Could information and communication technology (ICT) become the transformative tool for a new style of global development? Could ICT promote knowledge-based, innovation-driven, and smart, adaptive, participatory development? As countries seek a way out of the present period of economic contraction, they are trying to weave ICT into their development strategies, in the same way organizations have learned to use ICT to transform their business models and strategies. This integration offers a new path to development that is responsive to the challenges of our times.

In e-Transformation, Nagy Hanna identifies the key ingredients for the strategic integration of ICT into national development, with examples from around the world. He draws on his rich experience of over 35 years at the World Bank and other aid agencies to outline the strategic options involved in using ICT to maximize developmental impact transforming public service institutions, networking businesses for innovation and competitiveness, and empowering communities for social inclusion and poverty reduction. He identifies the key interdependencies in e-transformation and offers a holistic framework to tap network effects and synergies across all elements of the process, including leadership, cyber policies, institutions, human resources, technological competencies, information infrastructure, and ICT uses for government, business, and society.

Integrating analytical insights and practical applications across the fields of development, political economy, public administration, entrepreneurship, and technology management, the author candidly argues that e-transformation, like all bold ideas, faces implementation challenges. In particular, the aspiration-reality gap needs to be systematically addressed if ICT-enabled innovation and transformation is to become a development practice. E-transformation is first and foremost about thinking strategically and creatively about the options made possible by the information technology revolution in the context of globalization. To this end, the author provides tools and best practices designed to nurture innovation, select entry points, prioritize among competing demands, and sequence and scale up. He outlines the roles of all participants political, managerial, entrepreneurial, social and technical whose leadership is essential for successful innovation."

Natural monopolies are not subject to the market-based principle of competition. Consequently, it is necessary to control companies in such monopoly positions with regard to their pricing. In the future, it will become more and more important to consider a possible change in the regulation regime when the future-oriented costs of equity - both in terms of price regulation and for conducting capital market-oriented business valuations - are to be determined. Based on the principal-agent problem, the book explains this topic. The effect of a change in the regulation regime is presented in the form of two studies: an international secondary analysis of the effects on cost of equity based on event studies of the Anglo-Saxon area and a primary analysis based on the Austrian regulation policy for electricity and gas supply systems. The two studies arrive at similar results: The change from a rate-of-return regulation to incentive regulation systems leads to a significant increase in systematic risk.

Public finance is a major feature of the development of modern European societies, and it is at the heart of the definition of the nature of political regimes. Public finance is also a most relevant issue in the understanding of the constraints and possibilities of economic development. This book is about the rise and development of taxation systems, expenditure programs, and debt regimes in Europe from the early nineteenth century to the beginning of World War I. Its main purpose is to describe and explain the process by which financial resources were raised and managed. The volume presents studies of nine countries or empires that are considered highly representative of the widest European experience on the matter and discusses whether there are any common patterns in the way the different European states responded to the need for raising additional resources to pay for the new tasks they were performing.

Conventional wisdom warns that unaccountable political and business agents can enrich a few at the expense of many. But logically extending this wisdom implies that associated principals - voters, consumers, shareholders - will favor themselves over the greater good when 'rules of the game' instead create too much accountability. Democratic Governance and Economic Performance rigorously develops this hypothesis, and finds statistical evidence and case study illustrations that democratic institutions at various governance levels (e.g., federal, state, corporation) have facilitated opportunistic gains for electoral, consumer, and shareholder principals. To be sure, this conclusion does not dismiss the potential for democratic governance to productively reduce agency costs. Rather, it suggests that policy makers, lawyers, and managers can improve governance by weighing the agency benefits of increased accountability against the distributional costs of favoring principal stakeholders over more general economic opportunities. Carefully considering the fundamentals that give rise to this tradeoff should interest students and scholars working at the intersection of social science and the law, and can help professionals improve their own performance in policy, legal, and business settings.

