The book provides conceptual and empirical insights into the complex relationship between knowledge flows and regional growth in the EU. The author critically scrutinizes and enhances the RIS (Regional Innovation System) approach, discussing innovation as a technological, institutional and evolutionary process. Moreover, she advances the ongoing discourse on the role of space and technological proximity in the process of innovation and technological externalities. The book closes with an investigation of the role of technological change and knowledge spillovers in the dynamic growth and catching-up of EU regions. "

Since the end of the Cold War capitalism has become the dominant form of economic and political organization across the globe. This does not mean, however, that all forms of capitalism are the same. Competing Capitalisms explains why some countries have developed very different forms of capitalism and what happens when they interact. The book considers the distinctive experiences of Australia's market-based, and Japan's state-led forms of capitalism and explains what this means for future international economic competition.

The Russian labour market has been hailed by some economists as being 'perfectly flexible' because Russia has achieved enormous employment restructuring with minimal unemployment, and by others as plagued by rigidities since pay structures have been frozen, inequality has increased and job creation has been negligible. Such disagreements reflect both the lack of serious research on the formation of a labour market in Russia and the lack of theoretical agreement as to what constitutes a labour market. Simon Clarke addresses these empirical and theoretical issues on the basis of statistical survey and case study data collected within the framework of a large-scale collaborative research programme on the restructuring of labour and employment in Russia. The book reviews the historical context, the statistical data and the theoretical issues before proceeding to a detailed analysis of the development of the labour market in the interaction of the labour market strategies of employers and employees. The Formation of a Labour Market in Russia will be of interest to scholars of transition studies and labour economics, industrial relations specialists and sociologists of labour.

The last two decades have seen a reshaping of the international economy together with a radical weakening in the conditions of the working class. New productive techniques and methods in the organization of labour have been implemented on a world-wide scale partly as a consequence of the financialization of capital. The geographical diffusion of market relations has continued and with it the dominance of capital in all realms of social reproduction. In charting this change, the book offers an alternative view of contemporary capitalism. It has been suggested that we are entering a new phase where the 'globalization' of economic activities is fully achieved, where 'post-Fordist' regulation has overcome the crisis of Keynesian capitalism, and where the dominant tendency is towards the 'end of work'. In contrast to this view, the authors of this book argue that current internationalization is not a structure, but a contradictory process and that new patterns in the division of labour while successful in increasing the pressure over workers have not been able to supersede Fordism entirely. They conclude that the slow growth of the economies, caused by neoliberal economic policies, is a crucial factor in explaining unemployment and the fragmentation of labour.

This book sheds new light on the political economy of public management reform. It examines the new forms of economic decentralization and macroeconomic adjustment, and discusses their implications for policy design and regulation.The authors discuss leading-edge research on public management reform, privatization and decentralization in both industrialized and aid-dependent countries, concentrating on the meso-level of institutional response. Combining theory, case studies and institutional analysis, they focus on issues including public/private partnerships, public finance and aid allocation. The authors also present new ideas on the design of a regulatory framework. This book will be welcomed by academics and researchers working in the fields of development studies, development economics, political economy and international public management as well as policymakers working for government agencies and NGOs in developing countries.

Corruption, collusion and clientelism are pervasive legacies of Soviet rule in most successor states of the Soviet Union. This legacy has been a major obstacle to the development of viable democratic and market institutions. Analyzing the political and economic developments of Armenia and Georgia, this book demonstrates how systemic corruption undermines the rule of law which is crucial for democracy and a market economy. It argues that the tumultuous political transition of Georgia has created an anarchic system of corruption that is disastrous for economic development and people's welfare. In contrast, the Armenian government has maintained some control over the corrupt system, ameliorating the consequences of systemic corruption.

The key figure of the capitalist utopia is the individual who is ultimately free. The capitalist's ideal society is designed to protect this freedom. However, within Planet Utopia: Utopia, Dystopia, Globalisation, Featherstone argues that capitalist utopian vision, which is most clearly expressed in theories of global finance, is no longer sustainable today. This book concerns the status of utopian thinking in contemporary global society and the possibility of imagining alternative ways of living outside of capitalism. Using a range of sociological and philosophical theories to write the first intellectual history of the capitalist utopia in English, Featherstone provokes the reader into thinking about ways of moving beyond this model of organising social life through sociological modes of thought. Indeed, this enlightening volume seeks to show how utopian thinking about the way people should live has been progressively captured by capitalism with the result that it is difficult to imagine alternatives to capitalist society today. Presenting sociology and sociological thinking as a utopian alternative to the capitalist utopia, Planet Utopia will appeal to postgraduate and postdoctoral students interested in subjects including Sociology, Social Theory, Cultural Studies, Cultural Theory and Continental Philosophy.

