In 1960, the GDP per capita in South East Asian countries was nearly half of that of Africa. By 1986, the gap had closed and today the trend is reversed, with more than half of the world’s poorest now living in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Why has Asia developed while Africa lagged? The Asian Aspiration chronicles the untold stories of explosive growth and changing fortunes: the leaders, events and policy choices that lifted a billion people out of abject poverty within a single generation, the largest such shift in human history.

The relevance of Asia’s example comes as Africa is facing a population boom, which can either lead to crisis or prosperity; and as Asia is again transforming, this time out of low-cost manufacturing into high-tech, leaving a void that is Africa’s for the taking. But far from the determinism of ‘Africa Rising’, this book calls for unprecedented pragmatism in the pursuit of African success.

The Definitive Guide to Doing Business in Africa

For global and Africa-based companies looking to access new growth markets, Africa offers exciting opportunities to build large, profitable businesses. Its population is young, fast-growing, and increasingly urbanized--while rapid technology adoption makes the continent a fertile arena for innovation. But Africa's business environment remains poorly understood; it's known to many executives in the West only by its reputation for complexity, conflict, and corruption.

Africa's Business Revolution provides the inside story on business in Africa and its future growth prospects and helps executives understand and seize the opportunities for building profitable, sustainable enterprises. From senior leaders in McKinsey's African offices and a leading executive on the continent, this book draws on in-depth proprietary research by the McKinsey Global Institute as well as McKinsey's extensive experience advising corporate and government leaders across Africa. Brimming with company case studies and exclusive interviews with some of Africa's most prominent executives, this book comes to life with the vibrant stories of those who have navigated the many twists and turns on the road to building successful businesses on the continent.

Combining an unrivalled fact base with expert advice on shaping and executing an Africa growth strategy, this book is required reading for global business executives looking to expand their existing operations in Africa--and for those seeking a road map to access this vast, untapped market for the first time.

Why do the Japanese play rugby? How did Einstein help create Eskom? Who is the richest man in history?

Johan Fourie explores these questions and many more in this revised and expanded second edition of his bestseller ​Our Long Walk to Economic Freedom – an entertaining, accessible economic history spanning everything from the human migration out of Africa 100 000 years ago to the present. This enriching journey through an African-centred history reveals the roots and reasons for prosperity.

Why does one group flourish, but another continues to struggle? Do we have better lives than our ancestors? Fourie shows in his unique and engaging style why the builders of societies – rather than the burglars – ultimately win.

This textbook is aimed at students of management who need to have an appreciation of the role of statistics in management decision making.

The statistical treatment of business data is relevant in all areas of business activity and across all management functions (i.e. Marketing, finance, human resources, operations and logistics, accounting, information systems and technology). Statistics provide evidence-based information which makes it an important decision support tool in management.

Being a successful entrepreneur in the 2020s involves more than enthusiasm and a good eye for a new opportunity. A thorough understanding of the essential business functions, as explained in this edition of Business Management for Entrepreneurs, is a prerequisite for entrepreneurs who want to take their business to the next growth stage.

Business Management for Entrepreneurs guides the entrepreneur through the eight business functions: general management, finance, marketing, operations management, purchasing and the supply chain, human resources, information management and public relations. These management and managerial skills are essential to successfully managing a business which employs more people than when it was initially established.

This edition has been updated to highlight the economic factors and technologies that influence business functions relevant to entrepreneurs. Business Management for Entrepreneurs is an invaluable resource for students studying Entrepreneurship, all young entrepreneurs planning to start their own business, and entrepreneurs who have their own business but want to learn more about managing the business functions as the business grows.

How does the South African economy work? Why do macroeconomic variables change? So what if they do? What happens next? How do economic processes and policy institutions really work? Which data must I use? What can policy do? And then the big questions: How can we reduce unemployment and maintain low inflation? What then about poverty, inequality, inclusive growth and development in South Africa?

The answers are found in How to think and reason in Macroeconomics – A South African text, a popular university textbook with very positive feedback from students, lecturers and practitioners. This fifth edition is completely up-to-date and comprehensive. It combines well-informed intuitive understanding with solid economic theory plus a concrete understanding of South African economic issues, processes, institutions and data. In this way it prepares you to analyse macroeconomic events and policies in a globalised and development context – and understand different perspectives in policy and political-economic debates.

