This book presents a systematic overview on partition function form games: a game form in cooperative game theory to integrate externalities for various applications. Cooperative game theory has been immensely useful to study a wide range of issues, but the standard approaches ignore the side effects of cooperation. Recently interest shifted to problems where externalities play the main roles such as models of cooperation in market competition or the shared use of public resources. Such problems require richer models that can explicitly evaluate the side-effects of cooperation. In partition function form games the value of cooperation depends on the outsiders' actions. A recent surge of interest driven by applications has made results very fragmented. This book offers an accessible, yet comprehensive and systematic study of properties, solutions and applications of partition function games surveying both theoretical results and their applications. It assembles a survey of existing research and smaller original results as well as original interpretations and comparisons. The book is self-contained and accessible for readers with little or no knowledge of cooperative game theory.

This book was written mainly during the Spring periods of 2008 and 2009, when the ?rst author was visiting Maastricht University. Financial s- port both from the Dutch Science Foundation NWO (grants 040. 11. 013 and 0. 40. 11. 082) and from the research institute METEOR (Maastricht Univ- sity) is gratefully acknowledged. Jerusalem Bezalel Peleg Maastricht Hans Peters April 2010 v Contents Preview to this book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi Part I Representations of constitutions 1 Introduction to Part I. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1. 1 Motivation and summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1. 2 Arrow's constitution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1. 3 Arrow's Impossibility Theorem and its implications. . . . . . . . . 4 1. 4 Ga ]rdenfors's model. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1. 5 Notes and comments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 2 Constitutions, e?ectivity functions, and game forms . . . . . . 7 2. 1 Motivation and summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 2. 2 Constitutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 2. 3 Constitutions and e?ectivity functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 2. 4 Game forms and a representation theorem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 2. 5 Representation and simultaneous exercising of rights. . . . . . . . 19 2. 6 Notes and comments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 3 Nash consistent representations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 3. 1 Motivation and summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 3. 2 Existence of Nash consistent representations: a general result 22 3. 3 The case of ?nitely many alternatives. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 3. 4 Nash consistent representations of topological e?ectivity functions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 3. 5 Veto functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 3. 5. 1 Finitely many alternatives. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 3. 5. 2 Topological veto functions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 3. 6 Liberalism and Pareto optimality of Nash equilibria. . . . . . . . . 40 3. 7 Notes and comments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 vii viii Contents 4 Acceptable representations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 4. 1 Motivation and summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ."

Why do some countries' economies struggle to develop, even when they are the focus of so much research and international funding? While recognizing that the obstacles facing poor nations are many and complex, Rabie proposes that the roots of most obstacles are sociocultural; thus, sociocultural transformation and economic restructuring can only be successful when treated as interconnected, mutually beneficial objectives. A Theory of Sustainable Sociocultural and Economic Development outlines an innovative model capable of identifying the major obstacles hindering poor nations' development in general, and the sociocultural and political obstacles in particular, placing them in their proper historical contexts, and addressing them comprehensively.

This volume is a collation of original contributions from the key actors of a new trend in the contemporary theory of knowledge and belief, that we call "dynamic epistemology." It brings the works of these researchers under a single umbrella by highlighting the coherence of their current themes, and by establishing connections between topics that, up until now, have been investigated independently. It also illustrates how the new analytical toolbox unveils questions about the theory of knowledge, belief, preference, action, and rationality, in a number of central axes in dynamic epistemology: temporal, social, probabilistic and even deontic dynamics.

This book honors the memory of Tony Atkinson, who made significant contributions to the rigorous study of income inequality, poverty, and redistribution. These essays presented, covering a span of over 30 years of research and scholarship, have been at the forefront of distributional analysis, and many of them are of prime importance for contemporary developments in the real-valued measurement of poverty and inequality, with particular reference to the concepts of fuzzy poverty assessment, vulnerability, heterogeneity/multidimensionality, unit consistency, sub-group decomposability, and dominance criteria. While all of these articles have been previously published-singly or with co-authorship-in a number of professional journals or distinguished edited volumes, this book is greatly enriched by a substantial introductions by the authors, which place the contributions in context, highlights their inter-connectedness, and relates them to the work of Tony Atkinson and other scholars. This book is of intrinsic value to welfare analysts, as well as being a tribute to a very great scholar by a fellow economist.

