The normal enterprise, contrary to widespread prejudice, can do well out of intense knowledge, without bothering with snobbish high-tech delusions. In this respect, the present book deals with all the questions you might have been afraid to ask. It offers explanation, policy and practical conclusions in an international perspective. It is a compelling read!' - Arndt Sorge, Professor Emeritus, WZB, GermanyThis book contributes to the discussion about the relevance of knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship for industrial innovation in the context of traditional low-technology industries. There is a widespread assumption that low-tech industries offer limited opportunities for entrepreneurial activity due to their mature character. Yet there are indications that the phenomenon is finally emerging in these traditional sectors. This detailed book contributes to the ongoing political debate on relevant policy measures to promote future industrial innovation. It extends awareness of the relevance of low-tech industries for future economic and societal development, linking both scientific and political perspectives. Detailed chapters identify the typical patterns, prerequisites and impacts of knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship, as well as the distribution of entrepreneurial activities in low-tech sectors. The authors conclude with policy recommendations to promote such activities. This book will appeal to social scientists, economists and students of innovation and entrepreneurship studies. Policy-makers and company representatives will also find much of interest in this book, with its surprising insights into a field that has been so far neglected in the scientific as well as the policy-oriented debate. Contributors: Y.D. Caloghirou, T.F. Fernandes, M.M. Godinho, A. Havas, H. Hirsch-Kreinsen, G. Karagouni, I. Kastelli, R.P. Mamede, A. Protogerou, I. Schwinge, A. Tsakanikas, A.Y. Yudanov

This book examines government/regulatory responses to the Asian financial crisis which brought unprecedented financial turmoil for most East Asian countries. It provides thought-provoking insights on fundamental differences in the institutional and regulatory framework of ten East Asian countries, including an assessment of the various corporate governance reforms after the crisis.

This book offers a concise introduction to the field of financial economics and presents, for the first time, recent behavioral finance research findings that help us to understand many puzzles in traditional finance. Tailor-made for master's and PhD students, it includes tests and exercises that enable students to keep track of their progress. Parts of the book can also be used at the bachelor level.

This book focuses on the problem of responsibility voids: these are cases where responsibility for a morally undesirable outcome cannot be attributed to any of the involved agents. Responsibility voids are thought to occur in collective decision-making and in the context of artificial intelligent systems. In these cases, philosophers worry that there is a shortfall of moral responsibility. In particular, such voids are often assumed to justify a notion of collective responsibility that cannot be reduced to individual responsibility. One of the aims of the book is to study how collective responsibility and joint action relate to individual responsibility and individual actions. The book offers a unifying framework for modelling moral responsibility by drawing from modal logic and game theory. The book investigates the possibility and scope of the problem of responsibility voids. One of its characteristics is its pluralistic perspective on moral responsibility: in contrast to giving a unique and all-encompassing definition of it, the book makes progress by spelling out and modelling several conceptions of moral responsibility. One of the appealing features of the book is that a relatively small range of models is used to investigate a variety of conceptions of moral responsibility. The unifying framework can thus be used to characterize the conditions under which responsibility voids are ruled out.

This book presents the state of the art in the relatively new field of dynamic economic modelling with regime switches. The contributions, written by prominent scholars in the field, focus on dynamic decision problems with regime changes in underlying dynamics or objectives. Such changes can be externally driven or internally induced by decisions. Utilising the most advanced mathematical methods in optimal control and dynamic game theory, the authors address a broad range of topics, including capital accumulation, innovations, financial decisions, population economics, environmental and resource economics, institutional change and the dynamics of addiction. Given its scope, the book will appeal to all scholars interested in mathematical and quantitative economics.

This volume presents interviews that have been conducted from the 1980s to the present with important scholars of social choice and welfare theory. Starting with a brief history of social choice and welfare theory written by the book editors, it features 15 conversations with four Nobel Laureates and other key scholars in the discipline. The volume is divided into two parts. The first part presents four conversations with the founding fathers of modern social choice and welfare theory: Kenneth Arrow, John Harsanyi, Paul Samuelson, and Amartya Sen. The second part includes conversations with scholars who made important contributions to the discipline from the early 1970s onwards. This book will appeal to anyone interested in the history of economics, and the history of social choice and welfare theory in particular.

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 is the first comprehensive and systematic English-language treatment of Mexico's economic history to appear in nearly forty years. Drawing on several years of in-depth research, Juan Carlos Moreno-Brid and Jaime Ros, two of the foremost experts on the Mexican economy, examine Mexico's current development policies and problems from a historical perspective. They review long-term trends in the Mexican economy and analyze past episodes of radical shifts in development strategy and in the role of markets and the state. This book provides an overview of Mexico's economic development since Independence that compares the successive periods of stagnation and growth that alternately have characterized Mexico's economic history. It gives special attention to developments since 1940, and it presents a re-evaluation of Mexico's development policies during the State-led industrialization period from 1940 to 1982 as well as during the more recent market reform process. This reevaluation is critical of the dominant trend in economic literature and is revisionist in arguing that, in particular, the market reforms undertaken by successive Mexican governments since 1983 have not addressed the fundamental obstacles to economic growth. Development and Growth in the Mexican Economy also details the country's pioneering role in launching NAFTA, its membership in the OECD, and its radical macroeconomic reforms. Carefully argued and meticulously researched, the book presents a wide-ranging, authoritative study that not only pinpoints problems, but also suggests solutions for removing obstacles to economic stability and pointing the Mexican economy toward the road to recovery.

