Majority rules are generally unstable and not binding for future voters, and so are insufficient for the required security of a market economy. In this challenging book, Peter Moser argues that stability can be achieved by democratic political institutions limiting the influence of majorities. Peter Moser examines the contribution to stable policy choices of a wide range of political institutions including constitutional rules, the organizational structure of legislatures and administrative and judicial procedures. He contributes new insights about the importance of decision rules in democracies by combining theory with empirical studies. He analyses legislative procedures in the US, the European Union and Switzerland, tests a novel explanation for central bank independence, discusses the implications of political decision rules for regulatory behavior, and provides a concise survey of recent critical research on democratic institutions. This book will be particularly welcomed by public choice scholars as well as other economists and political scientists interested in the role of democratic institutions.

The introduction of market reforms has radically transformed China. The Market in Chinese Social Policy examines the impact of a shift to market principles in the critical sector of social policy. The contributors demonstrate how social policy reform has been driven by economic transformation, as profound structural change produced inevitable knock-on effects in people's livelihood. Marketization in social policy in turn creates new needs and raises issues that challenge commonly accepted notions of public-private responsibilities in a society undergoing rapid and deep social change.

One of the key issues for the prosperity of our societies in a globalised economy is to connect public policies together to achieve maximum results. Policy-makers and practitioners in key public and private agencies need to learn how to collaborate, to create joint-decision processes, to evaluate the effects of new governance partnerships and to become more efficient in the use of engagement tools. This book develops a conceptual map for this new area of practice and provides leading cases from different OECD countries to help practitioners plan for this form of innovation.

The Market of Virtue - Morality and Commitment in a Liberal Society is a contribution to the present controversy between liberalism and communitarianism. This controversy is not only confined to academic circles but is becoming of increasing interest to a wider public. It has become popular again today to criticize a liberal market society as being a society in which morality and virtues are increasingly being displaced by egoism and utility maximization. According to this view the competition between individuals and the dissolution of community ties erode the respect for the interests of others and undermine the commitment to the common good. The present book, however, develops quite a different picture of a liberal society. An analysis of its fundamental principles shows that anonymous market-relations and competition are by no means the only traits of a liberal society. Such a society also provides the framework for freedom of cooperation and association. It gives its citizens the right to cooperate with other people in pursuit of their own interests. Just as the rivalry between competitors is a basic element of a liberal society so is the cooperation between partners. Thus not only self-centred individualism is rewarded. The main part of the book explains how the freedom to cooperate and to establish social ties lays the empirical foundation for the emergence of civil virtues and moral integrity. It is the basic insight of this analysis that it can no longer be maintained that a liberal society is incapable of producing moral attitudes and social commitment. If a civil society can develop under a liberal order, then one can reckon with citizens who voluntarily contribute to public goods and who commit themselves of their own accord to the society, its constitution and institutions.
However this book not only develops further arguments for the current debate between liberalism and communitarianism by explaining the emergence of morality and virtue in a market society. It also provides new aspects for the present theoretical and methodological controversies over the fundaments of the social sciences and contributes to the advancement of the modern individualistic approach in social theory. In this context it aims especially at an improvement of a sociological model of behaviour.

As part of its review of competition law that started in the late 1990s, the European Commission proposes to revise its interpretation and application of the Treaty 's prohibition of abuses of dominant positions. Also, it has instigated a debate about the promotion of private enforcement of EC competition law. On the former subject, the Commission published a Discussion Paper in 2005; on the latter, a Green Paper in 2005, followed by a White Paper in 2008.

The chapters in this volume critically appraise the Commission 's proposals, including the most recent ones. The authors also highlight the repercussions of the proposed more economic approach to abuses of dominant positions on private litigants opportunities to bring damages actions in national courts for such abuses.

This book shows how the three most important countries in South America have responded to the challenges of globalization since the mid-1960s: the first OPEC price hike, the Third World debt crisis leading to the “lost-decade” for the continent, and, finally, bold but often ill-planned neo-liberal reforms of the 1990s. Latin America will experience another cycle of structural changes in the coming decades, as the reforms of the 1980s and 1990s failed to produce the desired effects of social justice, fair income distribution, sustainable growth, and consolidation of democracy.

King seeks to understand how the transition from state-socialism to capitalism was accomplished in Eastern Europe. The purpose of studying the process of transition is uo understand the end-point of the transition; that is, the structure of the postcommunist economy results from the different ways that private property was made by enterprise level actors. King identifies strategies of transition employed by postcommunist economic elites to transform property and acquire various property rights discusses, the conditions under which different strategies are likely to be selected, lists and, the resources used by actors to implement these strategies.

