This volume constitutes the first ever attempt to establish a basis for comparative research on defence procurement regulation. For decades there has been repeated emphasis on the extent to which barriers to trade in Europe and the US prevent a more competitive defence market. Transatlantic Defence Procurement offers the first analysis of the potential impact of defence procurement regulation itself as a barrier to trade between the US and the EU. Part I examines the external dimension of a new EU Defence Procurement Directive, focusing on its implications for third countries, in particular the US. Part II examines foreign access and treatment under US law. Part III maps a future research agenda that is essential for a more systematic understanding of legal barriers to transatlantic defence trade. The book provides context for future initiatives, ranging from reformed market access arrangements to a Defence Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and beyond.

Male sex work generates sales in excess of one billion dollars annually in the United States. Recent sex scandals involving prominent leaders and government shutdowns of escort websites have focused attention on this business, but despite the attention that comes when these scandals break, we know very little about how the market works. Economics, Sexuality, and Male Sex Work is the first economic analysis of male sex work. Competition, the role of information, pricing strategies and other economic features of male sex work are analyzed using the most comprehensive data available. Sex work is also social behavior, however, and this book shows how the social aspects of gay sexuality influence the economic properties of the market. Concepts like desire, masculinity and sexual stereotypes affect how sex workers compete for clients, who practices safer sex, and how sex workers present themselves to clients to differentiate them from the competition.

Male sex work generates sales in excess of one billion dollars annually in the United States. Recent sex scandals involving prominent leaders and government shutdowns of escort websites have focused attention on this business, but despite the attention that comes when these scandals break, we know very little about how the market works. Economics, Sexuality, and Male Sex Work is the first economic analysis of male sex work. Competition, the role of information, pricing strategies and other economic features of male sex work are analyzed using the most comprehensive data available. Sex work is also social behavior, however, and this book shows how the social aspects of gay sexuality influence the economic properties of the market. Concepts like desire, masculinity and sexual stereotypes affect how sex workers compete for clients, who practices safer sex, and how sex workers present themselves to clients to differentiate them from the competition.

The orthodox view of economic policy holds that public deliberation sets the goals or ends, and then experts select the means to implement these goals. This assumes that experts are no more than trustworthy servants of the public interest. David M. Levy and Sandra J. Peart examine the historical record to consider cases in which experts were trusted with disastrous results, such as eugenics, the regulatory use of security ratings, and central economic planning. This history suggests that experts have not only the public interest but also their own interests to consider. The authors then recover and extend an alternative view of economic policy that subjects experts' proposals to further discussion, resulting in transparency and ensuring that the public obtains the best insights of experts in economics while avoiding pitfalls such as expert bias.

Written by leading experts in the field of business, finance, law and economics, this edited volume brings together the latest thoughts and developments on turnaround management and business rescue from an academic, judiciary and turnaround/insolvency practitioner perspective. Turnaround Management and Bankruptcy presents different viewpoints on turnarounds and business rescue in Europe. Presenting a state-of-the-art review of failure research in finance, such as on bankruptcy prediction, causes of decline, or distressed asset valuation. It also presents the latest insights from turnaround management research as well as giving a contemporary insight into law debates on insolvency legislation reform, cross-border judicial issues, bankruptcy decision-making by judges and competition policy in distressed economies. Finally, the book provides a regional and sector perspective on how the current crisis affects Europe, its government policies and industry performance. In this way, the volume presents a modern, interdisciplinary and scholarly overview of the latest insights, issues and debates in turnaround management and business rescue, developing a European perspective in an attempt to redress the predominance of an American orientation in the academic literature. It aims at a wider audience interested in turnarounds and failure, such as faculty and students in the fields of law, business, economics, accountancy, finance, strategic management, and marketing, but also at judges, insolvency practitioners, lawyers, accountants and turnaround professionals, as well as the EU and government officials, staff of trade unions and employer's associations.

This invaluable book provides the foundations for a new theory of the firm, drawing on Birger Wernerfelt's landmark work on economic theory and the resource-based view of the firm. It addresses a vigorous and long-standing academic debate over what exactly a 'firm' is, both in the field of management and economics. Wernerfelt revisits his classic articles, including an extensively revised 'A Resource-Based View of the Firm' (1984), which have been updated and synthesized to provide precise and accessible concepts and predictions. By offering future directions for research and practice, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of management and economics alike.