Based on a case study carried out in the southern city of Guangzhou in China, this book describes the dramatic changes occurring at a large state owned enterprise as this socialist country undergoes market transition. It shows how these changes have led to the dismantling of the "iron rice bowl", the transformation of the socialist work unit and the life of its members, and the creation of a new model of occupational welfare.

This book investigates the concepts and instruments for managing change in companies striving toward a market orientation in Poland. The focus is on the identification of factors, which have led to the considerable success of certain corporations, in spite of the very dynamic environment in transformation countries since 1989. The analysis considers problems and solutions for all the relevant stakeholder relationships. Although the case study is largely based on Poland, the book also contains research papers on the economic, political, and social context of doing business in Central and Eastern Europe.

After successful transition from a socialist to market economy, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe are faced with the challenge of how to catch up with the EU15. This book provides the first systematic analysis of how Central and Eastern Europe has been restructuring from a knowledge-based economy perspective. It is an essential reference for understanding processes that are shaping present and future growth of the eastern part of the enlarged EU.

This book focuses on the transition faced by business organizations and their stakeholders as they move from protected markets to open competition, and it explores how these changes can be facilitated by outside interveners/agents. The four authors--two from Europe and two from the United States--have worked separately as consultants with leaders of many companies and unions facing these challenges including AT & T, Lucent, Electricite de France and the Italian State Railways (Ferrovie dello Stato). The reader is thus afforded an unusual insight into the process of change in a large organization--not only close up accounts of what happened, but understanding of the relationship between the researcher/consultant and different groups within the organization: senior managers, HR people, unions, and ordinary employees. The book draws lessons from these cases and experiences on a number of different levels: lessons about the methods of intervention in large organizations; about the nature of the organizational transitions as business faces increased competition; about the pressures this places on unions and other stakeholder groups; about the differences between the US and European context; and about possible models for advancing the change process in the future. The analysis finally focuses on the larger set of forces driving all these cases: the transition to a global post-industrial economy. The experience of change in these corporations, from this perspective, illuminates the dynamics of transition between neo-corporatist stakeholder relations and a more pluralist and decentralized system emerging throughout the industrialized world. This unusual book--by a team of highly experienced researchers/consultants--will be of interest to a broad readership of academics, students, consultants, HR professionals interested in the process and management and change and contemporary trends in modern societies.

Offering a diverse set of contributions to current social contracting research, The Social Institutions of Capitalism illustrates how social contracts necessarily underlie and facilitate all forms of capitalist production and exchange. The editors bring together novel contributions from fields as diverse as economics, evolutionary game theory, contract law, business ethics, moral philosophy and anthropology to offer multifaceted but subtly intertwined perspectives on fundamental questions concerning human cooperation. This interdisciplinary book, with articles written by academics who are widely known and respected in their respective fields, will be of great value to those interested in political theory, moral philosophy and business ethics.

The Japanese economy has been in the post-bubble recession for the last decade. This is in contrast to the resilient and secular growth Japan had enjoyed since World War II to the 1980s. How Japan copes with the massive restructuring of its business and economic system that appears to be needed for Japan to get back to its growth path is of interest to its global trading partners. In this book, leading Japan specialists from North America, Japan, and the UK provide detailed discussions of the representative issues the Japanese business and economic system currently faces and explore the directions Japan will be following in the 21st century.

In the Community-building process, citizens are the most invoked and feared, but at the same time the least known subject. This lack of knowledge nourishes the citizens' detachment from the European Union and itself emerged in well known cases such as the French and Dutch referenda on the Constitutional Treaty or the public concern towards the EU policy on immigration. This gap is true especially for active citizenship organizations operating in the European policy making, not only in Brussels, but also and above all at national and local levels, and this book is aimed at filling this knowledge gap. The book is divided into two parts. The first part of the book focuses on the way in which the literature on EU governance and citizenship and on participatory democracy deals with citizen activism in public policy making. The second part discusses a number of empirical research projects on civic activism in Europe. This book aims, on the one hand, to bridge the academic debate to more policy oriented debates in which active citizenship organizations and policy makers are involved; and, on the other hand, to bridge theoretical discussion of the nature of the EU with the empirical literature based on the study of civic activism in Europe and at the national level. The distinctiveness of the book is that it tries to overcome both the "methodological nationalism" that affects the research and public debate on the EU, the normative attitude of most part of European studies in favor of an approach aimed at describing phenomena, and the habit of dealing with civic associations in Europe by referring only to the "Brussels Civil Society," making it of interest to both policy makers as well as students and scholars in European Studies, Political Science, Sociology and International Relations.

