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Books > Business & Economics > Industry & industrial studies > General
To what extent can governments supplement private venture capitalists and stimulate the economy by providing money to new entrepreneurs as well as existing enterprises? The UK's National Enterprise Board (NEB) attempted to do just this, and whilst it gained most publicity through its efforts to bail out ailing giants such as British Leyland and Rolls Royce Aerospace, much of its attention was actually directed to smaller ventures. Originally published in 1988 Professor Kramer reports that the NEB's record of success was surprisingly good, and that many flourishing undertakings would not be in business today had it not been for the NEB's efforts. The author goes further, and after discussing the political and economic issues involved in according public aid to private enterprises on a case by case basis, he argues that not only should the UK revive its NEB, but that other countries, notably the United States, could benefit by establishing their own versions of it. Indeed, throughout, the author's perspective as an outsider makes him peculiarly alive to the relevance of the UK example to a whole range of international cases. As the first scholarly, full-length study of the NEB, this book will be of value to those interested in the relationships between venture capitalists generally and the enterprises in which they take equity. It will also interest those studying the relationship between holding companies and their subsidiaries.
This book is a continuation of Corporate Law and the Theory of the Firm: Reconstructing Corporations, Shareholders, Directors, Owners, and Investors. The author extends his analysis of contract law, property law, agency law, trust law, and corporate statutory law and applies that analysis to defy conventional concepts and theories in economics, finance, investment, and accounting and expose the artificial boundaries established by decades of research founded on indefensible assumptions and fallacious conclusions. Using the Humpty Dumpty principle, where words mean what the authors want them to mean, economists have created "strange new worlds" where contract law, property law, agency law, and corporate statutory law no longer apply. The author dismantles the theory of the firm by proving the theory of the firm wilfully and intentionally ignores fundamental contract law, property law, agency law, and corporate statutory law. Contrary to the theory of the firm, shareholders do not own corporations, directors are not agents of shareholders, and shareholders are not investors in corporations. The author proves that by property law and corporate law, capital is not privately owned by capitalists but by corporations. Entire economic and social systems have been constructed that have no basis in law. With the advent of publicly traded corporations, the capital is there, but both capitalists and capitalism have been rendered extinct. This book will appeal to researchers and graduate and upper-level undergraduate students in economics, finance, accounting, law, and sociology, as well as legal scholars, attorneys and accountants.
This book examines the linkages between exchange rates and India's merchandise trade since the 1990s. It looks at India's trade in the post-liberalisation period through its two main components: commodities and trading partners, and provides a bird's eye view through aggregate analyses accompanied by a historical narrative of the evolution of trade and exchange rate dynamics. Presenting a comprehensive analysis of bilateral and product-specific trade, the book explores the impact of exchange rate on labour intensive sectors and charts out major development. It also offers compelling evidence to suggest that if some commodities are identified as integral to India's export plans, then the impact of exchange rate must be weighed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) prior to a market intervention. This timely volume will be of interest to scholars and researchers of economics, business and finance, development studies, trade, business, and industry as well as practitioners, think-tanks, and policy makers.
This tenth volume of papers emanating from the annual International High Technology Small Firms Conference represents a full decade of research and policy relevant papers on innovation and growth problems of New Technology-based Firms (NTBf). Because this series has become the major vehicle for publication among the best international researchers working on the formation and subsequent growth problems of NTBfs, it represents an authoritative voice on NTBf development problems. Topics covered in this volume include strategy, spin offs - their contribution to NTBf growth and the problems they encounter during the traumatic spin off process, the current hot topic of clusters and their role in enhancing NTBf formation and growth, networking and global issues since many NTBfs are truly born global.
This comprehensive reference work gives an overview of the industrial development and current state of industrialization and deindustrialization in Asia, specifically Southeast Asia and China. It introduces typologies of industrial policies and discusses the manufacturing sector and its evolving role in the region. Designing Integrated Industrial Policies examines the integration of SMEs in global value chains and provides macro-econometric and firm-based micro-econometric analyses of (de)industrialization. This book will be a very useful reference particularly as a how-to guide on industrial promotion and designing integrated industrial policies not only for economic growth and job creation but also for "inclusive" development. It presents country cases and illustrates useful tools for industrial policy simulation and for evidence-based policy making through these concrete examples.
