This book explores the economic and social development of the Western Balkan region, a group of six countries that are potential candidates for EU membership. It focuses on the key economic issues facing these countries, including the challenge of promoting economic growth, limiting public deficits and debt, and fostering international trade relations. Given the severe impact of the recent economic crisis on social welfare in the region, it also investigates the nature and extent of social exclusion, a factor likely to produce future political instabilities if not effectively addressed by a return to sustainable economic growth. The contributions explore these issues in light of the major influence of EU policy instruments and advice, which are currently guiding the economies along an accession trajectory to future EU membership.

Public sector organizations are in one of the most challenging environments they have ever had to face as they bear much of the cost of the recession. More than ever before, public sector leaders need to instil strong performance improvement disciplines into their organizations that enable these leaders to fully understand: key outcomes and priority deliverables, how to allocate reduced financial resources and where to reduce costs and improve efficiencies without jeopardizing service delivery.
Written in an accessible and practical style, this fully-updated second edition addresses the efficiency drive using models, tools and ideas more commonly found in the corporate world, such as balanced scorecard and Lean. It also includes new case studies and real-life examples, from Audit Scotland, Belfast City Council, Brisbane City Council, City of Charlotte, Civil Service College (Singapore) FBI, NHS, Ministry of Works (Bahrain), Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the US Postal Service.

This book gives readers the theoretical and empirical methods to analyze applied economics. They are institutional economics, information economics, environmental economics, international economics, financial economics, industrial organization, public economics, law and economics, and spatial economics. Because the chapters of this book deal with current topics in these categories, they are relevant not only to researchers and graduate students but also to policy makers and entrepreneurs. As there is uncertainty about the global economy, it is necessary to consider optimal, efficient behavior to survive in the confused world. The book is organized in three parts. Part 1 deals with institutional economics, information economics, and related topics, approached through game theory. Part 2 focuses on environmental economics, international economics, and financial economics, through a microeconomic or econometric approach. Finally, Part 3 concentrates on public economics, social security, and related fields, through microeconomics or macroeconomics.

This book explores the various economic and institutional factors that explain why huge investments are made in unworthy transportation mega-projects in the US and other countries. It is based on research, the general literature, economic analyses, and results from a specifically collected database showing that a significant proportion of implemented mega-projects have been found to be inferior ex-ante or incapable of delivering the returns they promised ex-post. Transportation infrastructure and other public investments of a similar scope ("mega-projects") reflect public sector priorities and objectives, non-pecuniary as well as financial constraints, and a range of decision-making processes. This book describes how decisions made in the public sector with respect to transportation infrastructure investments are affected by the large populations and territories they serve, the estimation of the substantial opportunity costs they entail, the formal procedures instituted for quantitatively appraising projected outcomes and monetary returns, and the political environment in which these decisions are made.

This book presents a selection of contributions on the timely topic of structural reforms in Western economies, written by experts from central banks, the International Monetary Fund, and leading universities. It includes latest research on the impacts of structural reforms on the market economy, especially on the labor market, and investigates the results of collective bargaining in theory and practice. The book also comprises case studies of structural reforms. A literature survey on the topic serves as a valuable source for further research. The book is written by and targeted at both academics and policy makers.

This book analyzes the relative balance of bargaining power between governments and the banks in charge of underwriting their debt during the first financial globalization. Brazil and Mexico, both indebted countries that underwent major changes in reputation and negotiating power as they faced financial crises, provide valuable case studies of government strategies for obtaining the best possible outcomes. Previous literature has focused on bankers' perspectives and emphasized that debtors were submissive during negotiations, but Weller finds that governments' negotiating power varied over time. He presents a new analytical framework that interprets when and why officials were likely to negotiate loans more or less effectively, with newly uncovered primary sources from debtors' and creditors' archives suggesting key causes of variation: fiscal accounts, political stability, and creditors' exposure and reputation.

