The conventional wisdom has it that a balanced budget is the height of economic rationality, that social security should be privatized, and that most adult welfare recipients could and should get jobs. All our social and economic problems, we are told, are due to too much government; if we only left the American free enterprise system alone, the free market would heal all that ails our society and lead to lasting prosperity. Challenging these widespread stereotypes and myths, this book starts with the fundamental theory underlying capitalist ideology, showing that even in theory an unfettered free market cannot deal effectively with the many needs of a modern economy. Our society has many social goals to which the great majority subscribe-goals such as sustained full employment, universal health care, and quality education for all. The free market will not, the author argues, bring us quality education for every American child, affordable universal health care, Social Security for the elderly, assistance for the poor, or protection of the environment. Only an active, participant government can affect positive change in such areas of social concern.

This book offers examples of how data science, big data, analytics, and cloud technology can be used in healthcare to significantly improve a hospital's IT Energy Efficiency along with information on the best ways to improve energy efficiency for healthcare in a cost effective manner. The book builds on the work done in other sectors (mainly data centers) in effectively measuring and improving IT energy efficiency and includes case studies illustrating power and cooling requirements within Green Healthcare. Making Healthcare Green will appeal to professionals and researchers working in the areas of analytics and energy efficiency within the healthcare fields.

This book presents essential insights on environmental policy derived from behavioral economics. The authors demonstrate the potential of behavioral economics to drive environmental protection and to generate concrete proposals for the efficient design of policy instruments. Moreover, detailed recommendations on how to use "nudges" and related instruments to move industry and society toward a sustainable course are presented. This book addresses the needs of environmental economists, behavioral economists and environmental policymakers, as well as all readers interested in the intersection between behavioral economics and environmental policy.

Clothing serves as a system of signs that helps to order social interaction by identifying and locating individuals and groups within society. In the first in-depth study to analyze the communicative character of uniforms and other types of clothing, Nathan Joseph examines how clothing functions in a variety of social contexts to enforce norms, maintain institutional power, identify group membership, and express or suppress individuality.

Drawing on a wide range of case studies, Cultures of Financialization argues that, in our age of crisis, the global economy is more invested than ever in culture and the imagination. We must take the idea of 'fictitious capital' seriously as a way to understand the power of finance, and what might be done to stop it.

Doing business in Europe is increasingly becoming an everyday reality for many companies, not only large corporations, but also small and medium-sized enterprises. European Business Environment offers students a practical introduction to how to create, manage and develop business opportunities in the European Union. Taking a multidisciplinary approach to doing business in the EU, this textbook focuses on the European dimensions of economics, marketing and law. With case studies presented throughout the book, the relationship between business and the political institutions, policies and regulations of the European Union are explored. This is an essential introductory textbook for students at both undergraduate and graduate levels in a wide range of degree and professional programmes, including Economics, MBA, Law and Marketing. It is of particular relevance to students interested in the European context of these disciplines and can be used as a core textbook for courses in European Integration or Business and International Environment in Europe and other parts of the world.

Global Mobility of Research Scientists: The Economics of Who Goes Where and Why brings together information on how the localization and mobility of academic researchers contributes to the production of knowledge. The text answers several questions, including "what characterizes nationally and internationally mobile researchers?" and "what are the individual and social implications of increased mobility of research scientists?" Eight independent, but coordinated chapters address these and other questions, drawing on a set of newly developed databases covering 30 countries, including the US, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, and China, among others.

Individuals all over the world can use Airbnb to rent an apartment in a foreign city, check Coursera to find a course on statistics, join PatientsLikeMe to exchange information about one's disease, hail a cab using Uber, or read the news through Facebook's Instant Articles. The promise of connective platforms is that they offer personalized services and contribute to innovation and economic growth, while bypassing cumbersome institutional or industrial overhead. In The Platform Society, Van Dijck, Poell and De Waal offer a comprehensive analysis of a connective world where platforms have penetrated the heart of societies-disrupting markets and labor relations, circumventing institutions, transforming social and civic practices and affecting democratic processes. This book questions what role online platforms play in the organization of Western societies. First, how do platform mechanisms work and to what effect are they deployed? Second, how can platforms incorporate public values and benefit the public good? The Platform Society analyzes intense struggles between competing ideological systems and contesting societal actors-market, government and civil society-raising the issue of who is or should be responsible for anchoring public values and the common good in a platform society. Public values include of course privacy, accuracy, safety, and security, but they also pertain to broader societal effects, such as fairness, accessibility, democratic control, and accountability. Such values are the very stakes in the struggle over the platformization of societies around the globe. The Platform Society highlights how this struggle plays out in four private and public sectors: news, urban transport, health, and education. Each struggle highlights local dimensions, for instance fights over regulation between individual platforms and city governments, but also addresses the level of the platform ecosystem as well as the geopolitical level where power clashes between global markets and (supra-)national governments take place.

