Central banks have evolved over many years, and sometimes centuries, as policy-making, not profit-making, institutions, and yet they are structured legally and financially like 'for-profit' companies of the twenty-first century. The question is what is an appropriate level of equity, or capital, for a central bank to have so that it can function for policy effectiveness over profit-maximisation, without hindrance to the achievement and maintenance of policy goals?

This collection takes the reader through historical, theoretical and factual discussions on why central banks exist and the role - actual and intended - they have in assisting their home nation in achieving monetary and financial stability. The contributions analyse the different ways central banks are funded and how funding arrangements may impact on their independence. The objective is to explore these themes first from the academic and practitioner's views - those of the economist, accountant and lawyer's - and then to introduce practical experiences from a range of different central banks, in terms of their economic and socio-political environments. It will be the first time that the theorist and practitioner, the accountant, the economist and the lawyer come together in one volume. The reader will be able to access the full breadth of views on this important subject.

The main observations are that there is no single, quantifiable formula that central banks can use to calculate capital levels. Factors to consider are the historical context of central banks and whether capital was ever appropriate to needs at their foundation; the cultural, social and political contexts; and, in terms of the presentation of financial statements, profit and loss sharing arrangements and what accounting conventions are being used. If these are considered alongside the, often idiosyncratic, mandates individual central banks have, a qualitative understanding of what is an appropriate level of capital is achieved. This collection will be of interest to postgraduates and researchers focusing on the role of central banks in monetary economics; as well as a professional audience of central bankers, the BIS, the IMF, World Bank, EBRD and government departments.

As Europe moves toward an integrated academic system, European economics is changing. This book discusses that change, along with the changes that are happening simultaneously within the economics profession. The authors argue that modern economics can no longer usefully be described as ?neoclassical?, but is much better described as complexity economics. The complexity approach embraces rather than assumes away the complexities of social interaction. The authors also argue that despite all the problems with previous European academic structures, those structures allowed for more diversity than exists in US universities, and thus were often ahead of US universities in exploring new cutting-edge approaches. The authors further argue that by trying to judge themselves by US-centric measures and to copy US universities, the European economics profession is undermining some of the strengths of the older system ? strengths on which it should be building. While the authors agree that European economics needs to go through major changes in the coming decade, they argue that by building on Europe?s strengths, rather than trying to follow a US example, Europe will be more likely to become the global leader in economics in the coming decades rather than a second-rate copy of the US. The book begins with two chapters spelling out the authors? view of the changes in economics and European economics. This is followed by 11 interviews with a diverse set of innovative European economists from a range of European countries. In the interviews these European economists reflect on the ongoing changes in economics generally and in European economics specifically. These interviews demonstrate how the economics profession is moving away from traditional neoclassical economics into a dynamic set of new methods and approaches (incorporating work in behavioral economics, experimental economics, evolutionary game theory and ecological approaches, complexity and nonlinear dynamics, methodological analysis, and agent-based modelling) that the authors classify as complexity economics. This fascinating and easy-to-read book will prove a stimulating and thought-provoking read for those with an interest in economics, European education, and the nature of academic disciplines generally.

Which kinds of growth lead to increased employment and which do not? This is one of the questions that this important volume attempts to answer. The book explores the complex relationships between innovation, growth and employment that are vital for both research into, and policy for, the creation of jobs. Politicians claiming that more rapid growth would remedy unemployment do not usually specify what kind of growth is meant. Is it, for example, economic (GDP) or productivity growth? Growing concern over 'jobless growth' requires both policymakers and researchers to make such distinctions, and to clarify their employment implications. The authors initially address their theoretical approach to, and conceptualization of, innovation and employment, where the distinction between process and product innovations and between high-tech and low-tech goods and services are central. They go on to address the relationship between innovation and employment, using empirical material to analyse the effects that different kinds of innovations have upon job creation and destruction. Finally, the volume summarizes the findings and addresses conclusions as well as policy implications. This book will be of great interest to those involved in research and policy in the fields of macroeconomics (economic growth and employment), industrial economics and innovation.

Since the beginning of the 1990s, Brazil has followed a pattern of economic development inspired by Washington Consensus. This framework includes a set of liberalising and market friendly policies such as privatisation, trade liberalization, stimulus to foreign direct investment, tax reform, and social security reforms. This book assesses the determinants and impacts of financial liberalisation in Brazil considering its two dimensions: the opening up of the balance of payments capital account, and the penetration by foreign bank of the domestic banking sector. The author combines theoretical and empirical analyses. Some make use of mathematical models and/or statistical techniques; however, they are only used when they are strictly necessary to the analysis.

