This book is a comparative study of international practices in bankruptcy law, providing perspectives from a variety of specialisms including practitioners, lawyers, bankers, accountants and judges from the United Arab Emirates, the UK and Singapore.

Drawing on concepts in political economy, political ecology, justice theory, and critical development studies, the authors offer the first comprehensive, systematic exploration of the ways in which adaptation projects can produce unintended, undesirable results. This work is on the Global Policy: Next Generation list of six key books for understanding the politics of global climate change.

How an economy handles financial and business distress has a major impact on confidence in business, the availability of investment, the cost of credit, and economic growth. The financial crisis of 2007-2008 and its aftermath was a catalyst to legal reform in the field of bankruptcy and restructuring law and brought an added focus to the systemic threat of bank failure to the financial system. This book explores the general principles and practice of legal reform within bankruptcy. From a variety of specialists including practitioners, lawyers, bankers, accountants and judges from the United Arab Emirates, the UK and Singapore, it provides a variety of perspectives on the topic. Chapters include topics such as the 'Four Pillars of Regulatory Framework', the history and application of the UNCITRAL Model Law on Cross-Border Insolvency, the challenges for financial institutions and the treatment of the insolvency of natural persons. The book also offers a comparative study of Islamic Shari'ah principles with modern bankruptcy regimes, an analysis of bankruptcy in the UAE and an evaluation of the legal infrastructure of the DIFC Courts. The authors explore core questions surrounding bankruptcy law, including its ability to facilitate the turnaround of business, to enable efficient reallocation of capital, to provide coherent rules for entrepreneurs, investors, employees, and creditors, and to provide for both appropriate sanctions and for rehabilitation. ?

Until World War II, the Four Corners Region--where New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona meet--was a collection of isolated rural towns. In the postwar baby boom era, however, small communities like Farmington, New Mexico, became bustling municipalities with rapidly expanding economies. In "Quest for the Golden Circle," Arthur Gomez traces the development of the Four Corners' two industries, mining and tourism, to discover how each contributed to the economic and urban transformation of this region during the 1950s and 1960s.

Focusing on four cities--Durango, Colorado; Moab, Utah; Flagstaff, Arizona; and Farmington, New Mexico--Gomez chronicles how these towns played key roles in the West's dramatic postwar expansion. Cities such as Denver, Albuquerque, Phoenix, Tucson, El Paso, and Salt Lake City all grew through use of the abundant petroleum, uranium, natural gas, timber, and other natural resources extracted from the Four Corners region.

But the energy boom in these towns was not to last. With the arrival of foreign oil bringing economic growth to a halt in the early 1970s, town leaders turned again to the land to stimulate their economy. This time, the resource was a seemingly inexhaustible one-tourism. Gmez examines how business-minded citizens marketed the area's scenic wonders and established the entire region as a tourist destination. Their efforts were further assisted by the selection of stunning federal lands--Mesa Verde, Grand Canyon, and Arches National Parks--as treasures protected and promoted by the National Park Service.

Both mining and tourism, however, were beset by complex new problems and issues. Extensive highways, for instance, were planned to bisect a Navajo reservation. As Gmez illustrates, the growing cities in the Four Corners region felt tremendous competing pressures between outside business powers and local needs as their extractive economy boomed and busted and as they then struggled to attract tourism dollars. In addition, he highlights the prominent roles played by federal agencies like the Atomic Energy Commission and the National Park Service in shaping regional destiny.

An outstanding analysis of the complexities of postwar development, "Quest for the Golden Circle" successfully illuminates the history of one region within the larger story of the modern American West.

This book examines the successful private, public and civil society models of agriculture value chains in India and addresses relevant challenges and opportunities to improve their efficiency and inclusiveness. It promotes the value-chain approach as a tool to improve access to finance for small holder farmers and discusses the possible structure of and regulatory framework for the 'National Common Agricultural Market'- a term that featured in the Indian Finance Minister's 2014-15 budget speech, and which is aimed towards standardizing and improving transparency in agricultural trade practices across states under a single licensing system. The book deliberates on the potential of developing innovative financial instruments into the value chain framework by supporting tripartite agreements between producers, lead firms and financial institutions. Its fourteen chapters are divided into three parts-Agriculture Value Chain Financing: Theoretical Framework, Agriculture Value Chain Financing in Cases of Select Commodities; and Institutional Framework for Agriculture Value Chain Financing. Since the concept of value chain financing is being considered as a future policy agenda, the book is of great interest to corporations dealing with agricultural inputs and outputs; commercial, regional, rural and cooperative banks; policy makers; academicians and NGOs.