Today, universities around the world find themselves going beyond
the traditional roles of research and teaching to drive the
development of local economies through collaborations with
industry. At a time when regions with universities are seeking best
practices among their peers, Shiri M. Breznitz argues against the
notion that one university's successful technology transfer model
can be easily transported to another. Rather, the impact that a
university can have on its local economy must be understood in
terms of its idiosyncratic internal mechanisms, as well as the
state and regional markets within which it operates.
This timely and significant book explores the characteristics and complexities of Asian urban tourism, considering the extent to which Western paradigms can be transferred to Asian settings and the striking contrasts that exist within the region. In an era of unprecedented urban expansion in Asian cities, this book comes at a time of great urgency, illuminating the possible problems and opportunities that arise when a destination emerges as a tourism hotspot. Split into three parts; introducing Asian urban tourism and urbanization, the management and marketing of Asian cities, and emerging trends and issues associated with Asian urban tourism, the book offers a range of varying and vibrant perspectives from international and interdisciplinary experts in the field. Chapters include studies on a wide range of destinations such as Hong Kong, Macau, Cambodia, Phuket, Kolkata, Busan, Delhi, and Sri Lanka among many others, and explore crucial contemporary themes such as overtourism, urbanization and administrative challenges, world heritage, smart cities and the use of technologies such as VR in urban tourism experience creation. It will be a vital resource for upper-level students, researchers, and academics in tourism, city tourism, Asian studies, development studies, cultural studies, and sustainability, as well as professionals in the field of tourism management.
The book presents a stochastic analysis based on production risk and application of this method in the industrial sector under production risk where energy use is an input factor. Using South Korea as a case study, the book empirically models energy demand at the industrial level and analyzes the results to identify key determinants of energy demand, productions level, productions risk and energy usage efficiency. Particular attention is paid to the factors that enhance production risk or increase variations in energy input during production. A dynamic panel model is specified and applied to 25 Korean industrial sectors over the period 1970-2007. The determinants of energy usage are identified and their effects in the form of elasticities of energy usage are estimated. In addition the structural changes in the energy demand pattern are explored. Stochastic production technology is applied to create two primary models: A production model where the energy usage is a determinant of output and an energy demand model based on an inverted factor demand model where demand is a key determinant of the level of energy usage. The findings reveal that: First, there are large variations in the degree of overuse or inefficiency in energy usage among the individual industries and over time; second, ICT (information and communication technology) capital and labor are substituting energy; third, ICT capital and value added services are two input factors decreasing the variability of energy demand while non-ICT capital, material and labor are increasing the variability of energy demand. Finally, the results suggest that technical progress contributes more to the increase of mean of energy demand than to the reduction of the level of risk. An emerging recommendation is that industries increase the level of ICT capital and digitalization and invest more in R&D activities and value added services to reduce the uncertainty related to their demand for energy. This study forms the structure of the demand for energy under stochastic production risk for the South Korean industrial sector. Public research programs aimed at the industrial sector should be concerned about both mean and risk properties in research on new technologies and in the investigation of possible alternative energy inputs. This book describes the state of the art in energy usage analysis and production risk, applying factor requirement methodology. It will be of use as a main or supplementary text in the teaching of advanced graduate courses but also as a reference for those working on empirically advanced research. The book is an important addition to the existing literature on industrial development, with its focus on energy as a core production input.
This book analyzes the relationship between technological innovation and economic development in Japan before World War II. Guan Quan deploys econometric analysis, multivariate statistical analysis and case studies from different industries to shed light on technological innovation in the Japanese context with particular emphasis on the importance of the patent system. A great deal of new inventions and patents in this period led to fast economic growth in Japan characterized by the simultaneous development of both traditional and modern industries. These insights help reshape the understanding of Japan's economic development and industrial advancement at an early stage and provide pointers to developing countries as to how human capital, social capabilities and thereby technological innovation can figure in economic growth. The book will appeal to academics of the East Asian economy, development economics and modern economic history as well as general readers interested in the miracle of the Japanese economy as the first to achieve economic development and modernization among non-Western countries.