Key features:

• Accessible analysis, theory and diagrams, combining intuitive understanding and sophisticated analysis.
• A choice of learning routes with different levels of difficulty and mathematics.
• Real-world economic reasoning skills, not dry theory.
• Online animations that provide unique insights into macroeconomic fluctuations and shocks.
• Explicit continuous focus on South Africa as an open economy in an African and global context shaped by China, Trump’s trade wars and Brexit.
• Theoretical and policy analysis of unemployment, inflation, low growth and inclusive growth, as well as the National Development Plan.
• Analytical case studies of the global financial crisis, quantitative easing, the Euro crisis and the Eskom crisis.
• First-hand, freshly updated insights into how South African policy institutions, processes and instruments work.
• Clear guides to access relevant South African data sources, with useful data tips.
• Thorough integration of the structural social and economic realities (notably inequality and poverty) of South Africa as a middle-income country.
• Incorporation of broader considerations such as human development, inclusive growth and sustainable development.

Supporting the economy, paying for healthcare, creating new jobs, preventing a climate apocalypse: how can we pay for it all?

Leading economic thinker Stephanie Kelton, shows how misguided that question is, and how a radical new approach can maximise our potential as a society. Everything that we've been led to believe about deficits and the role of money and government spending is wrong.

Rather than asking the self-defeating question of how to pay for the crucial improvements our society needs, Kelton guides us to ask: which deficits actually matter?

Public Economics is a southern African textbook on the subject, written by respected South African experts. The new edition deals with current issues such as social security and health care, and demonstrates how public economic theory is relevant to the real-world context.

Public Economics equips senior undergraduate and postgraduate students with basic analytic skills and demonstrates how these apply to practical issues.

A vital and timely investigation into how the consulting industry has made its way to the heart of our economies and governments - and what to do about it

There is an entrenched relationship between the consulting industry and hollowed-out, risk-averse governments and shareholder value-maximizing firms. Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington show that our economies' reliance on companies such as McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Company, PwC, Deloitte, KPMG and EY stunts innovation, obfuscates corporate and political accountability and impedes our collective mission of halting climate breakdown. The 'Big Con' is possible in today's economies because of the unique power that consultancies wield through extensive contracts and networks - as advisors, legitimators and outsourcers - and the illusion that they are objective sources of expertise and capacity. The Big Con weakens our businesses, infantilizes our governments and warps our economies.

Mazzucato and Collington expertly debunk the myth that consultancies always add value to the economy. With a wealth of original research, they argue brilliantly for investment and collective intelligence within all organizations and communities, and for a new system in which public and private sectors work innovatively for the common good. We must recalibrate the role of consultants and rebuild economies and governments that are fit for purpose.

A revolution is taking place in the great marketplaces of the informal sector and it contains an unquantified scale and power as an economic engine and a way of life for the majority of our low income populations. The KasiNomic Revolution may still be a murmur in the streets, a grassroots economic groundswell, but it is the future of African economic activity.

Kasi is the South African term for the township – a teeming conurbation of homes and businesses, entertainment venues and social meeting places. GG Alcock uses the term KasiNomics to describe the informal sectors of Africa, whether they are in the township, a rural marketplace, at a taxi rank or on a pavement in the shadow of skyscrapers. Brought up in a rural Zulu community, GG has learnt and shares the lessons of African culture, language, stick fighting, lifestyle and tribal politics, along with shared poverty and community, which have prepared him for accessing the great informal marketplaces of Africa. He is uniquely placed to uncover the extraordinary stories of kasi businesses which not only survive but excel, revealing a revolutionary entrepreneurship which is mostly invisible to the formal sector.

KasiNomic Revolution is a story of kasi entrepreneurs on one side and, on the other, of great corporate successes and failures in the informal community. KasiNomic Revolution is at once a business book, and at the same time a deeply human book about the people and lives of rural and urban informal societies.

KasiNomic Revolution is about the lessons of marketing, distribution, culture and modernity in an informal African world.

