Avoiding prejudice will be critical to economic success in the fourth industrial revolution. It is not the new and innovative technology that will matter in the next decade, but what we do with it. Using technology properly, with diverse decision making, is the difference between success and failure in a changing world. This will require putting the right person in the right job at the right time. Prejudice stops that happening. Profit and Prejudice takes us through the relationship between economic success and prejudice in labour markets. It starts with the major changes that occur in periods of economic upheaval. These changes tend to be unpopular and complex - and complexity encourages people to turn to the simplistic arguments of 'scapegoat economics' and prejudice. Some of the changes of the fourth industrial revolution will help fight prejudice, but some will make it far worse. The more prejudice there is, the harder it will be for companies and countries to profit from the changes ahead. Profit is not the main argument against prejudice, but can certainly help fight it. This book tells a story of the damage that prejudice can do. Using economics without jargon, students, investors and the public will be able to follow the narrative and see how prejudice can be opposed. Prejudice is bad for business and the economy. Profit and Prejudice explains why.

More than 190 million children under 15 are working in the world today. Academic and policy research on child labor and related questions about how children spend their time in low income countries has boomed in recent years. This volume contains fresh knowledge to help better understand the relationship between child labor and the transition between school and work. It contains 11 original research papers by authors from Africa, Asia, Latin America as well as the United States and Europe. These papers offer insights and answers to issues such as: how to measure child labor; how the returns to education in the adult labor market affect children's school enrollment; how cash transfer programs affect schooling and children's participation in market and non-market activities; how child labor and schooling affect health; why children participate in activities that are labeled worst forms of child labor; how children's time is allocated along gender lines; what role local labor demand plays in shaping the work and schooling decisions of children; and, how many hours of work can be undertaken before negative effects on school attendance are observed.

This book applies cutting-edge economic analysis and social science to unpack the rich complexities and paradoxes of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The book takes the reader on a bold, refreshing, and informative tour through its technological drivers, its profound impact on human ecosystems, and its potential for sustainable human development. The overarching message to the reader is that the Fourth Industrial Revolution is not merely something to be feared or survived; rather, this dramatic collision of technologies, disciplines, and ideas presents a magnificent opportunity for a generation of new pioneers to rewrite "accepted rules" and find new avenues to empower billions of people to thrive. This book will help readers to discern the difference between disruption and transformation. The reader will come away from this book with a deeply intuitive and highly contextual understanding of the core technological advances transforming the world as we know it. Beyond this, the reader will clearly appreciate the future impacts on our economies and social structures. Most importantly, the reader will receive an insightful and actionable set of guidelines to assist them in harnessing the Fourth Industrial Revolution so that both they and their communities may flourish. The authors do not primarily seek to make prescriptions for government policy, but rather to speak directly to people about what they can do for themselves, their families, and their communities to be future-proofed and ready to adapt to life in a rapidly evolving world ecosystem.

As the fourth largest military spender in the world, India has a huge defence economy supported by a budget amounting to nearly $67 billion in 2020-21. This book examines how well India's defence economy is managed, through a detailed statistical exposition of five key themes - defence planning, expenditure, arms production, procurement and offsets. This book is based on hard-core evidence collected from multiple government and other credible sources including the ministries of Defence, Finance, and Commerce and Industry, Comptroller and Auditor General of India and the Reserve Bank of India. It discusses key issues such as the evolution of India's defence plan; the feasibility of increasing defence spending; India's defence acquisition system; and the recent reform measures taken under the rubric of the 'Make in India' initiative. Well supplemented with original tables and figures, India's Defence Economy will be indispensable to students and researchers of defence and security studies, politics and international relations, finance, development studies, economics, strategic studies, South Asian politics, foreign policy and peace studies. It will also be of interest to defence ministry officials, senior armed forces personnel, military attaches, defence training institutes and strategic think tanks.

As the fourth largest military spender in the world, India has a huge defence economy supported by a budget amounting to nearly $67 billion in 2020-21. This book examines how well India's defence economy is managed, through a detailed statistical exposition of five key themes - defence planning, expenditure, arms production, procurement and offsets. This book is based on hard-core evidence collected from multiple government and other credible sources including the ministries of Defence, Finance, and Commerce and Industry, Comptroller and Auditor General of India and the Reserve Bank of India. It discusses key issues such as the evolution of India's defence plan; the feasibility of increasing defence spending; India's defence acquisition system; and the recent reform measures taken under the rubric of the 'Make in India' initiative. Well supplemented with original tables and figures, India's Defence Economy will be indispensable to students and researchers of defence and security studies, politics and international relations, finance, development studies, economics, strategic studies, South Asian politics, foreign policy and peace studies. It will also be of interest to defence ministry officials, senior armed forces personnel, military attaches, defence training institutes and strategic think tanks.

