This book takes as a starting point that welfare states in developed societies do not provide systems of social insurance against the risk of an early death. In contrast to the way in which economically developed countries provide ways of insuring citizens against other possibilities, such as unemployment and disease, no such social insurance mechanism exists for early death. It aims to demonstrate that, despite the impossibility to compensate the victims of a short life once they are identified, and despite the impossibility to identify the persons who will be short-lived (when they are still alive), it is nonetheless possible to construct a social insurance against the risk of a short life by means of age-based statistical discrimination favouring all young persons. Combining philosophical literature with economic analysis, the book re-examines the ethical foundations of social insurance, and proposes a major reform of the welfare state: the construction of a social insurance against a short life. It shows how such an insurance system could be constructed by partially 'reversing' existing pension systems, by offering a period of retirement to all young adults before they start their career. Such a 'reversed' pension system would allocate more free time and opportunities to younger members of society before they enter the labour market, and, hence, this system would also improve the lives of the - unidentified - young persons who will turn out to die prematurely. The book discusses the social desirability of this new system, as well as its financial feasibility and societal consequences, examining how pension allowances paid to young adults may be financed by the work of senior workers. As such, this book demonstrates how the universal uncertainty about the duration of life can be reconciled with the idea of social justice. With an accessible and interdisciplinary approach, this book will be of interest to academics working in a range of fields, including economics, public finance, social insurance, the economics of ageing and the welfare state, economic ethics and political philosophy.

The role of government in East Asian economic development has been a continuous issue. Two competing views have shaped enquiries into the source of the rapid growth high-performing Asian economies and attempts to derive a general lesson for other developing economies: the market-friendly view, according to which government intervenes little in the market, and the developmental state view, in which it governs the market. What these views share in common is a conception of market and government as alternative mechanisms for resource allocation. They are distinct only in their judgement of the extent to which market failures have been, and ought to be, remedied by direct government intervention. This collection of essays suggests a breakthrough, third view: the market-enhancing view. Instead of viewing government and the market as mutually exclusive substitutes, it examines the capacity of government policy to facilitate or complement private sector co-ordination. The book starts from the premise that private sector institutions have important comparative advantages over government, in particular in their ability to process information available on site. At the same time, it recognizes that the capabilities of the private sector are more limited in developing economies. The market-enhancing view thus stresses the mechanisms whereby government policy is directed at improving the ability of the private sector to solve co-ordination problems and overcome other market imperfections. In presenting the market-enhancing view, the book recognizes the wide diversity of the roles of government across various East Asian economies-including Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and China-and its path-dependant and developmental stage nature.

This book records the first success stories of a new form of financial intermediation, the hometown investment fund, that has become a national strategy in Japan, partly to meet the need to finance small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) after the devastating earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. The hometown investment fund has three main advantages. First, it contributes to financial market stability by lowering information asymmetry. Individual households and firms have direct access to information about the borrowing firms, mainly SMEs, that they lend to. Second, it is a stable source of risk capital. The fund is project driven. Firms and households decide to invest by getting to know the borrowers and their projects. In this way the fund distributes risk but not so that it renders risk intractable, which was the problem with the originate and distribute model. Third, it contributes to economic recovery by connecting firms and households with SMEs that are worthy of their support. It also creates employment opportunities, at the SMEs as well as for the pool of retirees from financial institutions who can help assess the projects. Introduction of the hometown investment fund has huge global implications. The world is seeking a method of financial intermediation that minimizes information asymmetry, distributes risk without making it opaque, and contributes to economic recovery. Funds similar to Japan s hometown investment fund can succeed in all three ways. After all, the majority of the world s businesses are SMEs. The first chapter explains the theory behind this method, and the following chapters relate success stories from Japan and other parts of Asia. This book should encourage policymakers, economists, lenders, and borrowers, especially in developing countries, to adopt this new form of financial intermediation, thus contributing to global economic stability.

