In the modern world of gigantic datasets, which scientists and practioners of all fields of learning are confronted with, the availability of robust, scalable and easy-to-use methods for pattern recognition and data mining are of paramount importance, so as to be able to cope with the avalanche of data in a meaningful way. This concise and pedagogical research monograph introduces the reader to two specific aspects - clustering techniques and dimensionality reduction - in the context of complex network analysis. The first chapter provides a short introduction into relevant graph theoretical notation; chapter 2 then reviews and compares a number of cluster definitions from different fields of science. In the subsequent chapters, a first-principles approach to graph clustering in complex networks is developed using methods from statistical physics and the reader will learn, that even today, this field significantly contributes to the understanding and resolution of the related statistical inference issues. Finally, an application chapter examines real-world networks from the economic realm to show how the network clustering process can be used to deal with large, sparse datasets where conventional analyses fail.

First published in 1990, this book presents an original and comprehensive overview of Australian economic thought. The authors stress, by way of introduction, the many important innovative contributions Australian economists have made to thought worldwide. As the argument develops, the work of major figures is discussed in detail in addition to the role of different journals and economic societies.

This volume, first published in 1982, is a collection of original essays written to honour Professor W. Arthur Lewis, 1979 co-winner of the Nobel Prize in economics. The authors, an international group of distinguished scholars, address a varied set of specific issues reflecting Professor Lewis' research interests, covering topics which include: technological change in agriculture, analyses of unemployment and income distribution, the role of government policy in the development process, the historical record of development, and the relationship between developed and developing nations. The book will be of interest to both the academic researcher and practicing professionals in the international organisations and national governments, and are particularly appropriate to graduate courses in economic development, cost-benefit analysis and economic history.

First published in 1991 this text provides an incisive analysis of theories concerning the origins of economic inequality between nations. Central to the authora (TM)s investigation is the concept of underdevelopment, and a focus on successive Western a ~systems of conceptualisationa (TM) of the relationship between the west and the rest of the world. The first part of the book concerns the Marx/Engels theory of the Asiatic mode of production, and the anti-Imperialist reaction against Eurocentrisim initiated by the theoretical synthesis of J. A. Hobson. This is followed by an examination of the post-World War II era, particularly the evolution of development studies and the differing versions of dependency theory.

The author concludes with an analysis of the most recent reactions against economic imperialism and dependency theory, and concludes with an assessment of their implications for the further economic development of todaya (TM)s Third World.

In 1976, volume 116 of the Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems appeared in the library of the University of Illinois. The title of the book, Input-Output Analysis and the Structure of Income Distribution was sufficiently intriguing to one of the present editors (Hewings) to command attention. Some years later, during the First World Congress of the Regional Science Association in Cambridge Massachusetts in 1980, Madden and Batey presented some of their work using their now familiar demographic-economic modeling system. Discussion ensued about the relationship between this system, Miyazawa's formulation and the social accounting matrices most closely associated with the work of Stone. During a year's residence at the University of Illinois, Batey was able to produce a valuable typology of multipliers that began the process of integrating these several modeling systems into a coherent package. Thereafter, a number of regional scientists have exploited the ideas and insights proposed by Miyazawa, especially the notion of the interrelational income multiplier and the ideas of internal and external multipliers.

The contributors to this volume seriously engage issues in the crossroads where biology, psychology, and economics meet. The volume makes several important contributions to the area and provides an overview of the current state of knowledge. Biologist David Sloan Wilson, psychologists Robert Kurzban and C.A. Aktipis, economists Geoffrey Hodgson, Paul Rubin and Evelyn Gick, and jurist David Friedman consider altruism, selfishness, group selection, methodological individualism, dominance hierarchies, and other issues relating evolutionary psychology to economics. Several contributors, such as Viktor Vanberg and Brian Loasby, pay special attention to the role of F. A. Hayek and other "Austrian" thinkers in shaping evolutionary approaches to economic theory. Theoretical biologist Deby Cassill relates her revolutionary theory of "skew selection" in biology to perennial issues in political economy. The volume includes a symposium on group selection and methodological individualism. In an important paper, D. G. Whitman argues that group selection and methodological individualism are "compatible and complementary. Comments from Elliot Sober & David Sloan Wilson, Richard Langlois, Todd Zywicki, and Adam Gifford offer a heterogeneous set of responses to Whitman's argument. Roger Koppl's introduction constitutes a review essay and includes an argument that "Austrian" economists have a comparative advantage in bringing the Verstehen tradition of social thought into contact with recent work in biology and evolutionary psychology.