This book is about bounded rationality and public policy. It is written from the p- spective of someone trained in public economics who has encountered the enormous literature on experiments in decision-making and wonders what implications it has for the normative aspects of public policy. Though there are a few new results or models, to a large degree the book is synthetic in tone, bringing together disparate literatures and seeking some accommodation between them. It has had a long genesis. It began with a draft of a few chapters in 2000, but has expanded in scope and size as the literature on behavioural economics has grown. At some point I realised that the geometric growth of behavioural - search and the arithmetic growth of my writing were inconsistent with an am- tion to be exhaustive. As such therefore I have concentrated on particular areas of behavioural economics and bounded rationality. The resulting book is laid out as follows: Chapter 1 provides an overview of the rest of the book, goes through some basic de?nitions and identi?es themes.

This book examines how credit and finance schemes affect the financial lives of vulnerable people around the world. These schemes include payday lending, matched savings, and financial literacy in the Global North, and micro-credit and mobile banking in the Global South. Buckland sets these schemes within the context of financialization and seeks to identify strengths, weaknesses, and ways to enhance the well-being of vulnerable people. This book's coverage of a wide range of financial products and geographic regions makes for a unique and innovative perspective on this topic. It presents a balanced critique of credit and finance schemes under the assumption that reform is the most practical means to improve human well-being.

"Field of Schemes" is a play-by-play account of how the drive for new sports stadiums and arenas drains $2 billion a year from public treasuries for the sake of private profit. While the millionaires who own sports franchises have seen the value of their assets soar under this scheme, taxpayers, urban residents, and sports fans have all come out losers, forced to pay both higher taxes and higher ticket prices for seats that, thanks to the layers of luxury seating that typify new stadiums, usually offer a worse view of the action. The stories in "Field of Schemes," from Baltimore to Cleveland and Minneapolis to Seattle and dozens of places in between, tell of the sports-team owners who use their money and their political muscle to get their way, and of the stories of spirited local groups--like Detroit's Tiger Stadium Fan Club and Boston's Save Fenway Park!--that have fought to save the games we love and the public dollars our cities need. This revised and expanded edition features the first comprehensive reporting on the recent stadium battles in Washington DC, New York City, and Boston as well as updates on how cities have fared with the first wave of new stadiums built in recent years.

This volume provides a comprehensive account of Wilhelm Roepke as a liberal political economist and social philosopher. Wilhelm Roepke (1899-1966) was a key protagonist of transatlantic neoliberalism, a prominent public intellectual and a gifted international networker. As an original thinker, he always positioned himself at the interface between political economy and social philosophy, as well as between liberalism and conservatism. Roepke's endeavors to combine these elements into a coherent whole, as well as his embeddedness in European and American intellectual networks of liberal and conservative thinkers, are a central theme throughout the book. The volume includes papers by international experts from a conference in Geneva on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Roepke's passing. The first part focuses on new biographical insights into his exile years in Istanbul and Geneva, while the second part discusses his business cycle theory in the context of the Great Depression, and the third part elaborates on his multifaceted social philosophy. Wilhelm Roepke was among the most important thinkers within the classical liberal revival post-WWII, with intriguing tensions between liberalism and conservatism. A highly recommended volume. -- Peter J. Boettke, 2016-2018 President of the Mont Pelerin Society and Professor of Economics and Philosophy, George Mason University This important collection of papers provides an in-depth assessment of Wilhelm Roepke's contributions, placing him in the context of his time. A fine contribution. -- Bruce J. Caldwell, Director of the Center for the History of Political Economy and Research Professor of Economics, Duke University

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.

Non-communicable diseases have surpassed infectious diseases as the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in developed countries. Prevention and treatment of the causes and consequences of lifestyle-related diseases forms an important part of health policy in the twenty-first century. Public health economics - from quantifying the problem, to evaluating interventions and developing toolkits to assist decision makers - is an essential area for any postgraduate student and researcher with an interest in applied economics to understand. There are a wide range of techniques from mainstream economics and health economics that can be applied to the evaluation of public health policy and public health issues. In this book, Brown presents examples from developed countries to illustrate how economic tools can be applied to public health. Further, cross-country comparisons illustrate how contextual factors related to healthcare systems, demographics and environmental factors may impact on outcomes and the cost-effectiveness of public health policies, in order to aid understanding and help students apply theory into practice.

