While research evaluation has achieved particular significance in the United Kingdom, there is growing interest and activity in this area among Scandanavian countries. Funded by the Swedish Council for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences, this book is a product of the increasing recognition of the importance of evaluations. The principal aim of "Economics of Sweden" is to locate Swedish economic research in an international setting and from there, to identify the strengths and weaknesses of Swedish economics. Throughout, an effort has been made to relate to recent work on evaluation by developing a theoretical foundation for assessing the future of Swedish economic research. The authors have achieved this by maintaining close two-way contact with the profession and by combining different empirical methods. This has taken the form of continuous interaction with the economics profession in seminars and on site visits to various economics departments. Although the study is focused on Sweden the analysis should also be relevant to several other countries, particularly the other Nordic countries, Canada, Australia and Israel.

In contemporary shopping sites new modes of subjectivity, inter-personal relationships and models of social totality are being "tried on", "taken off" and "displayed" in much the same way that one might shop for clothes. These are not the modernist spaces of goal-directed individuals and utopian projects. Rather it is a space of carnivalesque inversions of the present order of things. The multiple masks of the postmodern person "who wears many hats" in different groups and surroundings form a veritable "dramatis personae". In such masks of the individual and the social world may be found a new spatialization and new intuitive perceptions of time and space. This representation of contemporary social life grows out of the work of Henri Lefebvre, Michel Maffesoli, Walter Benjamin and Mikhail Bakhtin. It is an attempt to take seriously the idea that we live in a postmodern consumer culture and to follow through the implications and possibilities of this idea. Cases are drawn from Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan and Singapore to illustrate the new intersections between people, mass culture and consumption.

The papers in this volume were presented in Budapest at the 20th Colloquium of the SociA(c)tA(c) Universitaire EuropA(c)enne de Recherches FinanciA]res (SUERF), arranged in association with the Robert Triffin-SzirAk Foundation. Each paper deals with a different aspect of the characteristics of and trends in corporate governance. The three main topics are: Corporate governance of financial institutions; Corporate governance as exerted by financial institutions; Financial instutions as participants in the transfer of corporate governance. A/LISTA The structure of financial markets and institutions has a significant impact on the ways in which the power to manage corporate resources is allocated. The relative roles of different types of owners and the legal framework within which they operate are currently in a state of flux throughout Europe. Financial integration in the European Union, the transition to open market economies in Central and Eastern Europe and privatization, have a profound effect on the behaviour and influence of different enterprises. This collection of papers demonstrates the range of aspects of corporate governance in a world characterized by rapid technological, political and institutional change which is currently concerning researchers and practitioners. The authors come from a wide number of countries and disciplines, and include people from leading banks and corporations, public officials and academics, providing different perspectives on corporate governance, financial markets and global convergence in eastern and western Europe. Their contributions will be of considerable interest to academics in the fields of finance and banking, monetary economics andmacro-economics, and also to professionals in banks, securities houses, corporate treasuries, pension funds, consultancies, law firms, central banks and regulatory bodies.

How successful is PPP, and its extension in the monetary model, as a measure of the equilibrium exchange rate? What are the determinants and dynamics of equilibrium real exchange rates? How can misalignments be measured, and what are their causes? What are the effects of specific policies upon the equilibrium exchange rate? The answers to these questions are important to academic theorists, policymakers, international bankers and investment fund managers. This volume encompasses all of the competing views of equilibrium exchange rate determination, from PPP, through other reduced form models, to the macroeconomic balance approach. This volume is essentially empirical: what do we know about exchange rates? The different econometric and theoretical approaches taken by the various authors in this volume lead to mutually consistent conclusions. This consistency gives us confidence that significant progress has been made in understanding what are the fundamental determinants of exchange rates and what are the forces operating to bring them back in line with the fundamentals.