This book reviews the development of China's social security system from 1949 onwards and analyzes its features in each stage. By emphasizing the role of the social security system in regulating income distribution, it points out some problems in the current social security framework that are becoming apparent as the income gap continues to grow. It proposes various measures such as intensifying the reform of the social insurance fund, expanding old age insurance coverage, promoting health equality, and establishing a new rural medical security system that could be employed to improve the system's equitability, sustainability, and inclusivity.

This book addresses some of the major issues facing postal and delivery services throughout the world. Postal operators worldwide have been slow to address the threats from and opportunities created by electronic competition. The European Commission and member states are wrestling with these issues, while at the same time continuing to deal with the interrelated issues of implementing entry into postal markets and maintaining the universal service obligation. The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 in the U.S. exacerbated financial and managerial problems faced by USPS that result in part from electronic substitution for letter delivery. Comprised of original essays by prominent researchers in the field, this book addresses the new reality of the postal industry and proposes ways in which postal operators might reinvent themselves. Issues discussed include cross-border parcel delivery, e-commerce, the transformation of postal networks, and the effects of postal liberalization. This book will be of interest to postal operators, regulatory commissions, consulting firms, competitors and customers, experts in the postal economics, law, and business, and those charged with the responsibility for designing and implementing postal sector policies. Researchers in regulatory economics, transportation technology, and industrial organization will also find useful information in this volume.

Egalitarianism, the view that equality matters, attracts a great deal of attention amongst contemporary political theorists. And yet it has turned out to be surprisingly difficult to provide a fully satisfactory egalitarian theory. The cutting-edge articles in Egalitarianism move the debate forward. They are written by some of the leading political philosophers in the field. Recent issues in the debate over equality are given careful consideration: the distinction between 'telic' and 'deontic' egalitarianism; prioritarianism and the so-called 'levelling down objection' to egalitarianism; whether egalitarian justice should have 'whole lives' or some subset thereof as its temporal focus; the implications of Scanlon's contractualist account of the value of choice for egalitarian justice; and the question of whether non-human animals fall within the scope of egalitarianism and if so, what the implications are. Numerous 'classic' issues receive a new treatment too: how egalitarianism can be justified and how, if at all, this value should be combined with other values such as desert, liberty and sufficiency; how to define the 'worst off' for the purposes of Rawls' difference principle; Elizabeth Anderson's feminist account of 'equality of relations'; how equality applies to risky choices and, in particular, whether it is justifiable to restrict the freedom of suppliers who wish to release goods that confer different levels of risk on consumers, depending on their ability to pay. Finally, the implications of egalitarianism and prioritarianism for health care are scrutinized. The contributors to the volume are: Richard Arneson, Linda Barclay, Thomas Christiano, Nils Holtug, Susan Hurley, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Dennis McKerlie, Ingmar Persson, Bertil Tungodden, Peter Vallentyne, Andrew Williams, and Jonathan Wolff.

Rosa Luxemburg, Oskar Lange and Michal Kalecki made important contributions to twentieth century political economy that guided the thinking of their student Tadeusz Kowalik and his reinterpretation of the Keynesian Revolution. A wide range of contributors to this volume, including G.C. Harcourt and Peter Kriesler, Noemi Levy-Orlik, Gabriele Pastrello, Paul Zarembka, John Bellamy Foster, Roberto Lampa, Meghnad Desai, Marcin Kula, Jo Michell and Andrew Trigg, re-examine the theories of Luxemburg, Lange, Kalecki and Kowalik, by highlighting the common themes in their political economy and the neglected aspects of their work that Kowalik brought together in his writings.