This book applies cutting-edge economic analysis and social science to unpack the rich complexities and paradoxes of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The book takes the reader on a bold, refreshing, and informative tour through its technological drivers, its profound impact on human ecosystems, and its potential for sustainable human development. The overarching message to the reader is that the Fourth Industrial Revolution is not merely something to be feared or survived; rather, this dramatic collision of technologies, disciplines, and ideas presents a magnificent opportunity for a generation of new pioneers to rewrite "accepted rules" and find new avenues to empower billions of people to thrive. This book will help readers to discern the difference between disruption and transformation. The reader will come away from this book with a deeply intuitive and highly contextual understanding of the core technological advances transforming the world as we know it. Beyond this, the reader will clearly appreciate the future impacts on our economies and social structures. Most importantly, the reader will receive an insightful and actionable set of guidelines to assist them in harnessing the Fourth Industrial Revolution so that both they and their communities may flourish. The authors do not primarily seek to make prescriptions for government policy, but rather to speak directly to people about what they can do for themselves, their families, and their communities to be future-proofed and ready to adapt to life in a rapidly evolving world ecosystem.

This book is the first book that provides comprehensive economic analysis of cross-border outsourcing by Japanese manufacturing firms based on microdata. Previous literature on many other countries has often been constrained by limited data availability about outsourcing, but research contained in this book exploits unique firm-level data and directly tests theoretical hypotheses derived from new firm heterogeneity trade models. Productivity, capital-labor ratio and R&D intensity are examined at the firm level. While rich empirical results in this book convince us how powerful the orthodox economic theory is in understanding Japanese firms, detailed firm-level findings, combined with accessible and concise overviews of Japanese international trade, are widely informative for international economists, experts of Japanese society, business strategists for offshoring, and policy makers in both developed and developing economies. This book further discusses how boundaries of Japanese firms, traditionally sheltered by language and cultural barriers, are affected by outsourcing decisions simultaneously crossing national borders and firm boundaries. The interpretations of Japanese characteristics in outsourcing have deep implications for understanding drastically changing Japanese business amid globalization.

After three decades of economic reform, China is experiencing substantial demographic changes and a steady structural transformation toward a market economy. These phenomena pose major challenges for the Chinese labor market, which are at the center of the booming academic and policy research in recent years. This volume presents fresh knowledge on labor market issues in China. It contains eight original research articles which offer insights and answers to question such as: Which are the most important challenges of the Chinese labor market? How does rural-urban migration affect occupational choice in rural China? Does urban occupational mobility differ across gender? Which is the cost of job displacement in urban labor markets? Is over-qualification affecting the hiring probability across educational groups? How does the social insurance system perform in terms of coverage of urban workers? Which are the incentive problems in the new rural pension program?

This is a comprehensive book on infrastructure development and construction management. It is written keeping in mind the curricula of construction management programmes in India and abroad. It covers infrastructure development, the construction industry in India, financial analysis of the real estate industry in India, economic analysis of projects, tendering and bidding, contracts and contract management, FIDIC conditions of contract, construction disputes and claims, arbitration, conciliation and dispute resolution, international construction project exports and identifying, analysing and managing construction project risk. Thus, this book covers most of the construction management activities that are carried out at different stages of a construction project. This is an essential book for students of construction management, construction professionals, academicians and researchers.

First published in 1990, this is an analysis of the history of western economics from Petty to Supply-Side, through the prism of the controversies over productive labour and its product. It treats the early economists' "productive-unproductive" dichotomies as shorthands for many other sets of distinctions relevant for boundaries, value and welfare. Central to the debates is the question of whether the economy is said to generate a 'surplus'. Economists and politicians with views on these matters include the Physiocrats, Smith and Ricardo, Marx and his Soviet and western admirers, the marginalists, Keynes, Polanyi, Becker, and Reagan. The book maps the shifting emphases that economists and social thinkers have placed on markets and 'mode' of production generally. This reissue will be useful to students of economic thought, welfare theory and policy, growth economics and economic systems.

