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Books > Business & Economics > Economics > Economic systems
From the first appearance of the term in law in the Clean Water Act of 1972 (US), ecological integrity has been debated by a wide range of researchers, including biologists, ecologists, philosophers, legal scholars, doctors and epidemiologists, whose joint interest was the study and understanding of ecological/biological integrity from various standpoints and disciplines. This volume discusses the need for ecological integrity as a major guiding principle in a variety of policy areas, to counter the present ecological and economic crises with their multiple effects on human rights. The book celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Global Ecological Integrity Group and reassesses the basic concept of ecological integrity in order to show how a future beyond catastrophe and disaster is in fact possible, but only if civil society and ultimately legal regimes acknowledge the necessity to consider ecointegrity as a primary factor in decision-making. This is key to the support of basic rights to clean air and water, for halting climate change, and also the basic rights of women and indigenous people. As the authors clearly show, all these rights ultimately depend upon accepting policies that acknowledge the pivotal role of ecological integrity.
First published in 1986, this work challenges underdevelopment analyses of Africa's past experiences and future prospects, and builds upon a very wide range of recent historical research to argue that the impact of Capitalism has resulted in economic progress and significant improvements in living standards. In marked contrast to the dependency approach, they propose that the important political and economic differences between the experiences of developing countries should be stressed and analysed. The argument is supported by a detailed look at the emergence since 1900 of capitalist social relations of production in nine different countries.
The theory and applications of random dynamical systems (RDS) are at the cutting edge of research in mathematics and economics, particularly in modeling the long-run evolution of economic systems subject to exogenous random shocks. Despite this interest, there are no books available that solely focus on RDS in finance and economics. Exploring this emerging area, Random Dynamical Systems in Finance shows how to model RDS in financial applications. Through numerous examples, the book explains how the theory of RDS can describe the asymptotic and qualitative behavior of systems of random and stochastic differential/difference equations in terms of stability, invariant manifolds, and attractors. The authors present many models of RDS and develop techniques for implementing RDS as approximations to financial models and option pricing formulas. For example, they approximate geometric Markov renewal processes in ergodic, merged, double-averaged, diffusion, normal deviation, and Poisson cases and apply the obtained results to option pricing formulas. With references at the end of each chapter, this book provides a variety of RDS for approximating financial models, presents numerous option pricing formulas for these models, and studies the stability and optimal control of RDS. The book is useful for researchers, academics, and graduate students in RDS and mathematical finance as well as practitioners working in the financial industry.
Why do some states thrive, grow their economies and uplift their people while others, facing similar challenges, slide into low growth, social dysfunction and failure? After decades of work on the ground in states in Africa, Latin America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, bestselling author Greg Mills seeks to provide answers in Rich State, Poor State. On each continent he traverses, Mills interrogates the how and why. How did Botswana go from being one of the least-developed and poorest nations at independence to enjoying the highest rate of per capita growth of any country in the world? Why has South Africa failed to attain similar heights? How did the Baltic states achieve reforms that have positioned them among the best-performing economies in Europe? How did Vietnam overcome a traumatic past in favour of a rapid and positive development transformation? Why is Mexico – despite what Donald Trump and Narcos may have you believe – the only large developing economy that competes with China in manufacturing? Based on extensive interviews with current and former presidents, prime ministers and key government officials across the globe, as well as research from leading institutions like the World Bank, Freedom House, the Heritage Foundation, the IMF and the Brenthurst Foundation, Mills concludes that, while some states unlock reform, creating an environment where agility, dynamic change and a relentless desire for progress overwhelm political obstacles, others are stymied by vested interests and the inability to look beyond short-term gains for an elite. In the African context, a failure to reform, and to make better choices, explains the persistent continental default to economic, social and political crisis. Yet the upside of getting things right is encouragingly positive. The examples of change in Rich State, Poor State contrast success and failure, and in so doing, determine a path for Africa’s next generation of reformers.
