Fair trade is a growing global movement. A huge and widening range of fair trade goods are now available in the shops. Why is fair trade so important? This book provides 50 reasons why buying fair trade delivers a host of benefits to people and the planet. It's an inspiring account of how every consumer can play a part in improving and even saving lives and making global trade work better for poor people. Did you know that buying fair trade: -- Helps eradicate sweatshops -- Helps end child labour -- Reduces the debt burden on developing countries' farmers -- Ensures small-scale farmers can earn a living wage -- Supports and protects the environment? This book provides a critical guide to international trade and shows that fair trade presents a realistic and positive alternative for farmers and producers in developing countries. By improving schools, healthcare and working conditions, the fair trade movement has already saved lives and empowered whole communities. This book shows how every consumer can help make a difference in the fight to end poverty and inequality.

By the year 2000, annual sales of computer products to China may well reach $15-18 billion, making China one of the largest computer markets in the world. At the same time, China's own computer industry is expected to become world-class and internationally competitive. How this will come about, the market and economic trends that are presently developing, and the opportunities they present for Western businesses are explored here by two insiders, offering not only useful analysis but hands-on guidance to the ways in which China's computer market works. With an appendix listing more than 500 of the most important Chinese computer companies, industrial and professional organizations, and related consulting and law firms, the book will be essential reading for computer industry management and top sales executives, and for investment bankers and others with important stakes in the China market.

China's computer market is not easy to enter. The key to doing so, according to the authors, is to understand not only China's unique historical, cultural, and environmental factors that condition the way business is done there, but the way Chinese businesspeople think and act. China is a low-income and transitional economy, much different from Japanese and other Asian economies, and incentives and price structures are distorted and the rules of the game are not clearly written. The legal infrastructure is incomplete, and laws are not rigorously enforced. Using the latest data available only from local Chinese sources, Zhang and Wang dissect the Chinese computer market in terms that Westerners can understand and relate to: its opportunities, but also its risks. Academics teaching and studying international business, marketing, and investment will also benefit from the authors' insights.

We are now living in a period of disillusion in the ability of economic policy to stabilise the economy. This is proven by the onset of severe world recession in the early 1980s and the inability to invert the negative phase of the business cycle under way in the industrialized countries in the early 1990s. The failure of old policies motivates the research into the causes of economic fluctuations and their measurement whose results are published in this volume

This volume treats various aspects of the Yugoslav economic model and focuses on the long-term program of stabilization undertaken by that country in the last few years. The contributors discuss such diverse topics as the country's socioeconomic relations, and problems and prospects for carrying out a long-term stabilization program. "Essays on the Yugoslav Economic Model" puts forth a number of assertions relating to the country's economic performance: that Yugoslavia must resort to greater reliance on markets; it must become more export oriented with a fully convertible currency; the country must rid itself of debilitating inflation; it must preserve a social policy consistent with its socialist principles.

This volume treats various aspects of the Yugoslav economic model and focuses on the long-term program of stabilization undertaken by that country in the last few years. "Essays on the Yugoslav Economic Model" puts forth a number of assertions relating to the country's economic performance: that Yugoslavia must resort to greater reliance on markets; it must become more export oriented with a fully convertible currency; the country must rid itself of debilitating inflation; it must preserve a social policy consistent with its socialist principles. Furthermore, Yugoslavia must take all of these measures and more within the constraints of the existing socio-political framework of socialist self-management and heterogeneous population. The contributors each agree that given the country's diversity, a resort to markets is the only meaningful option available.

Your classic advanced microeconomic theory textbook delivering rigorous coverage of modern microeconomics.

In his book "Marktform und Gleichgewicht", published initially in 1934, Heinrich von Stackelberg presented his groundbreaking leadership model of firm competition. In a work of great originality and richness, he described and analyzed a market situation in which the leader firm moves first and the follower firms then move sequentially. This game-theoretic model, now widely known as Stackelberg competition, has had tremendous impact on the theory of the firm and economic analysis in general, and has been applied to study decision-making in various fields of business. As the first translation of von Stackelberg's book into English, this volume makes his classic work available in its original form to an English-speaking audience for the very first time.

