This book examines how Japan should cope with fiscal challenges, as demands on the budget from an ageing society have necessitated the reigning in of public debt and the revamp of the pension and healthcare systems. It combines insights from academic research with the views of policymakers to distil key issues that need to inform public debate.

The book brings together implementation studies from the Asia Pacific countries in the context of the deadline of 2015 for achieving the Millennium Development Goals. The contributors to this volume are scholars belonging to the Network of Asia Pacific Schools and Institutes of Public Administration and Governance (NAPSIPAG). NAPSIPAG is the only non-West governance research network presently located at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi after having shifted from its original location at INTAN (Government of Malaysia) at Kuala Lumpur in 2009. Implementation is a less understood but a much debated area of governance research. It requires micro-level analysis of government agencies, service delivery departments and stakeholders on one hand and its national and global policy level connections on the other. Implementation studies are above disciplinary divides and subsequent disjunctions which inhibit explorations on policy downslides or failures. The studies relate to the new initiatives which governments across the region have undertaken to reach out to the MDG targets agreed upon in 2000. The focus of analysis is the policy framework, local capacities of both the government agencies and people in drawing partnerships with relevant expert groups, ability to bring transparency and accountability measures in transactions for cost-effective results, leadership and sustainability dimensions which influence the functioning of local agencies. The book is especially important in the background of 15 voluminous Administrative Reforms Commission Reports accumulating dust in India and similar efforts lying unattended in many other countries of this region as well. Countries like Malaysia, which has focused upon implementation strategies combined with timely evaluation and supervision of administrative agencies has almost achieved most of their committed MDGs. A special report of Malaysian efforts, initiates the debate of moving beyond the best practice research in implementation arena. The central idea of this book is to demonstrate the role of communities in making governance effective and government responsive to the needs of people.

Korea experiences a traumatic and largely unanticipated economic crisis in 1997-98 from which the country is still recovering. The crisis laid bare numerous structural, economic, and policy weaknesses. The authors chronicle and analyze the key factors behind Korea's economic miracle from 1962-1989 and the causes that contributed to the economic downturn and ensuing crisis of 1997-98. As the country undertakes a series of recovery measures, the authors consider the importance of the ongoing restructuring efforts in the corporate and banking sectors, the development of the 'new economy', and the potential economic advantages to be derived from reunification with the North.

This book argues that Russia has struggled under autocratic power and that this continues to affect economic development today. A 'cult of power' has underpinned legal nihilism, distrust, secrecy and aversion to transparency and accountability. Informal institutions are more important than formal institutions, and influence macroeconomic development. Property and power are merged while property rights are weakly developed. Russia does not only face market failure, but also hierarchy and network failure. A system of values and social practices, with deep historic roots, constitutes perhaps the most formidable obstacle to social and economic development.
By exploring the operating mechanisms of the Russian economy in a comparative perspective, and with fascinating insights into how a socio-economic infrastructure has been created which continues to exert an influence on modern-day Russia and limits its development, this book is an essential read for all interested in the Russian economy and modern Russian history.

Building on the New Economic Foundation and Jubilee 2000's experience of making complex economic issues interesting and attractive to a mass audience, and publishing alternative reports, the Real World Economic Outlook provides an overview and reviews the global economy from a different and radical perspective. This first report looks at globalization and debt deflation.

The advances in transportation and communications have caused and supported the emergence of a global economy. The small economies are especially attractive to multinational companies for siting of production facilities because of lower costs and friendlier governmental attitudes. The emerging international economy has had an impact on third world countries in many ways. In general, international linkages and local economic sovereignty are inversely related. However, participation in the international economy is needed to balance the import/export flow used to improve the conditions in the smaller countries. Although external economic linkages are not risk-free, it appears that a certain amount of foreign involvement is necessary for successful economic development and improvement of conditions for small emerging nations. This work uses the Caribbean nations as a laboratory to show the various aspects of international linkages. This is especially appropriate because of the proximity of these countries to the North American markets.

Reclaiming Social Policy re-evaluates the importance of social policies in the shaping of well-being and combating exclusion, and enhances critical understanding of how these policies are constituted in a globalizing world. Written from a practitioner's perspective, the core concern of the book is the capacity for policy making required to protect groups from becoming excluded, promote inclusion, and avoid sharpening of trends towards marginalization. The book emphasises the context- and path-dependence of patterns and policies of inclusion and exclusion, and provides a normative and practical framework for supporting social policy making.

Globalization poses a formidable dilemma for the third world state. While there are compelling external pressures to liberalize domestic economies, market-oriented reforms threaten the economic well-being of various societal groups. Popular resistance to these reforms has been strong throughout the developing world. This volume examines the political strategies employed by third world governments to maintain programmes in the face of domestic opposition.

This book argues that economic inequalities are devastating the socio-economic and political potential of developing countries. Inequality is worsening in most parts of the developing world - this is a timely examination of its causes and consequences. It suggests political and policy solutions to inequality. It looks at data from over 150 countries in an accessible way. Inequalities of wealth and income have a significant impact for the achievement of economic, political and human development in developing counties. This book argues that a high level of economic inequality undermines a country's growth potential, retards the development of social capital, and encourages corruption.

This volume explores the usefulness of the Asian model of agricultural development for Africa, where, even before the recent world food crisis, half the population lived on less than on dollar a day, and a staggering one in three people and one third of all children were undernourished. Africa has abundant natural resources; agriculture provides most of its jobs, a third of national income and a larger portion of total export earnings. However the levels of land and labor productivity rank among the worst in the world. The book explains Africa s productivity gap and proposes ways to close it, by examining recent experience in Africa and by drawing on lessons from Asia.

