The aim of this book is to consider theoretically the notion of the global competitiveness of regions, as well as giving attention as to how such competitiveness may be empirically measured. With this in mind, the book has three specific objectives: first, to place the concept of regional competitiveness within the context of regional economic development theory; second, to present a rationale and method for quantifying the global competitiveness of regions; and, third, to undertake the most geographically widespread analysis of regional competitiveness differences across the globe. With regard to the third goal, the analysis incorporates more than 500 regions across Europe, North and South America, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and the so-called BRIC economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The importance of the concept of competitiveness has increased rapidly in recent years, with the issues surrounding it becoming, at the same time, more empirically refined and theoretically complex. The focus on regions reflects the growing consensus that they are the primary spatial units that compete to attract investment, and it is at the regional level that knowledge is circulated and transferred, resulting in agglomerations, or clusters, of industrial and service sector enterprises. This growing acknowledgement of the region's role as a key spatial unit of organisation has led to attention turning to competitiveness at a more regional level. The book explores the results of the World Competitiveness Index of Regions (WCIR), covering the rankings and results of the 2014 edition. The WCIR provides a tool for analysing the development of a range of regional economies across the globe. It enables an illustration of the changing patterns of regional competitiveness on the international stage to be generated. In fundamental terms, the WCIR aims to produce an integrated and overall benchmark of the knowledge capacity, capability, and sustainability of each region, and the extent to which this knowledge is translated into economic value and transferred into the wealth of the citizens of each region.

Employment has changed dramatically in the last few decades with the onset of neoliberal globalization. This change has become the objective of inquiry from different perspectives, such as development studies, labour economics or industrial relations, focusing on different units of analysis. The Political Economy of Employment Relations provides an exceptional contribution to existing literature by presenting alternative theory and practice on employment relations. It is within this critical theoretical intervention that solidarity economies emerge as a unique theoretical construct as well as a unit of analysis to expose the alternative paths that employment relations may resort to against the contemporary challenges of neoliberal globalization. This book analyses globalization, global economic crisis, and issues of work and labour from the point of view of the developing world, presenting local case studies from countries including the USA, India, Spain and Greece, and outlining alternative approaches to global challenges. This volume has relevance to those with an interest in industrial relations, sociology of work and occupations, labour economics and development economics.

Corporate Realities, first published in 1995, provides a concise but comprehensive review of the management issues relating to different types of organisation. Avoiding academic jargon, it describes the characteristics of administrative, manufacturing, service and professional organisations. It explores the features of both small and large businesses. The authors demonstrate how the transition from small to large scale can be achieved, as well as reviewing recent attempts to recreate entrepreneurial forms of organisation in the context of larger, more complex ones. Most importantly, it identifies future trends and the skills that will be needed to manage corporations at the turn of the century. This book will be of interest to students of business studies.

Throughout the world, corporations are experiencing the second major transition in corporate governance of this century. The nature of the relationship between the corporation and the rest of society is changing fundamentally. The corporate board has unique responsibilities during this transition, but as it tries to respond directors are faced with destabilizing paradoxes: resolving who is in control--management or the board, achieving critical judgment while maintaining detachment, and avoiding becoming either a cozy club or a collection of all-stars. Written for practitioners, this book addresses corporate governance and the role of the board of directors in multinational corporations. Based on interviews with 71 directors serving on more than 500 boards in eight countries, this book highlights the nature of the challenges and suggests ways to analyze and confront them. This major international study compares the experiences of board members in Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Venezuela. Based on practical experience, The Corporate Board will prove indispensable to executive and non-executive directors, corporate secretaries, bankers, institutional investors, policymakers, stock brokers, and specialists in mergers and acquisitions, as well as academics and stockholders concerned about corporate accountability.