Technology and knowledge are two of the most important factors for maintaining a competitive advantage in today's global economy. This book examines recent trends in the analysis of knowledge and technology from an evolutionary perspective.Technology and Knowledge emphasizes the importance of knowledge in the creation of technological change and innovation. The authors examine the role of knowledge underlying innovation, and the flows of knowledge and other interactions between and within firms. Combining empirical work with simulations to solve models which are too complex to be understood analytically, the book presents a balanced and complementary approach to an area that is critically important for economic growth and international competitiveness. This book will be warmly welcomed by academics working in the fields of technological change, innovation, knowledge and industrial organization.

For Principles of Microeconomics courses. For a complete multimedia book tour of Economics: Principles, Applications, & Tools, 8e Click Here. For a look at the Supply & Demand Chapter of this title, Click Here. Questions that drive interest, applications that illustrate concepts, and the tools to test and solidify comprehension. Students come into their first Economics course thinking they will gain a better understanding of the economy around them. Unfortunately, they often leave with many unanswered questions. To ensure students actively internalize economics, O'Sullivan/Sheffrin/Perez use chapter-opening questions to spark interest on important economic concepts, applications that vividly illustrate those concepts, and chapter-ending tools that test and solidify understanding.

This book paints a portrait of social life in America by providing an accessible discussion of empirical economics research on issues such as illegal immigration, health care and climate change. All the studies in this book use the same data source: individual responses to the American Community Survey (ACS), the nation's largest household survey. The author identifies studies that clearly illustrate core econometric methods (such as regression control and difference-in-differences), replicates key statistics from the studies, and helps the reader to carefully interpret the statistics. This book has a companion website with replication files in R and Stata format. The Appendix to this book contains a guide to using the free R software, downloading the ACS and other public-use microdata, and running the replication files, which assumes no background knowledge on the part of the reader beyond introductory statistics. By opening up the hood on how top scholars use core econometric methods to analyze large data sets, a motivated reader with a decent computer and Internet connection can use this book to learn not only how to replicate published research, but also to extend the analysis to create new knowledge about important social phenomena. A more casual reader can skip the online supplements and still gain data-driven insights into social and economic behavior. The book concludes by describing how careful empirical estimates can guide decision making, through cost-benefit analysis, to find public policies that lead to greater happiness while accounting for environmental, public health and other impacts. With its accessible discussion, glossary, detailed learning goals, end of chapter review questions and companion resources, this book is ideal for use as a supplementary volume in introductory econometrics or research methods courses.

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.

Economics Today: Micro View-Bringing the Real World to Your Students For a complete multimedia book tour of Miller, Economics Today, 17e, Click Here. For a look at the Supply & Demand Chapter of this title, Click Here. Students learn best when they see concepts applied to examples from their everyday lives. This new edition of Economics Today: Micro View covers leading-edge issues while lowering barriers to student learning. The text relentlessly pursues the fundamental objective of showing students how economics is front and center in their own lives while providing them with many ways to evaluate their understanding of key concepts covered in each chapter. Each chapter begins and ends with an Issues and Applications feature, which introduces a timely issue in the chapter opener and analyzes the issue using the economic tools learned in that chapter at the end. This text is also available with MyEconLab(r), which includes assessment questions that tie to these Issues and Applications, as well as ABC News video clips. With MyEconLab, students can continue working problems online and receive personalized tutorial resources. Visit MyEconLab for more information.

The current economic transition in Central and Eastern Europe is leading to the emergence of significant fragmentation within regions and between countries. The competitive struggle for scarce resources and global markets during the transition to capitalism in Eastern and Central Europe has caused countries to move away from a process of regional convergence which existed under state socialism to regional divergence. This book focuses on regional economic change in Eastern and Central Europe using Slovakia as a case study. It explains the relationship between industrial change and regional development, and discusses fragmentation within the context of the legacy of the state socialist industrialization model. The book interweaves up-to-date empirical analysis with theoretical debates and uses regional case studies to highlight key issues. Reconstructing the Regional Economy examines both the limits and scope of regional capitalist development, documenting the nature and causes of uneven development in Slovakia. It addresses industrial and restructuring strategies, arguing that current progress must be understood within the context of the past, and that the present complex mix of old and new economic and institutional structures contribute significantly to economic fragmentation and divergence. The author criticises shock therapy, and argues that the transition to a market economy cannot simply be achieved through filling the supposed vacuum left by the collapse of central planning. This original and important book will be welcomed by academics and students interested in the economics of transition and by policymakers in Western and Eastern European countries.

