This book focuses on the contribution of Information Technology (IT) and Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES) in shaping the current and future global economic scenario, with a special focus on Asia, and taking into account the three broad macroeconomic dimensions - growth, sustainability and governance mechanisms. The last two decades have witnessed a structural shift in the world economy due to the tremendous growth in gross domestic product share for the service sector; in fact, service has emerged as the dominant sector and the main driver of GDP growth. This is mainly attributable to the spectacular success of the IT sector in the new knowledge economy. Tradability, technology and transportability - the three T's - govern productivity growth in today's services. Growing Asian economies such as India, China and Vietnam, using their demographic advantages, have been reaping the benefits of this boom. The book's content focuses on recent debates and discussions concerning the issue of long-term sustainability and governance, especially in India, as these companies are facing continuous challenges in terms of international competition, salary inflation, health hazards, scarcity of talent, employee attrition, security concerns, global slowdown and many other technology-related issues. The book further highlights how the increased application of IT-based products and services is resulting in harsh inequalities concerning income distribution in many developing countries of Asia, mainly because of its labor shedding nature, and hence might be detrimental to sustainable development, if suitable policy measures are not implemented to counter these effects. The book provides a wealth of information for researchers, graduate students and political scientists alike, as well as thought-provoking insights for social scientists, policymakers and government officials. It also offers a valuable source of data for business and management professionals, and for members of Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

Drawing on behavioural, experimental and neoclassical economics, this volume brings together eminent academics and practitioners to provide working macroeconomic models and explore the social norms governing a post-crisis financial world.

This book is about China's economy transformation. Currently, China's macro-leverage ratio has been effectively controlled, the central market interest rate (one year fixed interest rate) has gone down, and liquidity is now relatively abundant. However, financial institutions are generally reluctant to lend, the local governments are unwilling to act, and the fact that liquidity released by the central bank cannot be effectively transmitted to the real economy is leading to a contraction of credit and higher financing costs for private enterprises. Meanwhile, the downturn in the internal economic cycle has been exacerbated by the external shocks caused by frictions in Sino-US trade, and this set of circumstances has contributed to the polarization of expectations regarding China's real economic prospects and policy trends, as seen, for example, in the questions and discussions about policy trends relevant to the private economy. Indeed, one might claim that the current confusion of expectations even exceeds that of 2008, when the international financial crisis breaks out. From a dialectical perspective, the more pessimistic expectation of economic trend, the easier it is to build consensus on reform, and the more remarkable actual effects of reform, which must be based on a comprehensive understanding of the phased characteristics of China's economic development. In this book, based on the experience working in central bank of China, the author argues that China's policy should focus on internal demand. In the coming period, China needs to persevere in the market orientation, step up reform and opening up, and create a favorable business environment. This book represents the following opinions: First, to reach a common understanding of the medium and high economic growth, and avoid the dream of high growth. Second, to stick to supply-side structural reform, accelerate economic transformation and structural adjustment, and further unleash the reform dividends and growth potential. The long-term and structural problems cannot be attributed to short-term and cyclical problems. Third, the challenges of external shocks could be also regarded as opportunities, which include but not limited to accelerate reform to improve property rights protection, state-owned capital management, corporate governance, income distribution, and social security. Fourth, whenever the trade friction happens, a multilateral framework is always helpful.

This book provides an investor-friendly presentation of the premises and applications of the quantitative finance models governing investment in one asset class of publicly traded stocks, specifically real estate investment trusts (REITs). The models provide highly advanced analytics for REIT investment, including: portfolio optimization using both historic and predictive return estimation; model backtesting; a complete spectrum of risk assessment and management tools with an emphasis on early warning systems, risk budgeting, estimating tail risk, and factor analysis; derivative valuation; and incorporating ESG ratings into REIT investment. These quantitative finance models are presented in a unified framework consistent with dynamic asset pricing (rational finance). Given its scope and practical orientation, this book will appeal to investors interested in portfolio optimization and innovative tools for investment risk assessment.

Approximately two years ago, the Guido Carli Association charged a group of distinguished economists with studying various aspects of the international monetary system and proposing ways to improve it. The studies were presented at a conference in Florence, Italy, on June 19, 1998 and their edited versions are published in this volume. Ideas for the Future of the International Monetary System consists of two parts: Part I contains the studies commissioned by the Carli Association - those by Dominick Salvatore; Koichi Hamada; Forrest Capie; Michele Fratianni, Andreas Hauskrecht and Aurelio Maccario; Jurgen von Hagen and Ingo Fender, Michael Artis, Marion Kohler and Jacques Melitz; Barry Eichengreen; Michele Fratianni and Andreas Hauskrecht; Paolo Savona and Aurelio Maccario; and Elvio Dal Bosco - and the comments by Paul De Grauwe and William Branson, and the editors' conclusions. Part II contains three papers presented at the Florence conference, by Antonio Fazio, Carl Scognamiglio, and Alberto Predieri.