This book is written in honor of Horst Brezinski and explores a wide and diverse range of topics related to comparative economic studies. Containing contributions from a number of former Presidents of the European Association for Comparative Economic Studies, the chapters discuss the hard budget constraint, economic transformation in Central Eastern Europe, illiberal democracy, sovereign wealth fund, higher education, the euro, the shadow economy, multinational companies, and economic power. Additional attention is given to new areas of study such as the digital economy and sports economics. This book aims to examine comparative economies across a wide range of geographical areas including China, Hungary, the United Kingdom, Poland, and the United States and will be relevant to those interested in emerging and transition economies, the political economy, economic policy, and international relations.

Procurement is a critical government activity, yet very little scholarly attention is devoted to procurement fraud in public policy, public management, or public financial management research. While many publications focus on the stages of the procurement process and appropriate protocols to follow for successful procurements, the opportunities for exploitation of the process have not been as widely studied. Procurement fraud is similarly understudied in the white-collar crime literature, where attention has primarily been placed on corporate crime or political corruption. This book extends criminal justice and white-collar crime scholarship by using these literatures to frame public procurement fraud. Additionally, organizational behavior approaches are applied to public procurement fraud to explain possible motivations for this type of occupational crime. This book takes an interdisciplinary approach to provide insights into the characteristics of individuals who abuse the procurement process for personal gain, and it offers some strategies for detecting and preventing further abuse. Original research is also presented and compares the offender-based and offense-based characteristics of the perpetrators of public procurement fraud with those of street and white-collar criminals. The intention of this book is to elevate the issue of public procurement fraud and to align it with criminal justice and white-collar crime scholarship.

This book develops new, original methods of welfare comparison and comparative dynamics between distinct and discretely positioned (rather than continuously related) socioeconomic situations. These methods are not only realistic but also extremely relevant to serious economic problems. Using them, the book sheds illuminating new light on the theoretical analysis of Keynesian economics and other important issues of political economy. For instance, it shows that the principle of effective demand applies exactly as Keynes put it to the unemployment equilibrium in the short run. It also shows that the equilibrium may change along the expansion path as the government chooses to vary its expenditure to maximize national welfare. The same methods are effectively employed theoretically to investigate modern trade policy issues such as gains from trade, the theory of tariffs, free trade agreements, and the role of the WTO. Those methods are also used to study the welfare and efficiency of various socioeconomic situations.

How can developing countries become high-income nations? What are the reference points for measuring national development, public leadership and government performance? What is the nexus between public policies and geopolitical, political, emotional, historical, national governance-related, social and cultural norms, forces and factors which shape the process of the state building? This second edition of the book elaborates on many of these critical interconnections, focusing on 9 years after Georgia's Revolution of Roses in November 2003. The book explains what can be accomplished in two electoral terms at a given starting level of GDP per capita and which pitfalls to avoid. It contributes to documenting an almost decade-long history of Georgia.

Handbook of Economic Stagnation takes a broad view, including contributions from orthodox and heterodox economists who examine situations in countries and worldwide regions, including Japan and the Euro area. To be sure, stagnation is periodically relieved by short economic bursts usually brought on by unsustainable asset price bubbles. Once the bubbles burst, stagnation returns. This book's fresh, comprehensive approach to the topic makes it the premier source for anyone affected by these cycles.

This edited collection is a critical evaluation of the impact of fiscal imbalances on the economy of industrialized and developing countries as prepared by a diverse group of scholars involved in advanced research on public finance. Technical issues, economic consequences and the political economy of budget deficits and government debt are covered in one succinct volume. The work provides a balanced presentation of neo-classical views on measures of government deficits; the budget process and major budgetary legislation in the United States; and the impact of deficits on economic activity, exchange rates, inflation, financial markets, trade balance, and economic growth. It also examines the political economy of government budgets in the OECD, select developing economies, and South Africa. From the 1950s to the 1980s, economic activity and growth were affected by fiscal imbalances and excessive government activity in many countries. Although many actors have made retrenchment attempts, economic research has not resolved the conflicting arguments about the impact of fiscal imbalances on the global economy. This book provides a balanced presentation of all major issues related to the impact of fiscal activity on the economy.