Southeast Asia: A Region in Transition, first published in 1991, is a contemporary human geography of the 'market' economies of the region usually defined by membership of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Organized thematically, the chapters deal with the environment and development, plural societies, agrarian change and urbanization. This thematic approach provides a comprehensive picture of the ASEAN countries and gives a depth of coverage often lacking in other regional geographies. With a detailed introduction dealing with the physical environment and history of the region, this work will be of great value to students studying the human geography of Southeast Asia, as well as those with a more general interest in the issues and developments affecting the ASEAN region.
First published in 1987, Administered Protection in America follows calls in the United States, at that time, for the protection of American industries and the preservation of jobs threatened by foreign competition. Professor Rugman's and Dr Anderson's work presents evidence that the United States already has a system of administered protection in place in the form of escape clauses, countervailing duty and anti-dumping procedures. The book argues that the application of these procedures by a largely decentralised administration has reduced United States state policy to a state of near anarchy. Rugman and Anderson argue that this is counterproductive for the United States and extremely harmful for America's trading partners in Europe, Canada and the Far East. The conclusion looks at discussions of trade negotiations with Canada, which Canada was pursuing for a bilateral free trade agreement with the United States.
This book situates the evolution of capitalist economies along Asia's Pacific Rim after the Second World War within broader global, political and economic changes. Specifically, it charts their growth at the interface of periodic crises and successive waves of restructuring, and links changes in the world economy to shifts in regional dynamics in east and southeast Asia. It suggests that while the expansion of Japanese corporate networks was crucial to the emergence of the region as a low-cost exporter to the world, the reintegration of China into the world market will free the region from its dependence on the US as a market of last resort.
This volume addresses the attractiveness of financial centers with a primary focus on the mutual fund industry. It uses different empirical analysis approaches in an attempt to disentangle the reasons for location attractiveness and in order to identify its influence on fund pricing. The presented research tackles an issue that is fundamental to the understanding of organizational behavior in finance - the rationale in the decision-making process of market participants and its consequences for an economy.
This book provides an introduction to advanced macrodynamics, viewed as a di- quilibriumtheoryof?uctuatinggrowth. Itbuildsonanearlierattempttoreformulate 1 the foundations of macroeconomics from the perspective of real markets diseq- librium and the con?ict over income distribution between capital and labor. It does so, not because it wants to support the view that this class con?ict is inevitable, but with the perspective that an understanding of this con?ict may help to formulate socio-economic principles and policies that can help to overcome class con?ict at least in its cruder forms or that can even lead to rationally understandable proce- 2 dures and rules that turn this con?ict into a consensus-driven interaction between 3 capitalists or their representatives and the employable workforce. The book starts from established theories of temporary equilibrium positions, the forces of real growth, and the con?ict over income distribution, represented by basic modeling approaches, which it considers in detail in its Part I in order to prepare the ground for their integration in Part II of the book. In this way we inspect what types of models of disequilibrium, income distribution, and real growth we have at our disposal, as models that have proved to be of real interest and sound from a rigorous modeling perspective.
The purpose of this book is to reconsider economic liberalism from the viewpoint of political liberalism. The author argues that advocates of economic liberalism largely overlook empirical political preferences which, in many societies, go far beyond a limited role of the state. Recent difficulties of reforming the welfare state provide evidence that political preferences are at odds with liberal economic policy in numerous cases. This fact challenges a political conception which demands a limited state role but also claims that citizens' preferences 'as they are' should determine the content of policies. Using an evolutionary perspective on economic liberalism, the book develops new arguments about how economic liberalism can be brought into line with political liberalism. Drawing on an evolutionary theory of markets, Gerhard Wegner reinforces the claim that liberal economic policies are conducive to prosperity in society, but he argues that the liberal promise of prosperity does not translate into corresponding political preferences on the part of citizens. A tension between political and economic liberalism arises which lies at the centre of this book. Political Failure by Agreement will strongly appeal to postgraduate students and researchers of global governance, political theory, political economy and institutional economics.
