It is thanks to companies like these that Italy still exports more food-processing machines, washing machines, fridges, shoes and shoe-making machines, ski boots, ceramic tiles, jewels, woollen and silk clothes, radiators and boilers, optical frames and neck-ties than any other country in the world.

ECONOMIST: A survey of Italy

There are 35 processing plants in Romania that are authorized to slaughter horses, and horse exports are on the increase, up 10 percent in the last year.

FORBES: The Romanian Horse Cart Ban That's (Probably) Behind Europe's Horse Meat Scandal

In 1995 the federal government decreed so-called Order 58-R, which set the volume of oil exports and obligated the Moscow Oil Refinery to build a factory for processing polypropylene-based chemicals, financed by petroleum revenues over a ten-year period.

FORBES: The Boomerang Effect