The book is the first pioneering study to assess the impacts of the megaconferences on water policies, programmes and projects at global, regional and national levels. The results are bleak. The evaluation indicated that except for the UN Water Conference, held in Argentina in 1977, the impacts of the subsequent megaconferences have been at best marginal in terms of knowledge generation and synthesis, poverty alleviation, and/or environmental conservation.

Monetary Theory and Monetary Policy is the second collection of essays by Karl Brunner - one of the most prominent monetary economists of the twentieth century. It demonstrates the importance of economic analysis for the development of appropriate economic policies. The book opens with a preface by Thomas Lys which provides the reader with an account of both Karl Brunner's personal and academic life. This is developed further in an introduction by Allan H. Meltzer, who focuses on Brunner's intellectual development. Issues discussed in this collection include the question of whether monetarism has failed, monetary policy, persistent inflation, deficits and interest rates, high-powered money, the monetary base, the money supply, international monetary order and the question of whether supply-side economics is sufficient for comprehensive policymaking. This selection will be welcomed by academics, students and policymakers interested in monetary economics and the work of Karl Brunner.

The growing disparity between the developed and the developing countries has once again rekindled the debate about the relative merits of foreign investment as means whereby the developed countries can help the devel oping countries in both achieving a reasonable rate of growth and also from preventing the widening gap between the North and the South from widening even further. This renewed interest in the debate was most sharply highlighted at the recently concluded North-South economic summit conference at Cancun, Mexico. There, the United States took the position that massive increases in foreign aid were neither practical nor the best means of ensuring continuing and satisfactory growth in the developing countries. Rather the solution was to be found in depending on a free market economy and on inflows of private foreign investment. Behind these views, of course lie the more fundamental questions: for example, what should be the role of multinational corporations in the developing countries since they constitute the main source of foreign private investment? Should there be greater cooperation between the public sectors of the North and the South? What is the best means of bridging the economic gap between the North and the South: through direct transfers of wealth from the North to the South or through raising South's growth rates via the transfer of technology and the inflow of investment by multinationals? These questions are of fundamental importance and have wide ranging implications, not only for the economic"

The European M:: metary System (EMS) is perhaps the only success story of the Common Market since the First Enlargement. Its success, particul arly where the comnercial use of the ECU is concerned, has taken rrost experts by surprise. So much so, that when the author tried to recommend to his students a suitable and substantial work of study and/or reference about the experience of the EMS and its possible future evolution --- no book could be found. Thus, the author set out to write the present work. The author's aim is not to give a historical account of the EHS. Rather, the intention is to place the experience in a major historical context wherein the System is seen an important transitional phase on the road to the implementation of a full economic and rronetary union (EMU) When examining the earlier plans for an EMU which saw the light of day between 1969 and 1970 (already so long ago ) clear reasons emerge why the original six founder Member States of the EEC should have found it logical to embark upon the road to an El'1U - "p=vided the political will to do so existed." Thus, they had become highly integrated and were conducting half their trade with each other. Then, there was the desire to integrate still further ---- eventually leading (perhaps) to a political union."

Real exchange rate changes - resulting either from shifts in nominal exchange rates or increases in costs that are asymmetric across countries - are the primary focus of this text. The book shows how exchange rates and local production costs are passed through into import prices. It is found both analytically and empirically for OECD countries that pass-through is incomplete and the degree of pass-through depends on country and industry characteristics such as production share, market structure, product attributes and demand features. The book also investigates the implications of exchange rate changes for profits, investment and the entry/exit decisions of firms. The main finding is that even though the exchange rate changes have a limited impact on price competitiveness, they do matter for location and investment decisions.