In recent decades, network industries around the world have gone through periods of de- and re-regulation. With vast amounts of sometimes conflicting research carried out into specific network industries, the time has come for a critical over-arching assessment of this entire industry in order to provide a platform of understanding to aid future research and practice. This comprehensive resource provides an orientation for academics, policy makers and managers as to the main economic, regulatory and commercial challenges in the network industries. The book is split into sections covering market, policy, regulation, management perspectives, whilst all of the key network industries are covered, including energy, transport, water and telecommunications. Overseen by world-class Editors and experts in the field, this inter-disciplinary resource is essential reading for students and researchers in international business, industrial economics and the industries.

The natural gas business consists of two major aspects, sourcing and transportation, and distribution has been a growing area of interest to industry, government and academia. With the emphasis on promoting natural gas sector, there is an increasing need to have a well documented book that deals with the business issues, particularly the transportation and distribution of this sector, specifically aimed at petroleum engineers and professionals. This book fills this gap to provide structured material that deals with managerial and regulatory aspects with an applied technical perspective wherever needed.

The separation between ownership and control has become common practice over the last century, in most medium and large firms across the world. Throughout the twentieth century, the theory of the firm and the theory of industrial organization developed parallel and complementary views on managerial firms. This book offers a comprehensive exposition of this debate. In its survey of strategic delegation in oligopoly games, An Economic Theory of Managerial Firms is able to offer a reinterpretation of a range of standard results in the light of the fact that the control of firms is generally not in the hand of its owners. The theoretical models are supported by a wealth of real-world examples, in order to provide a study of strategic delegation that is far more in-depth than has previously been found in the literature on industrial organization. In this volume, analysis is extended in several directions to cover applications concerning the role of: managerial firms in mixed market; collusion and mergers; divisionalization and vertical relations; technical progress; product differentiation; international trade; environmental issues; and the intertemporal growth of firms. This book is of great interest to those who study industrial economics, organizational studies and industrial studies.

There is wide consensus on the importance of knowledge for economic growth and local development patterns. This book proposes a view of knowledge as a collective, systemic and evolutionary process that enables agents and social systems to overcome the challenges of the limits to growth. It brings together new conceptual and empirical contributions, analysing the relationship between demand and supply factors and the rate and direction of technological change. It also examines the different elements that compose innovation systems. The Economics of Knowledge, Innovation and Systemic Technology Policy provides the background for the development of an integrated framework for the analysis of systemic policy instruments and their mutual interaction the socio-political and economic conditions of the surrounding environment. These aspects have long been neglected in innovation policy, as policymakers, academics and the business community, have mostly emphasized the benefits of supply side strategies. However, a better understanding of innovation policies grafted on a complexity-based approach calls for the appreciation of the mutual interactions between both supply and demand aspects, and it is likely to improve the actual design of policy measures. This book will help readers to understand the foundations and working of demand-driven innovation policies by stressing the importance of compent and smart demand.

The 2008 credit crisis started with the failure of one large bank: Lehman Brothers. Since then the focus of both politicians and regulators has been on stabilising the economy and preventing future financial instability. At this juncture, we are at the last stage of future-proofing the financial sector by raising capital requirements and tightening financial regulation. Now the policy agenda needs to concentrate on transforming the banking sector into an engine for growth. Reviving competition in the banking sector after the state interventions of the past years is a key step in this process. This book introduces and explains a relatively new concept in competition measurement: the performance-conduct-structure (PCS) indicator. The key idea behind this measure is that a firm's efficiency is more highly rewarded in terms of market share and profit, the stronger competitive pressure is. The book begins by explaining the financial market's fundamental obstacles to competition presenting a brief survey of the complex relationship between financial stability and competition. The theoretical contributions of Hay and Liu and Boone provide the theoretical underpinning for the PCS indicator, while its application to banking and insurance illustrates its empirical qualities. Finally, this book presents a systematic comparison between the results of this approach and (all) existing methods as applied to 46 countries, over the same sample period. This book presents a comprehensive overview of the knowns and unknowns of financial sector competition for commercial and central bankers, policy-makers, supervisors and academics alike.

