In this book, economics meets sociology in order to investigate one of the central social changes in history: the decline of fertility. The book demonstrates how social interactions can be used to extend the rational and individual-centered approach of economists to include social norms, bounded rationality, social learning, and changing values and attitudes. The combination of these elements yields new insights into the dynamics and determinants of fertility change.

Privatization and capital markets support and reinforce each other to promote economic growth around the world. This work is intended to fill a gap in the literature by discussing the links between privatization and capital markets, and to provide useful insights for policy makers in developing countries and in the international donor agencies, for academics and practitioners dealing with economic development, and for the internationally minded private sector around the world. Privatization, in its various forms, and the development of capital markets will be a primary catalyst for economic growth and development well into the next century.

This book builds on cutting-edge scholarship and the author's quarter century of hands-on experience at the World Bank to lay out an innovative with-the-grain approach to integrating governance and growth---as a constructive, hopeful way of engaging the challenging governance ambiguities of our early 21st century world.
A 'with the grain' perspective directs attention away from a 'good governance' pre-occupation with off-the-shelf blueprints and optimal policies, and towards the challenges of initiating and sustaining forward development momentum. This altered angle of vision has powerful implications for how we understand and address the challenges of governance reform and development policymaking---both across countries and over time.
The book distinguishes among four broad groups of countries- according to whether their policies are dominant or competitive, and whether their institutions are personalized or impersonal. It also distinguishes among alternative options for governance reform---'top down' options which aim to strengthen formal institutions, and options which aim to support the emergence of 'islands of effectiveness'. And it explores the 'goodness of fit' between alternative reform options and divergent country contexts---including how narrowly-focused initiatives can achieve results even in a broader sea of institutional dysfunction.
The book examines how, over time, virtuous circles can link inclusive growth, positive expectations and ongoing institutional improvement. Taking the decade-or-so time horizon of practitioners, the aim is to nudge things along---seeking gains that initially may seem quite modest but can, sometimes, give rise to a cascading sequence of change for the better. Sometimes the binding constraint to forward movement can be institutional, making governance reform the priority; at other times, the priority can better be on inclusive growth. Over the longer-run, stability depends also on a broad-based commitment among citizens to the institutional order, as one which offers the hope of a better life for all.

This volume examines one of the major systemic changes in world economic history: the economic transformation in the Central European nations and the former Soviet states. Part I considers the dramatic adjustments in commodity structure and the geographic distribution of trade in these countries, while Part II surveys the sweeping transition of the Central and Eastern European countries' payments systems and the evolution of financial markets, exchange rates, and banking systems. Forms of integration with the global economy and proposed requirements for accession to the European Union are considered in Part III, and Part IV presents a model evaluating the record of structural adjustments in these transforming economies. The economic transformation in Central and Eastern Europe has been one of the major systemic changes in world economic history. This volume examines the dramatic changes in trade and payment systems in Central European nations and the former Soviet states during the first half of the 1990s. Part I considers the dramatic adjustments in commodity structure and the geographic distribution of trade in these countries, while Part II surveys the sweeping transition of the Central and Eastern European countries' payments systems and the evolution of financial markets, exchange rates, and banking systems. Forms of integration with the global economy and proposed requirements for accession to the European Union are considered in Part III, and Part IV presents a model evaluating the record of structural adjustments in these transforming economies. The main objective of this volume is to thoroughly cover the latest research advances in international trade and payments among these transforming economies. Written by noted authorities from prominent research centers, the chapters have a predominantly survey character and are supported by sound empirical evidence. Combining empirical research with policy evaluation and recommendations, this volume will serve as a resource for further studies on the economic transformation of the former Soviet bloc countries.

"This book analyses privatisation in Ireland, a European economy that has experienced rapidly changing fortunes over the last 30 years. It examines the effects of privatisation in terms of corporate performance, public finances and the distributional aspects of privatisation including the impact on employment and share ownership"--