Too many of the world's citizens face impoverished living standards. The economic and financial crises have made matters worse. The viewpoint of Living Standards and Social Well-Being is that the fundamental objective for an economy is provisioning, not simply efficiency. The chapters in this volume examine how economies across the globe come to understand what constitutes a living and how they can improve living standards, including balancing paid work with family life and civic responsibility.

The authors provide historical, theoretical, and empirical studies of moving economies at the macro level and households at the micro level toward improved living standards. It is argued that achieving well-being and decent living standards, through work and welfare state policies, is a social responsibility. Such improvements could be delivered through basic income policies, family support, job guarantees, decent work, shorter work weeks, and support from social welfare. These issues are important for economics and the other social sciences and in particular for social economics.

This book was published as a special issue of the Review of Social Economy.

The global financial crisis has sent shockwaves through the world's economies, and its effects have been deep and wide-reaching. This book brings together a range of applied studies, covering a range of international and regional experience in the area of finance in the context of the global downturn. The volume includes an exploration of the impact of the crisis on capital markets, and how corporate stakeholders need to be more aware of the decision-making processes followed by corporate executives, as well as an analysis of the policy changes instituted by the Fed and their effects. Other issues covered include research into the approach of solvent banks to toxic assets, the determinants of US interest rate swap spreads during the crisis, a new approach for estimating Value-at-Risk, how distress and lack of active trading can result in systemic panic attacks, and the dynamic interactions between real house prices, consumption expenditure and output. Highlighting the global reach of the crisis, there is also coverage of recent changes in the cross-currency correlation structure, the costs attached to global banking financial integration, the interrelationships among global stock markets, inter-temporal interactions between stock return differential relative to the US and real exchange rate in the two most recent financial crises, and research into the recent slowdown in workers' remittances. This book was published as a special issue of Applied Financial Economics.

Economic Institutions and Democratic Reform rigorously and systematically explores the political effects and consequences of economic reform in more than 20 post-communist countries. By using primary quantitative data and stringent statistical analyses, Ole Norgaard demonstrates that there is no universally applicable economic reform strategy and that popular democracy is often the foundation of a successful economy, rather than a powerful executive or president, as is popularly asserted. The book also shows that generalised models are not productive when studying the complexity of post-communist transformation. The author argues that the danger to democracy comes from the alienation of citizens and the collapse of public service and education systems instigated by individuals who, with few democratic credentials, capture the political playing field. These leaders have often been encouraged by Western governments who believe democracy can only be imposed on reluctant societies by newborn capitalist elites. This book will be essential and challenging reading for political scientists and economists as well as policymakers in NGOs, such as aid agencies and the institutions of the EU.

The book is an economic history of the South Sea Bubble. It combines economic theory and quantitative analysis with historical evidence in order to provide a rounded account. It brings together scholarship from a variety of different fields to update the existing historical work on the Bubble. Up until now, economic history research has not been integrated into mainstream histories of 1720. Technical work on share prices and ledgers has been inaccessible to a wider audience. As well as providing new evidence against the gambling mania argument, the book also interprets the existing economic history scholarship for non-specialists.

The Creation of Wealth and Poverty is a study of the means and ways by which wealth and poverty are created in both developed and developing countries. It puts a particular emphasis on the role played by economic policy in shaping the stratification of modern societies through specific programmes dealing with issues of job creation, poverty and environmental degradation. This book is concerned with the social effects of the ongoing crisis in finance, development and the environment. By focusing on the political, legal and financial institutions that govern society and the economy, the book provides an analysis of wealth and poverty from a historical perspective. It shows how economic and social policies of the neoliberal model have led to a rise in unemployment, poverty and inequality and, therefore, made societies more polarized. This volume will be of great interest to policymakers, academics and students who study political economy, development economics and macroeconomics.

