Public Technology Procurement and Innovation studies public technology procurement as an instrument of innovation policy. In the past few years, public technology procurement has been a relatively neglected topic in the theoretical and research literature on the economics of innovation. Similarly, preoccupation with 'supply-side' measures has led policy-makers to avoid making very extensive use of this important 'demand-side' instrument. These trends have been especially pronounced in the European Union. There, as this book will argue, existing legislation governing public procurement presents obstacles to the use of public technology procurement as a means of stimulating and supporting technological innovation. Recently, however, there has been a gradual re-awakening of practical interest in such measures among policy-makers in the EU and elsewhere. For these and other related measures, this volume aims to contribute to a serious reconsideration of public technology procurement from the complementary standpoints of innovation theory and innovation policy.

Over the past thirty years, urban economic theory has been one of the most active areas of urban and regional economic research. Just as static general equilibrium theory is at the core of modern microeconomics, so is the topic of this book - the static allocation of resources within a city and between cities - at the core of urban economic theory. An Essay on Urban Economic Theory well reflects the state of the field. Part I provides an elegant, coherent, and rigorous presentation of several variants of the monocentric (city) model - as the centerpiece of urban economic theory - treating equilibrium, optimum, and comparative statistics. Part II explores less familiar and even some uncharted territory. The monocentric model looks at a single city in isolation, taking as given a central business district surrounded by residences. Part II, in contrast, makes the intra-urban location of residential and non-residential activity the outcome of the fundamental tradeoff between the propensity to interact and the aversion to crowding; the resulting pattern of agglomeration may be polycentric. Part II also develops models of an urbanized economy with trade between specialized cities and examines how the market-determined size distribution of cities differs from the optimum. This book launches a new series, Advances in Urban and Regional Economics. The series aims to provide an outlet for longer scholarly works dealing with topics in urban and regional economics.

Investment is crucial to the development of a nations economy and welfare. In contrast to the situation in the United States, investment activity in Europe has been quite modest over the past few years. This volume gathers together a number of papers by prominent researchers in the field of investment. It provides an overview of recent developments in this area and presents new empirical findings on the determinants and implications of the investment process in European countries. Among the topics examined are the role played by taxation, uncertainty and the financial systems, as well as the relevance of corporate governance to the investment process. Two chapters are dedicated to infrastructure investment and foreign direct investment.

For many countries tourism is an industry of great economic significance; it is seen as a main instrument for regional development, as it stimulates new economic activities. Tourism may have a positive economic impact on the balance of payments, on employment, on gross income and production, but it may also have negative effects, particularly on the environment. Questions arise as to whether it is possible to keep on developing tourism in a certain area without negative or irreversible influences on the environment. Tourism and Sustainable Economic Development provides a theoretical framework for these problems, as well as practical illustrations on the following topics: * the conditions under which specialization in tourism is not harmful for economic growth; * the trade-offs, if any, between tourism development and economic growth; * the need for government intervention and the various policy options and instruments available to policy makers. The book comprises two parts. The first part presents general views on tourism and sustainable economic development, and some opinions on the relationship between tourism and the environment.Some of the basic concepts implicit in sustainability are examined in relation to regional development, urban tourism, art cities, and rural tourism. The second part of the book concentrates on strategies and policy instruments. The purpose is to concisely define and bring together some policies which appear to be necessary, and whose implementation is required if we are to reconcile tourism development with the protection and conservation of the environment. Some analytical tools for policy making with regard to tourism and the environment are developed. As will become clear, there are many gaps in our knowledge that need to be filled if we are to be successful in controlling tourism in a way that puts this important industry onto a sustainable development path.

In today's globalized international system, international and regional organizations can only function effectively within the context of a larger social partnership with governments, the private sectors, and a plethora of increasingly influential interest groups. Regionalism Versus Multilateralism seeks to illustrate these new roles by tracing the way the Organization of American States (OAS), the oldest regional organization, has pursued its objectives in the context of evolving hemispheric and international circumstances. It analyzes the impact of these circumstances on the operations, programs and activities of the Organization, and the adjustments and direction which `metamorphosed' the regional membership at certain crucial junctures of hemispheric and international evolution. The book does so in three parts: through an historic examination of the objectives of the Organization; a critical analysis of its response over time to the forces of growth, transformation and change; and the projection of what continuing developments might dictate on the future characteristics of the Organization if it is to respond effectively to the needs and aspirations of member states. This book is a collaboration between Christopher R. Thomas and Julian T. Magloire, with both parties contributing equally to its content and preparation.