Very little has been written on industrialization and deindustrialization in Asia and Africa. This reference work sheds illuminating light upon the industrial development in Asia and Africa. It also provides an in-depth look into China's engagement and migrant labour in Africa. The book also addresses the roles of public-private partnership (PPP) and international development cooperation and how they are fundamental to industrialization in Asia and Africa. Designing Integrated Industrial Policies will be a very useful reference particularly as a how-to guide on industrial promotion and designing integrated industrial policies not only for economic growth and job creation but also for "inclusive" development. It comes with country cases and illustrates useful tools for industrial policy simulation and for evidence-based policy making through these concrete examples.
The book provides a comprehensive application of narrative theory to video games, and presents the player-response paradigm of game criticism. Video Game Narrative and Criticism explains the nature of gameplay - a psychological experience and a meaning-making process in the fictional world of video games.
Ensuring equity in healthcare is the main concern of health policymakers in order to provide a sustainable health system. This concern is more prominent in developing countries due to the scarcity of resources. This book provides a comprehensive analysis and discussion on the distributive pattern of out-of-pocket pharmaceutical expenditures under the health reforms in Turkey and makes comparisons with pharmerging countries. Turkey's health reforms began in 2003 to address shortcomings related to financial protection and to improve health outcomes and the quality of healthcare services. The primary motivation was to ensure equity in the distribution of health resources, and this transformation process led to profound changes in how these resources were used, and in health financing in general. However, there is a lack of knowledge regarding the long-term effect of health reforms on the distribution patterns of health expenditures and health service use. This book offers a thorough equity analysis of the health financing system, affected by this health transformation program. Index and curve approaches are used in the equity analysis of pharmaceutical expenditures. The book examines the long-term effects of health system regulations on the health spending characteristics of households and improves the current understanding of equity in this context. It includes extensive international comparisons of healthcare services across a range of developing countries and highlights the significance of ensuring equity for emerging economies. The author explores the existing evidence as well as future research directions and provides policy and planning advice for health policymakers to contribute to establishing a more equal health system design. Additionally, the book will be of interest to scholars and professionals in the fields of health economics, public health management and health financing.
In a turbulent global economy, the popular idea of declining
farms and factories is largely unfounded. UN and World Bank data
show growing output everywhere, but it remains hidden by the
faster-growing service sector. Engineers, programmers, surgeons,
and pilots make up an increasing share of what is actually the
service sector, showing that this sector is not in decline. There
is no doubt that industries are shifting, but how does it all add
up?
This book investigates the intensifying struggle for excellence between universities in a globalized academic field. The rise of the entrepreneurial university and academic capitalism are superimposing themselves on the competition of scientists for progress of knowledge and recognition by the scientific community. The result is a sharpening institutional stratification of the field. This stratification is produced and continuously reproduced by the intensified struggle for funds with the shrinking of block grants and the growing significance of competitive funding, as well as the increasing impact of international and national rankings on academic research and teaching. The increased allocation of funds on the basis of performance leads to overinvestment of resources at the small top and underinvestment for the broad mass of universities in the middle and lower ranks. There is a curvilinear inverted u-shaped relationship of investments and returns in terms of knowledge production. Paradoxically, the intrusion of the economic logic and measures of managerial controlling into the academic field imply increasing inefficiency in the allocation of resources to universities. The top institutions suffer from overinvestment, the rank-and-file institutions from underinvestment. The economic inefficiency is accompanied by a shrinking potential for renewal and open knowledge evolution.
Trust is an authoritative collection of previously published articles and is unique in the growing literature on trustworthiness. The broad ranging articles are organized into three parts, expressing three definite answers to the question posed in the introduction: Why does trustworthiness pay? Part I, 'Trust as Strategy', stipulates that trust is an investment in reputation. Part II, 'Trust as Taste', argues that agents have a preference for trustworthiness, which may explain the anomaly of trustworthiness in single-shot games. Part III, 'Trust as Trait', maintains that trust is a trait that evolutionary selection may favor. In his extensive introductory essay, Elias Khalil elaborates and contrasts the strengths and weaknesses of each answer. Including over 35 articles from diverse disciplines such as economics, sociology, political science, anthropology, philosophy, psychology, evolutionary biology, and organizational studies, Trust will be a valuable reference for many years to come.