In common with most other advanced capitalist economies of the Global North, the UK has experienced a decline in the manufacturing industry and an increase in the service sector in recent decades. At the same time, there has been a substantial manufacturing growth in a number of countries in the Global South, especially China and India. Why have these changes occurred? What have been their economic and ecological consequences? How can we best understand the way the contemporary economy functions? This book explores the answers to these questions, proposing that the contemporary capitalist economy is best understood as a complex socio-spatial system of co-production involving relations between people, things and non-human entities. It is argued that these people typically have conflicting and competitive interests yet can come together to resolve their differences or find ways of regulating their conflicting interests. National states continue to have a critical role in establishing these systems of regulation. At the same time, many companies draw on the knowledge of their customers while others enrol animals, insects and plants as co-producers. As a result, the improbable processes of commodity production and capital accumulation continue more or less routinely; with problems and occasional crises overcome in a variety of ways. Co-produced Economies will be of interest to students of economic geography, political economy and economic development, and more generally to social scientists interested in issues of the causes and consequences of economic change. It will also be of relevance to policy makers seeking to develop economic policies in the increasingly volatile global economy and in the context of growing environmental concerns.

The world has changed profoundly since the publication of the influential book Technopoles of the World. As policy-makers and practitioners attempt to harness science, technology and innovation to create dynamic and vibrant cities many wonder how relevant Manuel Castells and Peter Hall's messages are today. Twenty years later, this book returns to their concepts and practices to update their message for the 21st century. Making 21st Century Knowledge Complexes: Technopoles of the World Revisited argues that the contemporary technopole concept encompasses three new dimensions. Firstly, building synergy between partners is vital for the success of complexes. Secondly, the correct governance arrangements are critical to balance competing interests inevitable in any science city project. Thirdly, new evaluation mechanisms are indispensable in allowing policy-makers to steer their long-term benefits. Through twelve case study chapters and a detailed comparative analysis, this book provides academics, policy-makers and practitioners with critical insights in understanding, managing and promoting today's high-technology urban complexes.

This volume contains eight new and innovative research articles relevant to researchers and policy makers. Each chapter deals with an aspect of human welfare and is authored by an expert in the field. One deals with how technological change affects the distribution of earnings, two deal with how workers advance through corporate hierarchy, four deal with how incentives motivate workers, and the final chapter deals with how one immigrant group is far more successful than even the native population. Among the questions answered are: What accounts for the relative rise in skilled worker salaries? Which workers advance more quickly up the corporate ladder? Are workers hired from outside the company as successful as internally promoted workers? Does performance-based pay affect worker absenteeism? Do retirement incentives to workers really help the firm? Do unexpected decreases in retirement income decrease retiree life satisfaction? Do more stringent divorce laws increase cohabitation? What causes immigrants to really succeed in their new country?

This study analyses enterprise development and entrepreneurship and their relationship with the state and market building in Russia. It focuses on continuities and changes in the factory regime, drawing on existing literature and the author's own research and evaluation.

Research into firm growth has been accumulating at a terrific pace, and Alex Coad's survey of this multifaceted field provides a detailed, comprehensive overview of the latest developments.Much progress has been made in empirical research into firm growth in recent decades due to factors such as the availability of detailed longitudinal datasets, more powerful computers and new econometric techniques. This book provides an up-to-date catalogue of empirical work, as well as a coherent theoretical structure within which these new results can be interpreted and understood. It brings together a large body of recent research on firm growth from a multidisciplinary perspective, providing an up-to-date synthesis of stylized facts and empirical regularities. Numerous empirical findings and theories of firm growth are also surveyed and compared in order to evaluate their validity. Drawing on a vast and diverse body of research, this book will prove invaluable to students, academics, policy makers and practitioners with a need to keep abreast of studies in industrial organization, firm growth and management.

Marx claims that unselfishness is a child of (workplace) culture, whereas the gene is selfish. If Marx is right then the prerequisite for overthrowing capitalism is a system which both leverages selfishness and creates solidarity between workers. This book illustrates and discusses the major points of the economic theory of producer cooperatives, its evolution since the 1950s, and links with Marxian theory. Labour Managed Firms and Post-Capitalism, most importantly, demonstrates that a system of producer cooperatives offers a wealth of advantages compared to capitalism. There is general agreement that the main benefit of this form of economic democracy is that people who are allowed to freely pursue their interests are happier than those acting on somebody else's instruction. The author argues that a system of democratic firms would eradicate classical (high-wage) unemployment and scale down both Keynesian and structural unemployment levels. He also shows that a system of producer cooperatives literally reverses the capital-labour relationship typical of capitalism and that its establishment can consequently be looked upon as a revolution. This volume is of great interest to academics, lecturers and researchers with an interest in Marxism, political economy and industrial economics, as well as economic theory and philosophy.

Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is the systematic and analytical process of comparing benefits and costs in evaluating the desirability of a project or programme - often of a social nature. It attempts to answer such questions as whether a proposed project is worthwhile, the optimal scale of a proposed project and the relevant constraints. CBA is fundamental to government decision making and is established as a formal technique for making informed decisions on the use of society's scarce resources. This timely sixth edition of the classic Cost-Benefit Analysis text continues to build on the successful approach of previous editions, with lucid explanation of key ideas, simple but effective expository short chapters and an appendix on various useful statistical and mathematical concepts and derivatives. The book examines important developments in the discipline, with relevant examples and illustrations as well as new and expanded chapters which build upon standard materials on CBA. Highlights include: updated historical background of CBA extended non-market goods valuation methods the impact of uncertainty evaluation of programmes and services behavioural economics decision rules and heuristics CBA and regulatory reforms CBA in developed and developing countries value of household production other topics frequently encountered in CBA, such as costs of diseases and air pollution, and value of statistical life. This book is a valuable source and guide to international funding agencies, governments, interested professional economists and senior undergraduate and graduate students. The text is fully supported by a companion website, which includes discussion questions and PowerPoint slides for each chapter.

Having been state-owned for decades, the railway reform in China confused many people, particularly in terms of its ownership and property rights arrangements. Western literature always prescribes that the best model for railway reform is privatization. China's leadership has also enunciated the state's determination to re-arrange property rights and rejuvenate corporate governance. But is China's railway reform really a story of convergence and will the Chinese government follow the western model of railway reform? Addressing these questions, this book provides a positive explanation of the reform in China's railway sector between 1978 and the dissolution of the Ministry of Railways. It bridges the socialist reform and transport policy literature, and studies the empirical changes of the property rights arrangements in China's railway system. Refuting the convergence theory, it concludes that the cyclical reform policies of decentralization and re-centralization were actually an exploratory and interactive mechanism of "assets discovery" and "assets recovery". This in-depth study is based on 21 face-to-face interviews with railway cadres as well as field trips to collect first-hand information in Guangzhou, Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Wuhan. As one of the only empirical studies on the reform of the railway sector in China, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of China studies, Transport studies and Political Economy.

The central concerns of mobilities research - exploring the broader context and human aspects of movement - are fundamental to an understanding of the maritime freight transport sector. Challenges to the environment, attempts at more sustainable practices, changes in the geoeconomic system, political power, labour, economic development and governance issues are all among the topics covered in this book. The aim of this volume is to address issues of maritime transport not only in the simple context of movement but within the mobilities paradigm. The goal is to examine negative system effects caused by blockages and inefficiencies, examine delays and wastage of resources, identify negative externalities, explore power relations and identify the winners and losers in the globalised trade system with a particular focus on the maritime network. Maritime Mobilities therefore aims to build a bridge between "traditional" maritime academic approaches and the mobilities paradigm. This volume is of great importance to those who study industrial economics, shipping industries and transport geography.

The air transport industry has high economic impact; it supports more than 60 million jobs worldwide. Since the early years of commercial air travel, passenger numbers have grown tremendously. However, for decades airlines' financial results have been swinging between profits and losses. The airline industry's aggregate net average profit between 1970 and 2010 was close to zero, which implies bankruptcies and layoffs in downturns. The profit cycle's amplitude has been rising over time, which means that problems have become increasingly severe and also shows that the industry may not have learned from the past. More stable financial results could not only facilitate airline management decisions and improve investors' confidence but also preserve employment. This book offers a thorough understanding of the airline profit cycle's causes and drivers, and it presents measures to achieve a higher and more stable profitability level. This is the first in-depth examination of the airline profit cycle. The airline industry is modelled as a complex dynamic system, which is used for quantitative simulations of 'what if' scenarios. These experiments reveal that the general economic environment, such as GDP or fuel price developments, influence the airline industry's profitability pattern as well as certain regulations or aircraft manufactures' policies. Yet despite all circumstances, simulations show that airlines' own management decisions are sufficient to generate higher and more stable profits in the industry. This book is useful for aviation industry decision makers, investors, policy makers, and researchers because it explains why the airline industry earns or loses money. This knowledge will advance forecasting and market intelligence. Furthermore, the book offers practitioners different suggestions to sustainably improve the airline industry's profitability. The book is also recommended as a case study for system analysis as well as industry cyclicality at graduate or postgraduate level for courses such as engineering, economics, or management.