Information technology has become a constant presence in contemporary life, infiltrating community, business and state affairs. This book discusses the uses and problems of IT in both developing and advanced countries, focusing on the ways in which IT changes society without neglecting the problematic aspects of the Internet revolution such as computer crime and the lack of professionals with computer literacy, particularly from a developing country's perspective. It examines such issues as the characteristics of network economies, connectivity pricing, Internet access, regulation, changes in supply chains, IT gaps between supply and demand, productivity increases, and the digital divide. Emanuele Giovannetti, Mitsuhiro Kagami and Masatsugu Tsuji have gathered together a group of international experts in economics and trade who discuss the impact of this revolution globally, looking at countries or regions including the UK, EU, Central and Eastern Europe, USA, Japan, India, South Africa, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and China.

The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) has had risk as a research topic on its agenda right from its inception in 1972. Risk has played a - jor role in the Energy Program, with research being carried out both in-house and in cooperationwith other internationalinstitutions like the InternationalAtomic - ergy Agency (IAEA) and national research centers. Research areas were primarily the evaluationof all possible risks within one categoryof energysupply like nuclear ?ssion or fusion or fossil fuels and, even more important, the comparisonof risks of different energy-supplystrategies. Later on an independent program was started which still exists today under the name Risk and Vulnerability. There is a large amount of literature on risks to which IIASA's research programs have contributed signi?cantly over the years, and there is, of course, an abundance of published work on international negotiations, part of which is a result of the work of the Processes of International Negotiation (PIN) Program. There are, however, so far no studies on the combination of these two strands. Therefore, and as research on both topics is housed at IIASA, we are happy that our PIN Program has undertaken the dif?cult and important task of analyzing what the editors of this book have called negotiated risks.

With increasing greenhouse gas emissions, we are embarked on an unprecedented experiment with an uncertain outcome for the future of the planet. The Kyoto Protocol serves as an initial step through 2012 to mitigate the threats posed by global climate change. A second step is needed, and policy-makers, scholars, business people, and environmentalists have begun debating the structure of the successor to the Kyoto agreement. Written by a team of leading scholars in economics, law, and international relations, this book contributes to this debate by examining the merits of six alternative international architectures for global climate policy. Architectures for Agreement offers the reader a uniquely wide-ranging menu of options for post-Kyoto climate policy, with a concern throughout to learn from past experience in order to maximize opportunities for future success in the real, 'second-best' world. It will be an essential reference for scholars, policy-makers, and students interested in climate policy.

One might expect that after their identification in the 19th century, all aspects of Giffen goods would have been studied by now. This appears not to be the case. This book contains the latest insights into the theory of Giffen goods. In the past, surprisingly few goods could be categorized as "Giffen." This may be because of a lack of understanding of the character of these goods. Therefore, the theories explained in this book may also produce a solid basis for further empirical research in the field. Experts throughout the world have contributed to this book, which predominantly pursues a mathematically rigorous approach. It may be used by researchers in the field of fundamental economics and in graduate-level courses in advanced microeconomics.

For centuries Andean civilization and ecology has afforded a special fascination for European travellers and officials. In this volume, eight writers - anthropologists, economists and historians working in Bolivia, Britain, France, Ireland and Peru - describe and analyse aspects of rural society in various Andean regions. They focus on the impact of capitalist development on both the peasant economy and the landed elite in the Andes and the ways in which that impact has been shaped by a specific Andean culture and a characteristic Andean ecology and climate. Their discussion of Andean specificity centres on the notion of verticality, first developed by John Murra to describe political and economic adaptation to climatic variation in the Andean eco-system. The volume represents a substantial contribution to our understanding of Andean rural society and the nature of the Latin American peasantry and peasant economy. It will appeal to all those interested in economic anthropology, Latin America, peasant studies and the capitalist world-economy.

