This book refutes prevailing theories that attribute post-1950 state per capita income convergence to (1) neo-classical adjustment mechanisms, (2) institutional sclerosis, and (3) southern industrialization. Wheat and Crown argue that southern income was low because of slavery's legacy--sharecropping, agricultural dependence, low urbanization, poor education, high Black population percentages, and low wage rates. The legacy's dominant feature was the sharecropper-tenant farmer system, which replaced slavery. Sharecropping was the foundation of southern poverty. Sharecropping's collapse, beginning around 1950, affected all of the other features of slavery's legacy. For example, millions of sharecroppers out-migrated from the South, shifting poverty to the North and lowering the South's Black percentage. This out-migration, white in-migration, and the civil rights movement jointly raised educational attainment in the South, further boosting southern income. Southern industrialization had only a marginally significant effect. In 1950's high income region, the West, the transport cost element in the price of manufactured goods shrank because of (1) transportation improvements and (2) rapid manufacturing growth, which reduced the need for long distance imports from the Manufacturing Belt. The resulting decline in the West's relative cost of living led to wage adjustments. Consequently, the West--despite having the highest manufacturing growth rates--had the nation's lowest per-capita income growth rates. Agricultural decline and educational gains stimulated income growth in the Plains. Nationally, per-capita employment gains were a strong influence.

This book provides fresh insights into concepts, methods and new research findings on the causes of excessive food price volatility. It also discusses the implications for food security and policy responses to mitigate excessive volatility. The approaches applied by the contributors range from on-the-ground surveys, to panel econometrics and innovative high-frequency time series analysis as well as computational economics methods. It offers policy analysts and decision-makers guidance on dealing with extreme volatility.

Kula contends that conventional time-dependent theories in welfare economics are based on the unwarranted assumption that people live forever, an assumption that underpins the criteria for many decision-making activities and one that leads public sector policy makers to discriminate against future generations. It is seen in its most extreme in decision making on such long-term projects as nuclear power facilities, whose effects will be visited upon many future generations. How did this assumption gain currency and influence? Kula says, this oddity has been imposed by mathematical economists who now dominate the scene. Kula aggressively challenges these theories, which he alleges are untrue and unjust, provides an alternative method for discounting, and shows how its application can yield dramatically positive results. His book is thus a unique, important contribution to the theory and practice of decision making in public endeavors, intended not only for academics but equally for their practitioner colleagues in all parts of the world.

Kula corrects the conventional theory by assuming societal models in which individuals are mortal and generations overlap. From this emerges a new discounting theory which leads to outcomes that are dramatically different from the old ones. The new criterion is called modified discounting, and can be readily applied to real-life projects. In Part I, Kula lays out his theory and constructs the new decision-making method, in which public policy makers accept the proposition that all generations ought to be treated equitably. Then, in Part II, he provides five case studies to illustrate his theory, each devoted to major public activities such as nuclear waste disposal, forestry, agriculture, and urban transport, and based on experiences in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland.

The choice of currency denomination, indexation, and maturity structure of public debt is an increasingly important aspect of policy in a world of high debts and and financially integrated markets. This book surveys theories and evidence on public debt composition and debt returns with the goal of emphasizing the main policy issues.

This study examines the process of capital accumulation at the level of the business firm, linking it to the macro-level of the world-economy as explicated by Hopkins and Wallerstein. Focusing upon the timber industry in the nineteenth century, and using primary archival material, the work analyzes how capital operates in the resource sector in the world-economy. The purpose is to refine further our understanding of capitalism as a mode of social organization and production, and in the process, refine contemporary theories of social change. In terms of coverage, the book addresses the timber industry over the course of the nineteenth century and provides an historical reconstruction of that industry. Its primary focus, however, is on the main features of timber and lumber production as a process of capital accumulation. The study will be of interest to scholars of social change and economic transformation, economic history, and political sociology.

This contributed volume combines approaches of the current inequality debate with aspects of finance based on profound macroeconomic model analyses. Research on inequality has had a long tradition in economics. With the financial crisis from 2007, not only output decreased tremendously, but also inequality has risen since then. The book presents selected contributions of a workshop held at Bielefeld University in 2016 and features additional papers written by experts in the field. A mixture of established researchers and young scholars presents both theoretical and empirical frameworks to analyze the subject.

