The 8th volumes of Research in Asian Economic Studies focuses on topics such as "The new Industrial revolution in Asian economies"

This book is based on the conference "EMU and the Outside World," held at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), December 11, 1998. The conference was organized by the Swiss Institute for Business Cycle Research (KOF), which is supported jointly by the ETH and the Swiss Society for Business Cycle Research (SGK), an organization comprising representatives from private industry, the Swiss National Bank and public authorities. On the eve of the final stage of European Economic and Mone tary Union (EMU), Zurich seemed to be a particularly appropriate place for such a conference. On the one hand, given its location and economic and financial links with the euro area, Switzerland is one of the "outside coun tries" most affected by EMU. On the other hand, it was nowhere else than in Zurich where the vision of "a United States of Europe" was expressed for the first time by Winston Churchill in his speech on September 19, 1946. For many EMU is a step in that direction, whether welcome or not. Most of the papers appearing in this volume were presented at the con ference and have been revised and updated. Three contributions, chapter 11- 13, were commissioned specially for this publication. Besides the authors of the chapters, special thanks are due to Guido Boller, Robert McCauley, Umberto Schwarz, and Charles Wyplosz."

This volume focuses on the interaction between business, the environment, government regulators and technology, describing the greening of industry in the USA, Japan and the EU and the way in which environmental management is being applied. Following a review of the essential role that financial institutions have to play in this field, the book concludes with an examination of the way in which the regulators are also having to change in order to meet the dual challenge of environmental improvement and the drive for increased industrial competitiveness.

This is an applications-oriented text that demystifies the linkages between monetary and fiscal policies and key macroeconomic variables such as income, unemployment, inflation and interest rates. Specially written "newspaper" articles simulate current macroeconomic news on asset-price bubbles, exchange rates, hyperinflation and more. Exercises and diagrams, and a global perspective - incorporating both developed and emerging economies - make this a broadly useful, real-world oriented text on a complex and shifting subject.

This book presents theoretical and empirical analyses of the new developments in exchange rate regimes in developing countries since the 1990s. It addresses a variety of exchange rate regimes from hard peg to floating and their impact in regions such as East Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe.

This book looks at the banking and finance industries in Italy and how these industries contribute to the Italian economy. Could these industries be the solution to the contradiction in which the country's economy has been caught for several years? The economy is better governed than it has been in the past, but is not growing as much as it could. The book looks at how this solution might be achieved and what factors will govern the contribution of the banking and finance industries.

Why do governments prefer to limit themselves to a specific inflation target? Specialists and senior officials of the European Central bank, the OECD and national central banks look beyond inflation targeting as the goal of monetary policy. Among the contributing, Nobel Laureate Robert Mundell surveys the history and prospects of the sovereignty of the state over money, while Michael Bordo and Lars Jonung use data of 14 industrialized countries to show relationships between fiscal and monetary regimes.

This book reconstructs Keynesian macroeconomics so that it is compatible with the neoclassical dynamic microeconomic theory. This theory adopts three postulates: rational expectations, perfect price flexibility, and exclusion of the money in utility function (MIU). Based on the new theoretical finding that the Lucas model (1972) contains multiple equilibria, the author unifies Keynesian and monetarist theories within the same framework. The book applies the above basic theory to international macroeconomics and economic growth theory. New Keynesian theory contains logical inconsistencies: menu costs that have no close relationship with microeconomics and MIU, which implies that the money accumulated as wealth is never spent. These two assumptions do not proximate the real world. In this volume, the author discusses how various segregated theoretical approaches in macroeconomics relate to one another and proposes how to integrate them.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, China has been experiencing a dramatically rapid economic development. What is the real life of Chinese people like under China s steady GDP fast growth? How rich are the rich and how poor are the poor? This book provides first-hand data on standards of living in Chinese households, which may help to answer the above questions.The Survey and Research Center for China Household Finance conducted the first and only nationally representative survey on household finance in China in 2011. The China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) collected the micro-level information of Chinese households demographics, housing and financial assets, debt and credit constraints, income and expenditures, social welfare and insurance, intergenerational transfer payments, employment and payment habits.Readers will receive a vivid picture of wealth disparity, real estate market developments, social welfare status, household financial behaviors and other economic issues in today s China.

