After leading the world during most of the 20th century in economic, political, technological, military, and even social terms, America's role is now being challenged. Its values questioned, and its methods often disparaged, America had become the clear example to be followed or even copied, yet its more recent strategic and political decisions gained little international support and a lot of outright opposition. The quality of its national planning and decision making has been severely compromised, and risk management appears to be largely absent. India and China are now emerging as new economic powers, with advancing technological prowess. Their focus is on socioeconomic development, but their capabilities and potentials are much broader and may challenge America's leadership before long, unless it recognizes the changing demands of the new wide open globalized world.

This timely Handbook collates a range of evidence from top scholars in the field to help readers understand who microfinance reaches, how it helps, and why clients come back. It offers updated views on important concepts that enable a broader framework for understanding poverty and the corresponding financial needs of poor households. Chapters cover recent findings on social impacts, the role of gender, fairness of interest rates, financial resilience in emergencies, and financial education, to provide a thorough coverage of key areas of the field. The Handbook focuses on delivery mechanisms for financial services including group liability lending, agent banking, and digital finance, as well as the special role of value chain finance and insurance for smallholder agriculture. The case studies from both developed and developing countries and regions, illustrating the novel aspects of the link between microfinance, financial inclusion and development will make this a critical read for economics and development studies scholars. The practitioner views on the role of microfinance included in the Handbook will also make this a relevant and useful read for policy makers and practitioners in the area

The recent and ongoing crises in the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, Central America, and southern Africa have been and continue to be approached in very different ways by the United States and its West European allies. Richard J. Payne shows how the many future challenges to the strategic alliance of the U.S. and the NATO countries will have to be adapted to a new and less confrontational world, emphasizing the international economic situation over political or ideological factors. Payne maintains that despite years of divergent views on how to handle Third World trouble spots, strains within the Western Alliance can be alleviated in the future by diplomatic and cooperative means. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the underlying tensions, and cooperation, between the United States and Western Europe in their approaches to the Soviet Union, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Iran-Iraq War and Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, and the struggle for ideological and political control of southwestern Africa. American and European strategies and interests in the Third World greatly affected the broader issues of detente, Eastern-Western European relations, America's leadership abilities, and ultimately NATO itself. The lessening of ideological confrontations between Moscow and Washington, Payne affirms, was followed by the revolutionary changes in Eastern Europe. This volume will be used in courses on international relations, American foreign policy, world politics, Third World politics, global issues, and West European politics. It will also be of great value to political scientists and policymakers.

The rise of large economic regions rivaling the United States will challenge its competitive strength and ability to withstand cross-border economic turbulence--a challenge the U.S. has not faced in more than 50 years. To meet this challenge, American business leaders need a comprehensive understanding of the existing global economic and monetary system. It is that, plus an explanation of international economic trend analysis, that Schaefer's book provides. Based on key economic and financial indicators published weekly in The Economist, Schaefer integrates a discussion of established international economic concepts with actual economic and financial data, giving readers a system to evaluate current economic indicators and anticipate future trends. An important resource for professionals and academics in international finance and investment, and for corporate management operating on a global scale.

This book provides a state-of-the-art assessment of citizen participation practice and research in the United States. With contributions from a stellar group of scholars, it provides readers an overview of a field at the heart of democratic governance. Individual chapters trace shifts in participation philosophy and policy, examine trends at different government levels, analyze technology/participation interactions, identify the participation experiences of minority populations, and explore the impact of voluntary organizations on this topic. A five-chapter section illustrates innovative cases. Another section explores the role of various methodologies in advancing participation research. The scope, depth, and timeliness of the coverage fills two voids in the public administration literature. First, the book provides a unique collection of articles for graduate courses in citizen participation and democratic governance. The volume also offers an excellent compendium for researchers who are at the frontline of participation research and practice.