This carefully edited selection of Robert Eisner's essays ties together his authoritative contributions to economic analysis and macroeconomic policy issues, particularly business, investment and tax policy. He offers a trenchant analysis of the fundamental issues of employment, investment and economic welfare in an advanced market economy, offering a challenge to the conventional wisdom on macroeconomic theory and policy.Professor Eisner first examines the determinants of business investment and criticizes neoclassical theories on investment. He goes on to assess the role of tax incentives in investment and finds that tax policy is a flawed way of attempting to encourage investment. He also analyses national income accounting and offers some alternative measurements for calculating national product. Professor Eisner then examines the implications of war for the economy and explores the macroeconomic consequences of disarmament including its possible effects on unemployment. Lastly, he addresses the conflict between economic policy and principle; particularly concerning the environment, insurance and the theory of choice, academic freedom and the elderly.

The text is the first of its kind on financial engineering and risk management in Islamic finance. It sets out detailed guidelines for financial engineering from an Islamic perspective. The text also presents some practical issues concerning futures contracts and how these can be handled from an Islamic perspective. It brings out the different points of view in this respect and reflects the current state of knowledge as well as the challenges that lie ahead for financial engineers. The text explores the prospects of some Islamic contracts having similarity with commodity futures; forward contracts, especially in agriculture; and Islamic permissible contractual arrangements for resource mobilization by the public sector. It also makes an analytical comparison between debt and equity contracts with regard to incentive compatibility and efficiency.

Under the rule of the current economic order, social injustice is ever-increasing. Issues such as poverty, inhumane working conditions, inadequate wages, social insecurity and an unhealthy labor market continue to persist. Many states are also unable to produce policies capable of resolving these problems. The characteristics of the capitalist system currently render it unable to provide social justice. In fact, on the contrary, the system reinforces these injustices and prevents economic and social welfare from reaching the masses. Many Muslim scholars have analyzed and, indeed, criticized this system for years. This book argues that an alternative and more equitable theoretical and practical economical order can been developed within the framework of Islamic principles. On the other hand, the experiences of societies under the rule of Muslim governments do not always seem to hold great promise for an alternative understanding of social justice. In addition, the behaviors of Muslim individuals within their economic lives are mostly shaped by the necessities of daily economic conditions rather than by the tenets of Islam that stand with social justice. Until 1990s, studies of Islamic economics made connections between finance and the notion of social justice, but work conducted more recently has neglected this issue. It is therefore evident that the topic of social justice needs to be revisited in a more in-depth manner. Filling an important gap in existing literature, the book uniquely connects social justice and Islamic finance and economics on this topic. Theory, practice and key issues are presented simultaneously throughout this book, which is based on the writings of a number of eminent scholars.

In a unique survey, based on new census data, "Geographic Perspectives on Soviet Central Asia" highlights the region's geographic, economic and ecological problems since 1945. Painting a grim picture, this book investigates how the combination of rapid population growth and declining per capita investment is causing economic conditions to slide in rural areas and encouraging an ecological catastrophe. The authors discuss the effects of low rural out-migration, and show that at current growth rates the rural working-age population will double with each generation. Unprecedented in a developed country, this is causing the region to become more rather than less rural. Soviet Central Asia is an area of low productivity, and the book considers the lack of support from Soviet central government to the region. Wishing to maximize their return to capital and labour, the government is concentrating its investment in the European West and directing insufficient funds for a growing workforce in Central Asia. Soviet Central Asia also faces grave ecological problems; the declining level of the Aral Sea, extensive soil salinization and water pollution. This book should be of interest to undergra

This collection of essays presents insight and methodology that are highly relevant for readers today as they consider the future of the world they live in. Experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic, people have realized how fragile the current economy is and the necessity for reconstructing the socio-economic system. That system, which was considered the default for so long, was succeeded by the analytical framework of economics and regional science. The contents of this book are diversified, as are the achievements of Prof. Yasuhiro Sakai, to whom this volume is dedicated, and cover a wide area from mathematical and experimental economics to conventional and emerging fields of regional science. Some are timeless topics that have had new life breathed into them. Part I deals with, among other areas, risk management with uncertain events; the effectiveness and impacts of regulation and friction related to trading; the stability of strategic behavior and market equilibrium; and sustainable regional development and urban planning from the long-term perspective. Part II also presents a diversity of subjects, including input-output analysis and computable general equilibrium (CGE) modelling for internal as well as external structure and network linkage, such as a value chain; openness and creativity as related to competition among cities and regions; dispersion versus concentration; and inequality versus equality.

