![]() |
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
|
Your cart is empty |
||
|
Books > Business & Economics > Economics > Economic systems > General
In this discipline-defining volume, some of the leading
international scholars in the history of economic thought
re-examine the concepts of 'classical economics' and the 'canon',
illuminating the roots and evolution of the contemporary
discipline.
Political Economy and the New Capitalism examines the relevance of Sam Aaronovitch's pioneering empirical studies of British capitalism in the light of modern developments. A wide range of problems are reviewed from industrial concentration today to the co-ordination of economic policies in Europe. Aaronovitch's work on the role of finance in the British economy is the subject sustained reflection. Individual chapters examine orthodox and left-wing criticisms of finance, exchange rate instability, and employment, growth and regions in the context of European Union. This work concludes with a bibliography of the published writings of Sam Aaronovitch and collects the reflections of some of the most distinguished thinkers in economics today including: Meghnad Desai, G.C. Harcourt, Pat Devine, Egon Matzner, Malcolm Sawyer, Sir Alan Budd, Jan Toporowski, Philip Arestis, Eleni Paliginis, Victoria Chick and Ben Fine.
Representing an innovative approach to the analysis of the economic geography of capitalism, this stimulating book develops an analytical political economic framework. Part 1 provides an introductory overvi9ew fo some of the fundamental debates about price, profits and value in economics which underlie the analytical political economy approach. Part 2 analyzes the special role of space and transportation in commodity production and the spatial organization of the economy that this implies. Parts 3 and 4 examine the conflicting goals and actions of different social clases and individuals and how these are complicated by space, concluding with a detailed analysis of capitalists' strategiesas they cope with uncertainty and disequilibrium.
This book pursues a nonlinear approach in considering both chaotic dynamical models and agent-based simulation models of economics, as well as their dynamical behaviors. Three key concepts arising in this context are "nonlinearity," "bounded rationality" and "heterogeneity," which also make up the title of the book. Nonlinearity is the warp that runs throughout all models because systems that exhibit chaotic or other complex behavior in the absence of any exogenous disturbances are absolutely nonlinear. Bounded rationality constitutes the woof, because economic systems do not exhibit complex behavior if all agents are perfectly rational, as is usually assumed in neoclassical economics. Agents who are boundedly rational have to struggle to do their best with limited information and tend to adapt to their economic environment without knowing what is the best. Furthermore, the heterogeneity of firms or consumers dyes the fabric of complex dynamics woven from the warp and woof.
The discourse of Confucian Capitalism has been crucial in shaping our understanding of the brilliant economic successes of the Chinese diaspora all over the world. From this perspective, hard work, family values, and communal cohesion, as well as business practices based on sentiment, trust, and social networks, are the legendary means of explaining the wealth and commercial talent of these remarkable people. The book examines the subject of Chinese business' by exposing the enduring myth about the determining effects of these values and practices supposedly derived from Confucianism. Such myth relies on an ahistorical and essentialised notion of Chinese Culture', and brings into focus three sites of controversy: the economically driven Chinese subject, work-place relations characterised by consensus and cultural sharing, and an operating ethos of collectivist, pre-capitalist sociality. In its interrogation of the discourse of Confucian capitalism, it is the aim of this book to arrive at a critically informed and socially realistic understanding of Chinese business. The author combines abstract analysis with examples from anthropological fieldwork among Chinese traders in Sarawak, East Malaysia. By anchoring theoretical discussion to real case-studies, the multi-disciplinary approach of this book offers a useful insight into Chinese business activities, and contributes to current debates in cultural studies, economic anthropology, the economic performance of overseas Chinese, and neo-Confucian societies more generally.
As human society continues to develop, we have increased the risk of large-scale disasters. From health care to infrastructure to national security, systems designed to keep us safe have also heightened the potential for catastrophe. The constant pressure of climate change, geopolitical conflict, and our tendency to ignore what is hard to grasp exacerbates potential dangers. How can we prepare for and prevent the twenty-first-century disasters on the horizon? Rethinking Readiness offers an expert introduction to human-made threats and vulnerabilities, with a focus on opportunities to reimagine how we approach disaster preparedness. Jeff Schlegelmilch identifies and explores the most critical threats facing the world today, detailing the dangers of pandemics, climate change, infrastructure collapse, cyberattacks, and nuclear conflict. Drawing on the latest research from leading experts, he provides an accessible overview of the causes and potential effects of these looming megadisasters. The book highlights the potential for building resilient, adaptable, and sustainable systems so that we can be better prepared to respond to and recover from future crises. Thoroughly grounded in scientific and policy expertise, Rethinking Readiness is an essential guide to this century's biggest challenges in disaster management.
