former Soviet Union. The book will appeal to scholars and students of conspiracy theories, as well as those in the areas of political science, area studies, media studies, cultural studies, psychology, philosophy, and history, among others. Politicians, educators, and journalists will find this book a useful resource in countering disinformation in and about the region.

The world is increasingly becoming less democratic and this trend has not left Southeast Europe untouched. But instead of democratic breakdown what we are witnessing is a gradual decline and the rise of competitive authoritarian regimes. This book aims to give a country-by-country overview of how illiberal politics has led to a decline in democracy and the re-emergence of autocratic governance in Southeast Europe, more specifically in the Western Balkans. It defines illiberal politics as the everyday practices through which ruling parties undermine democratic institutions in order to remain in power. Individual chapters examine recent political developments and identify practices of illiberal politics that target electoral institutions, rule of law, media freedom, judicial independence, and enable political patronage, while several thematic chapters comparatively explore cross-regional patterns. This book addresses academics, policymakers, and practitioners with professional interest in Southeast Europe or democratic decline and is both timely and relevant as the European Union attempts to reengage with the countries of the Western Balkans. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies.

Emerging Markets and Financial Resilience presents a picture of finance research. The issue of financial resilience in emerging markets is apt and timely as emerging countries are faced with the challenge of finding ways of sustaining their current trajectory in shaping the global financial architecture to ensure sustainable growth.

In 2010, the Latin American and Caribbean region showed great resilience to the international financial crisis and became the world region with the fastest-growing flows of both inward and outward foreign direct investment (FDI). The upswing in FDI in the region has occurred in a context in which developing countries in general have taken on a greater share in both inward and outward FDI flows. This briefing paper is divided into five sections. The first offers a regional overview of FDI in 2010. The second examines FDI trends in Central America, Panama and the Dominican Republic. The third describes the presence China is beginning to build up as an investor in the region. Lastly, the fourth and fifth sections analyze the main foreign investments and business strategies in the telecommunications and software sectors, respectively.

This book is an analysis of the specificities of public film funding on an international scale. It shows how public funding schemes add value to film-making and other audio-visual productions and provides a comprehensive analysis of today’s global challenges in the film industry such as industry change, digital transformation, and shifting audience tastes. Based on insights from fields such as cultural economics, media economics, media management and media governance studies, the authors illustrate how public spending shapes the financial fitness of national and international film industries. This highly informative book will help both scholars and practitioners in the film industry to understand the complexity of issues and the requirements necessary to preserve the social benefits of film as an important cultural good.

This study analyzes the characteristics, motivations, strategies, and needs of FDI from emerging markets. It draws from a survey of investors and potential investors in Brazil, India, South Korea, and South Africa.

During the 1990s, the governments of South Asian countries acted as ‘facilitators’ to attract FDI. As a result, the inflow of FDI increased. However, to become an attractive FDI destination as China, Singapore, or Brazil, South Asia has to improve the local conditions of doing business. This book, based on research that blends theory, empirical evidence, and policy, asks and attempts to answer a few core questions relevant to FDI policy in South Asian countries: Which major reforms have succeeded? What are the factors that influence FDI inflows? What has been the impact of FDI on macroeconomic performance? Which policy priorities/reforms needed to boost FDI are pending? These questions and answers should interest policy makers, academics, and all those interested in FDI in the South Asian region and in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

Janos Kornai The collapse of the socialist system in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union is one of the major events of this century, perhaps the most important of all. The transformation now taking place is without any precedent in history. The original development of capitalism was a process that lasted for centuries. The almost total liquidation of capitalism in the countries ruled by communist parties took place-in historical terms-in a very short period of time, but it was carried out by force and repressive methods. The transformation which has now begun is diverting these countries back onto the path of capitalist development and the hope is that the process will take place much faster than the original emergence of capitalism. And another hope can be expressed: that the governments of these countries will not resort during the process to the arsenal of political violence and repression in order to speed it up. Although the post -socialist transformation is a historically unique phenomenon, some components and features of it show a similarity with other processes or events that took place under other circumstances. Other empires before the Soviet empire collapsed. The political structures of other countries took the path from dictatorship to democracy. Under other conditions, state assets have been privatized, inflation has been curbed, foreign capital has flowed in, new oligopolies have formed, and so on. The uniqueness lies in the new, specific configuration of these component processes and may other phenomena.

This document examines the global and regional evolution of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and offers recommendations so these flows can contribute to the region's productive development processes.