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.

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.

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 Microeconomics of Risk and Information covers the principal areas in the field, including risk aversion, simple portfolio theory, precautionary savings, production under risk, risk sharing in the Edgeworth box, adverse selection and moral hazard. Keeping to a strict two-dimensional environment and using only some basic calculus, this textbook is written principally for students of advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate courses in economics, finance, and other fields, who have studied microeconomics at the intermediate level. Compact and clear, the book reflects the author's twenty-year experience teaching the course in the one-semester format to students around the world.

Managers are often under great pressure to improve the performance of their organizations. To improve performance, one needs to constantly evaluate operations or processes related to producing products, providing services, and marketing and selling products. Performance evaluation and benchmarking are a widely used method to identify and adopt best practices as a means to improve performance and increase productivity, and are particularly valuable when no objective or engineered standard is available to define efficient and effective performance. For this reason, benchmarking is often used in managing service operations, because service standards (benchmarks) are more difficult to define than manufacturing standards. Benchmarks can be established but they are somewhat limited as they work with single measurements one at a time. It is difficult to evaluate an organization's performance when there are multiple inputs and outputs to the system. The difficulties are further enhanced when the relationships between the inputs and the outputs are complex and involve unknown tradeoffs. It is critical to show benchmarks where multiple measurements exist. The current book introduces the methodology of data envelopment analysis (DEA) and its uses in performance evaluation and benchmarking under the context of multiple performance measures.

Clemens Schutte analyses the emergence of corporate control structures in the Czech privatization process. The book depicts the basic features of the Czech system of corporate control and the direction of its transformation. This is an extremely relevant subject since the Czech privatization process is a model case in several respects: it is institutionally open and hence allows for spontaneous development; and privatization has been carried out comprehensively and rapidly. Based upon a theoretical analysis of the institutional cornerstones of corporate control, the book develops clear recommendations which are subsequently used as a benchmark to assess the performance of the evolving Czech system of corporate control.The book discusses the role of the most important players in corporate control including the big bank-centred financial groups, capital markets, the board model of Czech corporations and the institutional base of debt control and minority shareholder protection. It also reveals the conflict of political intentions and real-time developments. As an important and timely contribution, this book will be invaluable reading for all those involved, or interested, in the privatization and corporate control of other Central and Eastern European countries. Those working in financial and political institutions will also find this book valuable.

You just know that an improvement of the user interface will reap rewards, but how do you justify the expense and the labor and the time guarantee a robust ROI ahead of time? How do you decide how much of an investment should be funded? And what is the best way to sell usability to others?
In this completely revised and new edition, Randolph G. Bias (University of Texas at Austin, with 25 years experience as a usability practitioner and manager) and Deborah J. Mayhew (internationally recognized usability consultant and author of two other seminal books including The Usability Engineering Lifecycle) tackle these and many other problems. It has been updated to cover cost-justifying usability for Web sites and intranets, for the complex applications we have today, and for a host of products offering techniques, examples, and cases that are unavailable elsewhere. No matter what type of product you build, whether or not you are a cost-benefit expert or a born salesperson, this book has the tools that will enable you to cost-justify the appropriate usability investment.
.Includes contributions by a host of experts involved in this work, including Aaron Marcus, Janice Rohn, Chauncey Wilson, Nigel Bevan, Dennis Wixon, Clare-Marie Karat, Susan Dray, Charles Mauro, and many others;
.Includes actionable ideas for every phase of the software development process;
.Includes case studies from inside a variety of companies;
.Includes ideas from "the other side of the table," software executives who hold the purse strings, who offer thoughts on which proposals for usability support they've funded, and which ones they've declined."

This collection of essays examines the development of the American South from the end of the Civil War to the end of World War II. Written by both well-known and emerging scholars, the essays are divided into sections that address some of the major issues of that era, such as race relations, economic development, political reform, the roles of southern women, the messages of folk music, and the problems of the region's historians. Each article offers fresh insights or new information on its subject, and collectively the articles help to illuminate how the most traditional of American regions tried to cope with the forces of modernization.