Southeast Asia: A Region in Transition, first published in 1991, is a contemporary human geography of the 'market' economies of the region usually defined by membership of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Organized thematically, the chapters deal with the environment and development, plural societies, agrarian change and urbanization. This thematic approach provides a comprehensive picture of the ASEAN countries and gives a depth of coverage often lacking in other regional geographies. With a detailed introduction dealing with the physical environment and history of the region, this work will be of great value to students studying the human geography of Southeast Asia, as well as those with a more general interest in the issues and developments affecting the ASEAN region.
The global capitalism perspective is a unique research program focused on understanding relatively recent developments in worldwide social, economic, and political practices related to globalization. At its core, it seeks to contextualize the rearticulation of nation-states and broad geographic regions into highly interdependent networks of production and distribution, and in so doing explain consequent changes in social relations within and between countries in the contemporary era. The present volume contributes to this effort by focusing on social class formation across borders via the processes and actors that make globalized capitalism possible. The essays presented here offer a wide range of emphases in terms of the particular lenses and evidence they use. They cover such topics as the emergence of a transnational capitalist class-based fascist regime responding to the structural crises of global capitalism as well as the links between global class formation and the US racial project as it relates to electoral politics and demographic changes in the US South. This book was published as a special issue of Globalizations.
The volume analyzes the long-term trajectories of change in the capitalist models of the UK, Germany, Sweden, France, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, and the United States. The case studies identify critical junctures and key periods of change in order to show how institutions are shaped by different sets of socio-political compromises and public policy. The case studies follow a common methodology, comparing change and linkages across six core institutional domains, thus facilitating a comparative understanding of the patterns and drivers of institutional change, as well as how liberalisation impacts countries in similar and dissimilar ways. The historical perspective of the cases highlights the transformative effects of relatively slow and incremental changes. These case studies also make an innovative contribution to examining the linkages between four levels of institutions that regulate the economy - the international, macro (national), meso, and micro. The volume reveals both a common trend toward more liberal forms of capitalism but also variations on this overarching trajectory. Markets themselves create their own dynamics, which have varied effects on firms and other economic actors in historically diverse institutional contexts. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.
This book explores the dynamic processes in economic systems, concentrating on the extraction and use of the natural resources required to meet economic needs. Sections cover methods for dynamic modeling in economics, microeconomic models of firms, modeling optimal use of both nonrenewable and renewable resources, and chaos in economic models. This book does not require a substantial background in mathematics or computer science.
This focused case study analyses the roots of super-diversity in a place where immigration is an emerging phenomenon, Northwestern Spain (Galicia). It is characterized by a mostly rural population, an aging demographic, and a historically depressed economy. Yet the region has recently experienced a significant increase in immigration - a reversal of the region's historically pronounced trend of emigration. To understand immigration in its early stages, this book takes a historical approach that focuses on diversities that go beyond nationality. It explores local yet international phenomena such as different patterns of return migration, transnational community and familial relationships, and niche labour markets. The book takes a broad interdisciplinary perspective, drawing on sociology, anthropology, history, sociolinguistics, literature, and education, to provide a detailed case study analysis. While the case is specific, many other geographic regions will share some of the factors the book explores. Understanding how these factors interact will provide a useful point of contrast for analysing them in a range of other international contexts.
The shock waves of conservative advances have reached into every corner of American and British politics. Parties of the right have prospered, while parties of the left have stumbled, retreated, and are now regrouping. The agenda for both right and left is set by the terms of the free-market doctrines that have displaced the post-war consensus politics of liberal capitalism. This volume describes and challenges the ideological basis of the free-market right. Though critiques of the policies of the Reagan and Thatcher governments are hardly in short supply, this major new study offers the most thorough and up-to-date analysis available. No other book considers in such depth conservative ideas and policies on both sides of the Atlantic. It provides the first clear account of the distinction between conservative and other forms of capitalism. It also examines the fault lines dividing opposing camps within conservative capitalism and their consequences for domestic policy in Britain and the US. Linking political theory and public policy, it is one of the few critical appraisals of the New Right based on a clear understanding of what the arguments for the free market really are. Finally, the authors demonstrate what the left needs to learn from its failures, how to remould its understanding of the relationship between politics and the market, and how to recapture the lost initiative.