John Levy's text presents microeconomic theory for use in analyzing and formulating public policy. It couples a direct and non-intimidating approach to essential theory with a presentation that is sophisticated at the policy level. It does not attempt to cover the entire body of economic theory, but rather presents those elements of theory most relevant to courses in public economics and public policy in such programs as public administration, policy analysis, health planning, environmental management, urban affairs, and urban planning. The text is divided into two parts. The first introduces basic concepts with an emphasis on their philosophical underpinnings and policy uses; the second consists of six essays on policy-related subjects, selected to make use of concepts presented in the first part. Among the unusual features of the book are the discussion of the tax expenditure concept, benefit cost analysis with numerical example, substantial discussions of the origins and philosophical implications of economic man as a behavioral model, and an entire chapter devoted to public choice.

Changing preferencesis a phenomenonoften invoked but rarely properlyaccounted for. Throughout the history of the social sciences, researchers have come against the possibility that their subjects' preferenceswere affected by the phenomenato be explainedor by otherfactorsnot taken into accountin the explanation.Sporadically, attempts have been made to systematically investigate these in uences, but none of these seems to have had a lasting impact. Today we are still not much further with respect to preference change than we were at the middle of the last century. This anthology hopes to provide a new impulse for research into this important subject. In particular, we have chosen two routes to amplify this impulse. First, we stress the use of modellingtechniquesfamiliar from economicsand decision theory. Instead of constructing complex, all-encompassing theories of preference change, the authors of this volume start with very simple, formal accounts of some possible and hopefully plausible mechanism of preference change. Eventually, these models may nd their way into larger, empirically adequate theories, but at this stage, we think that the most importantwork lies in building structure.Secondly, we stress the importance of interdisciplinary exchange. Only by drawing together experts from different elds can the complex empirical and theoretical issues in the modelling of preference change be adequately investigated.

Chartered by the crown in 1474, the Merchant Adventurers was England's preeminent regulated international trading company until the early nineteenth century. It functioned as a guild, with members who were the only merchants entitled to export finished cloth from the growing English woolen industry, which gave them an unchallenged monopoly. It was the only company entitled to export cloth from England to other countries. The organization served as a social channel for its members, who built The Merchant Adventurers Hall at York in the North of England after the group was formed in 1357. This source book collects eighteen substantial documents written between 1407 and 1805, the most important years of the society's history. This group includes the Charter of 1407, extracts from the Charter of Edward IV (1462) and the Laws and Ordinances of 1608. Taken together, these records form one of the most detailed pictures of business organizations and methods during the later Tudor, the Stuart, and the early Hanoverian eras. With detailed notes and an extensive introduction. CONTENTS The Merchant Adventurers, A Brief History The Laws and Ordinances The Rise and State of the Fellowship The Statute of 1497 Extracts from Wheeler, A Treatise of Commerce Residence towns of the Adventurers The number of freemen Extract from "the Debate betweene the Heraides" The Charter of 1407 Extracts from the Charter of Edward IV, 1462 Extracts from the Charter of Elizabeth of 1464 List of the Foreign Grants and Privileges of the Fellowship Abstract of the Privileges of the Merchant Adventurers at Dort Extracts from the Court Register of the Company Ordinance of the Lords and Commons, 1643 Extract from the Act of 1688, "laying open "the trade of the Society Correspondence by Wm. Rycant, Resident at Hamburg Letter from the States General of Holland concerning those of the Society still left in the City of Dort, 1751 Letter from Lord Bute to Mr. Mathias, 1761, and the French note concerning the establishment of a French Company Correspondence of Thornton, 1805 By-law of 1688 (continued from pages 197) "The bulk of this volume is devoted to the "Laws, Customes and Ordinances of the ffellowshippe of Merchantes Adventurers of the Realm of England, etc.," a large folio volume of over 200 pages kept since 1852 among the additional manuscripts of the British Museum, and probably compiled between 1608 and 1611. In these pages we have the public and official side of one of the great mediaeval industries of England-the continental distribution of the woollen goods for which that kingdom was once so remarkable. Though the society may be said to have lived for six centuries, from the twelfth to the beginning of the nineteenth, its chief activity seems to have been from the fifteenth to the middle of the eighteenth, first in the North of France and in the Low Countries, and then at Hamburg. The extensive private records of the "Merchant Adventurers" have not yet been found but enough original material exists in this volume to throw much light on the beginnings of the continental commerce of England, especially in the period when the English were ceasing to export the raw wool and taking up at home the manufacture of cloth for the continental market. Thereby the prosperity of Florence and other cities of Northern Italy was affected in no small degree, and the balance of industrial daring and consequent wealth moved northward. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the rivalries of the Emperor and the Crown of England transferred the "Staple" or warehouses of the society from Antwerp to Hamburg, and brought on a long warfare with the Hanseatic League, that ended disastrously enough for the former." Thomas J. Shahan, The Catholic University Bulletin, Volume 8, No. 4, October, 1902