There has been little analysis of the constitutional framework for management of the UK economy, either in constitutional law or regulatory studies. This is in contrast to many other countries where the concept of an 'economic constitution' is well established, as it is in the law of the European Union. Given the extensive role of the state in attempting to resolve recent financial crises in the UK and elsewhere in Europe, it is particularly important to develop such an analysis. This book sets out different meanings of an economic constitution, and applies them to key areas of economic management, including taxation and public borrowing, the management of public spending, (including the Spending Review), monetary policy, financial services regulation, industrial policy (including state shareholdings) and government contracting. It analyses the key institutions involved such as the Treasury and the Bank of England, also including a number of less well-known bodies such as the Office for Budget Responsibility. There is also coverage of the international context in which these institutions operate especially the European Union and the World Trade Organisation. It thus provides an account of the public law applying to economic management in the UK. This book also adopts a critical approach, assessing the degree to which there is coherence in the arrangements for economic management, the degree to which economic policy-making is constrained by constitutional norms, and the degree to which economic management is subject to deliberation and accountability through Parliament, the courts and other institutions.

This expanded and enlarged third edition of Theodore Pelagidis and Michael Mitsopoulos' popular Who's to Blame for Greece? covers almost a decade of Greece's economic crisis from 2009 to 2019, as well as recent developments in the first months of 2020. It provides an overview of recent developments in the Greek economy and outlines the most important obstacles to a return to robust and sustainable growth rates. It considers the new optimism being developed in Greece after the crisis, but also the policy challenges facing Greece emanating from a deeply hurt economy in the aftermath of the crisis and the structural problems that persist. The book covers the most recent issues that affect the Greek economy including, the migration crisis at the borders with Turkey as well as a faltering global economy hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. This book will appeal to researchers, practitioners and policy makers interested in the EU and the political economy of Greece and offers valuable updates on the second edition.

This book analyzes public debt from a political, historical, and global perspective. It demonstrates that public debt has been a defining feature in the construction of modern states, a main driver in the history of capitalism, and a potent geopolitical force. From revolutionary crisis to empire and the rise and fall of a post-war world order, the problem of debt has never been the sole purview of closed economic circles. This book offers a key to understanding the centrality of public debt today by revealing that political problems of public debt have and will continue to need a political response. Today's tendency to consider public debt as a source of fragility or economic inefficiency misses the fact that, since the eighteenth century, public debts and capital markets have on many occasions been used by states to enforce their sovereignty and build their institutions, especially in times of war. It is nonetheless striking to observe that certain solutions that were used in the past to smooth out public debt crises (inflation, default, cancellation, or capital controls) were left out of the political framing of the recent crisis, therefore revealing how the balance of power between bondholders, taxpayers, pensioners, and wage-earners has evolved over the past 40 years. Today, as the Covid-19 pandemic opens up a dramatic new crisis, reconnecting the history of capitalism and that of democracy seems one of the most urgent intellectual and political tasks of our time. This global political history of public debt is a contribution to this debate and will be of interest to financial, economic, and political historians and researchers. Chapters 13 and 19 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This book provides perspectives on the latest developments and pertinent issues in the Indian financial sector in current times. The reforms initiated in the nineties in the financial sector have transformed the way financial markets and institutions function today. However, certain sectors like banking, and markets like the capital market have undergone sea changes. The research contributions in this book focus on the issues pertaining to such sectors like banking, NBFCs and the stock market. The opening up of financial markets and emergence of institutional investors have been a significant phenomenon in the Indian context. At this backdrop of increasing financial integration, the impact of financial liberalisation on the overall development of the sector, and how the global policies and events influence the Indian financial sector, are analysed in the book. The emergence of new regulations in the capital markets to instill more discipline and transparency, have also changed the way corporates take financing decisions. For example, regulatory authorities are continuously reviewing norms pertaining to issues like promoters' shareholding owing to risks arising from excessive leverage and the linkages between financial intermediaries. Corporate governance, environmental aspects are some important additions in corporate financing norms in the recent past. The book incorporates a discussion on this, too. Apart from these, the book also has incorporated several aspects on an emerging concept called financial inclusion, its measurement and constraints to achieve the same. And finally, at the backdrop of the disruption created by the COVID-19 pandemic, the impact on the Indian capital market is also discussed. Contributions are based on rigorous empirical research and incorporate the perspectives of renowned academicians in the field of finance and financial economics across the country. Apart from the research community, this book will also be helpful for financial analysts working in the financial sector to have some idea about the current issues, the direction of research on those issues and different perspectives on them.