Did you know …

• That the muti market is worth R3 billion a year, with 27 million consumers?
• That the average hawker earns R3000 a month and there are nearly 500 000 of them!?
• That the trade in goats is worth millions of rand?
• That the dagga trade can set the standard for market and distribution to the informal market?
• That Parmalat Cheese Slices have created a multi-million rand business in kotas, and why the Perfect Sishebo Show is the biggest food show in the country?

Do consumers modernise or westernise? What are the eight cultural megatrends of the South African kasi sector? One of them is modernising, another is spirituality, but how and why?

Feast on Mogodu Mondays and Shwam-shwams, visit sacrifice ceremonies and stokvels, meet sangomas and urban trendsetters. You will never look at the low income informal sector people and businesses in the same way again. With stories and anecdotes, from kayaking down the Tugela, Zulu dancing in the pyramids to hijacking a Kulula flight, GG’s true life stories and how they link to understanding and inspiration for marketing ideas will make you gasp, laugh and shake your head in wonder.

A book as eclectic, mysterious and colourful as the marketplace it is written about.

Whether it's pumping oil, mining resources or shipping commodities across oceans, the global economy runs on extraction. Promises of frictionless trade and lucrative speculation are the hallmarks of our era, but the backbone of globalisation is still low-cost labour and rapacious corporate control. Extractive capitalism is what made - and is still making - our unequal world.

Professor Laleh Khalili reflects on the hidden stories behind late capitalism, from seafarers abandoned on debt-ridden container ships to the nefarious reach of consultancy firms and the cronyism that drives record-breaking profits.

Piercing, wry and constantly revealing, Extractive Capitalism brings vividly to light the dark truths behind the world's most voracious industries.

From 1978 through the turn of the century, China was transformed from a state-owned economy into a predominantly private economy. This fundamental change took place under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which is ideologically mandated and politically predisposed to suppress private ownership. In Dancing with the Devil, Yi-min Lin explains how and why such an ironic and puzzling reality came about. The central thesis is that private ownership became a necessary evil for the CCP because the public sector was increasingly unable to address two essential concerns for regime survival: employment and revenue. Focusing on political actors as a major group of change agents, the book examines how their self-interested behavior led to the decline of public ownership. Demographics and the state's fiscal system provide the analytical coordinates for revealing the changing incentives and constraints faced by political actors and for investigating their responses and strategies. These factors help explain CCP leaders' initial decision to allow limited private economic activities at the outset of reform. They also shed light on the subsequent growth of opportunism in the behavior of lower level officials, which undermined the vitality of public enterprises. Furthermore, they hold a key to understanding the timing of the massive privatization in the late 1990s, as well as its tempo and spread thereafter. Dancing with the Devil illustrates how the driving forces developed and played out in these intertwined episodes of the story. In so doing, it offers new insights into the mechanisms of China's economic transformation and enriches theories of institutional change.

Financial crises have been pervasive for many years. Their frequency in recent decades has been double that of the Bretton Woods Period (1945-1971) and the Gold Standard Era (1880-1993), comparable only to the period during the Great Depression. Nevertheless, the financial crisis that started in the summer of 2007 came as a great surprise to most people. What initially was seen as difficulties in the U.S. subprime mortgage market, rapidly escalated and spilled over first to financial markets and then to the real economy. The crisis changed the financial landscape worldwide and its full costs are yet to be evaluated. One important reason for the global impact of the 2007-2009 financial crisis was massive illiquidity in combination with an extreme exposure of many financial institutions to liquidity needs and market conditions. As a consequence, many financial instruments could not be traded anymore, investors ran on a variety of financial institutions particularly in wholesale markets, financial institutions and industrial firms started to sell assets at fire sale prices to raise cash, and central banks all over the world injected huge amounts of liquidity into financial systems. But what is liquidity and why is it so important for firms and financial institutions to command enough liquidity? This book brings together classic articles and recent contributions to this important field of research. It is divided into five parts. These are (i) liquidity and interbank markets; (ii) the public provision of liquidity and regulation; (iii) money, liquidity and asset prices; (iv) contagion effects; (v) financial crises and currency crises. The aim is to provide a comprehensive coverage of role of liquidity in financial crises.

