This book examines selected actions and investments of the European Central Bank (ECB) from a climate and sustainability standpoint. Shedding new light on the topic from various angles - ethical, philosophical, political, economical and legal - it situates sustainability mainstreaming in the finance and investment field at all levels. The former ECB President Mario Draghi once said that he considered sustainable development and an intact environment to be human rights, and therefore enshrined in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. The acting ECB President Christine Lagarde added that the future path for the climate is uncertain, but it would remain within our power to influence it. However, with all that in mind the ECB's policy of buying assets as securities is often questionable. This volume analyzes these actions in connection with sustainability, and puts forward practical recommendations for improving the ECB's investment strategy on its way creating a sustainable financial market.

This book explores the reasons behind Europe's poor performance in terms of overall growth and its progressively diminishing role in the global context. Recognizing that the big challenge is to restore confidence and hope in Europe, potential solutions are discussed. The volume comprises a selection of contributions to the XXVI Villa Mondragone International Economic Seminar (Rome, 2014), the most recent of a series of seminars that have provided outstanding scholars with an opportunity to discuss key topics in economic research. In recent years the persistence of high unemployment and low growth has increased the Euroscepticism that has targeted the euro and the Brussels bureaucracy. Readers will find this book a fascinating source of information on current thinking regarding topics such as European industrial policy, European governance, unemployment, the euro and competitiveness, trade and financial integration, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, anticorruption policies, and energy and climate policies. In particular, it examines the structural reforms and commitment to development that will be required for Europe to become a region characterized by social justice, dynamism, and opportunities for all.

This book purports to investigate and compare the economic development experiences in both Taiwan and South Korea in last two decades. Taiwan and South Korea's economic development after WWII is a well-known story. However, their development after the successful post-war industrialization has not been comprehensively studied. The book examines whether the three factors -the role of private business, government policy, and foreign influence-that had contributed to Taiwan's and Korea's post-war development, are still relevant during the post-industrial development era. Researchers in the fields of global political economy, Asian economic development and East Asian studies will find this book a fresh and invaluable contribution to the literature. The book will also be of value to policy makers in developing countries in drafting their national development policies, diplomats conducting economic diplomacy with Taiwan and South Korea, and business people planning to expand their business interests in Asia.

This pioneering book explores the meaning of the term "Black social economy," a self-help sector that remains autonomous from the state and business sectors. With the Western Hemisphere's ignoble history of enslavement and violence towards African peoples, and the strong anti-black racism that still pervades society, the African diaspora in the Americas has turned to alternative practices of socio-economic organization. Conscientious and collective organizing is thus a means of creating meaningful livelihoods. In this volume, fourteen scholars explore the concept of the "Black social economy," bringing together innovative research on the lived experience of Afro-descendants in business and society in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, and the United States. The case studies in this book feature horrific legacies of enslavement, colonization, and racism, and they recount the myriad ways that persons of African heritage have built humane alternatives to the dominant market economy that excludes them. Together, they shed necessary light on the ways in which the Black race has been overlooked in the social economy literature.

Airbnb, gaming, escape rooms, major sporting events: contemporary capitalism no longer demands we merely consume things, but that we buy experiences. This book is concerned with the social, cultural and personal implications of this shift. The technologically-driven world we live in is no closer to securing the utopian ideal of a leisure society. Instead, the pursuit of leisure is often an attempt to escape our everyday existence. Exploring examples including sport, architecture, travel and social media, Steven Miles investigates how consumer culture has colonised 'experiences', revealing the ideological and psycho-social tensions at the heart of the 'experience society'. This first critical analysis of the experience economy sheds light on capitalism's ever more sophisticated infiltration of the everyday.

This volume of Studies in Law, Politics and Society considers the crucial role played by intermediaries, such as companies and lawyers, in the legal system.In this special issue, scholars from different disciplines find that, in some instances, legal intermediation can succeed in fulfilling the initial goals of regulation. However, in re-evaluating the role of the legal devices that organizations set up to comply with regulation, this volume also illustrates their diverse impact on legality and legal consciousness in organizations and in economic life.With a broad range of case studies covering anti-discrimination law, financial rules, competition law, labour law and health and safety procedures, this European-focused volume makes an important contribution to the scholarship in this field.

