The Handbook of Microfinance showcases an expansive collection of works from leading academics and field practitioners. In an attempt to understand the enormous gap between the limited number of clients that are currently benefiting from microfinance services, and the huge number of potential clients that are not, the selected contributions in this comprehensive handbook have one common thread: the prevailing mismatch between demand by clients of microfinance institutions and potential clients selecting themselves out for their demand for a wider array of financial products which is not being met.The scope of the book is wide, and explores successes and failures, main challenges and debates, methodologies for impact evaluation via random trials, leading trends in Asia versus Latin America, main efforts in Africa, the importance of value chains in Central America, ethical and gender issues, savings, microinsurance, governance, commercialization trends and the potential advantages and disadvantages of it. This exhaustive Handbook also features main lessons from informal finance and 19th-century credit cooperatives addressing the above-mentioned mismatch.

This study compares household energy use, environmental awareness, and consumerism among residents of small towns in Sweden and America. The author, a cultural anthropologist, uses quantitative and qualitative data from fieldwork to formulate a holistic analysis. The study considers broader questions about the uses of energy, consumer goods, quality of life, and the environment. The industrial worldview is critiqued at both individual and institutional levels. It concludes with a call for a more spiritual approach to environmentalism and social issues.

This book, first published in 1990, analyses contemporary Yugoslavian development strategy in its historical and political context, assessing how corruption, negligence, and an emphasis on industry to the detriment of agriculture and trade, have all played a part in bringing Yugoslavia close to financial and political chaos. The book concludes by considering the contemporary prospects for a more integrated policy approach in the midst of the country's political crisis.

This comprehensive and up-to-date book explains the economic rationale behind the production, delivery and exchange of electricity. Creti and Fontini explain why electricity markets exist, outlining the economic principles behind the exchange and supply of power to consumers and firms. They identify the specificities of electricity, as compared to other goods, and furthermore suggest how markets should be optimally designed to produce and deliver electricity effectively and efficiently. The authors also address key issues, including how electricity can be decarbonized. Written in a technical yet accessible style, this book will appeal to readers studying power system economics and the economics of electricity, as well as those more generally interested in energy economics, including engineering and management students looking to gain an understanding of electricity market analysis.

In this wide-ranging collection of significant articles by leading scholars, the editors link the impact of innovation to the process by which firms and industries change over time and ultimately to economic development and growth. The books cover topics such as the impact of the product life cycle on industry evolution, the links between innovative activity and the start-up of new firms, and an analysis of the sources of diversity and the impact of diversity on economic evolution. The three key elements of the post-entry performance of firms are examined - their ability to survive, the learning process and the links between industry evolution and productivity. The books then explore the roles of turbulence and persistence in an evolutionary economy. Additional topics include the evolution of market structures, the evolution of regions and the international competitiveness of industries in an evolutionary context. Finally the books examine the implications for government policy of the links between innovation, industry evolution and economic development.

First published in 1984, this title discusses the emergence of both the orthodox and political economy based approaches to underdevelopment in geography , critically assessing their strengths and weaknesses, and showing the relationship between intellectual developments and changing material conditions. The work is primarily concerned with theories, though it does contain much empirical material drawn from throughout the Third World. The book examines the emergence of theories of development historically and considers the various contemporary theoretical 'schools', both Marxist and non-Marxist. It goes on to consider four aspects of development which are of particular interest to geographers, namely the world economy, regional imbalances, the human-nature theme and the analysis of urban space, and concludes by suggesting some directions for future research.

In this book, economics meets sociology in order to investigate one of the central social changes in history: the decline of fertility. The book demonstrates how social interactions can be used to extend the rational and individual-centered approach of economists to include social norms, bounded rationality, social learning, and changing values and attitudes. The combination of these elements yields new insights into the dynamics and determinants of fertility change.

The highly praised Western, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, has been used in many game-theory courses over the years and has also found its way into leading journals of this field. Using the rich material offered by this movie, alongside other elements from popular culture, literature and history, this book furthers this exploration into a fascinating area of economics. In his series of Schumpeter lectures, Manfred J. Holler uses his analysis of Sergio Leone's movie as a starting point to argue that combinations of desires, secrets and second-mover advantages trigger conflicts but also allow for conflict resolution. Many people and organizations have a desire for secrecy, and this is often motivated by a desire to create a second-mover advantage, and by undercutting the second-mover advantage of others. This book demonstrates that the interaction of these three ingredients account for a large share of social problems and failures in politics and business but, somewhat paradoxically, can also help to overcome some of the problems that result by applying one or two of them in isolation. This book has been written for curious readers who want to see the world from a different perspective and who like simple mathematics alongside story telling. Its accessible approach means that it will be of use to students and academics alike, especially all those interested in decision making, game theory, and market entry.