International financial markets play an increasing role in the mind of the general public, much more than they did a few decades ago. There can be no doubt that the size of financial markets has grown at a faster pace than the markets for goods and services in the past ten or twenty years. However, it is still unclear whether this is a desirable development, or whether it indicates looming risks. The book documents and classifies the debate about the potential decoupling of the financial sector from the real economy, and then to introduce it into the context of established scientific lines of research. We try to provide a logical structuring of the heterogeneous arguments by postulating a decoupling hypothesis (phenomena, causes, consequences). Various models are presented in this structure and stylized facts can be isolated.

The Open Economy Macromodel: Past, Present And Future has two main objectives. The first is to assess the state of play of the Open Economy Macromodel by bringing together those who developed it with those who apply it today. The second is to assess possible directions for its future development.

The volume is divided into three parts. Part one focuses on the models, men, and institutions involved in the development of the international macroeconomic model. In this section, the contributors examine the two monetary approaches to the balance of payments, as well as the relationship between long-term fluctuations in real exchange rates and inflation. Part two deals with the present state of the models by looking at Robert Mundell's theory of optimum currency areas (OCAs) and its relationship with key currencies. The chapters in this section also consider the impact of exchange rate variability on labor markets, as well as the interactions between theoretical developments and real-world behavior in the open economy macromodel. The third and last part of this volume provides a perspective on the future by looking at alternate models and institutional perspectives. Several contributors examine the relationship between asset prices, the real exchange rate, and unemployment in a small economy via what they call "a medium-run structuralist perspective." The future of institutional structures necessary to conduct international economic policy is the subject of the last chapters in part three of the volume.

The phenomenon of state-led development has been persistent throughout modern history and remains significant today. Latecomers in the world's development, from Russia in the 19th century to contemporary China, persistently resorted to the state as a developmental instrument in economic catch-up. Why did relatively 'backward'economies tend to take the state-led approach rather than following the free market model? Why did those latecomers that used the state as the main coordinator and had the bureaucratic capacity to do so modernize faster than other 'backward' economies? Finally, do the successful state-led developers have the potentials to take the lead in world's developments? Or under what conditions could they do so? These are the questions the book intends to answer. This book looks into the state-led development in the post-war period, offering a new perspective for interpreting the choice of the state-led approach by latecomers and the consequences of such choices.

The book discusses the mechanisms by which securities are traded, as well as examining economic models of asymmetric information, inventory control, and cost-minimizing trading strategies.

US capitalism has long been ranked first among nations in production, jobs, wealth, power, and individual freedom. Is this level of preeminence likely to continue? In this candid, sobering assessment of our current fiscal maladies, economist Robert H. Parks explains why he predicts capitalism is now rushing to its demise.
A strong opponent of the supply-side, trickle-down economics that has been in vogue under conservative presidents, Parks argues that bottom-up stimulus and big government spending still have an important role to play in bringing greater prosperity to all US citizens. Citing the stellar examples of the financing of World War II, the use of fiscal and monetary tools to end the Great Depression, social security, and the G.I. Bill, Parks advocates public works programs to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, improve our public school system, and other vital projects. To critics who object that deficit financing would be inflationary, he counters that the present inadequate system is already producing severe oil and food price inflation, even as house prices continue to plunge.
Among the other urgent problems that the federal government must tackle, Parks addresses the need to curb societal violence and the murder rate through gun control, the worldwide threat from nuclear proliferation through government's leadership in promoting disarmament measures, corruption of government by business through influence-peddling, environmental protection, and, most of all, "the military, industrial, and big oil complex." Parks identifies energy cartels and the armament industry as the "dangerous and secret links of major industries to government officials, corporate executives, and military commanders." He asserts that the loosely regulated manufacture of weapons together with the virtual monopoly over oil production and gas prices constitutes the greatest threat to the welfare, not only of capitalism, but also of global society in the future.
This stern jeremiad from an experienced economics forecaster, who correctly predicted the "mini-depression" of 1981-82, is a call for drastic change in our national agenda and policy making.

American things, American material culture, and American archaeology are the themes of this book. The authors use goods used or made in America to illuminate issues such as tenancy, racism, sexism, and regional bias. Contributors utilize data about everyday objects - from tin cans and bottles to namebrand items, from fish bones to machinery - to analyze the way American capitalism works. Their cogent analyses take us literally from broken dishes to the international economy. Especially notable chapters examine how an archaeologist formulates questions about exploitation under capitalism, and how the study of artifacts reveals African-American middle class culture and its response to racism.

This book collects the contributions to a conference of a group of young Polish and German public law scholars on the Constitutional Law of the European Union. The articles present a multi-faceted examination of unity and its realization in the primary and constitutional law of the EU, an analysis of EU constitutional structure in the face of diversity, and the independence of EU law from international common law, among other topics.

This title covers topics that are found in levels one and two of an undergraduate level module where students are studying a programme in the area of economics, finance, accountancy or more broadly management.