This book revisits an important chapter of financial history in the Middle East and the Balkans from 1870 1914. During this period, capital flows in the form of sovereign debt increased rapidly throughout the region. The spiral of heavy government borrowing eventually culminated in defaults on foreign obligations in the Ottoman Empire (1875), Egypt (1876), Greece (1893) and Serbia (1895). In all four cases, introducing international financial control over the finances of the debtor states became the prevalent form of dealing with defaults. The different cases of international financial control became increasingly refined and they marked important milestones in the evolution of the global governance of sovereign debt before 1914. For the defaulting states however, the immediate impact of international financial control was infringement of sovereignty. The extent of international financial control and the borrowing capacity of debtor states varied in each case as well as the degree of resistance towards it. This book documents the characteristics of international financial control in a comparative perspective. It relates sovereign debt, default and international financial control to political and fiscal systems, and raises questions about the tension between national sovereignty and global capital. It sheds light on the impact of international financial control on the long-term credibility and fiscal capacity of the debtor states in question. The author demonstrates that the governments' decisions to borrow internationally, and their attitudes towards international financial control, were heavily influenced by domestic political and fiscal factors.

A number of competing views are swirling around the literature concerning the impact of globalization on the ability of cooperatives to survive. This 10th volume of the Advances in the Economic Analysis of Participatory & Labor-Managed Firms series wants to understand some of these elements in the evolution of cooperatives in a world where globalization seems to be the driving force behind innovative forms of organization. In keeping with the main focus of the economics literature, the volume is focused on worker and producer cooperatives. This issue contains eleven papers and is organized into three parts: the first part collects empirical studies on producers cooperatives in Israel, Italy, Spain and Canada. The second part focuses on theoretical advances in the literature on cooperatives with the objective of understanding the conditions that explain co-ops longevity. Finally the third part documents the expansion into the global markets of the Mondragn Cooperative Corporation.
*Contains original research on cooperatives.
*Focuses on the impact of globalization on the cooperatives performance and survival.
*Contains a mix of empirical and theoretical research.

Renewed tensions between Russia and the West have fueled speculation that Moscow's apparent designs on the Arctic region could help stimulate a new cold war. Vladimir Putin's openly nationalistic ambitions, as demonstrated most vividly with his seizure of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, might seem to justify such concerns. This book by a noted expert shifts the debate over Russia's strategy from what Moscow could do in the Arctic to the realities of what Putin's Russia likely will do. Buchanan challenges the widely held assumption that the Arctic is emerging as one of the most important strategic theaters in a potentially dangerous new cold war between Russia and the West. In fact, she explains that Putin's Arctic aspirations rely heavily upon continued international cooperation via commercial partnerships with Western energy firms and Eastern injections of capital-all of which could be at risk in a new cold war. Three main themes are intertwined throughout the book: Russian Arctic interests; Putin's vision to regain great power status; and the emerging narrative of a new cold war in the Arctic. Weaved together, they dovetail nicely to present a qualitative assessment of Russian Arctic strategy devoid of ideological biases. The unique departure for the book is that it makes the case that Russia's renewed great power ambitions under Putin are not the only explanation for Russian Arctic strategy. By exploring the broader context of Putin's actions, the book fills a gap in literature. It will be of interest both to specialists and to anyone interested in relations between Russia and the West as well as the numerous questions about how the Arctic region will be exploited-and who will do the exploiting.

The contributors present theoretical and empirical advances on business cycles analysis with particular attention to Euro-zone characteristics. The book also identifies applications of sophisticated tools by private and public institutions involved in the analysis of economic fluctuations.

Asia Meets Europe raises questions about the nature of regions and, in particular, about the role of inter-regionalism in a rapidly changing environment. Julie Gilson considers the correlation between Asia and Europe within the framework of the unique post cold-war inter-regional Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM). The author then examines the nature of this new type of interaction and its various economic and political forms by exploring the historical precedents and prevailing ideas of region that shape and distort it. The book also encompasses the challenging roles of private enterprise and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) when faced with state actors who continue to regard regional and inter-regional co-operation with ambivalence. Asia Meets Europe will be of special interest to academics and researchers of Asian studies, Asia-Europe relations and international political economy. Practitioners involved in policy making in East Asia and Europe will also find the book of use.