This first volume of the Handbook serves as a definitive reference source and teaching supplement for the field of regional economics, and for related fields such as geography, transportation economics, regional science and physical planning. It provides an advanced state-of-the-art survey for professional teachers, researchers and advanced (post-) graduate students in these disciplines. In addition to a representative survey of past developments, it also points to new directions and trends within the field. For more information on the Handbooks in Economics series, please see our home page on http: //www.elsevier.nl/locate/hes

Utopianism and radicalism achieve greater prominence when economic and social crises render the dominant moral and political universe open to question. The essays in this book examine how utopianism and radicalism informed the literary expressions, political discourse, communal experiments, and cultural projects in the U.S. from 1888 to 1918. In particular, these essays track how socialism, anarchism, syndicalism, feminism, and black nationalism contested the ideological terrain during a period when reform ideas and movements were beginning to reshape that terrain. The degree to which utopianism and radicalism were involved in that reformulation, either in its expanse or its constraint, is of prime interest throughout the book. Teachers and students interested in utopian studies, American studies, and the cultural/intellectual history of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era will find this book highly useful.

Welfare economics is a branch of economics using microeconomic techniques to simultaneously determine the efficiency of the overall economy and the income distribution consequences associated with it. As a British economist best known for his work in many fields and particularly in welfare economics, Pigou attended the prestigious Harrow School and was a graduate of King's College, Cambridge, where he studied under Alfred Marshall, famously known as the creator of "The Marshall Plan." Here in The Economics of Welfare, Pigou asserts that individuals are the best judges of their own welfare, that people will prefer greater welfare to less welfare, and that welfare can be adequately measured either in monetary terms or as a relative preference. Scholars and students of both economics and welfare policy will find Pigou's work a significant contribution to current debates on welfare policy directions. Included in Volume II: "The National Dividend and Labour" and "The Distribution of the National Dividend." ALSO AVAILABLE AT COSIMO CLASSICS: The Economics of Welfare: Volume I ARTHUR CECIL PIGOU (1877-1959) was a Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge University from 1908 to 1943. He is best known for the development of "The Pigou Effect," an economics term, which refers to the stimulation of output & employment caused by increasing consumption. Pigou served on a number of royal commissions, including the 1919 committee on income tax.

This edited book examines the challenges and opportunities arising from today's sharing economy from an operations management perspective. Individual chapter authors present state-of-the-art research that examines the general impact of sharing economy on production and consumption; the intermediary role of a sharing platform; crowdsourcing management; and context-based operational problems. Sharing economy refers to a market model that enables and facilitates the sharing of access to goods and services. For example, Uber allows riders to share a car. Airbnb allows homeowners to share their extra rooms with renters. Groupon crowdsources demands, enabling customers to share the benefit of discounted goods and services, whereas Kickstarter crowdsources funds, enabling backers to fund a project jointly. Unlike the classic supply chain settings in which a firm makes inventory and supply decisions, in sharing economy, supply is crowdsourced and can be modulated by a platform. The matching-supply-with-demand process in a sharing economy requires novel perspectives and tools to address challenges and identify opportunities. The book is comprised of 20 chapters that are divided into four parts. The first part explores the general impact of sharing economy on the production, consumption, and society. The second part explores the intermediary role of a sharing platform that matches crowdsourced supply with demand. The third part investigates the crowdsourcing management on a sharing platform, and the fourth part is dedicated to context-based operational problems of popular sharing economy applications. "While sharing economy is becoming omnipresence, the operations management (OM) research community has begun to explore and examine different business models in the transportation, healthcare, financial, accommodation, and sourcing sectors. This book presents a collection of the state-of-the-art research work conducted by a group of world-leading OM researchers in this area. Not only does this book cover a wide range of business models arising from the sharing economy, but it also showcases different modeling frameworks and research methods that cannot be missed. Ultimately, this book is a tour de force - informative and insightful!" Christopher S. Tang Distinguished Professor and Edward Carter Chair in Business Administration UCLA Anderson School of Management

A new industrial miracle is needed in the United States, not unlike the one precipitated by the crisis of World War II. Our current crisis of global competition with lower-paying foreign jobs, coupled with the decline in the quality of education in America threatens our way of life and our American Dream.

