The Socialist Industrial State (1976) examines the state-socialist system, taking as the central example the Soviet Union - where the goals and values of Marxism-Leninism and the particular institutions, the form of economy and polity, were first adopted and developed. It then considers the historical developments, differences in culture, the level of economic development and the political processes of different state-socialist countries around the globe.

The book considers the challenge of poverty and deterioration of the ecological environment in China, particularly in rural areas. Examining key factors such as the overuse of natural resources and the loss of biodiversity in the face of an expanding population and rapidly developing economy. It focuses on examining the frameworks of rural households in poor mountainous areas in rural China, considering their livelihood choices and decision-making processes. It analyses the relationship between these households' livelihoods and their environment, notably farmers' attitudes and perceptions towards ecological conservation policies, and their use of forest resources. Cutting across the fields of population studies, sociology, economy and environment, this is an important read for scholars and students interested in how China is dealing with the challenges of natural resources exploitation, sustainable development and social welfare.

This book, now in its third edition, explores how human populations grow, based on their creative abilities. To reconsider the theory of economic growth from a physicist's perspective, the book analyses the concepts of value and utility and their relationship to thermodynamic concepts. This approach allows the author to include characteristics of technology in descriptions of development and to formulate a phenomenological (macroeconomic, no-price fluctuations are discussed) theory of production as a set of evolutionary equations in one-sector and multi-sector approximations. The theory is proved to be useful for describing both national economies and global production in ancient times. This monograph presents the topics in a compact and consistent manner and can be used by students with a background in physics and other natural sciences who wish to specialize in economics. It explains how the growth of production is connected with advances in technology, consumption of labour and energy and makes it possible to analyse past and present social production systems and to build scripts of future progress. The book is of interest to energy specialists engaged in planning and analyzing the production and consumption of energy carriers, and to economists wanting to know how energy and technology affect economic growth. This third edition has been substantially revised and three brand new chapters have been added. Chapter 8 illustrates the robustness of the theory with the aid of statistical historical data from the Russian economy, while Chapter 12 is devoted to a reconstruction of the global production activity in ancient times. Chapter 13 discusses the principles of the organization of social production.

Financial economics is a fascinating topic where ideas from economics, mathematics and, most recently, psychology are combined to understand financial markets. This book gives a concise introduction into this field and includes for the first time recent results from behavioral finance that help to understand many puzzles in traditional finance. The book is tailor made for master and PhD students and includes tests and exercises that enable the students to keep track of their progress. Parts of the book can also be used on a bachelor level. Researchers will find it particularly useful as a source for recent results in behavioral finance and decision theory.

This book examines the linkages between exchange rates and India's merchandise trade since the 1990s. It looks at India's trade in the post-liberalisation period through its two main components: commodities and trading partners, and provides a bird's eye view through aggregate analyses accompanied by a historical narrative of the evolution of trade and exchange rate dynamics. Presenting a comprehensive analysis of bilateral and product-specific trade, the book explores the impact of exchange rate on labour intensive sectors and charts out major development. It also offers compelling evidence to suggest that if some commodities are identified as integral to India's export plans, then the impact of exchange rate must be weighed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) prior to a market intervention. This timely volume will be of interest to scholars and researchers of economics, business and finance, development studies, trade, business, and industry as well as practitioners, think-tanks, and policy makers.

Economics – macro, micro and mysterious – is integral to everyday life. But despite its importance for personal and collective decision making, it is a discipline often viewed as technical, arcane and inaccessible and thus overlooked in public discourse. This book is a call to arms to bring the discipline of economics more into the public domain. It calls on economists to think about how to make their knowledge of the economics public. And it calls on those who specialise in communicating expert knowledge to help us learn to communicate about economics. The book brings together scholars and practitioners working at the early stages of an emerging field: the public communication of, and public engagement with, economics. Through a series of short essays from academics and practitioners, the book has two key goals: first and foremost, it will make a case for why we need to make economics public and for the importance of having a clear vision of what it means to make economics public. Secondly, it suggests some ways that this can be done featuring contributions from practitioners, including economists, who are engaging audiences in newspapers, museums and beyond. This book is essential reading for those in economics with an interest in making economics public and those already in the many fields dedicated to communicating expert knowledge in public spaces who have an interest in where economics can fit.