The United States and Mexico trade many commodities, the most important of which are indispensable sources of energy-crude oil and agricultural labor. Mexican oil and workers provide cheap and reliable energy for the United States, while US petro dollars and agricultural jobs supply much-needed income for the Mexican economy. Mexico's economic dependence on the United States is well-known, but The Politics of Dependency makes a compelling case that the United States is also economically dependent on Mexico. Expanding dependency theory beyond the traditional premise that weak countries are dominated by powerful ones, Martha Menchaca investigates how the United States and Mexico have developed an asymmetrical codependency that disproportionally benefits the United States. In particular, she analyzes how US foreign policy was designed to enable the US government to help shape the development of Mexico's oil industry, as well as how migration from Mexico to the United States has been regulated by the US Congress to ensure that American farmers have sufficient labor. This unprecedented dual study of energy sectors that are usually examined in isolation reveals the extent to which the United States has become economically dependent on Mexico, even as it remains the dominant partner in the relationship. It also exposes the long-term effects of the agricultural policies of NAFTA, which led to the unemployment of millions of agricultural workers in Mexico, a large percentage of whom relocated to the United States.

This book assesses the extent of the authority that the Organisation of American States holds over the key issues confronting its member states. It explores the extent and significance of the transformation of the OAS since 1991: its roots, the reasons for and extent of its emergence, and the role that the organisation currently plays in the promotion of regional governance in the two key issue-areas of security and the defense and promotion of democratic norms and principles of good governance. By assessing where the OAS has succeeded and failed, Horwitz provides an in-depth explanation of how cooperation and consensus works in the Inter-American system. This study reports on indications that the OAS is looking for ways to act multilaterally in certain security issues, for instance trying to develop a drug regime. The OAS is also actively defending and promoting democratic norms and rules. Presently, the Western Hemisphere is at a crossroads and it is too soon to tell whether the OAS will adapt and succeed or whether the efforts to integrate OAS member states through specific common security policies and the democracy paradigm will add to the list of previous regional integration failures. This book is an important contribution to the debate on the role of International Organisations in shaping the Inter-American system. By looking at specific cases such as the defence of democracy, where the OAS is working through specific agencies and promoting cooperation and consensus, we are able to discern the successes and failures of the OAS.

The essays present an up-to-date picture of the North-South negotiating process with respect to commodities. Some of the essays examine general issues concerning these negotiations, looking at topics such as power relationships and debt problems; others form coherent case studies. The development of the Common Commodity Fund also is discussed.

The rivalry for trade in tea and textiles between the English and Dutch East India companies is very much a global history. This trade is strongly connected to emblematic events such as the opening of Western trade with China, the Boston Tea Party, the establishment of British Empire in Bengal and the Industrial Revolution.

The Japanese economy experienced rapid development during the mid-1950s through to the early -1970s, with a compound annual average growth rate of higher than ten per cent. Although the labor productivity of the agricultural sector increased fairly sharply, the non-agricultural sectors enjoyed much higher growth rates of labor productivity during the same period of time. This resulted in big income gaps between the agricultural and non-agricultural households. To reduce such income gaps between the two sectors, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries (MAFF) enacted the Agricultural Basic Act in 1961 and started enforcing various policies for agriculture. These representative policy measures have been the output price-supports, in particular rice, the output-mix change, the set-asides, the input subsidies, and the research and extension (R&E) programs.
In Volume 2 the (crops-livestock) multiple-product translog variable profit function is used to quantitatively investigate the impacts of the output price-supports, the set-asides, the input subsidies, and the R&E programs on the important economic indicators from 1965-97. The most important finding based on such quantitative analyses is that the agricultural policy measures introduced by the MAFF played a vital role in restricting land transfers from small- to large-scale farms for more efficient and productive farming on larger-scale farms contrary to expectations.

The 21st century Latin American developmental welfare state model is based on a new public-private alliance, where state-led developmental social policy relies for its implementation mainly on proactive, emerging regional entrepreneurs and a growing middle class. This volume illustrates where innovative development strategy may be in the making.

