Poverty is one of the top problems the Muslim community faces today. A scholastic approach towards a solution based on the values and cultural contexts of the Muslim community holds great importance and significance to the Islamic civilizations and modern economic and cultural applications in the world. Challenges and Impacts of Religious Endowments on Global Economics and Finance is a pivotal reference source that examines the role of waqf and similar endowments in Islamic financial systems and how these religious endowments impact global economics and finance. While highlighting topics such as Islamic finance, risk management, and economic development, this publication explores adopting Islamic approaches to contemporary socio-economic issues and the methods of content analysis and meta-analysis methods. This book is ideally designed for professionals, economist regulators, financial analysts, academics, researchers, and postgraduate students seeking current research on modernized Islamic economic models in order to tackle the problem of fiscal deficiency.

Will the European Union survive the global economic crisis? Will the Arab Spring trigger new forms of regional cooperation in North Africa? Will Asian regionalism prevail? This volume investigates the intimate relationship between regional governance processes and global crises. Starting with a thorough analysis of the so-called Eurocrisis and its impact on the European Union, the contributors look at how regional cooperation and integration in the Arab world, Africa, Asia and Latin America have been improved or challenged by local and global crises. Through a selection of topical studies dealing with economic, humanitarian and democratic crises, they discuss the future evolutions of regional governance and call for a new paradigm to put 'citizens' at the centre of regionalism.

This book provides the first comprehensive analysis of unbundling and, in particular, ownership unbundling policies from the perspective of international economic law. It does so by focusing on the prominent example of the EU's energy sector and its Third Energy Package. Unbundling has become an increasingly crucial competition instrument in network-bound industries worldwide. It is designed to ensure access to bottleneck infrastructures on fair and non-discriminatory terms and thus to suppress the anti-competitive potential deriving from vertical integration in natural monopoly situations. While promoting important public policy objectives, unbundling policies have also raised a number of legal issues. This book analyzes how international economic law limits the adoption and maintenance of unbundling and related measures and also outlines how international trade law can play a 'positive' role in this field. As a result, it provides a valuable reference for academics, practitioners and policy-makers.

This volume is both a tribute to and study of the French economist Jean-Paul Fitoussi. Fitoussi's pluralistic scholarship has shaped modern macroeconomics, political economy, economics of inequality and, more recently, the economics of sustainability.

When the global financial crisis broke, central banks in both the US and the UK undertook massive asset purchase programmes which resulted in considerable increase in assets. Cross-border spillover effects were noted across global economies. Balance sheet adjustments may eventually gnaw at the profit-earning capacities of central banks, and in extreme cases, negative equity can manifest. This updated book investigates a benchmark for comparing central banks. The author employs a unique and large set of metrics to gauge the quality of central banks and presents an argument to reflect upon international best practices covering 124 banks in this latest study. The study uses different criteria including the accounting body, research, presence of stress-testing exercises, inflation-targeting frameworks, staff efficiency, and languages of communication with the public, amongst others. The book begins by providing an overview of central banking, before exploring some stylized facts about central banks in unique detail. It then presents a ratings methodology for worldwide central banks to analyse the results. A backtesting exercise is included to validate the quality of the ratings obtained. The book concludes by offering insights into the comparison of central banks.

This volume brings together historians, economists, political scientists, and anthropologists to present a global perspective on the new forms of lending and borrowing that have become a key feature of twentieth-century mass consumer societies, emphasizing comparative and transnational historical perspectives.

Help your students navigate the realities of the global economy - the theories, the data, the policies and their impact. Emphasizing the use of data and empirics to link cutting-edge economic theory to current world events, this book was developed in the classroom by two of the most prominent researchers in the field who saw a need for a text with fresh theories and perspectives. Seamlessly blending theory and data with real-world policies, events, and evidence, Feenstra and Taylor's International Economics provides engaging, balanced coverage and applications of key concepts. The book covers the latest events and newest research. International Economics is supported by Achieve, our integrated, online learning system which allows you to engage every student with powerful multimedia resources, an integrated e-Book, robust homework, and a wealth of interactives, creating an extraordinary new learning resource for students. Key features include: Access to an eBook for easy reading and searching LearningCurve adaptive quizzing offers practice questions to check understanding and provides feedback to ensure students have grasped the concepts Discovering Data and Work It Out problems provide the opportunity to locate, analyze, and interpret real-world data, related to topics in the book Curated multi-step questions and graphing problems are paired with rich feedback to guide students through the process of problem solving and developing their analytical thinking