Cement, Earthworms, and Cheese Factories examines the ways in which religion and community development are closely intertwined in a rural part of contemporary Latin America. Using historical, documentary, and ethnographic data collected over more than a decade as an aid worker and as a researcher in central Ecuador, Jill DeTemple examines the forces that have led to this entanglement of religion and development and the ways in which rural Ecuadorians, as well as development and religious personnel, negotiate these complicated relationships. Technical innovations have been connected to religious change since the time of the Inca conquest, and Ecuadorians have created defensive strategies for managing such connections. Although most analyses of development either tend to ignore the genuinely religious roots of development or conflate development with religion itself, these strategies are part of a larger negotiation of progress and its meaning in twenty-first-century Ecuador. DeTemple focuses on three development agencies-a liberationist Catholic women's group, a municipal unit dedicated to agriculture, and evangelical Protestant missionaries engaged in education and medical work-to demonstrate that in some instances Ecuadorians encourage a hybridity of religion and development, while in other cases they break up such hybridities into their component parts, often to the consternation of those with whom religious and development discourse originate. This management of hybrids reveals Ecuadorians as agents who produce and reform modernities in ways often unrecognized by development scholars, aid workers, or missionaries, and also reveals that an appreciation of religious belief is essential to a full understanding of diverse aspects of daily life.

Designed to replace the same author's "The European Union and the Third World," this new text provides systematic coverage of the European Union's policies in relation to the developing world in the twenty-first century and includes substantial coverage of governance issues and the relationship between development initiatives and European integration.

The Role of Business in Global Governance offers an empirically rich analysis of the new political role of corporations in the co-performance of governance functions beyond the state. Within comparative case studies, potential explanations of the political role of transnational corporations are systematically tested.

This edited volume looks at energy poverty, an issue whose pivotal role in the fight for human development is only now being recognised by policymakers. Nearly one quarter of humanity still lacks access to electricity. Close to one third rely on traditional fuels like firewood and cow dung for cooking, at great cost to their health and welfare. While most prevalent in parts of Africa and Asia, energy poverty is a global problem which concerns us all. This book, which brings together economists, policymakers, entrepreneurs, and other practitioners from all over the world, is dedicated to a single goal: finding a solution to this haunting problem. It is part history, part economics, part political analysis, part business case review, and part field handbook. Part One focuses on defining and measuring the problem and benchmarking progress in solving it, an obvious prerequisite to any successful energy-access policy. Part Two reviews past and current energy access programs, with an eye towards finding out what worked and what didn't and what can be replicated elsewhere. These case reviews are told as seen on the ground - China's experience by top Chinese officials and Africa's by African regulators and scholars. Based in part on those cases, the book's last, more forward-looking section aims to present practitioners with a tool kit, a menu of options to speed up their efforts. The energy access agenda is gaining traction at a time of rising concerns about climate change and resource constraints. This book shows that bringing modern energy to those who lack it not just a moral imperative, but will likely benefit the world as a whole without harming the environment or unduly stretching finite resources.

"Weitz summarizes the results of both studies and practical experience undertaken by the Rehovot Settlement Study Center, which he heads in Israel, and outlines an integrated, interdisciplinary regional approach to development that they have worked out. . . . Weitz's thoughtful discussion should interest those wanting to learn ways of promoting more effective development." Choice

In recent years, the Republic of Guinea has shed its reputation as one of the most tightly controlled state economies in Africa, leaving behind a cloistered era marked by an extraordinarily closed economic and political system. In breaking with its dismal past, Guinea has launched an ambitious program of reform which has affected the entire range of the country's institutions, regulations, and markets.

Culling data from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, and numerous interviews and previously unpublished government data, Jehan Arulpragasam and David E. Sahn here present an overview of the Guinean economy, and its evolution--from independence, through crisis, to reform--and model implications of these changes for economic performance and living standards of the poor. Highlighting the chasm between theory and practice, between well-intentioned program and problematic implementation, the authors reveal how Guinea both parallels and contradicts past experiences of economic reform in Africa. Most notably, reform in Guinea has been hindered by the weighty administrative, managerial, and logistical demands of undertaking a vast battery of economic adjustments, all in one fell swoop.

The most detailed and informative study of the Guinean economy to date, "Economic Transition in Guinea" illustrates not only the successes of the nation's reform agenda, but also the fundamental constraints to development that often lie beyond the reach of such reform.

This book is a collection of working papers, policy briefs and training modules, published by the International Poverty Centre in Brazil, which provides a comprehensives set of recommendations for alternative economic policies that can generate growth, employment and poverty reduction in developing countries.