This volume is a timely addition to the emerging literature on the rise of China and India, focusing on how rapid economic growth and geopolitical changes in these countries are reshaping the world economy and global governance. It covers issues such as productivity, labor market, trade competition, and energy.

While considerable progress has been made in analyzing the formulation of international economic policies, the existing literature remains deficient in several respects. First, the existing models take a relatively simplistic view of the political-economy environment. For example, in contrast to the observed reality, a large majority of the models view the government as a monolithic entity. Second, there is only limited recognition of the political-economy interactions between interest groups across national borders. Third, dynamic factors governing trade policy formulation have been essentially absent in the literature. Fourth, the empirical work in this area, both cross-industry within national boundaries and cross-national, is very much in infancy and in need of further development. Fifth, other aspects of international economic policy such as foreign aid and foreign direct investment have been scarcely addressed in the existing literature. In this volume, edited by Devashish Mitra and Arvind Panagariya, a group of distinguished scholars in international trade, especially from the younger generation, analyzes several of these important but neglected aspects of the political economy of international economic policy. The volume contains 12 essays topped by an introduction by the editors. The contributors to this volume are Alok Bohara, Carl Davidson, David Feldman, Kishore Gawande, Amy Glass, Omer Gokcekus, Keith Hall, William Kaempfer, Justin Knowles, Pravin Krishna, Phil Levy, Chris Magee, Steve Matusz, Wolfgang Mayer, John McLaren, Devashish Mitra, Alex Mourmouras, Doug Nelson, Arvind Panagariya, Martin Richardson, Martin Ross, Kamal Saggi and Ed Tower. The volume makes major advances in the area of political economy of trade, aid and investment policy, and therefore will be of considerable interest to academic researchers and students of international economics. Because of its obvious focus on the process of policy formulation, economists as think tanks, international institutions such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization, and trade-policy analysts in developed and developing countries will also read it.

Academics and practitioners alike recognize that global governance institutions suffer from a democratic deficit. Many have looked to transnational civil society as a means of remediation. Yet a clear gap has begun to emerge between normative hopes and empirical reality. Using new data from civil society engagements with the World Bank, this book shows how transnational civil society organizations prioritize pre-existing mission over responsiveness to claimed stakeholders, undertake activism in line with financial incentives, achieve impacts using elite channels of influence, and undercut the authority of developing country governments. It explores the structural roots of these patterns and examines their impact on democratic representation. It also offers practical advice for how these negative patterns can be moderated through new practices at the Bank and new norms within civil society.

In 2000, the European Union set out to shape itself into the world's most dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy within a decade. But how great is the capacity of the EU to orchestrate 'competitiveness'? Can common policy instruments produce consistent effects across diverse varieties of capitalism? Has substantial policy learning taken place in response to the successes and failures of the Lisbon agenda? Europe and National Economic Transformation identifies the nature and limits of the transformative capacities of the EU's push for economic gains. The book does so by examining the consequences of the decade-long Lisbon process and its successor, Europe 2020. It explores a broad range of economic outcomes and consequences for an array of policy areas, including innovation financing, employment services, labor migration policy and pension reform.

Banking and investment in Mexico have changed radically over the past decade, and the economic events that prompted these changes will have a significant impact on Mexico's role in regional and world financial markets. Adams traces the evolution of Mexico's banking and investment activities, reviews current conditions and their implications for future investment opportunities in Mexico, and makes clear that what happens to Mexico's economy and political stability will have major implications for what happens elsewhere in the world. One of the first books to look at banking and investment in Mexico after the peso crash of 1994-1995, with a highly detailed bibliography and notes, Adams's study will be important reading for international business, finance, and investment professionals and for their colleagues with similar interests throughout the academic community.