This invaluable book provides the foundations for a new theory of the firm, drawing on Birger Wernerfelt's landmark work on economic theory and the resource-based view of the firm. It addresses a vigorous and long-standing academic debate over what exactly a 'firm' is, both in the field of management and economics. Wernerfelt revisits his classic articles, including an extensively revised 'A Resource-Based View of the Firm' (1984), which have been updated and synthesized to provide precise and accessible concepts and predictions. By offering future directions for research and practice, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of management and economics alike.

Classical social choice theory relies heavily on the assumption that all individuals have fixed preference orderings. This highly original book presents a new theory of social preferences that explicitly accounts for important social phenomena such as coordination, compromise, negotiation and altruism. Drawing on cybernetics and network theory, it extends classical social choice theory by constructing a framework that allows for dynamic preferences that are modulated by the situation-dependent social influence that they exert on each other. In this way the book shows how members of a social network may modulate their preferences to account for social context. This important expansion of social choice theory will be of interest to readers in a wide variety of disciplines, including economists and political scientists concerned with choice theory as well as computer scientists and engineers working on network theory.

Our elaborate market exchange system owes its existence not to our calculating brain or insatiable self-centeredness, but rather to our sophisticated and nuanced human sociality and to the inherent rationality built into our emotions. The modern economic system is helped a lot more than hindered by our innate social instincts that support our remarkable capacity for building formal and informal institutions. The book integrates the growing body of experimental evidence on human nature scattered across a variety of disciplines from experimental economics to social neuroscience into a coherent and original narrative about the extent to which market (or impersonal exchange) relations are reflective of the basic human sociality that was originally adapted to a more tribal existence. An accessible resource, this book will appeal to students of all areas of economics, including Behavioral Economics and Neuro-Economics, Microeconomics, and Political Economy.

Firms are a ubiquitous feature of the economic landscape, with much of the activity undertaken within an economy taking place within their boundaries. Given the size of the contribution made by firms to economic activity, employment and growth, having a theoretical understanding of the nature and structure of firms is crucial for understanding how an economy functions. The Theory of the Firm firstly offers a brief overview of the past, consisting of a concise discussion of the classical view of production, followed by an outline of the development of the neoclassical - or 'textbook' - approach to firm level production. Secondly, the 'present' of the theory of the firm is discussed in three sections. The first section considers the post-1970 theory of the firm literature per se, while the second section scrutinises the relationship between the three most prominent of the modern sets of theories: the reference point, property rights and transaction cost approaches. The third section looks at the theory of privatisation. The unique aspects of this book includes its discussions of the post-1970 contributions to the theory of the firm; the integration of the theory of the entrepreneur with the theory of the firm; and the theory of privatisation. This volume offers an intuitive introduction to the theories of the firm as well as simple formal models of the most important contributions to the literature. It also outlines the historical evolution of the traditional and modern theories of the firm. This book is of great interest to those who study history of economic thought, industrial economics and organizational studies.

While this book contains numerous facts and empirical findings and touches on policy issues, its main contribution to the existing literature lies in the theoretical perspective it offers. The core of this book is a general equilibrium theory of labor and marriage presented in Chapter 2, which provides the conceptual framework for the rest of the chapters. Two major implications of the theory are sex ratio effects and compensating differentials in marriage. The book demonstrates how a few core concepts, linked via economic analysis, help explain a multitude of findings based on statistical analyses of data from a wide variety of cultures. It is hoped that readers of this book will improve their understanding of how marriage works to help us design better economic and social policies as well as help people live better and happier lives, making the book of interest to not only economists but sociologists and anthropologists as well.