"Freedom at Work" introduces new paradigms that can spark this miracle. From replacing the archaic business paradigms that still dominate US businesses to the crisis in morality and values crippling the nation, author J. M. Murff addresses every facet of the challenge facing America. He also explains the need to reinvent business education and the revolution in innovation that the United States must now bring forth.

In addition to introducing seven new business paradigms, "Freedom at Work" also provides the keys to an innovation revolution and new business economics for job creation. Murff discusses the need for the restoration of values upon which America was founded and which have floundered in recent years. To restore our place in the global economy, we must find a new way to teach business and to develop new laws for maximizing human potential. By using new tools for successfully navigating a global economy, we will be able to maximize business performance in the twenty-first century.

A blow by blow account of how the US music business really works. Written as a "HOW NOT TOO" guide this book is filled with fantastic hints, tips, anecdotes and analysis in bite sized and often very funny snippets. This book is essential reading for anyone who is interested in playing a part in the biggest music market on earth. The book deals with the basics of business as well as strategy, marketing, branding and selling both at wholesale and retail. The Sound of Money is a comprehensive and wide ranging guide that will enable readers to gain insights that they can use in almost any business. Failure to understand American business processes leads to many disasters. Now you can access a million dollars worth of research for a few dollars less. This is the definitive guide. Backed up by regular podcasts and internet updates you will never regret investing in this book.

The book focuses on food security highlighting the role of indigenous knowledge and scientific research in addressing the plight of poor small-scale agricultural producers. Rapidly growing global population and global policies and management governing sustainability, hunger, food security and poverty alleviation are discussed. Additionally, impacts of probable climate change, research on land productivity and performance of dependable food crops i.e. cassava and pearl millet are discussed. Analyzed in great detail are roles of small stock, urban/peri-urban agriculture and advantages of climate-smart agriculture and participatory research in enhancing food security of the small-scale agricultural producers in Southern Africa.

As the developed world continues to become more digitized, lesser developed areas are starting to see more technological advancements being integrated into their society. These advancements are creating opportunities to improve both the economy and the lives of people within these areas. Information Technology Integration for Socio-Economic Development features theoretical concepts and best practices in the implementation of new technologies within developing areas around the world. Highlighting empirical research on the application of information technologies to bridge the digital divide within different countries, the book is ideally suited for technology developers, managers, and policy makers.

We are, undoubtedly, in a time where we need to be determined to succeed. We are all aware of the challenges that we face through globalisation, an unparalleled pace of change, all of the factors that have provided the script for seemingly endless versions of 'Shift Happens'youtube videos and its companion pieces. I have argued elsewhere that people who say that recession will last for some notional period of time are simply misleading us. If we, as a nation, are not competitive there will be no end to recession; it will become decline. In the short term, we need to be determined to succeed in other ways. We cannot accept a situation where we have high levels of youth unemployment whilst facing skills shortages and having vacancies that we cannot fill. We need people who are highly (and appropriately) skilled: that is why this book is so valuable. (David Cameron)

This small book is about the slow recovery from the recent recession. In its Part I it addresses the Tea Party and other economic conservatives and sets forth thirty statements they don't want to believe, but must come to believe if they are ever to stop blocking private and government investment spending that will speed our economic recovery. But economic conservatives are not alone in their need to make changes. Economic theory needs to recognize more expansively and more rigorously that getting things done in an economy and especially in a sick economy requires a combination of free markets and economic organization, not free-markets alone. Part II of this book essentially provides the basic postulates of a theory of economic organization. Core principles of economic organizations are: that they exist to economize on the communications costs of markets; that above all truth and open information (transparency) are essential to the communication that supports economic cooperation; that economic organizations exist to serve individuals, not the other way around. This book joins the many other publications that have found Wall Street and all the other major financial markets wanting in respect to both first principles. The third part of this book sets forth specific examples of the changes needed in three major parts of current mainstream economics: Microeconomics; Macroeconomics; and International Economics.

In today's environment, success in delivering projects is not based on a company having the best delivery framework or a project having the best plan or risk log, but rather on the skills of the people who are planning, managing and delivering on the work of that project. It is no longer sufficient to just have fundamental project management skills; resources also need to possess an augmented set of "soft" or consultative skills. This book focuses on the evolving competencies needed for project managers in the current environment. It proposes a framework called the "Consultative Project Management Competency Model" which outlines 25 essential competencies. Each competency is described with examples and proficiency differentiation for levels of experience. This book also defines a holistic approach for improving project management competencies of individuals or an entire organization.