Mario Amendola and Jean-Luc Gaffard argue that all too often, markets and technology are treated as two magic words that will open the door to a wealth of riches. An increasing number of governments appear to be aiming for a pure market economy in order to reap the benefits of a benevolent technology that promises the most spectacular advances. Both markets and technology can certainly be considered essential economic factors, but which market and what technology? Is the current prevailing view of competition without restraints and privatisation at all costs actually the essence of the market? This book maintains that the dominant view mistakes the relationship between growth and technical change and, as a consequence, the role of the market in this context. The authors argue that once the issue is analysed in the proper light, the usual ingredients of the dominant policy recipe - zero inflation, balanced budgets, privatisations, deregulation of all markets, extreme flexibility - may not actually be the appropriate ones.The Market Way to Riches will appeal to academics from many branches of economics including heterodox, evolutionary and macroeconomics and those with an interest in economic growth generally. Policy makers influencing economic growth will also find much to engage them.

The global health crisis, exacerbated by the COVID-19 outbreak, has challenged all sectors of society, including health, economics, finance, and social inequality. The threats and complexities from the COVID-19 pandemic shock are the core subject of this latest volume in the Contributions to Economic Analysis series. The Economics of COVID-19 contains selected contributions analysing the effects of this pandemic, covering macroeconomics, computable general equilibrium models, financial markets, the reduction in seismic noise due to the slowdown in traffic and economic activities caused by the spread of the virus, the rapid surge in the digital transformation of production and consumption. Also included are health studies proposing to improve the traditional epidemic models, the effects of the pandemic on mental health, Minority Ethnic Groups in the UK, as well as the Lombardy region in Italy. The aim of this collection is to spur much needed research into the effects of COVID on the global economy, the health, and financial sectors, as well as its effects on development and growth and economic inequality.

How Nations Innovate compares how affluent capitalist economies differ in their patterns of technological innovation. Building on the 'varieties of capitalism' literature, this book goes beyond the traditional focus on 'radical versus incremental innovation' in existing scholarship, and takes the comparison of capitalism to an entirely new set of questions around technological innovation. For example, which type of capitalism engages in job-threatening innovation? Whose innovation widens income inequality? Whose innovation raises productivity? Which type of capitalism has more effective financial markets for innovation? Whose innovators emphasize 'control' rather than 'flexibility' during innovation? By addressing these questions, the author demonstrates that the way nations innovate often has deep, and sometimes counter-intuitive, implications for how they compare in many areas of socio-economic performance. For example, although venture capital is most active in Anglo-Saxon economies, it seems that venture-capital performance in stimulating innovation is also poorest in precisely these countries. On the issue of employment, the author argues that, whilst technological innovation in Anglo-Saxon economies creates jobs, innovation in European economies destroys jobs. Nations also differ in the nature of income inequality driven by innovation. While innovation pushes top earners further ahead of median earners in Anglo-Saxon economies, it drags bottom earners further behind the median in European economies. Finally, varieties of capitalism also differ in their ability to cope with the volatilities of innovation. While Anglo-Saxon economies face a trade-off between low volatility and high innovation output, these two goals seem jointly achievable in European economies.

Social enterprises boost the economic landscape and benefit causes that are important to society in general. Examining the role of public policy within these small initiatives will produce more effective methods for these two avenues to work together. Influence of Public Policy on Small Social Enterprises: Emerging Research and Opportunities is a pivotal scholarly resource that provides in-depth discussion on how social enterprises are reshaping global economies. Highlighting relevant topics that include legal funding, government policies, third-sector enterprises, and procurement procedures, this reference publication is ideal for academicians, students, government officials, business managers, and researchers that are interested in staying current on the latest advances in the field of social enterprises.