Trading across borders, export intermediaries are specialized service firms that connect domestic manufacturers with overseas buyers. How do they do it? What determines their success or failure? Have they really lowered transaction costs for their clients, minimized agency costs, and possessed competitive resources and capabilities in world trade? Surprisingly, no study until now has answered these questions or has explored the underlying issues as thoroughly as Peng does here.

Peng develops an integrated model of export intermediary performance. He focuses on the nature of export transactions and manufacturer-intermediary relationships which may lead to agency problems, and underlines the importance of valuable, unique, and hard-to-imitate resources and capabilities for intermediaries' competitive advantages. Peng employs a distinct analytical approach that highlights three underlying themes--transactions, agents, and resources--then tests his model with six critical case studies and a 1,000-firm mail survey. Operators of export intermediaries seeking ways to improve their performance, aspiring entrepreneurs studying the export business for niche opportunities, manufacturing executives seeking top quality service from export intermediaries, and government officials in charge of export promotion and pertinent legislation--all will find Peng's book a useful examination of issues critical to their work.

This important book provides a comprehensive analysis of the impact of privatization on the economic performance of companies in Central and Eastern Europe. It sheds new light on the achievements and shortcomings of the privatization process and draws out lessons for the future. After considering the theoretical issues surrounding privatization, the authors provide an in-depth examination of corporate governance and company performance in advanced market economies as well as transition economies. They begin with a description of the main principles, techniques and results of privatization in Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary and Poland. A statistical and econometric analysis of extensive company-level data and interviews from a large number of firms between 1990 and 1997 is then conducted to discover the main factors in changing economic performance. Using this information the authors compare the transformation of the company sectors in the four countries, and in addition assess company restructuring from the perspective of West European privatizations. Privatization and Economic Performance in Central Eastern Europe will be of interest to policymakers in governments and international organizations and those working in the fields of microeconomics, industrial organization and transition studies.

This text explores the rise of consumerism and the expanding variety of goods available in Japan. Japan is placed within the comparative context of the 'consumer revolution' in Europe and North America, contributing to the analysis of the ways in which consumption and everyday life change in the course of economic development.

This book covers a wide spectrum of issues in behavioural game theory (BGT), ranging from players' heterogeneity, social preferences and reciprocity, to learning, information and punishment in public good games. The book opens up the interdisciplinary aspects of BGT, and presents models which are tested through experimental methods.

This textbook articulates the elements of good craftsmanship in applied microeconomic research and demonstrates its effectiveness with multiple examples from economic literature. Empirical economic research is a combination of several elements: theory, econometric modelling, institutional analysis, data handling, estimation, inference, and interpretation. A large body of work demonstrates how to do many of these things correctly, but to date, there is no central resource available which articulates the essential principles involved and ties them together. In showing how these research elements can be best blended to maximize the credibility and impact of the findings that result, this book presents a basic framework for thinking about craftsmanship. This framework lays out the proper context within which the researcher should view the analysis, involving institutional factors, complementary policy instruments, and competing hypotheses that can influence or explain the phenomena being studied. It also emphasizes the interconnectedness of theory, econometric modeling, data, estimation, inference, and interpretation, arguing that good craftsmanship requires strong links between each. Once the framework has been set, the book devotes a chapter to each element of the analysis, providing robust instruction for each case. Assuming a working knowledge of econometrics, this text is aimed at graduate students and early-career academic researchers as well as empirical economists looking to improve their technique.

This book focuses on the concepts of social capital, corporate social responsibility, and economic development in relation to economic theory of institutions and behavioural economics. It also takes a macroeconomic and empirical approach, on the relationship between social capital, ethical behaviour and economic development.

This textbook presents the basics of game theory both on an undergraduate level and on a more advanced mathematical level. It is the second, revised version of the successful 2008 edition. The book covers most topics of interest in game theory, including cooperative game theory. Part I presents introductions to all these topics on a basic yet formally precise level. It includes chapters on repeated games, social choice theory, and selected topics such as bargaining theory, exchange economies, and matching. Part II goes deeper into noncooperative theory and treats the theory of zerosum games, refinements of Nash equilibrium in strategic as well as extensive form games, and evolutionary games. Part III covers basic concepts in the theory of transferable utility games, such as core and balancedness, Shapley value and variations, and nucleolus. Some mathematical tools on duality and convexity are collected in Part IV. Every chapter in the book contains a problem section. Hints, answers and solutions are included.

