In recent years, there has been a surge in social movement theorizing known as the contentious politics approach to studying political protest activity. In 2002, a conference sponsored by the Collective Behavior and Social Movements Section of the American Sociological Association was held at the University of Notre Dame to consider, in part, this development in field. But the conference organizers also wanted to consider more broadly what we collectively consider to be social movement research and theorizing. In part, this means moving beyond a state-centered view of contentious politics and toward a more open definition of what might be fruitfully examined by social movement theories - and in turn what might inform those theories even as we use then in more traditional social movement arenas. This volume represents some of the fruits of that conference and includes four sections that defines social movement authorities challenges beyond state targets, expands our notions of what constitutes repression of social movement activity, examines challenges to cultural authorities and processes, and illustrates the broader notions of authority challenge in three case studies of corporate systems. With this volume, "Research in Social Movements, Conflict and Change" celebrates its 25th anniversary and a history of publishing important, leading edge research and theorizing in the areas pf protest, social conflict, and political change.

This book contains a unique collection of studies on key economic and social policy challenges faced by countries of the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean region in a short- and long-term perspective. Prepared within the EU funded FP7 project on "Prospective Analysis for the Mediterranean Region (MEDPRO)" conducted in 2010-2013 it takes account on recent political developments in the region (Arab Spring) and their potential consequences. It covers a broad spectrum of topics such as factors of economic growth, macroeconomic and fiscal stability, trade and investment, Euro-Mediterranean and intra-regional economic integration, private sector development and privatizations, infrastructure, tourism, agriculture, financial sector development, poverty and inequality, education, labor market and gender issues.

This volume concentrates upon the theme of policy analysis concepts and methods, viewing it from an institutional and implementation focus. Environmental policy issues are emphasized with an analysis of low-level common pool Woodstock governance, Madagascar's national environmental action plan, agriculture policy assessment and forestry and irrigation policies. The text is international in its focus with case studies taken from Nepal, the Philippines, China and Africa. Emphasis is placed upon issues of policy reform and cutting the costs of corruption.

The economic analysis of tobacco consumption is a complex and challenging issue, which entails addressing many different questions: What is the economic burden of smoking and do smokers pay their way'?How do individuals perceive their own health risks?What is the effect of the addictive properties of nicotine on the behavior of a rational, utility-maximizing individual? What is the most effective way to discourage tobacco consumption? In this context, the assessment of the social burden of smoking using a cost-of-illness framework has played a central role since the beginning of the 1970s. Interest in this type of study has grown even more in the wake of the lawsuits brought by American states against the tobacco companies with the aim of recovering excessive medical costs resulting from smoking-related diseases. Economists argue that there is no need for government intervention on condition that smokers receive accurate information about the health hazards - including the risk of addiction - and that they bear all the costs of smoking themselves. Economists agree on this last point: smokers bear most if not all of the economic costs of tobacco consumption. Moreover, a better understanding of the determinants of smoking and of the public perception of the risks of smoking could help decision-makers to improve the design of tobacco control policies.The purpose of Valuing the Cost of Smoking is to review the various methods used to value the adverse health outcomes of smoking, from the standard human capital approach to the new preference-based methods with which intangibles can be assessed. This volume should also help understand better the behavior of smokers as well as the factors thatdetermine the demand for cigarettes. Finally, the volume contains a review of the scientific evidence regarding the effectiveness of taxes in reducing tobacco use.

This analysis of the political economy of government debt is divided into two parts. The first part deals with theoretical issues. Topics covered include: behavioural aspects; long term debt strategy; the political economy of redistribution; a model of intergenerational redistribution; the relationship between social security and the deficit in the US; the consequences of endogenous technology; and budgetary and monetary issues related to European integration. The second part of the volume concerns empirical applications, including the empirical relevance of the notion of debt neutrality; the management of the nominal government debt; the global linkages between interest rates and public debt; functional finance; some positive theories of government debt; and suggestions for fiscal indicators.

This book studies the dynamics of monetary and fiscal interactions in the Euro Area. The policy makers are the European Central Bank and national governments. The primary target of the ECB is low inflation. And the primary target of a national government is low unemployment. However, there is a short-run trade-off between low inflation and low unemployment. Here the main focus is on sequential policy decisions. Another focus is on simultaneous and independent policy decisions. And a third focus is on policy cooperation. There are demand shocks, supply shocks, and mixed shocks. There are country-specific shocks and common shocks. The key question is: Given a shock, what are the dynamic characteristics of the resulting process?

