This book analyzes the banking crisis and the events surrounding it in Hungary and other emerging EU member countries in 2007-2013. Written by Julia Kiraly, a former policymaker, and the Deputy Governor of the Hungarian Central Bank at the time of the crisis, it also offers a firsthand account of the processes in and responses to the financial crisis. While there is extensive literature on the crisis, most of it focuses on the US or the Eurozone, sometimes mentioning the "emerging world" in passing. However, Central and Eastern Europe experienced the crisis very differently than other emerging countries. In the pre-crisis years, the region in accession to the EU attracted abundant fresh capital, but the seemingly unconstrained global liquidity fuelled credit bubbles. After the Lehman crisis, capital rapidly fled these countries. In this part of the world, the recession proved to be much worse than elsewhere, with double-digit growth soon turning into a double-digit decline in GDP. Several countries had to turn to the IMF and the EU for stand-by credit. Based on her own inside experience as a top central banker, the author offers a personal yet professional analysis of the causes and consequences of the financial hurricane.

This book offers a thorough introduction to the highly promising complex agent-based approach to economics, in which agent-based models (ABMs) are used to represent economic systems as complex and evolving systems composed of heterogeneous agents of limited rationality who interact with each other, generating the system's emergent properties in the process. This approach represents a response to the limitations of the dominant theory in economics, which does not consider the possibility of a major crisis, and to the inability of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium theory to generate empirically falsifiable propositions. In the new perspective, the focus is on identifying the elements of instability rather than the triggering event. As the theory of complexity demonstrates, the interactions of heterogeneous agents produce non-linearity: this puts an end to the age of certainties. With ABMs, the methodology is "from the bottom up". The individual parameters and their distribution are estimated, and then evaluated to verify whether aggregate regularities emerge on the whole. In short, not only micro, but also meso and macro empirical validation are employed. Moreover, it shows that the mantra of growth should be supplanted by the concept of a growth . Given its depth of coverage, the book will enable students at the undergraduate and Master's level to gain a firm grasp of this important emerging approach. "This book is flower blossomed by one of the two greatest Italian economists." Bruce Greenwald, Columbia University "The author's - the ABM prophet's - thoughts on economics have been at the forefront of the world. Without a firm belief in and dedication to human society, it is impossible to write such a book. This is a work of high academic value, which can help readers quickly understand the history and current situation of complex economic theory. In particular, we can understand the basic viewpoints, academic status, advantages and shortcomings of various schools of economic theory." Jie Wu, Guangzhou Milestone Software Co., China

As the financial crisis engulfs the world economy, there is an ambitous agenda for regulatory reform. This book provides a comprehensive review of the analysis of finance, economics and the law and economics, illuminating past and current banking and financial regulation designed to prevent another credit/dollar crisis and global recession.

The crisis of distribution is one of the longest standing and most complicated issues facing human society. Imbued with social, political, historic, and cultural elements, it varies significantly across different countries as a result of all these factors. As an emerging economy which transferred from a planned to a market economy, China has experienced large distribution gaps since it implemented the Reform and Opening-up Policy in the early 1980s, requiring stronger economic law to mitigate and regulate the crisis of distribution. In this two-volume set, the author analyzes distribution crises from a theoretical perspective and proposes law and policy solutions. In this first volume, he discusses the four main concepts and focus points of the crisis of distribution - distribution itself, the crises it faces, the rule of law, and development. Concentrating on the major distribution problems China faces in particular, the author proposes regulatory methods which can be used to overcome the distribution dilemma, such as tools from policy and economic law, and reiterates the significance of theory building in resolving the issues. The book should be of keen interest to researchers and students of law, economics, and political science.

This book surveys big data tools used in macroeconomic forecasting and addresses related econometric issues, including how to capture dynamic relationships among variables; how to select parsimonious models; how to deal with model uncertainty, instability, non-stationarity, and mixed frequency data; and how to evaluate forecasts, among others. Each chapter is self-contained with references, and provides solid background information, while also reviewing the latest advances in the field. Accordingly, the book offers a valuable resource for researchers, professional forecasters, and students of quantitative economics.

The interaction between mathematicians and statisticians reveals to be an effective approach to the analysis of insurance and financial problems, in particular in an operative perspective.

The Maf2006 conference, held at the University of Salerno in 2006, had precisely this purpose and the collection published here gathers some of the papers presented at the conference and successively worked out to this aim. They cover a wide variety of subjects in insurance and financial fields.