As King illustrates through his case studies, when aggregated, these strategies are primarily responsible for the structuring of the postcommunist capitalist systems. This is done through the creation of different types of property (such as multinationals or management buy-outs) and integrating mechanisms (such as markets or state redistribution). The resulting property forms and integrative mechanisms that emerge from this process are assessed for their possible effect on economic performance and long-term development. Differences that exist among the various postcommunist economies are explained by the institutional legacies from the reform period of communism. This book is of particular interest to scholars, students, and researchers involved with East European studies, political and economic sociology, and international political economy.

Japan has always been an "odd man out" from the standpoint of Western norm or Western finance. It is a country that is as developed as any in the West. However, it is also a country that possesses the significant institutional and cultural traits that separate it from the West. An important question in finance is to what extent the basic models of finance, developed with the Western "perfect market" view in mind, can be applied to Japan; or conversely, what critical adjustments must be made to make models amendable to the reality of Japanese finance. This book contains 21 substantive papers that address various aspects of Japanese finance. This is an attempt to bring them together under the same cover so that the commonality and peculiarity of Japanese finance can be more easily discerned across different applications as well as compared across countries. Hence, despite apparent differences in topics, the theme is international and comparative in nature throughout.

*Selected by Emma Watson for her Ultimate Book List* Fashion is political. From the red carpets of the Met Gala to online fast fashion, clothes tell a story of inequality, racism and climate crisis. In The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion, Tansy E. Hoskins unpicks the threads of capitalist industry to reveal the truth about our clothes. Fashion brands entice us to consume more by manipulating us to feel ugly, poor and worthless, sentiments that line the pockets of billionaires exploiting colonial supply chains. Garment workers on poverty pay risk their lives in dangerous factories, animals are tortured, fossil fuels extracted and toxic chemicals spread just to keep this season's collections fresh. We can do better than this. Moving between Karl Lagerfeld and Karl Marx, The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion goes beyond ethical fashion and consumer responsibility showing that if we want to feel comfortable in our clothes, we need to reshape the system and ensure this is not our last season.

In light of Europe's prolonged state of crisis, this book reassesses the challenges and prospects of the European integration process. Scholars from diverse disciplines reflect on various types of integration by analyzing political, economic and sociological variables, while also taking legal and cultural constraints into account. Readers will learn about the dilemmas and challenges of the European transformation process as well as political reforms to overcome these challenges. The book is divided into four parts, the first of which discusses the external dimension of the European Union, including a review of development aid policies and EU foreign policy. In turn, the second part focuses on institutional change and asymmetrical integration in the EU. The third part is devoted to the rise of populism and nationalism, including an analysis of the role of civil society organizations in the Brexit. In closing, the last part highlights the crisis of the Euro as a symbol of European integration and the emerging social and economic divide between countries of the North and South.

How Can Reliability Analysis Impact Your Company's Bottom Line? While reliability investigations can be expensive, they can also add value to a product that far exceeds its cost. Affordable Reliability Engineering: Life-Cycle Cost Analysis for Sustainability & Logistical Support shows readers how to achieve the best cost for design development testing and evaluation and compare options for minimizing costs while keeping reliability above specifications. The text is based on the premise that all system sustainment costs result from part failure. It examines part failure in the design and sustainment of fielded parts and outlines a design criticality analysis procedure that reflects system design and sustainment. Achieve the Best Cost for Life-Cycle Sustainment Providing a framework for managers and engineers to develop and implement a reliability program for their organizations, the authors present the practicing professional with the tools needed to manage a system at a high reliability at the best cost. They introduce analytical methods that provide the methodology for integrating part reliability, failure, maintainability, and logistic math models. In addition, they include examples on how to run reliability simulations, highlight tools that are commercially available for such analysis, and explain the process required to ensure a design will meet specifications and minimize costs in the process. This text: Demonstrates how to use information gathered from reliability investigations Provides engineers and managers with an understanding of a reliability engineering program so that they can perform reliability analyses Seeks to resolve uncertainty and establish the value of reliability engineering Affordable Reliability Engineering: Life-Cycle Cost Analysis for Sustainability & Logistical Support focuses on reliability-centered maintenance and is an ideal resource for reliability engineers and managers. This text enables reliability professionals to determine the lowest life-cycle costs for part selection, design configuration options, and the implementation of maintenance practices, as well as spare parts strategies, and logistical resources.