This book examines the relationship between development economics, social protection and democratization in the specific context of Sub-Saharan Africa. Moving existing theories of transformation into a new terrain, it sheds light on the exclusive origins of dictatorship and democracy. The book explains how development, social protection and democracy-enhancing policies have been produced by existing institutional frameworks and contingent responses to emergency events, and that these have themselves been shaped by the actions of actors and by their embeddedness in the surrounding political, economic, cultural and social environment. The book also draws attention to the most relevant institutional and social mechanisms, with associated elite strategies and power politics relations in the creation of politically-induced conflicts. In doing so, it highlights the important role of welfare institutions in the reduction and reproduction of vertical and horizontal inequalities as well as their repercussion in the emergence of social conflicts.

In 2020 the world found itself in a state of flux. A global pandemic disrupted the world order while the digital transformation of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), with its challenges and huge potential benefits, presented a fundamental paradigm shift. How are Africa’s leaders to respond, today?

In a crisis, decisive leadership is imperative for the public good, but as we move beyond the pandemic and confront the changes of the 4IR, we must determine how we will adapt. What is clear is that leadership will have to be grounded in scientific and mathematical thinking and in good governance. It follows, then, that for South Africa to succeed as a nation in the 21st century we must be able to provide our people with an all-embracing education – not just science and technology but human and social sciences as well.

Leading in the 21st Century presents a comprehensive overview of how the world is changing and lessons we can draw from leaders, particularly in the African context. From Charlotte Maxeke and the Rain Queen Modjadji, to Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe, Eric Molobi and Richard Maponya, there is much to learn from great leaders. The challenges of the 21st century are immense – from climate change to social media and the digital divide that deepens our understanding of inequality, particularly in the ‘new normal’. South Africa faces not only a shifting global context but a fraught local context of stagnant growth, rising unemployment and deep-seated inequality, worsened in 2020 by the national lockdown necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic. The 4IR offers solutions to many of our most pressing problems and we cannot afford to be left behind.

The certainty is that the 4IR has arrived. The debates lie in how we respond to it. Tshilidzi Marwala deciphers it all, while providing a framework for navigating these shifts.

This theoretically rooted and research-based book provides insights on the JESSICA funding model which - unlike the traditional non-repayable aid - focuses on supporting sustainable urban development projects in a repayable and recyclable way. Looking through the lens of the JESSICA financial engineering mechanism used in urban transformation, it examines the functioning and performance thereof and formulates policy recommendations for the future. The aim of this volume is to contribute to a deeper understanding of the JESSICA sustainable funding model by exploring its repayable assistance mechanism to support sustainable urban development projects. The authors make several noteworthy contributions to the literature on EU cohesion policy and shed light on the use of the repayable instruments within public interventions, while providing, for the first time, a critical analysis of the JESSICA sustainable funding model from the holistic perspective which is especially relevant for supporting sustainable urban development. Financial Engineering in Sustainable Funding of Urban Development in the EU provides policy-significant findings that are important for EU cohesion policy in the field of repayable assistance to be reinvested in the long term in urban and regional transformation.

This work follows upon the author's previous volume, The Political Economy of Venezuelan Oil, and investigates the general workings of the Mexican oil industry in relationship to the economics and politics of Mexico. Specifically the author examines Mexico's state-run oil concern, PEMEX, and the costs and benefits of Mexican oil policy--for the nation as a whole and for special groups. Using in-depth interviews and extensive data from PEMEX and other sources, Randall explores issues such as PEMEX's relationships with workers and the oil union, with suppliers of capital goods and services, with the regions in which oil is produced, and with specific groups of oil consumers. Given the critical and negative publicity PEMEX has received over its lifetime, Randall also seeks to answer questions regarding the extent of corruption, overstaffing, and lax management within PEMEX, which she finds to be less than is often alleged. Students of energy and development economics will find Randall's study an important contribution to the literature of Latin American economic policy. In addition to examining the internal workings of PEMEX, Randall describes and analyzes measures taken to correct earlier abuses and to increase efficiency. She reveals the intricate relationships among Mexican oil production, OPEC, the United States, and other nations, and explores the contradictory aspects of Mexican economic and oil policies that inhibit the ability of the oil industry to reach official goals. Throughout, Randall traces the transformation of PEMEX from a nationalized industry that mainly produced crude oil for export to one that has expanded to include refined products and petrochemicals. As a result of this expansion, Randall demonstrates, PEMEX has had a major impact both on the market for labor and capital goods and on the regions in which it operates. Her conclusions regarding the current and future prospects for PEMEX have important implications for the study of economic and energy development throughout the Third World.

