Economic development and social welfare depend on the existence of effective and efficient infrastructure systems, particularly in health, energy, transportation and water, many of which are developed and managed through Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs). However, empirical evidence suggests some pitfalls in the use of these PPP arrangements. This book addresses these issues, focusing on mostly three key questions: How to improve the robustness of the decision-making process leading to the option of PPP? How to improve contract management as the longest phase of the process? How can contracts be improved to accommodate uncertainty and avoid harmful renegotiations? The authors explore the concept of flexible contracts, the uncertainty modeling for improving the robustness of the decision-making process, and develop an overall framework for effective contract management, along with a comprehensive analysis of current renegotiation patterns. The ultimate goal is to improve the contractual performance, as well as the overall infrastructure management and social welfare.

This book analyses the contribution of the new forms of reporting adopted by Public Sector Organisations in the provision of information on value creation processes to their various stakeholders. The contributors to this volume provide evidence of innovative accounting practices and reporting formats, drawing on case studies from across Europe. Together, they highlight the limitations and opportunities of these new forms of reporting that will require further study and exploration.

When States Go Broke collects insights and analysis from leading academics and practitioners that discuss the ongoing fiscal crisis among the American states. No one disagrees with the idea that the states face enormous political and fiscal challenges. There is, however, little consensus on how to fix the perennial problems associated with these challenges. This volume fills an important gap in the dialogue by offering an academic analysis of the many issues broached by these debates. Leading scholars in bankruptcy, constitutional law, labor law, history, political science and economics have individually contributed their assessments of the origins, context and potential solutions for the states in crisis. It presents readers - academics, policy makers and concerned citizens alike - with the resources to begin and continue that important, solution-oriented conversation.

Progressing towards sustainable development raises important challenges to conducting performance evaluations in governments because there are neither generally accepted methods nor specific standards to be met at present. Sustainability Performance Evaluation System in Government, makes a conceptual contribution to public sustainability performance evaluation and develops a set of framework indicators with the help of the strategic and comprehensive approach "Sustainability Balanced Scorecard". As a conceptual basis for the further research and application, this volume will be of great interest to researchers and practitioners at many levels of environmental / sustainability, public management and strategic control studies. Evaluators will find methodological approaches and applied tools for their work. Decision-makers and managers will find it valuable to manage the social, economic and environmental issues in a balanced and integrated manner. Governments will also find it helpful in assisting them in establishing an evaluation system towards sustainable development.

This book contains selected peer-reviewed papers that were presented at the Fourth International Symposium on Transportation Network Reliability (INSTR) Conference held at the University of Minnesota July 22-23, 2010. International scholars, from a variety of disciplines--engineering, economics, geography, planning and transportation-offer varying perspectives on modeling and analysis of the reliability of transportation networks in order to illustrate both vulnerability to day-to-day and unpredictability variability and risk in travel, and demonstrates strategies for addressing those issues. The scope of the chapters includes all aspects of analysis and design to improve network reliability, specifically user perception of unreliability of public transport, public policy and reliability of travel times, the valuation and economics of reliability, network reliability modeling and estimation, travel behavior and vehicle routing under uncertainty, and risk evaluation and management for transportation networks. The book combines new methodologies and state of the art practice to model and address questions of network unreliability, making it of interest to both academics in transportation and engineering as well as policy-makers and practitioners.

This book presents latest research in the field of Political Economy, dealing with the integration of economics and politics and the way institutions affect social decisions. The focus is on innovative topics such as an institutional analysis based on case studies; the influence of activists on political decisions; new techniques for analyzing elections, involving game theory and empirical methods.

Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way for himself if society is sweeping towards de struction. Therefore everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. No one can stand aside with unconcern: the interests of everyone hang on the result. Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the great historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our 1 epoch has plunged us. his is the message of Ludwig von Mises. In the historical T battle of ideologies, Mises is a pivotal figure. With great courage and decisive effect he carried the banner of truth and freedom for others through a time of rising statism. Murray Rothbard is correct when he says, " . . . if the world is ever to get out of its miasma of statism, or, indeed, if the economics profession is ever to return to a sound and correct development of economic analysis, both will have to abandon their contemporary bog and move to that high ground that Mises developed for us. " 2 This collection of essays is both a restatement and extension of the major contributions of Mises in epistemology, history, econom ics, and political philosophy. Mises began constructing the high ground on the foundation provided by Carl Menger and Eugen von B6hm-Bawerk."

Alexander von Kotzebue investigates the interdependency of charitable giving, fundraising, and governmental intervention. His study comprises a literature survey, a model of the donor-fundraiser relation, and finally, an econometric analysis of the impact of fundraising on giving behaviour. The survey introduces theoretical approaches to donor motivation, groups them according to their central assumptions, and assesses their empirical relevance. The theoretical analysis takes for granted that fundraising is an integral part of the giving process, and models the potential conflict concerning the amount of fundraising exerted. Fundraising typically displays an ambiguous effect on donor utility. The empirical analysis employs two extensive datasets to investigate this complex donor-fundraiser relation, while establishing a convincing link of donor-level data to non-profit financial data.

Harrie de Swart is a Dutch logician and mathematician with a great and open int- est in applications of logic. After being confronted with Arrow's Theorem, Harrie became very interested in social choice theory. In 1986 he took the initiative to start up a group of Dutch scientists for the study of social choice theory. This initiative grew out to a research group and a series of colloquia, which were held approximately every month at the University of Tilburg in The Netherlands. The organization of the colloquia was in the hands of Harrie and under his guidance they became more and more internationally known. Many international scholars liked visiting the social choice colloquia in Tilburg and enjoyed giving one or more presentations about their work. They liked Harrie's kindness and hospitality, and the openness of the group for anything and everything in the eld of social choice. The Social Choice Theory Group started up by Harrie consisted, and still c- sists, of scholars from several disciplines; mostly economics, mathematics, and (mathematical) psychology. It was set up for the study of and discussion about anything that had to do with social choice theory including, and not in the least, the supervision of PhD students in the theory. Members of the group were, among o- ers, Thom Bezembinder (psychologist), Hans Peters (mathematician), Pieter Ruys (economist), Stef Tijs (mathematician and game theorist) and, of course, Harrie de Swart (logician and mathematician).

Bank panics have always mattered because they create serious disruptions in economic and financial activity, depressing national economies. But they matter even more now, as information and communications technologies have stitched together a global financial system that is more vulnerable to crisis on a large scale. For example, the global bank panic of 2007-08 froze up the national economies of the U.S., England, France, Iceland, Ireland, and Germany -- all at the same time. And each of their governments had to act to bail out their own banks, without a consistent international regulatory framework.

In this volume, Fred Betz takes a unique, cross-disciplinary approach to understanding bank panics, with an emphasis on the U.S. Bank Panics of 1857, 1907, 1930-33, 2007-08 and the European Bank Panics of 2010-2013. Despite over a hundred years of modern economic theory and many excellent historical studies about bank panics, they are still poorly understood and certainly not yet preventable. Partly this has been a function of the limitations of modern economic theory, which cannot interpret bank panics as complex societal phenomena. All societal phenomena are, in reality, multi-disciplinary in scope and cross-disciplinary in connections. Bank panics can best be understood through the collective lenses of sociology, political science, psychology, management science, management of technology, among other disciplines. Through this dynamic approach, the author identifies five key underlying triggers of bank panics: (1) funding excessive leverage in speculation, (2) lack of proper banking regulation, (3) bad banking practices, (4) lack of banking integrity, (5) corrupt banking practices. In so doing, he suggests new strategies for avoiding and recovering from bank panics and other financial crises."