Globalization, Technological Change and Labor Markets is an edited collection of papers drawn from the conference held at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies in June 1997. This conference brought German and American perspectives to bear on the complex issues of global competition, technological change, and labor markets in the welfare state. The contributions are organized into five sections dealing with various aspects of the problem: (1) Macroeconomic Perspectives; (2) Microeconomic Aspects; (3) the German Model of Labor Relations; (4) the Social Market Economy; and (5) Trade Policy and Environmental and Labor Standards. This edited collection seeks to explore many of the key issues surrounding the debate over the impact of globalization and technological change on labor markets in Europe and the United States. `This volume provides path-breaking insights as to why globalization has wreaked havoc on the welfare states that had once propelled Western Europe and North America to an unprecedented standard of living throughout the post-war period. The high level of scholarship contained in the individual chapters forms a compelling argument that will convince even the most resistant skeptics that the days of the classic welfare state are numbered. More importantly, this book is filled with concrete suggestions based on careful economic analysis as to how technological change and globalization can be harnessed in conjunction with a new role of the state to provide a high standard of living.' David B. Audretsch, Ameritech Chair of Economic Development, Indiana University

This book is based on a conference on 'Regulation and the Evolving Nature of Postal and Delivery Services: 1992 and Beyond' held at Village PTT, La Londe les Maures, France, on March 18, 1992. Leading practitioners, worldwide postal administrations, and the express delivery industry, as well as a number of regulators, academic economists, and lawyers examine the important policy and regulatory issues facing the postal and delivery industries. This includes such issues as: international postal policy and the role of the Universal Postal Union; regulation and terminal dues; competition, entry and the role of scale and scope economies; the nature and role of costs analysis in postal service; productivity; and service standards.

This monograph is the proceedings of a symposium held at the University of California at Berkeley, September 12-14, 1990. It was sponsored by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPR!) and by the University of California University-Wide Energy Research Group (UERG). The sympo sium brought together researchers and practitioners from academia, the utility industry, private and public organizations and regulatory agencies to address various challenges and opportunities related to product differen tiation in the electric power industry. Electric utilities are evolving rapidly from commodity-oriented services to product-oriented services. Utilities are offering menus of service options tailored to the needs of different customers. Reliability is one important dimension of electric service that lends itself to such product differentia tion., Options include lower rate curtail able services for industrial cus tomers, higher reliability power for some commercial customers, and load control with rebates for residential customers., These specialized services are a first step toward the product differentiation goal of allowing all customers to choose the type of service best suited to their electricity needs. The symposium provided a forum for in depth examination of the complex planning, development, and implementation issues associated with differ entiated products. Its specific objectives were to: xviii * Review the state of the art in implementing reliability differ entiated electric services. * Address the entire process for developing and implementing reliability differentiated product menus including research, design, marketing, implementation, and evaluation. * Consider technical, economic, and regulatory barriers to imple menting reliability differentiated product design.

Equal treatment in access to credit has long been a fundamental social goal in the United States. However, despite the passage of several laws in the U.S. prohibiting discrimination in the provision of financial services on the basis of race, gender, and marital status, among other factors, questions concerning the existence of racial discrimination in such areas as home mortgage loans and small business credit continue, and confound public policy makers. This book is composed of nine articles and a panel discussion, originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Financial Services Research. These contributions explore the complex issue of discrimination in financial services.

Financial globalization has increased the significance of methods used in the evaluation of country risk, one of the major research topics in economics and finance. Written by experts in the fields of multicriteria methodology, credit risk assessment, operations research, and financial management, this book develops a comprehensive framework for evaluating models based on several classification techniques that emerge from different theoretical directions. This book compares different statistical and data mining techniques, noting the advantages of each method, and introduces new multicriteria methodologies that are important to country risk modeling.

Key topics include: (1) A review of country risk definitions and an overview of the most recent tools in country risk management, (2) In-depth analysis of statistical, econometric and non-parametric classification techniques, (3) Several real-world applications of the methodologies described throughout the text, (4) Future research directions for country risk assessment problems.

This work is a useful toolkit for economists, financial managers, bank managers, operations researchers, management scientists, and risk analysts. Moreover, the book can also be used as a supplementary text for graduate courses in finance and financial risk management.