"The China Household Finance Survey has a guiding significance for a realistic strategy adjustment and is also a major breakthrough in the subject s development at universities.
"Li Daokui, Professor at Tsinghua University.

The China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) is an in-house interview survey with a large influence in China. The CHFS's sample includes both urban and rural households, which is very important to the study of the overall household finance of China. Hongbin Li, Economist, Professor of Tsinghua University.

"Research Report of China Household Finance Survey 2012 bridges a major gap in the household finance field in China, and will have far-reaching academic and policy-making implications.
"Liu Yuzhen, Professor at Peking University.

"

This unique book deals with the most serious macroeconomic failure experienced in the US in the post-war period and the great inflation of the late 1960s and 1970s. It is the first detailed analysis, using Federal Reserve documents, of the thinking behind the inflationary monetary policy during this period. The book examines documentary evidence, including minutes, memos and reports and interviews with people who were closely involved in making policy decisions, to explain the monetary policy that led to this inflation. Thomas Mayer considers forecasting errors and wage and price controls in his attempt to explain why the inflation occurred and places some of the blame on ineffective operating procedures, institutional inefficiencies, and political pressures on the Federal Reserve. The author concludes that much of the responsibility for the mistaken policies lies with academic economists who underestimated the dangers of inflation and encouraged the Federal Reserve to focus on an unattainable employment goal. Monetary Policy and the Great Inflation in the United States will be welcomed by economists, political scientists and economic historians interested in monetary policy.

Challenges in Economic and Financial Policy Formulation provides an introductory, yet comprehensive, treatment of macroeconomic policies and their implementation in an Islamic-designed economic system.

This work is the only economic history of Venezuela written in English. In it, Salazar-Carrillo provides estimates that have not been published previously on the Venezuelan economy in general, and the oil component in particular. Evolution of the oil industry in Venezuela is covered in detail and the concept of the retained value of oil expenditures and tnvestment is developed. Recent government policies and the performance of the Venezuelan economy are evaluated, and export-oriented strategies are considered. The appropriateness of these plans in fostering economic development is discussed.

Will China's growing economy outstrip the economic power of Japan and the advanced industrialized democracies of the West? No. For China to continue its phenomenal growth and develop sustainable comparative advantage, it needs to sustain a huge world market for its products and the technological and organizational capacity for innovation. According to Arayama and Mourdoukoutas, because China cannot secure these economic conditions, its role in the world economy will be limited to that of a mass producer of certain types of products. China's strength is its low-cost, mass-production capacity--but the lack of an ingrained capacity to innovate constrains China to transforming foreign innovations into lower-priced imitations. Arayama and Mourdoukoutas detail their argument carefully and precisely, in a well-written analysis that will be necessary reading for business decision makers and their academic colleagues, and for others who are seriously interested in the future of world business.

Understanding the process of shaping investor expectations is essential to describe and predict changes in the value of assets on the financial markets, especially stock prices on the capital markets and thus the value of companies listed on them. The main objective of this book is to include the investor expectations in the concept of enterprise value management and measurement of shareholders value creation. It seems that the role of expectations, as a determinant of investment decisions on the capital market, requires a deep insight and highlight the importance of managing the expectations for creating value for shareholders, in particular in the context of the financial crisis of 2007-2009. Creating value for shareholders is to overcome investor expectations for the rate of return on their initial investment. That means that managers must understand how investors build their expectations. According to studies conducted by T. Copeland and A. Dolgoff'a there is a strong and statistically significant relation between the shareholders returns and the two types of variables: changes in expectations for the future earnings and changes in the level of interference of provided information. Almost 50% of the variance of return rates can be explained by these two variables. Studies have also shown that changes in expectations for long-term profits have a significant and immediate impact on the share price. Readers of this book will be able to understand the process of investor expectation formulation, will know how to create value in response to investor expectations and how to consciously shape investor expectations in order to increase company value.