The historian Wolfgang Mommsen was one of the foremost experts on Max Weber as well as an insightful and accessible interpreter of his work. Mommsen's classic book, first published in 1974 under the title The Age of Bureaucracy, not only concisely explains the basic concepts underlying Weber's worldview, but also explores the historical, social, and intellectual contexts in which he operated, including Weber's development as an academic, his relationship to German nationalism, and his engagement with Marxism. Supplemented with a new foreword, a bibliography that includes recent studies, and a postscript by Volker Berghahn that surveys the most important debates on Weber's work since his death, this short volume serves as an excellent resource for scholars and students alike.

The contradictions of modernisation run through the whole of modern Chinese history. The abundance of manufactured goods being sold in the west attests to China's industrial revolution, but this capitalist vision of 'utopia' sits uneasily with traditional Chinese values. It is also in conflict with the socialism that has been the bedrock of Chinese society since the foundation of the People's Republic in 1949. Utopia and Modernity in China examines the conflicts inherent in China's attempt to achieve a 'utopia' by advancing production and technology. Through the lenses of literature, arts, law, the press and the environment, the contributors interrogate the contradictions of modernisation in Chinese society and its fundamental challenges. By unpicking both China's vision of utopia and its realities and the increasing tension between traditional Chinese values and those of the west, this book offers a unique insight into the cultural forces that are part of reshaping today's China.

A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR A call to action for the creative class and labour movement to rally against the power of Big Tech and Big Media. Corporate concentration has breached the stratosphere, as have corporate profits. An ever-expanding constellation of industries are now monopolies (where sellers have excessive power over buyers) or monopsonies (where buyers hold the whip hand over sellers) - or both. Scholar Rebecca Giblin and writer and activist Cory Doctorow argue we're in a new era of 'chokepoint capitalism', with exploitative businesses creating insurmountable barriers to competition that enable them to capture value that should rightfully go to others. All workers are weakened by this, but the problem is especially well illustrated by the plight of creative workers. By analysing book publishing and news, live music and music streaming, screenwriting, radio, and more, Giblin and Doctorow deftly show how powerful corporations construct 'anti-competitive flywheels' designed to lock in users and suppliers, make their markets hostile to new entrants, and then force workers and suppliers to accept unfairly low prices. In the book's second half, Giblin and Doctorow explain how to batter through those chokepoints, with tools ranging from transparency rights to collective action and ownership, radical interoperability, contract terminations, job guarantees, and minimum wages for creative work. Chokepoint Capitalism is a call to workers of all sectors to unite to help smash these chokepoints and take back the power and profit that's being heisted away - before it's too late.

The authors predict that the impact will be far-reaching, leading to a more liquid, mature and efficient capital market. The structure of capital markets in Europe and the behaviour of actors in these markets will be fundamentally affected, leading to a more integrated market. For monetary union to achieve its real objective, policy makers will need to address a wide variety of outstanding issues, in particular the taxation of savings income, accounting standards, capital market regulation and financial supervision.
The start of monetary union on 1 January 1999 launched a process of radical change in the structure of capital markets in Europe. Whereas previously, Europe had been fragmented into many diverse national markets, a single Euro capital market is now emerging.
This book focuses on the long-term impact that the introduction of the euro will have on European capital markets and spells out implications for the financial sector and the wider economy. It discusses what further steps need to be taken to achieve a fully integrated market.
In particular, the book examines:
* The institutional and regulatory framework for European capital markets
* The structure of European capital markets on the eve of EMU
* The regional differences and the contrasts with the US capital market
* The central role played by banks in European capital markets and the likelihood that a more market-based system may emerge
* The implications of EMU for organised securities markets
* The consequences for governance and policy, and more in particular for the taxation of savings income, securities market regulation and financial supervision

Joseph Stiglitz examines the theory behind the economic downturns that have plagued our world in recent times. This fascinating three-part lecture acknowledges the failure of economic models to successfully predict the 2008 crisis and explores alternative models which, if adopted, could potentially restore a stable and prosperous economy.

This book examines the domestic and international dimensions of European Union (EU) competition policy, particularly mergers, anti-competitive practices and state aids. The authors argue that important changes in EU competition policy are having profound effects on the global political economy, and these changes are best understood as European Commission responses to new domestic and international pressures. Using a two-level game analytical framework that is both intra-EU and global in scope, Damro and Guay investigate a wide variety of domestic and foreign public and private actors that interact in crucial ways to determine the development and implementation of EU competition policy. They address this broad question: In what ways do changing external and internal factors affect the evolution of the EU's competition policy and the role that the Commission plays in it? Among the conclusions is that the EU - and particularly the European Commission - has become a leading global regulator.

