Rising Consumer Materialism presents a theoretical advancement of materialism research. It identifies eight areas of a consumer's life that are inter-disciplinary and of prime importance towards promoting happy and rewarding lifestyles. This study examines the pre-planned purchase process as the primary step towards satisfactory consumption. The theoretical framework provides a stream of research possibilities that guide readers towards healthy consumption patterns. Therefore, the book offers practical solutions to problems such as loneliness and unhappiness. It advocates a new dimension of consumption activity and lifestyle choices that can help to re-socialize and improve social bonds; hitting materialism right at its core, making the consumption experience well informed and beneficial for the consumer as well as society. Together, pre-planned engaging, intrinsic experiential purchases with a view to environmentalism, religiosity, social giving, social support and nostalgia can cure the excessive emphasis on acquiring and showing off valuables that are disruptive to a consumer's social affiliations and subjective wellbeing. Rather than utilizing material possessions as a proxy measure for success and happiness resulting in only temporary happiness, discontent, continuous brand/product switching, undesirable post purchase evaluations and shifting brand loyalties, the book establishes alternative mechanisms for achieving happiness. The integrated framework provides a comprehensive solution rather than a half-baked specific situational-based intervention and is a must read for academics, students and consumers alike.

This book investigates the effects of organizational contexts on the process of technological innovation. It analyses the internal organization of the firm as well as external influences, and examines how these factors affect a firm's innovative potential. The organization of the firm, it is argued, is intrinsic to the innovation process itself. The authors consider new concepts of the theory of the firm, look at evolutionary economics and concepts of innovation within this school of thought, and analyse national and sectoral systems of innovation. They discuss firm-specific knowledge and organization, and its effects on innovative opportunities. In addition, they pay special attention to a firm's ability to innovate in relation to incentives, and the sources of technology available to them. From this they conclude that organizational factors are primary features of the process of technical change. Included in the discussion are examinations of: * networks of collaborating firms in R&D activity * 'technology foresight' and the direction of future innovative activity in industrial sectors * the relationship between business units and corporate parents * government and regulatory agencies * the role of capital, and short termism in financial markets * the relationship between suppliers and customers Technological Change and Organization will be of welcomed by those interested in technological change and innovation, institutional and evolutionary economics, as well as to microeconomists interested in the theory of the firm and industrial organization.

This unique book - informed by ten years' research - focuses on intellectual property and charts the global transition towards intellectual capitalism with technology-based corporations as prime movers. The book gives a comprehensive overview of the history and fundamentals of intellectual property as well as a textbook introduction to the field. The book sheds new light on the economics and management of intellectual property in large corporations in Europe, Japan and the US. Special emphasis is given to strategies for the acquisition and commercialization of new technologies, patent strategies and strategies for secrecy and trademark, technology intelligence and corporate management of intellectual property. It includes an in-depth study of leading large corporations in Japan - including Canon, Hitachi, Toshiba and Sony. In conclusion, it explores the possible evolution of intellectual property management towards a distributed intellectual capital management in the context of a wider transition to intellectual capitalism, fueled by new technologies in general and new infocom technologies in particular. The book will have particular appeal to practitioners such as managers, economists, engineers and lawyers as well as students and scholars of industrial organization, economics of innovation and technical change, and management of technology.

This book is a definitive collection of Keith Pavitt's seminal articles in the analysis of technology and innovation. He presents realistic, empirical accounts of the economic impact of technological change on firms, emphasising the cognitive dimensions of technical change. The theme throughout is that technological knowledge remains largely tacit, and the transformation of advances in knowledge is complex, uncertain and requires continuous learning.The book explores the appropriate location of innovative activities, the size structure of innovating firms, the implications of technological trajectories for corporate strategies and organization, the influence of national systems of innovation on corporate behaviour and the usefulness of publicly funded research. The conclusions drawn challenge established theories, policies and practices. Technology, Management and Systems of Innovation will prove invaluable to students and scholars of both the economics and management of evolutionary technical change.