The Next 25 Years of Public Choice brings together the perspectives of many of the world's leading scholars of public choice on the present state of knowledge and the likely future course of scholarship on public choice and constitutional economy. This book presents material in a manner accessible to a wide educated readership and will be influential in guiding future research in this important field. It is directed at professional scholars of public choice, economics and political science, government officials, graduate students and anyone seriously interested in public policy. A distinguished group of internationally well-known scholars offer their own often far-reaching views on strengths and weaknesses in the current literature and pinpoint important avenues of research amenable to future research.

The author had already become involved with the subject of this book when President Nixon suspended the convertibility of the dollar on August 15, 1971. This declaration was equivalent to an official admission of the previously evident failure of the inter national monetary system established in Bretton Woods after long and difficult negotiations. Although the real reasons for this failure are much deeper and more complex, the immediate cause was the tremendous outjlow of money from the United States to Europe and Japan. Never before had economic history recorded a currency movement of such magnitude, although during the periods preceding the devaluation of the French franc and the re valuation of the Deutsche Mark (Le., by the end of 1968 and mostly in 1969), and particularly at the beginning of 1971, the in ternational flow of money grew to such huge proportions as to alm ost traumatize the economic and financial circles of developed capitalist countries. These economic and financial circles correctly foresaw that the ever growing and hardly controllable volume of currency flow could seriously endanger the already precarious balance of the international financial system and perhaps even upset it. This brief analysis, in contrast to many other predictions of cur rency developments, holds true for a longer period as well."

This second edition, now featuring new material, focuses on the valuation principles that are common to most derivative securities. A wide range of financial derivatives commonly traded in the equity and fixed income markets are analysed, emphasising aspects of pricing, hedging and practical usage. This second edition features additional emphasis on the discussion of Ito calculus and Girsanovs Theorem, and the risk-neutral measure and equivalent martingale pricing approach. A new chapter on credit risk models and pricing of credit derivatives has been added. Up-to-date research results are provided by many useful exercises.

After the recent financial crisis has hooked the banking system to its very foundations, Hartmut Brinkmeyer contributes to the question of how bank characteristics influence bank loan supply during crisis periods by developing a well-founded theoretical framework. The econometrical design deploys a number of remarkably innovative ideas such as the implementation of a bank-specific, self-chosen target capital ratio or a very convincing approach to the disentanglement of loan supply and demand. The results of this study deliver a profound insight into the lending behavior of European banks and explicitly urge academic and practical discussion.

This book examines and analyzes issues related to public finance in subnational governments, along with a discussion of case studies on decentralization. Most of the analysis applies to all public goods and services provided by subnational governments, with some placed on the role of subnational governments in the management of environmental resources, notably water and waste Coverage includes optimal arrangements for sharing fiscal responsibilities among different levels of government, the potential impact of decentralization on the quality of public goods delivery, local governments' expenditure and revenue choices, and the effect of decentralization on accountability, governance and policy outcomes. The scope of discussion extends to both public finance theory and applied policy debates. The first chapter, on trends in financing of public services, opens with an explanation of the how and why of government intervention in the economy, the nature and purposes of transfers between and among governments and trends in decentralization. Case studies examine the impact of decentralization in such areas as service delivery, water and sanitation, education and health, and on poverty and income inequality. Chapter 2 examines public budgets: governance structures, norms and organizational practices, building up understanding of budgets, budget cycles, fiscal revenues from fees and taxes, expenses, debt and political economy issues, rules mandating balanced budgets in government and more. Chapter 3 discusses issues of accountability and policy outcomes, offering important lessons from recent international experience, including ways to strengthen political, administrative and financial accountability. The concluding chapter recounts lessons from recent international experience and surveys implications for the nexus approach to management of environmental resources. The information, analysis and expert advice presented here is particularly relevant for developing and emerging countries, where well designed decentralization reforms have a higher potential to improve efficiency in the provision of public services, and to enhance the development of integrated and sustainable strategies for the use of water, soil and waste resources and applications that advance the nexus approach.