Produced here in two low-cost paperback volumes, John Bapty Oates' challenging insights into the human condition, and specifically, the REAL reasons behind the current global crises, is a must-read for any serious student of human nature, sociology or economics. Topics covered include the evolution of human consciousness; the rise of a global economy; and the many dangers and pitfalls that await us as a species if we cannot - or will not - listen with real urgency, to the lessons that life places before us. A true heavyweight amongst contemporary philosophical works.

Produced here in two low-cost paperback volumes, John Bapty Oates' challenging insights into the human condition, and specifically, the REAL reasons behind the current global crises, is a must-read for any serious student of human nature, sociology or economics. Topics covered include the evolution of human consciousness; the rise of a global economy; and the many dangers and pitfalls that await us as a species if we cannot - or will not - listen with real urgency, to the lessons that life places before us. A true heavyweight amongst contemporary philosophical works.

This book examines failure in the urbanisation of Northwest China as a result of government industrial policies that have impacted on the economic development of the region. By looking at the under-researched provinces of Gansu, Qinghai and Inner Mongolia, which make up a quarter of China's territory, Zheng and Deng challenge the common story of China's miracle growth and reveal the dark side of the country's pursuit of modernity. Severe weather conditions, chronic drought, permanent lack of oxygen and unforgiving terrain in the Northwest make farming, manufacture and services difficult simply because people tend not to stay. Yet, China's current political system forces growth to take place even though basic conditions and prerequisites for market-based growth are missing. This volume analyses 'ghost cities' and social tension in the process of 'forced urbanisation' in which huge amount of resources are wasted, the local environment is systematically damaged and ordinary people's basic rights are brutally violated in the name of higher GDP and greater government glory.

This volume focuses on the topic of energy transitions in the coal mining industries of China and Japan by adopting a Sino-Japanese comparative approach in area studies to examine the experiences between the two major East Asian economies. In China, rapid industrialization led to dramatic growth in energy demand and much of this energy demand was fueled by affordable coal energy. With growing social concerns about the environment and an increasingly vocal middle class in contemporary China, the authorities and state-owned enterprises are studying the use of coal fuels for its future development. In Japan, coal was also an affordable main source of energy for Japan's early post-war heavy industrialization until it was gradually replaced by oil in the 1960s. The oil shocks of the 1970s compelled Japan to look for cleaner and cheaper fuels, including nuclear power. In these energy transitions from coal to oil and then onto non-fossil fuels, the story of coal power in both countries is highlighted in this publication as a comparative study. This volume is a crucial contribution to the discussion of China's energy reforms, and required reading for scholars of climate change and society.

This work focuses on the EU's participation in the Dispute Settlement Proceedings (DSP) of the WTO for matters of non-conferred competences. The underlying thesis is that the joint membership of the EU and its Member States is fallacious, in that it could cause the EU to become responsible for violations of the WTO regulations on the part of the Member States. Such fallacies are rooted in the blurred nature of the distribution of powers in the EU polity.In order to tackle the issue of international responsibility, the analysis is based on the facts of a real-world case. Based on the tenets of public international law, the law of mixed agreements and the EU constitutional principles, the book puts forward a model for the EU's participation in the DSP, and for the reallocation of burdens to the respective responsible entity. This proposition deconstructs the joint responsibility regime and endorses a solution that could address the issue of responsibility in mixed agreements without a declaration of powers.

In the nineteenth century, the Netherlands and its colonial holdings in Java were the sites of dramatically increased industrialization. Led by a group of "merchant kings" who exemplified gentlemanly capitalism, this ambitious trading project transformed the small, economically moribund Netherlands into a global power. Merchant Kings offers a fascinating interdisciplinary exploration of this episode and reveals not only the distinctive nature of the Dutch state, but the surprising extent to which its nascent corporate innovations were rooted in early welfare initiatives. By placing colony and metropole into a single analytical frame, this book offers a bracing new approach to understanding the development of modern corporations.