Economics – macro, micro and mysterious – is integral to everyday life. But despite its importance for personal and collective decision making, it is a discipline often viewed as technical, arcane and inaccessible and thus overlooked in public discourse. This book is a call to arms to bring the discipline of economics more into the public domain. It calls on economists to think about how to make their knowledge of the economics public. And it calls on those who specialise in communicating expert knowledge to help us learn to communicate about economics. The book brings together scholars and practitioners working at the early stages of an emerging field: the public communication of, and public engagement with, economics. Through a series of short essays from academics and practitioners, the book has two key goals: first and foremost, it will make a case for why we need to make economics public and for the importance of having a clear vision of what it means to make economics public. Secondly, it suggests some ways that this can be done featuring contributions from practitioners, including economists, who are engaging audiences in newspapers, museums and beyond. This book is essential reading for those in economics with an interest in making economics public and those already in the many fields dedicated to communicating expert knowledge in public spaces who have an interest in where economics can fit.

The rich, multi-faceted and multi-disciplinary field of matching-based market design is an active and important one due to its highly successful applications with economic and sociological impact. Its home is economics, but with intimate connections to algorithm design and operations research. With chapters contributed by over fifty top researchers from all three disciplines, this volume is unique in its breadth and depth, while still being a cohesive and unified picture of the field, suitable for the uninitiated as well as the expert. It explains the dominant ideas from computer science and economics underlying the most important results on market design and introduces the main algorithmic questions and combinatorial structures. Methodologies and applications from both the pre-Internet and post-Internet eras are covered in detail. Key chapters discuss the basic notions of efficiency, fairness and incentives, and the way market design seeks solutions guided by normative criteria borrowed from social choice theory.

People pursue their own interests, whatever those interests might be. Some people have interests that are narrow and selfish, others have interests that are broad and altruistic, still others have interests that are somewhere in between. The idea that people are self-interested underpins all of economic analysis and raises two fundamental questions: 1. How do people choose the actions they think will further their own interests? 2. Can the potentially conflicting interests of different people be made to 'mesh' in some sort of socio-economic equilibrium? This book is devoted to a detailed study of the first question. Its Companion Volume (Economy-Wide Microeconomics: Equilibrium, Optimality, Applications and Tests) makes a detailed study of the second question.This book begins with the Arrow-Debreu theory of consumer choice. This theory supposes people choose so as to maximize a complete, continuous, transitive, and reflexive binary preference relation over a non-empty and compact choice set, under certainty. The book then studies numerous modifications, relaxations, and generalizations of each of these restrictions - up to and including recent work on Behavioral theories of choice. The study is presented from the Primal, Dual, and Revealed Preference points of view.Consumers are not the only agents in the economy, as Producers are present as well. Starting with the Arrow-Debreu idea that producers choose from a convex production set so as to maximize profit, a study is made of some of the extensions, modifications, and generalizations of this framework that have appeared in the literature. The study is presented from the Primal and Dual points of view.The final chapter in the book provides a link to its Companion Volume. The Chapter indicates how the theories of consumer and producer choice studied here inform answers of the second question posed above.