This book provides a detailed introduction to the theoretical and methodological foundations of production efficiency analysis using benchmarking. Two of the more popular methods of efficiency evaluation are Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), both of which are based on the concept of a production possibility set and its frontier. Depending on the assumed objectives of the decision-making unit, a Production, Cost, or Profit Frontier is constructed from observed data on input and output quantities and prices. While SFA uses different maximum likelihood estimation techniques to estimate a parametric frontier, DEA relies on mathematical programming to create a nonparametric frontier. Yet another alternative is the Convex Nonparametric Frontier, which is based on the assumed convexity of the production possibility set and creates a piecewise linear frontier consisting of a number of tangent hyper planes. Three of the papers in this volume provide a detailed and relatively easy to follow exposition of the underlying theory from neoclassical production economics and offer step-by-step instructions on the appropriate model to apply in different contexts and how to implement them. Of particular appeal are the instructions on (i) how to write the codes for different SFA models on STATA, (ii) how to write a VBA Macro for repetitive solution of the DEA problem for each production unit on Excel Solver, and (iii) how to write the codes for the Nonparametric Convex Frontier estimation. The three other papers in the volume are primarily theoretical and will be of interest to PhD students and researchers hoping to make methodological and conceptual contributions to the field of nonparametric efficiency analysis.

Economists can use computer algebra systems to manipulate symbolic models, derive numerical computations, and analyze empirical relationships among variables. Maxima is an open-source multi-platform computer algebra system that rivals proprietary software. Maxima's symbolic and computational capabilities enable economists and financial analysts to develop a deeper understanding of models by allowing them to explore the implications of differences in parameter values, providing numerical solutions to problems that would be otherwise intractable, and by providing graphical representations that can guide analysis. This book provides a step-by-step tutorial for using this program to examine the economic relationships that form the core of microeconomics in a way that complements traditional modeling techniques. Readers learn how to phrase the relevant analysis and how symbolic expressions, numerical computations, and graphical representations can be used to learn from microeconomic models. In particular, comparative statics analysis is facilitated. Little has been published on Maxima and its applications in economics and finance, and this volume will appeal to advanced undergraduates, graduate-level students studying microeconomics, academic researchers in economics and finance, economists, and financial analysts.

This book takes a comprehensive look at Japanese firms engaging in export and foreign direct investment (FDI) and develops new methods and data to investigate the internationalization of firms, which is a focus issue in international trade. Using micro-level data, the book provides an introduction to theoretical and statistical analysis of internationalization modes of Japanese firms with productivity heterogeneity. It makes clear that although the productivity of internationalized Japanese firms is higher on average than that of firms serving only the domestic market, the difference in productivity between exporters and FDI firms is not as obvious in comparison with that of their counterparts in the United States and Europe. Focusing on this point, the book analyzes not only productivity heterogeneity among firms, but also the differences in firm-specific factors other than productivity: industry-specific factors, market-specific factors such as market size and variable and fixed costs for export, and FDI in destination countries. This in-depth investigation reveals how those factors make the modes of Japanese firms' internationalization different from those in the United States and Europe. Further analysis focuses on the effects of match quality, organizational and institutional factors in the market on firms' exports, and FDI. As an approach to the current trends in international trade, this book is unique in using detailed firm-level panel data drawn from Japanese government statistics.

Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences, business and law, expertly written by the world's leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive and policy issues associated with discrete subject areas. Offering an engaging overview of the concepts of bounded rationality and their applications, this stimulating Advanced Introduction engages with the topic in a constructively critical manner to introduce new ideas. Chapters cover key topics including: optimally imperfect decisions; ecological rationality; the role of bounded rationality in evolutionary economics; satisficing as a response to bounded rationality; desirable types of economic decisions; the relational exercise of foresight; and the impact of bounded rationality on the efficiency of organizations. Key Features: Demonstrates the progress made in the field over the last century Presents a unique, succinct and useful coverage of the core issues in the topic Outlines different concepts of rationality and specifies factors that result in limited rationality Postgraduate and advanced undergraduate economics and business management students will find this a stimulating read. The easy-to-follow exposition of the topic and careful use of diagrams will also make this an interesting book for decision makers, business managers and policy makers who have studied economics or business administration.

