The book examines the expansion of investment and trade between China and New Zealand, and its changing composition within the political framework, especially the 2008 Free Trade Agreement. Particular attention is paid to China's volatile agrifood market, where New Zealand dairy products play an important role for both countries. The New Zealand-China economic relationship - asymmetrical and complementary, but with increasing competition from domestic production - is a case study of the complexities of globalization and the interplay of economic imperatives, political pressures and cultural factors. China is now New Zealand's main economic partner and a major source of migrants, tourists and students. This proposed study on how New Zealand and China manage their grave dissimilarities and disparities in growing, ever close economic ties will be of interest to academics, policy analysts, economic/trade decision makers, and business practitioners.

This book contributes to the microeconomics of growth among SMEs in less-developed countries. It begins with an overview of the Kosovo economy, and takes the case of Kosovo to explore the dynamics and determinants of firm growth. The author does this by exploring dynamics of firms' creation; survival and exit; organisational capabilities of firms; and looks at how external (environmental) factors affect firms' growth. The author pays special attention to innovation capabilities. This study makes a major contribution to European Studies by dealing for the first time with economic development in Kosovo. This book will be of relevance to development specialists including policy makers, researchers, consultants, students, and field staff of donor organisations active in Kosovo, the wider Balkan region and other low-income countries. It will also be of value to policy makers working in fields of economic development, entrepreneurship, industrial policy and innovation policy, and European and EU studies.

This book is an introduction to the history of - and current measurement practice of - inflation for the United Kingdom. The authors describe the historical development of inflation measures in a global context, and do so without using formal mathematical language and related jargon that relates only to a few specialist scholars. Although inflation is a widely used and quoted statistic, and despite the important role inflation plays in real people's lives - through pension uprating, train tickets, interest rates and the work of economists - few people understand how it is created. O'Neill, Ralph and Smith mix historical data with a description of practices inside the UK statistical system and abroad, which will aid understanding of how this important economic statistic is produced, and the important and controversial choices that statisticians have made over time.

An intense debate has played out in recent years regarding how to implement a so-called "flexicurity system"-a labor market reform that combines flexibility, particularly in the hiring and firing process of firms, with security in the employment and income of the workforce. In Flexicurity Capitalism, Flaschel and Greiner lay out the macroeconomic structure of this system, providing the detailed mathematical models necessary to ponder seriously how such a system can work. Their book rests on three pillars of thought: Marx, Kalecki-Keynes, and Schumpeter. The authors highlight the relevant contributions from the work of each and build upon it. They in turn provide a basic framework for flexicurity capitalism and then compare their economic system to pure capitalism to determine the best and most practical way forward. Their scope is ambitious: to address the shortcomings of a narrow focus on mass unemployment, selective-schooling systems, property rights based solely on ownership without qualified business decision-making expertise, financial markets that do not of channel savings properly into real investment, and innovations that ignore human rights or moral sentiments. Flaschel and Greiner's Flexicurity Capitalism provides serious discussion and feasible mathematical models necessary to consider moving in this direction.

The growing gap between the most affluent Americans and the rest of society is changing the country into one defined-more than almost any other developed nation-by exceptional inequality of income, wealth, and opportunity. This book reveals that an infrastructure of inequality, both open and hidden, obstructs the great majority in pursuing happiness, living healthy lives, and exercising basic rights. A government dominated by finance, corporate interests, and the wealthy has undermined democracy, stunted social mobility, and changed the character of the nation. In this tough-minded dissection of the gulf between the super-rich and the working and middle classes, Ronald P. Formisano explores how the dramatic rise of income inequality over the past four decades has transformed America from a land of democratic promise into one of diminished opportunity. Since the 1970s, government policies have contributed to the flow of wealth to the top income strata. The United States now is more a plutocracy than a democracy. Formisano surveys the widening circle of inequality's effects, the exploitation of the poor and the middle class, and the new ways that predators take money out of Americans' pockets while passive federal and state governments stand by. This data-driven book offers insight into the fallacy of widespread opportunity, the fate of the middle class, and the mechanisms that perpetuate income disparity.