This book offers an assessment of new opportunities available for the agricultural sector and provides technical assistance to the Greek authorities with regards to its rural development and fishery sector. Karantininis follows a value chain approach and analyzes the Greek agri-food industry, breaking it down vertically and horizontally. Vertically, the Greek agri-food chain is stripped to its main upstream and downstream components: inputs, primary production, distribution and retail. Horizontally, the agri-food value chain is analyzed in terms of size, ownership, governance and space. The author pays special attention to policy formation, policy implementation, the political and industrial structure, land and credit markets, education, extension and research. The author focuses on this through three subcategories of fruits and vegetables, aquaculture and olive oil. A number of opinions and recommendations are presented in each section, concluding with propositions for a new institutional structure for Greek agriculture.

Since the popularization of Internet access and use, businesses have moved to create and include electronic markets to reach a larger customer base. These electronic markets can exacerbate already existing socioeconomic problems as well as limit the effect of regulation from national states. Regulation and Structure in Economic Virtualization: Emerging Research and Opportunities is a critical academic publication that discusses and explores the relationship between the Internet and business networks, especially the development of web markets and their relation to regulation in global societies. Covering a wide range of topics, such as business virtualization, global outsourcing, and innovations in public governance, this book is geared toward academicians, researchers, and students seeking relevant and research on the interaction between the internet and business as well as the development of internet markets.

Constitutional political economy applies an economic approach to the analysis of constitutional choice. Initially, research clearly leaned towards legitimizing the state and its actions. However, the transitions taking place in Central and Eastern Europe have made apparent the necessity to improve our knowledge of the working properties of alternative constitutional rules, thus stressing the importance of positive analysis. The authors analyse both the opportunities and dangers of importing constitutions from around the world into this area. The papers assembled in this volume deal with the question of what individual transition processes have taught us in terms of constitution-building. The book contains analyses of post 1989 constitutional developments in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe from the perspectives of varied disciplines; including academics, politicians and the judiciary. Constitutions, Markets and Law will be welcomed by scholars of transition studies and political economists as well as practitioners of, and academics with an interest in, constitutional law.

CLASSIC STUDY OF AMERICAN LABOR ECONOMICS "This book outlines an evolutionary and behavioral theory of value based on data drawn from court decisions. Analyzing the meaning of reasonable value as defined by the courts, Commons finds that the answer is based on a notion of reasonable conduct. Expanding this point to encompass the habits and customs of social life, he shows that court decisions are based on customs that are powerful forces shaping the economic system. John R. Commons has contributed in one way or another to practically every piece of social and labor legislation that has been enacted in the 20th century." --JACK BARBASH, Monthly Labor Review, May 1989, Vol. 112, No. 5 " An] . . . analysis further along his chosen line than any of his predecessors. Into our knowledge of capitalism he has incorporated a great body of new materials which no one else has used adequately."-- WESLEY MITCHELL, American Economic Review, XIV (1924) 253 John R. Commons 1862-1945] was a Professor of Economics at the University of Wisconsin. He was the author and editor of numerous works, and established his reputation with his editorial contributions to A Documentary History of American Industrial Society (1910-1911). He was the author of The Distribution of Wealth (1893), Institutional Economics (1934) and co-author of the History of Labor in the United States (1918-1935). Commons drafted much of the nationally influential labor legislation for the state of Wisconsin that gave unions legal privileges, offered compulsory unemployment insurance to workers and established the first system of workers' compensation in the United States. Due to these path-breaking reforms, he is considered to be the spiritual father of the Social Security Act.

This comprehensive and impressive volume presents the first book-length, multi-country investigation of reform of economic education in transition economies. Authors from the West and from transition economies describe the major changes in economics content and instruction that occurred in schools and universities throughout nations in Eastern and Central Europe and the former Soviet Union from 1989 to 2000. Nine of the chapters discuss specific countries - Belarus, Bulgaria, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine. Other chapters describe reforms in the undergraduate economics curriculum at Moscow State University, Kiev State University, and Belarus State University. One chapter reports the findings from a five-nation study of the effect of economics programs to retrain teachers on the economic understanding of secondary students. Another chapter explains the important role of economic education in creating support for public policy reforms in a nation. The results from multi-national surveys of public attitudes toward economic reforms and the market economy are analyzed in one chapter. The book concludes with an insightful explanation of the major 'change agents' responsible for the reform of academic economics and the teaching of economics in the transition economies. Anyone interested in economic education, transition economies, or educational reform in schools and universities will find this book a unique and fascinating reading.

