In a world facing rising economic uncertainty and instability, look to cross-border investment activity for solid clues about what's next for economic growth and foreign exchange rates.

That's a key finding by Steven Riddiough, an associate professor of finance at the University of Toronto Scarborough and Rotman School of Management, and Huizhong Zhang from Australia's Monash University. They assessed nearly a quarter century of data on cross-border deals involving more than 40 countries and identified a predictive relationship between changes in a country's foreign investment activity and future changes in its economic growth and currency values.

In a world facing rising economic uncertainty and instability, look to cross-border investment activity for solid clues about what's next for economic growth and foreign exchange rates.

That's a key finding by Steven Riddiough, an associate professor of finance at the University of Toronto Scarborough and Rotman School of Management, and Huizhong Zhang from Australia's Monash University. They assessed nearly a quarter century of data on cross-border deals involving more than 40 countries and identified a predictive relationship between changes in a country's foreign investment activity and future changes in its economic growth and currency values.

Even when they perform equally well in elementary school, children from less privileged families in Germany are less likely to enter the high track in secondary school. A study by the ECONtribute Cluster of Excellence at the Universities of Bonn and Cologne shows that mentoring programmes can reduce this gap.