This important new book brings together a significant body of new essays on some of the central economic problems facing governments, firms and individuals in the 1990s. Under the direction of Paul Davidson and Jan Kregel, an international group of distinguished economists provide new perspectives on key issues including employment, corporate and work place restructuring, economic growth and development, financial integration and transformation of the former command economies. Combining rigorous scholarly assessments of the issues with policy prescription, the contributors seek to provide solutions to the problem of providing full employment, to identify the factors determining the expansion of the economy, and to analyse the impact of financial markets, financial derivatives and international regulations on domestic and global economic performance. Employment, Growth and Finance will be welcomed by all those interested in the solutions to international economic problems being developed by post Keynesian economists.

This book covers all important financial innovations for SME financing, and combines theoretical analysis and real world practices employed in China's financial market. As China is increasingly becoming a key player in the global economy, the book helps readers gain a better understanding of the current structure and operation of, as well as future changes in, the Chinese economy. Given the high likelihood of RMB joining the IMF's SDR in the near future, this book offers a well-timed publication that will prove valuable for a broad readership, either as a reference book or as a guide to understanding, researching, teaching on and making business decisions about China and related issues.

Rich in natural resources, straddling Europe and Asia, and home to markets of immense scale, Russia is an essential, critical player in an unprecedently complex global economy. Yet it has yet to fully exploit its unique position within this brave new world. Exploring the Future of Russia's Economy and Markets offers the first serious study of Russia's contemporary economic growth and economic aptitude. Based on the April 2017 conference "'New Reality' and Russian Markets" held at Harvard University and co-hosted by Harvard Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and RUDN University, Moscow, it brings together world-renowned thinkers to offer the latest empirical research on recent financial risks, institutional policies, and financial stability, all while weaving sound economic analyses around countercyclical expansionary macrotrends within the global market, current fiscal and monetary policies, and business cycles. It provides definitive technical insights into fintech, industrial policies and technological parks, TNCs, the oil and natural gas industry, and the impact of international sanctions on Russia's sustainable development. Cumulatively, the chapters gathered here demand that Russia look for alternative key drivers to get its economy going. The distinguished economists gathered here offer flexible bases for economic and financial stability that would foster sustainable economic development for Russia. Exploring the Future of Russia's Economy and Markets is essential reading for economists, policy makers, and students wishing to understand how Russia might take full advantage of its pivotal position within the world economy.

For a long time, economic research on Africa was not seen as a profitable venture intellectually or professionally-few researchers in top-ranked institutions around the world chose to become experts in the field. This was understandable: the reputation of Africa-centered economic research was not enhanced by the well-known limitations of economic data across the continent. Moreover, development economics itself was not always fashionable, and the broader discipline of economics has had its ups and downs, and has been undergoing a major identity crisis because it failed to predict the Great Recession. Times have changed: many leading researchers-including a few Nobel laureates-have taken the subject of Africa and economics seriously enough to devote their expertise and creativity to it. They have been amply rewarded: the richness, complexities, and subtleties of African societies, civilizations, rationalities, and ways of living, have helped renew the humanities and the social sciences-and economics in particular-to the point that the continent has become the next major intellectual frontier to researchers from around the world. In collecting some of the most authoritative statements about the science of economics and its concepts in the African context, this handbook (the first of two volumes) opens up the diverse acuity of commentary on exciting topics, and in the process challenges and stimulates the quest for knowledge. Wide-ranging in its scope, themes, language, and approaches, this volume explores, examines, and assesses economic thinking on Africa, and Africa's contribution to the discipline. The editors bring a set of powerful resources to this endeavor, most notably a team of internationally-renowned economists whose diverse viewpoints are complemented by the perspectives of philosophers, political scientists, and anthropologists. The set of analyses and reflections presented here try to endow each subject with depth and discovery.

Original, prescient and very different from most finance books which are highly technical and inaccessible, and also impersonal and exclusive/neoliberal. The book is informed by academic research and thinking, but not written in academic jargon and language. This research has significant global potential in reviving business education to embrace different cultural approaches to finance, long ignored by the mainstream. It helps retain timeless wisdoms and cultural values and reinvigorate social enterprise and sustainable business practices. This is a unique book, it is plural and inclusive, and at the same time, shows a solid understanding of the theory and practice of finance.

James Tobin was America's most distinguished Keynesian economist, whose path-breaking theoretical work has demonstrated that Keynes's original theories can be adapted to deal with modern macroeconomic problems. This significant volume presents a selection of those papers which in Professor Tobin's opinion have made a significant contribution to the developments of Keynesian economics in the twentieth century.

This book is the culmination of and a collection of distinguished scholar Lawrence Officer's principal research over 50 years of scholarly activity. The collection consists primarily of three topics on which the author has spent the major part of his research: purchasing power parity, standard of living, and monetary standards. There is also a unique chapter on economics and economic history in science fiction. This volume is ideal for academics, graduate and undergraduate students, and practitioners.