The collapse of socialism across Eastern Europe - as manifested most dramatically by the events of the forever memorable November 9, 1989, when the Germans of East and West reunited, moved and overjoyed, on top of the Berlin Wall - has added more support and urgency to the central thesis of this volume than I had ever hoped for. Whether the following studies deal with economic topics, such as employment, interest, money, banking, business cycles, taxes, public goods, or growth; with philosophical problems as the foundations of know ledge, and of economics and ethics in particular; or the reconstruction and theoretical explanation of historical and sociological phenomena such as exploitation, the rise and fall of civilizations, international politics, war, imperialism, and the role of ideas and ideological movements in the course of social evolution - each ultimately contributes to but one conclusion: The right to private property is an indisputably valid, absolute principle of ethics and the basis for continuous 'optimal' economic progress. To rise from the ruins of socialism and overcome the stagnation of the Western welfare states, nothing will suffice but the uncompromizing privatization of all socialized, that is, government, property and the establishment of a contractual society based on the recognition of the absoluteness of private property rights. *** In writing the following studies I received help from many sides. Special thanks go to my wife Margaret, who again took on the task of de Germanizing my English; to Llewellyn H."

This book develops new theory about the link between debt and democracy and applies it to a classic historical comparison: Great Britain in the eighteenth century which had strong representative institutions and sound public finance vs. ancient regime France, which had neither. The book argues that whether representative institutions improve commitment depends on the opportunities for government creditors to form new coalitions with other social groups, more likely to occur when a society is divided across multiple political cleavages. It then presents historical evidence to show that improved access to finance in Great Britain after 1688 had as much to do with the development of the Whig Party as with constitutional changes. In France, it is suggested that the balance of partisan forces made it unlikely that an early adoption of 'English-style' institutions would have improved credibility.

Some years ago, when Principal and Professor of Economics at the infant Univer sity of Buckingham, Britain's only independent university, I was intrigued to receive an application, supported by strong recommendations from a Signora Ilde Rizzo, who wished to take some courses in public finance. As she was already an of Catania, noted for its expertise in the economics of Assistant at the University public finance, my colleagues and I brushed aside her modest request to attend undergraduate courses and enrolled her in our new graduate course. We also hoped that she might, in time, be able to gain experience in teaching and writing in English. Dr. Rizzo exceeded our highest expectations. She presented the first D. Phil thesis ever at Buckingham and defended it with consummate success. This work is a revised and extended version of her thesis, and it is a pleasure to congratu late Dr. Rizzo on its appearance, and also her publisher for recognizing its qUality. It will come as no surprise to the reader that Dr. Rizzo has already published extensively in Italian and also in English, but this is her first book in the latter language. I am glad to think that Dr. Rizzo's thesis arose out of our mutual interest in the question as to whether debt financing offered governments a major opportunity for maintaining the growth of public spending."

IF, WHEN YOU SAY "CONSUMPTION TAX, " YOU MEAN . . . by Ernest S. Christian, Jr. and Cliff Massa III Much has been said and written about consumption taxes in the United States, but mostly in a theoretical context. Dozens of schol arly treatises have been published, along with innumerable papers and speeches most of which were more argumentative than illumi nating in nature. Audiences have sat through uncounted confer ences on the merits or evils of consumption taxes, depending on the speakers' perspectives. There have been only three comprehensive legislative proposals to which these theories and arguments could be 1 applied, no one of which was acted upon in the Congress. Purveyors of conventional wisdom have suggested that this theo retical context might be replaced within a year or two by actual con sideration of a federal-level consumption tax. Some see enactment of such a tax as a desirable -- or at least a necessary -- means for reducing the federal deficit. The National Economic Commission, which was created by legislation in 1987 to recommend deficit reduction measures, was perceived by many skeptics and proponents alike to be the Trojan Horse which would carry a consumption tax Lrhe proposals were H. R. 7015, ''The Tax Restructuring Act of 1980," introduced by Rep. Al Ullman; S. 1102, ''The Business Transfer Tax Act of 1985," introduced by Senator William Roth; and H. R. 4598, introduced by Rep."