This book is open access under a CC BY-NC-ND license. This volume analyzes the economic, social, and political challenges that emerging states confront today. Notwithstanding the growing importance of the 'emerging states' in global affairs and governance, many problems requiring immediate solutions have emerged at home largely as a consequence of the rapid economic development and associated sociopolitical changes. The middle-income trap is a major economic challenge faced by emerging states. This volume regards interest coordination for technological upgrading as crucial to avoid the trap and examines how various emerging states are grappling with this challenge by fostering public-private cooperation, voluntary associations of market players, and/or social networks. Social disparity is another serious problem. It is deeply rooted in history in the emerging states such as South Africa and many Latin American countries. However, income distribution is recently deteriorating even in East Asia that was once praised for its high economic growth with equity. Increasing pressure for political opening is another challenge for emerging states. This volume argues that the economic, social, and political problems are interwoven in the sense that the emerging states need to build political consensus in order to tackle the economic and social difficulties. Democratic institutions have not always been successful in this respect.
This edited volume analyses the channels through which EU membership contributed to the convergence process of member countries in the Baltics, Central-Eastern and South-Eastern Europe. These channels include trade, investment, finance, labour, and laws and institutions. Global integration has certainly played an important role. A large part of FDI flows and financial integration in the world have been persistent features of globalization. Have these countries experienced more intensive integration through these channels because of EU membership, with its much tighter institutional and political anchorage, than their fundamentals and global trends would suggest? Contributions by lead researchers of the area address different aspects of this question. .
Actor-systems dynamics is an innovative, multidisciplinary methodology for investigating and analyzing social struggles over economic resources and the related interplay between economic and socio-political institutions and processes. The authors, sociologists and economists, offer a systemic perspective on contemporary socio-economic issues such as economic crisis, unemployment, inflation, economic democracy and development; in their analyses, they identify several of the key factors that drive people to interact, to initiate change and transformation as well as to resist such change. Major underlying themes in the book are: Conflict over the distribution of economic resources and economic policies and institutions; the structural bases of economic inequality and conflict; the shaping and reshaping of socio-economic institutions, and the contradictions, conflicts and instabilities evoked by such developments; the failure of orthodox economic theories, including Keynesianism, in the face of recurrent economic crises and instabilities; the development and application of an open, dynamic actor-oriented systems theory - grounded in the social sciences - addressing complex socio-economic phenomena in ways diverging substantially from conventional economics. All in all, the papers collected here deal, on the one hand, with social power, conflict, and struggle concerning economic resources and institutions and, on the other hand, the structural and other factors which drive powering initiatives, conflict, and social innovation and transformation. The book is addressed to a broad spectrum of social and managerial scientists concerned with socio-economic issues, institutions, and development.
Understanding today's rapidly changing global business environment can be challenging, particularly with conflicting news about how business actions in the European Union or emerging economies of Asia, or migrations from Mexico and Central America are impacting the U.S. and world economies. INTRODUCTION TO GLOBAL BUSINESS: UNDERSTANDING THE INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENT & GLOBAL BUSINESS, 3E provides a clear, comprehensive analysis of today's global business environment, supported by current examples and mini-cases. Written by authoritative professionals, this edition introduces globalization using unparalleled scholarship and the fundamentals of the global business environment -- culture, ethics, economics and information technology. You see how shifts in the global geopolitical balance of power and changing regional strategic alliances can impact job opportunities and future living standards, as the text flows from concept to application. MindTap digital resources help you apply principles to personal and professional situations.
The adjustment problems of public finance in East-Central European countries are often misunderstood and misinterpreted by western scholars. This book contributes to the bridging of the gap between what is being thought by external observers and what the actual public finance reality is, as described by competent local scholars. Popular political economy research has remained biased towards advanced countries and has neglected developing and/or transition economies. Although there have been publications on CEE countries' public finances, these seem to be reluctant to apply the conceptual and analytical framework of standard political economy to CEE countries because of the assumption that CEE economies are different from their Western peers. But is this really the case? Are CEE economies so much different that none of the well-known "Western" political economy concepts/models could be applied to the analysis of fiscal performance in the region? The major hypothesis of the present book is that this is not the case. It demonstrates that models and concepts developed in "Western" academic circles can be safely applied in the context of CEE economies as well; that is, there is no need to develop a separate or unique theory designed for the study and understanding of (one-time) transition economies.
This book provides a historical economic analysis of two key issues relating to township and village enterprise (TVE) development in China. Firstly, the nature of the evolving relationship between TVEs and local government; in particular how TVE entrepreneurs have used institutionalized power to secure the political influence needed to defend their financial independence. Secondly, the relationship between TVEs and state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and the role of SOEs in China's economic transition. This study highlights the importance of the role of SOEs in the "dual-track pricing system" and its impact on other parts of the economy. Township and village enterprises were key to China's success in the late twentieth century, but have more or less disappeared as an entity over the past decade or so. By measuring the structural difference of the SOE sector before and after 1998-2003 SOE reform, Jin explains their fast catch-up in productivity since the mid-1990s, as well as the relative decline of TVE productivity.