Focusing on the international dimension of macroeconomic policy, this handbook covers the main areas of modern macroeconomic policy in open economies. The emphasis is on policy applications rather than the development of economic theory. There are three basic goals: (1) an understanding of how economic theories affect actual policy making, (2) a description of the institutional and conceptual development of the international economy, and (3) an explanation of the way policy-making institutions deal with the so-called international economy. The handbook consists of an introductory chapter and four parts. The first treats macroeconomic policy-making from the home country versus the rest of the world perspective. The second part stresses policies among interacting and reacting countries. The third part considers the development of world capital markets and the international monetary system as important parts of the policy environment. The final part details macroeconomic policies in the G7 and Latin American countries.

This book explores the integrity of equity markets, addressing such issues as the exchange vs. customer perspective on price discovery and the ways market participants deal with key regulatory concerns. Do market practitioners pass the integrity test? How does "market integrity" play out globally? What is the overall veracity of the marketplace? These are some of the key questions considered in this volume from the viewpoints of traders, economists, financial market strategists and exchange representative. Titled after the Baruch College Financial Markets Conference, Market Integrity: Do Our Equity Markets Pass the Test?, this book is of interest to market practitioners, trading professionals, academics and students in the field of financial markets. The Zicklin School of Business Financial Markets Series presents the insights emerging from a sequence of conferences hosted by the Zicklin School at Baruch College for industry professionals, regulators and scholars. Much more than historical documents, the transcripts from the conferences are edited for clarity, perspective and context; material and comments from subsequent interviews with the panelists and speakers are integrated for a complete thematic presentation. Each book is focused on a well-delineated topic, but all deliver broader insights into the quality and efficiency of the U.S. equity markets and the dynamic forces changing them.

After years of relative neglect, the reconstruction of post-war Germany has recently become a major research focus for historians. The contributors to this volume were among the first to evaluate the archives relevant to their topic and are hence able to present many fresh insights into Allied occupation policy in the late 1940s, revealing the painful adjustment which German industry, institutions and citizens had to make in the post-1945 world.

This book provides a comprehensive look at the changes that have occurred in the distributions of both income and wealth in the United States since 1960. Both historical and current data are used in the analysis of the interactive effects of these two distributions on the standards of living of various segments of American families. In assessing the changing pattern of the distribution of income, the author employs a variety of standards against which to measure the level of income received by various segments of the population. This book is unique in that the analysis looks at all income classes. Such topics as the causes of poverty, the shrinking middle class, and the concentration of wealth holdings amongst the rich are all examined in detail. The book also explores the impacts of both distributions on such specific groups as Blacks, Hispanics, women, and children. In the final chapter, the author proposes a series of policy measures that should be pursued to move the United States toward more equitable distributions of both income and wealth.

Part One of the book examines the distribution of income during the period 1960-88. Part Two looks at the changing distribution of wealth in the United States. The work concludes with an examination of the effects of the distribution of wealth on the distribution of income; a review of the causes of the patterns of distribution as seen in the data; and a discussion of the effects of these changes upon American society. Individuals associated with policy planning groups, both in government and in the private sector, including advocacy groups, should find this book quite useful to their work. It should also appeal to academics concerned with the issues of economics of poverty, the economics of discrimination, human capital theory, and urban economics.

This book examines the challenges for the life insurance sector in Europe arising from new technologies, socio-cultural and demographic trends, and the financial crisis. It presents theoretical and applied research in all areas related to life insurance products and markets, and explores future determinants of the insurance industry's development by highlighting novel solutions in insurance supervision and trends in consumer protection. Drawing on their academic and practical expertise, the contributors identify problems relating to risk analysis and evaluation, demographic challenges, consumer protection, product distribution, mortality risk modeling, applications of life insurance in contemporary pension systems, financial stability and solvency of life insurers. They also examine the impact of population aging on life insurance markets and the role of digitalization. Lastly, based on an analysis of early experiences with the implementation of the Solvency II system, the book provides policy recommendations for the development of life insurance in Europe.

A pioneering contribution to economic literature, this volume presents a theoretical and empirical study of the relationship between entrepreneurship and the process of long-term regional change. Based on an exhaustive review of classical works in historical, managerial, and spatial economics, Suarez-Villa identifies five major innovative entrepreneurial roles and their historical antecedents. He then explores the macro effects of these roles by analyzing data for a 94-year period, demonstrating the relationship between the emergence of each role and the occurence of major changes in the sectoral and regional economies.

