Why do some nations and cities attain high levels of economic and social prosperity? What makes them so successful? The kinds of factors habitually cited in answer to these questions explain why nations improve their economic and social performance but not why a small group of nations (or cities) perform much better than the rest. Economists stress efficient markets, effective industries and functional factors like transport, health, education, and infrastructure. Political scientists emphasize honest and democratic government. This book argues that three further factors are key: paradoxes, patterns, and portals. To an unusual degree, the world's most prosperous economies and societies think and act paradoxically. At their core are enigmatic, puzzle-like belief systems that elicit cooperation via abstract patterns rather than personal connections. They are often accompanied by high levels of autodidactic self-directed learning and intense creation in the arts and sciences. These factors, when combined, facilitate large-scale interactions between strangers and, in so doing, they energize markets, industries, cities, and publics. Pattern-based political economies are especially prominent in the portal cities, regions, and nations that are concentrated along the world's maritime circumference in North America, East Asia, North-Western Europe, and Australasia. It is only by integrating additional cognitive, cultural, creative, and geographic elements that we can truly understand the successes of prosperous economies. This book represents a significant contribution to the literature on political economy, economic growth, and prosperity.

This book provides readers with essential concepts from financial economics for an integrated study of the financial system and the real economy. It discusses how long-term market prices are determined and affected by population growth, technological progress and non-renewable resources. The meaning of market prices is examined from the perspective of households and from the perspective of firms. The book therefore connects different fields of finance, which usually focus only on either the households' side or the firms' side.

Thorstein Veblen and Hyman Minsky are seminal thinkers who place great importance on the interaction between processes that link finance and financial markets with economic and social evolution. This book makes a contribution to the recontextualisation of the habitual, non-evolutionary and laissez-faire macroeconomic theory and policy, thus exposing the relevant contribution of the macro-theories of Veblen and Minsky. The book starts with an elucidation of Veblen's cultural theory of insufficient private demand, waste and financial fragility and instability. It shows how speculative and parasitic leverage engenders solvency illusions and risk, pecuniary efficiency, low quality liability structures and socially destructive boom-bust cycles. Minsky's creative destruction liquidity processes and coordination failures of cash flow escalate the aforementioned path-dependent developments and explosive dynamics of capitalist economies. The main themes of the book are the cultural, evolutionary and holistic vision of macroeconomics, the evolving habits of mind, routines and financial institutions, the speculative, manipulated and unstable financial markets, as well as the financial macroeconomic destabilizing effects of pecuniary and parasitic consumption and investment. This book will be of great interest to researchers, intellectuals and students pursuing economics and finance.

This Oxford Handbook provides a fresh overall view and interpretation of the modern economic growth of one of the largest European countries, whose economic history is less known internationally than that of other comparably large and successful economies. It will provide, for the first time, a comprehensive, quantitative "new economic history" of Italy.
The handbook offers an interpretation of the main successes and failures of the Italian economy at a macro level, the research--conducted by a large international team of scholars --contains entirely new quantitative results and interpretations, spanning the entire 150-year period since the unification of Italy, on a large number of issues. By providing a comprehensive view of the successes and failures of Italian firms, workers, and policy makers in responding to the challenges of the international business cycle, the book crucially shapes relevant questions on the reasons for the current unsatisfactory response of the Italian economy to the ongoing "second globalization." Most chapters of the handbook are co-authored by both an Italian and a foreign scholar.

These essays on Post-Keynesian economics were written expressly for a volume to honour the life and work of Alfred Eichner. The original countributions - that critically examine and extend ideas in Eichner's "The Macrodynamics of Advanced Market Economies" are organized in seven sections that correspond to areas of economics in which Eichner made a significant contribution. Part 1 deals with the megacorp, a theory of firm pricing and investment that was one of Eichner's most important contributions. Issues of productivity and technical change, that lie at the center of Eichner's macrodynamic model, are the focus of part 1 and parts 3 and 4 elaborate on Eichner's work on growth and money and yield insights into the theoretical disagreements among the Post-Keynesians themselves. Part 5 presents a number of examples of non-neo-classical model building. Part 6 opens with a critique of the "new economic history" that leads to other essays on thorny methodological issues confronting Post-Keynesians. Part 7 gives a European perspective on North American Post-Keynesian economics. The essays reveal the relationships between Eichner's work and Institutionalist and Marxian economics. At the same time, the book raises current theoretical conflicts among these groups as well as among Post-Keynesians themselves. This book compliments Alfred S.Eichner's "The Macrodynamics of Advanced Market Economies", also published in 1991, and is appropriate for scholars and upper-level undergraduates and graduate students.