The game-theoretic modelling of negotiations has been an active research area for the past five decades, that started with the seminal work by Nobel laureate John Nash in the early 1950s. This book provides a survey of some of the major developments in the field of strategic bargaining models with an emphasize on the role of threats in the negotiation process. Threats are all actions outside the negotiation room that negotiators have ate their disposal and the use of these actions affect the bargaining position of all negotiators. Of course, each negotiator aims to strengthen his own position. Examples of threats are the announcement of a strike by a union in centralized wage bargaining, or a nation's announcement of a trade war directed against other nations in negotiations for trade liberalization. This book is organized on the basis of a simple guiding principle: The situation in which none of the parties involved in the negotiations has threats at its disposal is the natural benchmark for negotiations where the parties can make threats. Also on the technical level, negotiations with variable threats build on and extend the techniques applied in analyzing bargaining situations without threats. The first part of this book, containing chapter 3-6, presents the no-threat case, and the second part, containing chapter 7-10, extends the analysis for negotiation situations where threats are present. A consistent and unifying framework is provided first in 2.

Ira Horowitz Depending upon one's perspective, the need to choose among alternatives can be an unwelcome but unavoidable responsibility, an exciting and challenging opportunity, a run-of-the-mill activity that one performs seem ingly "without thinking very much about it," or perhaps something in between. Your most recent selections from a restaurant menu, from a set of jobs or job candidates, or from a rent-or-buy or sell-or-Iease option, are cases in point. Oftentimes we are involved in group decision processes, such as the choice of a president, wherein one group member's unwelcome responsibility is another's exciting opportunity. Many of us that voted in the presidential elections of both 1956 and 1984, irrespective of political affiliation, experienced both emotions; others just pulled the lever or punched the card without thinking very much about it. Arriving at either an individual or a group decision can sometimes be a time consuming, torturous, and traumatic process that results in a long regretted choice that could have been reached right off the bat. On other occasions, the "just let's get it over with and get out of here" solution to a long-festering problem can yield rewards that are reaped for many 1 ORGANIZATION AND DECISION THEORY 2 years to come. One way or another, however, individuals and organiza tions somehow manage to get the decision-making job done, even if they don't quite understand, and often question, just how this was accomplished."

This book presents, compares, and develops various techniques for estimating market power - the ability to set price profitably above marginal cost - and strategies - the game-theoretic plans used by firms to compete with rivals. The authors start by examining static model approaches to estimating market power. They extend the analysis to dynamic models. Finally, they develop methods to estimate firms' strategies directly and examine how these strategies determine market power. A detailed technical appendix reviews the relevant information-theoretic and other econometric models that are used throughout. Questions and detailed answers for students and researchers are provided in the book for easy use.

A critical issue in dealing with climate change is deciding who has a right to emit carbon dioxide. Allocation in the European Emissions Trading Scheme provided the first in-depth description and analysis of the process by which rights to emit carbon dioxide were created and distributed in the European Union. This was the world's first large-scale experiment with an emission trading system for carbon dioxide and was likely to be copied by others if there was to be a global regime for limiting greenhouse gas emissions. The book comprises contributions from those responsible for putting the allocation into practice in ten representative member states and at the European Commission. The problems encountered in this process, the solutions found, and the choices they made, will be of interest to all who are concerned with climate policy and the use of emissions trading to combat climate change.

How do we place value on goods--and, importantly, why? Valuation and pricing are core issues in the market economy, but understanding of these concepts and their interrelation is weak. In response, The Worth of Goods takes a sociological approach to the perennial but timely question of what makes a product valuable.
Structured in three parts, it first examines value in the broader sense--moral values and how they are formed, and the relations between economic and non-economic values-- discussing such matters as the value of an oil spill, the price of a scientific paper, value in ethical consumption, and imaginative value. The second part discusses the issues surrounding valuation in aesthetic markets, specifically wine, fashion models, art, and the creative industries. The third part analyzes valuation in financial markets--credit rating agencies, stock exchange markets, and industrial production.
This pioneering volume brings together leading social scientists to provide a range of theoretical tools and case studies for understanding price and the creation of value in markets within social and cultural contexts and preconditions. It is an important source for scholars in economics, sociology, anthropology, and political science interested in how markets work, and how value is established.