It has taken a long time to make this book. Many initial drafts of the chapters published in this book were presented in November 2000 during a two-day conference on Interactive governance: towards a post-parliamentary democracy held in Enschede (The Netherlands). The Netherlands Institute of Governance (NIG) sponsored the . conference. After this conference the organisers discussed the possibility of making a book on the basis of papers presented at this event. In the end it was agreed that such a publication would indeed be worthwhile provided the initial papers were fundamentally revised. Moreover it was agreed that also supplementary chapters should be included, in order to strengthen the international comparative perspective. On this basis authors of the conference papers chapters and envisioned new chapters were invited to (re)submit drafts. The completion of the book, however, was unexpectedly halted by the tragic sudden death of our co-editor and dear friend Oscar van Heffen. In his lifetime he was the driving force behind this project. Without his efforts, insightful comments and helpful suggestions this book, in its present form, would never have been published. As such we dedicate this volume to his memory, the completion of the book being an honorary debt to our friend and his wife Mirjan.

Any Chainnan of the British Post Office dwells in the shadow of Rowland Hill, and, if he were an honest man, he probably from time to time, while singing the praises of Rowland Hill, as is his due, thinks a silent thought of sympathy for his predecessor Colonel Maberly, the head of the Post Office, the Champion of established orthodoxy, the leader of the Professionals, who had to endure the irresistible force of Hill's arguments combined with his skills as a pamphleteer, agitator, and political propagandist. My favorite passage of the book Royal Mail by Martin Daunton (1985) shows how much the Post Office of the day needed a Rowland Hill to challenge Colonel Maberly and all that he stood for. I quote from a passage describing how the Colonel, when he arrived at about 11:00 a.m. and while enjoying his breakfast, listened to his private secretary reading the morning's correspondence. Daunton records: The Colonel, still half engaged with his private correspondence, would hear enough to make him keep up a rumring commentary of disparaging grunts, "Pooh! stuff! upon my soul!" etc.

Inter and Intra Governmental Arrangements for Productivity - An Agency Approach focuses on public productivity. It addresses long standing and current questions on government productivity. Its scope and coverage range from theory to very specific applications. First of all it demonstrates the applicability of a theoretical framework to concrete issues in the public sector: the Principal Agent (PA) theory or the Agency theory. Secondly, it demonstrates the different perspectives of this theoretical framework as seen by researchers and practitioners from various countries. The volume is based upon the revised seminar papers from a conference that was held at the University of Twente. Two trends obvious in this world are its increasing global character and the need for increasingly efficient and effective organizations. Inter and intra governmental organizations need to learn to effectively and efficiently work together in complex web like relationships. This study forms a major step in that direction. It consolidates several current economic concepts that are highly visible and specifically applies them to various levels and functions of government. It emphasizes that PA theory is a powerful conceptual framework because of the economic focus on transactions between principals and agents. The issues of information asymmetry, across government constituents, political/diplomatic considerations, and the narrow focus of PA problems will be described. Attention is also given to the issues of citizen demands, internal markets, franchising, competitive procurement and contracting in'. The study concentrates on academic thinking about the applicability of PA concepts to administrative theory building. As such it makes a current, valid contribution to the knowledge and practice of public administration world-wide.

Due to the developments in the role of governments, the importance of government accounting and financial reporting is increasing. This led to changes in Government Accounting all over the world. For institutional, public finance and other reasons this has not always been done for central governments and regional and local governments in the same way. Some countries maintain the cash basis, some changed over to the accrual basis. Many of them started at first with lower government levels, only few changed over completely. Comparative Issues in Government and Accounting aims to give insight in the array of different patterns the world shows with respect to government accounting and financial reporting. Of course a complete overview would have been too ambitious a goal. This book brings together an interesting number of academics coming from a representative number of countries to get an impression of the situation and especially of the existence and the backgrounds of similarities and differences. Thirty-five authors and co-authors produced 21 chapters reflecting on the situations in 16 countries on 4 continents. Countries dealt with are Albania, Australia, Belgium, China, Egypt, Finland, France, Japan, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Russia, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.

It is now twenty years since the concept of rent-seeking was first devised by Gordon Tullock, though he was not responsible for coining the phrase itself. His initial insight has burgeoned over two decades into a major research program which has had an impact not only on public choice, but also on the related disciplines of economics, political science, and law and economics. The reach of the insight has proved to be universal, with relevance not just for the democracies, but also, and arguably more important, for all forms of autocracy, irrespective of ideological com plexion. It is not surprising, therefore, that this volume is the third edited publication dedicated specifically to scholarship into rent-seeking behavior. The theory of rent-seeking bridges normative and positive analyses of state action. In its normative dimension, rent-seeking scholarship has expanded, enlivened, in some respects turned on its head, the traditional welfare analyses of such features of modern economics as monopoly, externalities, public goods, and trade protection devices. In its positive dimension, rent-seeking contributions have provided an important analy tical perspective from which to understand and to predict the behavior of politicians, interest groups and bureaucrats, the media and the academy within the political market place. This bridge between normative and positive elements of analysis is invaluable in facilitating an understanding of and evaluating the costs of state activity within a consistent paradigm."

