Economic crisis tends to spur change in the 'rules of the game' - the 'institutions' - that govern the economic activity of firms and employees. But after more than a decade of economic pain following the burst of the Japanese Bubble Economy of the 1980s, the core institutions of Japanese capitalism have changed little. In this systematic and holistic assessment of continuity and change in the central components of Japanese capitalism, Michael A. Witt links this slow institutional change to a confluence of two factors: high levels of societal co-ordination in the Japanese political economy, and low levels of deviant behaviour at the level of individuals, firms, and organizations. He identifies social networks permeating Japanese business as a key enabler of societal co-ordination and an obstacle to deviancy, and sheds light on a pervasive but previously under-explored type of business networks, intra-industry loops. Includes a foreword by Gordon Redding.

Inefficient, overstaffed and indifferent to the public's needs, the Soviet economic bureaucracy operates today much as it did in the 1930s. In Restructuring the Soviet Economic Bureaucracy, Paul R. Gregory takes an inside look at how this system works and why it has traditionally been so resistant to change. Gregory's findings shed light on a bureaucracy that is widely considered the greatest threat to Gorbachev's efforts at perestroika, or restructuring. Restructuring the Soviet Economic Bureaucracy is based on Soviet and Western published accounts as well as interviews with former members of the Soviet economic bureaucracy, mainly from the middle elite. These informants, with their expert knowledge of the system, tell how bureaucrats big and small make the routine and extraordinary decisions that determine Soviet resource allocation. This highly personalized account reveals Soviet bureaucratic practices to be the response to an inherently complex resource-allocation problem that defies easy solutions. The often-criticized irrationalities of the Soviet bureaucracy are revealed to contain their own internal logic and consistency.

This book contributes fresh theoretical and empirical evidence on patterns of regional production structures, specialization, regional disparities, convergence and divergence processes and evaluation of cohesion policies in both current and future European Union (EU) member states in the context of increased integration. These subjects are addressed in both individual and cross-country analyses using innovative methodologies. The book is an essential reading for a large audience including researchers and policy makers working in the fields of economic integration, transition economics and regional development. The thirteen contributions brought together in this book are the result of recent research undertaken in the framework of a larger project initiated and coordinated by the Center for European Integration Studies (ZEI) of the University of Bonn on determinants of regional specialization, growth and convergence in the context of European integration. A number of these papers were presented to a conference on "European integration, regional convergence, location of industrial activity and labour market adjustment" initiated by the Center for European Integration Studies of the University of Bonn and organized jointly with the Center for European Studies of the University "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" of Iasi, Romania. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the European Commission Framework Programme and the Center for European Integration Studies of the University of Bonn.

Broadband is a key enabler of the information society, increasing productivity and competitiveness across all sectors of the economy. Unlike traditional n- rowband connections, broadband provides high speed, always-on connections to the Internet and supports innovative content and services. Direct consumer welfare gains from mass-market adoption of broadband across the EU could easily reach 50 billion euros or more per annum. This is quite apart from the more profound societal shifts that ubiquitous broadband could bring. It may allow the individual to distribute content and ideas independent of traditional media and bring together communities of interest without regard to borders. Public policy for broadband will have a big impact on whether and how quickly these bene?ts are realised. Getting policy right could bring large bene?ts for consumers, ?rms and the economy at large; getting policy wrong risks s- ?ing both the rollout of broadband and new innovative services, and thus the realisation of the EU's e-Europe vision. In this book, we focus on the residential market for broadband access in EU countries, analysing the current and prospective level of competition and dr- ing implications for public policy. A key aim is to understand better the relative importance of facilities-based and access-based provision in fostering com- tition and promoting take-up of broadband services.

Experts present their analyses of historical developments as well as new economic challenges for the European Union. Contributors, representatives from major banks and academia, point out the dramatic economic shifts among and within Europe, Asia, and the United States. At the bottom line of this EU analysis are major implications for investors, managers, policymakers, and the public at large in both the EU and the rest of the world.