In this book, sociologist William I. Robinson offers a theory of globalization that follows the rise of a new capitalist class and a transnational state. Growing beyond national boundaries, this new class comprises a global system in which Japanese capitalists are just as comfortable investing in Latin America as North Americans are in Southeast Asia. Their development of global, interconnected industries and businesses make them drivers of world capitalism.

Robinson explains how global capital mobility has allowed capital to reorganize production worldwide in accordance with a whole range of considerations that allow for maximizing profit making opportunities. As a result, production systems that were once located in a single country have been fragmented and integrated externally into new globalized circuits of accumulation. What this means, however, is not simply that factories are located overseas where labor might be cheaper, but rather that the whole production process is broken down into smaller parts and each of those parts moved to a different country, depending on where investment might be highest. Yet at the same time, this worldwide decentralization and fragmentation of the production process has taken place alongside the centralization of command and control of the global economy in transnational capital.

In turn, this economic organization finds a political counterpart in the rise of a transnational state. The leaders of global businesses and industries think about themselves and how they live in new ways. Hegemony in the twenty-first century, Robinson argues, will be exercised not by a particular nation-state but by this new global ruling class through the machinery of this transnational state. Robinson observes, for example, that global elites, regardless of their nationality, increasingly tend to share similar lifestyles and interact through expanding networks of the transnational state. Globalization is in this way unifying the world into a single mode of production and a single global system and bringing about the integration of different countries and regions into a new global economy and society. But the new global capitalism is rife with contradictions, such as the growing rift between the global rich and the global poor, concludes Robinson. The twenty-first century is likely to harbor ongoing conflicts and disputes for control between the new transnational ruling group and the expanding ranks of the poor and the marginalized. Sure to stir controversy and debate, "A Theory of Global Capitalism" will be of interest to sociologists and economists alike.

The European economy is still in recession, even though there are some weak indications of stabilization. This book examines important aspects of the crisis in selected countries of Southern Europe, the Balkans and Eastern Europe. The intensity of the crisis and its economic and social repercussions have varied from country to country, generally impacting the core countries less than those on the periphery. The countries in the latter group currently face significant structural challenges with regard to improving productivity and competitiveness, including the areas of investment, climate, the labour market, and the public sector. The book not only illustrates the scope of the problem, but also informs readers on the policies implemented to address it, and discusses the progress some of the economies have already made. Special topics include the convergence hypothesis, agriculture and growth, Public-Private Partnership in Infrastructure (PPPI), and the labour market.

Through

This book is a wide-ranging and timely overview of the contemporary Chinese banking system. It charts the vast changes in Chinese banking from before China's admission to the WTO in 2001 to more recent regulatory reform and developments in the shadow banking sector. The book begins with an economic history of the mono-banking system, and a critical discussion of reforms taken by the government in preparation for China's entry to the WTO. The second part of the book discusses banking regulation and government policy during and after the global financial crisis in 2008-2009 and their impact on banking, including recent developments. Finally, the book concludes an empirical analysis of the impact of banking reforms on a number of important issues, including bank efficiency, capital structure, competition and financial stability, and risk taking behaviour, and a review of the relevance of shadow banking and internet banking.

Economics is widely regarded as a social science. But the division of social vs. natural science limits the study of economics -- and, in fact, all social sciences -- locking away theories and evidence that greatly improve levels of analysis and research across all areas of interdisciplinary study. For too long now, this division has ceased to make sense.In this ground-breaking new study, Paul Fudulu bases a theory of new natural economic science on one of the most important causal laws of physics: the ever entropic degradation of the universe. This theory is comprehensive for all of human behavior, and makes it possible to find solutions to unsolved problems of orthodox economics, revealing correlations which are crucial to a solid economic analysis. Through a book of two parts, Fudulu takes readers through this new theory, starting at the basics and building to look at individual examples, including the formation of human ends and an exploration of coercive actions through the use of externalities as a cover-up. For students, researchers and academics in social sciences and economic theory, this is an unmissable book with an exciting new theory of natural economics.