Managers are often under great pressure to improve the performance of their organizations. To improve performance, one needs to constantly evaluate operations or processes related to producing products, providing services, and marketing and selling products. Performance evaluation and benchmarking are a widely used method to identify and adopt best practices as a means to improve performance and increase productivity, and are particularly valuable when no objective or engineered standard is available to define efficient and effective performance. For this reason, benchmarking is often used in managing service operations, because service standards (benchmarks) are more difficult to define than manufacturing standards. Benchmarks can be established but they are somewhat limited as they work with single measurements one at a time. It is difficult to evaluate an organization's performance when there are multiple inputs and outputs to the system. The difficulties are further enhanced when the relationships between the inputs and the outputs are complex and involve unknown tradeoffs. It is critical to show benchmarks where multiple measurements exist. The current book introduces the methodology of data envelopment analysis (DEA) and its uses in performance evaluation and benchmarking under the context of multiple performance measures.

The essays in this collection address specific themes in Volume I of Marx's "Capital." Although the essays can be read independently, they present complimentary perspectives on issues at the cutting edge of recent scholarship on Marx's work. Although all Parts of" Capital I "are discussed, the book is not intended to be a textbook. It will be read by specialists in the field as well as graduate students in the history of economic thought, political economy and philosophy.

In microeconomics, the decisions and functioning of individual consumers and households (what to do, what to buy, etc.), and firms or other organisations (what goods to produce, how to produce them, what prices to charge, etc.) are considered. It includes the study of the demand, supply and prices of individual goods and services such as petrol, maize, haircuts and medical services.

Understanding microeconomics is a comprehensive introduction to microeconomics in general, set against a contemporary South African background. The easy style and many practical examples make the content extremely accessible. The book covers all the material usually prescribed for introductory courses, and it lays a solid foundation for intermediate and advanced studies in economics.

This second edition is a thoroughly revised and slightly expanded version of the original one. Examples have been adjusted (where necessary), a few new topics are introduced and review questions are provided at the end of each chapter.

A lot of economic problems can formulated as constrained optimizations and equilibration of their solutions. Various mathematical theories have been supplying economists with indispensable machineries for these problems arising in economic theory. Conversely, mathematicians have been stimulated by various mathematical difficulties raised by economic theories. The series is designed to bring together those mathematicians who were seriously interested in getting new challenging stimuli from economic theories with those economists who are seeking for effective mathematical tools for their researchers. Members of the editorial board of this series consists of following prominent economists and mathematicians: Managing Editors: S. Kusuoka (Univ. Tokyo), A. Yamazaki (Hitotsubashi Univ.) - Editors: R. Anderson (U.C.Berkeley), C. Castaing (Univ. Montpellier II), F. H. Clarke (Univ. Lyon I), E. Dierker (Univ. Vienna), D. Duffie (Stanford Univ.), L.C. Evans (U.C. Berkeley), T. Fujimoto (Fukuoka Univ.), J. -M. Grandmont (CREST-CNRS), N. Hirano (Yokohama National Univ.), L. Hurwicz (Univ. of Minnesota), T. Ichiishi (Hitotsubashi Univ.), A. Ioffe (Israel Institute of Technology), S. Iwamoto (Kyushu Univ.), K. Kamiya (Univ. Tokyo), K. Kawamata (Keio Univ.), N. Kikuchi (Keio Univ.), T. Maruyama (Keio Univ.), H. Matano (Univ. Tokyo), K. Nishimura (Kyoto Univ.), M. K. Richter (Univ. Minnesota), Y. Takahashi (Kyoto Univ.), M. Valadier (Univ. Montpellier II), M. Yano (Keio Univ).

This book addresses several problems related to automated valuation methodologies (AVM). Following the non-agency mortgage crisis, it offers a variety of approaches to improve the efficiency and quality of an automated valuation methodology (AVM) dealing with emerging problems and different contexts. Spatial issue, evolution of AVM standards, multilevel models, fuzzy and rough set applications and quantitative methods to define comparables are just some of the topics discussed.