Local enterprise, institutional quality and strategic location were of central importance in the growth of medieval towns. This book, comprising a study of 112 English towns, emphasises these key factors. Downstream locations on major rivers attracted international trade, and thereby stimulated the local processing of imports and exports, while the early establishment of richly endowed religious institutions funnelled agricultural rental income into a town, where it was spent on luxury goods produced by local craftsmen and artisans, and on expensive, long-running building schemes. Local entrepreneurs who recognised the economic potential of a town developed residential suburbs which attracted wealthy residents. Meanwhile town authorities invested in the building and maintenance of bridges, gates, walls and ditches, often with financial support from wealthy residents. Royal lordship was also an advantage to a town, as it gave the town authorities direct access to the king and bypassed local power-brokers such as bishops and earls. The legacy of medieval investment remains visible today in the streets of important towns. Drawing on rentals, deeds and surveys, this book also examines in detail the topography of seven key medieval towns: Bristol, Gloucester, Coventry, Cambridge, Birmingham, Shrewsbury and Hull. In each case, surviving records identify the location and value of urban properties, and their owners and tenants. Using statistical techniques, previously applied only to the early modern and modern periods, the book analyses the impact of location and type of property on property values. It shows that features of the modern property market, including spatial autocorrelation, were present in the middle ages. Property hot-spots of high rents are also identified; the most valuable properties were those situated between the market and other focal points such transport hubs and religious centres, convenient for both, but remote from noise and pollution. This book takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on expertise from the disciplines of economics and history. It will be of interest to historians and to social scientists looking for a long-run perspective on urban development.

The Decline and Fall of Neoliberalism argues that the neoliberal era – starting after the collapse of the Bretton Woods system – is coming to an end. In the wake of the financial and economic crisis of 2008 and the outbreak of the pandemic in 2019, the doctrine outlined by monetarists appears to offer an inadequate response to the economic instability that characterises our contemporary world. To deal with the fallout of these crises, central banks have stepped in as major regulators of the economic system through massive interventions to support both financial markets and public spending, marking a clean break with the traditional conception of their role as depoliticised actors. Is the resurgence of inflation a consequence of this reckless strategy over which they seem to have lost control? Or is it rather rooted in an outdated understanding of money and monetary policy? One thing is certain: a profound change in policy is emerging. The growing turmoil in the global economy and the environmental challenges that face us demand an urgent and comprehensive rethinking of the economic role of the state. This book further develops the analysis presented in Populism and Neoliberalism and takes a closer look at the nature of neoliberalism as a political doctrine. Through this detailed description, it identifies the difficulties within economic thought that prevent it from responding appropriately to contemporary challenges. Drawing from the lessons of history, it proposes a renewed relationship between the state and the market that strikes a balance between planning and self-regulation. A post-neoliberal world is about to dawn, but its shape can still be determined by the path we choose to follow.

The Decline and Fall of Neoliberalism argues that the neoliberal era – starting after the collapse of the Bretton Woods system – is coming to an end. In the wake of the financial and economic crisis of 2008 and the outbreak of the pandemic in 2019, the doctrine outlined by monetarists appears to offer an inadequate response to the economic instability that characterises our contemporary world. To deal with the fallout of these crises, central banks have stepped in as major regulators of the economic system through massive interventions to support both financial markets and public spending, marking a clean break with the traditional conception of their role as depoliticised actors. Is the resurgence of inflation a consequence of this reckless strategy over which they seem to have lost control? Or is it rather rooted in an outdated understanding of money and monetary policy? One thing is certain: a profound change in policy is emerging. The growing turmoil in the global economy and the environmental challenges that face us demand an urgent and comprehensive rethinking of the economic role of the state. This book further develops the analysis presented in Populism and Neoliberalism and takes a closer look at the nature of neoliberalism as a political doctrine. Through this detailed description, it identifies the difficulties within economic thought that prevent it from responding appropriately to contemporary challenges. Drawing from the lessons of history, it proposes a renewed relationship between the state and the market that strikes a balance between planning and self-regulation. A post-neoliberal world is about to dawn, but its shape can still be determined by the path we choose to follow.