This volume explores a wide range of case studies, analyses, histories, and polemics on the fate of post-socialist Europe- and why that matters to readers today. Nearly 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the post-socialist economies of the former East remain adrift, buffeted by the international financial crisis, the Ukraine crisis, and the ongoing instability in the European Union. This new book brings together a diverse range of scholars in offering a comprehensive look at the struggles faced by policymakers, economists and business people across the former East, and the ways that they responded to crisis. This volume also will be of great value to policymakers, academics, historians, and economists seeking to understand possible influence of China's One Belt One Road policy on Eastern Europe and Russia.

The book covers a wide range of issues in Turkish economy and aims to discuss the problems, challenges and potential of Turkey in various sectors. The topics covered in the book include areas related to macroeconomics and monetary economics (inflation expectations, determinants and conduct of monetary policy), labor economics (earning differences, overeducation in labor markets), health economics (adult obesity), tourism economics (tourism response to disruptive events) and energy economics (solar energy systems). The book is written in a format so that general readers who are interested in the Turkish economy can easily read and have a deep understanding of the current economic issues in Turkey. In addition, the book is suitable for usage in the related courses as a textbook at the undergrauate and masters level in the fields of economics and business.

Planned as a number of independent volumes this work covers the years 1929-1937, the crucial period of the first two five-year plans, which saw the transformation of the Soviet Union from a peasant country into an industrial power. An examination of Soviet industrialization is seen as important in increasing an understanding of why the Soviet system took its present form; and as a case study of state-managed industrialization, should illuminate the economic problems of developing countries and questions of state planning generally. This book, the third part of the trilogy, re-examines the breakdown of the Soviet socialist market economy at the end of the 1920s and assesses its replacement by Stalinist centralized planning. The author explains how in those days of heroism and enthusiasm, hunger and repression, crucial Soviet economic and political institutions were established and are only now being effectively challenged by Gorbachev's revolution. While complementing the previous two volumes of this author's work this book is designed to be read independently. It sheds new light on a dramatic moment in Soviet history and in the formation of the Soviet system, by drawing on Soviet a

This book discusses the formation of the current huge property bubbles in many Asian economies and the high likelihood of another Asian financial crisis due to the eventual bursting of these property bubbles. In particular, it explains:In view of the huge costs due to the macroeconomic policy mistakes in many developing economies and some advanced economies, this book recommends the development of a new economic discipline on macroeconomic management and rigorous selection procedures of key economic and monetary officials. If properly done, these would help pre-empt financial crises, currency crises and asset bubbles in the future.

The goal of this book is to assess the efficacy of India's financial deregulation programme by analyzing the developments in cost efficiency and total factor productivity growth across different ownership types and size classes in the banking sector over the post-deregulation years. The work also gauges the impact of inclusion or exclusion of a proxy for non-traditional activities on the cost efficiency estimates for Indian banks, and ranking of distinct ownership groups. It also investigates the hitherto neglected aspect of the nature of returns-to-scale in the Indian banking industry. In addition, the work explores the key bank-specific factors that explain the inter-bank variations in efficiency and productivity growth. Overall, the empirical results of this work allow us to ascertain whether the gradualist approach to reforming the banking system in a developing economy like India has yielded the most significant policy goal of achieving efficiency and productivity gains. The authors believe that the findings of this book could give useful policy directions and suggestions to other developing economies that have embarked on a deregulation path or are contemplating doing so.