The Political Economy of Bureaucracy applies Public Choice theory and a complex systems view of government institutions to analyze policy implementation as an economic process. It addresses the common and vexing question of why managing federal agencies for results is so difficult by challenging traditional assumptions of institutional design and policy analysis. Using creative methods that focus on relationships that constrain the choices of executives and managers in a political hierarchy, the author reveals control and coordination as goals that are imperfectly achieved and often conflicting with one another. Despite decades of intense study, serious reform efforts and impressive technological advances, the U.S. government remains a typical bureaucracy that fails to meet citizens' expectations. Clearly, policy analysis is missing something. The problem may rest with "machine" models of government. Rules, especially those governing expenditures, are assumed to be feasible and effective. Analysis of the federal government as a complex system of relationships between semi-autonomous agents helps explain the disconnect between policy and results. The solution is to roll back micro-management of ends and means; policymakers should focus on objectives and facilitate implementation by selectively relaxing constraints that prevent experimentation needed to determine the most effective methods. This book devotes unusual attention to the interaction between executive and legislative branches of government and between political appointees and career civil servants. Most studies of government policy take existing institutional structure for granted. Different conclusions emerge from this analysis by virtue of the systems view that accepts status quo hierarchies but questions the effectiveness of the rules that govern policy implementation. This book will be of interest to postgraduates and researchers focussing on Economic Theory, Public Choice, Institutional Economics and Political Science, as well as to those working in the public sector interested in Public Administration, Public Policy, and Organizational Behavior.

Celebrating twenty years of transition from socialism to capitalism, this book is designed to be the core textbook for undergraduate courses in transition economics and comparative economic systems. Given the passage of time, Transition Economics: Two Decades On reviews and accounts for the outcomes in the so-called transition economies and, from an academic perspective, takes the reader through developments and issues in the twenty years of transition from plan to market.

Treating its subject matter thematically, the book incorporates much of the transition economics literature and evidence that have evolved over the past two decades. In particular, the authors focus on the most important aspects of economic transition, including:

• the initial conditions at the outset of transition
• paradigms and patterns of transition
• the main transition policies and economic reforms
• the performance of transition countries and firms
• the lessons from transition.

The textbook covers a wide range of both contemporary microeconomic and macroeconomic issues, in over thirty ex-socialist European and Asian countries, including Russia and China.

Transition Economics: Two Decades On is more than just a book about a particular part of the world or the transformation that was experienced at a particular time in history. The authors believe that the study of the economics of transition gives the reader an insight into theories, policies, reforms, legacies, institutions, processes and lessons that have application and relevance, beyond the specific transition from plan to market, to other parts of the world and to other times in history.

The major goal of the book is to create an environment for matching different d- ciplinary approaches to studying economic growth. This goal is implemented on the basis of results of the Symposium "Applications of Dynamic Systems to E- nomic Growth with Environment" which was held at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) on the 7th-8th of November, 2008, within the IIASA Project "Driving Forces of Economic Growth" (ECG). The symposium was organized by coordinators of the ECG project: Jesus Crespo-Cuaresma from IIASA World Population Program, and Tapio Palokangas and Alexander Tarasyev from IIASA Dynamic Systems Program. The book addresses the issues of sustainability of economic growth in a cha- ing environment, global warming and exhausting energy resources, technological change, and also focuses on explanations of signi?cant ?uctuations in countries' growth rates. The chapters focus on the analysis of historical economic growth - periences in relation to environmental policy, technological change, development of transport infrastructure, population issues and environmental mortality. The book is written in a popular-science style, accessible to any intelligent lay reader. The prime audience for the book is economists, mathematicians and en- neersworkingonproblemsofeconomicgrowthandenvironment.Themathematical part of the book is presented in a rigorous manner, and the detailed analysis is - pected to be of interest to specialists in optimal control and applications to economic modeling. The book consists of four interrelated parts.