This volume brings together leading scholars to make connections between efficiency and a number of diverse areas of current interest to economists. Included are new results concerning aggregation of technical efficiency, sources of productivity growth in U.S. manufacturing, intellectual property rights, and the determinants of successful mergers.

European integration has come a long way since the fIrst steps in the aftermath of the Second World War. At that time, the neutral European countries chose to stay outside the European Economic Community. Those countries that wanted less ambitious cooperation formed the European Free Trade Association. Increasing trade dependence between the two groupings was institutionalised when they signed free-trade agreements with each other, creating thus a wider European free-trade area in manufactures. The strong push towards deepening integration among EC countries, manifested in the Single European Act in 1985, and the dismantling of non-tariff barriers to trade and factor flows in the EC by 1993, made it necessary for EFTA countries to secure access on equal conditions to their most important export market and thus prevent trade diversion. The ensuing agreement on the European Economic Area responded to these demands, but did not resolve the apparent asymmetry in EEA decision-making. This emanated from the supremacy ofEC legislation over EEA rules, thus making EFTA countries passively adjust to EC norms. Consequently, Finland applied for membership in the EC in March 1992, with effect from 1995. The latest phase in the integration process, the Treaty on European Union, has an aim to further deepening, e. g. the formation of the economic and monetary union by 1999.

This book contains the papers that were presented in 1994 at the conference "Transaction Cost Economics and Beyond" organized by GRASP at the Tinbergen Institute in Rotterdam. It is generally recognized that transaction cost economics (TCE) is at the heart of the new theory of the firm. It is a well established research program with a well developed theoretical framework and good results in empirical testing. However, critics consider the approach too limited to understand the essential characteristics of such complex organizations like firms. Critics plea convincingly for the need to go beyond the original TCE framework and to develop a more pluralistic approach towards issues of economic organization. The new theory of the firm can only be further developed when scholars are willing to debate the issues in an open-minded, academic way. I thank the participants of the conference very much for putting so much effort in writing their papers and for their contribution to an open and stimulating discussion. It is my wish that this book contributes to the further deve lopment of the theory of the firm and that it helps us to a better understan ding of the complexities of economic organization. I would like to thank the following organizations for their support: the Tinbergen Institute, the "Vereniging Trust Fonds" of the Erasmus University, the Faculty of Economics of the Erasmus University, and GRASP (Group for Research and Advice in Strategic management and Industrial Policy)."

Work on this book began in the Spring of 1983, not long after an Amax Corporation annual budget meeting. As a member of the Amax board of directors since 1979, I had been present at such meetings in which the molybdenum price had been forecast to move higher than $7.00 per pound. The actual annual average prices were $9.70 in 1980, $8.50 in 1981, and $4.00 in 1982. The forecast for 1983 called for prices to return to higher levels, but as both dealer and producer prices declined further, my research began in earnest. Initially, the research was to address the question of why the molybdenum price had declined by more than half in a short period. More fundamental, as other metals prices also declined, was an impelling need to know the causes of the abrupt and sustained reduction in metals price levels that year. As prices stayed at low levels, while those of other materials recovered over the 1983-1986 period, the question became that of why metals prices had remained at startlingly low levels for over five years.

Trade, Competition and Domestic Regulatory Policy presents a unique combination of analysis of both international trade and investment policies, and competition and regulatory policies. Increasingly, policymakers, businesses and the law and economics professions need to better understand how changes and policy developments in international trade and competition developed and how their interaction impacts on global business. In addition to providing a comprehensive analysis of the attempts of international trade theory and practice to deal with tariffs, non-tariff barriers, market distortions and failures to protect various kinds of property rights, this book contains a detailed treatment of how property rights protection, including intangible property rights are a critical element of ensuring open trade and competitive markets. It examines how these rights have developed over time, and how they have been integrated into trade and competition policy. This book will be of significant interest to students of international business, professors of economics, law and business, and policymakers at the intersection of trade, investment, competition and property rights.