The OECD includes the richest nations in the world. It issues recommendations on economic and social policies. Is its counsel on welfare state policies coherent? And is it followed by member states in Western Europe? These are the guiding questions of this book, which is a first to deal with such issues. The OECD and European Welfare States comprises 14 country studies considering OECD recommendations and their implementation in Western European welfare states, an analysis of the internal processes in the OECD, a theoretical introduction and a concluding comparative chapter. The overall results show a large degree of consistency in OECD analyses and recommendations, though little efficacy is revealed. The authors of this book have compiled a major contribution to the analysis of the impact of international organisations on national welfare states, widening the scope of traditional analyses of national welfare state development. This edited book will be of special interest to those researchers and graduate students in the fields of international business, welfare state policy and comparative politics. It will also appeal to policy makers concerned with the OECD or welfare state development.

Social economy organizations such as cooperatives, non-profits, mutual benefit groups, foundations, and non-governmental organizations are uniquely positioned to respond not only to emerging social and economic needs, but also to new collective aspirations. In Quebec, for instance, a pioneering social economy system has been developed that is recognized worldwide for its ability to foster innovative solutions to economic disparity and sustainability issues. In the wake of a global crisis that has emphasized the growing gap between economic and social concerns, what can other regions gain from this model? Through robust theoretical and in-depth empirical studies, this book offers the first opportunity to English-language readers to learn about the Quebec experience of a social economy system. It takes stock of recent developments in the province relating to policy planning, governance, financing, local development, and legal frameworks. Innovation and the Social Economy also emphasizes this system's potential for exploring alternative practices of production, consumption, and distribution that can foster social transformation.

COVID-19 in the African Continent examines the development, achievements, and challenges that have resulted owing to COVID-19 pandemic and how these precarious socioeconomic situations are being managed in African countries. This book explores the range of interventions aimed at mitigating the effects of COVID-19 by offering an in-depth understanding of the disruptive impacts of COVID-19 on the African continent. This edited collection underscores the nature and effects of non-health-related challenges such as environmental complexities and possible solutions to socioeconomic shocks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic along with other social, political, and economic distortions. Providing readers with a profound insight of the critical societal consequences of these challenges in African economies, this book covers the macroeconomic policy approaches adopted by government and non-governmental organisations to boost post-COVID-19 recovery and enhance a systemic process to facilitate the prospects for addressing socioeconomic shocks across the continent.

The essays contained herein span over a decade and reflect David Prychitko's thinking about the role of the market system, and its relation to planning and democratic processes. The collection consists of previously published and unpublished articles written not only for economists but also for an interdisciplinary audience. Prychitko extends the Austrian School's criticism of central planning to include the decentralized, self-managed and democratic models of socialism - those that were supposed to distinguish Yugoslav-style socialism from Soviet socialism. He critically evaluates the socialist and market-socialist proposals of contemporary advocates including Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, Ted Burczak, Branko Horvat, and Joseph Stiglitz. A younger Austrian economist, Prychitko has also emerged as an internal critic within that tradition. He questions the Austrian School's claims that the unhampered market maximizes social welfare, that any actions of the state necessarily reduce welfare, and that anarcho-capitalism is viable and desirable. At the same time, he carefully discusses the viability of worker-managed enterprise from a market-process perspective, and offers a qualified defense. Scholars, particularly those with an interest in Austrian economic thought, comparative political economy and free market libertarianism will find this collection a valuable resource.

In The Fiat Standard, world-renowned economist Saifedean Ammous applies his unique analytical lens to the fiat monetary system, explaining it as a feat of engineering and technology just as he did for bitcoin in his global bestseller The Bitcoin Standard.