In this challenging book, John King makes a sustained and comprehensive attack on the dogma that macroeconomic theory must have 'rigorous microfoundations'. He draws on both the philosophy of science and the history of economic thought to demonstrate the dangers of foundational metaphors and the defects of micro-reduction as a methodological principle. Strong criticism of the microfoundations dogma is documented in great detail, from some mainstream and many heterodox economists and also from economic methodologists, social theorists and evolutionary biologists. The author argues for the relative autonomy of macroeconomics as a distinct 'special science', cooperating with but most definitely not reducible to microeconomics. The Microfoundations Delusion will prove a stimulating and thought-provoking read for scholars, students and researchers in the fields of economics, heterodox economics and history of economic thought.

This book analyses how deeply Finnish and Polish second-home owners are integrated into the community's economy. It evaluates second homes considered as a dynamically growing constituent of rural landscape in Europe. The author examines what the key drivers of the consumer's behaviour are, and what the impact of their spending is on the local economy. He utilizes a variety of analytical methods, i.e. classification trees, cluster analysis, regression models, Engel curves and statistical tests. His analysis is nested in microeconomic and consumer theories, tourism and rural studies. The research findings lead to the general conclusion on the consumption convergence that despite contrasting cultural, social and economic backgrounds as well as clear differences in the second home functioning, Finnish and Polish second-home owners are similar to a large extent, in terms of consumer behaviour. "The monograph is well positioned at the outset with respect to rural social and economic change. This is a solid piece of research that significantly furthers the understanding of economic linkage of second homes in Poland and Finland, and should be valued for its potential contributions to policy and regional development." "Professor C. Michael Hall, University of Canterbury" "The book comprises a thorough investigation of the economic relationship between second homes and rural areas at the local level. The study, for the first time, provides a detailed analysis of informal purchasing in the context of second homes. This significant finding should be taken seriously by rural developers and policy makers in both countries." "PhD, Kati Pitkanen, Finnish Environmental Institute" "This work is very useful in empirical, descriptive, analytical, methodological and practical terms. The monograph provides comprehensive and detailed characteristics of the widespread second-home phenomenon in two European countries as well as the assessment of its impact on the local, mostly rural, economy." "Professor Jerzy Wilkin, Institute of Rural and Agricultural Development, Polish Academy of Sciences"

Originally published in 1927, this book provides an analysis 'of the economic position of the small cultivator, particularly in contrast with that of the wage-labourer' based on a survey of small-scale farming in the Carmarthenshire area. At the time of publication numerous works had been written on the economics of large and small holdings, but most of these texts were lacking in comprehensive data. The aim of this study was collect in one place extensive and reliable data on the lives of smallholders, thereby giving an insight into their true economic position. A bibliography is included and notes are incorporated throughout. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in smallholdings, British agriculture and the history of economics.

Written by two leading experts, this is a compact guide to the key tools and methods necessary to carry out cost-benefit analysis (CBA). The authors use modern economic tools to obtain general equilibrium cost-benefit rules that can be used to evaluate small projects, as well as large and even mega projects. Intertemporal issues like discounting, the shadow price of capital, and the treatment of risk are covered, and a state-of-the-art summary of available methods for the valuation of unpriced commodities is also included. In addition, the book provides detailed expositions of the marginal cost of public goods (MCPF), the marginal excess burden of taxes (MEB), and second-best evaluation rules, and shows how these concepts are interrelated. The importance of undertaking due diligence in evaluations is highlighted. This is an excellent toolkit for graduate students learning about the principles of CBA, and is a useful guide for government officials and policymakers.

Written by two leading experts, this is a compact guide to the key tools and methods necessary to carry out cost-benefit analysis (CBA). The authors use modern economic tools to obtain general equilibrium cost-benefit rules that can be used to evaluate small projects, as well as large and even mega projects. Intertemporal issues like discounting, the shadow price of capital, and the treatment of risk are covered, and a state-of-the-art summary of available methods for the valuation of unpriced commodities is also included. In addition, the book provides detailed expositions of the marginal cost of public goods (MCPF), the marginal excess burden of taxes (MEB), and second-best evaluation rules, and shows how these concepts are interrelated. The importance of undertaking due diligence in evaluations is highlighted. This is an excellent toolkit for graduate students learning about the principles of CBA, and is a useful guide for government officials and policymakers.