The literature on the character, determinants and relative performance of the leading industrial economies has developed rapidly of late. However many of the most important pieces of writing are now slipping from view because they were originally published in different, often inaccessible and highly specialised academic journals. These three volumes bring together those key articles and provide a new introductory commentary on the literature. This authoritative collection provides the reader with easy access to the full range of arguments now being developed to explain why some forms of economic organisation prospered best in the immediate past, and why some models now seem more effective than others in responding to the new global conditions of intensified international competition and rapid capital mobility. These volumes will be an indispensable reference source for students and researchers specialising in modern capitalism.
First published in 1964, Was Stalin Really Necessary? is a thought-provoking work which deals with many aspects of the Soviet political economy, planning problems and statistics. It discusses the possible political consequences of the search for greater economic efficiency.
Identifying factors which stimulate regional growth and international competitiveness and using them for forecasting are the aims of this book. Departing from the theory of comparative advantages and their impact, the author demonstrates that such an approach has to be based on a sound theoretical foundation and on appropriate, advanced econometric methods. He proposes the use of heuristic optimization techniques, Monte Carlo simulation experiments and Lasso-type estimators to avoid bias or misleading findings, which might be the result of applying standard regression methods when key assumptions are not satisfied. In addition, the author demonstrates how some heuristic optimization-based methods can be used to obtain forecasts of industrial production in Russia and Germany founded on past observations and some leading indicators.
Because their economies were regulated, their financial systems 'repressed' and their states interventionist, for many years the countries of East Asia challenged the Washington consensus, offering an alternative development paradigm. However, in the 1990's, Asian capitalism was disrupted following Japan's stagnation and the financial crisis of 1997-98. Treading the unexplored theoretical terrain created by the simultaneous decline of the Washington Consensus and Asian developmentalism, this revealing book analyzes the comparative political economy of East Asia and Latin America. Divided into four key sections, it covers: Theoretical Framework Results of Globalization Converging and Diverging of Paths of Economic Development Finance and Regionalism. Through the juxtaposition of countries in East Asia and Latin America, leading academics analyze the impact of government intervention, institutional malfunction, social transformation and financial change as well as conflict and power on economic development. This book will prove to be invaluable to students and academics of development economics.
The whirlwind of financial globalization has descended upon emerging market economies and rapid change has brought both benefits and problems upon a dynamic group of nations. This book examines the impact of ever increasing financial globalization on emerging market economies, both in the former communist countries of Eastern Europe and the developing world in general. This impressive volume covers themes and issues such as: *global capital flows and financial liberalization *global financial architecture *financial and macroeconomic instability Financial Globalization and the Emerging Market Economies will be of interest to students and academics in many areas including international economics, international finance and international political economy. It will also provide a useful source of information for those who work in the financial industry at large.
China's recent economic reforms have led to impressive growth, and an unprecedented enthusiasm for establishing foreign enterprises in China. Since 1993, China has been the second largest recipient of foreign direct investment in the world and is now considered to be the world's third biggest economy. Its greater economic integration with the rest of the world, especially since its accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), has further accelerated its market-oriented economic reforms. China is now opening its protected markets and beginning to submit to the rule of international law. This ongoing transition and increasing participation in the world economy has resulted in significant changes in human resource management and social welfare practices in China's enterprises. The book examines the key areas, all of which are linked, where China is grappling with institutional reforms as it opens up to the outside world: state-owned enterprise reform, capital markets and financial reform, human resources and labour market reform, social welfare reform, and China's accession to the WTO and the growth of the private sector.
This book, written by a multinational team of experts, explores the changing face of central banking in Eastern Europe in the light of modern macroeconomic thinking, providing important and novel insights into the design of monetary policy institutions. With its authoritative content, this book will interest students and academics involved with money and banking, macroeconomics and Eastern European studies. Professionals working for financial institutions will also find plenty that will appeal within these pages.
This book, as the title suggests, explains how General equilibrium, the dominant conceptual framework in mainstream economics, describes a perfectly impossible world. Even with its counterfactual assumptions taken for granted, it fails on many levels. Under the impressive editorship of Ackerman and Nadal, this book will appeal to students and researchers in economics and related social science disciplines.