The Eastern Enlargement of the EU will not be complete until the new member states join the EMU. Economic and political economy arguments point to fast EMU accession of new member states. Failure to do so will create a two speed Europe, a fundamental change in the economic and political architecture of the EU, adding to the strains already evident between core and peripheral countries. Current high level of trade and business cycle integration of new member states with the Eurozone, decreases the probability of asymmetric shocks. Lower transaction costs, elimination of exchange rate risk and the danger of currency crises, further trade and investment creation, lower interest rates and large fiscal gains, should outweigh the loss of the exchange rate as adjustment tool. The Eastern Enlargement of the Eurozone provides comprehensive economic analysis of theoretical, empirical and political issues that will determine whether EMU enlargement is a success, which has implications for all common currency systems.

"Geopolitical and Economic Changes in the Balkan Countries" is a background work on the history, wars, and invasions of the Balkans. The ways in which this background has produced and altered the present unsettled situation in Bosnia and other parts of the peninsula is discussed. The recent involvement of the United States and the stabilizing role of Greece in southeastern Europe, as well as the potential economic cooperation between the Balkan countries and the European Union are analyzed.

Fifteen years ago, twenty-seven countries in Europe and Central Asia embarked on their economic transition paths. For some, the outcome was a considerable success. Several others are still struggling to shed the inheritance of the past and to correct more recent policy mistakes. Why were post-Communist recessions so long in some countries and growth disappointing? Why was fiscal performance so different? Was democracy a factor, which facilitated reforms or rather slowed them down? This book discusses these questions in the context of new empirical evidence, including a critical examination of the main themes in the economics of transition literature.

After more than two decades of widespread hardship for most nations, what are the different paths available for them to resume steady growth and welfare? Will they actually succeed in building new growth models that meet the challenges of the present phase of internationalisation? This book attempts to answer these questions by analysing different perspectives and discussing the conditions for new national growth trajectories to emerge. The book provides conceptual tools for characterising alternative growth regimes by analysing their institutional backgrounds and political context. Unlike standard convergence theories, the authors argue that the diversity of capitalism is likely to persist as national economies adapt to the forces of globalisation. Still these national paths remain strongly conditioned by the kind of governance set up at both regional and fully international levels. The Hardship of Nations will be of great interest to undergraduates and graduates in the social sciences - economics, political sciences, sociology, geography and management - who require an overview of the debates on growth of national economies in the present stage of globalisation.

This book provides an assessment of the evolution and dynamics of regional innovation systems (RISs) and the economic and social impact of resulting knowledge spillovers, presenting comparative case studies on the regions of several Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries (Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Lithuania and Estonia). It analyses RISs on the basis of several dimensions, such as absorption capacity and intellectual capital, and using several methods such as data envelopment analysis, patent network analysis, and weighted sum approach. Further, by looking at the economic and social impact of knowledge spillovers in RISs and networking, it identifies key distinguishing factors, including foreign direct investments, still prevalent centralized decision-making, EU-driven innovation policies and public financing of innovations. Sectoral case studies, e.g. from the automobile, chemical and other hi-tech manufacturing industries, are presented to help readers understand the different types of knowledge spillovers in CEE countries and the evolution and dynamics of RISs, and provide a multifaceted overview of the CEE regions.

The theory of capitalism and of the economic order is the central topic of the German economic tradition in the 20th century. Capitalism has not only been the topic for Marxist economics and for the Frankfurt School but also for the Historical School and for the postmarxist theory of capitalism in Ordo- and Neo-Liberalism as well as in Solidarism. The question of the foundations of the economic order of the market economy and of capitalism as well as the problem whether a third path between capitalism and social ism is possible occupied this tradition from the Historical School to Ordo Liberalism and the theory of the social market economy. The theory of capitalism and of the social market economy as well as the critique and reform developed in this theoretical tradition is important for the theory of economic systems as well as for today's problems of the eco nomic order. Its relevance for the present world economy is visible in the discussions whether there exist different models of capitalism and whether they can be described as the Anglo-American and as the Rhenish model of capitalism influenced by the thought of the German economic tradition. Michel Albert, the author of this classification, gave the key-word in his book Capitalism against Capitalism. The papers of this book can help to clarify this debate by giving a first hand introduction to some of the main economic thinkers of capitalism."

This comparative analysis of growth, structural change and labour market dynamics in the Greater Mekong countries (Yunnan Province in China, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Lao PDR and Myanmar) of Southeast Asia is the first of its kind. It explores economic integration and cooperation, the possibilities for improving the functioning of labour markets and facilitating mutually beneficial labour flows in the region. The book begins with a comparative overview of policy reforms, economic performance and structural changes, focusing on economic relations in the Greater Mekong countries. It then examines the salient features of labour market structures and policies, patterns of cross-border migration, and information systems, paying attention to the similarities and differences between countries. It is especially timely in the context of economic transition from socialist systems in the three Indochina countries, the ongoing policy reforms in Yunnan Province and Myanmar, and in light of the Asian financial crisis in shaping growth trends. The analysis yields policy recommendations for improvement in labour market performance. The book will be of great interest to development and labour economists and those working in the field of Asian studies, as well as to policymakers.