Migration is conceived differently in Europe compared with countries like the US, Canada or Australia. International Innovation Networks and Knowledge Migration confronts traditional views on migration with modern theories of brain circulation and innovation networks, showing that migration leads to mutual benefits for both the home and host countries This new volume brings together several case studies and empirical in-depth analyses which are constructed from the strong migration relationship between Turkey and Germany that has existed for more than 50 years. Bringing together over 20 international contributors, this book highlights that knowledge migration and cultural diversity can strongly stimulate entrepreneurial activities, competence acquisition and economic development of countries and regions. The authors highlight the considerable scope for improvement of European migration policies in order to be better prepared to successfully process structural changes stemming from an aging society in Europe, and an increasing international division of labour. This volume is suitable for those who study industrial economics, international economics and European economics. It is also of interest to those who want to delve deeper into the Turkish-German migration nexus.

When originally published in 1986, this book was one of the first to deal solely with the urban and regional incidence and development implications of new firm formation in particular EU countries. It reviews the extent of and reasons for geographical variation in numbers of new firms, examines the nature of such firms and assesses the regional impact and policy implications in various EC countries.

Published in 2002, Housing Policy and Economic Power is a valuable contribution to the field of Human Geography.

Airline E-commerce Book Structure

Book Description

Online travel is big business and has become one of the most popular items purchased by consumers on the internet. According to one estimate, in 2012, approximately $313 billion or over one third of total B2C travel was spent on online travel products with air travel alone accounting for 61% or $191 billion. A variety of contributing factors is responsible for this development:

• the emergence of the commercial internet in the mid-1990s;
• a change in the behavior of consumers who through inexpensive internet access and growing familiarity with easy-to-use technology today shop 24/7 from anywhere in the world;
• airline companies use the internet not only as a new platform to service, sell and market but by cutting traditional supply channels and reaching directly to the end consumer - also to realize cost savings in their sales and distribution value chains;
• the arrival of new intermediaries in the form of online travel agencies, meta search engines, network affiliates, and other mass sales and marketing websites that distribute travel products to the public;
• the growing prevalence of mobile platforms and social media allowing for new unprecedented forms of interactivity with shoppers of travel products.

Airline companies everywhere have integrated electronic commerce or e-commerce into their business operations in various shapes and forms. Today, it is no longer a question of 'if' for an airline company but 'how' to deal with e-commerce and leverage it to enhance its competitiveness. With plenty of references to and examples of leading companies from the airline industry and beyond, this book discusses the critical success factors for an airline e-commerce strategy and the role of e-commerce in sales & distribution, marketing, and customer service. Furthermore, explored are the various organizational structures to manage e-commerce, the handling of day-to-day web site operations like site content management and security, the growing concerns surrounding web site privacy, emerging social media and mobile trends, and the role of e-commerce in managing airline emergency situations. This book is an introduction to the business & technology cross-over topic of airline e-commerce and could be of interest to students and practitioners alike - from the airline travel industry and beyond.

Table Of Contents

Part I. Introduction to Airline E-commerce

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: The Fundamentals of Airline E-commerce

Chapter 3: Airline Web Site Product Overview

Part II. Airline E-commerce Strategy & Applications

Chapter 4: Airline E-commerce Strategy

Chapter 5: Airline Web Marketing

Chapter 6: Airline E-Sales & Distribution

Chapter 7: Airline Customer Service in Cyberspace

Part III. Airline E-commerce Operation

Chap 8: The Airline E-commerce Organization

Chap 9: Airline Web Site Management

Chap 10: Crucial Airline E-commerce Issues

- Web Site Privacy

- Social Media & Mobile

- Emergency Response Planning

In recent years, natural gas has become a major source of energy, with trade across borders increasing through both pipelines and as Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). Owing to this global development, this book traces the development of the gas supply industry, from localised to national industries and national industries to a major global industry. It looks at the basic economics and origins of the industry, as well as the role of the government in its development and relation to international markets. The book highlights certain economic characteristics such as the industry's vertical and horizontal structure, the composition of consumer demand and the role of government in safety, planning and investment. With the understanding of the industry's long term development, the book helps to illustrate the relationship between natural gas producers and importers of LNG. This book would be of interest to scholars majoring in resource economics and energy economics, as well as to international practitioners in the natural gas market.

At the time in which this book was first published in 1987, mass unemployment had emerged as the dominant, most visible, problem of the West European economies. In this challenging discussion of ways to overcome unemployment Ciaran Driver stresses the importance of managed restructuring. This book is ideal for students of business and economics.