Many know the Chicago School of Economics and its association with Milton Friedman, George Stigler, Ronald Coase and Gary Becker. But few know the School's history and the full scope of its scholarship. In this Companion, leading scholars examine its history and key figures, and provide surveys of the School's contributions to central aspects of economics, including: price theory, monetary theory, labor and economic history. The volume examines the School's traditions of applied welfare theory and law and economics while providing a glimpse into emerging research on Chicago's role in the development of neoliberalism.A companion in the true sense of the word, this volume surveys a wide body of Chicago economic studies and guides readers carefully through each. The Companion offers biographies of leading Chicago economists and evaluations of the School's connection to approaches to economics that draw from and complement the School, including the Virginia School and the work of Armen Alchian and Edward Lazear. Moreover, this book is a first in many respects as it analyzes the interconnections of the Chicago School's theory, methodology, and policy, and considers by what means and ideas the School's policy framework is driven. The breadth and depth of the insights presented here will appeal especially to students and scholars of economics and historians interested in economics, social science and applied public policy. Ross B. Emmett is Professor of Political Economy and Political Theory and Constitutional Democracy, and Co-Director of the Michigan Center for Innovation and Economic Prosperity at James Madison College, Michigan State University, USA.

This title was first published in 2001: Exploring the relationship between the recession and labour supply in Kazakhstan during the 1990s, this volume develops an innovative new model of the transitional process in the context of the CIS. It departs from conventional economic models explaining the process of transition, transferring the focus of attention from labour demand to labour supply with a view to clarifying how the transitional recession has affected households and, in turn, how these changes modified the supply of labour. Paolo Verme examines how the dynamic of the reallocation of labour between state and private enterprises has been drastically altered by the growth of self-employment and also takes a much-needed look at the contribution of other factors, offering an original explanation of this most important economic phenomenon.

This title was first published in 2001: This thorough and comprehensive examination of the nature and pattern of post-Cold War aid to sub-Saharan Africa provides incisive, comparative case studies of the motivations behind the foreign aid policies of key members of the Development Association Committee (DAC). In one of the most rigorous contemporary efforts to evaluate the adequacy of the dominant theories of international relations on an important subject like foreign aid, Dr Omoruyi eschews easy answers to the problem of Africa's marginalization in the international system. He provides thoughtful, innovative suggestions for promoting a new development partnership between industrialized countries and Africa using a sophisticated quantitative method of inquiry, making this text a valuable contribution to social science literature on research methods.

This title was first published in 2000. Recent years have seen tremendous economic and political changes in Sub-Saharan Africa. The contributors to this volume focus on the pressing problem of how actors in their everyday life, political and social action handle uncertainty. With the help of rich empirical material from different countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, the authors try to understand how actors react, manoeuver, organize and make their actions meaningful in an environment characterized by unpredictability and change.

This title was first published in 2003. Covering a diverse range of countries such as Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Russia, as well as referring to the characteristics of the region as a whole, this book examines the inflow and outflow of foreign direct investment from both home and host company and country perspectives. By analyzing foreign direct investment in terms of process, content and context, the book provides a holist approach towards direct foreign investment in the transitional context of Central and Eastern Europe, embracing both macro- and micro-economic perspectives of the process.

There can be no doubt that the influence of the financial sphere has intensified rapidly in recent years, but there is much debate about the effect of that influence. The aftermath of the Financial Crisis has led to numerous discussions of the phenomenon of so-called financialization: the increasing impact of financial institutions on the activity of all business entities; emerging threats related with dynamically developing financial markets and the growing importance of financial themes. In light of these issues, which appear in all economies and touch all entities and every area of economic activity, there is a need for a summary and evaluation of the role of financialization in the world today. This monograph presents the role of financialization in the modern world. It shows positive as well as negative effects of financialization on the stability of the whole economy, the functioning of different types of markets, activity of enterprises, state institutions and behaviours of households. Written by expert contributors, this book plays an important role in the debate concerning future directions of development of the financial sector and financial markets. Financialization and the Economy is of great importance to those who study political economy, macroeconomics and banking.

Title first publishedin 2003. This comprehensive book focuses on the prevailing conditions in Asia and Africa under various macroeconomic and sectoral themes in order to provide in depth explanations for the divergent development experiences of the two regions. Seeking to go further than the simple comparison of policies, the book carefully examines the institutional context for policy implementation within which growth and development have proceeded in the regions.