Review: 'Fiat currency central banks claim to fight the inflation they cause, and likewise to offset the financial instability and systemic risk they create. The depreciation of the currencies they issue at will often cause falls in foreign exchange value, goods and services inflation, or asset price inflations. Of these, asset price inflations are the most insidious, for while they last they are highly popular, leading people to think they are growing rich and to run up their debt. When the asset inflations collapse, the central banks can come as the fire department to the fire they stoked. Nobody is better at diagnosing and dissecting these central bank games than Brendan Brown, whether it is the Federal Reserve (The Global Curse of the Federal Reserve) or the European Central Bank - this book, Euro Crash. It will give you a healthy boost in your scepticism about those who pretend to be the Platonic guardians of the financial system.' - Alex J. Pollock, Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, Washington, DC; former president and chief executive officer, Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago.

This volume explores the consumer perspectives of the introduction of the Euro. In 1996, the European Commission set up a Euro Working Group, which brought together all the families of consumers' associations and is responsible for providing the Commission with reasoned opinions on consumer policies and measures. In 1997, they were joined by a team of psychologists, sociologists and experts in people's attitudes to money, of various nationalities. Their task was to take a closer look at all the psychosociological issues related to the Euro and, wherever possible, to draw practical conclusions about the measures to be taken in order to facilititate the changover to the Euro for the various population groups. The task had to be organised in such a way as to answer three questions: What is the changeover to the euro? What is a currency? What is a consumer?A/LISTA The inter-disciplinary group of experts tackled this whole gamut of problems and issues. Their work, in cooperation with the commission's departments (the Directorate-General for Consumer Policy, DGXXIV) and the Euro Working Group of the Consumer Committee, considerably influenced the decisions of the Community authorities. The dossier presented here is an edited selection of the reports prepared by members of this group, covering the reports on an extremely wide range of questions. All these reports are available from DGXXIV. Furthermore, this book contains the main sections of the report prepared by the Euro Working Group of the Consumer Committee, which served as an important point of departure for the experts' work and is repeatedly referred to in their articles.

Can Korea realize its dream of matching the economic performance of the G-7 nations in the next 15 years? The marshalling of capital, and dedicated, low-cost labor by authoritarian governments in the past created double-digit economic growth based on imported technology. How can Korea's young democracy, fledgling science, and liberalizing policies compete against a new level of global competition? Korea must build its research capability, accelerate the development of smaller, high-tech firms, and reduce bureaucratic conflict in support of an innovation-based strategy. This book puts Korea's technological challenge in its historical context, documents the reasons past strategies are no longer viable, and presents a blueprint for the next stage in Korean development. Korean economy is one of the most exciting and dynamic ones in the world. Korea finds itself in the position of being regarded as respected competition by nations and firms which earlier regarded it only as a source of low-cost, high-quality production. As the economy has slowed, the Korean government and private sector have faced the challenge of making a change in strategy in regard to its approach to technology, and how the economy is to be managed. This analysis of where Korea has been and how it will deal with technology and economic management is conducted by prominent Korean and American scholars.

Most people have some idea what Greeks and Romans coins looked like, but few know how complex Greek and Roman monetary systems eventually became. The contributors to this volume are numismatists, ancient historians, and economists intent on investigating how these systems worked and how they both did and did not resemble a modern monetary system. Why did people first start using coins? How did Greeks and Romans make payments, large or small? What does money mean in Greek tragedy? Was the Roman Empire an integrated economic system? This volume can serve as an introduction to such questions, but it also offers the specialist the results of original research.