Business firms from the emerging markets of Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America are becoming increasingly important players in the global economy. Owned and controlled by indigenous nations these emerging transnational corporations are greatly influenced by the social and institutional contexts of their home countries. As a result of the process of globalization, these corporations are engaged in a diverse range of international operations including the establishment of wholly-owned foreign subsidiaries, to joint ventures and strategic alliances. This authoritative collection sheds new light on the global and regional operations of business firms from emerging markets and shows how the pressures of the competitive global economy help shape the management and organisation of these firms. The Globalization of Business Firms from Emerging Economies presents a comprehensive and authoritative selection of the most important articles and papers on this subject published during the last twenty five years. Drawing on a wide range of sources, it will improve access to an important literature which is crucial to the understanding of a significant new area of international business. The collection will be of particular interest to students, researchers, scholars and practitioners involved in international business, industrial economics and economic geography.

Risk and Business Cycles examines the causes of business cycles, a perennial topic of interest within economics. The author argues the case for the revival of an important role for monetary causes in business cycle theory, which challenges the current trend towards favouring purely real theories. The work also presents a critique of the traditional Austrian theory of the trade cycle. This controversial approach will ensure that the book is of interest to all those involved with business cycles, as well as Austrian economics.

Eco-innovation is becoming a conceptual reference point for many regional and international public policies and management strategies. This field of research has been focusing on how environmental innovation is particularly related to the intensity of emissions and economic performance. There are two reasons for this growing interest. The first is that environmental performance is one of the main economic policy goals of European countries, thanks to its relevance to the Lisbon Strategy and the Goteborg priorities for sustainable development. The second, which is partly linked to the first, is related to the growing impact of environmental regulation on private sector activity in many European countries.

This volume brings together microeconomics studies on firms' eco-innovation and economic performance, both in the industrial and service sector, with a sector-based perspective rooted mainly in the exploitation of NAMEA data at regional level, and finally with a macroeconomic analysis of the environment, income and welfare.

This collection brings together the best of recent research in the interlinked areas of eco-innovation and income-environment relationships studies, and in its entirety is an excellent source of knowledge for postgraduates, researchers and students of Environmental and Ecological Economics alike. As well as fully developing the theoretical aspects of its topics, these essays are also strongly policy-oriented and will be of interest to anyone seeking information on an applied perspective.

Traditional microeconomic theory has much to offer a manager. It suggests ways to increase profits by setting prices and packaging services, using advertising to increase demand and shows how internet auction sites like eBay affect competition and profitability. By using game theory to present and solve a manager's decision-making problems and by focusing on the strategic nature of these problems, this text makes microeconomic theory much more intuitive and relevant for the business student.

The text is separated into four sections:

• basic microeconomic theory of the firm and the basic tools of game theory
• problems related to the strategic interaction between firms, including price and quantity competition and product differentiation
• issues arising from strategic interactions within the firm, including vertical and horizontal integration, training and motivating workers, and labour unions
• marketing economics including information problems, advertising, durable goods and the product life cycle.

This book will be suitable for any student with a background of introductory economics. The authors include a variety of international examples and case studies from the business world to expand and illustrate key concepts, and provide end-of-chapter exercises to test students? grasp of the material. An online supplement comprising of problems and solutions as well as PowerPoint slides is available for lecturers.

Based on bank and official archives, this book focuses on Japan's financial activities abroad - in particular, Japan's borrowings. This is the story of Japan's success: a "doubtful" borrower in the 1870s, it became respected after the Russo-Japan war. This study also highlights the mechanism of loan issues on the international capital markets. First published in 1994, this title is part of the Bloomsbury Academic Collections series.

The first book of its kind, this is a collection of essays on the financing of transportation in non-metropolitan areas in the United States. It reviews basic demographic trends and conditions of infrastructures at the present time while exploring a wide range of alternatives for improving them. Including contributions from local finance personnel, engineers and other government officials, Financing Local Infrastructure in Nonmetropolitan Areas is an exhaustive study of the problems facing local infrastructure, providing an invaluable resource for scholars, administrators, and laypersons whose jobs are affected by infrastructure issues, such as agricultural and business personnel.

This impressive collection from some of today's leading distributional analysts provides an overview a wide range of economic, statistical and sociological relationships that have been opened up for scientific study by the work of two turn-of-the-20th-century economists: C. Gini and M. O. Lorenz. The authors include such figues as Barry Arnold and Frank Cowell and the resulting book deserves its place on the bookshelf of serious mathematical economists everywhere.

This 1997 book examines the income distributional experience of fifteen developed economies - representing a wide range of social and economic strategies - over the past two decades. Experts from each of the countries have carefully documented the pattern of distributional change in individual earnings and household income in their countries and analysed the driving forces behind these changes. Separate chapters are devoted to the experiences of Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, West and former East Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. The authors examine the effects on the inequality of household income of the development of individual earnings, unemployment, inflation, public sector transfers and taxes, and demographic changes.