Recently, the issue of inequality has regained attention in the economic and political debate. This is due to both an increase in income inequality, in particular among rich countries, and an increasing interest in this issue by researchers and politicians. In the last three decades, income inequality among rich countries increased. This period also witnessed the growth of "financial capitalism", characterised by the strong dependency of economies on the financial sector, by the globalisation and intensification of international trade and capital mobility, and by the "flexibilisation" of labour markets and the reduction of wage shares. From the 1980s to the present day, this book considers the theoretical aspects of inequality (its foundations, definitions, approaches and origins) and examines empirical evidence of income inequality in a wide range of advanced economies. The key arguments in this volume are that income inequality increased during this period because labour and welfare became seen as costs to be compressed in "financial capitalism" rather than as a fundamental part of aggregate demand to be expanded. However, the welfare state is not a drain on economic performance and competitiveness, nor is it a barrier to economic efficiency. Instead, it is demonstrated that in countries that adopt "welfare capitalism", welfare state expenditure not only contributes to a reduction in inequality but also fosters economic growth. Inequality in Financial Capitalism is of great importance to those who study economics, political economy, labour economics and globalisation.

Rethink climate, resilience, and sustainability for your organization In Future Ready: Your Organization’s Guide to Rethinking Climate, Resilience, and Sustainability, a team of business leaders with deep expertise in engineering, planning, finance, project, program implementation and advisory consulting perspective delivers an essential guide for executives, managers, and other business and infrastructure organization leaders to set and implement a resilience, sustainability and ESG strategy in complex project and operating environments. Through practical examples and proven insights, readers will learn to proactively engage with stakeholders, successfully plan, implement, and measure the impacts of their initiatives, and effectively communicate the results. In the book, the authors draw on hundreds of completed projects across a full range of client organizations, markets, sectors, and scales to equip readers with unprecedented insights and the behind-the-scenes work that went into making the projects successful. The authors also include: Strategies for identifying, cataloguing, and reporting risks—from the operational to the physical and transactional—as well as explanations of how climate risk scenarios can reveal hidden opportunities and unexpected vulnerabilities A Future Ready mindset and the specific examples of organizational sustainability and climate adaptation commitments and the paths companies have taken to meet their goals Critical questions that leaders must ask of themselves and their organizations before they begin a climate, resilience, and/or sustainability initiative A must-read guide for executives, board members, ESG professionals, and other business and infrastructure organization leaders, Future Ready belongs in the hands of anyone who finds themselves responsible for helping an organization achieve their environmental, social, and governance goals.

Since ancient times the exercise of individual freedoms has been inseparable from the expansion of the market, driven by the search for profit. This force, namely capitalism, has stimulated human creativity and aggression in ways that have produced immense benefits. As capitalism has broadened its scope in the epoch of globalization, these benefits have become even greater. Human beings have been liberated to an even greater degree than hitherto from the tyranny of nature, from the control of others, from poverty and from war. The advances achieved by the globalization of capitalism have appeared all the more striking, when set against the failure of non-capitalist systems of economic organization.

However, capitalist freedom is a two-edged sword. In an epoch of capitalist globalisation, its contradictions have intensified. They comprehensively threaten the natural environment. They have intensified global inequality within both rich and poor countries, and between the internationalised global power elite and the mass of citizens rooted within their respective nation. In this remarkable, expansive text, Peter Nolan explores the impact of the domineering economic phenomenon on our personal and social liberties.

Strategic Choice and Path-Dependency in Post-Socialism focuses on the distinctive institutional legacies of state socialism and their impact on the transformation of Poland, Hungary and the former Czechoslovakia. Strategic dilemmas and problems of institutional design involved in the transition from state socialism to democratic and market-orientated societies are also addressed in this ground breaking volume.A distinguished group of scholars from Eastern and Central Europe, as well as the West, addresses the transformation process from the institutional and evolutionary perspectives in political economy and the social sciences. The first part presents six essays by Western scholars reflecting on institutional design, strategic dilemmas, path-dependency, and the dynamics of post-socialism with a general relevance to the transformation process. The remaining papers provide detailed, contemporary analyses of the transformation of Poland, Hungary, and the former Czechoslovakia respectively. Each part covers the same broad set of themes so that the reader obtains an insightful and authoritative overview of the problems of institutional design, strategic dilemmas and path dependency. This strong combination of theoretically informed comparative analysis with up-to-date case studies, drawing on several years' experience of the countries discussed, will ensure that this major new volume will be welcomed by students and researchers interested in Eastern and Central Europe, comparative economics, politics and sociology.

