Presented in this book is a comprehensive empirical analysis of mergers and acquisitions in the U.S. banking industry. The purpose of the study is to examine the merger phenomenon in the banking industry by answering the following questions: - What are the incentives for banks to merge? - Has the prohibition of interstate banking prevented banks from diversifying and has it increased the rate of bank failures by restricting (geographical) diversification opportunities? - Are bank mergers wealth-creating activities and how are the gains/losses from a merger distributed between the acquiring and acquired bank shareholders? - How can the changes in shareholder wealth resulting from bank mergers be explained and are there differences between interstate and intrastate mergers? - What are the implications of the study's findings for regulatory policy? Theory and practical implications are blended in this book which should appeal to both academics and practitioners in the field

Climate change remains a global challenge requiring international collaborative action. Another area where countries have successfully committed to a long-term multilateral resolution is the liberalization of international trade. Integration into the world economy has proven a powerful means for countries to promote economic growth, development, and poverty reduction. The broad objectives of the betterment of current and future human welfare are shared by both global trade and climate regimes. Yet both climate and trade agendas have evolved largely independently through the years, despite their mutually supporting objectives. Since global emission goals and global trade objectives are shared policy objectives of most countries, and nearly all of the World Bank's clients, it makes sense to consider the two sets of objectives together. This book is one of the first comprehensive attempts to look at the synergies between climate change and trade objectives from economic, legal, and institutional perspectives. It addresses an important policy question - how changes in trade policies and international cooperation on trade policies can help address global environmental spillovers, especially GHG emissions, and what the (potential) effects of (national) environmental policies that are aimed at global environmental problems might be for trade and investment. It explores opportunities for aligning development and energy policies in such a way that they could stimulate production, trade, and investment in cleaner technology options.

Drawing on the expertise of leading voices, this book takes stock of key challenges in addressing climate change mitigation, serving as a reference tool for understanding the interface between international trade and climate and shedding light on key issues including global commons, border tax adjustment, subsidies and biofuels.

In a globalised world, where goods cross borders many times as intermediate and as final products, trade facilitation is essential to lowering overall trade costs and increasing economic welfare, in particular for developing and emerging economies. Facilitation efforts undertaken by various countries around the world also show that the benefits of such measures clearly compensate the costs and challenges posed by their implementation.

Issues related to environmental protection and trade liberalization have moved to the forefront of international policy agendas. The Economics of International Trade and the Environment explores - from an economic standpoint - many of the questions that are germane in increasing our knowledge of environmental policy in the presence of international

Unlike any other text on international trade, this groundbreaking book focuses on the dynamic long-run relationship between trade and economic growth rather than the static short-run relationship between trade and economic efficiency. The authors begin with well-known theory on international trade, and then take the student into more recent and less well-known work, all with a careful balance between empirical and theoretical perspectives. A valuable teaching tool for courses in international economics, economic growth, and economic development at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, the book uses some very modest algebra, calculus, and statistics. However, most analytical discussions are built around diagrams in order to make the text accessible to students with a variety of social science backgrounds. An Instructor's Manual is available to professors who adopt the text.