This volume is intended to serve as a review of the "next generation" of political economy scholars in what can be called the "Wagnerian" tradition, which traces its roots to Buchanan and De Viti De Marco in the 1930s, who argued that any decision that results from a political entity must be the product of individual decision makers operating within some framework of formal and informal rules. To treat these decisions as if they were the product of one single mind, or even simply the additive result of several decisions, is to fundamentally misunderstand and mischaracterize the dynamics of collective action. Today, Richard Wagner is among the most prominent theorists in analyzing the institutional foundations of the economy and the organization of political decision-making. In this collection of original essays, former students schooled in this tradition offer emerging insights on public choice theory, public finance, and political economy, across a range of topics from voting behavior to entrepreneurship.

Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) are often seen as a threat to western nations. They raise political issues about the nature of their ownership, origin, objectives, portfolio & performance, & are regarded with suspicion by countries in which the SWFs invest. This text provides a comparative study of the 7 largest SWF holding countries.

This book provides systematic comparative research of antifraud laws and context at EU countries using a Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model to predict illegal activities in ERDF and CF. It also details a map of corruption risk with the goal of reducing corruption and fraud in the management of European Regional Development Funds and Cohesion Funds through the incorporation of adequate measures and strategies derived from the resulting of EUMODFRAUD EU Project. The authors analyse the specific situations, observe the risks and finally, propose an innovative method that allows predicting fraudulent acts, which will be of interest to both academics, researchers, and policy makers in financial services, public finance, and financial crime.

This study provides an in-depth analysis of the external debt problem of a country--Mexico--that allegedly faces a debt overhang, which inhibits long-term growth-oriented investment. Issues facing the debtor nation and its commercial bank creditors are simultaneously examined in order to move closer towards an understanding of the situation of debt-distressed developing countries. The need to address these issues on a case-by-case basis is emphasized, opposed to a global approach to solving the debt crisis presently recommended by some.

Not only does this work provide a survey of the theoretical literature on the international debt crisis it also provides a way of incorporating simultaneously the concerns of the opposing sides--debtor nations and creditor banks. It will be of interest to economists and policy-makers in international finance and trade and development economics.

This book presents to the reader the economic, fiscal and financial crises in world history that have had a great impact on the entire world and the fiscal measures taken by governments to combat each crisis since the 1600s in chronological order. Such events are often described as Black Swans, a concept introduced by economist and risk analyst Nassim Nicholas Taleb in the book Fooled By Randomness in 2001, in reference to events that were thought to be impossible but had a huge impact when they did happen. The first part of the book discusses the crisis models in order to allow the reader to better understand the financial, fiscal and economic crises that are detailed in the following chapters. Each chapter starts with an overview of the crisis in question followed by an analysis of the impact on the affected countries. They go on to highlight the causes of the crisis in question, the fiscal and financial measures employed to recover from it and ends on a description of the post-crisis period. Given the profusion of black swan events that the 21st century has already witnessed, this book would be a valuable read for academics and students of economics as well as practitioners and policy makers.

The book looks at the issues Indian banks are facing, pre- and post-pandemic. Technology, big data, and use of artificial intelligence are slowly influencing not merely management practices but are also changing customer demands and methods of operation. Obviously newer risks problems like cybercrimes, remote working, disruptions in operations are aggravating the situation. Authors in the book recommend a hard relook at the bank business model.