This book evaluates Bangladesh's impressive economic and social progress, more often referred to as a 'development surprise'. In doing so, the book examines the gap in existing explanations of Bangladesh's development and then offers an empirically informed analysis of a range of distinctive factors, policies, and actions that have individually and collectively contributed to the progress of Bangladesh. In an inclusive way, the book covers the developmental role, relation, and impact of poverty reduction, access to finance, progress in education and social empowerment, reduction in the climatic vulnerability, and evolving sectoral growth activities in the agriculture, garments, and light industries. It also takes into account the important role of the government and NGOs in the development process, identifies bottlenecks and challenges to Bangladesh's future development path and suggests measures to overcome them. By providing an inclusive narrative to theorize Bangladesh's development, which is still missing in the public discourse, this book posits that Bangladesh per se can offer a development model to other developing countries.

This title was first published in 2000: An in depth analysis of employment and technology issues in the housing and construction industries of developing countries, in the context of globalization of economies and increased opportunities for advanced technology transfer. Supported by case studies from Asia including the misallocation of resources that led to the Asian crisis of 1997 and the experience of Shanghai in advanced technology transfer. Ganesan advances a number of strategies to achieve higher employment creation, a proper mix of resources and sustained growth.

This book is about the causes and consequences of economic inequality in the advanced market economies of today. It is commonplace that in market systems people choose their own individual economic destinies, but of course the choices people make are importantly determined by the alternatives available to them: economic disparity arises mainly from unequal opportunity. Yet this merely begs the question; from whence do the vast existing inequalities of opportunity arise? This book theorizes power and social class as the real crux of economic inequality. Most of mainstream economics studiously eschews questions involving social power, preferring to focus instead on "individual choice subject to constraint" in contexts of "well-functioning markets". Yet both "extra-market" power structures and power structures arising from within the market system itself are unavoidably characteristic of real-world market-based economies. The normal working of labor and financial markets engenders an inherent wealth-favoring bias in the distribution of opportunities for occupational choice. But that bias is greatly compounded by the economic, social, political and cultural power structures that constitute the class system. For those power structures work to distribute economic benefit to class elites, and are in turn undergirded by the disparities of wealth they thus help engender. Inequality and Power offers an economic analysis of the power structures constituting that class system: employers' power over employees; the power of certain businesses over others; professionals' power over their clients and other employees; cultural power in the media and education systems; and political power in "democratic" government. Schutz argues that a "class analysis" of the trend of increasing economic inequality today is superior to the mainstream economic analysis of that trend. After considering what is wrong with power-based inequality in term of criteria of distributive justice and economic functionality, the book concludes with an outline of various possible correctives. This book should be of interest to students and researchers in economics, sociology, political science and philosophy, as well as anyone interested in the theories of social class.

'It is written in clear English, without equations, and with plenty of charts to ground oneaEURO (TM)s understanding in the real world ... The authors make a compelling case that economists need to take their simplifying assumptions more seriously, to embrace statistical techniques that can track dynamic markets with time-varying parameters, and to always be aware of the importance of shifts in the underlying context.'Global Commodities Applied Research DigestEconomics Gone Astray is a collection of essays on critical topics in macroeconomics that frame the issues in terms of clearly stated assumptions, highlighting the errors often made by professional economists, and allowing readers to better analyze market behavior and the economic consequences of policy decisions.The book differs from textbook economics, as it tackles sophisticated topics without using mathematics or technical jargon. This makes the book highly accessible to all types of readers, from investors and investment professionals, to professors and their students.The book's style integrates a large quantity of clearly drawn charts which help anchor the readers' perceptions of the topics being examined, from inflation to taxes, to demographics.

First published in 1997, this volume examines how Bulgaria has been an early starter, but a slow and often erratic mover in the path of stabilization and systemic transition. This book provides a most useful account of the development to date, and of the costs associated with Bulgarian strategy (or lack of), empirical analysis and theoretical reflections, especially in comparison with other transition economies. It will be of great interest to any scholar, official or businessman involved not only with Bulgaria, but more generally with post-communist countries.