The latest edition of the gold standard in the economics and financing of health care In the newly revised Sixth Edition of Health Economics and Financing, an expert team of authors delivers an authoritative discussion of key topics in the economic and finance issues relevant to health care. From cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analyses to the economic considerations driving the choices of physicians, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies, the book explores the influence of financial considerations - both public and private - that remain front-of-mind for modern health care decision makers.
The separation between ownership and control has become common practice over the last century, in most medium and large firms across the world. Throughout the twentieth century, the theory of the firm and the theory of industrial organization developed parallel and complementary views on managerial firms. This book offers a comprehensive exposition of this debate. In its survey of strategic delegation in oligopoly games, An Economic Theory of Managerial Firms is able to offer a reinterpretation of a range of standard results in the light of the fact that the control of firms is generally not in the hand of its owners. The theoretical models are supported by a wealth of real-world examples, in order to provide a study of strategic delegation that is far more in-depth than has previously been found in the literature on industrial organization. In this volume, analysis is extended in several directions to cover applications concerning the role of: managerial firms in mixed market; collusion and mergers; divisionalization and vertical relations; technical progress; product differentiation; international trade; environmental issues; and the intertemporal growth of firms. This book is of great interest to those who study industrial economics, organizational studies and industrial studies.
All industrialization is deeply rooted within the specific geographies in which it took place, and echoes of previous industrialization continue to reverberate in these places through to the modern day. This book investigates the overlap of memory and the impacts of industrialization within today's communities and the senses of place and heritage that grew alongside and in reaction to the growth of mines, mills, and factories. The economic and social change that accompanied the unchecked accumulation of wealth and exploitation of labor as the industrial revolution spread throughout the world has numerous lasting impacts on the socioeconomics of today. Likewise, the planet itself is now reeling. The memory and heritage of these processes reach into the communities that owe the industrial revolution their existence, but these populations also often suffered adverse impacts to their health and environment through the large-scale and rapid extraction of natural resources and production of goods. Through the themes of memory, community, and place; working post-industrial landscapes; and the de-romanticization of industrial pasts, this book examines the endurance and decline of these communities, the spatial processes of industrial byproducts, and the memory and heritage of industrialization and its legacies. While based in the traditions of geography, this collection also draws upon and will be of great interest to students and scholars of cultural anthropology, archaeology, sociology, history, architecture, civil engineering, and heritage, memory, museum, and tourism studies. Using global examples, the authors provide a uniquely geographic understanding to industrial heritage across the spaces, places, and memories of industrial development.
Literature on China's finance in the West has focused on "financial repression" in its highly regulated financial markets. However, fundamental changes in China's financial system are underway and China's peer-to-peer (P2P) lending is now the largest in the world. This book uses exclusive researches, interviews and surveys to bring readers a clear picture of the rapidly developing P2P lending industry in China. It is comprised of two parts. The first part is a comprehensive analysis of China's P2P lending industry. It outlines the factors behind the meteoric rise of P2P lending in China, and also the challenges its rapid rise has posed. The second part is a panoramic survey of China's P2P lending industry with study of typical cases, which could also provide reference to the analysis in the first part. Besides, it introduces the existing relevant regulations, regulators, likely upcoming regulatory measures as well as the diverse body of new financial institutions appearing with the development of the industry, to analyse in-depth the current functioning of the industry in China and its lending practices through a large scale survey.
The book is a cross-section of the over all Italian development. Italy can be considered a microcosm that contains all the imbalances and territorial differences that can be observed in the European macro-areas. Its north can now be considred integrated with the more developed European continental shelf. The Centre represents a local development in transition to a more visible technological change. The late south risks accumulating more socio-economic backwardness. For these reasons, we believe this volume is useful, with just a few pages presenting one of the most interesting cases of local industrial development, outside the mainstream of the industrial economy which saw in Fordism and Taylorism the best way for industrializaion. Here, on the contrary, it is argued that big fish cannot always consume the smallest one that flickers faster and its flexibility, that has social roots, can be an advantage in global markets. Technology appears to be the key to the future. Please note: This title is co-published with Aakar Books, New Delhi. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Maldives or Bhutan)
Classes of Labour: Work and Life in a Central Indian Steel Town is a classic in the social sciences. The rigour and richness of the ethnographic data of this book and its analysis is matched only by its literary style. This magnum opus of 732 pages, an outcome of fieldwork covering twenty-one years, complete with diagrams and photographs, reads like an epic novel, difficult to put down. Professor Jonathan Parry looks at a context in which the manual workforce is divided into distinct social classes, which have a clear sense of themselves as separate and interests that are sometimes opposed. The relationship between them may even be one of exploitation; and they are associated with different lifestyles and outlooks, kinship and marriage practices, and suicide patterns. A central concern is with the intersection between class, caste, gender and regional ethnicity, with how class trumps caste in most contexts and with how classes have become increasingly structured as the 'structuration' of castes has declined. The wider theoretical ambition is to specify the general conditions under which the so-called 'working class' has any realistic prospect of unity.