In dynamic investment planning the time of investment is a significant issue. By simplifying the mathematical notation, the author of this book seeks to make control theory a practical tool that can be applied to the problem of timing. The book, first published in 1977, begins with an introduction to one important approach to control theory - dynamic programming. Then some of the relevant literature that deals with investment decision-making is reviewed. This is followed by a mathematically formulated planning model. The computational aspects of the model are discussed and a complete computer flow chart is given. The second part of the book gives a thorough application of the theory by means of a detailed case study - the planning of a steel industry. The case study illustrates how a fairly abstract dynamic analysis can be effectively integrated with practical decision-making concerns. This book is ideal for students of economics and business.

With the advent of Thatcherism in the UK and Reaganomics in the USA, 'industrial policy' had become something of a discredited notion in the 1980s. The emphasis had shifted to programmes of deregulation, de-nationalization, and tax reform. The essays in this challenging and vigorous collection, first published in 1989, sprung from work that had been conducted in the USA, notably at the Harvard Business School, on reappraising the role of the public sector in industrial management. This American work suggested ways in which public sector and other bodies might have revitalized industrial life. This book is ideal for students of business and economics.

The physical distribution of products is an important element in the marketing operations of all productive enterprises, and in many cases efficient distribution is the most important single factor leading to success. With the emergence of post-industrial society the role of distribution has come to increasingly be viewed as a generator of wealth in the economy, attracting the interest of public policy makers anxious to influence investment, employment and efficiency in the sector. First published in 1982, this book isolates the major trends affecting the main institutions in distribution and contrasts the processes of change amongst the countries and regions of the European Economic Community. Structural change in the industry is related to spatial change in the regions and comparisons made of the varied public policy responses in member countries. An interesting and relevant reissue, this title will be of particular value to economics and business students with an interest in the development of the European consumer and post-industrial Europe.

Fritz Machlup (1902-83), the Austrian-American economist, is recognized as one of the first scholars to examine knowledge as an economic resource and, for more than half a century, many other economists and management theorists have also argued that economic growth is-or soon will be-dependent on the effective acquisition, transmission, and application of information and ideas. As serious scholarly work on and around 'the knowledge economy' continues to flourish, this new four-volume collection from Routledge's Critical Concepts in Economics series meets the need for an authoritative, up-to-date, and comprehensive reference work to make better sense of a voluminous-and somewhat amorphous-body of literature. The Economics of Knowledge and the Knowledge-Driven Economy provides a 'one-stop' collection of classic and contemporary contributions to facilitate ready access to the most influential and important scholarship from a wide range of theoretical and practical perspectives. As well as gathering the best work of economists, the collection also incorporates insights from disciplines including Management Science, Law, Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, and Political Science. The Economics of Knowledge and the Knowledge-Driven Economy is compiled by Cristiano Antonelli (editor of Routledge's earlier collection on The Economics of Innovation (2008) (978-0-415-42677-0)) and Paul A. David, leading scholars in the field. The Economics of Knowledge and the Knowledge-Driven Economy is fully indexed and has a newly written introduction which places the gathered material in its intellectual context. It is an essential work of reference and is destined to be valued by scholars and students as a vital one-stop research resource.

Smart Evaluation and Integrated Design in Regional Development puts forward an alternative approach to evaluation in spatial planning - one that focuses on 'territory' and 'landscape'. The book introduces an innovative evaluation approach, namely Territorial Integrated Evaluation (TIE), a meta-evaluation methodology for designing regional development scenarios. A research team from the Politecnico di Torino applied this methodology experimentally to the practices of spatial planning in Trentino in order to aid the Province in a process of institutional innovation that is still going on today. TIE defines territorial scenarios serving the need for regional economic development as well as the conservation of nature and landscape. A cross-border region, Trentino has a special need to harmonize economic development with the exceptional and internationally renowned value of its landscape which includes the Dolomites, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Therefore TIE set out to design regional development scenarios that integrated various topics - retail, tourism, infrastructures, nature and landscape. By testing out TIE in practice in this extraordinarily dynamic institutional context, the book makes a significant contribution to the discussion about newly emerging approaches to spatial planning that involve multidisciplinary vision, new paradigms in regional development, and institutional learning and capability in decision-making.