We are now witness to the waning years of the 1900s. Soon, we shall embark upon a bold journey into the uncharted territory of the twenty-first of various persuasions have speculated as to what the century. Futurists oncoming decades might bestow upon us. Not surprising, most predictions are closely tied to advances in technology, especially in astrophysiCS, biochemistry, electronics, and genetics. But what about the economic system? Whatever happens, forces have undoubtedly already been set in motion which will mold (or remold) the structure and character of American capitalism. American capitalism has been, is, and will undoubtedly continue to be a system in transition. Technology perennially changes, albeit at a faster or slower pace sometimes than others, and society's institutions continually adjust to these technological changes. Such adjustments alter the character of our politico-economic system when statutes are enacted, court decisions rendered, administrative agency rules promulgated, and cultural mores realigned to supplant old ones. Other adaptations are brought about when small-group collective action is successful in causing a special status of privilege to be conferred on some members of society, but restrictions to be levied on others.

This volume contains classic essays on economic policy written by one of its great exponents. The opening essay traces the author's evolving structures of thought about economics and the policy proposals that came from them over this period. Section 2 contains essays that set the background to the policy recommendations. In section 3 the role of investment incentives is analyzed. Section 4 is concerned with the influence of accounting conventions on private decision-making and government policy in both capitalist and planned economies. Section 5 contains a number of package deals, all designed to fit within the constraint of the philosophy of governments in power. The last section, general essays, ranges from a scheme for the payment of prisoners to the celebration of the views on policy of great economists, from Colin Clark, through Nicky Kaldor to John Cornwall.

John Grieve Smith traces the origins of postwar full employment policies in the experience of the interwar years and the work of Keynes and Beveridge. He reviews the successful achievement of full employment after the war and its subsequent abandonment as the Keynesian consensus gave way to the new, monetarist-inspired, orthodoxy. The book puts forward alternative proposals for expansionary policies, and for international financial reform. It is written throughout in terms accessible to both the layperson and the expert.

This text addresses the concerns of human rights in developing nations, reviews research, and suggests solutions for the problems. It is divided into three parts. The first section of the book presents an overview, in terms of the history of political terror in the developing world in the years 1980-1991 and also in examining the very term "human rights." The papers in Part II present different ways of looking at, conceptualizing and measuring human rights policies, practices or conditions. This is followed by an assessment of exactly why there are differences in human rights policies, practices and conditions in developing countries. The final chapter in this section reports the results of a study showing that good human rights practices in developing countries are promoted by the presence of democratic institutions.

Peterson, Albaum, and Kozmetsky have systematically and formally documented here the American public's understanding of, attitudes toward, and perceptions regarding capitalism in the 1980s, and in so doing, have provided the first book to focus expressly on capitalism through empirical survey research. This work is based on a decade of empirical investigations and attempts to provide an accurate perspective that is devoid of the authors' personal views.

The data for the studies reported in the book were derived from questionnaires administered to more than 10,000 individuals--comprising national samples of the general public, newspaper editors, and college students. Information was collected by telephone or mail interviews, and participants were queried about various facets of capitalism. In analyzing the data, the authors have integrated disparate research to provide a comprehensive portrait of the public's view of capitalism at the beginning and the end of the 1980s. Following an introductory chapter, the presentation of their findings falls into four primary subject areas: defining capitalism, attitudes toward capitalism, perceptions of capitalism and business, and changes in attitudes toward capitalism. A final chapter summarizes the conclusions. In identifying a heretofore unknown public mind-set, this study will be a valuable reference tool for courses and professionals in corporate communications, management, and business and government, as well as an important addition to public and academic libraries.

John Mills provides a critical survey of the way economics has developed. He argues that the main goal of economics ought to be to show how to achieve a combination of economic growth, full employment, low inflation, avoidance of extreme poverty, and sustainability. That it has failed to do so is neither inevitable nor accidental. It has failed because of a combination of intellectual error and the effects of social and political pressure, which Mills claims could and should have been avoided.

In characterising the Japanese way of business, Professor Okumura has made one of the most significant contributions to the study of economics. Following his study of the conversion of pre-war zaibatsu to post-war groups of enterprises, he worked on the roll of comprehensive trading companies in these groups, the main banking system and the permanent employment system. - However, he is very critical of this way of business, whereas those influenced by him are enthusiastic in its appreciation. - This is the first English translation of his work.

This valuable book contributes substantively to the current state-of-the-art of macroeconomics. It provides a method for building models in which business cycles and economic growth emerge from the interactions of a large number of heterogeneous agents. Drawing from recent advances in agent-based computational modeling, the authors show how insights from dispersed fields can be fruitfully combined to improve our understanding of macroeconomic dynamics.

