In this chapter: Action-oriented environmental indicators for Mediterranean countries // Using multi-criteria analysis to identify strengths and priorities // Assessing sub-national environmental performance // Green national accounting for the Mediterranean countries.

This article focuses on the reaction of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) economies to international financial shocks. The crises in emerging markets at the end of the last century underlined the significant vulnerability of the emerging ASEAN economies to international financial fluctuations and a lack of sustainability in their exchange rate regime. A structural VAR model is used to analyze the efficiency of the measures adopted by these countries after this episode of crisis in order to protect their economies against speculative attacks. The results reveal that the impact of the recent subprime crisis on emerging ASEAN countries is less significant than that observed in industrialized ones.

This paper analyzes the under-investigated relationship uniting financial development and income distribution. We use a novel approach taking into account for the first time the specific channels linking banks, capital markets and income inequality, the time-varying nature of the relationship, and reciprocal causality. We construct a set of annual indicators of banking and capital market size, robustness, efficiency and international integration. We then estimate the determinants of income distribution using a panel Bayesian structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model, for a set of 49 countries over the 1994-2002 period. We uncover a significant causality running from financial sector development to income distribution. In addition, the banking sector seems to exert a stronger impact on inequality. Finally, the relationship appears to depend on the characteristics of the financial sector, rather than on its size.