DEA is computational at its core and this book will be one of several books that we will look to publish on the computational aspects of DEA. This book by Zhu and Cook will deal with the micro aspects of handling and modeling data issues in modeling DEA problems. DEA's use has grown with its capability of dealing with complex service industry and the public service domain types of problems that require modeling both qualitative and quantitative data. This will be a handbook treatment dealing with specific data problems including the following: (1) imprecise data, (2) inaccurate data, (3) missing data, (4) qualitative data, (5) outliers, (6) undesirable outputs, (7) quality data, (8) statistical analysis, (9) software and other data aspects of modeling complex DEA problems. In addition, the book will demonstrate how to visualize DEA results when the data is more than 3-dimensional, and how to identify efficiency units quickly and accurately.

Transparent and prudent local financial management has come to be recognized as critical to the integrity of local public sector and to gaining and retaining trust of local residents. Such integrity and trust is sometimes lacking in some local governments in developing countries, especially in the Africa region. This volume attempts to provide practical guidance to local governments interested in establishing sound financial management systems. Leading international experts have contributed to all relevant aspects of local public financial management - cash management, internal controls, accounts, audits, and debt management.

Budgeting and budgetary institutions play a critical role in resource allocation, government accountability, and improved fiscal and social outcomes. This volume distills lessons from practices in designing better fiscal institutions, citizen friendly budgets, and open and transparent processes of budget preparation and execution. It also highlights newer concepts of performance budgeting, accrual accounting, activity based costing, and the use of information and communication technology in budgeting. These tools of analysis are supplemented by a review of budgeting in post-conflict countries and two country case studies on the reform of budgeting systems.

A wide-ranging survey of the theory and evidence on public goods, presenting the main literature on public goods, both theoretical and empirical, in a systematic manner. The breadth and depth of the book's coverage extends the existing literature in many ways.

While liberal democracies are the best systems of self-governance for societies, they rarely invoke great enthusiasm. On the one hand, democracies have been known to fail in achieving efficient or fair allocations. On the other hand, many citizens take the democratic system for granted as they have yet to experience an alternative. In this book the vision we propose is that the potential of democ- racies has not yet been exhausted, and that optimal democracies are both the Utopia for societies and the aim that scientists should be committed to. We present a number of ideas for drawing up new rules to im- prove the functioning of democracies. The book falls into two parts. The first part examines ways of combining incentive contracts with democratic elections. We suggest that a judicious combina- tion of these two elements as a dual mechanism can alleviate a wide range of political failures, while at the same time adhering to the founding principles of democracies. The second part presents new rules for decision-making and agenda setting. Together with modern communication devices, these rules can sometimes transcend the limitations of liberal VI Preface democracies in achieving desirable outcomes. Examples of such rules include the flexible majority rule where the size of the ma- jority required depends on the proposal, or the rule that only those belonging to the winning majority can be taxed.

The Handbook of Public Finance provides a definitive source, reference, and text for the field of public finance. In 18 chapters it surveys the state of the art - the tradition and breadth of the field but also its current status and recent developments. The Handbook's intellectual foundation and orientation is truly multidisciplinary. Throughout its examination of the standard material of public finance, it explores the connections between that material and such neighboring fields as political science, sociology, law, and public administration.

The editors and contributors to the Handbook are distinguished scholars who write clearly and accessibly about the political economy of government budgets and their policy implications. To address the needs and interests of international scholars, they place European issues next to the American agenda and give attention to the issues of transformation in Central Eastern Europe and elsewhere.