This book discusses mathematical models for various applications in economics, with a focus on non-linear dynamics. Based on the author's over 50 years of active work in the field, the book has been inspired by models from the period between 1920 and 1950. Following a brief introduction to economics for mathematicians and other modelers, it assembles a repository of useful specific functions for global dynamic modeling. Furthermore, twelve "research stubs" - outlined research agendas that have not yet been fully worked on - are suggested for further study and could even be expanded to entire research projects. The book is a valuable resource, particularly for young scientists who are skilled in mathematical and computational techniques and are looking for applications in economics.

In November 2001 the members of the World Trade Organization approved the start of new trade talks at the WTO ministerial meeting in Doha. Written by a team of authors from developing and developed countries in the Asia-Pacific region, this collection of essays identifies ways that progress might be made on key negotiating topics. The negotiations launched will focus on such problematic issues as improving market access in agriculture, and strengthening the development impacts of WTO which, if achieved, will have profound implications on world trade.

In this book, Davide Gualerzi employs the concept of transformational growth to explore the investment-driven cycle of expansion of the 1990s in the US economy, and of the of role played by the ICT sector.

The book articulates a view of demand-led growth in which the focus is on effective demand, the composition of the growth process and the link between changing composition and expansion.

* ... release reputation bearers from the burden of being constantly mo- tored and reduce the likelihood of government or public supervision and control. * ... strengthen client trust, ease the recruitment and retention of capable employees and improve access to capital markets or attract investors. * ... legitimate positions of power and build up reserves of trust which - lowed companies and politicians - but also researchers and journalists - to put their issues on the public agenda, present them credibly and mould them in their own interests. But a fear of loss is not the only reason for the steadily increasing - portance of reputation in corporate management today (or more especially, in the minds of top management). Rather, the main reason is that corporate reputation has shifted from being an unquantifiable 'soft' factor to a me- urable indicator in the sense of management control. And it is a variable that is obviously relevant to a company's performance: recent studies by the European Centre for Reputation Studies and the Ludwig-Maximilians- Universitat of Munich compared the stock market performance of a port- lio of the top 25% of reputation leaders (based on regular reputation me- urements in the wider public) with that of the German DAX 30 stock m- ket index. The results show that a portfolio consisting of reputation leaders 1 outperformed the stock market index by up to 45% - and with less risk. Fig. 1. Performance of 'reputation portfolios' vs.

This is what we ve all been waiting for a book that demystifies the European community 's monetary union. Unlike other books, this one provides readers with a practical yet sophisticated grasp of the macroeconomic principles necessary to understand a monetary union. The most important case in point is the Euro area, where policy targets are price stability and full employment. To illustrate all of this there are numerical simulations of monetary policy, fiscal policy, and wage policy.

E.V.K. FitzGerald takes a fresh approach to the macroeconomics of developing countries, based on the influence of global markets on domestic savings, private investment, firm behaviors, employment levels and income distribution. He suggests that a Keynesian approach is still relevant today when reformulated to reflect open economies, heterogeneous firms, poverty reduction objectives and volatile financial markets. The study concludes with clear recommendations as to how global capital markets might be reconstructed in order to better support economic development.

There is now a vast and still rapidly expanding literature of scholarly studies on the Chinese experience of economic growth and systemic transformation over the past 16 years. By and large, most of the studies tend to conceptualize the experience as a process of transition to the market economy. This position applies to even the moderate, evolutionary economists, who, thanks to the overwhelming evidence of the heterodox nature of the experience, have seemed to outcompete outright free-market advocates and have dominated the literature. In contrast to the market-centred orthodoxy, this book develops an alternative interpretation that is in the tradition of the late industrialization literature. Based on a wealth of evidence and well-articulated theoretical arguments, it submits that the outstanding performance of the Chinese economy during the period of 1978-94 was based on an appropriate combination of market and (non-market) institutional regulation. This book is likely to be taken seriously by scholars who want to make sense of the complex Chinese experience.

This major work focuses on the structure of macroeconomic variables and its role in determining the growth patterns of the real economy. Technological links and demand habits are put together and their mutual interactions quantified through simulation.

In 1990, Chile emerged from almost 17 years of military rule to become the only Latin American country where a democratic regime coexists with free market policies that actually work. This book explores this paradox, and examines the prospects for future economic growth with income redistribution, under free market rules and democratic politics, by combining history, politics and technical analysis. The author looks at short-term policymaking, the "Chicago boys", education, health, nutrition, infant mortality, the labour market, women, the middle sectors, poverty, housing, privatization, market imperfections, the state, non-government organizations, copper, inflation, external trade, the financial sector, non-traditional exports and the external debt.