Thirty years have passed since in 1987 formal democratization was achieved in South Korea. Since then the country has undergone the two turnover test (Huntington), and it overcame economic, financial, and political crises. However, social inequality is higher than before democratization, social conflict has been exacerbating, and political polarization has been on the rise. South Korea's democracy has been going through a continuous stress test trying the polity's capacity to heal social conflict, integrate society, and mature politics as meeting these challenges is key to sustainable consolidation of democracy. The chapters of this edited volume, written by experts from South Korea and Germany in respective fields, examine the way in which South Korea has coped with these challenges in its political system, political economy, and political society since its transition to formal democracy, and provide a focused critical assessment of three decades after democratization.

In China, the decade 1979-88 featured an unprecedented willingness to depart from the traditional dogmatic interpretations of socialism and to enter into a discourse aimed at promoting economic reforms and development. Robert C. Hsu systematically explores the substance and logic of the evolution of the most vital economic-reform theories prevalent in China during those years (before the recent slow-down). He also examines and assesses the delicate interaction between these theories and the practical policies of the Chinese government. Hsu's analysis covers the debates over exactly how to combine the market mechanism with socialist planning. Chinese economists argued about how to diversify the ownership system, how to implement price-wage reforms, how to invigorate state-owned enterprises and make them more efficient, and how to develop China's agriculture, industry and foreign trade. Though Hsu critically dissects the diversity of views and describes the shortcomings which will affect future economic policies and theories, his mood is primarily an affirmation of the new dynamic age of China's economics.

Developing country debt crises have been a recurrent phenomenon over the past two centuries. In recent times sovereign debt insolvency crises in developing and emerging economies peaked in the 1980s and, again, from the middle 1990s to the start of the new millennium. Despite the fact that several developing countries now have stronger economic fundamentals than they did in the 1990s, sovereign debt crises will reoccur again. The reasons for this are numerous, but the central one is that economic fluctuations are inherent features of financial markets, the boom and bust nature of which intensify under liberalized financial environments that developing countries have increasingly adopted since the 1970s. Indeed, today we are in the midst of an almost unprecedented global "bust."
The timing of the book is important. The conventional wisdom is that the international economic and financial system is broken. Policymakers in both the poorest and the richest countries are likely to seriously consider how to restructure the international trade and financial system, including how to resolve sovereign debt crises in a more effective and fair manner.
This book calls for the international reform of sovereign debt workouts which derives from both economic theory and real-world experiences. Country case studies underline the point that we need to do better. This book recognizes that the politics of the international treatment of sovereign debt have not supported systemic reform efforts thus far; however, failure in the past does not preclude success in the future in an evolving international political environment, and the book thus puts forth alternative reform ideas for consideration.

Following the eight year rule of Idi Amin, then several years of war and civil war, the Ugandan economy was in ruins by the time peace was restored in 1986. Since then Uganda has consistently been one of the fastest growing economies in Africa, leading to a substantial reduction in poverty. Its economic success has attracted considerable attention and has arguably had more influence on development thinking and on the international aid architecture than any other country. The HIPC debt relief initiative, the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, and the growth of budget support have all been strongly influenced by Ugandan experience and thinking. Ugandan innovations such as poverty reduction strategies, public expenditure tracking surveys, and virtual poverty funds have been widely adopted elsewhere.
Most of the reforms which transformed the economy originated within the Uganda government during the 1990s, rather than being imposed through donor conditionality. In this book, for the first time many of the architects of those reforms give their personal accounts of the thinking behind the reforms, how they were implemented, and their impact. Since measures that work well in one environment may fail when transplanted to a different environment, the authors identify factors that were critical to the success of Uganda's reforms. While a number of individual reforms have been the subject of academic study, this book represents the first consolidated account of the economic reforms undertaken by the Uganda government and their impact on growth and poverty reduction.

An engaging look at the ways economic thinking can help us understand how sports work both on and off the field.

