This book is a quarterly forecast and analysis report on the Chinese economy. It is published twice a year and presents ongoing results from the "China Quarterly Macroeconomic Model (CQMM)," a research project at the Center for Macroeconomic Research (CMR) at Xiamen University. Based on the CQMM model, the research team forecast major macroeconomic indicators for the next 8 quarters, including the rate of GDP growth, the CPI, fixed-asset investment, resident consumption and foreign trade. At the same time it focuses on simulation of current macroeconomic policies in China. In addition to helping readers understand China's economic trend and policy guide, this book has three main goals: to help readers understand China's economic performance; to forecast the main macroeconomic indicators for the next 8 quarters; and to simulate the effectiveness of macroeconomic policies.

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.

This book offers a critical perspective on the issues related to women's empowerment, microfinance, and entrepreneurship in India. Written by distinguishing experts in this field, this book highlights women's empowerment, which is a process of entrusting power to an individual on the control over resources and decisions. However, these two factors are less effective in a society where religion and cultural dominance is high. The book sheds light on the social security measures undertaken by the government aiming to the right to work helped women who are bounded by social restrictions. Over time there is a shift in rural occupational structure towards non-farm activities, which is largely distress driven self-employment. Access to credit is a great source to provide self-employment that develops self-esteem among women and uplift their position. The book highlights the discrimination against women entrepreneurs in access to credit led to gender biased entrepreneurial society. Association with self-help groups (SHGs) has made women more socially empowered. SHG members help them to change their life in a positive manner through micro-entrepreneurial activities. The book has emphasized on the role of microfinance, which has served the poor to become financially self-reliant. It is observed that for second generation borrowers, the impact of microfinance seems to fizzle out, where MFIs who are gaining efficiency are diverting their objective of servicing poor, signalling a sign of mission drift.

This book examines key issues and policy concerns relating to fiscal sustainability and competitiveness in European and Asian economies. In addition to estimating the extent of fiscal capacity or lack thereof for these economies, the authors supplement the empirical analysis with country case studies.

This book examines the effect of banking on the real economy and society, focusing on banking supervision as the decisive factor in steering banking activities and determining the social outcome of the game of finance. Banking is like a cardiovascular system for our society. If it functions correctly, it allows the economy to operate smoothly. On the other hand, if it malfunctions it becomes a doomsday device. This creates an asymmetry of risks - the asymmetry between the potential dire consequences and the modest rewards of accepting those risks. Banking was one of the critical technological factors enabling the transition from the middle ages and the creation of modern society. However, while today it contributes little to economic growth, its malfunction has a profound and lasting adverse impact. The book explains why, how and what. Why is it important to keep tight supervision of the banks? How can banking supervision improve stability, not only of the financial system but also of the whole human society? What went wrong with the regulation in the past?

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.

This book explores the role of national fiscal policies in a selected group of Euro-area countries under the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). In particular, the authors characterize the response of output to fiscal consolidations and expansions in the small Euro-area open economies affected by high public and private debt. It is shown that the macroeconomic outcome of fiscal shocks is strongly related to debt levels. The Euro-area countries included in the investigation are Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and Portugal, over the sample period 1999-2016, i.e., the EMU period. The main econometric tools used in this research are structural vector autoregressive (VAR) models, including panel VAR models. The available literature relating to the subject is also fully reviewed. A further closely investigated topic is the potential spillover effects of German fiscal policies on the selected small Euro-area economies. Moreover, in the perspective of the evolution of the Euro Area towards a full Monetary and Fiscal Union, the authors study the effects of area-wide government spending shocks on aggregate output and other macroeconomic variables during the EMU period. The closing chapter of the book considers evidence on the consequences of austerity policies for European labour markets during recent years.