This book highlights the critical relationship between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) associated with its trade interdependency. As the largest trade partner in the region, China has not only presented itself with opportunities for ASEAN to tap its market, but also created great challenges for the region. The fundamental question that this book addresses, therefore, is whether China's engagement with ASEAN comes at a cost for the latter following from the systemic risks tied to the China-centric supply chains in the region. The trade interactions between China and ASEAN, though extensively explored, are less understood in the context of its influence over the region amidst the recent changing dynamics that follow from China's global engagement and backlash from major powers. The book therefore resolutely rises against stereotypes and cliches, making readers reconsider many oversimplified assumptions of the benefits of trade engagement where economies are interconnected through complex production chains.

The fact that environmental issues, which cause a significant externality within global goods, have gained a global dimension, necessitated more concrete steps for challenging with environmental issues. At this point, efforts to reduce environmental issues and protect the environment have been on the axis of sustainability. This book contains theoretical and empirical researches written by academicians and researches in the field of environment and sustainability. In the contributions, the macro dimensions of environmental pollution such as economic growth, health sector and technological development are examined. In addition to these, the contributors deal with micro dimensions such as consumption, marketing, accounting and firm behavior both in theory and empirically.

First published in 1998, this volume focuses on the special category of countries popularly referred to as 'transition economies' through an analysis of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and their role in Asian economies, with a view to assessing whether they could or should provide a model for African countries. The present volume explores the institutional peculiarities displayed by 'transition economies'. These are economies which are undergoing a comprehensive and fundamental societal transformation with a view to creating a utopian communist society within the frame of a centrally administered economy, then a pluralistic society based on a market economy and the rule of law. Much of the debate on the economic performance of African LCD's has focused on informal sector activities or on the imperative to achieve structural adjustment. By highlighting instead the challenges facing two of the least successful among the African economies - Ethiopia and Tanzania, both of which share a socialist past - this book moves beyond the above issues. It argues that institutional adjustment is critical to the prospects for success in developing transition economies. As such the book investigates the transaction costs environment within which small-scale industrial activities are set. By drawing extensively on the Asian experience, (predominantly China and Vietnam but also India and Taiwan), it identifies sources of transaction costs by examining not only the transactional disadvantages of small-scale production, but also the past and present sources of institutional inefficiency.

Written by four recognized experts with senior experience in research and government, this text is the first comprehensive survival kit for students and practitioners of economic policy. It is set to become an indispensable resource for everyone involved or interested in modern economic policy. Academic scholars willing to engage in policy discussions and students at graduate or advanced undergraduate levels will find it an essential bridge to the policy world.
What makes the book unique is that it combines like no other, facts-based analysis, state-of-the art theories and models, and insights from first-hand policy experience at national and international levels. The book has grown out of ten years of experience teaching economic policy at the graduate level. It provides an intellectually coherent framework to understand the potentialities and limits of economic policy. It addresses positive dimensions (how do policies impact on modern economies?), normative dimensions (what should policymakers aim to achieve and against what should their action be judged?) and political-economy constraints (which are the limits and obstacles to public intervention?). It fills an important gap by reconciling in each major policy area stylized facts of recent economic history, key questions faced by contemporary policymakers, and essential lessons from theory which are captured and explained in a clear, concise, and self-contained way.
All major areas of domestic and international policymaking are covered: fiscal policy, monetary policy, international finance and exchange-rate policy, tax policy, and long-term growth policies. The book concludes with a special chapter on the lessons of the financial crisis.
The authors are intellectually non-partisan and they draw examples from various countries and experiences; from emerging markets to developing economies, shedding light when necessary on local specificities such as European Union rules and instruments. Economic Policy: Theory and Practice is the essential guide to economic policy in the new post-crisis context.

This book contains at least three main highlights: breaking through the limitations of the mainstream Western economics system and the market theory framework, correctly explaining the successful experience of China's reform and opening up over the past 40 years from an economic perspective, and developing a new economics system and market theory. China's reform and opening up and innovative developments have provided a wide range of materials and resources for this theory; the results of this research will be integrated into world economic theories and serve the economic development and economic growth across the world.