This book reviews the experience of 14 countries with external liberalization and related policies, based on papers written by national authors following a common 0000oeconomic methodology. The methodology, the papers' main results, and policy implications are summarized in the introductory chapter.
The book reports on a follow-on project to the country studies presented in Lance Taylor (ed.), External Liberalization, Economic Performance, and Social Policy, OUP, 2001. The new project represents a significant extension of the earlier work in that it focuses principally on formerly socialist European economies (Hungary, Poland, Russia), Asian economies (consistently growing China, India, Singapore, and Vietnam; the 1997-98 crisis victims Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, and Thailand; and cyclically stagnant Philippines and Turkey). Brazil is also included as an important comparator. Macroeconomics has traditionally been less actively pursued in Asia and the transition economies than, say, in Latin America. The 1997-98 crisis awoke the Asians to the importance of macro, and the present book is in part a response to the development.
A distinguishing feature of the book is the common methodology, which focuses on the mechanisms via which effective demand is generated and the interactions of labor productivity, employment growth, and income distribution. The country papers show clearly how trade and capital account liberalization along with changes in the real exchange rate affected demand, productivity, and employment at the country level. They also trace through shifts in the overall income distribution and the incidence of poverty. The authors of the papers bring a wealth of insightinto their thick descriptions a la Clifford Geertz's famous Balinese cockfight about how diverse economies responded to rather similar reform packages and offer lessons about ongoing institutional change. They also suggest policy shifts that may help make economic performance better in the future than it has been in the past.

This book explores the encounters with market socialism through reforms in China and Vietnam and looks at the distinctions between market socialism and capitalism. The book discusses whether market socialism is compatible with economic integration and whether state ownership can be reconciled with a market economy.

This book outlines the core concept of the theory of mixed oligopoly and presents recent results that have arisen in a mixed oligopolistic market. The wave of privatization since the 1980s has taken the development of the theory of mixed oligopoly in several directions. Although the main concern of the theory of mixed oligopoly focuses on the effect of regime change-especially privatization of a public firm-on social welfare, existing studies have not considered the difference in economic environments. With drastic changes in economic environments along with economic development in recent years, the domestic and foreign markets have become more and more integrated, firms have become concerned about corporate social responsibility, and governments or politicians have had various interests and preferences. Against that background, this book revisits the question of how privatization affects social welfare by incorporating regional and international interdependency and investigates how firms' activities for corporate social responsibility, governments' preferences, and political economic situations affect the market circumstance in a mixed oligopoly. The dynamic aspect of privatization is also investigated.

In this important book, industrial and enterprise reform over the last decade in Eastern Europe is critically reviewed in light of increasing Eastern integration into the global economy. The authors argue for the further globalization of Eastern European enterprise networks as a condition for recovery and growth in the region. Empirical evidence is provided from five industrial sectors (car industry, telecommunication, shipbuilding, computers, software), including case studies and international comparisons.

The privatization revolution, profit or revenue sharing, and employee participation in enterprise decision making are some of the major characteristics of modern capitalism. Such features can be observed in almost all countries, including Western developed, Third World, and primarily ex-socialist countries. The diffusion of stock ownership, the promotion of economic and industrial democracy, and the globalization of production and finance present new challenges and opportunities and reflect important structural economic and political changes. This book examines all these issues and provides valuable information and suggestions for labor-management relations and international business cooperation.

The Russian labour market has been hailed by some economists as being 'perfectly flexible' because Russia has achieved enormous employment restructuring with minimal unemployment, and by others as plagued by rigidities since pay structures have been frozen, inequality has increased and job creation has been negligible. Such disagreements reflect both the lack of serious research on the formation of a labour market in Russia and the lack of theoretical agreement as to what constitutes a labour market. Simon Clarke addresses these empirical and theoretical issues on the basis of statistical survey and case study data collected within the framework of a large-scale collaborative research programme on the restructuring of labour and employment in Russia. The book reviews the historical context, the statistical data and the theoretical issues before proceeding to a detailed analysis of the development of the labour market in the interaction of the labour market strategies of employers and employees. The Formation of a Labour Market in Russia will be of interest to scholars of transition studies and labour economics, industrial relations specialists and sociologists of labour.