This book discusses the economic interaction and interdependence that has arisen amongst nations in the contemporary world economy, the nature and significance of the pattern of trade balances that have resulted from them and the question of what, if anything, should be done by national governments about that pattern. The need for international coordination of economic policies is also investigated.

This book looks at East Asia's monetary and financial integration from both Asian and European perspectives. It analyzes the Euro area's framework for monetary policy implementation, introduced in 1999. It reviews the efforts to foster regional monetary and financial integration and relates them to Europe's own evolution. It highlights successes and failures in both cases and offers a careful assessment of the state of play. A central theme of the volume is that the East Asian reliance on markets is not enough to promote the kind of deep integration that Europe has achieved and that provides protection against exchange rate turbulence. The implications of the recent global crisis are also examined.
Written by two of the foremost monetary experts on Asia and Europe, this book will be an invaluable aid to students and academics interested in the relevance of the European experience to the debates about monetary integration in East Asia.

The United Nations is in a time of major crisis in the history of the organization. The product of many leading scholars on both sides of the Atlantic, this work examines whether out of the crisis of mulitlateralism engulfing the organization in the late 1980s there could arise a renewed and strengthened global body. Pursuing the theme of the dynamics of international cooperation, thirteen authors look at three principal issue-areas: the principal UN organs, leading economic subjects, and leading social subjects. Two distinguished American scholars provide concluding commentaries. Running throughout the book is an emphasis on the economic dimension to international politics.

Banking in Transition Economies is a modern analysis of banking in the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe and includes a detailed examination of banking in the first five years of transition as well as policy recommendations for banking reform in the region. This authoritative book presents an extensive investigation of changes in the structure of the banking industry and the progress of privatization, particularly in Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic. Privatization and the restructuring of 'problem banks' are analysed as well as the strategy for re-capitalization and bank failure, and the role of foreign banks in bringing reform to the region. The book offers policy prescriptions for the transition from a passive banking structure to an active financial sector supporting the development of the industrial sector, and for the role of the state after privatization. This book will be of great importance to bankers in Central and Eastern Europe and economists interested in the process of transition, as well as financial and monetary economists.

This book deals with analysis of international finance and trade using a global macroeconomic model focused on Africa. Historical, econometric, as well as general and partial equilibrium analyses are creatively used both to explore finance and trade related issues in Africa, and to model the pattern that emerges from such exploration. The model developed is used for analysis of external shocks and domestic policy responses.

Societies, whether traditional or modern, experience tension between spontaneity (individual freedom) and control (regulation). Consequently, economies as a subsystem of society experience it too. More specifically, they experience a tension between economic individualism and economic collectivism, which in modern economies revolves around the role of the state in the economy. Since the collapse of communism, this tension has manifested itself not as a tension between market capitalism and command socialism but as a tension between the free market and the interventionist variants of market capitalism. Although currently economic and political liberalization is in evidence worldwide, not only in post-communist societies, its outcome remains uncertain. Liberal democracy in the sense of democratic politics and free-market economics has not triumphed hitherto, and also its future is far from assured. The end of history is not in sight.

Growth patterns have changed radically over the last two decades, to which capital and the labour markets appear to have failed to adapt. Unemployment in Europe has been growing, almost without remission, to levels unseen since the Great Depression. These facts are somewhat at odds with the development of growth theory which has mainly been orientated towards an equilibrium full employment framework. The main message of equilibrium theory of fluctuations was precisely that the policy maker is impotent. Now, with the universal acceptance of endogenous growth theory, the common concensus proposition would be `we are all neo-classical for the short run and Keynesian for the long run' (investment being too important for growth to be left entirely in private hands).