Forecasting exchange rates is a variable that preoccupies economists, businesses and governments, being more critical to more people than any other variable. In Exchange Rate Forecasting the author sets out to provide a concise survey of the techniques of forecasting - bringing together the various forecasting methods and applying them to the exchange rate in a highly accessible and readable manner. Highly practical in approach, the book provides an understanding of the techniques of forecasting with an emphasis on its applications and use in business decision-making, such as hedging, speculation, investment, financing and capital budgeting. In addition, the author also considers recent developments in the field, notably neural networks and chaos, again, with easy-to-understand explanations of these "rocket science" areas. The practical approach to forecasting is also reflected in the number of examples that pepper the text, whilst descriptions of some of the software packages that are used in practice to generate forecasts are also provided.

In this book, the author describes that the relationship based shareholding was the hidden key factor to explain Japan's miraculous economic success after WWII. The stock market which valued the low profitability Japanese companies highly enabled them to provide 'better and cheaper' manufactured goods in the export markets, leading resource poor Japan to a leading exporter and economic and financial superpower. The book also casts critical eyes to the weakness of the traditional Japanese financial system as a catch-up model, in comparison with the open US system.

This book highlights the critical relationship between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) associated with its trade interdependency. As the largest trade partner in the region, China has not only presented itself with opportunities for ASEAN to tap its market, but also created great challenges for the region. The fundamental question that this book addresses, therefore, is whether China's engagement with ASEAN comes at a cost for the latter following from the systemic risks tied to the China-centric supply chains in the region. The trade interactions between China and ASEAN, though extensively explored, are less understood in the context of its influence over the region amidst the recent changing dynamics that follow from China's global engagement and backlash from major powers. The book therefore resolutely rises against stereotypes and cliches, making readers reconsider many oversimplified assumptions of the benefits of trade engagement where economies are interconnected through complex production chains.

This book analyzes one of the most important and difficult macroeconomic questions at the beginning of the 21st century: how to overcome the growing threat to economic progress and political stability posed by negative aspects of globalization. Economic problems are becoming increasingly international, demanding action at the supranational level, yet the only effective institutional framework for dealing with them remains national. The essays make a valuable and timely contribution to a highly topical debate by integrating micro and macroeconomic analysis, covering a wide range of specific institutional and policy issues drawn from the experience of many countries - all from the perspective of an academic economist with an unusually intimate knowledge of decisionmaking at the highest level.

When General Motors and Chrysler declared bankruptcy in 2009 and immediately targeted thousands of dealerships for closure, tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars were on the line. Staring down two of the largest manufacturers in the world - as well as President Obama's Automotive Task Force - a determined triumvirate of car dealers banded together and went to Washington, D.C. to make their voices heard. Alan and Alison Spitzer's fast-paced memoir takes readers behind the scenes as "citizen's lobbyists" traverse throughout all of the major corridors of power in the nation's capital to make their case and bring justice to thousands of small business across the country.

The collapse of the Bretton Woods system in the early 1970s resulted in a transition to fluctuating rather than fixed currency system. This brought sterling into the turmoil of the world currency markets, and by the end of the 1970s, sterling had quietly ended its role as an international currency. Sterling-dollar diplomacy collapsed, bringing to an end what had hitherto been considered Britain's prime relationship. Britain and European Monetary Cooperation, 1964-1979 provides a unique perspective on these events, shedding light on the complexities of the historical context of British monetary diplomacy and exploring the country's attempt at a European approach to sterling in the 1960s and '70s. The book describes the political and economic approach Britain took at the turn of the 1970s, and explains how the country became restricted by the burden of the sterling balances. In this book, the author illustrates how these developments offered opportunity for both cooperation and conflict in the light of monetary diplomacy. He demonstrates how Britain's struggle to achieve exchange rate stability, twinned with controversy over European Economic Community membership, finally prompted serious reconsideration of economic policy-making. This book challenges the commonly-held perception of the decline of sterling, and explains that, although Britain's attempt at a European approach failed, the decline of the currency was more complicated than a 'managed decline'.