Are ticket scalpers good for teams? Should parents push their kids to excel at sports? Why do Koreans dominate women’s golf, while Kenyans and Ethiopians dominate marathon racing? Why would Michael Jordan, the greatest player in basketball, pass to Steve Kerr for the game-winning shot?

Paul Oyer shows the many ways economics permeates the world of sports. His topics range from the business of sport to how great athletes use economic thinking to outsmart their opponents to why the world’s greatest sports powerhouse (at least per capita) is not America or China but the principality of Liechtenstein. Economics explains why some sports cannot stop the use of performance-enhancing drugs while others can, why hundred-million-dollar player contracts are guaranteed in baseball but not in football, how one man was able to set the world of sports betting on its ear—and why it will probably never happen again.

This book is an entertaining guide to how a bit of economics can make you a better athlete and a more informed fan.

Developing country debt crises have been a recurrent phenomenon over the past two centuries. In recent times sovereign debt insolvency crises in developing and emerging economies peaked in the 1980s and, again, from the middle 1990s to the start of the new millennium. Despite the fact that several developing countries now have stronger economic fundamentals than they did in the 1990s, sovereign debt crises will reoccur again. The reasons for this are numerous, but the central one is that economic fluctuations are inherent features of financial markets, the boom and bust nature of which intensify under liberalized financial environments that developing countries have increasingly adopted since the 1970s. Indeed, today we are in the midst of an almost unprecedented global "bust."
The timing of the book is important. The conventional wisdom is that the international economic and financial system is broken. Policymakers in both the poorest and the richest countries are likely to seriously consider how to restructure the international trade and financial system, including how to resolve sovereign debt crises in a more effective and fair manner.
This book calls for the international reform of sovereign debt workouts which derives from both economic theory and real-world experiences. Country case studies underline the point that we need to do better. This book recognizes that the politics of the international treatment of sovereign debt have not supported systemic reform efforts thus far; however, failure in the past does not preclude success in the future in an evolving international political environment, and the book thus puts forth alternative reform ideas for consideration.

This book looks at the role of the modern corporation in advanced capitalist countries. In particular it considers corporate control and shareownership and the impact of these on consumers' choice, the mobilization of financial capital, the saving function, and the question of the potentially inherent tendency towards stagnation and crisis. The author suggests that there is a tendency towards social ownership of the means of production in modern capitalist economies, directly via share purchase and indirectly via, e.g., occupational pension funds, while at the same time control and appropriation remain vested in a small minority. This is shown to affect financial capital accumulation and the saving function, since the competition between giant corporations encourages their controllers to increase corporate saving above the level desired by small shareholders who are suggested to be unable fully to compensate for such increases by their actions.

Between Politics and Markets examines how the decline of central planning was related to the rise of two markets: an economic market for the exchange of products and factors, and a political market for the diversion to private interests of state assets and authorities. Lin reveals their concurrent development through an account of how industrial firms competed their way out of the plan through exchange relations with one another and with state agents. He argues that the two markets were mutually accommodating, that the political market grew also from a decay of the state's self-monitoring capacity, and that economic actors' competition for special favors from state agents constituted a major driving force of economic institutional change. The findings presented in the book illustrate that concrete markets for products and factors need not mimic 'the invisible hand', nor is there a linear correlation between their expansion and the rise of a legal-rational state.

The global financial crisis and recession have placed great strains on the free market ideology that has emphasized economic objectives and unregulated markets. The balance of economic and noneconomic goals is under the microscope in every sector of the economy. It is time to re-think the objectives of the employment relationship and the underlying assumptions of how that relationship operates.
"Invisible Hands, Invisible Objectives" develops a fresh, holistic framework to fundamentally reexamine U.S. workplace regulation. A new scorecard for workplace law and public policy that embraces equity and voice for employees and economic efficiency will reveals significant deficiencies in our current practices. To create one, the authors--a legal scholar and an economics and industrial relations scholar--blend their expertise to propose a comprehensive set of reforms, tackling such issues as regulatory enforcement, portable employee benefits, training programs, living wages, workplace safety and health, work-family balance, security and social safety nets, nondiscrimination, good-cause dismissal, balanced income distributions, free speech protections for employees, individual and collective workplace decision-making, and labor unions.
"Invisible Hands, Invisible Objectives" is not just another book that sketches a reform agenda. The book provides the much-needed rubric for how we think about employment policy specifically, but also economic policy more generally. It is a must-read in these most critical times.