The impact of the Great Depression on politics in the 1930s was both transformative and shocking. The role of government in America was forever transformed, and across Europe socialist, communist, and fascist parties saw their support skyrocket. Most famously, the National Socialists seized power in Germany in 1933, setting off a chain of events that led to the greatest conflagration in world history. The recent Great Recession has not been as severe as the Great Recession, but it has been severe enough, producing a half decade of negative and/or slow growth across the advanced industrial world. Yet the response by voters has been extraordinarily muted considering the circumstances. Why is this? In Mass Politics in Tough Times, the eminent political scientists Larry Bartels and Nancy Bermeo have gathered a group of leading scholars to analyze the political responses to the Great Recession in the US, Western Europe, and East-Central Europe. In contrast to works that focus on policy responses to the Recession, they examine how ordinary voters have responded. In almost every country, most voters have not shifted their allegiance to either far left or far right parties. Instead, they've continued to act as they have in more normal times: vote based on their own personal circumstances and punish the incumbents who were on watch when the bad turn occurred regardless of whether they were center-left or center-right. In some countries, electoral trends that existed before the Recession have continued. The US, for instance, saw no real increase in popular support for an expanded welfare state. In fact, the anti-regulatory right, which gained strength before the Recession occurred, experienced a series of victories in Wisconsin after 2008. Interestingly, states that had strong welfare systems have seen the least political realignment. As the contributors show, ordinary voters tend to vote based on their own experiences, and those in expansive welfare states have been buffered from the harshest effects of the Recession. That said, states with weaker welfare systems-e.g., Greece-have seen significant political turmoil. Moreover, there have been a small number of cases of popular radicalization, and the contributors have been able to isolate the cause: when voters can establish a clear and direct connection between the actions of political elites and economic hardship, they will throw their support to protest parties on the right and left. Ultimately, though, the picture is one of relatively stoic acceptance of the downturn by the majority of publics. Featuring an impressive range of cases, this will stand as the most comprehensive scholarly account of the Great Recession's impact on political behavior in advanced economies.

There has been little analysis of the constitutional framework for management of the UK economy, either in constitutional law or regulatory studies. This is in contrast to many other countries where the concept of an 'economic constitution' is well established, as it is in the law of the European Union. Given the extensive role of the state in attempting to resolve recent financial crises in the UK and elsewhere in Europe, it is particularly important to develop such an analysis. This book sets out different meanings of an economic constitution, and applies them to key areas of economic management, including taxation and public borrowing, the management of public spending, (including the Spending Review), monetary policy, financial services regulation, industrial policy (including state shareholdings) and government contracting. It analyses the key institutions involved such as the Treasury and the Bank of England, also including a number of less well-known bodies such as the Office for Budget Responsibility. There is also coverage of the international context in which these institutions operate especially the European Union and the World Trade Organisation. It thus provides an account of the public law applying to economic management in the UK. This book also adopts a critical approach, assessing the degree to which there is coherence in the arrangements for economic management, the degree to which economic policy-making is constrained by constitutional norms, and the degree to which economic management is subject to deliberation and accountability through Parliament, the courts and other institutions.

The prevailing aspiration of business is performance, while that of society is progress. Capitalism, both the paradigm and practice, sits at the intersection of these dual aspirations, and the essays in this volume explore its fraught status there. Contributions to this volume address questions such as (i) what's the problem with capitalism?; (ii) is the problem just with the practice or with the very paradigm?; (iii) what is progress and who is responsible for it?; (iv) what evolution is required at the individual, system, and paradigm level so that enterprises and the executives who lead them may better integrate performance with progress?; and (v) whither consumers, employees, and investors in this evolution? The book offers perspectives from two distinct intellectual domains-social science and philosophy. Scholars in social science (including economics, management, and sociology) tend to study performance. Ideas of progress, on the other hand, tend to fall more under the purview of philosophers (in particular social and political philosophers). Further, to obtain an insider's view on practice and possibilities, the volume includes essays from a handful of thoughtful business leaders. Research should consider not just how to make sustainability profitable, but also how to make profitability and the modern economic system sustainable. If we are to better comprehend why the world is in protest, to reflect on progress or dilemmas of trust, we must appreciate the tenuous assumptions of modern microeconomics and markets, and hear from modern philosophers about the basis and limits of rationality.