In development literature Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is traditionally considered to be instrumental for the economic growth of all countries, particularly the developing ones. It acts as a panacea for breaking out of the vicious circle of low savings/low income and facilitates the import of capital goods and advanced technical knowhow. This book delves into the complex interaction of FDI with diverse factors. While FDI affects the efficiency of domestic producers through technological diffusion and spill-over effects, it also impinges on the labor market, affecting unemployment levels, human capital formation, wages (and wage inequality) and poverty; furthermore, it has important implications for socio-economic issues such as child labor, agricultural disputes over Special Economic Zones (SEZ) and environmental pollution. The empirical evidence with regard to most of the effects of FDI is highly mixed and reflects the fact that there are a number of mechanisms involved that interact with each other to produce opposing results. The book highlights the theoretical underpinnings behind the inherent contradictions and shows that the final outcome depends on a number of country-specific factors such as the nature of non-traded goods, factor endowments, technological and institutional factors. Thus, though not exhaustive, the book integrates FDI within most of the existing economic systems in order to define its much-debated role in developing economies. A theoretical analysis of the different facets of FDI as proposed in the book is thus indispensable, especially for the formulation of appropriate policies for foreign capital.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (commonly referred to as ObamaCare or PPACA), which was signed into US law in 2010, generated a lot of noise from both supporters and detractors. This book argues that the changes introduced by ObamaCare were, in the long history of government intervention in the US health system, generally not as new or novel as claimed. The scope of the changes introduced by ObamaCare is very wide and covers, among others: the health insurance industry, pharmaceuticals, employers, employees, or the uninsured. The structure of the book shows the individual causes, key assumptions, and impacts of the reform on individual elements or areas of the US health system. One of the most important aspects of the work is analysis of the phenomenon of the so-called ‘death spiral’. The changes introduced by ObamaCare reform make it possible to investigate the causes of this phenomenon on a country-wide scale and enable a broader analysis of its effects. The book will be of great interest to readers in the economics, management and policy of health and health care.

Food consumption and nutrition are historically among the most characteristic features of inequality in living standards driven by socioeconomic, gender, generational and geographical reasons. Nutrition directly impacts mortality, life expectancy, height and illness and thus becomes a good indicator of living standards and their evolution over time. However, one issue that remains unresolved is how to measure past diet inequalities with the available sources. This book evaluates nutritional inequalities in Spain from the nineteenth century to the present day. It explores the socioeconomic, gender, generational and geographical variations in food consumption and nutrition in Spain during this period. Deriving historical data on nutrition and diet has always been difficult due to issues with available sources. This book adopts a multi-dimensional approach and two complementary methodologies capable of presenting a more comprehensive picture: the first analyses diets based on primary sources, while the second examines the effect of nutritional inequalities on biological living standards, with special emphasis on average height. This combination allows for greater precision than previous studies on the impacts of food inequality. This book will be of significant interest to scholars from different academic branches, especially historians, economic historians and historians of science, economists, and also doctors, endocrinologists, paediatricians, anthropologists, nutritionists and expert in cooperation and development.

The search for symmetry is part of the fundamental scientific paradigm in mathematics and physics. Can this be valid also for economics? This book represents an attempt to explore this possibility. The behavior of price-taking producers, monopolists, monopsonists, sectoral market equilibria, behavior under risk and uncertainty, and two-person zero- and non-zero-sum games are analyzed and discussed under the unifying structure called the linear complementarity problem. Furthermore, the equilibrium problem allows for the relaxation of often-stated but unnecessary assumptions. This unifying approach offers the advantage of a better understanding of the structure of economic models. It also introduces the simplest and most elegant algorithm for solving a wide class of problems.

The collapse in commodity prices since 1980 has been a major cause of the economic crisis in a large number of developing countries. This book investigates whether the commodity-producing countries, by joint action, could have prevented the price collapse by appropriate supply management. The analysis is focused on the markets for the tropical beverage crops: coffee, cocoa, and tea. Using new econometric models for each market, the impact of alternative supply management schemes on supply, consumption, prices, and export earnings is simulated for the later 1980s. The results indicate that supply management by producing countries would, indeed, have been a viable alternative to the `free market' approach favoured by the developed countries. This has important implications for current international commodity policy, and, in particular, for future joint action by producing countries to overcome persistent commodity surpluses as a complement to needed diversification.