cancer n. any malignant tumor . . . Metastasis may occur via the bloodstream or the lymphatic channels or across body cavities . . . setting up secondary tumors . . . Each individual primary tumor has its own pattern . . . There are probably many causative factors . . . Treatment. . . depends on the type of tumor, the site of the primary tumor and the extent of the spread. (Oxford Concise Medical Dictionary 1996, 97) Let us begin by stating the obvious. Acts of organized violence are not necessarily of human nature, but they are endogenous events arising within the an intrinsic part evolution of complex systems of social interaction. To be sure, all wars have features in common - people are killed and property is destroyed - but in their origin wars are likely to be at least as different as the social structures from which they arise. Consequently, it is unlikely that there can be a simple theory of the causes of war or the maintenance of peace. The fact that wars are historical events need not discourage us. On the contrary, we should focus our understanding of the dimensions of each conflict, or classes of conflict, on the conjuncture of causes at hand. It follows that the study of conflict must be an interdisciplinary one. It is or a penchant for eclecticism that leads to that conclusion, but the not humility multi-dimensionality of war itself.

This book examines cooperation between the US and the EU on financial regulatory reform, notably at the outset and the first three years of the global financial crisis. It discusses the development of US-EU cooperation on financial regulation over the last few decades at several levels, including at heads of state level, markets regulator level and at international level, and progresses with a detailed examination of cooperation at the outset of the financial crisis. It looks at the nature of and motivation for intense US-EU cooperation on coordinating a response to the crisis and presents a compelling argument that a defacto alliance was formed, which served to benefit respective US and EU interests domestically and in the international financial system. Providing a new perspective on financial regulatory reform after the last financial crisis and the relationship of regulatory outcomes to international financial governance, this volume will be of use to researchers interested in transatlantic relations, financial regulation, international relations, global governance, and the European Union, as well as professionals and policymakers working in foreign relations, financial markets, or banking policy.

This book focuses on one of the two G20 tracks, the finance track. It examines the evolution of the finance track in G20, the organizational structure of the finance track, and the role of international organizations in reforming the financial architecture. It discusses how the agenda is formed and driven by the political economy of the host country as well as the imperative of the time. It also documents the finance track themes taken up by different G20 presidencies over the years. Some of the common threads between the G20 emerging economies' presidencies in terms of the finance track themes that the G20 leaders have considered include financial sector regulation and reform, reform of international financial institutions, global growth and macroeconomic policies, international taxation, and financial inclusion. The book is an excellent resource for the researchers of international economics as well as for policymakers.

This volume discusses the development of the Mexican manufacturing sector during the NAFTA era. This book pursues several objectives simultaneously. Firstly, it gives continuity to and revitalizes the structuralist economic perspective and debate proposed by Latin American development theory. Secondly, it analyzes the trend of structural heterogeneity in Mexico from 1994-2008 using the manufacturing sector as a case study. Lastly, it uses methodologies established by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) to provide an in-depth statistical evaluation of the effects of economic liberalization on structural change, labor productivity, production concentration, and dynamic competitiveness in the main industries of the sector: food, beverages, and tobacco; textiles and apparel; chemistry; electromechanics. Providing historical context for the evolution of Mexico's economy after trade liberalization, this volume will be of interest to students, scholars, and researchers of industrial economics, economic development, Latin-American studies, developing studies, international economics, international relations, political science, and economic geography.

The concept of an information economy is considered by some to be a new branch of economic theory, and by others as the next stage of development for an economy post-industrialization. Leading and developing economies are seeking to quickly develop a functional information economy in order to help overcome the consequences of the global financial crisis and ensure high global economic competitiveness. This book analyzes modern conceptual models of information economies, highlighting and examining their systemic contradictions and failings. It explores the disconnection between the readiness of the technical infrastructure for forming and developing the information economy, and an unprepared institutional and societal structure that is therefore unable to implement these processes and models. The editors present different approaches to solving these methodological and practical contradictions and lay out future models across different international contexts. They also provide recommendations for optimizing their theoretical model and improving its implementation in modern economic systems.

This book, the first of two volumes, explores the legacy of Trevor Winchester Swan, often described as Australia's greatest ever economist. An insightful biography is accompanied with Swan's most prominent articles to provide a broad view of his life and work. Particular attention is given to the famous Swan Diagram, known among macroeconomists worldwide, Swan's four zones of economic unhappiness, his view of how economies grew based on capital deepening and technical progress, and the Solow-Swan model of economic growth. This book aims to shed light on the enigmatic and influential life of Trevor Winchester Swan. It will be relevant to students and researchers interested in the history of economic thought.