This time, Ammous delves into the world's earlier shift from the gold standard to today's system of government-backed fiat money—outlining the fiat standard's purposes and failures; deriving the wider economic, political, and social implications of its use; and examining how bitcoin will affect it over time.

With penetrating insight, Ammous analyzes global political currencies by analogy to bitcoin: how they're "mined" whenever government-guaranteed entities create loans, their lack of inherent restraints on inflation, and the rampant government intervention that has resulted in heavy, devastating, and persistent distortions to global markets for food, fuel, science, and education.

Through these comparisons, Ammous demonstrates that bitcoin could be our next step forward—providing high salability across space, just like the fiat system, but without the unchecked fiat-denominated debt. Rather than a messy hyperinflationary collapse, the rise of bitcoin could look like a debt jubilee and an orderly upgrade to the world's monetary operating system, revolutionizing global capital and energy markets.

This significant new book provides a succinct overview of the essential policy issues surrounding capital liberalization. The book compares the experiences of transition economies in Europe with those of advanced nations, allowing the reader to examine the changing international economic and financial environment within which transition countries have to liberalize. The book first deals with the critical issues concerning liberalization, including sequencing and financial market development. The authors move on to present an overview of the early liberalization experiences of advanced economies and East-Asian countries. This provides the context for a series of chapters reviewing liberalization progress in transition economies, in which international experts and senior officials analyze their own countries' experiences. The authors also emphasise the importance of financial market reform and the construction of a sound institutional framework if countries are to attract and productively use capital inflows. A stable financial system, whilst not infallible, is also crucial for minimizing the risk of financial crises of the type experienced by a number of countries during the 1980s and 1990s. The comprehensive scope of the subject matter and international contributions from a range of different perspectives will ensure this book is warmly received by academics and researchers with an interest in EU accession, transition economics and financial market reform. It will also serve as a useful guide to governments involved in capital liberalization in other parts of the world such as Latin America and Asia.

Winner of the first Paul A. Baran-Paul M. Sweezy Memorial Award for an original monograph concerned with the political economy of imperialism, John Smith's Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century is a seminal examination of the relationship between the core capitalist countries and the rest of the world in the age of neoliberal globalization.Deploying a sophisticated Marxist methodology, Smith begins by tracing the production of certain iconic commodities-the T-shirt, the cup of coffee, and the iPhone-and demonstrates how these generate enormous outflows of money from the countries of the Global South to transnational corporations headquartered in the core capitalist nations of the Global North. From there, Smith draws on his empirical findings to powerfully theorize the current shape of imperialism. He argues that the core capitalist countries need no longer rely on military force and colonialism (although these still occur) but increasingly are able to extract profits from workers in the Global South through market mechanisms and, by aggressively favoring places with lower wages, the phenomenon of labor arbitrage. Meticulously researched and forcefully argued, Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century is a major contribution to the theorization and critique of global capitalism.

Globalization and the Small Open Economy investigates the specific role of small open countries in a globalizing economic system and assesses the unique pressures and opportunities afforded them by globalization. Traditionally, in contrast to large countries, small open economies (SOEs) have relied on international economic policy rather than domestic policy as a means to foster national economic development. Their firms also have a far greater reliance on host countries to gain competitive advantage than those of larger nations. This would suggest that globalization has potentially a far greater impact on SOEs than on large countries. The contributors to this volume concur with this view and seek to outline the challenges and opportunities faced by policymakers and managers of multinational enterprises from SOEs. They examine the role of government, environmental policy, inward and outward foreign direct investment and multinational management and conclude that, on balance, globalization provides more of an opportunity than a threat to economic growth in these countries. An innovative collection with fascinating new insights on the present and future role of small, open countries in the global economy, this will be an important new reference source for academics and students, public policy research institutes, international business scholars and trade economists.