Welcome to Economics Express - a series of short books to help you: * take exams with confidence * prepare and deliver successful assignments * understand quickly * revise and prepare effectively. As you embark on your economic journey, this series of books will be your helpful companion. They are not meant to replace your lectures, textbooks, seminars or any other sources suggested by your lecturers. Rather, as you come to an exam or an assignment, they will help you to revise and prepare effectively. Whatever form your assessment might take, each book in the series will help you to build up the skills and knowledge you will need to maximise your performance. Each topic-based chapter will outline the key information and analysis, provide sample questions with responses, and give you the assessment advice and exam tips you will need to produce effective assessments based on these core topics. A companion website provides supporting resources for self testing, assessment, exam practice and answers to questions in the book. Stuart Wall is series editor and Professor of Business and Economics Education. He is one of the UK's leading authors across a wide range of economic areas, with many of his textbooks translated into Chinese, Russian and other foreign languages. Stuart has extensive experience of assessing students' work in economics from many UK and overseas universities.

This three volume set gathers together selected key articles in evolutionary economics, ordering these into the domains of micro analysis (concerned with agents), meso analysis (concerned with rule populations and trajectories) and macro analysis (concerned with the structure and development of the whole economy). This authoritative collection, with an original introduction by the editors, will be of interest to scholars and researchers seeking to understand how evolutionary economics fits together and to advance such an integrated approach.

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.

In 1987 the Swedish National Board for Technical Development (STU, later becoming the Swedish National Board for Industrial and Technical Development, NUTEK) initiated a study of Sweden's Technological Systems and Future Development Potential. A comprehensive, interdisciplinary study was envisioned, yielding not only useful insight but also a permanent competence base for future analyses of technological systems and technology policy in Sweden. Three leading Swedish research institutes were invited to participate: the Industrial Institute for Economic and Social Research in Stockholm, the Department ofIndustrial Management and Economics at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, and the Research Policy Institute at the University of Lund. I was invited to direct the project. The project group decided to focus initially on a particular technological system, namely factory automation, to be followed by similar studies of other systems. Numerous publications have resulted from the project thus far. The current volume represents a summary of our work on factory automation. It consists of several original essays and of some previously published papers which have been edited, in some cases substantially, in order to form a comprehensive and coherent picture of a technological system. To our knowledge, this is the first in-depth analysis of a technological system designed as a component of a systematic study of technological systems more generally. At the time of this writing, three further studies on electronics and computers, pharmaceuticals, and powder technology are under way, to be published in a later volume.

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 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.

This book discusses ideas for stakeholders to develop strategies to access and use financial products and services such as deposits, loans, and fund transfer mechanism, insurance, payment services, and intermediaries, distribution channels at economical prices in order to cater to the needs of the poor and underprivileged people. Financial inclusion ensures ease of access, availability, and usage of the financial products and services to all the sections of the society. The book will help in recognizing the role of financial inclusion as one of the main drivers in reducing income inequality and thus supporting sustainable economic growth of the countries, especially of an emerging economy. The book provides conceptual and practical ideas from the practitioners, best practices from the experts, and empirical views from the researchers on the best practices and how to mitigate the challenges and issues plaguing the development of the financial inclusion.

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)."

This book addresses the gaps in undergraduate teaching of partial equilibrium analysis, providing a general equilibrium viewpoint to illustrate the assumptions underlying partial equilibrium welfare analysis. It remains unexplained, at least at the level of general economics teaching, in what sense partial equilibrium analysis is indeed a part of general equilibrium analysis. Partial equilibrium welfare analysis isolates a market for a single commodity from the rest of the economy, presuming that other things remain equal, and measures gains and losses by means of consumer surplus. This is a money metric that is supposed to be summable across individuals, recommending policy that maximizes the social surplus. But what justifies such apparently uni-dimensional practise? Within a general equilibrium framework, the assumption of no income effect is presented as the key condition, and substantive general equilibrium situations in which the condition emerges are presented. The analysis is extended to the case of uncertainty, in which the practice adopts aggregate expected consumer surplus, and scrutinizes when such practice is justified. Finally, the book illustrates partial equilibrium as an institutional artifact, meaning that institutional constraint induces individuals to behave as if they are in partial equilibrium. This volume forms an important contribution to the literature by researching why this disparity persists and the implications for economics education.

Now in its fifth edition, Economic Approaches to Organisations remains one of the few texts to emphasize the importance of economic issues and developments in the study of organisations and management. It explains in a non-technical way different economic approaches such as behavioural theory of the firm, game theory, agency theory, transaction cost economics, economics of strategy and evolutionary approaches. This latest edition is packed with practical examples from real-world companies, helping you to understand how the concepts relate to economic and organizational problems happening in the world today.

This volume focuses on incentive regulation and competition. While much of the regulatory action is taking place in telecommunications, the impact of competition and the resultant regulatory change is being felt in other traditional public utilities including electricity. The book reviews topics including price caps, incentive regulation, market structure and new regulatory technologies.