The migration movement, which has taken place since the beginning of the story of mankind, increasingly continues voluntarily or compulsorily for various reasons such as social challenges, technological revolutions and wars. Due to migration, many new questions emerge depending on these issues. Researchers from many different disciplines are looking for answers to these questions arising from migration movements. This book covers deep researches from different perspectives and disciplines upon migration by successful and expert researchers in their field. In this book, different and rigorous analyses of all areas influenced by migration are carried out and various dimensions of immigration studies are shown.

This volume illuminates and critically assesses Paul A. Samuelson's voluminous and groundbreaking contributions to the field of economics. The volume includes contributions from eminent scholars, including six Nobel Laureates, covering the extraordinary depth and breadth of Samuelson's contributions.

The 2015 edition of the Global Burden of Armed Violence provides a wealth of data relevant to security and the post-2015 sustainable development framework. It estimates that 508,000 people died violently - in both conflict and non-conflict settings - every year in 2007–12, down from 526,000 in 2004–09. This trend is visible in non-conflict settings, where the proportion of women and girls is also slightly reduced, from 17 to 16 per cent. Yet, the number of direct conflict deaths is on the rise: from 55,000 to 70,000 per year over the same periods. Firearms are used in close to half of all homicides committed and in almost one-third of direct conflict deaths. Nearly USD 2 trillion in global homicide-related economic losses could have been saved if the homicide rate in 2000–10 had been reduced to the lowest practically attainable levels - between 2 and 3 deaths per 100,000 population.

This book presents a new narrative on the eurozone crisis. It argues that the common currency has the potential to kill the European Union, and the conventional wisdom that the eurozone can be fixed by a common budget and further political integration is incorrect. The authors address key questions such as why the European Union and the single market have been successful, why the common currency poses a threat to European integration, and whether it is possible to either fix the eurozone or dissolve it while keeping the EU and the single market. Contrary to the view that it would be best if the Southern European countries left the eurozone first, the book makes the case that the optimal solution would be to start the process with the most competitive countries exiting first. The authors argue that a return to national currencies would be beneficial not only to the crisis-ridden southern countries, but also to France and Germany, which were the main promoters of the single currency. An organised unwinding of the euro area would be beneficial both for the European economy and for Europe's main trading partners. The authors contend that to defend the euro at all costs weakens the European economy and threatens the cohesion of the European Union. If pro-European and pro-market EU leaders do not dismantle the eurozone, it will most likely be done by their anti-European and anti-market successors. If that happens, the European Union and the common market will be destroyed. This book will be a useful and engaging contribution to the existing literature in the fields of macro, monetary and international finance and economics.

The EMU debt crisis that emerged in 2010 has identified a group of Southern countries, especially Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy, as low performers exhibiting several serious macroeconomic imbalances, and it has also highlighted that EU integration experienced by Eastern European countries (especially the latter-comers to EU) was not accompanied by a rapid process of real convergence. Since then, the research about the effects of peripherality have regained a renewed interest to ultimately ground better regional policy recommendations aimed at achieving a sustained reduction of income per capita disparities across EU regions. In this new work, Pascariu and Duarte, along with an international group of acclaimed scholars, delve into key challenges currently facing the European Union. They investigate this central question: does the domestic market system lead to the development of a center-periphery model, by highlight gaps, or does it support the convergence process? Analyzing the effects of peripherality across the EU regions, a two-fold approach is used to deliver policy recommendations grounded in economic theory, and of interest to other countries and regions facing a process of integration.

This book focuses on the systematic change in the global economy accompanying the rise of China. Once China has the same huge and advanced economy as the U.S., the global economy's current one-center system will have a chance to change: China will represent an alternative center. If it can satisfy essential criteria for the global economy such as a stable foreign exchange system, healthy international trade environment and strong support for economic development etc., China will be able to offer a viable alternative. In this constellation the two centers of the global economy and financial system, the U.S. and China, would ideally cooperate, and the global economy could benefit from having two economic and financial centers.

