Comparing Childcare Expenditures Across OECD Countries

The following chart shows public childcare and pre-primary education expenditure across a select few OECD countries: Click to enlarge Public spending on childcare in France, Sweden and the U.K. is in the 0.4% to 0.6% of the GDP which is double that spent by Greece and Korea. The U.S. spends relatively low on childcare than …

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Five Undervalued Foreign Stocks

A low Price-to-Book(P/B) ratio implies that the stock may be undervalued. This ratio can be used together with other factors in identifying potential investment opportunities. The following five foreign stocks have P/B ratios of ≤ 0.75: 1.Company: Banco Santander SA (SAN) Current Dividend Yield:  9.98% Sector: Banking Country: Spain 2.Company: Brasil Telecom SA (BTM) Current …

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U.S. Economic Crises Since 1990

The following is an excerpt of the U.S. economy from the CIA’s The World Factbook site: The US has the largest and most technologically powerful economy in the world, with a per capita GDP of $47,200. In this market-oriented economy, private individuals and business firms make most of the decisions, and the federal and state …

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Impact of Rapid Reversal of Hot Money Flows from Emerging Countries

When hot money flows into an emerging country it can create spectacular rises in equity markets. However when the flow of hot money reverses course, the inevitable crashes will be terrifying as well. The following chart shows the performance of the Thailand IFC Investable Index from 1988 to 2000: Click to enlarge In the early …

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U.S. Companies Can Pay More Dividends Than Their European Peers

European companies generally tend to have higher dividend yields than U.S. companies. For example, currently the dividend yield on the S&P 500 is just 2.15% compared to 3.69% and 4.2% for UK’s FTSE 100 and Germany’s DAX. Though European dividend yields are high, the total dividend payouts are still lagging according to a research report …

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