The United States holds strategic stockpiles of nearly 100 industrial minerals, metals, and other commodities. These stockpiles have influenced the world commodity markets in many ways. This work brings together in one place, documentary and statistical evidence about the size and nature of the U.S. strategic stockpiles, and the ways in which this influence has been evidenced, in markets for the important industrial metals.

This book details very simply and for even the most novice of potential analysts not only how to perform analytics which describe what is happening, predict what is going to happen, and optimize responses, but also places these analytics in the context of proactive strategy development.

In his penetrating analysis of Mexico's current economic, political, and social situation, Ramirez focuses on the major structural problems that underlie the nation's profound economic difficulties and the challenges they pose to its people. Writing for both economists and political scientists, Ramirez offers a framework of analysis for a better understanding of Mexico's economic crisis -- one based on an in-depth examination of both its historical origins and its present ramifications. The discussion is supported by comprehensive coverage of the relevant economic data, making this one of the most thorough treatments of the subject available in print.

Following an introductory chapter that provides essential background information, Ramirez addresses the historical and institutional background of the current situation. His study is unusually broad-based in scope, encompassing such issues as the social costs of modernization and the legacy of revolution during the first part of this century, Cardenas and the revolutionary process, economic growth via import-substitution policies, the exhaustion of the Mexican growth model during the 1970s and 1980s, the IMF austerity program. The final chapters present cogently argued policy recommendations -- including alternatives to the austerity measures imposed by international lending organizations. Ramirez's conclusions regarding the causes of Mexico's economic decline and his predictions for the country's economic future make an important contribution to the debate over Mexico's economic survival.

In this groundbreaking new study, Clements assesses the impact of alternative foreign trade strategies--export promotion and import substitution--on employment and income distribution in Brazil. The first work to evaluate specifically the impact of Brazil's foreign trade policies on income distribution, this volume uses a modified input-output technique to assess income distribution questions.

This volume discusses the determinants of happiness and presents case studies of how public policy can help promote happiness. Happiness is a private matter and individual pursuit, however public policy does have an important role and can contribute much through various enabling means. Possible examples of such influence include establishing a set of institutions that allow private enterprises to flourish, investing in infrastructure and in education, protecting people from harm and reducing risks and alleviating pain when harm is unavoidable. This book takes a multidisciplinary approach that encompasses Economics, Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, Political Science and an international perspective.

In January 2005, the German government enacted a substantial reform of the welfare system, the so-called "Hartz IV reform." This book evaluates key characteristics of the reform from a microeconometric perspective. It investigates whether a centralized or decentralized organization of welfare administration is more successful to integrate welfare recipients into employment. Moreover, it analyzes the employment effects of an intensified use of benefit sanctions and evaluates the effectiveness and efficiency of the most frequently assigned Active Labor Market Programs. The analyses have a focus on immigrants, who are highly over-represented in the German welfare system. "

A Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) is the unconditional government-ensured guarantee that all citizens will have enough income to meet their basic needs without a work requirement. Significant questions include: Why should we adopt a BIG? Can the U.S. afford it? Why don't the current welfare programs work? Why not guarantee everyone a job? Would anyone work if his or her income were guaranteed? Has a BIG ever been tested? This book answers these questions and many more in simple, easy-to-understand language.