Advances in Pacific Basin Business, Economics, and Finance is an annual publication designed to focus on interdisciplinary research in finance, economics, and management among Pacific Rim countries. All articles published are reviewed and recommended by at least two members of editorial board. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:1. Policy and management on financial markets and financial institutions 2. Options, futures and other derivatives markets 3. Corporate finance and investment decisions 4. Insurance and risk management 5. Accounting, auditing and taxation 6. Marketing, management, and business policies of the Pacific Rim countries 7. Interdisciplinary issues on supply chain, finance, and marketing 8. Monetary and foreign exchange policy 9. Income, employment and other economic policies among the Pacific Rim countries

While most advanced industrial countries have adopted a liberal approach to the regulation of capital flow, the typical developing countries have been driven to control foreign exchange in order to prevent a flood of speculative capital inflow and retain domestic monetary resources for local development needs. This book examines the Taiwanese experience in balancing controls on foreign capital with domestic development needs in a manner that has stabilized the national economy and created a substantial trade surplus. Chich-Heng Kuo's position in the Taiwanese government enables him to provide an accurate analysis of the legal framework and policies that have contributed to his country's success.

Kuo begins with a review of international capital flow patterns and suggests standards for national performance and capital markets that will enable policymakers to evaluate the costs and benefits of foreign exchange controls. His appraisal of the role of capital regulation in Taiwanese economic development indicates that encouragement of foreign direct investment and strict controls on outward capital flow have been key factors in creating a strong economy. Kuo describes the gradual reversal of these policies starting in 1986, when Taiwan had begun to accumulate large foreign exchange reserves and needed to focus on foreign investment abroad to cool down inflationary pressures at home. The final chapter explores possible applications for economic development in other countries. Providing legal and policy analysis as well as information on the impact of specific types of regulations, this case study will be useful to policymakers, professionals, and scholars concerned with international trade, capital, and economic development.

In an age of rising environmental concerns, it has become necessary for businesses to pay special attention the resources they are consuming and the long-term effects of the products they are creating. These concerns, coupled with the current global economic crisis, demand a solution that includes not only business, but politics, ecology, and culture as well. Developing Sustainable Value in Economics, Finance, and Marketing provides the latest empirical research findings on how sustainable development can work not just for organizations, but for the global economy as a whole. This book is an essential reference source for professionals and researchers in various fields, including economics, finance, and marketing; operations management; communication sciences; sociology; and information technology.

Global poverty continues to be a major problem, one that has received much attention and resources for the last 60 years. The developed countries, international institutions such as the World Bank and United Nations, various aid agencies, and civil society have contributed trillions of dollars to fight poverty yet there are more poor today than there were a decade ago. In this hard-hitting polemical Karnani demonstrates what is wrong today's approaches to reducing poverty. He proposes an eclectic approach to poverty reduction that emphasizes the need for business, government and civil society to partner together to create employment opportunities for the poor arguing that the only way they will ever be truly lifted out of poverty is to create jobs that provide financial support for entire local communities in developing nations.

In 1989 the post-Communist countries of Eastern Europe opened their economies by establishing more open exchange rate policies and exchange controls and eliminating prohibitive tariffs and quotas. Now trying to join the integrated world economy, they are facing the challenge of finding strategic alliances and attracting foreign capital. This book analyzes economic policy in Eastern Europe with a focus on the financial arrangement of currency boards. It examines the main challenges facing East European countries, their economic policy strategies, the main challenges to the economies that adopted currency boards, and whether currency boards were a solution.

The book is organized into two parts. Part I addresses the challenges to economic policy in Eastern Europe, and Part II turns to the discussion of currency board arrangements.

An examination of women's roles in politics and society in the contemporary Russian Federation as it creates a new market economy and democratic course born of a millennium of history and nearly 75 years of authoritarian communist rule.

The stage is set in the introduction followed by an examination of the history of the Bolshevik socialist state in 1917 through the participation of women in recent multiparty elections in 1993. The tsarist and Communist gender culture is presented, and the book then considers why and how, the Soviet Union disintegrated. Next the editors explore the reborn Russia of President Boris Yeltsin and women's rights under Soviet and post-Soviet rule. The book is enriched by statistical tables and glossaries of the names of leaders and terms for easy identification.