The Federal Reserve Bank held its Eleventh Annual Economic Policy Conference on November 14 and 15, 1986. The topic of the conference was Financial Risk: Theory, Evidence and Implications; this volume contains the papers and discussants' comments that were presented at this conference. As the reader will note, these papers cover the broad aspects of financial risk, from some key general concepts to specific domestic and international financial risk problems. And, of equal importance, they provide some interesting insights into reasons for the continuing turmoil in domestic and international financial markets that we have witnessed in recent years. ix I RISK: A GENERAL OVERVIEW 1 DIFFERENCES OF OPINION IN FINANCIAL MARKETS Hal R. Varian The standard models of financial markets such as the Sharpe-Lintner mean- variance model or the Rubinstein-Breeden-Litzenberger contingent con- sumption model both assume more-or-Iess homogenous probability beliefs.! There has been some work on extending the mean-variance model to allow for differences in beliefs across agents; see Jarrow (1980), Lintner (1969), Mayshar (1983), and Williams (1977). Differences in beliefs in contingent commodities models have received much less attention. The major references are Rubinstein (1975, 1976a), Breeden and Litzenberger (1978), Hakansson et al. (1982), and Milgrom and Stokey (1982).

The author provides a clear portrait of the dramatic transformation of the global financial system in the late 20th century. Drawing on work by a prestigious and interdisciplinary set of specialists, this volume looks at the political economy of individual sectors of the financial services industry, at regional market patterns such as the EU and NAFTA, and at individual countries from the Asian NICs to Europe and the United States. The book captures the complexity and dynamics of a sector with vital implications for the future of global economic development.

These proceedings, from a conference held at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis on October 17-18, 1991, attempted to layout what we currently know about aggregate economic fluctuations. Identifying what we know inevitably reveals what we do not know about such fluctuations as well. From the vantage point of where the conference's participants view our current understanding to be, these proceedings can be seen as suggesting an agenda for further research. The conference was divided into five sections. It began with the formu lation of an empirical definition of the "business cycle" and a recitation of the stylized facts that must be explained by any theory that purports to capture the business cycle's essence. After outlining the historical develop ment and key features of the current "theories" of business cycles, the conference evaluated these theories on the basis of their ability to explain the facts. Included in this evaluation was a discussion of whether (and how) the competing theories could be distinguished empirically. The conference then examined the implications for policy of what is known and not known about business cycles. A panel discussion closed the conference, high lighting important unresolved theoretical and empirical issues that should be taken up in future business cycle research. What Is a Business Cycle? Before gaining a genuine understanding of business cycles, economists must agree and be clear about what they mean when they refer to the cycle."

The breakup of the USSR created a Central Asian security complex or sphere of influence consisting of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, this security complex has tended to distance itself from a Russian-centered approach to foreign relations, has rejected involvement with a Turkey-oriented sphere of influence, and has shifted toward an Iran-oriented security complex. A major reason for these developments has been the activities of the three rival powers-Iran, Turkey, and Russia. As Peimani explains, these states have strong long-term interests in the region; earlier rivalries, which were dormant under Soviet rule, have reawakened since the breakup of the USSR. While Russia attempts to reincorporate Central Asia into its security complex, Iran and Turkey seek to include it in their spheres of influence. The rivalry among these states will largely determine the future development of the region and the individual states.

Occupational licensure, including regulation of the professions, dates back to the medieval period. While the guilds that performed this regulatory function have long since vanished, professional regulation continues to this day. For instance, in the United States, 22 per cent of American workers must hold licenses simply to do their jobs. While long-established professions have more settled regulatory paradigms, the case studies in Paradoxes of Professional Regulation explore other professions, taking note of incompetent services and the serious risks they pose to the physical, mental, or emotional health, financial well-being, or legal status of uninformed consumers. Michael J. Trebilcock examines five case studies of the regulation of diverse professions, including alternative medicine, mental health care provision, financial planning, immigration consulting, and legal services. Noting the widely divergent approaches to the regulation of the same professions across different jurisdictions - paradoxes of professional regulation - the book is an attempt to develop a set of regulatory principles for the future. In its comparative approach, Paradoxes of Professional Regulation gets at the heart of the tensions influencing the regulatory landscape, and works toward practical lessons for bringing greater coherence to the way in which professions are regulated.

Rewarding is Campagna's broad-sweep analysis of US macroeconomic policy under the several political regimes since WW I, evaluating whether these policies were justified, successful, and rational. Impressive historical scholarship brings alive the views and personalities of the times and provides immense detail concerning economic settings and problems of each period. Choice This book examines the various economic problems of the past 70 years and critically evaluates what has been done to solve them. Claiming that previous macroeconomic policies have not been successful largely because of political problems, the book presents a cogent argument for the need for new institutions to conduct rational policies in the future.