The tithe surveys of the early Victorian Age, after the great Domesday Book of the eleventh century, represent the most detailed and important national inventory to be taken before our own times. This 1986 book reconstructs elements of mid-nineteenth-century rural landscapes and farming systems by analysing the wealth of quantitative data which these tithe surveys contain, communicated cartographically by a set of 582 computer-generated maps, and statistically by a series of tables. The book also reveals the richness and variety of written evidence which the 14,829 parish tithe files (P.R.O. Class IR 18) contain, by means of analytical place and subject indexes for each English and Welsh county (some 200,000 entries in all) and by essays in which themes commonly encountered in the tithe file papers of each county are described. These sections of the book will be an essential tool for historians and historical geographers.

What role should regulation play in financial markets? What have been the ramifications of financial regulation? To answer these and other questions regarding the efficacy of legislation on financial markets, this book examines the impact of the Gramm Leach Bliley Act (GLBA), also called the Financial Modernization Act of 1999, which fundamentally changed the financial landscape in the United States. The GLBA allows the formation of financial holding companies that can offer an integrated set of commercial banking, securities and insurance products. The tenth anniversary of the most sweeping financial legislation reform in the industry's structure is a natural benchmark for assessing the effects of the law and for questioning whether changes are necessary in the working of this historic legislation. The importance of this review is reinforced by a variety of proposals in the last several years to reform the regulation of financial institutions that have attracted considerable attention among regulators and in the financial firms that they regulate. Most recently, the financial crisis and the failure of some large financial institutions have called into question the legitimacy of America's current financial structure and its regulation, including to some degree the GLBA. There is no doubt that regulatory reform is front and center on today's policy agenda. The lessons of the GLBA experience and its effects, both domestic and international, on financial markets and competitiveness, risk-taking and risk management by financial services firms and their regulators will be critical to the direction the country takes and the effort to ensure that future financial crises do not occur or have less costly damage. With contributions from academics, policy experts, and a sponsor of the GLBA, Congressman James Leach, this book is invaluable to anyone interested in financial system reform.

To the classical driving forces of migration such as poverty, oppression and war, yet another is being added: globalization. With the increasing economic interdependence between countries migration has become one of the important links. Many less developed countries (LDCs) accept migration of their workers to developed countries (DCs) because it reduces the pressure on unemployment, and remittances increase the capital inflow to the country. On the other hand, some of the DCs see migration as a threat to their employment and system of social security. Participants of the Second Annual Workshop of the Network EU-LDC Trade and Capital Relations gave a broad view of the problem which both DCs and LDCs are facing in connection with the globalization of labour markets. This volume consists of 10 chapters by scholars from the European Union (EU) and LDCs. Each paper is discussed in terms of its policy relevance by a policy maker as well as by an academic specializing in the field. In the opening chapter we aim to do justice to the discussion during the Workshop in Rotterdam in May 1995 at which preliminary versions of all chapters were presented. Edited versions of the interven tions by the policy makers and experts are included as far as possible af ter the chapters. The opinions expressed in this volume are those of the authors and not necessarily those of their organizations.

Economic cooperation between the CMEA countries is implemented according to the monetary and financial regulations worked out collectively. The regulations cover the organizational structure of international settlements; the choice of currency for settlements; the principles of international credit transactions; the determination ofthe exchange rate of the currency used in international settlements to national currencies and to convertible currencies outside the CMEA; the principles and rules ofinternational exchange and transfers; mIes for the currency allotments of citizens (roles of international transfers for citizens). The regulations also contain provisions for international settlements and credit transactions which are concluded through an independent international bank or banks. These regulations, the instruments and institutions together, form the international payments and monetary system of the CMEA. * The financial and monetary regulations of the CMEA community were formed in several stages, depending on the prevailing. conditions and the targets to be attained. In the years between 1949 and 1963 the general form of economic cooperation and of international settlements was the bilateral clearing agreement. In the bilateral agreements which the Soviet Union concluded with the other CMEA countries the currency of settlements was the Soviet rouble. The prices applied in foreign trade were not the internal producer prices of the Soviet Union, but world market prices (main international market prices) expressed in roubles, with the he]p ofthe exchange rate ofthe Soviet rouble to the US dollar, as quoted in the Soviet Union."