* Presents many of the microeconomic and macroeconomic theories and schools of thought not generally covered in mainstream principles of economics textbooks * Each chapter starts with a short "refresher" of standard neoclassical economic modelling before demonstrating how that model is distorted by people, problems and events in the real world to provide students with a more realistic picture of how the economy works * Updates throughout and new material on populism, racism, inequality, climate change and the covid-19 pandemic * Now has online supplements: quiz questions for students and PowerPoint slides for instructors

As it is today, the property market was a key and dynamic economic sector in Ancient Rome. Its study demands a deep understanding of Roman society, of the normative frameworks and the notions of wealth, value, identity and status that shaped individual and collective mentalities. This book takes a multisided insight into real estate as the subject of short- and long-term economic investments, of speculative businesses ventures, of power abuses and inequalities, of social aspirations, but also of essential housing needs. The volume discusses thoroughly relevant and new literary, legal, epigraphic, papyrological and archaeological evidence, and incorporates comparative historical perspectives and methodologies, including economic theory and current, critical sociological debates about the functioning of modern real estate markets and issues linked to its commodification and regulation. In pursuing this line of enquiry, the contributions that make up the book investigate the impact of ideas such as profit, risk, security and trust in transfers, management and use of residential houses, commercial buildings and productive estates in urban and rural contexts. The work further evaluates the legal responses to and the public enforcement strategies concerning such activities, the high mobility of fortunes and unstable property-rights that resulted from one-off but also structural, political, financial, economic and institutional crises that marked the history of the Roman Republic and Principate. This book aims to demonstrate the relevance of the study of pre-modern real estate markets today, and will be of significant interest to readers of economic history as well as Roman law, Roman archaeology, the history of urbanism and social history.

This book examines partnerships between commercial banks and microfinance institutions (MFIs). It demonstrates that when set up properly, these partnerships have the potential to develop and enhance the financial inclusion agenda, and further support sustainable development. MFIs provide access to finance predominantly for those who are poor but economically active, and therefore their expansion is imperative for inclusive economic development. However, MFIs are faced with enormous challenges. The book discusses how partnering with a commercial bank can meet these challenges and the process of interaction contributing to the enhancement of institutional robustness of MFIs. Through two distinct case studies, in Cambodia and Australia, the book discusses the motivations, objectives and operational dynamics of a partnership, as well as the challenges, success factors, and potential benefits, from the increase in outreach and sustainability, to the transference of knowledge and potential for capacity building. Similarly, the partnering banks benefit in line with the intended objectives-commercial or social besides help embedding social consciousness and improving staff engagement. Concluding with elucidating the characteristics of a partnership model that can succeed across different global contexts, the book will interest a range of researchers and students across development economics, banking, finance, and sustainable development.

This book attempts to reformulate existing orthodox economic theory in order to improve its conversation with disciplines that have traditionally been seen as the domain of political scientists, sociologists, psychologists and even biologists, and to fit economics into the broader scheme of social science theory. Drawing on general systems theory, Robert Scott Gassler applies economic analysis to a wide range of social phenomena that incorporate motives other than profit or self-interest, such as altruism and non-profit organisations. He debates in depth the means, problems and advantages of adapting economic theory to new sets of assumptions, and of communicating this theory intelligibly to those in related fields. This book should not only be read by political and social economists, but is also accessible to those in the fields of education, health and non-profit administration, public affairs, and urban planning to name but a few.

Humans have long neglected to fully consider the impact of their behaviour on the environment. From excessive consumption of fossil fuels and natural resources to pollution, waste disposal, and, in more recent years, climate change, most people and institutions lack a clear understanding of the environmental consequences of their actions. The new field of behavioural environmental economics seeks to address this by applying the framework of behavioural economics to environmental issues, thereby rationalizing unexplained puzzles and providing a more realistic account of individual behaviour. This book provides a complete and rigorous overview of environmental topics that may be addressed and, in many instances, better understood by integrating a behavioural approach. This volume features state-of-the-art research on this topic by influential scholars in behavioural and environmental economics, focussing on the effects of psychological, social and cognitive factors on the decision-making process. It presents research performed using different methods and data collection mechanisms (e.g. laboratory experiments, field experiments, natural experiments, online surveys) on a variety of environmental topics (e.g. sustainability, natural resources). This book is a comprehensive and innovative tool for researchers and students interested in the behavioural economics of the environment and in the design of policy interventions aimed at reducing the human impact on the environment.