Victor Zarnowitz has long been a leader in the study of business cycles, growth, inflation, and forecasting. These papers represent a carefully integrated and up-to-date study of business cycles, reexamining some of his earlier research as well as addressing recent developments in the literature and in history. In part one, Zarnowitz reviews with characteristic insight various theories of the business cycle, including Keynesian and monetary theories as well as more recent rational expectations and real business cycle theories. In doing so, he examines how the business cycle may have changed as the size of government, the exercise of fiscal and monetary policies, the openness of the economy to international forces, and the industrial structure have evolved over time. Emphasizing important research from the 1980s, Zarnowitz discusses in part two various measures of the trends and cycles in economic activity, including output, prices, inventories, investment in residential and nonresidential structures, equipment, and other economic variables. Here the author explores the duration and severity of U.S. business cycles over more than 150 years, and evaluates the ability of macro models to simulate past behavior of the economy. In part three the performance of leading, coincident, and lagging indicators is described and assessed and evidence is presented on the value of their composite measures. Finally, part four offers an analysis of the degree of success of large commercial forecasting firms and of many individual economists in predicting the course of inflation, real growth, unemployment, interest rates, and other key economic variables. Business Cycles is a timely study, certain tobecome a basic reference for professional forecasters and economists in government, academia, and the business community.

This highly original book develops a systematic zero-net-profit comparative statics theory of the firm that challenges many widely held views in microeconomics. It builds a bridge between the marginalist long-run theory of the firm and Sraffian theory to create a unified theoretical framework that explains how firms react to exogenous shocks resulting in new equilibrium positions of the whole economy. The central message of the book is that too often economists expect more from the microeconomic laws of input demand and output supply than they can really give. The authors show that the zero-net-profit condition requires a more articulated analysis that sometimes yields qualitative results contrary to those of familiar economic laws. Written for academic researchers and graduate students, the book will be of particular interest to those working on the microeconomics of industry equilibrium, comparative statics and Sraffian economics.

This textbook provides a comprehensive and up to date review of the rapidly expanding business cycle literature. It covers three key strands of the theory which have dominated recent literature in the subject: equilibrium (monetary and real) business cycles, nonlinear business cycle models and political business cycle theories.

After surveying the various approaches to business cycle modelling and studying the recent evidence it becomes clear that far more testing of these key business cycle hypotheses has been undertaken using US macroeconomic time series than the equivalent UK series. In an attempt to redress the balance the authors present new results for UK macroeconomic time series and compare and contrast them with previous results from the UK and those derived in the US. In conclusion, the authors consider the implications for policy of the various theories and the empirical results, and make suggestions for future research.

"Business Cycles" is designed for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of macroeconomics and monetary theory and policy and academic economists wishing to keep abreast of the substantial recent developments in this field.

The productivity of a business exerts an important influence on its financial performance. A similar influence exists for industries and economies: those with superior productivity performance thrive at the expense of others. Productivity performance helps explain the growth and demise of businesses and the relative prosperity of nations. Productivity Accounting: The Economics of Business Performance offers an in-depth analysis of variation in business performance, providing the reader with an analytical framework within which to account for this variation and its causes and consequences. The primary focus is the individual business, and the principal consequence of business productivity performance is business financial performance. Alternative measures of financial performance are considered, including profit, profitability, cost, unit cost, and return on assets. Combining analytical rigor with empirical illustrations, the analysis draws on wide-ranging literatures, both historical and current, from business and economics, and explains how businesses create value and distribute it.

The extraordinary stories of low-income women living in São Paulo, industrial case studies and the details of three squatter settlements, and communities in the periphery researched in Simone Buechler’s book, Labor in a Globalizing City, allow us to better understand the period of economic transformation in São Paulo from 1996 to 2003.  Buechler’s in-depth ethnographic research over a period of 17 years include interviews with a variety of social actors ranging from favela inhabitants to Wall Street bankers. Buechler examines the paradox of a globalizing city with highly developed financial, service, and industrial sectors, but at the same time a growing sector of microenterprises, degraded labor, considerable unemployment, unprecedented inequality, and precarious infrastructure in its low-income communities. The author argues that informalization and low-income women’s labor are an integral part of the global economy.  Other countries are continuing to use the same kind of neo-liberal economic model even though once again with the latest global financial crisis, it has proven to be detrimental to many workers.