From William Wrigley's advertising maxim `Tell them quick and tell them often,' to all-purpose words of wisdom such as E.F. Schumacher's `Think globally, act locally,' and Yogi Berra's `When you come to a fork in the road, take it,' the Dictionary of Business Quotations is a browser's delight, brimming with thousands of quotations for use in business speeches, reports, articles, or simply to spice conversation over lunch. Stretching from Chinese proverbs to John Maynard Keynes, from Heraclitus to Peters and Waterman, compiled from newspapers, books, movies, and poetry, this lively collection arranges more than 500 topics alphabetically, spiriting us from `Advertising,' `America,' and `Avarice,' through `Wall Street,' `Winners,' and `Youth.'

This book looks at two-stage industrial cluster theory and new innovation models in the context of the IT-ization and servitization of products. The formation of industrial clusters, such as export processing zones and special economic zones, has been the preferred mechanism for developing countries to boost their industrial development and export performance for the past several decades. Existing literature related to development economics cites numerous benefi ts of industrial clusters, and several countries have demonstrably reaped such benefits. The book goes beyond an evaluation of the development of traditional industrial clusters by promoting the idea of the formation of two-stage clusters. Moreover, it takes into consideration new innovation models, with ideas promoted that are based on empirical evidence available through evaluations of Chinese and Taiwanese firms in the consumer electronics and automobile sectors. Finally, the book looks at company strategies in a new business environment dominated by the servitization of industrial products. It proposes that firms integrate manufacturing and services to a greater extent, and, to substantiate these arguments, presents empirical evidence from India, Taiwan, and Bangladesh. Furthermore, the study contends that innovation and knowledge acquisition strategies are infl uenced not only by the size of fi rms but that they also vary with market preferences.

What role do transitional justice processes play in determining the gender outcomes of transitions from conflict and authoritarianism? What is the impact of transitional justice processes on the human rights of women in states emerging from political violence? Gender Politics in Transitional Justice argues that human rights outcomes for women are determined in the space between international law and local gender politics. The book draws on feminist political science to reveal the key gender dynamics that shape the strategies of local women's movements in their engagement with transitional justice, and the ultimate success of those strategies, termed 'the local fit'. Also drawing on feminist doctrinal scholarship in international law, 'the international frame' examines the role of international law in defining harms against women in transitional justice and in determining the 'from' and 'to' of transitions from conflict and authoritarianism. This book locates evolving state practice in gender and transitional justice over the past two decades within the context of the enhanced protection of women's human rights under international law. Relying on original empirical and legal research in Chile, Northern Ireland and Colombia, the book speaks more broadly to the study of gender politics and international law in transitional justice.

This textbook on network economics provides essential microeconomic instruments for the analysis of network sectors like telecommunications, transport or energy. Network-specific characteristics emerge both on the cost side and benefit side, requiring network providers to develop innovative entrepreneurial competition strategies for costing, pricing, and investment. From a competition policy perspective, a number of interesting questions arise: In which parts of networks is competition functional? In contrast, where is an abuse of market power to be expected? What is the division of labor between cartel authorities and regulatory agencies? The book develops an analytical framework for all network industries which allows readers to study entrepreneurial strategies as well as regulation and competition policies for network industries.

More than any other area of regulation, antitrust economics shapes law and policy in the United States, the Americas, Europe, and Asia. In a number of different areas of antitrust, advances in theory and empirical work have caused a fundamental reevaluation and shift of some of the assumptions behind antitrust policy. This reevaluation has profound implications for the future of the field.
The Oxford Handbook of International Antitrust Economics has collected chapters from many of the leading figures in antitrust. In doing so, this two volume Handbook provides an important reference guide for scholars, teachers, and practitioners. However, it is more than a merely reference guide. Rather, it has a number of different goals. First, it takes stock of the current state of scholarship across a number of different antitrust topics. In doing so, it relies primarily upon the economics scholarship. In some situations, though, there is also coverage of legal scholarship, case law developments, and legal policies.
The second goal of the Handbook is to provide some ideas about future directions of antitrust scholarship and policy. Antitrust economics has evolved over the last 60 years. It has both shaped policy and been shaped by policy. The Oxford Handbook of International Antitrust Economics will serve as a policy and research guide of next steps to consider when shaping the future of the field of antitrust.