The fate of both Mexico and the United States is that the two countries are forever tied by geography. The historical evolution of the dual interaction between the peoples of these two nations is and will be significant for the future of both countries. With this in mind, the book is divided into chapters reviewing such themes as the interaction and historical financial events that transpired during the advent of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the expansion of cross-border financial and investment services, as well as a framework and background review of the events leading up to and resulting from the devaluations of the 1970s and 1980s, and more recently the evolution of the peso crisis of 1994-1995. The imperceptible yet gradual economic integration of the two economies has required time in developing, while not always being seamless in its implementation and transition. American macroeconomic policy has long had a direct impact on the economy of Mexico, as is evidenced by the impact of U.S. interest rates on the financial underpinnings of the Mexican treasury and the banking system to assist with the overall economic growth of the nation. An appreciation for the historically sensitive issues and perspectives, be they nationalization of the oil industry, immigration, or market access for foreign financial services, is paramount to a fuller understanding of doing business on both sides of the border.

The first scholarly work to focus exclusively on the roles of pan-regional and worldwide labor organizations in the labor movements across the nations of the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. With a career that covers over a half century, Robert J. Alexander is perhaps our foremost authority on Latin American history and politics. In International Labor Organizations and Organized Labor in Latin America and the Caribbean: A History, Alexander explores one of the most fascinating and often overlooked aspects of the Latin American labor scene he has so meticulously chronicled: the relationships between labor unions within specific nations, region wide organizations, and organized labor around the world. Alexander has written many of the cornerstone works on labor movements within the nations of Latin America, and this is his first volume to focus on the impact of international unions on Latin American labor issues. Coverage includes the AFL-offshoot Pan American Federation of Labor and the CIA-backed AIFLD; the role of the Russian Union, Profintern; European-based unions like the anti-Communist/anti-Fascist Postal Telegraph and Telephone International; and intraregional organizations like the Confederacion de Trabajadores de America Latina (CTAL)-the first attempt to form a multinational labor organization exclusively for the region. Numerous original documents from the various organizations covered in the book Wide-ranging bibliographic materials, including original interviews by the author with numerous people who participated in the various institutions that are written about in this volume

In these essays James K. Galbraith wrote the history of Bush's presidency while it happened. This work contains Galbraith's most influential writings on current affairs along with new commentary, and explores the descent to disaster in Iraq and the ongoing transformation of the American economy under the steerage of Alan Greenspan. Important contributions examine the new U.S. strategic doctrine, the adverse economics of wars of occupation, the collapse of the technology bubble and its aftermath, the campaign against Social Security, the political economy of the 2004 election, the subversion of American voting as witnessed in Ohio, Hurricane Katrina and the fate of the dollar.

In recent years, economic relations between Latin American countries and the People's Republic of China have developed steadily, exhibiting marked tendencies toward greater diversification. Using newly released data from the Chinese Government along with extensive interviews in China and Latin America, Li gives us the first systematic analysis of the economic and political ideas underlying this surge in Sino-Latin American economic relations. His focus on China's relations with six major trading partners--Brazil, Argentina, Cuba, Chile, Mexico, and Peru--provides an accurate assessment of trends and prospects for an emerging bilateral economic partnership. The conclusions of this study find that Sino-Latin American ties have become less ideological and present PRC involvement has been largely compatible with Western interests. Since China is expected to develop into a major economic player in Latin America in the years to come, it is important for the United States to understand the implications of these burgeoning relations. This study is a valuable and much-needed contribution to the literature of South-South cooperation and collective self-reliance.

Li examines three main areas of Sino-Latin American economic relations: trade, aid, and investment. Beginning with the Communist Revolution in China, he traces the history of China's relations with the six Latin countries, moving through early developments, the post-Cuban Revolution era, the 1970s normalization period, and China's Open-Door policy. Future prospects are considered in the concluding chapters, with hopes for greater economic interactions depending on the outcomes of China's own economic reforms and Latin America's economic recession. This book will be of interest to those who practice in the sphere of world political-economic relations, as well as academics who study them.

This book examines selected pertinent topics on issues relating to current and future EU developments. In its initial sections, the book focuses on an array of wide ranging micro (agriculture, industry and competition) and macro (EMU, regional convergence and enlargement) issues. A final section is reserved for discussion on Britain's future relationship with the EU. In particular, the book posits possible alternative strategies (e.g. NAFTA membership and policy frameworks) and examines these from both a theoretical and empirical perspective.