Methods and techniques adopted in teaching, training, learning, research, professional development, or capacity building are generally standardized across most traditional disciplines, particularly within developing countries. This is not the case, however, when it comes to the Islamic disciplines, and, in particular, in relation to the study of Islamic economics and finance, which is influenced by conventional standards and techniques. This is primarily due to the lack of availability of the requisite standards and mechanisms designed within the spirit of Maqsid al-Shari'ah. This book offers a unique resource and a comprehensive overview of the contemporary methods and smart techniques available for teaching, learning, and researching Islamic eco-finance, and it presents solutions to the challenges in implementing them. Further, the book gives deep insight into the most appropriate methodologies that could be employed empirically to explore, model, analyze, and evaluate Islamic finance theories and models, respectively. It also gives recommendations for improving learning, teaching, and research outcomes in Islamic eco-finance. The book also addresses how, in this advanced technological era, smart tools like artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data, Zoom, and the internet of things can be adapted to help equip students, researchers, and scholars with smart skills. The book will enable those studying Islamic economics and finance to grasp the appropriate tools for research and learning. Additionally, the Islamic economics and finance sector is growing at a significant rate and therefore requires the upskilling and capacity building of its human resources; thus, the book will also be highly beneficial for practitioners involved in the industry.

This book analyses the controversial and critical issue of 2% inflation targeting, currently practised by central banks in the US, Japan and Europe. Where did the 2% target inflation originate, and for what reason? Do these reasons stand up to scrutiny? This book explores these key questions, contributing to the growing debate that the global 2% inflation standard prescribed by the central banks in the advanced economies globally is actually contributing to the economic malaise of these nations. It presents novel theoretical perspectives, intertwined with historical and market understanding, and features analysis that draws on monetary theory (including Austrian school), behavioural finance, and finance theory. Alongside rigorous analysis of the past and present, the book also features forward looking chapters, exploring how the 2% global inflation standard could collapse and what would ideally follow its demise, including a new look at the role of gold.

This book reconsiders the role of the Phillips curve in macroeconomic analysis in the first twenty years following the famous work by A. W. H. Phillips, after whom it is named. It argues that the story conventionally told is entirely misleading. In that story, Phillips made a great breakthrough but his work led to a view that inflationary policy could be used systematically to maintain low unemployment, and that it was only after the work of Milton Friedman and Edmund Phelps about a decade after Phillips' that this view was rejected. On the contrary, a detailed analysis of the literature of the times shows that the idea of a negative relation between wage change and unemployment - supposedly Phillips' discovery - was commonplace in the 1950s, as were the arguments attributed to Friedman and Phelps by the conventional story. And, perhaps most importantly, there is scarcely any sign of the idea of the inflation-unemployment tradeoff promoting inflationary policy, either in the theoretical literature or in actual policymaking. The book demonstrates and identifies a number of main strands of the actual thinking of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s on the question of the determination of inflation and its relation to other variables. The result is not only a rejection of the Phillips curve story as it has been told, and a reassessment of the understanding of the economists of those years of macroeconomics, but also the construction of an alternative, and historically more authentic account, of the economic theory of those times. A notable outcome is that the economic theory of the time was not nearly so naive as it has been portrayed.

This book provides a comprehensive account of the structure, conduct, and performance of the centrally planned economies of Eastern Europe, the USSR, Communist China and the Marxist LDCs, looking at 26 nations in all. The author focuses on reform, perhaps the most important issue facing countries such as the USSR, Poland, Hungary, and China. Bureaucracy, soft budget constraints, markets, and the nature of the socialist state are the central issues that arise in the course of reforming a socialist economy. The first half of the book deals with 'classical socialism' and provides a theoretical summary of the main features of a now closed period of history. The second half deals with the processes of reform and concludes that the reform of classical socialist systems is doomed to failure as they are unable to renew themselves internally.

Since the onset of the twelfth Five-Year Plan, China has been at the forefront as an innovative nation based on a carefully designed strategy. Despite this, it can be argued that the Chinese government requires a series of more effective and systematic fiscal and taxation policies. This book analyses the status quo and possible optimization of China's fiscal and taxation policies. By drawing comparisons with other countries, as well as a practical investigation into the lessons China has drawn from elsewhere, the author shows how a nation should make steadily growing and optimized financial investments in science and technology in order to foster the optimum environment for innovation. It is shown that institutional innovation should be a systematic project which involves top-level design and top-down leadership. This volume will be a useful reference for students, scholars, and policy makes who are interested in financial policy.

An overview of many currently topical issues around food and agriculture, with particular emphasis on their implications for development. These include Nobel Laureate Robert Fogel's discussion of nutritional standards and the implications of new theories of evolution in assessing the extent of malnutrition. Historical analysis informs contemporary surveys, including Yair Mundlak's comparison of the postwar record of 130 countries in agricultural technology and outputs. The important implications of labour markets, income distributions and the impact of welfare states on these issues are considered by a number of papers. The contributors include many leading academics from North America, Europe, Africa, Australia and Israel.