This book examines the patterns, characteristics, causes and coping mechanisms of the poor in Afghanistan applying econometric and statistical techniques. The authors address and identify the extent of poverty in Afghanistan over the years, the spatial patterns and regional imbalances of poverty in Afghanistan, the distinguishing characteristics of the poor in Afghanistan, and explore shocks faced by the poor in Afghanistan as well as subsequent coping strategies. Based on household level data collected under the 'National Risk Vulnerability Assessment' (NRVA) survey of 2003, 2005, 2007/08 and 2011/12 of Afghanistan, the authors identify options that may enable policy makers and other stakeholders to further enable the inclusion of the poor in development processes and to successfully cope with poverty and its adverse outcomes. This short book will be of interest to students, researchers, academicians, policymakers, international agencies and NGOs at international and national levels.
Is Capitalism Working? is a highly relevant question today - not least to a generation coming of age in a world still experiencing aftershocks from the near-meltdown of the world economy in 2008. Economic theory can be complex, but Jacob Field's wellstructured and thought-provoking text lays out the debate in a clear, accessible and engaging manner. Infographics and timelines ensure that readers grasp the basic tenets, history and context of capitalism, without distracting from the compelling arguments. Jacob Field presents a measured conclusion that reviews the evidence on each side, allowing room for the reader to draw his or her own conclusions.
This book is devoted to a systems-theoretical presentation of the main results of applying the systemic yoyo model and relevant analytical tools to the topics of money and financial institutions. The author presents the main concepts and results of the subject matter in the language of systems science, which has in the past century prompted revolutionary applicati ons of systems research in various subfields of traditional disciplines. This volume applies a brand new logic of reasoning to some of the unsett led problems in the area of money and banking. Due to the particular systemic approach employed, the reader will be able to see how different economic activities are implicitly related to each other and how financial decisions are holistically made in reference to seemingly unrelated events. That is, the learning of this particular subject matter takes place at a different, more elevated level, from which, among others, economies are respectively seen as both closed and open systems; their interactions emulate those of rotational pools of fluids. This book can be used as a textbook for researchers and graduate students in economics, finance, systems science, and mathematical / systems modeling. It will also be useful as a reference book for applied economists and various policy makers.
Part 1 of this volume analyses the main issues in the theory of Applied Economics. Part 2 surveys the rise of capitalist enterprise and indicates the importance of certain institutions in the growth and working of the economic system at the start of the twentieth century. The concluding chapters stress the relevance of these considerations to the problems facing politicians and administrators.
This book intends to be a contribution to the "varieties of capitalism" paradigm. The theoretical background is Weber 's theory of legitimacy. Was communism ever "legitimate"? What kind of legitimacy claims were made in the transition from communism to capitalism? Central Europe was closer to the Western "liberal" model. Russia built capitalism in a patrimonial way. China followed its own unique way; some called it "socialism with Chinese characteristics". Putin experiments with an innovation for post-communist capitalism. He confronts the "oligarchs" and reallocates property from those who challenge his political authority to old and new loyal ones. This book asks to what extent such forms can serve as generic models for post-communist capitalism?
This book explores the regional coordination and impact of state responses to irregular migration in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. The main argument is that regional and international trends of securitisation and criminalisation of irregular migration, often associated with framing the issue in terms of migrant smuggling and human trafficking, have intensified carceral border regimes and produced greater precarity for migrants. Bilateral and multilateral processes of regional coordination at multiple levels of government are analysed with a focus on the impact on asylum seekers and migrant workers in major destination and transit countries including Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, and Australia. The book will be of interest to a wide academic audience interested in the interdisciplinary field of Border Studies, as well as general readers concerned with the treatment of refugees and migrant workers who cross borders in search of safety, security, and a better life. |
You may like...
Mass Politics in Tough Times - Opinions…
Larry Bartels, Nancy Bermeo
Hardcover
R3,857
Discovery Miles 38 570
Africa's Business Revolution - How to…
Acha Leke, Mutsa Chironga, …
Hardcover
(1)
The Deficit Myth - How To Build A Better…
Stephanie Kelton
Paperback
How To Think And Reason In…
Frederick C. V. N. Fourie, Philippe Burger
Paperback
(1)R916 Discovery Miles 9 160
|