This important reader brings together published articles from Palgrave's journal The European Journal of Development Research on the development between China and Africa as well as emerging national economies in the BRICs group. Topics include trade relations, investment in sub-Saharan Africa, global politics of development and more.

This book examines the options for adopting an appropriate model of the exchange rate determination and its associated regime suitable for developing countries, with a case study of Indonesia. It examines exchange rate issues, develops market based, equilibrium and shadow pricing exchange rate models for developing countries, and suggests a suitable approach which is based on the consideration of all these three types of models and the choice of its associated exchange rate regime. This book shows that a credible exchange rate regime and policy, which reduces uncertainty in the exchange rate market, may mitigate the flight to currency from broad money, and ensure the stability and certainty for private sectors, especially in terms of export competitiveness.

This book offers cross-national evidence of the effectiveness of financial and physical incentives for regional development. It challenges the traditional wisdom that competition is harmful for regional development or can be zero-sum. It answers questions such as: What are the effects of tax incentives on the rest of the economy? Do such incentives merely redistribute employment? Do tax and infrastructure incentives have any effect on the unemployment rate of areas adopting them?

This book discusses the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) - the UN Poverty Targets for 2015. Part one discusses the background to the MDGs, their value and omissions, what they mean for changing understandings of 'development' and Development Studies and whether the MDGs will be achieved. Part two focuses on each goal or set of goals: extreme poverty (income and hunger); education and health; gender equality and empowerment; environmental sustainability and global partnerships for development.

A PDF version of this book is available for free in open access via the OAPEN Library platform, www.oapen.org. This book examines the emergence of both financial markets and carbon markets, and provides an in-depth investigation on the fundamental determinants of financial development.

This text explores the rise of consumerism and the expanding variety of goods available in Japan. Japan is placed within the comparative context of the 'consumer revolution' in Europe and North America, contributing to the analysis of the ways in which consumption and everyday life change in the course of economic development.

This book investigates whether legal reforms intended to create a market-friendly regulatory business environment have a positive impact on economic and financial outcomes. After conducting a critical review of the legal origins literature, the authors first analyze the evolution of legal rules and regulations during the last decade (2006-2014). For that purpose, the book uses legal/regulatory indicators from the World Bank's Doing Business Project (2015). The findings indicate that countries have actively reformed their legal systems during this period, particularly French civil law countries. A process of convergence in the evolution of legal rules and regulations is observed: countries starting in 2006 in a lower position have improved more than countries with better initial scores. Also, French civil law countries have reformed their legal systems to a larger extent than common law countries and, consequently, have improved more in the majority of the Doing Business indicators used. Second, the authors estimate fixed-effects panel regressions to analyze the relationship between changes in legal rules and regulations and changes in the real economy. The findings point to a lack of systematic effects of legal rules and regulations on economic and financial outcomes. This result stands in contrast to the widespread belief that reforms aiming to strengthen investor and creditor rights (and other market-friendly policies) systematically lead to better economic and financial outcomes.

Since 1999, Tanzania has been actively pursuing reforms of how the central government finances local government activities. Although local government authorities play a significant role in the delivery of key government services such as primary education and basic health care, the central government tightly controls the resources which it provides to the local government level. The book presents a detailed overview and analysis of the issues involved in developing and implementing local government finance reform in Tanzania, including the introduction of a formula-based system of intergovernmental grants.

This book contains a collection of papers by Japanese and German authors dealing with the ongoing globalization process and notable fluctuations in the regional economic development in East Asia. The contributions discuss the stabilizing and destabilizing elements of the globalization process. The authors investigate the different options for economic policy to stabilize an ever more tightly interwoven world economy. In the center of the discussion are developments in East Asia and the European Union.

In light of the Asian financial crisis of 1997, Lai examines whether East Asian economies converged onto the liberal market model by studying the evolution of the financial sectors of Korea, Malaysia and Thailand. This includes sectoral diversification, the nature of competition, and the regulatory and supervisory frameworks.

Foreign finance for private sector development (PSD) has become popular with the donor community and in multilateral development policy fora, seen as an antidote for recipient economies' aid dependency and a way of accomplishing growth, poverty reduction and empowerment. This book analyzes the pattern of foreign finance for PSD and examines multilateral and bilateral donors' practices in PSD financing, giving special attention to microfinance and microenterprises. It also models and explains private capital flows from developed to developing countries and reverse flows in the form of capital flight.

Jan Pronk The role of institutions in economic development has been debated at length. It is a major chapter in the history of economic thought. It was also a key - sue in comparisons of the effectiveness of Eastern and Western economic systems. Understanding the variety of social and cultural institutions has - ways been crucial in analysing development processes in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. Less attention has been given to institutions in studies of the economic performance of Western countries. This may be because economic policies in the West were mostly oriented to the short and medium terms rather than to the long-term perspective. In the short run ins- tutions are given, in the long run they lend themselves for change. From the outset, economic institutions (e.g. markets, enterprises) and their underlying values (e.g. efficiency, economicfreedom) received much - tention. Similar attention was given to political institutions (the state, government, the law) and values (democracy, accountability, human rights). Thought also turned to social institutions (entrepreneurship, the middle class, the family household, land-tenure systems) and social values (tradition, gender and age relations, justice). Studies soon followed of cultural insti- tions (religion, ethnicity) and values (material consumerism or the bond between man and nature). Without the insight gained by studying insti- tions, economics would have become a dull discipline.