There is a growing interest in Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs), particularly in infrastructure and public services. Under the scope of PPPs, renegotiations are becoming more relevant, as empirical evidence suggests that most PPP projects are inevitably renegotiated, i.e., the original contract needs to be adapted to new and unforeseen circumstances. Renegotiations have a substantial impact on the contract and performance of a PPP and usually represent significant costs for users and taxpayers. However, very little is known about the management and, mainly, the process of renegotiating that will, very likely, occur. This book provides a set of case-studies of PPP renegotiations in the transport sector. The authors illustrate the Portuguese experience, a country that has been using PPP extensively, particularly in transport. The case studies provide an extensive and detailed analysis on each aspect of the project and the renegotiation. What drives renegotiations? Why are some projects more renegotiated than others? What are the results? How can the performance of renegotiation processes be improved? These and other questions provide the basis for the discussions in this book. The novelty and value of the book come mainly from the extent of information available. Each case-study deals with these questions in much more detail than what is common in the case-studies approach.

Since 2010 Greece has been experiencing the longest period of austerity and economic downturn in its recent history. Economic changes may be happening more rapidly and be more visible than the cultural effects of the crisis which are likely to take longer to become visible, however in recent times, both at home and abroad, the Greek arts scene has been discussed mainly in terms of the crisis. While there is no shortage of accounts of Greece's economic crisis by financial and political analysts, the cultural impact of austerity has yet to be properly addressed. This book analyses hitherto uncharted cultural aspects of the Greek economic crisis by exploring the connections between austerity and culture. Covering literary, artistic and visual representations of the crisis, it includes a range of chapters focusing on different aspects of the cultural politics of austerity such as the uses of history and archaeology, the brain drain and the Greek diaspora, Greek cinema, museums, music festivals, street art and literature as well as manifestations of how the crisis has led Greeks to rethink or question cultural discourses and conceptions of identity.

This title was first published in 1980: This volume analyzes Japan's industrial organization both from a historical perspective and by looking in details at specific industries such as iron, steel and the automotive industry. Big business, business groups and industrial policy are also discussed. The volume also provides a survey of the literature in Japanese which will help the reader in search of original sources.

This volume presents the proceedings of the 4th International Scientific and Practical Conference on Digital Economy and Finances (DEFIN22) at the Saint-Petersburg University of Management Technologies and Economics (UMTE), which took place in March 2022. It includes the newest research on the impact of new digital technologies on the growth and capitalization of companies and the labor market. The volume discusses the problems of situational modeling of economic processes and the creation of "digital twins" of enterprises. The contributions analyse how big data and artificial intelligence technologies are shaping the financial markets.

This is the first of a two volume collection of the late Julian Simon's important and radical contributions to a wide variety of economic problems. Often considered as controversial and unorthodox, these essays challenge conventional approaches. The book begins with introductory chapters in which the author discusses his background and experiences as a controversial scholar. Divided into six parts, the first part considers some basic concepts on issues such as welfare, natural resources, causality and product differentiation. The second part contains essays on managerial economics as well as general microeconomics including monopoly, duopoly and oligopoly. Advertising is discussed in the third part and industrial organization in the fourth. Part five focuses on policies for exchange and auction considering, among other issues, airline overbooking, and the final section features articles on macroeconomics. This collection of controversial essays will be welcomed by academics and students interested in unorthodox approaches to various economic theories and concepts.

When Chinese women bound their daughters' feet, many consequences ensued, some beyond the imagination of the binders and the bound. The most obvious of these consequences was to impress upon a small child's body and mind that girls differed from boys, thus reproducing gender hierarchy. What is not obvious is why Chinese society should have evolved such a radical method of gender-marking. Gendering is not simply preparation for reproduction, rather its primary significance lies in preparing children for their places in the division of labor of a particular political economy. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and interviews with almost 5,000 women, this book examines footbinding as Sichuan women remember it from the final years of the empire and the troubled times before the 1949 revolution. It focuses on two key questions: what motivated parents to maintain this custom, and how significant was girls' work in China's final pre-industrial century? In answering these questions, Hill Gates shows how footbinding was a form of labor discipline in the first half of the twentieth century in China, when it was a key institution in a now much-altered political economy. Countering the widely held views surrounding the sexual attractiveness of bound feet to Chinese men, footbinding as an ethnic boundary marker, its role in female hypergamy, and its connection to state imperatives, this book instead presents a compelling argument that footbinding was in fact a crucial means of disciplining of little girls to lives of early and unremitting labor. This vivid and fascinating study will be of huge interest to students and scholars working across a wide range of fields including Chinese history, oral history, anthropology and gender studies.