This title was first published in 2003.The principal economic units in most developing countries are family based farm households. Empirical models that recognize the dual role of the farm household as producer and consumer in a theoretically consistent manner are essential tools for policy analyses. This book provides an important extension of the conventional farm household model by developing an analytical framework that allows for efficiency differences between family and hired labour as inputs in farm production. The model is estimated with survey data from the southern lowland region of Nepal. The estimation strategy is a two-step process. The first step estimates a farm-level production function in which is embedded a test for heterogeneity between family and hired labour. The labour heterogeneity detected in the production function estimation is incorporated, at the second step, in the labour supply estimation in a theoretically consistent manner. The methodological novelty is to relate the shadow wage rate for family labour to the observed market wage rate for hired labour, adjusted for the differential productivity of family and hired labour detected in the production function estimation.

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.

Collecting and analyzing data on unemployment, inflation, and inequality help describe the complex world around us. When published by the government, such data are called official statistics. They are reported by the media, used by politicians to lend weight to their arguments, and by economic commentators to opine about the state of society. Despite such widescale use, explanations about how these measures are constructed are seldom provided for a non-technical reader. This Measuring Society book is a short, accessible guide to six topics: jobs, house prices, inequality, prices for goods and services, poverty, and deprivation. Each relates to concepts we use on a personal level to form an understanding of the society in which we live: We need a job, a place to live, and food to eat. Using data from the United States, we answer three basic questions: why, how, and for whom these statistics have been constructed. We add some context and flavor by discussing the historical background. This book provides the reader with a good grasp of these measures. Chaitra H. Nagaraja is an Associate Professor of Statistics at the Gabelli School of Business at Fordham University in New York. Her research interests include house price indices and inequality measurement. Prior to Fordham, Dr. Nagaraja was a researcher at the U.S. Census Bureau. While there, she worked on projects relating to the American Community Survey.

The book deals with the dynamics and growth of a violent 21st century communist rebellion initiated in Nepal by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) ? CPN(M). It contextualizes and explains why and how a violent Maoist insurgency grew in Nepal after the end of the Cold War, in contrast to the decline of other radical communist movements in most parts of the world.

Scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds employ a wide variety of approaches and methods to unravel different aspects of the rebellion. Individual chapters analyze the different causes of the insurgency, factors that contributed to its growth, the organization, agency, ideology and strategies employed by the rebels and the state, and the consequences of the insurgency.

New issues are analysed in conjunction with the insurgency, such as the role of the Maoist student organization, Maoist's cultural troupes, the organization and strategies of the People's Army and the Royal Nepal Army, indoctrination and recruitment of rebels, and international factors. Based on original field work and a thorough analysis of empirical data, this book fills an existing gap in academic analyses of the insurgency in Nepal.

John Maynard Keynes was the most influential economist of the 20th Century, whose doctrines had a huge impact on American prosperity in the years following the Second World War. This new book by John Philip Jones describes the main features of Keynes's work, including the fiscal and monetary policies he recommended, together with a detailed tracking of how his theories played out in the American economy. The book focuses on each individual aspect of Keynes's doctrines: his revolutionary emphasis on the economy as a whole (the study that would later become known as macroeconomics); consumer demand and where it leads; investment demand and where it leads; the rate of interest and the influence of monetary policy; the role of government in controlling fiscal policy; and the overarching importance of expectations, optimism and pessimism. The book concludes with the seven major lessons drawn from the American economy in the latter half of the 20th Century and how these lessons were forecast by Keynes. An excellent introduction to Keynes and his legacy for students and non-specialist members of the public who want to know more about how the economy is controlled and stimulated, it is also of considerable interest to students of modern economic history.

In the past, Austrian economics has been seen as almost exclusively focused on microeconomics. Here, Steven Horwitz constructs a systematic presentation of what Austrian macroeconomics would look like. This original and highly accessible work will be of great value and interest to professional economists and students.

Originally published in 1979. An Input/output database is an information system carrying current data on the intermediate consumption of any product or service by all the specified major firms that consume it. This book begins with a survey of how the interrelationships of an economic system can be represented in a two-dimensional model which traces the output of each economic sector to all other sectors. It talks about how the use of such databases to identify major buyers and sellers can illuminate problems of economic policy at the national, regional, and corporate level and aid in analyzing factors affecting the control of inflation, energy use, transportation, and environmental pollution. The book discusses how advances in database technology, have brought to the fore such issues as the right to individual privacy, corporate secrecy, the public's right of access to stored data, and the use of such information for national planning in a free-enterprise society.

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 contains the most complete set of the Chinese national income and its components based on system of national accounts. It points out some fundamental issues concerning the estimation of China's national income and it is intended to the students of the field of China study around the world.