This open access book offers a critical perspective on intra-European mobility and migration by using new empirical data and theoretical discussions. It develops a theoretical and empirical analysis of the consequences of intra-European movement for sending and receiving urban regions in The Netherlands, Sweden, Austria, Turkey, Poland and Czech Republic. The book conceptualizes Central and Eastern European (CEE) migration by distinguishing between different types of CEE migrants and consequences. This involves a mapping of migration corridors within Europe, a unique empirical analysis of consequences for urban regions, and an analysis of governance responses. Next to the European and country perspectives on this phenomenon, the book focuses on the local perspective of urban regions where most mobile citizens settle (either permanently or temporarily). This way the book puts the analysis of intra-European movement in the perspective of broader theoretical debates in migration studies and beyond.

This volume covers the proceedings of the ZAFIN Finance and Sustainability conference, organized by the Wroclaw University of Economics in cooperation with the Corvinus University of Budapest and the University of Economics in Prague. The authors analyze a variety of issues related to recent finance problems, including corporate finance, public finance, monetary and fiscal policy issues, and risk management. The book also discusses topics related to sustainable finance, the transition to green economies, corporate sustainability and sustainable development. The target audience for this book includes researchers at universities and research and policy institutions, graduate students, and practitioners in economics, finance and international economics working for private or government institutions.

This book provides an insightful analysis of the looming refugee and mixed migration crisis in the context of four major, contemporary flows: two in west and east Europe, and one each in the Americas and Asia. The analysis, in each case, is followed by a judicious identification of the key issues involved and the presentation of a set of proposed policy responses to them. The discussion is then placed in a global setting and dovetailed with the recently launched United Nations initiative to adopt global compacts on refugees and migrants. The author brings to this book, the first of its kind, his vast experience of advising, and actively engaging with, many of the principal international organisations concerned with refugee and migration issues. This book will be of interest to researchers, students, NGOs, professional bodies, national ministries, international organisations and rights groups in the fields of economics, public finance, political economy, human rights and refugee law, and international relations and demography.

This book reviews recent approaches for partial identification of average treatment effects with instrumental variables in the program evaluation literature, including Manski's bounds, bounds based on threshold crossing models, and bounds based on the Local Average Treatment Effect (LATE) framework. It compares these bounds across different sets of assumptions, surveys relevant methods to assess the validity of these assumptions, and discusses estimation and inference methods for the bounds. The book also reviews some empirical applications employing bounds in the program evaluation literature. It aims to bridge the gap between the econometric theory on which the different bounds are based and their empirical application to program evaluation.

This book studies the relationship between the arts and the economy. By applying economic thinking to arts and culture, it analyses markets for art and cultural goods, highlights specific facets of art auctions and discusses determinants of the economic success of artists. The author also sheds new light on various cultural areas, such as the performing and visual arts, festivals, films, museums and cultural heritage. Lastly, the book discusses cultural policies, the role of the state in financing culture, and the relationship between the arts and happiness.

This book discusses contemporary banking and monetary policy issues from the perspective of the Austrian School of Economics. Based on the heritage of the Austrian school, leading scholars and practitioners offer a coherent diagnosis and analysis of the factors leading to Europe's current financial crisis. The first part of the book discusses Ludwig von Mises's and Friedrich August von Hayek's ideas on banking and monetary policy from both historical and economic standpoints. It includes contributions on Austrian monetary dynamics and micro-foundational business cycle theory, von Mises's concepts of liquidity and solvency of fractional-reserve banks, and liberalism of Austrian economics. The second part analyzes the measures taken by the European Central Bank (ECB) in light of the ideas of von Mises and Hayek. It includes contributions on non-neutrality of money, ECB monetary policy, and the future of the ECB. The third and final part presents discussions on monetary reforms, including contributions on Bitcoins, Cryptocurrencies and anti-deflationist Paranoia.