'National Systems of Innovation' presents a new perspective on the dynamics of the national and the global economy. Its starting point is that the international competitiveness of nations is founded on innovation. Which role do different parts of the national system play in determining the long-term dynamics of the economy? What is happening to the coherence of national systems of innovation in an era characterised by far-reaching internationalisation and globalisation? [NP] These and other issues are addressed in this volume. Available for the first time in paperback, the book is an invaluable resource for scholars and policy-makers.

'National Systems of Innovation' presents a new perspective on the dynamics of the national and the global economy. Its starting point is that the international competitiveness of nations is founded on innovation. Which role do different parts of the national system play in determining the long-term dynamics of the economy? What is happening to the coherence of national systems of innovation in an era characterised by far-reaching internationalisation and globalisation?
These and other issues are addressed in this volume, an invaluable resource for scholars and policy-makers.

This accessible book provides a rigorous explanation of the concepts and theory of technological change and learning in production. Dudley Jackson offers a thorough integration of theory and data to show how technological change and learning increase profitability. The impact of technological change and learning on the rate of profit are comprehensively explained with extensive use of 'real world' plant - and industry-level statistics. Data on the manufacturing industry in the United States is used to explain and exemplify neutral technological change, or increased multifactor productivity. Non-neutral capital-using/labour-saving technological change is then examined using data on the switch from steam to diesel locomotives in the railroad industry. The impact of technological change on unit cost and quality is examined in two case studies: automation in the pulp plant of a paper mill; and the refining of petroleum to produce gasoline of a higher octane rating. The theoretical background to, and derivation and use of, the learning curve is explained using data on the building of Liberty ships in individual shipyards during the Second World War. Finally the time constant progress function is introduced to show how learning increases profitability. This book will be of immense interest to students of microeconomics, strategic and production management, industrial organization and the economics of innovation and technology.

It is commonly known that the Andean nations of Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia are the international centers of cocaine production. But until now, there has been no comprehensive view of this billion dollar industry. Using never-before unearthed information culled from their extensive field research, Patrick Clawson and Rensselaer Lee reveal the configuration of the drug industry, from the original cultivation of coca in the fields of South America to the sale of cocaine on the streets of the United States. The authors analyze the economic and political impact of the drug business on the Andean nations, including such problems as violence and the undermining of legitimate business. Through the ground-breaking work of Clawson and Lee, "The Andean Cocaine Industry" illuminates one of the most pervasive problems facing the world today.

With their phenomenal growth rates, India and China are surging ahead as world economic powers. Due to increasing instability in the Middle East, they have turned to Africa to procure oil to fuel their industrialisation process. Africa's economy stands to be impacted in various ways due to the increasing interaction with these 'Asian Giants'. This book analyses the acquisition of oil blocks by Indian and Chinese oil corporations in eleven West African countries. It describes the differences in how India and China mobilise oil externally to meet their respective goals and objectives. The book examines the rate of return on capital, rate of interest on loans and the ease of availability of loans, the difference in the level of technology and ability to acquire technology, project management skills, risk aversion, valuation of the asset and the difference in the economic, political and diplomatic support received by the Chinese and Indian oil companies from their respective governments. It is argued that the difference in the relative economic and political power of India and China accounts for the ability of Chinese oil companies to outbid their Indian competitors and/or be preferred as partners by international oil companies. Containing interviews from Indian and Chinese oil company executives, government officials, industry officials, former diplomats and scholars and academics from India, China and the UK, this book makes a valuable contribution to existing literature on India, China and the oil industry in West Africa. It will be a valuable resource for academics in the field of International Relations, Foreign Policy Analysis, Asian Business and Economics.

At a time when state assistance to the arts sector has come under considerable scrutiny both in Europe and the United States, this book comprehensively examines the evolution of, and rationale for, state involvement with the so-called 'high' arts on both continents. This book offers an overview of the key economic issues arising in relation to the state and the arts in these regions, with a detailed analysis of the European and American models of state assistance to the high arts sector.John O'Hagan examines in detail the various channels - regulation, taxation and direct expenditure - through which the state interacts with the arts and compares and contrasts the experiences of America and Europe. Regulatory measures considered include the guarantee of artistic freedom, copyright, resale royalties for artists, and trade restrictions. He also considers taxation measures to support the arts, including deductions for charitable contributions to the arts, property tax exemption, and relief on artists' income. The discussion on direct expenditure covers state ownership of institutions, revenue funding and matching grants as well as new avenues of expenditure such as community arts/arts centres, and new revenue sources for this expenditure, such as lottery funding. Finally the book covers the non-profit making arts sector, and examines why it, and not the commercial sector, receives private and state funding. The State and the Arts will be indispensable for students and academics of public and social policy, cultural economics and public management. It will also be of considerable interest to policymakers and key players in the arts sector.