This study offers frank evaluations and a pro-and-con analysis of various retrenchment strategies. It focuses specifically on how environmental conditions and administrative and political aspects of cities affect the decisions to implement specific retrenchment strategies during periods of revenue decline or stagnation. The book takes the reader beyond the rationalistic and incremental approach of urban decision-making and demonstrates that decisions requiring fiscal retrenchment can be confusing and ill-planned. It also reveals how any action taken by the city will reflect the chief executive officer's perception of what the situation demands. The first part of the book, The Evolution of Financial Decline, discusses the structural antecedents that have contributed to the decline of financial sources. Here, the major literature that investigates the causes and consequences of urban fiscal strain is reviewed. In Part Two, Reacting Toward Fiscal Stress, the chapters deal specifically with different management techniques available to municipalities to cope with resource decline. The strategic advantages and political ramifications of these approaches are discussed in detail. These chapters also provide an inventory of response techniques for urban managers. Part Three, Retrenchment and the Urban Policy Process, builds upon the garbage can model developed by March and Simon by proposing that the retrenchment process is haphazard and random. The book concludes with some considerations of what happens to the urban policy process during periods of resource scarcity. This book should appeal to anyone interested in public administration, urban studies or political science.

Public-Private Partnerships for Infrastructure and Business Funding is ideal for scholars and practitioners who work in the field of public policy design and implementation, finance and banking, and economic development.

Diana Beck beschäftigt sich mit Qualifikationskonflikten, die sich durch Auslegung und Anwendung der Doppelbesteuerungsabkommen ergeben. Die Autorin systematisiert diese Qualifikationskonflikte und zeigt die Folgen auf, welche sich in einer nicht verhinderten Doppelbesteuerung oder in einer Minderbesteuerung konkretisieren. Schließlich entwickelt sie Lösungsvorschläge, um diesen Besteuerungsfolgen entgegenzuwirken.

In the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis, there have been many criticisms weighed against private credit rating agencies. Many claim they only exacerbate financial market volatility by issuing faulty public statements, ratings warnings, and downgrades. This instability increases the uncertainty in business environments and weakens the pace of business investment. Their rating changes also prompt national governments to reduce their spending at a time when fiscal expenditures are crucial for economic recovery. Public Credit Rating Agencies argues for the creation of national public credit rating agencies, offering the first in-depth discussion of their implied role and function operating alongside private agencies. Schroeder provides an up-to-date overview of the ratings industry and the government bodies that monitor its activities. She suggests that the proper implementation of public credit rating agencies will promote the stability of lending, further development and adaptation of new technology, and increase labor productivity and the profitability of new investment in businesses. Finally, this book clarifies the inconsistencies that have surfaced between public budgeting and a rating agency's evaluation of national budgets.

The Arab upheaval and the world's biggest financial crisis after the Great Depression were almost simultaneous in their occurrence. The Mediterranean economies now face a dual challenge of a political and financial restructuring in the light of a shaky economic pedestal on which they stand. In light of this socio-political and economic shift in both inland and in world markets, this book offers a thorough analysis on problems, prospects and the way ahead for the financial integration of the South-Mediterranean region. Several perspectives on financial integration and policy recommendations are put forward from a leading group of researchers specializing on the Mediterranean region.

This volume presents selected contributions from the 2018 conference of the International Schumpeter Society (ISS). The selected chapters in this volume reflect the state-of-the-art of Schumpeterian economics dedicated to the three conference topics innovation, catch-up, and sustainability. Innovation is driving catch-up processes and is the condition for a transformation towards higher degrees of sustainability. Therefore, Schumpeterian economics has to play a key role in these most challenging fields of human societies' development in the 21st century. The three topics are well suited to capture the great variety of issues, which have the potential to shape the scientific discussion in economics and related disciplines in the years to come. The presented contributions show the broadness and high standard of Schumpeterian analysis. The ideas of dynamics, heterogeneity, novelty, and innovation as well as transformation are the most attractive fields in economics today and offer the most prolific interdisciplinary connections now and for the years to come when humankind, our global society, has to master the transition towards sustainable economic systems by solving the grand challenges and wicked problems with which we are confronted today. Therefore, the book is a must-read for scholars, researchers, and students, interested in a better understanding of innovation, catch-up, and sustainability, and Schumpeterian economics in general.The chapter "Industrial life cycle: relevance of national markets in the development of new industries for energy technologies - the case of wind energy" is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 License via link.springer.com.