This timely and important book takes a serious view of our current economic situation. The author's conclusions differ from the conventional wisdom, which suggests that the manufacturing sector is regaining much of its dominance as a result of the declining dollar, that exports will take over as a major source of economic growth, that a recession is unlikely, and that a depression is no longer possible. Indeed, she outlines many similarities between the excesses of the 1980s and those of the 1920s which led to the Great Depression. The author provides convincing evidence that the recent economic recovery may only have provided a smokescreen for the continued deterioration of the U.S. economy.

Investment is the engine of growth. In consequence, the social welfare of the populace depends on the expectations of uncertain profitability as understood by the agents of a wealthy few who decide upon levels of investment. As private wealth is intimately tied to the investment process, the importance of wealth concentration goes far beyond considerations of equity. In recent years, private economic power has become increasingly concentrated as more of the population has become dependent upon an elite pursuing private ends. In this context, this book examines the role of capital accumulation in various historical contexts. Over seventy years ago, Michal Kalecki derived the mathematical relationship between government deficits, the external trade account and free cash-defined as the gross profit over and above that portion ploughed back into new investment. Since then, the free cash literature has remained largely within an industrial organizational context where free cash theory has helped to explain mergers. In contrast, this book, revisits Kalecki's free cash construction at the macro and global level and explores the various causes and effects of free cash on the economy. As part of this examination, the author highlights the historical uses of free cash in imperialist adventures, mergers and speculative endeavours. In addition to developing a new relative valuation measure of capital accumulation, he also utilizes a neo-Kaleckian model to help explain the U.S. slowdown in investment since the late 1960s, the increasing inequality of wealth and income and the recent speculative episodes associated with the spillage of free cash. Finally, based on these models the book argues for heightened taxes on the wealthy and an increased role for government investment in health care and energy. Free Cash, Capital Accumulation and Inequality offers an explanation as to how wealth and income inequalities have fashioned, and been fashioned by, various historical episodes right up to the present. It will be of great interest to those studying and researching in the field of economic analysis.

This book addresses ?global social economy? which addresses the relation of capitalism to human flourishing, the role of international governance in the world economy, the transformation of work and use of time in internationalizing economies, cross-country developments in gender, poverty, and ageing, and ethics economic policy issues in the international economy.

This edited collection examines the social nature of capitalism today, the possibilities for social and economic development in the world under the democratic leadership of the United Nations, and the middle ground between market and hierarchy occupied by gift exchange as a means of coordinating economic value creation and the creation of knowledge. It considers long term issues in the global social economy concerning gender and discrimination, intergenerational poverty transmission, and the role of ageing.

From a variety of internationally acclaimed contributors, this collection introduces new social economic perspectives on the global economy that contest the neoliberal Washington Consensus view dominant until recent financial crises.

The financial instability and its spillover to the real sector have become a great challenge to macro-economic theory. The book takes a Keynesian theoretical perspective, representing an attempt to revive what Keynes stressed in his General Theory, namely the role of the financial market in macroeconomic outcomes. Although this book is inspired and motivated by the Asian currency and financial crises in the years 1997-8 and the experiences of the currently evolving U.S. financial disruptions, it also focuses on reviving a modeling tradition that provides a theoretical framework that throws light on recent financial market episodes and disturbances and their macroeconomic effects. It brings to the forefront, as Keynes has suggested, the role of financial market stability for growth and macroeconomics. It criticizes theories that see economic disruptions and shocks rooted solely in the real side of the economy. It stresses the financial real interaction as the major source for macroeconomic instability and disruptions. This important new book from a group of Keynesian, but nonetheless technically oriented economists would be of most interest to specialists and graduate students in macroeconomics and financial economics, especially those with an interest in US and European financial markets, emerging market analysis, and dynamic economic modeling.

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.

This edited volume includes a broad sample of scholarly publications of Professor Edwin J. Perkins on U.S. financial history and related topics in the fields of economic and business history. Included are journal articles, excerpts from his prominent books, plus three previously unpublished manuscripts. The content is organized chronologically, starting with the colonial era and ending with the second half of the twentieth century. A major highlight of the book is the key role stockbroker, Charles Merrill, founder of Merrill Lynch & Co., played in the evolution and expansion of the nation's equity markets in the twentieth century.

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.

Milton Friedman and George J. Stigler shaped economics as we know it today - their Chicago School laid the groundwork for much of the neoclassical tradition in economic analysis. This book brings together a collection of letters from these two Noble laureates from the post-war years, containing new information about their personal and professional relationships, and also illuminating the development of ideas which are now fundamental to economic theory.

The book, expertly edited by Dan and Claire Hammond, contains an introductory chapter, chronologies for Friedman and Stigler, and transcripts of sixty eight letters written from 1945 to 1957 along with enclosures.