In this work, Rutherford reviews why Adam Smith, Hayek, Mises and others praised economic markets, with a view to understanding, in contrast, historical attacks on markets dating as far back as Aristotle. The market has long been criticized as an inappropriate method of allocation, encouraging market participants to misbehave for the sake of personal gain, and creating an impersonal new market culture. This book traces how such attacks have become more vociferous in recent centuries, especially with the rise of socialism. Most recently the critique has broadened to include toxic markets and the excessive marketization of activities hitherto external to the market. Analysing these major criticisms, as well as the value of regulation, utopias and virtue ethics as a means of avoiding future suspicions of markets, the author lays the groundwork for the reader's own assessment of the arguments, and concludes by posing suggestions of how best we might cope with flawed markets in the future.

The global financial crisis and recession have placed great strains on the free market ideology that has emphasized economic objectives and unregulated markets. The balance of economic and noneconomic goals is under the microscope in every sector of the economy. It is time to re-think the objectives of the employment relationship and the underlying assumptions of how that relationship operates.
"Invisible Hands, Invisible Objectives" develops a fresh, holistic framework to fundamentally reexamine U.S. workplace regulation. A new scorecard for workplace law and public policy that embraces equity and voice for employees and economic efficiency will reveals significant deficiencies in our current practices. To create one, the authors--a legal scholar and an economics and industrial relations scholar--blend their expertise to propose a comprehensive set of reforms, tackling such issues as regulatory enforcement, portable employee benefits, training programs, living wages, workplace safety and health, work-family balance, security and social safety nets, nondiscrimination, good-cause dismissal, balanced income distributions, free speech protections for employees, individual and collective workplace decision-making, and labor unions.
"Invisible Hands, Invisible Objectives" is not just another book that sketches a reform agenda. The book provides the much-needed rubric for how we think about employment policy specifically, but also economic policy more generally. It is a must-read in these most critical times.

Analyzing the key problems facing the transition countries in Central and Eastern Europe, this book describes the legacy of the central planners and the need for radical reforms. It documents the outstanding successes and failures, and demonstrates how some countries have graduated from "transition" to "integration" through membership in the European Union. The study concludes by indicating how the EU could help the poor performers through inclusion in a continent-wide integrated economic area. The book appeals to students in economics, comparative politics and area studies.

The overwhelming scientific evidence indicates that planet Earth is in the process of undergoing dramatic climate change, which threatens to undermine the quality of life around the world. Irrationality of Capitalism and Climate Change demonstrates how the roots of humanity's assault on the environment are directly associated with the origins of capitalism, an irrational social system in which reproduction of capital on a global scale is destructive to the environment. The author begins with a philosophical analysis of the role that reason and passion assume in social systems., then traces the local and regional environmental effects of preindustrial social systems. The author argues that nations are faced with a global challenge, to construct life-affirming policy that functions as an alternative to the global devastation that the accumulation of capital causes. The book concludes by proposing rational socialism, a life-affirming social system that functions in harmony with the environment.

Competition and free trade are both concepts which are absolutely central for the understanding of human societies but are also often the subjects of fears and criticisms. It is argued that it is not possible to understand what competition really is without referring to the concept of freedom, and that free trade must be understood as the way to expand the scope of competition. This book uniquely analyses the two concepts as closely interlinked, by approaching them in two parts. The first, 'Competition', introduces the reader to the traditional competition model, stresses its shortcomings, and explores the dynamics and range of the term in an authoritative way. The second part, 'Free Trade' examines the different types of trade, and analyses them in a wealth of contexts, from customs duties to import quotas. With discussions surrounding protectionist arguments, politics, liberalization and history, the author presents an overview of how competition and free trade operate in the real world. This book dispels the fears and misunderstandings which have developed around these central pillars of the modern economy and is essential reading for those studying international economics, international trade, political economy or corporate finance.