Ever since newspaper companies first turned to their governments for support in the 1950s, print media has been supported by state aid in many parts of the world. Today, the principles and practicalities of these subsidies have been called into question, endangering the secure funding of expensive high-quality press output.

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of today's global challenges in the print news media's struggle for survival. It presents current practices concerning government subsidies to newspapers for political, economic, and socio-cultural purposes against the background of declining readership and revenues, increased inter-media competition, austerity budgets imposed on national economies and shifting audience tastes. Using the insights of theoretical debates in the fields of media economics, media governance, and modern management theory, the book analyses these issues by investigating the power of government subsidies to shape and control newspaper markets. It brings together experts in these fields to combine theory with industry practices, aiming to help all parties involved to understand the complexity of issues and requirements necessary to preserve the social benefits of print media.

Kessler shows how political considerations distorted the liberalization process in Mexico, leading to inconsistent and unsustainable patterns of financial policy. Although market reform is promoted in developing countries to improve economic efficiency and stimulate growth, in Mexico financial liberalization provided rent-seeking opportunities for privileged groups and increased the states' ability to finance politically inspired obligations. The research examines four periods: the populist administrations of Echeverria and Lopez Portillo, during which the foundations of modern financial markets were paradoxically laid; the debt-crisis years of de la Madrid, who reversed his party's political strategy by favoring the business class with financial opportunities; the economic transformation undertaken by Carlos Salinas, who mixed genuine reform with destabilizing anti-market measures; and the political watershed of the Zedillo administration, whose unpopular bank rescue gave opposition parties unprecedented power within Mexico's policy making process. Kessler also provides a comparison of financial collapse in two other emerging markets, South Korea and Russia, and examines the political roots of crisis in both countries. He concludes by suggesting how greater attention to questions of power, social organization, and challenges to state authority can help the policy-making community avoid giving well-meaning advice that is unlikely to be implemented in a sustainable way.

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 comprehensive new text breaks the mould of traditional Public Sector Economics texts. It provides the student with a solid grounding in theory and focuses on how this theory can be applied to a broad range of contemporary issues such as health and education, the monopoly regulation and privatisation, as well as taxes and incentives. This approach teaches the student to understand how the public sector interacts with the rest of the economy, why governments act in the way they do, enabling them to evaluate policies and their alternatives.

During recent years, American states have launched programs to promote direct foreign investment and product export, but there has been little self-scrutiny of these efforts. This book presents the findings of Michael Frazier's detailed empirical study of four, state-supported export trade agencies. Using the evaluation techniques of Mazmanian and Sabatier (the M-S Model), Frazier pinpoints the factors that determine how well states develop an international business orientation. He also expands the M-S model by identifying additional variables that should be considered in future program evaluations.

This book provides a survey of the literature on implementation research, and argues in favor of both theoretical and empirical evaluation. Using the the M=S Model for export trade agency evaluation, Frazier examines the public export trade agencies of four states: Arkansas, Indiana, Michigan, and Virginia. He concludes that four factors--geographic location, state politics, economic interdependence and federal government involvement--heavily influence a state's level of success. The political leadership of the agency director and his supervisors, including the governor, is especially crucial. This is a useful handbook for legislators, policymakers, administrators, and students of program evaluation.

This book select successful cases of poverty reduction and alleviation in the Guizhou province of China, which reflects the highest number and widest distribution of people living in poverty. The local government seeks to achieve sustainable development goals and find multiple solutions to the problem.. The book introduces local experiences and presents the whole process from policy making to practice.

Decentralism of political power to regions and local government occurs worldwide in response to demands from the periphery. Such devolution of power raises a number of problems - political, financial, and legal. By gathering together important papers from a series of workshops sponsored by the SNS Constitutional Project and the Center for European Integration Studies, this volume presents a number of these problems from a truly interdisciplinary perspective. The authors believe that fiscal federalism, while originating in formally federal states, is relevant also to the analysis of state-local relationships in unitary states with some degree of regional or local authority. Among the topics they cover are the division of responsibilities and powers of taxation, bailouts, systems of equalization, and state grants, as well as problems related to democracy and citizens' rights. While the book's primary focus is Nordic, its international perspective is enhanced by contributions from Europe, Canada, and the U.S.

