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Sweden is in the European top three and probably one of the world’s best when it comes to attracting Venture Capital. In relation to GDP, Swedish companies are the best in Europe According to the EVCA (European Private Equity and Venture Capital Association) 71 billion euro was invested in last year by Venture Capital companies. That is an increase with 50 percent compared to 2005. Among the European countries Swedish companies are the top receivers in relation to GDP. 1,44 percent of the GDP was invested by Venture Capital in Sweden last year. Great Britain is second with 1,26 percent...

"India-Sweden trade hits $1.7bn NEW DELHI: Trade between Sweden and India has doubled between ’02 and ’06 to about $1.7bn per year. With Swedish exports to India increasing by 42.5% in ’06 alone, the country is optimistic that the future of bilateral trade relations between the two countries is bright. Launching the second edition of the Sweden-India Business Guide ’06-’07, Harald Falth of the Swedish embassy pointed out that trade had multiplied in both directions. “India is the third-largest export market for Sweden in Asia. And Indian export to Sweden is steadily increasing. The two-way future of Swedish-Indian trade sure...

For the past decade, U.S. lawmakers have put off immigration reform because nobody could agree on how best to regulate the flow. They still can't, as Washington's recent sorry scramble to craft a fix attests. But the stark disparity between job opportunities and living standards in America and many poor countries has resulted in such an influx of undocumented aliens (now between 10 million and 12 million, more than half from Mexico) that Congress and the White House must act.

NOGALES, Sonora — Along Boulevard El Greco, construction crews and bulldozers cross the busy street while just beyond the dust clouds, a pair of large retail centers are quickly taking shape. The new 250,000-square-foot Nogales Mall and the 130,000-square-foot Wal-Mart Supercenter are under construction at the city's southern edge. At the same site, a new Peter Piper Pizza and a Carl's Jr. are getting ready to open their doors, alongside a new Applebee's Neighborhood Grill & Bar. Touted as the largest mall to be built in Sonora, with the city's first pair of escalators, the Nogales Mall will have 114...

With every developer West of the Mississippi drooling over the chance to develop some 1/4 acre of the Concord Naval Weapons Station, it seems every politician and city planner worth their salt is now talking about “affordable housing.” But what is “affordable housing” in California?Since normal people know that “affordable housing” doesn’t really exist in the regions of California where normal people really want to live, what is it that big-government, pro-redevelopment politcos really mean when they yap on and on about “affordable housing” this campaign season?Two words: Subsidized Housing.When you look at it, most everything about housing in California...

Much has been made about high-profile, high-powered Democrats in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration, from his wife, Maria Shriver, to his chief of staff, Susan Kennedy. Then there's Bonnie Reiss, a close Schwarzenegger friend who serves as one of his most trusted senior advisers, and Daniel Zingale, Shriver's chief of staff. But there is another Democratic powerbroker in the Horseshoe, a long-time Schwarzenegger confidant who is as influential in the administration as he is invisible to the public: David Crane. "He is involved in all of the key deliberations that I have been a part of," said Sunne McPeak, secretary of...

IT IS AN axiom of commerce that economic development follows Interstate highways. Except in Vermont. A new study by University of Vermont economist Arthur Woolf has found that development that should have come along I-91 up the Connecticut River instead came across the river — in New Hampshire. The reason? Higher taxes and regulations in Vermont. “We’re seeing the gap grow larger and larger each time we do the study,”... “Those communities along the river are really feeling the impact now.” They are feeling the impact of taxes and regulations imposed in the 1960s and ’70s... Vermont border counties had...

My wife and I are looking to move to the South, where should we go? We were born and raised in the streets of NYC, but have come to apprecaite the kind of living the South affords. We love the South's history, culture, and way of life. We're thinking about LA, AL, MS, FL and/or TX. We want to be in a coastal area where we can enjoy the water. We want to live near a city that has good eating, fun, and lots of things to do. We don't want to get caught up in too much backwoods mentality...

Democratic politicians and left-leaning commentators, seeking to ex plain President Bush's victory, argue that Republicans have persuaded blue-collar voters to ignore their economic concerns and instead vote based on cultural issues like gay marriage, gun control and abortion.... The inspiration for this line of thought is Thomas Franks' recent book "What's the Matter With Kansas."... Social issues clearly played a crucial role in President Bush's re-election. But the notion that heartland voters are disregarding their economic well-being is wildly at odds with the facts, as a close look Franks' book and poll results makes clear. As long as Democrats continue...