This book is a collection of teaching cases on two Chinese companies, UFIDA and Founder. The cases describe the management practices of typical Chinese companies. UFIDA is a well-known company providing management software while Founder is a long-established high-tech company. The book aims at providing readers with original, first-hand materials, based on a theoretical framework, and broadening readers' vision regarding China's business niche in terms of culture, strategy, corporate governance, business environment, organizational dynamics, marketing, human resource, finance and the potential business partnerships with Chinese enterprises and the Chinese people. The cases are comprehensive and descriptive. This book appeals to top executives and leaders of multinational companies with ambitions to expand or already vested business interest in China. It is also of valuable use to companies specializing in international trade. The book provides insight into the great business opportunities in the development of China.

During the past 25 years the burden of managing economic policy for competitiveness has devolved to cities and to urban regions. National governments have increasingly been focused on staving off fiscal collapse. Mayors and local administrations have become very creative and active in looking after the state of their local economy and have developed extensive agencies for inter-city cooperation and action. This book explores this evolving role of cities and urban regions. Intelligent and rational policy must be based on an accurate understanding of the situation at hand and of the economic theory that can be utilized in the assessment of the most effective means that can be deployed. This book examines the theoretical contributions of economists and geographers and through the analyses of the performance of various cities will give the reader an understanding of the logic behind rational policy formation. Evaluation of a city's relative competitiveness is a controversial matter and this book provides a full treatment of the various approaches. Finally, it examines the experiences with competitiveness of several cities in North America and in Europe. Urban Competitiveness: Theory and Practice confirms that many cities in trying times do have a mechanism for enhancing their competitiveness and can work to create the sort of economic life the city's residents want.

The aim of this book is to consider theoretically the notion of the global competitiveness of regions, as well as giving attention as to how such competitiveness may be empirically measured. With this in mind, the book has three specific objectives: first, to place the concept of regional competitiveness within the context of regional economic development theory; second, to present a rationale and method for quantifying the global competitiveness of regions; and, third, to undertake the most geographically widespread analysis of regional competitiveness differences across the globe. With regard to the third goal, the analysis incorporates more than 500 regions across Europe, North and South America, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and the so-called BRIC economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The importance of the concept of competitiveness has increased rapidly in recent years, with the issues surrounding it becoming, at the same time, more empirically refined and theoretically complex. The focus on regions reflects the growing consensus that they are the primary spatial units that compete to attract investment, and it is at the regional level that knowledge is circulated and transferred, resulting in agglomerations, or clusters, of industrial and service sector enterprises. This growing acknowledgement of the region's role as a key spatial unit of organisation has led to attention turning to competitiveness at a more regional level. The book explores the results of the World Competitiveness Index of Regions (WCIR), covering the rankings and results of the 2014 edition. The WCIR provides a tool for analysing the development of a range of regional economies across the globe. It enables an illustration of the changing patterns of regional competitiveness on the international stage to be generated. In fundamental terms, the WCIR aims to produce an integrated and overall benchmark of the knowledge capacity, capability, and sustainability of each region, and the extent to which this knowledge is translated into economic value and transferred into the wealth of the citizens of each region.

First Published in 1992. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book provides a methodology for the analysis of oligopolistic markets from an equilibrium viewpoint, considering competition within and between groups of firms. It proposes a well-founded measure of competitive toughness that can be used in empirically relevant applications. This measure reflects the weight put by each firm on competition for market share relative to competition for market size - two dimensions of competition involving conflicting and convergent interests, respectively. It further explores several applications, such as the effect of tougher competition on innovation and of output market power on the emergence of involuntary unemployment, as well as the importance of strategic interactions for investment decisions. Relative to the dominant model of monopolistic competition, The Economics of Competition, Collusion and In-between aims to explore an alternative tractable model of firm competition opening the application of oligopoly theory to many fields in economics where general equilibrium features are crucial. It will be relevant to those interested in applied industrial organization, trade, macroeconomics (in particular macrodynamics) and quantitative economics.