Structural change analysis has been a distinctive feature of economics since its formative period. This authoritative three-volume collection presents a comprehensive selection of the key contributions to the topic.The Economics of Structural Change shows the central role that compositional dynamics plays in the analysis of fluctuations, development, employment and economy-environment interactions. Volume I covers concepts and theories in the economics of structural change; Volume II includes specific contributions to structural theories of growth, cycles and technological change; Volume III focuses on specific areas in the empirics of structural change analysis. This important three-volume set will be indispensable to researchers and practitioners alike.

In a balanced and readable account, this book explains how international, domestic, economic and political factors interrelated to shape the world of modern industry in the thirty years before it was originally published in 1987. It conveys some of the richness and diversity in the political and economic landscape of modern industries and provides a real-world background for the theory of economics and business. Drawing on the work of business analysts and industry specialists, as well as of economists and political scientists, it treats the subject in terms of applied economics in an empirical and practical perspective. After tracing the post-war development of manufacturing up to the mid-1980s, the same approach is applied to specific industries: steel, automobiles, consumer electronics, semiconductors, computers, automated machinery and textiles. Two themes are stressed throughout: industrial growth and development have become truly international, if not global; and most manufacturing takes place under oligopolistic conditions in a world of state intervention and pressure-group activities.

First Published in 1968. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Impact of liberalization on informality has been a subject of intense debate for many years and the major issue that has come up is whether liberalization helps to grow informal sector and informality in the economy or it is an obstruction for informal sector's growth. Thus, in the light of the recent liberalization measure, this book sets to examine general presumptions of the development of informal sector in the context of the Indian economy. The book begins with a broad framework for analysis of output contribution and growth of the informal sector. Liberalization is measured by openness indices and inter-sectoral linkages. Impact of liberalization on growth contributions of informal sector is captured by openness indices (i.e. degree of openness to trade and principal component scores), technical efficiency (measured by Data Envelope Analysis and estimated by Tobit Censored Regression model) and components of productivity (computed by Malmquist total factor productivity index) of the informal enterprises by inter-sectoral linkages. The linkages are modeled theoretically in a neo-classical growth theory and empirically measured by sub-contracting arrangements between formal and informal enterprises. In addition, the book also provides implications on promotion of informal sector from the viewpoint of employment generation. The description and analyses of the book will help with policy implications and enlighten the readers on the development of informal sector.

Published in the year 1983, Government and Public Enterprise is a valuable contribution to the field of Politics.

"This book addresses an important and timely topic which has garnered substantial interest among policymakers, academic analysts, and the broader scientific and technical community. It reflects over a decade of careful qualitative and quantitative research by these authors. This collection brings together their most interesting work in this important area." --Scott Stern, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
"This clear and succinct volume convincingly overturns the conventional wisdom about university-industry relations in science and technology. The authors muster extensive historical and contemporary empirical evidence to build a robust and nuanced conception of the transfer of knowledge between the two sectors. This work warrants close attention from academic administrators, research managers, and public policy-makers in the U.S. and abroad."--David M. Hart, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

Evolutionary Economics and Path Dependence presents important new theoretical and empirical work on economic change, learning processes, institutional change, choice and path dependency.The theoretical section includes discussion of the microfoundations of path dependency, path dependency in industrial networks, path dependence and the theory of the firm, lock-in effects in relation to professional organizations, the notion of bricolage in relation to path dependency and new and neo-institutional perspectives on the theory of the firm. The empirical part focuses on institutional change in the communications and transport sectors of the economy. More specifically it shows how path dependency occurs and develops through various types of lock-in effects within institutions. This book will be essential reading for academics and students of economics and economic history wishing to keep up-to-date with research at the frontier of this exciting field.