Over the past hundred years, tourism has evolved into the world's biggest business, and few countries today question the common wisdom that the road to economic development is paved with tourist dollars. Yet questions should be raised, Patricia Goldstone argues in this path-breaking book on the social and political impacts of tourism. She examines for the first time the close connections between business and politics as government and industry leaders work together to reengineer political trouble spots into tourist destinations in places like Ireland, Turkey, and Cuba. She also probes the impact of tourism on diverse cultures.

In a keenly perceptive account of the history of tourism in the twentieth century, the book tells how and why tourism aligned itself with political power, how it became embedded within such nontourist institutions as the World Bank, and how since World War II it has become an instrument of international development policy. In detailed case studies that are also compelling travel narratives, Goldstone documents the effects of tourism on local people, including its tendency to lead governments toward greater social repression. She offers fascinating insights into the ironies of modern tourism -- how, for example, it can insulate tourists from the very things they seek to encounter, and how, despite its preservational efforts, tourism can affect a culture in complex, sometimes troubling, ways.

Through a close examination of India's policies, economic system, social systems and politics, this study explores the numerous perspectives and debates on India's urbanization. The authors link contemporary urban issues with emerging challenges associated with policies and city management.

The industrialization of information resources has been a growing trend across the world in recent years, especially in China, where the information resource industry (IRI) has expanded exponentially for over more than a decade. While analysing the development conditions of China's IRI, this book clearly defines the implications and strategic value of the industry, summarizes basic IRI theories, and clarifies the history of its development and special regional characteristics within the Chinese context. Drawing on the statistics and measurement of various economic indicators of IRI, the authors propose four stages of development: a germination period; an initial development period; a subsequent rapid development period; and lastly, a steady development period. At the same time, the book draws upon various theoretical models such as the "Dynamic Resource Triangle" model, the "Information Resource Industrial Symbiosis" model, the value chain model and the explanation model of information consumption in order to shed light on IRI's elements and the optimization of its management. In addition, the authors present the Information Resource Industry Development Index (IRIDI) to evaluate IRI's development in different provinces and cities across Mainland China and monitor its dynamics from the point of view of industrial value and the external environment. While the book lays a solid theoretical foundation for the growth of China's IRI, it will also give international readers a clear picture of China's emerging industries in the current era. As an emerging strategic industry in China, the information resource industry (IRI) has had and will continue to have a growing impact on economic and social development. Focusing on the special characteristics of IRI policies in China, this book provides an in-depth discussion of the major directions, methods, and paths of development for IRI policies via a comprehensive analysis of the structural, organizational, promotional policies and policy instruments of China's IRI. Concentrating on policy instruments, the book, for the first time, provides a systematic, all-rounded review of China's IRI policies that have been released to date, and proposes a "China Information Resource Industry Policy Library" comprising six types of IRI policy documents: organizational, information, regulatory, incentives, market, and social. The whole contributes to a comprehensive understanding of the application of various IRI policies in China, and also supports the decision making behind and building of industrial policies.

This book analyzes the underlying theoretical principles of multi-objective linear programming problems with multi-choice parameters. It studies transportation problems on the same domain with extension to fuzzy stochastic criteria, and offers insights into sensitivity analysis through symmetric duality and complementarity using non-convex programming. These analytical presentations provide ample scope for researchers to contemplate real-world problems with an innovative vision. The formulation, analysis and solution procedures on inventory control models in the book use both deterministic and fuzzy parameters, and provide novel optimal inventory policies. The book discusses a wide range of optimal operational techniques for policy makers, government and private agencies in the fields of e-governance and agricultural crop insurance, which are crucial for developing countries. The recommendations address the gaps and remedies in various schemes that influence decision-making in the context of the economic development of such countries.

Focusing on the development agenda of selected developed and developing countries, the contributors in this volume show that the varying degrees of success or failure in the programs of different countries are due to the way they deal with human factor development. Each essay clearly shows that a nation cannot achieve development if it continuously fails to develop its own national human factor. The contributors maintain that what different parts of the world, particularly Southeast Asia, call a development miracle is not a miracle at all.