This book provides the analysis on capital markets in China, focusing attention upon (1) the bubble phenomena (whether or not a Chinese bubble really exists and might burst), (2) foreign direct investment and (3) integration, through all of which we could recognize the current situation and the future prospects of Chinese marketization. As regards to the bubble phenomena, particularly 'early warning indicator' of the bubble, this book attempts to utilize the Grubbs-Smirnov Test to discover the 'abnormal value' in several asset markets. Investigations of this book suggest that the distinctive features of the Chinese market have been significantly different from the markets of capitalist countries such as the United States and Japan. As far as Japan's foreign direct investments in China are concerned, this book tries to reveal the Chinese characteristics on FDI phenomena with FDI-trade ratio. The analysis of this book suggests that Chinese FDI from Japan has undoubtedly revealed the distortions caused by non-economic factors, which also mean that the distinctive features of the Chinese market have been different from the markets of the United States and Japan etc. Regarding integration, this book provides the analysis on the 'G2' system between the United States and China (cooperation or conflict between them). The considerations of this book conclude that it might be difficult to have good cooperation between them because of significant differences between the Chinese system and the US system.

This work examines the complex, detailed relationship between the theory of wealth and the theory of power, both subsumed as they are under the overarching mantle of capitalist ideology, ever distorting real connections and evading critical issues. It examines various theories of class, state, and power either explicitly or implicitly avowed in the diverse social science disciplines of politics, economics, and sociology. In illuminating the subtle machinations of ideology, it boldly reveals the realist ontology of capitalism which produces illusory theory. The essays employ transcendental realism, emphasizing the primacy of ontology over epistemology as a mode of critique, necessarily going beyond traditional Marxian arguments in many cases. Although intended only as an analytical critique, the project is emancipatory of necessity, for it allows, ultimately, for an increased purchase on reality.

This comprehensive and lucid study, first published in 1985, reconstructs the history of Western Marxist theories of the breakdown of capitalism. It provides a critical reading of theories of breakdown, with their conflicting interpretations of a single text, their invulnerability to empirical defeat, and their retreat from class analysis, as events in the history of ideas. This study traces the sources of theoretical conflict in a series of historical and epistemological issues that shift over time and generate new conditions for speculations concerning the fate of the system. In seeking to understand that durability of the concept of breakdown, the author raises important questions about the social conditions and consequences of theoretical work and the status of critical thought in society. This title will be of interest to students of history and economics.

This book offers an in-depth analysis of the roles and strategies of subsidiaries of American multinational companies (MNCs) in Taiwan's IT industry. Based on semi-structured interviews with 16 managing directors of the different foreign-owned subsidiaries and 100 functional unit managers, the authors investigate (1) the roles of functional units in evaluating strategy formulation and change in foreign subsidiaries; (2) the factors that determine strategy formulation and change in foreign subsidiaries and their functional units; and (3) the linkages between cross-functional units. The research underscores the view that MNCs' strategies are composed of assorted heterogeneous elements.

What can prosperity possibly mean in a world of environmental and social limits? The publication of Prosperity without Growth was a landmark in the sustainability debate. Tim Jackson's piercing challenge to conventional economics openly questioned the most highly prized goal of politicians and economists alike: the continued pursuit of exponential economic growth. Its findings provoked controversy, inspired debate and led to a new wave of research building on its arguments and conclusions. This substantially revised and re-written edition updates those arguments and considerably expands upon them. Jackson demonstrates that building a 'post-growth' economy is a precise, definable and meaningful task. Starting from clear first principles, he sets out the dimensions of that task: the nature of enterprise; the quality of our working lives; the structure of investment; and the role of the money supply. He shows how the economy of tomorrow may be transformed in ways that protect employment, facilitate social investment, reduce inequality and deliver both ecological and financial stability. Seven years after it was first published, Prosperity without Growth is no longer a radical narrative whispered by a marginal fringe, but an essential vision of social progress in a post-crisis world. Fulfilling that vision is simply the most urgent task of our times.