This book is a faithful record of China's economy that spans almost 70 years. Starting from 1949, it portrays in a panoramic picture how the economy has developed over these decades. From the initial restoration and retrenchment, to the great leap outward that resulted in the two phases of economic reform; from its accession to the WTO to the unprecedented process of urbanization, the book uses four chapters to depict in a chronological order how China becomes what it is today. For scholars on modern Chinese economy, this book offers a detailed account of a wide range of events that happened during clearly-divided time periods. On this basis, they can deepen their research on different individual subjects. Teachers of universities and colleges may use this book as a reference when preparing relevant courses. For economics majors, this book is a key that helps them clarify important issues. Learners who are interested in knowing more about China, especially the dramatic changes that have taken place in its economic scene, can equally acquire the needed facts and figures.

This book sheds new light on long-established concepts of microeconomic production theory and combines general theoretical analysis with references to management tools. It deals with concepts of microeconomic production theory, using the fund-flow model of Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen as a basic reference. This long-neglected model allows for a representation of productive operations that can easily be accommodated to empirical application.

Worldwide, postal operators have been slow to address the threats from and opportunities created by electronic competition. The European Commission and member states are wrestling with these issues, while at the same time continuing to deal with the interrelated issues of implementing entry into postal markets and maintaining the universal service obligation. The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 in the U.S. exacerbated financial and managerial problems faced by USPS that result in part from electronic substitution for letter delivery. A major aim of this book is to examine policies to address postal operations in a digital world and ways in which postal operators might reinvent themselves to respond to threats and exploit opportunities. Potential opportunities examined include parcels, e-commerce, digital delivery, regulatory innovations and pricing. This book will be of interest to postal operators, regulatory commissions, consulting firms, competitors and customers, experts in the postal economics, law, and business, and those charged with the responsibility for designing and implementing postal sector policies. Researchers in regulatory economics, transportation technology and industrial organization will also find considerable food for thought in this volume.

Capitalizing on the extensive experience of the author in estimating shadow prices, Shadow Prices for Project Appraisal forges a bridge between theory and practice, explaining what shadow (or accounting) prices are, how they are used, and how they can be estimated. Starting from the basic principles of applied welfare economics, Elio Londero's book provides a step by step derivation of those formulas more frequently utilized in estimating shadow prices. The preparation and use of input-output techniques are examined in detail, and different estimation approaches and updating procedures are presented. Finally, a detailed case study of shadow prices for Colombia illustrates their practical application. This book will be essential reading for students and teachers interested in cost-benefit analysis, and in shadow prices as a specialized field of applied welfare economics. In addition, the book will be an invaluable source for applied economists and practitioners interested in calculating shadow prices.

Arab entrepreneurs in Israel form part of a traditional, yet peripheral, ethnic minority attempting to integrate into Israel's larger economy. This study, based on extensive fieldwork, focuses on the obstacles that these Arab entrepreneurs and new industrialists must overcome in their development towards industrialization. The research exposes a highly flexible entrepreneurial culture making use of a limited set of opportunities and resources. The work makes a strong contribution to comparative cross-cultural research and theoretical formulations on issues of ethnic entrepreneurship.

The extraordinary stories of low-income women living in Sao 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 Sao 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.

Alexander Dolgin's Economics of Symbolic Exchange is in reality not one but three books, and although these semantic layers are interlinked, the reader will need to choose between the different vectors and modalities. One clearly evident dimension is research. Certain authors introduce quite new intellectual approaches into scienti?c debate. This requires a special frame of mind and a searching curiosity about social reality. Carl Gustav Jung identi?ed a p- nomenon which he called systematic blindness: when a science reaches a stage of maturity and equilibrium, it categorically refuses, from a sense of self-preservation, to note certain facts and phenomena which it ?nds inconvenient. In Alexander D- gin's book whole complexes of such "non-canonical" material are to be found. Here are just a few examples: ?le exchange networks, through which digital works of art are spread through the Internet; bargain sales of fashionable clothing; the paradox of equal pricing of cultural goods of varying quality; and a discussion of whether - tronage or business has the more productive in?uence on creativity. Obviously, not all the issues Volginraises are totally new, but brought togetherand examinedwithin an elegant logical framework of informational economics, they pose a challenge to scienti?c thinking. Such challenges are by no means immediately or, in some cases, ever acclaimed bythescienti?cestablishment. J. K. Galbraith, forexample, agreatAmericaneco- mist, whose works are read throughout the world, who introduced a whole range of crucially important concepts, the director of John F.