Empirical Studies in Comparative Politics presents a collection of papers analyzing the political systems of ten nations. It intends to provoke a conscious effort to compare, and investigate, the public choice of comparative politics. There have been many publications by public choice scholars, and many more by researchers who are at least sympathetic to the public choice perspective, yet little of this work has been integrated into the main stream of comparative political science literature. This work, however, presents an empirically oriented study of the politics, bureaucratic organization, and regulated economies of particular nations in the canon of the comparativist. It therefore provides a public choice view at the level of nations, not of systems. This compendium of work on comparative politics meets two criteria: In every case, a model of human behavior or institutional impact is specified; Also in every case, this model is confronted with data appropriate for evaluating whether this model is useful for understanding politics in one or more nations.

This book was initiated while the three major authors were at the Development Centre of Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris, working on its program on economic growth, trade, and sustainability. We wish to thank the OECD Development Centre for its support. The book was completed during summer 2001 at the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) at Iowa State University. We appreciate the resources and financial support CARD provided for publication of this work. Sandra Clarke provided technical editing of the manuscripts and oversaw the indexing of the book; Becky Olson prepared the camera-ready copy of the final manuscript. We thank them for their instrumental help in these last steps. Part of the work presented in this volume previously appeared in some form in journals. The analysis of Chile presented in Chapter 6 appeared as "Growth, Trade, Pollution and Natural-Resource Use in Chile. Evidence from an Economywide Model," Agricultural Economics 19(1998): 87-97; and as "Trade Integration, Environmental Degradation, and Public Health in Chile: Assessing the Linkages," Environment and Development Economics, in press. The work on Costa Rica and Indonesia summarised in Chapter 10 appeared as "Is There a Trade-off Between Trade Liberalisation and Pollution Abatement in Costa Rica? A Computable General Equilibrium Assessment," Journal of Policy Modeling 20(1): 11-31; and as "The Environment and Welfare Implications of Trade and Tax Policy," Journal of Development Economics 52(1997): 65-82.

G. Galeotti* and M. Marrelli** *Universita di Perugia **Universita di Napoli 1. The economic analysis of optimal taxation has permitted considerable steps to be taken towards the understanding of a number of problems: the appropriate degree of progression, the balance between different taxes, the equity-efficiency trade-off etc .. Though at times considered as abstract and of little use in policy design, the issues it addresses are real ones and very much on the agenda of many countries. As usual in scientific debate, criticisms have contributed to the correct understanding of the theoretical problems involved and made clear that, at the present state of the art, definitive conclusions may be premature. A first well-taken criticism addresses the assumption, underlying optimal taxation models, of a competitive economy with perfect information on the part of individual agents and full market clearing. Once we leave the Arrow-Debreu world, it is no longer necessarily the case that taxes and transfers introduce distortions on otherwise efficient allocations.

hen my husband died in 1973 I had to go through his W papers. Some of them were still in manuscript form and had never before been published. I selected several of these, plus a number of other articles that had appeared in periodicals but were no longer in print. This book is the result. At my request Richard Ebeling wrote an introduction which he has done in great detail. The depth of Ebeling's understanding of my husband's work is certainly apparent in his writing. I am pleased to have the Ludwig von Mises Institute present this volume to the public. Margit von Mises New York City September 1989 vii Introduction I I n the 1920s and the 1930s, Ludwig von Mises was recognized as one of the leading economic theorists on the European Conti nent. I F. A. Hayek has said that Mises's critique of the possibilities for economic calculation under socialism had "the most profound impression on my generation . . . . To none of us '" who read his] book Socialism] when it appeared was the world ever the same again., 2 Lord Lionel Robbins, in introducing the Austrian School literature on money and the trade cycle to English-speaking readers in 1931, emphasized the "marvelous renaissance" the "School of Vienna" had experienced "under the leadership of . . . Professor Mises."