Neoliberalism is a doctrine that adopts a free market policy in a deregulated political framework. In recent years, neoliberalism has become increasingly prominent as a doctrine in Western society, and has been heavily discussed in both academia and the media. In The Origins of Neoliberalism, the joint effort of an economist and a philosopher offers a theoretical overview of both neoliberalism's genesis within economic theory and social studies as well as its development outside academia. Tracing the sources of neoliberalism within the history of economic thought, the book explores the differences between neoliberalism and classical liberalism. This book's aim is to make clear that neoliberalism is not a natural development of the old classical liberalism, but rather that it represents a dramatic alteration of its original nature and meaning. Also, it fights against the current idea according to which neoliberalism would coincide with the triumph of free market economy. In its use of both history of economics and philosophy, this book takes a highly original approach to the concept of neoliberalism. The analysis presented here will be of great interest to scholars and students of history of economics, political economy, and philosophy of social science.

War, Power and the Economy contains a comparative history of Great Britain, France and Spain, the three rival empires of the 1700s. It explores how the states prepared for war, what kind of economic means they had, what institutional changes they implemented, and how efficient this was. As such, the book presents the first comparative synthesis aiming to understand the outcome of the global confrontation in the eighteenth century. Faced with the challenge of paying for new and more costly wars, some countries found flexible ways to get more money and better supplies, whereas others did not. The development of freer colonial markets, the increase of consumption and its taxation, the problems of venal administration or the different systems of patronage with contractors, are some of the factors explaining the divergences that were made clear by 1815. This book explores political and economic dimensions of the eighteenth-century European state in order to explain why and how changes in power as an outcome of war depended upon the available means and the way they were obtained and used. The book takes the idea that making war or preparing for it obliged governments to make important changes in their institutions, so that during the eighteenth century the state in many ways formed itself through war efforts. Ultimately, this study aims to show how closely political and military success was entwined with economic interests. This volume is of great interest to those who study economic history, political economy and European history.

In order to understand the resilience of capitalism as a mode of production, social organization, and an intellectual system, it is necessary to explore its intellectual development and underlying structure. A Historical Political Economy of Capitalism argues that capitalism is based on a dominant intellectuality: a metaphysics. It proposes the construction of a history-based 'critique of political economy', capable of revealing the poverty of capitalism's intellectual logic and of its application in practice. This involves a reconsideration of several classical thinkers, including Smith, Marx, Berkeley, Locke, Hobbes, Hume and Rousseau. It also sketches an emancipative methodology of analysis, aiming to expose any metaphysics, capitalist or none. In doing so, this book proposes a completely new approach in materialist philosophy. The new methodology in political economy that is proposed in this volume is an alternative way to organize a materialist approach. Some basic aspects of what is argued by the author can be found in Marx. This book is well suited for those who study political economy and economic theory and philosophy, as well as those who are interested in Marxism.

Using formerly secret Soviet state and Communist Party archives to describe the Soviet administrative command system, this study concludes that the system failed not because of Stalin and later leaders, but because of the economic system. It pinpoints the reasons for failure such as poor planning, unreliable supplies, preferential treatment of indigenous enterprises as well as the basic principal-agent conflict between planners and producers, which created a sixty-year reform stalemate. Although the command system was the most significant human experiment of the twentieth century, its basic contradictions and inherent flaws would re-surface if it were to be repeated.

Using formerly secret Soviet state and Communist Party archives to describe the Soviet administrative command system, this study concludes that the system failed not because of Stalin and later leaders, but because of the economic system. It pinpoints the reasons for failure such as poor planning, unreliable supplies, preferential treatment of indigenous enterprises as well as the basic principal-agent conflict between planners and producers, which created a sixty-year reform stalemate. Although the command system was the most significant human experiment of the twentieth century, its basic contradictions and inherent flaws would re-surface if it were to be repeated.