This is a management oriented book about efficiency, quality and effectiveness designed for an audience of management practitioners, scholars, and students. The integrative approach developed in this book contains new ideas regarding quality and efficiency-based effective management. These ideas lend themselves to managerial applications. This work is not meant to provide an exhaustive account of the measurement, and applications of effectiveness, quality, and efficiency concepts. With the exception of the treatment of conventional productivity concepts and measurements in Chapter 2, and of production flexibility in Chapter 5, the discussion in this book is largely non-teclmical. Among management practitioners, the book may be of particular interest to managers with broad strategic orientations in the fields of production management, quality management, marketing, and management of human resources. The academic audience is likely to include scholars and students interested in strategic planning, applied productivity analysis, quality management, marketing management, and management of human resources. The book could also be used as a supplementary text to or part of the readings in basic and advanced courses in strategic management, production management, and quality management. Concepts and dimensions of efficiency, quality, and effectiveness, as used throughout this book, are introduced in Chapter 1. The intricate sets of relationships among effectiveness, quality, and efficiency are explored.

A management agency --such as a publicly or privately owned electric utility -- must, if it is to be efficient in carrying out its day-to-day tasks, have a means of monitoring its performance to assess the efficiency of its operations and the effectiveness of its planning. For example, how did the demand for electricity compare with that assumed in planning? How effective were the incentives applied to induce energy conservation by users? Such ex post analyses are essential for improving the planning process and hence for improving decisions with respect to efficiency and resource allocation. Unfortunately, it seems to be very difficult for public agencies to make such ex post evaluations an integral part of agency activities, whether the agencies are "producers," e. g. , the Corps of Engineers or the Bureau of Reclamation with respect to water resources management, or are regulatory agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency or the Food and Drug Administration. Here and there a few ex post analyses of agency programs have been done, but rarely by the responsible agency itself. These analyses have attempted to compare the results actually achieved with the results estimated in planning, either in terms of project outputs or in terms of effectiveness of regulatory and/or economic incentives in inducing desired changes in behavior.

It is not uncommon that a group of scientists from many different disciplines join a working group, discuss a topic of interest and edit a volume of articles related to this topic. They may even agree on a jointly written introduction or conclusion . The study group "Environmental Standards" established in 1987 as an expert panel of the German Academy of Sciences and Technology in Berlin broke with that common tradition and became involved in a fascinating, but also pain-staking experiment to compose a document on setting environmental standards that has been literally written and authorized by all group members. The group consisted of eleven individuals representing the following disciplines: physics, chemistry, biology, engineering , law , psychology, and sociology/economics. The study group had two major goals: First, to provide a document that summarizes the state of the art in each discipline with respect to the topic of environmental standards. Since it is impossible to cover all environmental hazards in one book, the panel members agreed to limit the discussion of the scientific material to one major case study: the effects of ionizing radiation. This topic was selected because the scientific data base is well developed in this area and levels of anthropogenic release can be compared with natural background levels . These two conditions are rarely met by most chemical hazards.

This book is a substantially revised and enlarged version of the monograph General Equilibrium with Increasing Returns, published by Springer-Verlag as a Lecture Notes volume in 1996. It incorporates new topics and the most recent developments in the field. It also provides a more systematic analysis of the differences between production economies with and without convex production sets. Five out of twelve chapters are new, and most of the remaining ones have been reformulated. An outline of contents appears in chapter 1. As its predecessor, this book contains a formal and systematic exposition of the main results on the existence and efficiency of equilibrium, in production economies where production sets need not be convex. There is an explicit attempt at making of it a suitable reference both for graduate students and researchers interested in theory (not necessarily specialists in mathematical economics). With this twofold purpose in mind, the work has been written according to three key principles: (i) To provide a uhified approach to the problems involved. For that we construct a basic model that is rich enough to encompass the different models appearing throughout, and to derive all the results as coroilaries of a reduced number of general theorems. (ii) To maintain a relatively low mathematical complexity. Thus, when the estimated cost of generality exceeds the benefit of simplicity, we shall state and prove the theorems under assumptions that need not be the most general ones.