Both Taiwan and China are extremely populous nations that, due to population pressures and continuing high growth levels, have experienced challenges in sustainable development. Hsu illustrates Taiwan's path toward sustainable development and contrasts it to that of China, suggesting ways in which Taiwan can help China implement its environmental and social policies, and in which China might help Taiwan continue its path toward sustainable environmental and social policies. She explains that although Taiwan is a small compared to China, some aspects of its development model can (and should) be scaled up for larger countries. The importance of regulation enforcement is clear regarding Taiwan's environmental protection program, as is the promotion of small and medium sized enterprises in promoting income and social equality. Similarly, China's experimental methodology - using small areas to explore different ways of living or different technologies - can be useful in Taiwan. In Lessons in Sustainable Development, Hsu examines China and Taiwan in terms of inequality and environmental issues.

Dwindling innovation and deteriorating economic conditions are caused by a major force, a systemic shift in the American economy. In this gripping book, Dr. Samli makes the case that the US economy is shifting for the worse, tilting towards a finance-driven economy, and argues that investing in innovation will bring us out of the recession and back to a successful, market-driven economy. While the US is cost-cutting by sending jobs abroad, reducing education budgets, and redirecting government funds to military involvement, American innovation has been suffering and stifled. Dr. Samli explores the roots of the recession from this viewpoint and offers an 'innovative' solution for disciplining economic, political, and social activities to come out of the recession and restore the tilt towards the 99-percent.

This work on microeconomics offers interpretations of both its strengths and its weaknesses. It shows how the general equilibrium ideas of Walras and Marshall were gradually transformed after 1930 into formalized accounts of imaginary economies where trading never occurs.

This book challenges the generally accepted theories of classical economics, explaining why the expected utility theory, even if it were true, fails to be of much help in solving economic controversies.

The human factor has received scant attention in modern Economics, however this volume redresses the balance by incorporating human psychology into economic analysis. This book constructs a new basic structure model of economic circulation based on a new flow-like concept of utility (diminishing utility) and analyzes the direct relationship between human psychology and economic fluctuation, while expanding it into a consistent explanation of the generation and the collapse of financial bubbles.

"Reverse Licensing" evaluates the transfer of technology to the U.S. as an alternative growth strategy for both small- and medium-sized U.S. manufacturing firms which need new and competitive technology and for foreign firms which are anxious to enter the U.S. market but lack the required resources for export and/or foreign direct investment. The first theoretical research on international technology licensing from the U.S. licensees' standpoint, this book examines reverse licensing as an alternative to reverse investment. In addition, a sample of 120 U.S. manufacturing firms which have actually utilized reverse licensing is used for empirical and statistical analysis.

Industrial organization studies how markets allocate resources, specifically when there are few agents or when there are frictions that render the price-taking paradigm unsuitable. Game theory explores situations in which agents interact strategically and provides a useful foundation for studying many traditional industrial organization topics. The first volume of this wide-ranging Handbook contains original contributions by world-class specialists. It provides up-to-date surveys of the main tools of game theory that are used to model industrial organization topics. The Handbook covers numerous subjects in detail including, among others, the tools of lattice programming, supermodular and aggregative games, monopolistic competition, horizontal and vertically differentiated good models, dynamic and Stackelberg games, entry games, evolutionary games with adaptive players, asymmetric information, moral hazard, and learning and information sharing models. Technical yet accessible, this comprehensive resource will be required reading for both established researchers as well as graduate or advanced undergraduate students in industrial economics and game theory. Contributors incude: R. Amir, A. Attar, G.I. Bischi, F. Bloch, L. Corchon, S. Currarini, C. d'Aspremont, F. Feri, J. Gabszewicz, M. Jensen, L. Julien, F. Lamantia, I. Macho-Stadler, M. Marini, E. Maskin, D. Perez-Castrillo, C. Pimienta, D. Radi, R.A. Ritz, K. Ritzberger, O. Tarola, J. Thisse, A. Urbano, P. Ushchev, X. Vives, J. Zhao