This is an economic, social and cultural analysis of the nature of production and consumption activities in households in the counties of Kent and Cornwall. It yields important new insights on the transition to capitalism in England.
This authoritative collection brings together the leading contributions to the comparative study of forms of capitalism. An introductory essay presents the context in which these contributions developed, discusses the major issues raised by such comparative work, and suggests likely future developments. Topics include the major theoretical issues involved in analysing different kinds of market economies; the key frameworks for comparing systems of economic organisation, both historically and between societies; the analysis of the distinctive varieties of industrial capitalism that have developed in the Anglo-Saxon countries, Continental Europe and East Asia and studies of globalisation and the connections between types of market economies and varying forms of economic performance, particularly in terms of sectoral development and technical change. The collection will be an indispensable reference source and will improve access to important papers that may not be available in many libraries.
The Soviet Economy is a well informed work which seeks to acquaint students with the structure and problems of the economy of the USSR, analysing the practical and theoretical problems within the institutional structure of the Soviet system.
This book explores the dynamics of party politics in Taiwan and cross-Strait relations over the past decade. While power transfer from the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) back to the pro-status quo Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, KMT) in 2008 ushered a great leap of cross-Strait relations in the following years, the DPP's coming back to power in 2016 has reversed the trend and brought back a cold peace between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait featuring the period of the Chen Shui-bian administration. Social cleavage and partisan confrontation on the island have justified Beijing's strategy of selective engagement with the two main parties within Taiwan. The state of cross-Strait relations, therefore, has become a by-product of volatile party politics on the island. As speculation about Taiwan's future mounts, this book will interest scholars, China-watchers, and policymakers.
Regional disparities and spatial clustering are ubiquitous in today's world. This study contributes with empirical findings on the distribution of European research and patenting activity since the 1980s at the regional level. Besides a general theoretical part, it offers a quantitative clustering analysis, which makes use of EPO patent applications and a harmonized regional and technological classification. Moreover, the pan-European study incorporates a structural analysis of inter-regional co-patenting networks at the regional and technological level that covers the 1990s and 2000s. Finally, European regional income and growth disparities are addressed by placing emphasis on the spatial distribution of research activity and the regional settlement structure.
While colonial imposition of the Canadian legal order has undermined Indigenous law, creating gaps and sometimes distortions, Indigenous peoples have taken up the challenge of rebuilding their laws, governance, and economies. Indigenous conceptions of land and property are central to this project. Creating Indigenous Property identifies how contemporary Indigenous conceptions of property are rooted in and informed by their societally specific norms, meanings, and ethics. Through detailed analysis, the authors illustrate that unexamined and unresolved contradictions between the historic and the present have created powerful competing versions of Indigenous law, legal authorities, and practices that reverberate through Indigenous communities. They have identified the contradictions and conflicts within Indigenous communities about relationships to land and non-human life forms, about responsibilities to one another, about environmental decisions, and about wealth distribution. Creating Indigenous Property contributes to identifying the way that Indigenous discourses, processes, and institutions can empower the use of Indigenous law. The book explores different questions generated by these dynamics, including: Where is the public/private divide in Indigenous and Canadian law, and why should it matter? How do land and property shape local economies? Whose voices are heard in debates over property and why are certain voices missing? How does gender matter to the conceptualization of property and the Indigenous legal imagination? What is the role and promise of Indigenous law in negotiating new relationships between Indigenous peoples and Canada? In grappling with these questions, readers will join the authors in exploring the conditions under which Canadian and Indigenous legal orders can productively co-exist.
This book takes up a critical and realistic perspective on what is happening in China, India and other Asian countries in comparison with Western countries. It avoids hiding problems and difficulties, but communicates a positive message on the possibility to proceed in achieving a better situation. In this perspective the analysis of the public policies is a key point. These policies, in the Eastern as well as in the Western countries show objective difficulties and social contradictions but also that improvement is possible. The initial chapter is completely devoted to a study of China from within. The other topics analysed in the book are related to the social and natural environment's sustainability: innovation, research and education on the one side and the life of workers on the other; also including the "invisible" people of the informal employment and the economic migrants, especially in Asia. |
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