This enlightening text analyses the origins of Western complaints, prevalent in the late nineteenth century, that Japan was characterised at the time by exceptionally low standards of 'commercial morality', despite a major political and economic transformation. As Britain industrialised during the nineteenth century the issue of 'commercial morality' was increasingly debated. Concerns about standards of business ethics extended to other industrialising economies, such as the United States. Hunter examines the Japanese response to the charges levelled against Japan in this context, arguing that this was shaped by a pragmatic recognition that Japan had little choice but to adapt itself to Western expectations if it was to establish its position in the global economy. The controversy and criticisms, which were at least in part stimulated by fear of Japanese competition, are important in the history of thinking on business ethics, and are of relevance for today's industrialising economies as they attempt to establish themselves in international markets.

This topical and important book identifies the short to medium-term economic, financial and social consequences of Brexit. Containing perspectives from leading thinkers across legal, economic and financial fields, it considers both the general effect of UK withdrawal on the European integration process, and the specific impact on the free movement of capital, goods and people. Addressing the main areas within both the UK and the EU that can and will be affected by Brexit, including the financial sector, immigration, social rights and social security, After Brexit: Consequences for the European Union will make fascinating reading for all those currently engaged in the study and practice of Law, Economics, Finance, Political Science, Philosophy, History and International Affairs.

20 years after the collapse of communism in Central Eastern European countries and 30 years after the start of market-oriented reforms in China, this book provides a framework for understanding the differing emphasis and sequencing of two reforms and explores in-depth these issues in the demise of communism and the triumph of the market economy.

One of New York Magazine's best books on Silicon Valley! The true, behind-the-scenes history of the people who built Silicon Valley and shaped Big Tech in America Long before Margaret O'Mara became one of our most consequential historians of the American-led digital revolution, she worked in the White House of Bill Clinton and Al Gore in the earliest days of the commercial Internet. There she saw firsthand how deeply intertwined Silicon Valley was with the federal government--and always had been--and how shallow the common understanding of the secrets of the Valley's success actually was. Now, after almost five years of pioneering research, O'Mara has produced the definitive history of Silicon Valley for our time, the story of mavericks and visionaries, but also of powerful institutions creating the framework for innovation, from the Pentagon to Stanford University. It is also a story of a community that started off remarkably homogeneous and tight-knit and stayed that way, and whose belief in its own mythology has deepened into a collective hubris that has led to astonishing triumphs as well as devastating second-order effects. Deploying a wonderfully rich and diverse cast of protagonists, from the justly famous to the unjustly obscure, across four generations of explosive growth in the Valley, from the forties to the present, O'Mara has wrestled one of the most fateful developments in modern American history into magnificent narrative form. She is on the ground with all of the key tech companies, chronicling the evolution in their offerings through each successive era, and she has a profound fingertip feel for the politics of the sector and its relation to the larger cultural narrative about tech as it has evolved over the years. Perhaps most impressive, O'Mara has penetrated the inner kingdom of tech venture capital firms, the insular and still remarkably old-boy world that became the cockpit of American capitalism and the crucible for bringing technological innovation to market, or not. The transformation of big tech into the engine room of the American economy and the nexus of so many of our hopes and dreams--and, increasingly, our nightmares--can be understood, in Margaret O'Mara's masterful hands, as the story of one California valley. As her majestic history makes clear, its fate is the fate of us all.

The book evaluates the importance of constitutional rules and property rights for the German economy in 1990-2015. It is an economic historical study embedded in institutional economics with main references to positive constitutional economics and the property rights theory. This interdisciplinary work adopts a theoretical-empirical dimension and a qualitative-quantitative approach. Formal institutions played a fundamental role in Germany's post-reunification economic changes. They set the legal and institutional framework for the transition process of Eastern Germany and the unification, integration and convergence between the two parts of the country. Although the latter process was not completed, the effects of these formal rules were positive, especially for the former GDR.

This book studies the challenges for Indonesia, once a miracle economy, as it faces premature deindustrialisation, rising inequality and domestic and external factors impacting its export-oriented industrialization. Since the fall of Soeharto, Indonesia has undergone a far-reaching systemic transition from centralised and autocratic governance to a highly decentralised and democratic system. Complicated by regional variations, the country is now being called upon to respect labour rights and, amidst slow global economic recovery, is facing increased competition from other low-labour-cost countries, especially within the ASEAN Economic Community. Tadjoeddin and Chowdhury posit that Indonesia cannot recreate its past miracle based on cheap labour and suppression of labour rights. It will need to move quickly to high value-added activities driven by productivity growth and to develop its domestic market.