The book focuses on the different aspects of business in India required to be taken care of by any businessperson, especially a foreigner, willing to do business in India. India is known for "unity in diversity." The country being a very old civilization, and of continental size with great diversity, often remains a mystery for most of the foreign investors and businesspersons who get very easily attracted to it because of the humongous market and its potential. The book goes deep into the various important aspects of business in India which essentially hold the key to success of a business venture. A good understanding of the political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal aspects (the PESTEL framework) of the business environment in the country holds a businessperson in good stead in comparison with others who have little or no idea of the big picture. The book discusses these aspects with pertinent examples to make understanding their interplay easy. Any person unfamiliar with India as a country will get a good idea of different aspects of the country through the PESTEL framework and will be able to understand the true meaning of unity in diversity. Also, it makes it possible for someone well versed with the system of business in India to appreciate the finer aspects. The book is divided into three modules. The first module provides an overview of business in India, scope and potential for growth, opportunities, and some good success stories. The second module goes into the details of the PESTEL framework and discusses each arm at length. The combined study of numerous factors, which has been divided into different heads for better understanding, brings out many stories giving a fantastic learning experience. A closer look at how things are changing and what can be anticipated arguably is the most important part of the book, providing pointers to remain connected with day-to-day happenings. The third module goes into the practical aspects of doing business and deals with investment, establishing and running a business in India. Altogether, the book is a complete package to facilitate ease of business in the country and will be of interest to practitioners, policy makers and researchers working in this field.

Thorvald Stoltenberg Ambassador Chairman of the Editorial Advisory Board Most of us have been overwhelmed by the speed and extent of the changes that have been taking place in Europe since the late 1980s. Over the span of a few years, we have witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union and the unification of Ger many. This process has had far-reaching implications for Northern Europe: the Baltic states have attained independence, and with the establishment of the Baltic Sea regional co-operation and the Barents co-operation, a new type of East-West relations has come into being. The process of change continues. Its latest manifestation is the agreement between Russia and NATO, and NATO and EU enlargement is expected to take place over the next few years. With such far-reaching transformations, we need to reflect on what is hap pening. We need a more coherent picture of the new situation in Northern Europe and of where we are heading. This Yearbook is an attempt to fulfil this need. I would like to thank the editors for taking this initiative, which has been long awaited by those of us who have been actively interested in the improved relations between the former East and the old West that have been made possible by the end of the Cold War - and particularly in the new opportunities for cross-border co-operation and integra tion in the North European and Baltic space."

This book offers in-depth legal and political analysis concerning the compatibility of the Westphalian state model with globalization and the digital revolution. It explores the concept of democracy in a globalized world, discusses the legitimacy of economic integration in the global market, and presents three case studies (from Brazil, Taiwan and Spain) on the impact of social media on elections. It further entails novel perspectives on the impact of digitalization on national borders, and the role of citizens and experts in the shaping of globalization. A final chapter addresses the extent to which insights gained from the analysis of the abovementioned aspects will need to be considered in efforts to recover from the current global health and economic crisis.

The book constructs the Synergy Theory, a new theory of economic growth and calculation methodology. The book involves empirical comparative study on economic growth between China and the 14 developed countries, and on the basis of the synergy theory, divides GDP into labor compensation, capital income, and synergistic benefits, further establishes the new empirical model including the major determined factors of economic growth, such as growth of physical capital stock, growth of investment in physical capital, improvement of science and technology, improvement of human capital quality, labor force growth, institutional innovation and economic externalies. Subsequently, it uses the method of Data Envelopment Analysis to calculate the contribution of institutional innovation to economic growth, and it also focuses on the analysis of the determining factors of economic growth. Based on the analysis above, the new theory has been tested and the countermeasures and suggestions involving China's innovation-driven economy have been proposed.

This open access book examines the multiple intersections between national and international courts in the field of investment protection, and suggests possible modes for regulating future jurisdictional interactions between domestic courts and international tribunals. The current system of foreign investment protection consists of more than 3,000 international investment agreements (IIAs), most of which provide for investment arbitration as the forum for the resolution of disputes between foreign investors and host States. However, national courts also have jurisdiction over certain matters involving cross-border investments. International investment tribunals and national courts thus interact in a number of ways, which range from harmonious co-existence to reinforcing complementation, reciprocal supervision and, occasionally, competition and discord. The book maps this complex relationship between dispute settlement bodies in the current investment treaty context and assesses the potential role of domestic courts in future treaty frameworks that could emerge from the States' current efforts to reform the system.The book concludes that, in certain areas of interaction between domestic courts and international investment tribunals, the "division of labor" between the two bodies is not always optimal, producing inefficiencies that burden the system as a whole. In these areas, there is a need for improvement by introducing a more fruitful allocation of tasks between domestic and international courts and tribunals - whatever form(s) the international mechanism for the settlement of investment disputes may take.Given its scope, the book contributes not only to legal analysis, but also to the policy reflections that are needed for ongoing efforts to reform investor-State dispute settlement.