Two pioneering researchers identify key causes of workplace burnout and reveal what managers can do to promote increased productivity and health. Burnout is among the most significant on-the-job hazards facing workers today. It is also among the most misunderstood. In particular, we tend to characterize burnout as a personal issue-a problem employees should fix themselves by getting therapy, practicing relaxation techniques, or changing jobs. Christina Maslach and Michael P. Leiter show why this is not the case. Burnout also needs to be managed by the workplace. Citing a wealth of research data and drawing on illustrative anecdotes, The Burnout Challenge shows how organizations can change to promote sustainable productivity. Maslach and Leiter provide useful tools for identifying the signs of employee burnout, most often exhaustion, cynicism, and ineffectiveness. They also advise managers on assembling and interpreting worker self-evaluation surveys, which can reveal workplace problems and potential solutions. And when it comes to implementing change, Maslach and Leiter offer practical, evidence-driven guidance. The key, they argue, is to begin with less-taxing changes that employees nonetheless find meaningful, seeding the ground for more thorough reforms in the future. Experts estimate that more than $500 billion and 550 million workhours are lost annually to on-the-job stress, much of it caused by dysfunctional work environments. As priorities and policies shift across workplaces, The Burnout Challenge provides pragmatic, creative, and cost-effective solutions to improve employee efficiency, health, and happiness.
Economic theorizing suggests that firms can acquire and maintain market dominance in a number of ways. Some economists argue that firms attain dominance only by being relatively more efficient than their rivals and retain leadership only by staying more efficient than their rivals. Others argue that efficiency is not the only source of dominance and that leaders can retain preeminence even if they are inefficient. This book attempts to sort out the relevant points by exploring market dominance experienced by firms in ten different industries. It examines factors that led to acquiring, holding and in some cases losing dominance and asks whether those factors were consistent with economic efficiency. The results suggest that both schools make valid points. Generally, firms that rose to dominance were market pioneers and did so using economically-efficient strategies. In some cases, however, firms rose to dominance using inefficient strategies. Once they reached their ascendance, these firms engaged in a number of strategies, some efficient, others inefficient, to maintain their dominant positions. Most of the firms examined eventually lost their dominance. In some cases, the market evolved too rapidly for any firm to maintain control. In other cases the fall was ushered along by federal antitrust and trade policy. In still other industries, it was due either to poor management or the firm becoming inefficient. However, even when some of these dominant firms became inefficient, the market system worked only very slowly to remove them. The analysis has specific implications for antitrust policies toward dominant firms. Because the sources and consequences of dominance can be varied, neither a DEGREESIlaissez faire DEGREESR policy in favor nor a DEGREESIper se DEGREESR injunction against dominance is called for. A reasoned approach, tempered by underlying market conditions, is warranted toward the strategies used to acquire and maintain dominance.
The Great Labour Unrest examines the struggle between liberals, socialists and revolutionary syndicalists for control of Britain's best established district miners' union. Drawing widely on a vast and rich body of primary sources, this study reveals the debates that grassroots activists had during the fascinating and turbulent 'Great Labour Unrest' period. It charts the contexts in which the socialists challenged the union's Liberal leaders from the late 1890s and considers the complex strikes in 1910 against the implementation of the Liberal government's miners' eight-hour day. It analyses the emergence and development of a mass rank-and-file movement in the coalfield based around demands for a miners' minimum wage and, when this principle was won in March 1912, for an improved minimum wage. This book is of interest to academics, advanced students and lay people interested in political, social and economic history, political thought, economics, and industrial relations. -- . |
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