Palau

Palau is a tiny island nation on the southeastern edge of the Philippine Sea in the western part of the Pacific Ocean. It has about 35,000 inhabitants, about two-thirds of whom are native Palauans or Palauans of mixed Melanesian, Micronesian, Malayan, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, or Korean ancestry. Almost all Palauans speak English. Palau is unusual in the modern world for being a largely non-corporate state. Few major corporations have a presence in Palau, and corporate rights and authority that are standard elsewhere in the world are generally not recognized in Palau. This is attributed to Palau's remoteness and inconvenience for larrge-scale corporate access. Some experts also believe there is a cultural component, with most Palauans not having corporate ambitions and distrusting the motives of outsiders in business dealings. Most businesses in Palau are small and locally owned, and Palau's economy is almost entirely built on tourism.