This book provides a historical understanding of current debates over tax reform and offers a comparative framework for discussing the relationship between fiscal policy and the distribution of income and wealth. Topics covered include the evolution of income taxation since World War II; the turn toward value added taxation; the relationship between tax reform and the construction of welfare states; the impact of globalization on tax and fiscal policy; the social forces shaping tax consent; and the political economy of tax and fiscal reform. These topics are covered in case studies that focus on significant episodes in the fiscal history of Denmark, Sweden, France, Greece, the United Kingdom, Spain, Switzerland, the United States, and Japan.

Global cities today are facing fundamental challenges in relation to unaffordable housing and growing economic inequality. Singapore's success in making homeownership possible for 90% of its population has attracted much attention internationally. This book represents a culmination of research by the author on key housing policy innovations for affordable housing. Housing policy changes were effected in the 1960s through reforms of colonial legislation and institutions dealing with state land acquisition, public housing, and provident fund savings. The comprehensive housing framework that was established enabled the massive resettlement of households from shophouses, slums and villages to high-rise government-built flats. In the 1980s and 1990s, housing market and land use regulations were amended in response to the changing needs of a growing economy. Housing policies have also been utilised to curb housing speculation, build racially inclusive communities, and reduce wealth inequality. More recently, an ageing population of homeowners has necessitated focus on policies for housing equity extraction. This landmark title is of relevance to all developing economies exploring alternative systems of affordable housing.

Richard Tresch's Public Sector Economics is a new learning and teaching concept for undergraduate public finance courses. It is published in two complementary parts: the book, which contains a unified treatment of the theory of the public sector along with selected examples. the companion website (included in the price of the book), which features a large international Public Sector Example Bank, written and updated by Richard Tresch and tied to specific sections in the book. This innovative solution to the challenge of conveying the fundamentals of such a wide-ranging field allows students the best of both worlds: a readable, concise, and penetrating account of public sector theory, along with an evolving set of up-to-date examples that makes the theory come alive.

At a time when Congressional investigations have taken on added importance and urgency in American politics, this book offers readers a rare, insider's portrait of the world of US Congressional oversight. It examines specific oversight investigations into multiple financial and offshore tax scandals over fifteen years, from 1999 to 2014, when Senator Levin served in a leadership role on the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), the Senate's premier investigative body. Despite mounting levels of partisanship, dysfunction, and cynicism swirling through Congress during those years, this book describes how Congressional oversight investigations can be a powerful tool for uncovering facts, building bipartisan consensus, and fostering change, offering detailed case histories as proof. Grounded in fact, and written as only an insider could tell it, this book will be of interest to financial and tax practitioners, policymakers, academics, students, and the general public.

In this book, sociologists, philosophers, and economists investigate the conceptual issues around the performativity of economics over a variety of disciplinary contexts and provide new case studies illuminating this phenomenon. In featuring the latest contributions to the performativity debate the book revives discussion of the fundamental questions: What precise meaning can we attribute to the notion of performativity? What empirical evidence can help us recognize economics as performative? And what consequences does performativity have for contemporary societies? The contributions demonstrate how performativity can serve as a powerful conceptual resource in dealing with economic knowledge, as an inspiring framework for investigating performative practices, and as an engine of discovery for thinking of the economic proper.

This collection addresses the path to a new prosperity after the Great Recession. The contributors ask that if the 2008 crisis proved the unsustainability of the neoliberal development model, what does well-being mean today in advanced western democracies? What kind of production and consumption will be a feature of the coming decades? What are the financial, economic, institutional and social innovations needed to reconcile economy and society after decades of disembedding? The Crisis Conundrum offers an interdisciplinary interpretation of the crisis as an opportunity to reform capitalism and consumption societies, structurally as well as culturally. Students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including sociology, economics, development studies and European studies, with find this book of interest.