Following an introductory chapter that addresses economic change as an ongoing process, Suarez-Villa defines the various entrepreneurial roles in two theoretical chapters that examine the historical causes for their emergence and show how each can be viewed as an innovative agent of change. The empirical analysis of the succeeding chapters provides important new insights into the sectoral transformations of the U.S. regional economies promoted by the changing historical roles of entrepreneurship and the organizations through which it acts. Using U.S. national and regional data over the period 1889-1983 for agriculture, manufacturing, and distributive activities and services, as well as changes in regional, urban, and rural populations, the author identifies changes in regional productivity and employment for various sectors and the place of entrepreneurial activity in these changes. Concluding that entrepreneurship is an important but usually neglected component of regional economic change, Suarez-Villa draws conclusions from a long-term perspective, addressing such issues as entrepreneurial effectiveness, sectoral restructuring, and spatial impacts. Three appendixes, detailed notes, and a bibliography include important additional information for the student and researcher.

In terms of economics, the twenty-first century promises to be one of experiments and mixed economies that display features of both a private enterprise market and an intrusive government sector. To fully understand this coming trend, William Hixson presents this study of the U.S. economy since World War I and its experiments with mixed economics. Hixson describes how the largely laissez-faire economy prior to 1929 was so structured to make a crisis of illiquidity and overindebtedness inevitable, and how the mixed economy that has prevailed since World War II is structured to result in a similar crisis. His work challenges the generally accepted views of both U.S. and Marxist economists.

Following a brief introduction that outlines Hixson's approach and theoretical framework, the book begins with a seven-chapter study of the basic operating principles and procedures of a laissez faire economy. The next three chapters examine the Great Crash of 1929 and how it was a predictable outcome of the U.S. economy's operation in a laissez-faire mode. A set of four chapters then analyze the emergence of the government sector as an increasingly significant factor, and the evolution and institutionalization of mixed economy. The last set of chapters considers the past four decades of a mixed economy and why it lacks long-term viability, while the concluding two chapters suggest changes in operating principles and financial practices to make the mixed economy a viable one. This work will be a valuable resource for professionals involved in all types of financial and investing fields, as well as for students and scholars of economics and national economies.

This volume comprises papers presented at the 8th international conference "The Economies of the Balkan and Eastern European Countries in the Changing World" (EBEEC) held in Split, Croatia in 2016. The papers cover a wide range of current issues relevant for the whole of Eastern Europe, such as European integration, economic growth, labour markets, education and tourism. Written by experienced researchers in the field of economic challenges for Eastern Europe, the papers not only analyse recent problems, but also offer policies to resolve them. Furthermore, they offer insights into the theoretical and empirical foundations of the economic processes described. The proceedings of the conference appeals to all those interested in the further economic development of the Balkan and Eastern European countries.

Beyond Conventional Economics: Selected Works of E Ray Canterbery presents a collation of Canterbery's many contributions to economics. This volume marks the first time that his complete works have been presented, with the scope of the works ranging from microeconomics and macroeconomics to history of thought and methodology. If there is one theme that connects the contributions, it is Canterbery's long-abiding concern with the income and wealth distributions. They are front-and-center in his microeconomics, macroeconomics, history of thought, and even some of his theories of foreign exchange and speculation. Persona who appear in these pages include Abba Lerner, Harry Johnson, Hyman Minsky, Michal Kalecki, Pierro Sraffa, Kenneth Boulding, John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Alfred Eichner, Thorstein Veblen, John Kenneth Galbraith, Joan Robinson, Ayn Rand, Ronald Coase, Lester Thurow, Sven Arnt, and H Peter Gray. Canterbery's policy ideas still have relevance today, as some have been adopted worldwide. For example, in foreign exchange, his delayed peg has been utilitzed in countries that shy away from completely 'free' exchange rates. His criticism of monetary policy decision-making contributed to the idea of more frequent reporting on changes in the federal funds rate.

The effects of globalization strategies of multinational enterprises (MNEs) on national and local development are explored and analyzed here and implications of these effects for policy makers are highlighted. Containing contributions from international business scholars, the text addresses this previously little explored but critically important issue for the future of the world economy.