The 17 chapters in this book, which evolved from a conference on measuring the contributions of ITS sponsored by the California Department of Transportation in February 2002, examine the costs and benefits of ITS in an economic and business policy context. Section 1 examines the broad theme of how and what ITS contributes to the economy and how one makes a business case for ITS. Section 2 includes three chapters on ITS applications in mass transit. Section 3 explores ITS applications in the automobile/highway system. Section 4 considers integrative issues including how ITS is perceived and how it can be positioned to improve surface transportation. This volume will be especially useful to researchers and policy makers working in transportation, transportation engineering, and the economic analysis of transportation systems.

The results of the work of the Conference on Tax Coordination in the European Community appear at a time when the Community has undertaken, as a priority task, the completion of the internal market. The Commission's programme and proposed timetable for the achievement of that goal are spelt out in the White Paper, which was endorsed by the European Council at Milan in June 1985, an endorsement which was repeated at the Council's subsequent meeting in Luxemburg in December 1985. The Commission wholly endorses the views of the Conference as regards the need for urgent action to remove the grave restrictions on the free movement of the factors of production which continue to exist within the Community. It is the Commission's firm view that only a true dismantling of fiscal frontiers can permit the creation of an area without internal frontiers for which the Single European Act provides. To that end a certain approximation of rates of indirect taxation is indispensable if unacceptable distortion of competition is to be avoided. It is noteworthy that the Conference attaches great importance to the Community's problems in the field of direct taxation. This work will be particularly useful to the Commission, which intends to produce a further White Paper on company taxation in the near future. As the Conference rightly notes, action in this field is important for equalisation of the conditions of competition necessary for the completion of the internal market.

The likelihood of observing Condorcet's Paradox is known to be very low for elections with a small number of candidates if voters' preferences on candidates reflect any significant degree of a number of different measures of mutual coherence. This reinforces the intuitive notion that strange election outcomes should become less likely as voters' preferences become more mutually coherent. Similar analysis is used here to indicate that this notion is valid for most, but not all, other voting paradoxes. This study also focuses on the Condorcet Criterion, which states that the pairwise majority rule winner should be chosen as the election winner, if one exists. Representations for the Condorcet Efficiency of the most common voting rules are obtained here as a function of various measures of the degree of mutual coherence of voters' preferences. An analysis of the Condorcet Efficiency representations that are obtained yields strong support for using Borda Rule.

This book champions the view that economics is a social science, and that, moreover, it may serve as a new paradigm for the social sciences. Economics is taken to be part of those sciences which deal with actual problems of society by providing insights, improving our understanding and suggesting solutions. I am aware that the way problems are addressed here has little in common with economics as it is generally understood today; most economists make strong efforts to imitate the exact sciences. Economics tends to become a branch of applied mathematics; the majority of all publications in professional journals and books are full of axioms, lemmas and proofs, and they are much concerned with purely formal deductions. Often, when the results are translated into verbal language, or when they are applied empirically, disappointingly little of interest remains. The book wants to show that another type of economics exists which is surprisingly little known. This type of economics has its own particular point of view. It centres on a concept of man, or a model of human behaviour, which differs from those normally used in other social sciences such as sociology, political science, law, or psychology. I do not, how ever, claim that economics is the only legitimate social science. On the vii viii PREFACE contrary, economics can provide useful insights only in collaboration with the other social sciences-an aspect which has been disregarded by mathematically oriented economics."