In recent years, there has been an increase in new forms of employment. Namely, thanks to the use of platforms in business and the emergence of the ""gig economy"", there are gradual changes in this domain. These include part-time, temporary, informal, and unpaid family work. This type of employment can be defined as any job, but only of short or uncertain duration. The experiences gained by the countries of the European Union, as well as the countries of the Western Balkans from the COVID-19 crisis, during which they used new technologies in work, should in the future make working systems even more adapted to the digital age. At last, whether working from home is the product of one's own choice or is the result of a pandemic or other environmental shock, the change in the way work is done is real and governments must understand the implications and take steps to position their economies accordingly.

China has reduced the energy intensity of its economy dramatically. This book explores how this reduction was achieved and determines the major sources of energy savings. Using extensive data, the author examines the impacts of technological and structural changes on energy consumption and identifies the factors that were primarily responsible for the energy-efficiency improvements. It is an interesting work that will be useful for policy makers in assessing the energy consequences of development strategies and for economists in analyzing the relationship between energy use and economic growth.

Economic Impact or Contribution contributes to the applied regional economic literature by providing a framework for handling a diverse set of projects and providing detailed case studies of fieldwork regarding the health care industry, higher education institutions, the nonprofit sector, infrastructure investment, and a major musical entertainment event. Economic Impact or Contribution accomplishes three major tasks by answering the following questions: What are the differences between the economic concepts used in economic versus fiscal assessment studies? How can we structure an economic and business issue or challenge? How can we create a research product that helps the project's sponsors solve their problem? This book has emerged as an answer to many research-related questions in dealing with regional business and economic issues and challenges.

This book presents alternative macroeconomic perspectives, primarily open economy, on the limitations of discretionary fiscal policy, with a focus on government spending. Following an overview on the post-crisis Keynesian revival and of the macro-foundations needed for subsequent analysis, different perspectives are expounded that highlight the failings of fiscal activism. These perspectives include extended loanable funds analysis, an expenditure-output related model incorporating money and exchange rates, and a dependent economy framework. The approaches are used to examine investment and net export crowding out effects and their implications for national income, and are then adapted to show the macroeconomic impact of different fiscal consolidation measures, revealing that the nature of fiscal repair is critical. A concluding chapter evaluates the nexus between budgetary policy and confidence, summarises the key failings of fiscal activism, and suggests fiscal policy goals. The book will appeal to university lecturers and researchers in macroeconomics and economists working in government and the private sector.

Water exploitation has increased notably in the world during the last 250 years since the onset of industrialisation. The relationships between economic processes and water use are complex and include many interwoven drivers such as: technological development, dietary choices and food production, climate change, demographic change, and policy reforms, among others. Ensuring food, water, and energy for the growing population remains a common global challenge. Taking on a multi- and inter-disciplinary viewpoint, Water Resources and Economic Processes offers an up-to-date collection of contributions from leading scholars and works to gather research on important aspects of relevant fields and methodologies, including: Historical and long-term overview of the relations between income growth, water use, and technological development; Water markets and collaborative actions' promise and threats in the fight against water stress; Impact of climate change on water productivity, including inter- and intra-annual variations; Urban reforms and surveys on the attitude of citizens towards private and public mitigation and preservation measures; Regional, national, and global comparative case-studies; International trade, migration, conf licts, and the globalisation of water; Methodological and empirical challenges of building future scenarios. This book is a key reference text for those studying water governance and management. It is suited to PhD students, national institutions, and NGO, as well as other professionals interested in understanding sustainable water use at the local, national, and international scales.

Since the start of the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, research on central banking has gained momentum due to unusual levels of central bank activism and unconventional monetary policy measures in many countries. While these policies drew significant attention to advanced economy central banks, there has been much less academic focus on central banking in emerging economies. This book extends the research on the political economy of central banking by focusing on the emerging economies in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the European periphery. Central banks are at the heart of economic policymaking, and their decisions have a significant impact on the social and economic well-being of citizens. Adopting an interdisciplinary political economy perspective, the contributions in this book explore the reciprocal relations between politics, economics, and central banks, and how the global and domestic political economy contexts influence central bank practices. The chapters employ diverse theoretical perspectives such as institutional and organizational theory, developmental state resource dependency, and gender studies, drawing on disciplines ranging from politics, international relations, public policy, management, finance, and sociology. This book will appeal to academics and students of central banking, political economy, and emerging economies, as well as professionals and policymakers engaged with central banks, monetary policy, and economic development.