The last survey of the rent-seeking literature took place more than a decade ago. Since that time a great deal of new research has been published in a wide variety of journals, covering a wide variety of topics. The breadth of that research is such that very few researchers will be familiar with more than a small part of contemporary research, and very few libraries will be able to provide access to the full breadth of that research. This two-volume collection provides an extensive overview of 40 years of rent-seeking research.

The volumes include the foundational papers, many of which have not been in print for two decades. They include recent game-theoretic analyses of rent-seeking contests and also applications of the rent-seeking concepts and methodology to economic regulation, international trade policy, economic history, political competition, and other social phenomena. The new collection is more than twice as large as any previous collection and both updates and extends the earlier surveys. Volume I contains previously published research on the theory of rent-seeking contests, which is an important strand of contemporary game theory. Volume II contains previously published research that uses the theory of rent-seeking to analyze a broad range of public policy and social science topics.

The editors spent more than a year assembling possible papers and, although the selections fill two large volumes, many more papers could have been included. Our aim has been to include the most important contributions in the literature and give a broad overview of secondary contributions. The end result is a fine collection that shows the flexibility and power of the rent-seeking methodology, and the light shed on a broad range of political, social, and institutional research issues. Each volume begins with an extensive survey of the literature written by the editors and an overview of the contributions included in the two volumes.

This volume addresses important issues in economic theory and international trade with contributions from internationally renowned researchers - including some of Murray C. Kemp's many colleagues and former students.Economic Theory and International Trade begins with an examination of classical trade theory and welfare economics. It goes on to discuss international trade policy, including international trading agreements, taxation, tariffs and quotas. Attention then turns to the role of market structure in joint ventures, innovation, tariff policy and political economy. The final section is devoted to economic dynamics and international economics, with an emphasis on learning mechanisms, sustainable growth and immigration. This book will be indispensable to academics and graduate students in the area of international trade. Economic theorists and international trade specialists such as research units and researchers in government will also find this book of great interest.

This book examines the economy as an evolving entity and develops a new and coherent approach to the classification of economic systems. It demonstrates how the components of a decision-making system and the properties of a functioning economy are intrinsically linked. A well-functioning economy is shown to depend chiefly on 'correct' decisions. These in turn depend on an efficient decision-making system, an appropriate mix of markets, organizations and governments, and an optimal combination of the four enforcing mechanisms of a modern economic system: custom, command, competition and cooperation. Although this book is primarily about economics, non-economic considerations, including politics and ethics, are brought into the analysis. The most important decisions in life include choices between economic and non-economic issues. Hence, one of the aims of this book is to provide a conceptual framework to cope with these choices. The book also attempts to establish some plausible conditions for well-functioning economy and a 'just society'. This thoughtful book will be of interest to economists of economic theory and economic systems as well as policymakers in both the private and public sectors.

Blending past and present, this brief history of economics is the perfect book for introducing students to the field.A Brief History of Economics illustrates how the ideas of the great economists not only influenced societies but were themselves shaped by their cultural milieu. Understanding the economists' visions - lucidly and vividly unveiled by Canterbery - allows readers to place economics within a broader community of ideas. Magically, the author links Adam Smith to Isaac Newton's idea of an orderly universe, F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby to Thorstein Veblen, John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath to the Great Depression, and Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities to Reaganomics.Often humorous, Canterbery's easy style will make the student's first foray into economics lively and relevant. Readers will dismiss "dismal" from the science.

This book provides an assessment of the impact that Keynesian economics has had over the past 70 years, with contributions by many of Keynes's leading proponents.