This monograph is devoted to the analysis of the dynamics of business cycles and stabilization policies. The analysis is conducted in models of the AS-AD type, focusing on involuntary unemployment and capital accumulation. Major conclusions are the following. (1) Sectoral imbalances, once emphasized by such business-cycle theorists as K. Marx, A. Spiethoff, and F.A. Hayek, are rectified in finite time by competitive investment allocation, leaving aggregate variables as the main variables of business cycle dynamics. (2) The chronology of events during a cycle is established, which resolves the so-called real wage puzzle. (3) Owing to the crowding-out effect on investment, fiscal stabilization policies can destabilize the business cycle dynamics if implemented too intensively. (4) If coordinated properly, monetary stabilization policies can remove the destabilizing tendency of fiscal stabilization policies.

Using quantitative research, this volume investigates the characteristics, problems and trends of the automobile society in China's mega cities and large cities. It also addresses topics related to cars and cities, traffic safety and cars' consumption. China has experienced more than 30 years of rapid economic development, and people's living conditions have greatly improved. One of the symbols of this is family-car ownership, which has increased year by year. China is rapidly becoming an automobile society like North America. But China has huge population and limited urban space, and most of the cities are deteriorating environmentally. Added to this are the low degree energy self-sufficiency and people's lack of awareness of traffic rules, all of which have brought various social problems, such as traffic congestion, lack of parking spaces, air pollution, energy shortage and frequent accidents. The volume presents a series of studies examining the characteristics and problems of China's automobile society development from the perspective of sustainable development. The reports in the volume are both academic and highly readable, making it an interesting resource for researchers and general readers alike. It offers insights into the trends and problems of private cars in China, as well as observations on China's social change through the unique medium of cars.

Poverty alleviation is a central aim of economic and social policy, and yet there is no consensus about what poverty means or how it is best measured. Often, the households below an income poverty line are counted as poor, but there may be no firm basis for concentrating on that particular income level. There may also be wide variations among the households below any income poverty line in terms of their actual living standards. This book explores what poverty means in developed countries, and shows that understanding and measuring it requires widening the focus beyond current income. By using broader measures of resources and information on living patterns and concrete indicators of deprivation, it shows how those who are effectively excluded from participation in society due to lack of resources can be more accurately identified, and the processes producing such exclusion better understood. The core issue of this book is how to define and measure poverty in relatively rich countries in a way which is valid, meaningful in the context, and valuable for policy-making. Extensive analysis of data from a specially designed survey of a large representative sample of Irish households is used to illustrate the arguments.

Contemporary studies on social structure and the world political economy tend to be concerned primarily with present conditions and what these promise--or threaten for the future of the planet. The authors of this volume have taken a less fashionable stance, looking instead to the recent past and the pivotal historical moments that have formed the world we live in. Consisting of fourteen essays contributed by an international group of specialists, Rethinking the Nineteenth Century examines the social formations of that period and integrates them into a modern theoretical framework. The broad issues of class and state formation, imperialism and nationalism, and ascent and decline in the world system are the central focus of the book.

This volume fills a gap in the literature by analyzing basic issues in development economics as they affect a particular type of Third World nation - small island economies. Using practical examples from the Caribbean Basin and the South Pacific, the authors examine in depth structural and employment issues, demographic and socioeconomic issues, and environmental and natural resource issues. Their aim throughout is to identify and assess the particular and unique development problems faced by small island economies so that effective policies can be derived that will more accurately reflect socioeconomic realities in these areas.

Following an introductory overview, the authors discuss the role of staple exports in the economic well being of small island economies as well as issues relating to manufacturing and service sector activities and the structural and employment impacts of tourism. In Part Two, they turn to an exploration of demographic and socioeconomic issues including the effects of urbanization on the development process, the implications of migration from and between small island nations, the brain drain problem, and the relationship between criminal activity and development. Part Three shifts the focus from people-oriented issues to concerns related to agriculture and resource utilization. Separate chapters address agriculture in the developmental mix, the use of fisheries, forest resources, minerals, and conservation issues. The final section looks at the international considerations raised by the study and outlines the policy implications of the authors' findings. Students of development economics, international trade, and finance will find this an invaluable contribution to the greater understanding of the specific development problems faced by small island economies.

The book focuses on how microfinance institutions can be the alternative way to supply funds to combat different phases of global economic recessions. Also, it emphasizes upon their capabilities in reducing poverty and inequality as the countries of the world today aim to attain the goal of sustainable development. The book further deals with the challenges that the micro financial institutions may face while sustain in the competitive and vast changing global business environment. Finally, the book analyses the effectiveness of micro financial services for the emergence of micro, small and medium enterprises with new technology and innovations which, in turn, can be instrumental in ensuring new relocation of global supply chains.