Presented to Margaret Hall by her friends and associates who have known her at Oxford University, this book addresses some of the major issues associated with competition in theory and practice. The main feature of the book is a piece on privatization by a Nobel prize winner in economics. Among other essays, Paul Samuelson considers the theoretical underpinning of privatizing state assets. Mary Gregory ponders on the possibility of co-operation rather than competition between employer and worker and whether incomes policies are likely to feature on a medium-term political agenda.

The book discusses contemporary issues such as global financial architecture and regulatory practices, trade, investment and the multilateral process, the future of work, the role of technology for adaptation and mitigation of climate change, and financing infrastructure for sustainable development. With increasing global connectivity, events in one part of the world immediately affect or spread to the other parts. In this context, G20 has proved to be an effective forum, particularly after the Asian financial crises. Furthermore, over recent decades, G20 has been instrumental in managing financial crises and international conflicts by deploying global cooperation as a functional tool. As a body responding to crises, the G20 has played a central role in providing the political momentum for the strong international cooperation that ensured greater policy coherence and helped ease situations that could otherwise have been decidedly worse. The G20's agendas have encompassed short-term but critical issues of economic recovery, the sovereign crisis of Europe, high unemployment and financial sector regulation. But since moderate stabilization in the global economic environment, the focus of the group has also embraced long-term areas of governance and development. For emerging economies, such as India, the G20 has been an important platform framework to promote an inclusive global economic architecture that seeks to achieve equitable outcomes. This book reviews the past 20 years of the G20, since it was conceptualized as a replacement for the G-7. While issues such as global financial order have been a constant area of discussion, one of the failures has been not recognizing and acknowledging the importance of issues like trade, climate change and future of work. Featuring academic papers by experts in the area, this book provides a platform for the necessary discourse on these issues.

This book explores the causes of rising income inequality within industrialised, developing, and emerging economies. The development of finance capitalism over the last 40 years is charted to highlight how the neoliberal restructuring of national and global economies has driven income inequality. With case studies from the USA, South Korea, Argentina, and Sweden, a comparative analysis is presented to reveal how financialisation facilitates uneven capital accumulation and generates conditions that increase income inequality. This book aims to outline an analytical framework for a financialisation-induced income inequality nexus. It will be relevant to students and researchers interested in the political economy and financial economics.

All specialist economics students, plus students taking a non-specialist module, and social science students taking an economics module will need this book.

Nowhere is the historic global transformation creating a new international context more striking than in East and South Asia. Leading specialists here discuss key economic and political changes within the region, and the impact of the Asian economic miracle on global politics and international relations. Prospects for growth, democracy and security are investigated in depth as well as their implications for other powers in the post cold-war world.

These conference proceedings bring together 12 new essays on a variety of key issues in the field of domestic and international monetary economics. They cover aspects of monetary theory as well as monetary policy, the prime objective being the development of intellectual tools in order to find new ways of thinking to existing and new monetary problems in an increasingly unstable world economy marked by rapid and often unexpected changes, partly caused by the disappearance of boundaries for financial transactions.;The papers cover a wide range of topics aimed at meeting some of the challenges likely to arise during the late-20th century and beyond. By challenging the orthodox paradigms in monetary economics and generating controversy, the volume should be a reference point for economists, central and commercial bankers, businessmen and politicians. Other titles by Stephen F. Frowen include "Controlling Industrial Economies", "Monetary Policy and Financial Innovations in Five Industrial Countries" and "Unknowledge and Choice in Economics".

This timely research review analyses a broad selection of important readings from the existing literature addressing several fundamental questions about recessions. These include what a recession is, the causes and effects of recessions, how to identify and predict recessions, and how to manage the associated risks. The review offers a general overview of the subject, detailed analysis of the readings, discussion of policy implications and acknowledgment of the areas where further research is required, proving itself to be an invaluable source of reference for academics, scholars and practitioners alike.