This book was prompted by the current, lingering financial crisis, which has its basis in the disorderly financial practices of the United States. These practices have resulted in an accumulated debt which now requires the United States to run financial policies at artificially low interest rates. In principle, these low interest rates should flood the markets with ready money. Since the spread for banks is very thin, however, and they must carefully discriminate between available risks and finance only those propositions with no risk, credit is not abundantly available. With staggering foreign debt and a myriad of other perils looming, this great nation is at peril for sure. In the tradition of the Heilbronn Symposium, the authors look at historical cases as a means of understanding the current situation and informing possible solutions to a problem that continues to affect the global economy. The volume analyzes cases such as Prussia, Greece, Italy, Estonia, and the European Union. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of economic history as well as policy makers who may benefit from an historical understanding of the economic challenges their countries currently face.

"It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments." - from "The Theory of Money and Credit"
Originally published in 1912, Ludwig von Mises's "The Theory of Money and Credit" remains today one of economic theory's most influential and controversial treatises. Von Mises's examination into monetary theory changed forever the world of economic thought when he successfully integrated "macroeconomics" into "microeconomics" --previously deemed an impossible task --as well as offering explanations into the origin, value and future of money.
One hundred years later, von Mises and the Austrian school of economic theory are still fiercely debated by world economists in their search for the solution to America's current financial crisis. His theorems continue to inspire politicians and market experts who aim to raise up the common man and reduce the financial power of governments. In a preface added in 1952, von Mises urges the people of the world to see economic truth:
"The great inflations of our age are not acts of God. They are man-made or, to say it bluntly, government-made. They are the off-shoots of doctrines that ascribe to governments the magic power of creating wealth out of nothing and of making people happy by raising the 'national income.'"
"The best book on money ever written." --Murray Rothbard, economist and historian
"The greatest economist of the twentieth century." --Sandeep Jaitly, economist

Interdisciplinary factors in the modern business realm have significant impacts on economic agents within organizations. These behavioral influences affect multiple decision-making processes on both the individual and organizational levels. Applied Behavioral Economics Research and Trends provides a comprehensive examination of the social, psychological, and emotional factors in organizational behavior and economic decision-making and how these issues provide a deeper understanding of various economic behaviors. Highlighting relevant coverage across a range of topics, such as consumer behavior, inter-temporal choices, and self-employment, this book is ideally designed for managers, researchers, professionals, graduate students, and practitioners seeking scholarly material on the implications of behavioral economics across numerous industries.

This book consists of five acts and two interludes, which are all written as dialogues between three main characters and other supporting characters. Each act discusses the epistemological, institutional and methodological foundations of game theory and economics, while using various stories and examples. A featured aspect of those discussions is that many forms of mutual misunderstanding are involved in social situations as well as in those fields themselves. One Japanese traditional comic story called the Konnyaku Mondo is representative and gives hints of how our thought is constrained by incorrect beliefs. Each dialogue critically examines extant theories and common misunderstanding in game theory and economics in order to find possible future developments of those fields.

Adam Smith revolutionized economic theory with his 1776 work An Inquiry to the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. He proposed rules governing labor, supply, and demand; and describes division of labor, stockpiling of wealth, lending, and interest. Smith also discusses how economies lead to opulence. Wealth of Nations also offers a defense for free-market capitalism. This edition of Wealth of Nations is an abridged version edited by Harvard economics professor CHARLES JESSE BULLOCK (1869-1941) and published in 1901 by Harvard Classics, a series that offered the essential readings for anyone who wanted the functional equivalent of a liberal arts education. Any student of economics should be familiar with the concepts and laws that Smith developed, as much of economic theory is still based upon his work. Scottish economist and philosopher ADAM SMITH (1723-1790) helped set standards in the fields of political economics and moral philosophy, playing a key role in the early development of the scholarship of economics. His other writings include Essays on Philosophical Subjects.

The historical record concerning industrialization since 1770 is consistent with the classical view of economic growth, but not with the currently accepted neo-classical growth theory. Flaws in the logic and empirical short-comings of the neo-classical theory suggest that it should be rejected. Specifically, ideas that originate in static concepts cannot be applied to growth, a dynamic process. Nineteenth-century industrialization, the world wars and the Depression, the post-war boom, and the more recent slowdown in growth are discussed.