Societal grand challenges have taken a toll on humanity, which finds itself at a crossroads. The concentration of wealth and economic inequality, the dominance of Big Tech firms, the loss of privacy and free choice, and the overconsumption and abuse of natural resources have been reinforced by globalization. Regulation, legislation, international treaties, and government and corporate policies have fallen short of offering sufficient remedies. This book identifies the root cause of these problems and offers a bold solution: a new economic system, free from the design flaws that have contributed to these societal grand challenges. The proposed cooperative economy is an ethical community-driven exchange system that relies on collective action to promote societal values while accounting for resource constraints. Unlike the modern economic system that is predominantly driven by opportunistic behavior, the cooperative economy moves away from a materialistic orientation and follows a more balanced perspective that leverages prosocial behavior. The book explains how this new system adopts design principles that promote self-sufficiency of communities, sustainability and entrepreneurship while limiting overconsumption and excessive profit-making. It enhances economic equality by leveraging price subsidization and by restricting salary differences. The book describes how the system serves the interests of consumers, vendors, and employees while preventing the accumulation of power by the platform owner who operates this system. This book is invaluable reading for policymakers who have been searching for solutions to some of the grand challenges that our society faces, and to managers who have sought alternative ways to cope with platform ecosystems, resource shortages, and supply chain disruptions. It revisits long-held assumptions, offering a treatise and food for thought, as well as a plan for concrete action. The book is also highly relevant to scholars and students in the study of economics, strategy, innovation, and public policy and to all readers who are concerned about the future of our planet and society.

Societal grand challenges have taken a toll on humanity, which finds itself at a crossroads. The concentration of wealth and economic inequality, the dominance of Big Tech firms, the loss of privacy and free choice, and the overconsumption and abuse of natural resources have been reinforced by globalization. Regulation, legislation, international treaties, and government and corporate policies have fallen short of offering sufficient remedies. This book identifies the root cause of these problems and offers a bold solution: a new economic system, free from the design flaws that have contributed to these societal grand challenges. The proposed cooperative economy is an ethical community-driven exchange system that relies on collective action to promote societal values while accounting for resource constraints. Unlike the modern economic system that is predominantly driven by opportunistic behavior, the cooperative economy moves away from a materialistic orientation and follows a more balanced perspective that leverages prosocial behavior. The book explains how this new system adopts design principles that promote self-sufficiency of communities, sustainability and entrepreneurship while limiting overconsumption and excessive profit-making. It enhances economic equality by leveraging price subsidization and by restricting salary differences. The book describes how the system serves the interests of consumers, vendors, and employees while preventing the accumulation of power by the platform owner who operates this system. This book is invaluable reading for policymakers who have been searching for solutions to some of the grand challenges that our society faces, and to managers who have sought alternative ways to cope with platform ecosystems, resource shortages, and supply chain disruptions. It revisits long-held assumptions, offering a treatise and food for thought, as well as a plan for concrete action. The book is also highly relevant to scholars and students in the study of economics, strategy, innovation, and public policy and to all readers who are concerned about the future of our planet and society.

What is the role of culture in the innovation dynamic of small firms within the context of their territorial environments? How do shared values, beliefs and practices underpin the knowledge production process that leads to innovation? In what way do symbolic aspects of social life shape European SMEs' innovation processes? This volume gives an extensive insight into the complex links between culture and innovation in one of the key agents of economic life: SMEs and micro firms. The chapters employ different analytical and methodological strategies in regions of Europe to identify dimensions of culture, especially values, norms, skills and institutions, and to scrutinize which specific components of culture are relevant to firm innovation and to the more general dynamics of regional innovation. The original research presented shows how small firms learn, interact, compete and collaborate with other key agents of the innovation system. Taken as a whole, the volume points the way towards a more comprehensive framework for understanding the nature of innovation in SMEs and micro firms. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of European Planning Studies.