This book analyses several aspects on the efficient resource allocation in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and the European sovereign debt crisis. The main focus of the volume is on recent European Union (EU) experience highlighting the interrelation between inherent structural rigidities and practical limitations in the conduct of sound economic policy. Special reference is made to Greece (evidencing unprecedented experience), the EU periphery countries and the US. This book will be of interest to academic and central bank researchers, business practitioners (in consultancy and finance) and graduate students, as it is a good example of how scholarly dialogue can contribute to contemporary high-quality policy debate on sound liquidity provision and financial stability in the Eurozone, as well as the effective ways to combat recession in the EU periphery countries.

A comparison of British and German industries' reaction to the opportunities and threats offered by the Single European Market (SEM) is presented here. The book outlines the effect that the SEM was expected to have on the two countries and contrasts this with actual progress, based on published data and a detailed study of four industries: retailing, pharmaceuticals, insurance and machine tools. It shows that while indeed the single European market has had an impact, many measures have had a far weaker effect than expected. The existence of other barriers not tackled by the SEM programme - weakened measures, poor implementation, global business trends and the recent recession - helped to reduce the impact of the SEM. Nevertheless it stands out as one of the most striking influences on British and German industries for many years. Germany, with its geographical advantage, longer-term approach and stronger manufacturing, seems the better placed to benefit overall. But the less regulated and, in some respects, more flexible UK economy may have competitive advantages as the pressures increase. It is no accident that it has been chosen so frequently as the best site within the EC for investment by firms from non-EC countries.

This book was prompted by the current, lingering financial crisis, which has its basis in the disorderly financial practices of the United States. These practices have resulted in an accumulated debt which now requires the United States to run financial policies at artificially low interest rates. In principle, these low interest rates should flood the markets with ready money. Since the spread for banks is very thin, however, and they must carefully discriminate between available risks and finance only those propositions with no risk, credit is not abundantly available. With staggering foreign debt and a myriad of other perils looming, this great nation is at peril for sure. In the tradition of the Heilbronn Symposium, the authors look at historical cases as a means of understanding the current situation and informing possible solutions to a problem that continues to affect the global economy. The volume analyzes cases such as Prussia, Greece, Italy, Estonia, and the European Union. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of economic history as well as policy makers who may benefit from an historical understanding of the economic challenges their countries currently face.

Analyzing the Gross National Product (GNP) and other national economic statistics is one way to look at the financial well being of a country. Another more revealing and more interesting way is to analyze the variety and amount of goods and services consumed by citizens, businesses, and the various levels of government. The "Handbook" presents a systematic and statistical portrait of consumption and wealth, allowing readers to better understand America's economic, political, and cultural landscape. This handbook focuses on the latest statistical information available on U.S. spending habits by exploring a wide range of economic, demographic, and geographic variables.

This book studies the strategic interactions between monetary and fiscal policies in the world economy. The world economy consists of two regions, say Europe and America. The policy makers are the central banks and the governments. The policy targets are low inflation, low unemployment, and low structural deficits. There are demand shocks, supply shocks, and mixed shocks. There are regional shocks and common shocks. This book develops a series of basic, intermediate, and more advanced models. Here the focus is on the Nash equilibrium. The key questions are: Given a shock, can policy interactions reduce the existing loss? And to what extent can they do so? Another topical issue is policy cooperation. To illustrate all of this there are a lot of numerical examples. The present book is part of a larger research project on European Monetary Union, see the references given at the back of the book. Some parts of this project were presented at the World Congress of the International Economic Association, at the International Conference on Macroeconomic Analysis, at the International Institute of Public Finance, and at the International Atlantic Economic Conference. Other parts were presented at the Macro Study Group of the German Economic Association, at the Annual Meeting of the Austrian Economic Association, at the Gottingen Workshop on International Economics, at the Halle Workshop on Monetary Economics, at the Research Seminar on Macroeconomics in Freiburg, at the Research Seminar on Economics in Kassel, and at the Passau Workshop on International Economics."