This book analyzes the impact of Basel Accord in Bangladesh. More specifically, it focuses on the credit risk homogenization under standardized approach of Basel Accord where External Credit Rating Agencies (ECAIs) are allowed to rate the exposures, the potential risk of allowing sub-ordinated debt (Sub-debt) as Tier 2 capital, and multiple bank distress cases as a real-world scenarios. In doing so, the book explores why the ECAIs rating fail to capture the real credit risk of exposure and to what extent sub-debt is reliable as regulatory capital. With that, the book's scope is categorized into three tracts (i) analyzes the ECAIs incentive and sanction issues from institutional economics perspective (ii) discusses the ill-impact of Naive adoption of sub-ordinated debt as regulatory capital and its associated risk on financial system, and (iii) providing readers an empirical illustrations of bank distress when an economy tapped into institutional failures in the above-mentioned tracts (i) and (ii).

This book provides a comprehensive presentation on energy-efficient management in urban rail transit system via operations research and uncertain optimization methods. It is suitable for researchers, engineers, and students in the fields of transport management. The readers will learn numerous new modeling ideas on reducing tractive energy consumption and improving regenerative energy utilization, and find this work a useful reference.

This book contains eight papers focusing on factors associated with the growth of government. There is a large literature in public economics, especially public choice, on the determinants of the growth of government. The papers in this volume focus on a number of arguments related to why government has grown in many developed countries during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Chapters focus on taxation, trade openness, technology, income changes, and tax compliance. The volume features prominent scholars such as Nobel Laureate Gary Becker, Casey Mulligan, Gordon Tullock, Randall Holcombe, and Tyler Cowen.

Today's financial system is considerably more complex than in years past, as new financial instruments have been introduced that are not well understood even by the people and institutions that invest in them. Numerous high-risk opportunities are available, and the number of people who unwittingly wander into such ventures seems to grow daily. There is also the realization that people's lives are affected by the financial system without their overt participation in it. Despite no active participation, pensions can be emasculated by a sudden decline in interest rates, or a rise in rates can increase the monthly payments on a mortgage, credit cards or other debt. This book looks at the history of the American banking system, including the passage of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, the implementation of deposit insurance, along with certain other provisions of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, the Bretton-Woods agreements, the forces of technological innovation and the Dodd-Frank Act, passed by Congress in 2010 for regulatory reform. This book will be of interest to undergraduate and graduate level students that want to gain a broad understanding of how the financial system works, why it is important to the economy as a whole, and what its strengths and weaknesses are. Also, readers should gain an understanding of what the Federal Reserve, other regulators and other central banks are doing, and will be in a position to critique their actions and say with some depth of understanding why they agree or disagree with them.

This book offers a series of statistical tests to determine if the "crowd out" problem, known to hinder the effectiveness of Keynesian economic stimulus programs, can be overcome by monetary programs. It concludes there are programs that can do this, specifically "accommodative monetary policy." They were not used to any great extent prior to the Quantitative Easing program in 2008, causing the failure of many fiscal stimulus programs through no fault of their own. The book includes exhaustive statistical tests to prove this point. There is also a policy analysis section of the book. It examines how effectively the Federal Reserve's anti-crowd out programs have actually worked, to the extent they were undertaken at all. It finds statistical evidence that using commercial and savings banks instead of investment banks when implementing accommodating monetary policy would have markedly improved their effectiveness. This volume, with its companion volume Why Fiscal Stimulus Programs Fail, Volume 2: Statistical Tests Comparing Monetary Policy to Growth, provides 1000 separate statistical tests on the US economy to prove these assertions.

This edited volume takes a closer look at various European pension-plan models and the recent challenges, trends and predictions related to the design of such schemes. The contributors analyse new ideas, both from national governments and European institutions, and consider current debates on topics such as the Capital Markets Union (CMU) and the so-called 'European Pillar of Social Rights' - calling for a new approach to social policy at the European level in response to common challenges, such as ageing and the digital revolution.This interdisciplinary work embraces economic, financial and legal perspectives, while focusing on previously selected coherence aspects in order to ensure that the analyses are comprehensive and globally consistent.