Costs have declined even in Portugal, which is in the weakest position of countries other than Greece.
This growth in demand has been met by a vast expansion of exports from South America, notably Brazil, and a change in the net position of countries of the former Soviet Union, especially Russia and Ukraine; they swung from being the world's second largest importer in 1980 to the world's third largest exporter in 2010.
Predictably, the leading position of countries such as Argentina, Brazil and Mexico is likely associated with the increase in their research budgets after 1990 (18, 23, 33).
Finally, the relative position of countries even within a given Welfare Regime/Health System cell may even be inverted with regards to the proportion of spending due to PHI or OOP: for instance of the Netherlands and Australia, where the former has a higher proportion of PHI than Australia, but a lower proportion of OOP.
International comparisons are useful in assessing a country's economic performance relative to other countries and in evaluating the competitive position of a country in international trade.
Broadly, the new study confirmed the relative positions of countries which had taken part in earlier studies.
The world has changed enormously since 1997, and the entrenched positions of countries – developed v developing – at the UN climate talks have failed to keep up.
In the past, Mr. Hong has made prints of world maps in which the positions of countries are scrambled across continents, eliminating existing dichotomies of West and Non-West.
Clustering countries, ordering these clusters and indicating relative positions of countries according to their positions for entrepreneurial environment and new entrepreneurs' rates provide empirical ground for practical recommendations.
We cluster countries with respect to these indicators, order the clusters and indicate relative positions of countries according to their clusters' positions for entrepreneurial environment and new entrepreneurs' rates.
They provide contemporaneous country rankings and, in some instances, comparisons of how the rank positions of countries change over time, ignoring the above-mentioned debates and their constructive outcomes.