Capital theory is a cornerstone of modern economics. Its ideas are fundamental for dynamic equilibrium theory and its concepts are applied in many branches of economics like game theory, resource and environmental economics, although this may not be recognized on a first glance. In this monograph, an approach is presented, which allows to derive important results of capital theory in a coherent and readily accessible framework. A special emphasis is given on infinite horizon and overlapping generations economics. Irreversibility of time, or the failure of the market system appear in a different light if an infinite horizon framework is applied. To bridge the gap between pure and applied economic theory, the structure of our theoretical approach is integrated in a computable general equilibrium model.

First published in 1986, this book presents a reissue of the first detailed confrontation between the Austrian school of economics and Austrian philosophy, especially the philosophy of the Brentano school. It contains a study of the roots of Austrian economics in the liberal political theory of the nineteenth-century Hapsburg empire, and a study of the relations between the general theory of value underlying Austrian economics and the new economic approach to human behaviour propounded by Gary Becker and others in Chicago. In addition, it considers the connections between Austrian methodology and contemporary debates in the philosophy of the social sciences.

Personalist Economics: Moral Convictions, Economic Realities, and Social Action examines the nature of the worker and consumer from a personalist perspective, comparing that body of knowledge to what is received from conventional economics. A running theme throughout this book is that personalist economics is attentive to both aspects of human material need - physical need and the need for work as such - in a way that does not disregard human wants. Accordingly, this book is more concerned about the philosophical base and description of the economy's significant characteristics than social economic policy. Personalist Economics explores four dimensions of particularly acute human physical need: unemployment, poverty, homelessness, and death. In addressing these four aspects of need, the book delves into the second and third domains of social economics: description of the significant characteristics of the economy, and social economic policy. In the same way, Personalist Economics explores two types of economic cooperation - supra-firm alliances and inter-firm partnerships - as means for addressing certain aspects of human material need. This book concludes with a lengthy discussion of the challenges facing personalist economics in the years ahead.

Pluralism in Economics sheds new light on the various meanings and consequences of pluralist approaches to the history and methodology of economics. The first part focuses on philosophical and methodological issues. The second part contains six case studies which discuss diverse issues but adopt the pluralistic approach recommended in the first part.The contributors attempt to reconcile two major strands of thinking in economic methodology: the 'rhetoric' of economics as advocated by Deirdre McCloskey and the sociological approach which argues that scientific knowledge can be best analysed in the context of a sociological understanding of the scientific enterprise. The book has been prepared under the auspices of the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy and presents new work by leading economists from both Europe and North America.

"This is an innovative and original analysis. It does not fall easily into any one category, nor should it. This book stands alone. It is a self-contained polemic, a railing against the Enlightenment and modernism. However, because it has a broad argument, it should have a broad audience. It will be of interest to students of philosophy, sociology, politics, anthropology and cultural studies."--Jonathan Joseph, Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent at Canterbury
"This is a sophisticated, acerbic analysis of Western thought. It sometimes exaggerates, but never misreads. It forces us to reassess what modernity has wrought in a powerful critique, akin in spirit to "Fanon's Wretched of the Earth.""
--Immanuel Wallerstein, Yale University
"A passionate invitation for us to consider the deformations and dangers of post-Enlightenment modernism and our own potential to return to a better world."
--Roger Owen, Harvard University

Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital presents a novel interpretation of the good and bad times in the economy, taking a long-term perspective and linking technology and finance in an original and convincing way. Carlota Perez draws upon Schumpeter's theories of the clustering of innovations to explain why each technological revolution gives rise to a paradigm shift and a 'New Economy' and how these 'opportunity explosions', focused on specific industries, also lead to the recurrence of financial bubbles and crises. These findings are illustrated with examples from the past two centuries: the industrial revolution, the age of steam and railways, the age of steel and electricity, the emergence of mass production and automobiles, and the current information revolution/knowledge society. By analyzing the changing relationship between finance capital and production capital during the emergence, diffusion and assimilation of new technologies throughout the global economic system, this seminal book sheds new light on some of the most pressing economic problems of today. A bold interpretation of how the changing relationship between technological advances and financial capital shapes the patterns of economic cycles, this path-breaking book will provide essential insights for business leaders, policymakers, academics and others concerned with managing change in the world economy.

In June 2010 IE Business School, with King Abdulaziz University, gathered in Madrid some of the world's foremost scholars, academics and practitioners of Islamic Economics and Finance. These highlights of the symposium and original articles specifically address the post-crisis application of this growing and relevant economic philosophy in Europe.

This book presents critical surveys of literature from behavioural and evolutionary economics, management, marketing and business history and offers new empirical evidence involving both case studies and behavioural research. Particular attention is given to transaction cost and resource-based perspectives on business organization. The book concludes by discussing the emerging 'growth of knowledge' and 'management without trade-offs' approaches to the firm.Taken together, the inter-related chapters in this book make a significant contribution by promoting and assisting research and teaching on how managers cope with competitive pressures in the present climate of rapid technological change, shifting patterns of corporate alliances, continual restructuring and re-ranking of relative competitive strengths, and rising environmental expectations. Management, Marketing and the Competitive Process will be particularly useful for courses on business strategy, managerial and industrial economics, and marketing.

In recent years, the usual optimisation techniques, which have proved so useful in microeconomic theory, have been extended to incorporate more powerful topological and differential methods, and these methods have led to new results on the qualitative behaviour of general economic and political systems. These developments have necessarily resulted in an increase in the degree of formalism in the publications in the academic journals. This formalism can often deter graduate students. The progression of ideas presented in this book will familiarize the student with the geometric concepts underlying these topological methods, and, as a result, make mathematical economics, general equilibrium theory, and social choice theory more accessible.

First published in 1914 and reissued with a new introduction in 1992, Work and Wealth is a seminal vision of Hobson's liberal utopian ideals, which desired to demonstrate how economic and social reform could transform existing society into one in which the majority of the population, as opposed to a small elite, could find fulfillment.

Hobson attacked conventional economic wisdom which made a division between the cost of production and the utility derived from consumption. Far from being necesarily arduous, Hobson argued that work had the potential to bring about immense utility and enrichment. The qualitative, humanist work argues in favour of a new form of capitalism to minimise cost and maximise utility.

At the time of his death in 1989, Karl Brunner was known not only for his writings in monetary economics but also for his contributions to econometrics, the theory of man, logics and the analysis of sociopolitical problems. Between 1953 and 1989, Professor Brunner published over 200 articles and books, founded two leading academic journals - the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, and the Journal of Monetary Economics - and organized numerous conferences. Economic Analysis and Political Ideology, the first volume of Karl Brunner's essays with an introduction by Nobel Laureate James M. Buchanan, reproduces articles dealing with Professor Brunner's socio-economic analysis. Providing insight into a man absorbed and preoccupied by economic scholarship, this volume includes papers ranging from economic policy, inflation, the place of religion in the social order and Keynes's sociopolitical vision to more personal writings on the author's quest for knowledge and the reasons underlying his fascination with economics. The second volume, Monetary Theory and Monetary Policy, with a foreword by Alan Meltzer, is published separately and deals with macroeconomic issues.