Much of the received wisdom about the world of work emphasizes the marketization of the employment relationship; the decline of class-based forms of inequality, and the individualization of employment relations. Non-standard forms of employment, the delayering of organizational hierarchies, and the use of individual performance-based payment systems are all held up as examples of a new neo-liberal order in which employers and employees no longer feel a sense of obligation to each other.
Drawing on a range of employee and employer surveys, including the authors own Working in Britain 2000 survey, this ambitious study presents a comprehensive examination of the conditions, attitudes, and experiences of British employees from the mid-1980s to the early years of this century. The authors' analyses provides a compelling critique of the received wisdom, while also providing an original, alternative account of recent developments in work and labour markets. Along the way, the book covers such topical issues as the changing nature of trade union membership, the consequences of Britain's 'long hours' culture', and the apparent inability of women to ask for pay rises. Significantly, the authors seek to reposition debates about the future of work by restoring the concepts of contracts and social class to the analysis of the employment relationship.
Based on the ESRC funded Future of Work research programme this book is destined to shape our understanding of employment in Britain for the foreseeable future.

"Infrastructure is crucial for developing countries and needs enormous investment. Efficiency in its provision is all the more important at a time in which available resources are shrinking. In this brilliant book Estache and Iimi consistently bring together elements from many fields of economics and analyze a large amount of original data to provide guidance towards efficient infrastructure provision. They convincingly make the case that competitive, transparent public procurement is the best way ahead; and highlight the many subtle issues involved in designing effectively competitive procurements, a daunting task for such large projects and in countries with weak institutions and high risk of corruption. The book is a must-read for anyone who studies or works on these very important issues." Giancarlo Spagnolo, Professor of Economics, University of "Rome Tor Vergata" "Public provision of infrastructure will remain the dominant paradigm for many countries and many types of infrastructure services. As such, improving public procurement is central to our ability to cost-effectively provide services to the 1.5 billion individuals that still do not have access to electricity, and the many more who live without safe water or lack access to reliable transport infrastructure. Effective public procurement is also at the heart of the growth agenda as developing countries are struggling to provide their growing economies with the infrastructure they need despite tight fiscal conditions. This book provides us with new insights on how to effectively and efficiently use scarce public resources. This extremely useful and insightful book offers policy-makers a wealth of suggestions to make their procurement systems smarter and an effective tool for development." Marianne Fay, Chief Economist, Sustainable Development Network, The World Bank

The Future of the Euro is an attempt by political economists to analyze the fundamental causes of the euro crisis, determine how it can be fixed, and consider what likely futures lie ahead for the currency. The book makes three interrelated arguments that emphasize the primacy of political over economic factors. First, the 'euro problem' is discussed as the result of the single currency's fundamental lack of institutional embeddedness, insofar as its original design omitted three 'forgotten unions' alongside of monetary union: a financial and banking union, mutually supporting institutions of fiscal union and economic government, and a political union holding similar legitimacy to the nation-state. Second, the 'euro experience' shows how the euro's unfinished design led to economic divergence - quietly altering the existing distribution of economic and political power within Europe prior to the crisis - which in turn determined the EU's crisis response. The book highlights how the euro's four most important members - Germany, France, Italy and Spain - each changed once they adopted the euro, why the crisis affected them so differently, and how each has since struggled to live with the commitments the euro necessitates. Third, the book examines three possible 'euro futures' through the lens of the politics of its reluctant leader Germany; through the lens of the EU's capacity to 'move forward' through crises; and through the geopolitical lens of the international monetary system. The book concludes that any successful long-term solution to the euro's predicament needs to start with the political foundations of markets.