This book arose from our conviction that the NNS-DSGE approach to the analysis of aggregate market outcomes is fundamentally flawed. The practice of overcoming the SMD result by recurring to a fictitious RA leads to insurmountable methodological problems and lies at the root of DSGE models failure to satisfactorily explain real world features, like exchange rate and banking crises, bubbles and herding in financial markets, swings in the sentiment of consumers and entrepreneurs, asymmetries and persistence in aggregate variables, and so on. At odds with this view, our critique rests on the premise that any modern macroeconomy should be modeled instead as a complex system of heterogeneous interacting individuals, acting adaptively and autonomously according to simple and empirically validated rules of thumb. We call our proposed approach Bottom-up Adaptive Macroeconomics (BAM). The reason why we claim that the contents of this book can be inscribed in the realm of macroeconomics is threefold: i) We are looking for a framework that helps us to think coherently about the interrelationships among two or more markets. In what follows, in particular, three markets will be considered: the markets for goods, labor and loanable funds. In this respect, real time matters: what happens in one market depends on what has happened, on what is happening, or on what will happen in other markets. This implies that intertemporal coordination issues cannot be ignored. ii) Eventually, it s all about prices and quantities. However, we are mostly interested in aggregate prices and quantities, that is indexes built from the dispersed outcomes of the decentralized transactions of a large population of heterogeneous individuals. Each individual acts purposefully, but she knows anything about the levels of prices and quantities which clear markets in the aggregate. iii) In the hope of being allowed to purport scientific claims, BAM relies on the assumption that individual purposeful behaviours aggregates into regularities. Macro behaviour, however, can depart radically from what the individual units are trying to accomplish. It is in this sense that aggregate outcomes emerge from individual actions and interactions.

Economists increasingly agree on the nature of the development and social policies needed to halve poverty over the next ten years. A similar convergence is nowhere in sight in the case of macroeconomic policies. Disagreements in this area remain significant, exacerbated by rising financial instability and a string of banking and currency crises that impacted negatively on poverty, growing macro imbalances in some industrialized countries and the rapid development of difficult-to-regulate international financial markets. This volume presents a pro-poor macroeconomic policy allowing countries to recapture policy space, help promote growth, reduce inequality and diminish poverty in a sustainable way.

This book explains how the US dollar serves as the primary reserve currency for the international financial system and assesses its prospects for the future. The book provides an analysis of the main factors that have given rise to the global currency power of the dollar and the key benefits that have accrued to both the United States and other countries from this arrangement. It then considers the growing costs that can be associated with the dollar-centered reserve system and the prospects for the medium-term in terms of its potential threats to global financial stability. In the light of these considerations, the book examines three alternative currency arrangements that could address some or all of the defects associated with the global currency power of the dollar. These include a shift to a multi-reserve currency system, an enhancement of the IMF's role as an international lender of last resort and provider of global "safe" assets, and the introduction of central bank digital currencies. "A cogent, persuasive and timely look at the dollar's power." Kirkus Reviews

National income and products estimates are used extensively worldwide. During the 1950's P. Studenski's work "The Income of Nations" became a classic on the topic. With more extensive compilations, more sophisticated applications, the results and methodology and far-reaching international agreements, the international comparability in accounts is now insured. This volume supplements the earlier research in national accounting with a historical overview that shows the development in national income and product accounts. Readers: researchers and professionals in economy, statistics and accounting.

In this book export demand and supply are modeled simultaneously using a new proxy for globalization. Empirical estimates for the United States, Canada, and Germany show that the countries differ as to the price elasticities of demand and supply and the effects of globalization. However, the elasticity of exports to world production equals unity throughout, which is in line with constant returns to scale, but lower than the values found in previous studies that do not distinguish between growth and globalization.

This book is concerned with the problem of wage rigidities in macroeconomic theory, and their implications for public policy. It offers an analysis of the microeconomic foundations of rigid wages, considering their implications for normative economics, and their role in explaining involuntary unemployment. The initial chapters examine short-run macroeconomic equilibrium with nominal rigidities within the framework of fixed-price temporary equilibria. This is followed by an overview and assessment of the main microeconomic mechanisms likely to account for real wage rigidity. In this context new findings concerning microeconomic mechanisms likely to account for real wage rigidity, including implicit contract theory, union behaviour and efficiency wage models are reported. The effect of efficiency wages on macroeconomic fluctuations is also considered. Finally an analysis of the important public policy issues raised in the book is provided.