Countries such as Japan and Singapore have experienced significant development in recent decades because their programs have focused intently on building the human factor. Countries such as Mexico, Nigeria, Bolivia, and India, on the other hand, are struggling to develop because their ongoing development programs do not address the human factor. Nations that aspire to achieve sustained human-centered development in the 21st century should focus on human factor development now.

This book presents an academically rigorous yet practical guide to efforts to understand how knowledge, policy and power interact to promote or prevent change. It offers a power analysis perspective on the knowledge-policy process, illustrated with rich empirical examples from the field of international development, combined with practical guidance on the implications of such an approach. It provides ways to identify and address problems that have hampered previous attempts to improve the space between knowledge and policy; such as difficulties in analysing political context, persistent asymmetric relationships between actors, ignorance of the contributions of different types of knowledge, and misconceptions of the roles played by intermediary organisations. Most importantly, the book gives readers the ability to develop strategies for negotiating the complexity of the knowledge-policy interface more effectively, so as to contribute to policy dialogues, influence policy change, and implement policies and programmes more effectively. The authors focus on the dynamics of the knowledge-policy interface in international development; offering novel theoretical insights and methodological approaches that are applicable to a broader array of policy arenas and their audiences, including academics, practitioners and students.

This book aims to tell the Abu Dhabi story in economic development, from its past dominance in oil to its economic vision for the future. More than being an exemplar of industrial restructuring and diversification from a resource-based to a 21st century knowledge-based economy and society, Abu Dhabi emphasises its cultural legacy and tradition as an environmental advocate for green and sustainable pathways. It has as many challenges as creative responses to show that its success is not by wealth alone. This case study unveils Abu Dhabi in particular and the rest of Arabic and GCC economic development in general. They have all attracted foreign investment and global business, typically as hydrocarbon-rich resource economies. Beyond that, the geoeconomics and geopolitics of the Middle East and North Africa, with or without the Arab Spring in 2011 is in and of itself, a rich region for multidisciplinary studies and research, not just for economics and business. With Qatar, Abu Dhabi boasts of one of the highest per capita income in the world; therein lies a reason to enquire about its success and pivotal role in the GCC and global contexts.

The easy money that flowed through the banking system prior to 2008 fuelled a boom in buy-outs. Now it is gone, how will the private equity industry reinvent itself? This book features a series of interviews with some of the most respected and innovative firms and gives rare insights to the strategies that will drive this secretive sector over the next economic cycle.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is a large, complex, and diverse region, which faces a wide range of economic issues. The MENA group includes Algeria, Bahrain, Cyprus, Djibouti, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. This book uses analytical tools drawn from the trade, labor, finance, and development literature to critically analyze and compare these countries' economic policies.The approach taken in this book is to focus on the economic policies and institutional arrangements which have evolved in MENA and which may serve to explain the differences in each country's economic performance. The key objective of the book is to unravel the context-specific variety of growth-promoting policies within MENA rather than focus on specific countries.This book stresses that the poor performance of Arab MENA can be chiefly explained by their aversion to a Western paradigm of market economics. In the advanced industrial countries and in Israel, "globalization" is largely viewed in economic terms - the free movement of goods, services, labor and capital across borders. In the Arab MENA, however, "globalization" is viewed in largely ideological terms and has been regarded as a new version of imperialism. Consequently, the Arab MENA region remains one of the most un-globalized regions in the world.The book serves as both a textbook and a summary of the very large literature on MENA. It examines the following economic realities of the region and compares them across the MENA economies:

The book analyses the influence of corruption on economic growth and environmental protection, examining corruption from different perspectives. It contributes to several streams of the literature and assembles evidence of the influence of corruption on two important variables in human welfare: income and environmental policies. The material evinces the detrimental effect that corruption has on economic growth and on the stringency of environmental policies. It also shows that standard techniques for fighting corruption are often based either on simplistic definitions or on strong assumptions that do not apply in many countries blighted by corruption. From a methodological standpoint, this work combines a number of approaches including a theoretical discussion of corruption and of its definition (often omitted in economic studies), together with econometrics, case studies and policy discussions.