This book presents China's wealth management market to the public, institutions and research groups. As the money base of Renminbi (RMB or Chinese Yuan) from the central bank increases exponentially in recent years, the overall leverage ratio rises in an alarming rate and the shadow banking issues stick out. Where this massive amount goes has raised huge interest all over the world. This book answers this question in three aspects: What is the money made up? Who is managing the money and how are they doing? The author studied six types of financial institutions that are responsible for channeling the money to industries and individuals. Banks although still the main vehicle for money flows, other financial organizations have taken more and more important roles in the money management market. Insurance, trust, security and mutual funds are the main non-banking business participants. New money management products are innovated, as are the regulations. The money management business in China has experience from starting chaos to a regulated market and the evolution is still going on. Professionals and researchers around the world are watching China's money market closely, studying the mechanisms, looking for business opportunities and trying to theorizing economic rules. This book is a well presented and professionally structured for the above purposes.

This book is an examination of the sovereign risk and debt limit issues facing the Eurozone (crisis/post crisis) and the need for alternative mechanisms to fund the capital investment requirements of the region.

Praise for the Classic Guide to the Bond Market

"This is simply the most comprehensive, useful look-it-up book on municipal bonds I’ve ever read (said with all due respect to The ABC of Municipal Bonds my dad wrote in 1937 when I was nine). Read Fundamentals cover to cover. I’m keeping mine in my briefcase, under my arm, at my fingertips. No accountant, financial advisor, attorney, new bond salesman, reporter, regulator, test-writer, cautious, suspicious first-time investor in municipal bonds, or dinner guest is ever going to catch me again with a question about municipal bonds I can’t answer."–Jim Lebenthal, Chairman, Lebenthal & Co.

"Judy Wesalo Temel gives us the Rosetta stone of the municipal bond market, the key to unraveling the many mysteries of ‘muni’s.’ Her book, a fresh take on the old standard Fundamentals of Municipal Bonds, updates chapter and verse on everything from investing to underwriting, from over-the-counter to over-the-Internet. The style is clean, crisp, and as simple as this complex subject can be. Are you a novice who wonders how to invest in bonds? She lays out the basics. Examples are easy to follow–even the mathematical ones that are critical to explaining how municipal bonds work. At the same time, there is plenty of meat for the pros. Whether you need to start from square one and learn all about municipal bonds and how they work, or need a ready reference for specific technical questions you run across as a market professional, this book is for you."–Kathleen Hays, Economics Editor, Credit Markets Reporter, and "Bond Belle" CNBC

"This is a must-read for every scholar, banker, and public official concerned with local government finance in the United States. Judy Wesalo Temel has done the impossible: she has clearly and insightfully explained how we finance the development of the nation's vital public infrastructure. This is an important book, one that will be required reading for professionals responsible for planning, designing, and evaluating publicly financed projects–the health care, transportation, and educational facilities that all citizens rely upon. The bond market is an essential element in the life of local and state government, and this book makes it understandable to all Americans."–Mitchell Moss, Henry Hart Rice Professor of Urban Planning and Director, Taub Urban Research Center, Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, New York University

This book analyses the methods used to assess financial sustainability as defined by the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC). Recently, there have been calls to consider sustainability as a fundamental guiding principle in public management. The financial and economic crisis has spurred a demand for greater financial sustainability in public administrations. Although the concept of sustainability has been traditionally associated with three dimensions (environmental, social and economic), this book is focuses on the metrics used to evaluate financial sustainability and explores the concept of financial health. It will be of interest to researchers and academics in the field of financial sustainability.

With the current global crisis, high levels of volatility in trade, capital flows, commodity prices, aid, and the looming threat of climate change, this book brings together high-quality research and presents conceptual issues and empirical results to analyze the determinants of the vulnerability to poverty in developing countries.