This is a groundbreaking volume of theory and strategy on political economy and polity of the twenty-first century, which unites domains of economics, politics, international relations, and the environment in an organic whole. Distilled in concrete terms, it elucidates the enigma of oil in view of the centrality of global social relations and with respect to two major exigencies of our time, namely, world peace, and defense of our ecosystem. A Prelude to the Foundation of Political Economy also highlights the need for detachment of US foreign policy from dependence on oil, to reveal rather vividly the illusion of America's power and leadership. This book is a wakeup call to the altered reality in which we live.

A topical insider view of causes and consequences of financial crises since the Mexican collapse of 1995. The book includes a detailed exploration of recent and ongoing firestorms, including the near meltdown of the global financial system and the euro crisis, and suggests ways to save the international financial and monetary system.

This proceedings book presents selected papers from the 10th international conference on the "Economies of the Balkan and Eastern European Countries in the Changing World" (EBEEC), held in Warsaw, Poland, in May 2018. In addition to discussing the latest research, it includes papers adopting a wide variety of theoretical approaches and empirical methodologies and covering a number of key areas, such as international economics, economic growth, finance and banking, insurance, healthcare, agriculture, labor and energy markets, innovation, management and marketing. In addition, the authors discuss policy instruments and best practices for the region. This book appeals to scholars and students in fields of economics and finance as well as practitioners interested in the development of the region.

Children play a crucial role in today's economy. According to some estimates, children spend or influence the spending of up to $500 billion annually. Journalists, sociologists, and media reformers often present mass marketing toward children as a recent fall from grace, but the roots of children's consumerism -- and the anxieties over it -- date back more than a century. Throughout the twentieth century, a wide variety of groups -- including advertisers, retailers, parents, social reformers, child experts, public schools, and children themselves -- helped to socialize children as consumers and struggled to define the proper boundaries of the market. The essays and documents in this volume illuminate the historical circumstances and cultural conflicts that helped to produce, shape, and legitimize children's consumerism. Focusing primarily on the period from the Gilded Age through the twentieth century, this book examines how and why children and adolescents acquired new economic roles as consumers, and how these new roles both reflected and produced dynamic changes in family life and the culture of capitalism. This volume also reveals how children and adolescents have used consumer goods to define personal identities and peer relationships -- sometimes in opposition to marketers' expectations and parental intentions.

A host of internationally recognized experts have been brought together to examine one of the most important sectors in today's world economy, the information sector. The study utilizes the most recent quantitative and econometric research on the media and information sectors and their markets. Most of the work presented is from two international conferences and other invited conferences.

The emergence of a new macro economy in Euro-Asia is a great challenge for academics and policy makers alike. Our book focuses on this macro economy and the monetary and fiscal policy responses. As the new environment has evolved over time, private behaviour as well as policy responses have changed. Policy makers as well as private agents had to learn the new environment. In our book we thus put heavy emphasis on uncertainty and learning. The first part of the book explores monetary policies allowing for uncertainty and time-varying behaviour of economic agents in markets, in particular in the labour market and the monetary policy responses to it. We study both forward and backward looking behaviour, learning and robust control as well as the role of financial markets for policies. The second part explores fiscal policy in the Euro-area, its sustainability, its effects on economic growth and the attempts of the Euro-area to stabilize the public debt. The third part explores monetary and fiscal policy interactions in the Euro-area countries. Since there are many national fiscal authorities but only one monetary authority this is a particularly challenging problem of Euro-area countries. Methodologically, we use modern methods such as advanced econometric methodology, learning models that allows to study time varying behaviour, and dynamic macro modelling and dynamic optimization.

The deregulation of domestic financial markets and the capital account in developing countries has frequently been associated with financial turmoil and macro volatility. The book analyzes the experience of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Nigeria, Russia, South Africa, and Thailand, and draws implications for building development-friendly domestic and international financial architectures. The recommendations are made in light of the key challenge: to design and implement policies able to control macro volatility while building the rules of the financial game that will ultimately contribute to mitigating the sources of aggregate risk.

From Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times bestselling author Robert Shiller, a groundbreaking account of how stories help drive economic events-and why financial panics can spread like epidemic viruses Stories people tell-about financial confidence or panic, housing booms, or Bitcoin-can go viral and powerfully affect economies, but such narratives have traditionally been ignored in economics and finance because they seem anecdotal and unscientific. In this groundbreaking book, Robert Shiller explains why we ignore these stories at our peril-and how we can begin to take them seriously. Using a rich array of examples and data, Shiller argues that studying popular stories that influence individual and collective economic behavior-what he calls "narrative economics"-may vastly improve our ability to predict, prepare for, and lessen the damage of financial crises and other major economic events. The result is nothing less than a new way to think about the economy, economic change, and economics. In a new preface, Shiller reflects on some of the challenges facing narrative economics, discusses the connection between disease epidemics and economic epidemics, and suggests why epidemiology may hold lessons for fighting economic contagions.

Financial education offers definite and profitable rewards.

Numerous readers of "GOLD AHEAD" have reported unexpected and valuable results from things learned which they had the opportunity to use at once to their financial betterment.

Such results are important. They show that the clearer our insight, the better we take advantage of our opportunities. But, after all, far greater results will come later. Such knowledge can be carried through life always available to help promote the owner's financial welfare.

Plans of study recommended for self development groups, school and college classes, families and individuals follow. A detailed study of each tale with the questions prepared for this purpose is recommended.

In its latest Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) projects that without further action the global average surface t- perature would rise by a further 1. 8-4. 0 DegreesC until the end of this century. But even if the rise in temperature could be limited to the lower end of this range, irreversible and possibly catastrophic changes are likely to occur. Consequently, the protection of the earth's atmosphere requires substantial efforts to reduce CO and other green- 2 house gas emissions - especially in countries with very high per capita emissions. To limit the imminent rise in temperature, in the Kyoto-Protocol, the European Union has committed itself to reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases by 8% up to 2008-2012 compared to 1990 levels. Within the EU burden sharing agr- ment, some countries have to achieve even higher emissions reductions. Germany was assigned a reduction target of 21%. The entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol in February 2005 marks a first step towards meting global climate targets, but more ambitious action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is needed after 2012, when the Kyoto targets expire. Under German presidency, the EU has committed itself to unilaterally reduce its greenhouse gas emissions until 2020 by 20%. In case a Post- Kyoto agreement can be reached, the EU reduction target would be 30% (CEU, 2007).

This book focuses on the concepts of social capital, corporate social responsibility, and economic development in relation to economic theory of institutions and behavioural economics. It also takes a macroeconomic and empirical approach, on the relationship between social capital, ethical behaviour and economic development.

This study was motivated by an awareness of the ever-growing importance of technology on productivity and power in the information age. It examines the relationship among national security, economic competition, and technology. An underlying premise is that in an era of diminished military confrontation, economic and technological power are acquiring enhanced importance in national security considerations. Green believes that this is bound to promote closer coordination between government and private industry, but not without tensions. Using both a public policy and an economic focus, his work seeks to clarify the debate on high technology industrial policy and to address the policy question of whether and how government should respond to competitive assaults in strategic industries.

This volume addresses trends, causes, and consequences of the new economy in micro- and macroeconomic terms. Modern information and communications technologies increase the efficiency of traditional activities and pave the way for creating new activities and products. How will market participants cope with the challenges of the new economy and which role will governments play in a dramatically changing world?The book presents a thorough analysis of the effects of new technologies and products on overall productivity and on goods markets, labor markets, and financial markets. It also deals with the implications of the new economy for the welfare state and discusses the issue of whether there is a need for new regulatory devices, in particular in the field of international trade in goods and services.

Major theoretical approaches stress the superiority of privately-owned over state-owned companies without addressing how corporate performance should best be measured. This book investigates performance of both private and state-owned, applying factor analysis to compare the two states.