This comprehensive volume provides uniquely diverse insights into various aspects of decentralization and development from both developed and developing countries, with special reference to Sri Lanka. For a quarter century, Sri Lanka was battered by its prolonged civil war, which ended in 2009, but has now achieved relative peace and stability. Having developed rapidly, Sri Lanka offers a classic example for developing countries. There is, however, a strong need, particularly in the context of postwar conflict, to formulate policies for reconciliation, peace building, and development at all levels-local, provincial, and national. Decentralization itself is not a new subject; however, how to devolve power to local administrative levels within a unitary system and how to link the devolved power to make local administrative systems more conducive to development and provide better services for citizens are challenging tasks in many countries. Taking into account the developmental, governance, and conciliatory needs and the sensitivity of central-local relations, this volume critically examines the local government systems in Sri Lanka. It also proposes a viable, effective and autonomous local-level administrative unit based, which draws on experiences from Japan and other countries, and identifies the role and functions of such a unit. The book presents commissioned papers from a three-year research project undertaken by internationally respected experts with financial support by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) under a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research.

The economic situation in Sub-Saharan Africa has recently undergone a process of change. After a long period of stagnation during the 1980s and 1990s, GDP per capita has shown significant growth in the 2000s. Although the growth rate is lower than that of East Asia, it is significantly higher than that in previous decades. The most significant factor yielding the better economic performance is the increase in commodity prices including oil, mineral and agricultural products, which are the main export products for most African countries. Another factor has been the scaling up of aid flows following the commencement of the Millennium Development Goals. The enhanced commitment of the donor community increased aid flow to Africa, which in turn increased GDP through consumption of locally sourced products and services, such as with the construction industry.This book aims to fill the lack of micro evidences on a structural change of African producers. By collecting studies on single industries, the authors attempt to demonstrate firms' and farmers' responses to the recent economic trend such as growth of demand, emergence of FDI and improvement in infrastructure. Since the economic trend differs by industry, its impacts on producers can be observed more clearly by focusing on a single industry. Based on case studies, this book covers four industries in five countries that experienced significant external changes; namely, horticulture in Ghana, construction in Burkina Faso, textiles in Madagascar, agriculture in Uganda, and wood processing in Tanzania. All studies are based on original data collected through the authors' field work.

In the quarter century since its emergence from military rule and integration into the global economy, Bangladesh's economy has achieved high growth, reduced aid dependence and made remarkable improvement in social indicators while at the same time it continues to suffer from increasing inequality. This book analyses these successes and failures.

This book is a detailed study of rural reform in China. After the death of Mao, and with the ascendency of Deng Xiaoping in 1978, China began a programme of agricultural reform intended to increase productivity. Three major changes moved the agricultural sector from a centrally planned system to a more market-oriented system. First, replacement of collective teams by farming by households. Second, an increase in free markets for rural products, and increase in state prices for farm products, and the partial elimination of the two-tier price system. Third were changes in the economic structure that facilitied greater productivity and a 250% increase in average real rural incomes between 1979 and 1986. This book is unique in that it studies a single township (Dahe in Hebei Province) in depth over the two periods, thus providing a great deal of data about the effects of the reform at the village level.

This book elaborates on the distinction between societal innovation and social innovation. It provides eight case studies to illustrate the scope, process, outcome, and impact of societal innovation and social innovation. In addition, the book proposes a model for interested parties to maximize their contribution for the common social good in a systematic and effective way. Case studies are used to illustrate concepts for readers to grasp the real essence of the relatively abstract notions of societal innovation and social innovation. In doing so, the book shows how small efforts can bring big benefits for the under privileged and to society as a whole. This book serves as a helpful resource for government officials, social innovation practitioners, social entrepreneurs, Non Profit Organizations, as well as students who would like to contribute to the common social good.

This contributed volume examines development efforts in sub-Saharan Africa and the role privatization and foreign investment can play. The focus is on African and international capital mobility and recent experience in private investment in contemporary African states. While government in Africa continues to have a hand in economic and political matters, private enterprise, private investment, and market forces are becoming increasingly active. The volume reveals these new directions in development practice in Africa and analyzes the difficulties which government, while well-intended, has created in the past.

Contributors from the United States and Africa pose questions and examine scenarios for investment in sub-Saharan Africa. And while no single strategy is agreed upon, they provide overwhelming evidence that it has been the failure of prior central policies which has held these nations back, and that hope for the 1990's lies in the unleashing of the private sector. This work will be of interest to scholars and policy-makers in development economics, international trade and finance, and African studies.

As a country, Taiwan is one of the most vibrant, exciting, colourful and entrepreneurial on earth. The contributors reveal what underpins the vitality of Taiwan, examining the relevance of its democratic politics, civil society and the presence of an existential threat from China, as well as the importance of its international business nexus.