This volume focuses on current problems in banking that have the potential not only for disrupting the smooth provision of banking and other financial services, but also for adversely affecting domestic and even international macroeconomic activity. Because serious banking problems have been experienced in most countries in recent years, the papers both focus on fragility and regulation in different countries and are authored by leading financial economists in six different countries including Belgium, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States. By providing an international perspective, the papers provide insights into the commonality of banking problems in different countries and the role of regulation both in attempting to prevent and in potentially, albeit unintentionally, encouraging bank crises. As such, the papers add to our storehouse of knowledge on the causes, symptoms, and consequences of banking problems across countries.

Based on the observation of economic reality, this book provides for the foundations of a new structure of national payment systems. Specifically, to this end, a rigorous accounting for money transactions, savings, and invested profit is suggested, with a major aim to settle sustainable lending levels. Profit lies at the heart of economic activities. Indeed, companies, from small to large, seek net gains to remunerate shareholders and to increase their assets. Yet, economists are far from sharing a common theory of profit. Using mathematical tools and a discursive approach, this book contributes to the debates in such regard, in the attempt to provide new answers to old economic issues. What is macroeconomic profit? Is there any relationship between wages, lending, and profit? This book is an accesible resource for economists and financial experts as well as global economics students, researchers, academics and historians alike. It will challenge policy-makers and professionals and lead them on a thought-provoking journey through the realm of macroeconomics.

The concept of risk-sharing in financial and social contracts is one of the unique features of Islamic finance. Many theoretical studies generally claim superiority of an Islamic financial system based on pure equity and participatory modes of financing, while empirical studies provide mixed results. Studies and discussions are needed to fully understand how Islamic finance could contribute to the ongoing discussion of financial stability. Against this background, this book addresses various aspects of Islamic finance and the risk-sharing mechanism contributions to the overall macroeconomic and financial stability. Undoubtedly, the findings and recommendation from this book should be of great interest not only to future academic researchers in the field of macroeconomic stability and Islamic finance, but also to policy makers and regulators who are keen on drawing lessons from Islamic finance experiences to prevent similar crisis in the future.

Wealth and money, which are meant to be sources of human happiness and facilitators of good social relations has instead become a monstrosity beyond human control. The unbridled quest to make money and accumulate wealth as well as assign social signification on the basis of the outcome of individuals' efforts in the process has ended up distorting existence and the meaning of being human itself. This work brings together a collection of very provocative and challenging articles that confront the problems created by wealth. Can there be happiness when wealth is increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands? Can wealth really bring happiness? And what are the implications of the current trend to commodify everything for the project of human happiness? The contributors to the volume argue that there is a need to change wealth accumulation and its core purpose. They contend that from wealth accumulation the gear must change to wealth alleviation, because the ways the rich become wealthy often correlate with the ways the number of the poor increase. Following from this, they argue that rather than the current focus on poverty alleviation, the focus should shift to wealth alleviation because a happy future for all lies in promoting human well-being and removing human ill-being through the spring wells of solidarity and humanity. ______ Professor Mammo Muchie was born in Ethiopia and educated until matriculation in Gonder. He did his graduate studies at Columbia University, USA and his Mphil and PhD degrees at Sussex University. Professor Muchie has taught and researched at various Universities including Cambridge University, and Amsterdam University in The Netherlands. He is currently Director of Research Centre on Development & International Relations, Aalborg University, Denmark. Li Xing was born in China, and holds a PhD in Development Studies and International Relations. Dr Xing has published profusely on global politics, international relations and development issues. His main research interest is on China and East Asia. He is currently an Associate Professor at the Research Centre for Development and International Relations, Aalborg University, Denmark.

Volumes 45a and 45b of Advances in Econometrics honor Joon Y. Park, Wisnewsky Professor of Human Studies and Professor of Economics at Indiana University. Professor Park has made numerous and substantive contributions to the field of econometrics since beginning his academic career in the mid-1980s and has held positions at Cornell University, University of Toronto, Seoul National University, Rice University, Texas A&M University, and Sungkyunkwan University. This first volume, Essays in Honor of Joon Y. Park: Econometric Theory, features contributions to econometric theory related to Professor Park’s analysis of time series and particularly related to the research of the first two or so decades of his career.