Ten years after the collapse of communism in Poland, the debate continues over the impact of the transition to a market economy. Whilst few actually say the socialist system could - or should - have been preserved, the path of change has been far from smooth, and has produced both winners and losers in the race to reform. This book assesses the prevailing attitudes of both support and disenchantment among Poles towards transition, in the light of their own experiences. In particular Janice Bell uses statistical indicators on economic well-being, regional voting results and public opinion survey data to analyse the socio-economic influences on patterns of voting behaviour, and finds unemployment to be a crucial denominator. Groundbreaking in its perspective, this study will appeal to all those concerned with the social implications of reform programmes in former communist countries.

During the last decade of the twentieth century, the Korean peninsula was the stage for non-stop, dramatic political and economic events. This volume brings together an unusually broad range of perspectives on US policy towards North Korea, the North Korean economy, and North-South economic co-operation and unification. The year 2000 opened a new chapter on the Korean peninsula; the North-South summit in June was no doubt a historical milestone that could lead to major changes on the peninsula. But the fundamental issues herein addressed are still relevant and important. No overnight solutions or magic bullets exist. Essential ingredients for North-South economic co-operation, ranging from regional security matters to policy nuts and bolts, remain little changed. Assembled in this volume are a diverse group of economists and analysts from academia, government and think tanks in the US and South Korea. Topics range from philosophical to practical policy matters. Students, researchers and policymakers interested in Korea and in the broader issues of economic and political integration will find this volume fresh and insightful.

This book unites diverse heterodox traditions in the study of endogenous money - which until now have been confined to their own academic quarters - and explores their similarities and differences from both sides of the Atlantic. Bringing together perspectives from post-Keynesians, Circuitists and the Dijon School, the book continues the tradition of Keynes's and Kalecki's analysis of a monetary production economy, emphasising the similarities between the various approaches, and expanding the analytical breadth of the theory of endogenous money. The authors open new avenues for monetary research in order to fuel a renewed interest in the nature and role of money in capitalist economies, which is, the authors argue, one of the most controversial, and therefore fascinating, areas of economics. Providing new theoretical and empirical grounds for the construction of a general, policy oriented theory of money, this thought-provoking collection will appeal to academics, researchers and students interested in monetary economics. It will also be welcomed by monetary policymakers and central bank officials.

Market dominance - encompassing single firm dominance, overt and tacit collusion, mergers and vertical restraints - raises many complex analytical and policy issues, all of which continue to be the subject of theoretical research and policy reform. This second edition of a popular and comprehensive text extends the arguments and combines an analysis of the issues with a discussion of actual policy and case studies. This new edition addresses the recent fundamental changes in antitrust law, especially in the UK and the EU, and reviews some high profile and controversial cases such as the Boeing-McDonnell Douglas merger and the Microsoft monopoly. The author moves on to deal with several unresolved questions including the conflicts between trade and antitrust policy, the foreign take-over of domestic assets and extra-territorial claims made by certain countries. Market Dominance and Antitrust Policy will be of considerable value to students and scholars of economics, law and business, as well as researchers, policymakers and practitioners with an interest in competition policy and international trade.

The Open Economy and its Financial Constraints explores the role of money and finance in an open economy. The existence of money and global financial flows compound the likelihood of financial constraints, in particular, financial vulnerability, financial exclusion and financial fragility, and create the possibility of unemployment. Penelope Hawkins focuses on financial openness and contends that while vulnerable economies can benefit from long-term international capital, greater financial exposure makes them increasingly susceptible to the crises associated with financial withdrawals. The author explores in detail the experiences of South Africa, Brazil and Thailand and finds that the consequences of financial liberalisation remain uncertain. She examines the rationale behind the distribution of credit within and between countries, and goes on to construct a financial vulnerability index as an empirical mechanism to rank nations according to their vulnerability to the withdrawal of international financial flows. This book offers an innovative conceptual approach to constraints in economic theory which will appeal to students and scholars of financial economics, particularly those who embrace non-orthodox monetary theory. It will also prove an enlightening read for development economists who can draw important lessons from the book's examination of the consequences of financial liberalisation.