This book provides a self-contained presentation of the statistical tools required for evaluating public programs, as advocated by many governments, the World Bank, the European Union, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. After introducing the methodological framework of program evaluation, the first chapters are devoted to the collection, elementary description and multivariate analysis of data as well as the estimation of welfare changes. The book then successively presents the tools of ex-ante methods (financial analysis, budget planning, cost-benefit, cost-effectiveness and multi-criteria evaluation) and ex-post methods (benchmarking, experimental and quasi-experimental evaluation). The step-by-step approach and the systematic use of numerical illustrations equip readers to handle the statistics of program evaluation. It not only offers practitioners from public administrations, consultancy firms and nongovernmental organizations the basic tools and advanced techniques used in program assessment, it is also suitable for executive management training, upper undergraduate and graduate courses, as well as for self-study.

This book explores contemporary issues and trends facing Islamic banks, businesses and economies as presented at the International Conference of Islamic Economics, Banking and Finance. The authors leverage current empirical research and statistics to provide unique and fresh perspectives on the changing world of Islamic finance. They focus specifically on to the implementation of Islamic financial instruments and services in global capital markets and how their success can be evaluated. Chapters feature case studies from all over the world including examples from Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina and the United Kingdom, to name a few. The breadth and immediacy of the research presented by the authors will appeal to practitioners and scholars alike. The global outlook and rich data-based approach adopted in this book guarantee that it is a timely and valuable addition to the field of Islamic finance.

This state-of-the art collection of papers analyses various aspects of the theory of externalities and public goods. The contributions employ new analytical techniques like the aggregative game approach, and discuss the philosophical underpinnings of the theory. Furthermore, they highlight a range of topical empirical applications including climate policy and counterterrorism. This contributed volume was written in memory of Richard C. Cornes, a pioneer in the theory of externalities and public goods.

This book examines the volatile landscape of the Chinese economy and the barriers to its continuing development. The author argues that underlying inefficiencies in China's financial system currently prevent the further growth of its institutions and inhibit reform of monetary and fiscal policy. Rambures shows that, despite efforts to avoid a "middle income trap", such long-overdue structural reforms are still faced with strong resistance from both economic and political circles. Chapters discuss approaches in tackling the Chinese national debt, the recent stock exchange collapse and subsequent currency devaluation, declining trade surplus, the wariness of foreign investors and its negative impact on foreign exchange reserves, and the heavy burden of state-owned "zombie companies". The discussion positions current economic events within the context of China's transition from a foreign trade and investment-led economy to one that is propelled by domestic consumption, service industries and innovation. Crucially, Rambures also addresses financial trends with reference to pervasive long-term influencing factors such as an ageing population, increasing inequality, corruption, pollution and migration.

This book offers a systematic guide to the allocation of American taxpayer dollars used to provide for the common defense. With engaging and illustrative examples like the narrative of a helicopter purchase, it reveals an unexpectedly chaotic political process that produces a conversely stable aggregate defense budget. The book explores specific attempts to control or influence these turbulent funding outcomes as Congress reviews the Presidential budget request. Containing data and sources largely unavailable to researchers without access to the Department of Defense, the book should be of interest to anyone looking for a direct, current, and methodical analysis of defense budget outcomes that preserves the informal and nuanced mechanics of a political and complicated process.

This volume presents selected papers from the 18th Eurasia Business and Economics Society (EBES) Conference, with major emphasis placed on highlighting the latest research developments in the economics of innovation, public economics, and management. The articles in the volume also address more specialized topics such as luxury fashion, weather derivatives, health management, islamic bonds, and life satisfaction, among others. The majority of the articles focus on phenomena observed in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and South Asia, representing a unique contribution to understanding contemporary research challenges from a different perspective.

This book provides a comprehensive, theory-based analysis of current issues in population economics. It addresses the most important problems caused by demographic changes using the popular overlapping generations growth model by Samuelson and Diamond. Taking into account families' fertility decisions, it examines not only the demographic changes due to longer life expectancy but also the effects of social security policy on demography and labor supply/individual retirement behaviors. Conducting all analyses in a dynamic general equilibrium setting, the book offers a valuable theoretical reference guide in the field of population economics.