Unlike other books that focus only on selected specific subjects this book provides both a broad and rich cross-section of contemporary approaches to stochastic modeling in finance and economics; it is decision making oriented. The material ranges from common tools to solutions of sophisticated system problems and applications.
In Part I, the fundamentals of financial thinking and elementary mathematical methods of finance are presented. The method of presentation is simple enough to bridge the elements of financial arithmetic and complex models of financial math developed in the later parts. It covers characteristics of cash flows, yield curves, and valuation of securities.
Part II is devoted to the allocation of funds and risk management: classics (Markowitz theory of portfolio), capital asset pricing model, arbitrage pricing theory, asset & liability management, value at risk. The method explanation takes into account the computational aspects.
Part III explains modeling aspects of multistage stochastic programming on a relatively accessible level. It includes a survey of existing software, links to parametric, multiobjective and dynamic programming, and to probability and statistics. It focuses on scenario-based problems with the problems of scenario generation and output analysis discussed in detail and illustrated within a case study. Selected examples of successful applications in finance, production planning and management of technological processes and electricity generation are presented. Throughout, the emphasis is on the appropriate use of the techniques, rather than on the underlying mathematical proofs and theories.
In Part IV, the sections devoted tostochastic calculus cover also more advanced topics such as DDS Theorem or extremal martingale measures, which make it possible to treat more delicate models in Mathematical Finance (complete markets, optimal control, etc.)
Audience: Students and researchers in probability and statistics, econometrics, operations research and various fields of finance, economics, engineering, and insurance.

Exploring the modern approach to the economics of happiness, which came about with the Easterlin Paradox, this book analyses and assesses the idea that as a country gets richer the happiness of its citizens remains the same. The book moves through three distinct pillars of study in the field: first analysing the historical and philosophical foundations of the debate; then the methodological and measurements issues and their political implications; and finally empirical applications and discussion about what determines a happy life. A Modern Guide to the Economics of Happiness extends the concept of happiness to that of wellbeing, offering an inquiry into well-being within the paradigm of complex systems. It draws together both recent developments in studies on the economics of happiness as well as its historical roots, covering the concept of Eudaimonia, Aristotle's theories and the important contribution of Italian economists. Critical case studies look at the relationship between physical activity and wellbeing, the value of family for life satisfaction, and the role of social capital for migrant acceptance. An invigorating read for economics and psychology scholars, this book will also be of interest to those researching welfare and development economics.

How does innovation emerge from normal economic activity? Economic Interdependence and Innovative Activity is an original new book which tries to answer this question by reconciling inter-industrial analysis with the study of innovation. This book provides a bridge between economic statics and the dynamics of growth and development. As well as offering important and original empirical data for Canada, France, Italy, Greece and China, the authors make a series of theoretical advances and propose a new way to observe the innovative process as well as new analytical tools to examine innovative activity. Their central thesis is that innovative outputs emerge out of increased social interaction, and division of labour through cooperative networks. An authoritative theoretical introduction and some thought-provoking conclusions have been prepared by Christian DeBresson. Economic Interdependence and Innovative Activity encourage input-output economists to encompass innovative activities in dynamic models and innovation researchers to look at technical interdependencies.

This volume includes archival documents and essays exploring the inter-relationship between the government and the economy. In the first piece, Levy, Peart, and Albert examine the one-sided controversy generated by Rose Wilder Lane and V. Orval Watts against a new generation of Keynes-influenced textbooks which focused on governmental policy and the scope of government activity. In addition to their essay, Levy et al. include significant and interesting historical documents as part of the story. The second piece, by Warren J. Samuels, examines Heinrich von Treitschke's view on property as a function of politics using archival documents. The last three pieces include a detailed examination of Warren J. Samuels' views on the economic role of government, based on his course notes in the area. Two sets of notes are published in addition to the introductory essay.

First published in 1913, this Routledge Revivals title reissues J. A. Hobson's seminal analysis of the causal link between the rise in gold prices and the increase in wages and consumer buying power in the early years of the Twentieth Century. Contrary to the assertions of some notable contemporary economists and businessmen, Hobson contended that the relationship between gold prices and wages (and the resulting social unrest across much of Europe) was in fact much more complex than it initially appeared and that there were significantly more important factors in the rise of contemporary wealth, such as the rapid enlargement of state enterprise and joint stock companies; a wide extension of banking and general financial apparatus; and the opening of profitable fields of investment for the development of underdeveloped countries, which helped raise the rate of interest and profits.