WOMEN hold a centre stage in any society. They are the pillars of a family and thus need special attention to raise a family with vital values. However, most women in Third World countries like Zambia lack access to education and other factors of production to enhance their economic status in a country where 80 per cent of the population lives in abject poverty. Besides this negative status quo, organisations like Jesus Cares Ministry (JCM) have been doing a lot better in empowering women with different skills. Recently JCM trained 120 women with various skills that included tailoring, knitting, cookery...

Motor City Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is right to be distancing himself from a City Council proposal to create a racially exclusive business district in Detroit to help black entrepreneurs. Not only would the plan, dubbed African Town, heighten racial tensions unnecessarily. It could also exacerbate the very problem it aims to solve. The insidious premise of this economic development plan, which was approved last week in a 7-to-2 vote overriding Mr. Kilpatrick's earlier veto, is that immigrants from Latin America, Asia and the Middle East are "stealing" jobs and resources from native blacks. But for the presence of these foreigners,...

CHICAGO — Team New York, a group of about 15 state and local economic-development officials from the Empire State, was ready for the big game. The team was set to try to impress on some of the more than 3,000 corporate real estate executives and consultants who had gathered at a convention in Chicago the advantages of doing business in New York. They had rented a cavernous ballroom with a wall of windows overlooking the Chicago River in the convention's headquarters hotel. They had a jazz band playing softly in the background. They had tables groaning under the weight of...

FLORENCE - Casino opponents went straight to the Oregon Supreme Court on Tuesday, asking justices to order Gov. Ted Kulongoski to terminate the state's agreement with a Coos Bay tribe to build a casino near Florence. Attorneys representing People Against a Casino Town filed a lawsuit with the state's highest court late Monday, bypassing the circuit and appellate courts that would normally hear such arguments first. Effectively, the "petition for writ of mandamus" asks the court to void the state's gaming compact with the Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians on the grounds that the governor...

<p>Hunt Downer officially announced his bid for governor Tuesday during a campaign tour in Alexandria.</p> <p>Flanked by about a dozen supporters at England Airpark's Heritage Park, the 57-year-old Republican state representative from Houma noted a passing plane.</p> <p>"It's good to hear engines. That's economic development," he said.</p>

At a Washington D.C. press conference on Tuesday, Andrew Natsios, the head of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), announced what may be a major shift in USAID policy away from promoting fertility decline as a chief means to achieve international development. According to “Foreign Aid in the National Interest,” “As far back as the mid-1980s, it was reported that demographic factors such as fertility decline and population growth play a role in economic development – but that good governance, adequate resources, sound economic policies, and lack of corruption are even more important….The conclusion, then, is that good economic...

International efforts to stamp out graft among public officials have made little progress, laments a new study. Corrupt politicians and greedy businessmen are not just enriching themselves, but hampering economic development THE United Nation's summit on sustainable development, now under way in Johannesburg, is a rallying point for a plethora of causes, some more deserving than others. The latest to join the throng—with some justification—is Transparency International (TI), a non-governmental organisation that fights corruption worldwide. But those striving to break the cycle of poverty and graft in the developing world will find little to encourage them. TI’s latest Corruption Perceptions...

It's economic development, not peace-processing. The latest mission impossible embraced by those who would resolve the Middle East conflict is the effort to "democratize" the Palestinian Authority, an organization that has thrived on repression, violence, and aggressive irredentism. Meanwhile, a far more promising route to peace--the path of economic cooperation and development--is being neglected or given mere lip service. It's as if the only form of economic life possible for Palestinians were the one that has prevailed in the last ten years--the provision of foreign billions to huge bureaucracies that squandered or stole much of it, while lawlessness and corruption...

Every Issue of The Monthly to your door: Subscribe Online Respond to this ArticleWashington Monthly Home Page May 2002 The Rise of the Creative Class Why cities without gays and rock bands are losing the economic development race. By Richard Florida As I walked across the campus of Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University one delightful spring day, I came upon a table filled with young people chatting and enjoying the spectacular weather. Several had identical blue T-shirts with "Trilogy@CMU" written across them---Trilogy being an Austin, Texas-based software company with a reputation for recruiting our top students. I walked over to...

PROFESSOR THE LORD BAUER, the economist who has died aged 86, argued that overseas aid is not only a waste of money but obstructs development and the relief of poverty in developing countries. Bauer held the Chair of Economics at the London School of Economics from 1960 to 1983; he maintained that it was the character of a country's institutions and the aptitudes of its people, not the provision of Western aid, that determined its progress. "Where peoples' abilities, motivations and social and political institutions are favourable," he wrote in 1972, "material progress will occur. Where these basic determinants are...