New technology is revolutionizing broadcasting markets. As the cost of bandwidth processing and delivery fall, information-intensive services that once bore little economic relationship to each other are now increasingly related as substitutes or complements. Television, newspapers, telecoms and the internet compete ever more fiercely for audience attention. At the same time, digital encoding makes it possible to charge prices for content that had previously been broadcast for free. This is creating new markets where none existed before. How should public policy respond? Will competition lead to better services, higher quality and more consumer choice - or to a proliferation of low-quality channels? Will it lead to dominance of the market by a few powerful media conglomerates? Using the insights of modern microeconomics, this book provides a state-of-the-art analysis of these and other issues by investigating the power of regulation to shape and control broadcasting markets.

Chapters in Game Theory has been written on the occasion of the 65th birthday of Stef Tijs, who can be regarded as the godfather of game theory in the Netherlands. The contributors all are indebted to Stef Tijs, as former Ph.D. students or otherwise. The book contains fourteen chapters on a wide range of subjects. Some of these can be considered surveys while other chapters present new results: most contributions can be positioned somewhere in between these categories. The topics covered include: cooperative stochastic games; noncooperative stochastic games; sequencing games; games arising form linear (semi-) infinite programming problems; network formation, costs and potential games; potentials and consistency in transferable utility games; the nucleolus and equilibrium prices; population uncertainty and equilibrium selection; cost sharing; centrality in social networks; extreme points of the core; equilibrium sets of bimatrix games; game theory and the market; and transfer procedures for nontransferable utility games. Both editors did their Ph.D with Stef Tijs, while he was affiliated with the mathematics department of the University of Nijmegen.

This volume offers a snapshot of the research that is ongoing in the area of value transfer. It provides relevant input for increasing the quality of cost-benefit analyses of projects with environmental and health impacts. The volume includes papers by some of the most influential authors in the area and covers the latest developments in the field.

Property tax revolts have occurred both in the United States and elsewhere. This book examines the causes and consequences of such revolts with a special focus on the California experience with Proposition 13. The work examines the consequences of property tax limitations for public finance with a detailed analysis of the tax system put into place in California. Theoretical approaches and evidence from a comprehensive empirical study are used to highlight the equity and efficiency of property tax systems. Since property taxes are the primary source of revenue for local governments, the book compares and contrasts the experiences of several states with regard to the evolution of local government following property tax limitations. Finally, the book considers alternatives for reform and lessons to avoid future tax conflicts of this kind.

Innovation has become a major field of study in economics, management, sociology, science and technology, and history. Case studies, empirical models, appreciative analyses and formal theories abound. However, after several decades of study on innovation, and so many different types of contribution, there are still many phenomena we know very little about. The debate on innovation still has much to deliver; important questions remain unanswered and many problems require solution. Bringing together many leading figures in the field, this collection aims to address these concerns by offering detailed analyses of topics that are crucial for understanding innovation. In addition, it offers discussions of topics that researchers are just beginning to explore and of topics that continue to defy our efforts to understand and systematise. This important and wide-ranging collection will be essential reading for academic researchers and graduate students who wish to gain a broad overview of frontier-research in innovation.

Innovation has become a major field of study in economics, management, sociology, science and technology, and history. Case studies, empirical models, appreciative analyses and formal theories abound. However, after several decades of study on innovation, and so many different types of contribution, there are still many phenomena we know very little about. The debate on innovation still has much to deliver; important questions remain unanswered and many problems require solution. Bringing together many leading figures in the field, this collection aims to address these concerns by offering detailed analyses of topics that are crucial for understanding innovation. In addition, it offers discussions of topics that researchers are just beginning to explore and of topics that continue to defy our efforts to understand and systematise. This important and wide-ranging collection will be essential reading for academic researchers and graduate students who wish to gain a broad overview of frontier-research in innovation.