This book summarizes how globalizing capitalism-the economic system now presumed to dominate the global economy-can be understood from a geographical perspective. This is in contrast to mainstream economic analysis, which theorizes globalizing capitalism as a system that is capable of enabling everyone to prosper and every place to achieve economic development. From this perspective, the globalizing capitalism perspective has the capacity to reduce poverty. Poverty's persistence is explained in terms of the dysfunctional attributes of poor people and places. A geographical perspective has two principal aspects: Taking seriously how the spatial organization of capitalism is altered by economic processes and the reciprocal effects of that spatial arrangement on economic development, and examining how economic processes co-evolve with cultural, political, and biophysical processes. From this, globalizing capitalism tends to reproduce social and spatial inequality; poverty's persistence is due to the ways in which wealth creation in some places results in impoverishment elsewhere.

This book is a contribution to the debate about the transition process, and focuses on structural institutions in Russia and the East.

In transitional countries with unfavourable initial conditions and weak institutions, economic and social performance can only in part be explained by the approaches followed in the field of macroeconomic adjustment, privatization, and liberalization. By reviewing the impact of initial conditions on industrial and institutional conditions in the gradual and late reforming countries, this book aims to rekindle the debate surrounding these largely neglected issues.

This is a condensed edition of 'The Road to Serfdom' republished in this edition with 'The Intellectuals and Socialism' (originally published in 1949). In 'The Road to Serfdom' F. A. Hayek set out the danger posed to freedom by attempts to apply the principles of wartime economic and social planning to the problems of peacetime. Hayek argued that the rise of Nazism was not due to any character failure on the part of the German people, but was a consequence of the socialist ideas that had gained common currency in Germany in the decades preceding the outbreak of war. Such ideas, Hayek argued, were now becoming similarly accepted in Britain and the USA. On its publication in 1944, 'The Road to Serfdom' caused a sensation. Its publishers could not keep up with demand, owing to wartime paper rationing. Then, in April 1945, Reader's Digest published a condensed version of the book and Hayek's work found a mass audience. This condensed edition was republished for the first time by the IEA in 1999. Since then it has been frequently reprinted. There is an enduring demand for Hayek's relevant and accessible message. The 'Road to Serfdom' is republished in this impression with 'The Intellectuals and Socialism' originally published in 1949, in which Hayek explained the appeal of socialist ideas to intellectuals - the 'second-hand dealers in ideas'. Intellectuals, Hayek argued, are attracted to socialism because it involves the rational application of the intellect to the organisation of society, while its utopianism captures their imagination and satisfies their desire to make the world submit to their own design.

This Modern Guide explores central ideas, concepts, and themes in the Austrian school of economics, with a focus on how both the school and the overall theory have evolved over recent decades. Leading scholars offer their insights into potential directions of future research in the field, pointing towards contemporary debates and their potential conclusions, underdeveloped aspects and extensions of theory, and current applications of interest. Spanning theories of entrepreneurship to the theory of the business cycle, from methodology to sociology, and from cryptocurrencies to culture, this clear and concise Modern Guide provides an expert curation of the topic. Chapters offer an overview of the present state of scholarship in the field, including discussions on praxeology, the function of entrepreneurship in the market process, spontaneous orders, the Austrian theory of money, and banking. Written in an accessible style, this will be an invigorating read for economics scholars looking for an alternative to mainstream approaches. It will also be useful for scholars and practitioners seeking an introduction to Austrian economics.

This thought-provoking book investigates the political and economic transformation that has taken place over the past three decades in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe (CESEE) since the fall of the Iron Curtain. Through an examination of both the successes and shortcomings of post communist reform and the challenges ahead for the region, it explores the topical issues of economic transition and integration, highlighting important lessons to be learned. Featuring contributions from both top academics and experienced policymakers, 30 Years of Transition in Europe first discusses the process of transition in CESEE from a historical perspective, analysing the impacts of differing approaches on economic and monetary policy, the role of central banks and the speed of reform in various countries of the region. Chapters also compare CESEE transformations to emerging economies in Asia, and examine contemporary concerns around financial and monetary stability, as well as exploring the long-term determinants of economic growth such as digitalization, climate change and demographic trends. Economists, central bankers, and policymakers in the banking sector and other international financial organizations will find this book an enlightening read. It will also be useful for academics in economics and politics with a particular interest in emerging European economies and European integration.