General Editors: JA1/4rgen G. Backhaus, University of Erfurt
Richard E. Wagner, George Mason University
Contributors: Andy H. Barnett, Charles B. Blankart, Thomas E. Borcherding, Rainald Borck, Geoffrey Brennan, Giuseppe Eusepi, J. Stephen Ferris, Fred E. Folvary, Andrea Garzoni, Heinz Grossekettaler, Walter Hettich, Scott Hinds, Randall G. Holcombe, Jean-Michel Josselin, Carla Marchese, Alain Marciano, William S. Peirce, Nicholas Sanchez, David Schap, A. Allan Schmid, Russell S. Sobel, Stanley L. Winer, Bruce Yandle.

This book mainly addresses the general equilibrium asset pricing method in two aspects: option pricing and variance risk premium. First, volatility smile and smirk is the famous puzzle in option pricing. Different from no arbitrage method, this book applies the general equilibrium approach in explaining the puzzle. In the presence of jump, investors impose more weights on the jump risk than the volatility risk, and as a result, investors require more jump risk premium which generates a pronounced volatility smirk. Second, based on the general equilibrium framework, this book proposes variance risk premium and empirically tests its predictive power for international stock market returns.

This book is an analysis of the specificities of public film funding on an international scale. It shows how public funding schemes add value to film-making and other audio-visual productions and provides a comprehensive analysis of today's global challenges in the film industry such as industry change, digital transformation, and shifting audience tastes. Based on insights from fields such as cultural economics, media economics, media management and media governance studies, the authors illustrate how public spending shapes the financial fitness of national and international film industries. This highly informative book will help both scholars and practitioners in the film industry to understand the complexity of issues and the requirements necessary to preserve the social benefits of film as an important cultural good.

This book employs a qualitative analysis of China's publicly financed construction sector, taking the system design as its point of departure and applying comprehensive evaluation techniques to create an index system for this type of construction - which in turn serves as a basis for quantitatively evaluating China's publicly financed construction sector. Given the fact that China's publicly financed construction sector is a very complex field of systems engineering involving multiple subsystems, as an important indicator of China's fiscal innovations since its reform and opening, publicly financed construction is now shifting from theory to practice, demonstrating that China has entered an era of fully publicly financed construction.

This is a study of Malaysia's new political economy, with a focus on ownership and control of the corporate sector. It offers a pioneering assessment of government-linked investment companies (GLICs), a type of state-owned institution that has long prevailed in the corporate sector but has not been analysed. Malaysia's history of government-business ties is unique, while the nature of the nexuses between the state and the corporate sector has undergone major transitions. Corporate power has shifted from the hands of foreign firms to the state to the ruling party, and well-connected businessmen, and back to the state. Corporate wealth is now heavily situated in the leading publicly-listed government-linked companies (GLCs), controlled through block shareholdings by a mere seven GLICs under the jurisdiction of the Minister of Finance. To indicate why these GLICs are important actors in Corporate Malaysia, this study provides a deep assessment of their ownership and control of Bursa Malaysia's top 100 publicly-listed enterprises.

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.

In 1999 a number of member states of the European Union will adopt a common currency. This change in the monetary system requires that a Eur- opean Central Bank is set up and a common monetary policy is pursued. There is general agreement among those countries which are likely to join the common currency that price level stability has to be the ultimate objec- tive of monetary po1icy. It is an open issue, however, what kind of policy is best suited for that purpose. The alternative strategies under discussion are a direct inflation targeting, an intermediate monetary targeting or a mixture of both. For these policy strategies a stable money demand relation is of cen- tral importance. Therefore a workshop on Money Demand in Europe was organized at the Humboldt University in Berlin on October 10/11, 1997. This research conference brought together academic and central bank econo- mists and econometricians predominantly from Europe to discuss issues on specification, estimation and, in particular, stability of money demand rela- tions both in a single equation and in a systems framework. In this volume revised versions of the papers presented and discussed at the workshop are collected. The volume thereby gives an overview of money demand analysis in Europe on the eve of the introduction of the Euro in some European countries. It contributes to the discussion on a suitable monetary policy for the new European Central Bank.