These essays bring together a progression in monetary theory. The major theme that runs through all of the chapters is that in order to do monetary economics well in general equilibrium, it helps to have a good money demand underlying the theory.

A proper underlying money demand sets up arguably the best foundation from which to make extensions of monetary economics from the basic model. At the same time that money demand is modelled, this also ?endogenizes? the velocity of money. This has been a challenge in the literature that these essays solve and then use to extend basic neoclassical growth and business cycle theory. Solving this problem, in a way that is a natural, direct, and ?micro-founded? extension of the standard monetary theory is the first major contribution of the collection. The second major contribution is the extension of the neoclassical monetary models, using this solution, to reinvigorate classic issues of monetary economics and take them to the frontier.

Social Welfare Spending: Accounting for Changes from 1950 to 1978

This book focuses on the construction of the economic policies of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and its institutions. It reviews the faltering economic performance of the EMU countries before and after the onset of the financial crisis. It exposes the shortcomings and design faults of the EMU project on fiscal and monetary policies under the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) and now the 'fiscal compact'. It critically examines the labour market agenda of the EMU and argues for avoidance of the neo-liberal employment policies being advocated. It proposes an alternative policy agenda for a sustainable currency union, and asks whether a currency union can be sustained without de facto political union.

This text contains papers addressing the major problems and possible reforms in the international monetary and financial system from the perspective of developing countries. Among the issues addressed are global macroeconomic management, international liquidity, volatile private capital flows, structural adjustment, governance in the IMF and World Bank, the role of the regional development banks, and the potential for developing country co-operation.

This book studies interactions between monetary and wage policies in the Euro area, closely reviewing and discussing the process of policy competition and the structure of policy cooperation. On policy competition, the book focuses on competition between the European central bank, the American central bank, the German labour union, and the French labour union. As to policy cooperation, the focus is on the same institutions. Includes numerical simulations and solutions.

This volume explores the measurement of economic and social progress in our societies, and proposes new frameworks to integrate economic dimensions with other aspects of human well-being. Leading economists analyse the light that the recent crisis has shed on the global economic architecture, and the policies needed to address these systemic risks.

In recent decades, the financial markets have experienced various crises, shocks and disruptive events, driving high levels of volatility. This volatility is too strong to be fully justified simply by changes in fundamentals. This volume discusses these highly relevant issues with special focus on asset pricing and behavioral finance. Financial price assets of the 2020s appear to be driven by various attractors in addition to fundamentals, and there is no doubt that investor emotions, market sentiment, the news, and external factors such as uncertainty all play a key role. This has been clearly observed in recent years, especially during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic that has changed the common perception of the way financial markets work.

The recent financial crisis has troubled the US, Europe, and beyond, and is indicative of the integrated world in which we live. Today, transactions take place with the use of foreign currencies, and their values affect the nations' economies and their citizens' welfare. Exchange Rates and International Financial Economics provides readers with the historic, theoretical, and practical knowledge of these relative prices among currencies. While much of the previous work on the topic has been simply descriptive or theoretical, Kallianiotis gives a unique and intimate understanding of international exchange rates and their place in an increasingly globalized world.

The aim of this volume is to provide deep insights and the latest scientific developments and trends in experimental economics. Derived from the 2015 Computational Methods in Experimental Economics (CMEE) conference, this book features papers containing research and analysis of economic experiments concerning research in such areas as management science, decision theory, game theory, marketing and political science. The goal is to present possibilities for using various computer methods in the scope of experimental economics to further provide researchers with a wide variety of tools. The field of experimental economics is rapidly evolving. Modern use of experimental economics requires the integration of knowledge in the domains of economic sciences, computer science, psychology, and neuroscience. Recent research includes experiments conducted both in the laboratory and in the field, and the results are used for testing and a better understanding of economic theories. Researchers working in this field use mainly a set of well-established methods and computer tools that support the experiments. Methods such as artificial intelligence, computer simulation and computer graphics, however, are not represented enough in experimental economics studies and most experimenters do not consider their usage. The goal of the conference and the enclosed papers is to allow for an exchange of experiences and to promote joint initiatives to insight change in this trend.

Monetary Policy in a Converging Europe covers the most important monetary issues in the transition towards an Economic and Monetary Union in Europe, containing contributions from renowned experts in relevant research and policy areas. Among other things, the contributions discuss the scope for inflation targeting, monetary interdependencies within the core' ERM countries, money demand within the European Union, the difference between the monetary transmission mechanisms in the various European countries, and the preferred exchange rate policy in Stage Two of EMU. The book provides an excellent overview of current issues for anyone interested in monetary policy in a converging Europe.