The Greek economic crisis has imperilled the stability of the eurozone, generating much global anxiety. Policymakers, analysts, and the media have daily debated the course of the Greek economy, prescribing ways to move forward. This collection of essays progressively moves from an analysis of the causes of the crisis and the policy responses so far to a debate on some of the country s advantages and capabilities that should underpin its new development model and propel the return to growth. The book analytically chooses to view the glass as half-full and seeks to provide motivation and inspiration for change by indicating some of the economic sectors where Greece maintains a comparative advantage. Therefore, it challenges the emerging picture of Greece as a country doomed to failure, where everything falls apart.

Neoliberalism is a doctrine that adopts a free market policy in a deregulated political framework. In recent years, neoliberalism has become increasingly prominent as a doctrine in Western society, and has been heavily discussed in both academia and the media. In The Origins of Neoliberalism, the joint effort of an economist and a philosopher offers a theoretical overview of both neoliberalism's genesis within economic theory and social studies as well as its development outside academia. Tracing the sources of neoliberalism within the history of economic thought, the book explores the differences between neoliberalism and classical liberalism. This book's aim is to make clear that neoliberalism is not a natural development of the old classical liberalism, but rather that it represents a dramatic alteration of its original nature and meaning. Also, it fights against the current idea according to which neoliberalism would coincide with the triumph of free market economy. In its use of both history of economics and philosophy, this book takes a highly original approach to the concept of neoliberalism. The analysis presented here will be of great interest to scholars and students of history of economics, political economy, and philosophy of social science.

First Published in 1968. This is a study of the impact of the First WorId War on the role of government in the economy of a country which was the prototype of modern industrial society and focuses on the economic control and social response during 1914 to 1919.

The entry of foreign capital and the adoption of free trade provoked fierce conflicts in many countries of South America during the twenty-first century. In Colombia and Peru, people engaged in clashes, sometimes violent, to defend their livelihood against the encroachments of the free market and the impositions of Wall Street. Farmers organized to save their lands from foreign mining corporations, and cities fought to save their water from toxic contamination. Indian tribes blocked highways to preserve their ancestral lands, and students paralyzed universities to save higher education. In Venezuela the shift toward socialism mobilized those groups previously enjoying privileges. The lightning rod for the clashes in Venezuela was President Hugo Chavez, whose political career spanned most of the period covered in this book. Governments in the three countries tried to quell the turmoil through a combination of corruption, repression, political maneuvering, and propaganda campaigns. Clear and brief chapters offer dramatic accounts of the struggles raging in these three countries. Both thought-provoking and exciting, the text exposes the worst characteristics of the political systems and the growing income inequality in Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela.

The Future of Capitalism After the Financial Crisis: The Varieties of Capitalism Debate in the Age of Austerity contains thirteen world leading political economists writing from within eight different countries who critically analyze the current crisis tendencies of capitalism both globally and in particular countries. Given the likelihood of an increasingly crisis prone future for capitalism, it is important not only to rethink capitalism in its current manifestations or varieties. It is also important to rethink research methods and conceptual frameworks in preparation for understanding an increasingly rocky future in which capitalism itself could go the way of the many species that in the past were endangered only to become extinct. More and more titles of books and articles are suggesting that capitalism or perhaps civilization itself is endangered if we do not make radical changes in the near future. This book breaks with academic path dependency and attempts to open new vistas of political economy and of multidisciplinary analysis that are crucially important if our thought processes are to be effective in a world in jeopardy. The varieties of capitalism (VoC) debate itself came into being as the Soviet Union unraveled. It drew in scholarship from a cross-section of Marxian and heterodox political economy. The key argument of VoC was that if capitalism was the only global option then those on the Left must get involved in policy discussions on how capitalist economies can be fashioned to become competitive as well as progressive. However, the financial crisis has seen policy across the advanced economies veer toward competitiveness coupled with austerity. The lesson for the Left is that alternatives to capitalism must be sought in the here and now.