Arab entrepreneurs in Israel form part of a traditional, yet peripheral, ethnic minority attempting to integrate into Israel's larger economy. This study, based on extensive fieldwork, focuses on the obstacles that these Arab entrepreneurs and new industrialists must overcome in their development towards industrialization. The research exposes a highly flexible entrepreneurial culture making use of a limited set of opportunities and resources. The work makes a strong contribution to comparative cross-cultural research and theoretical formulations on issues of ethnic entrepreneurship.

You just know that an improvement of the user interface will reap rewards, but how do you justify the expense and the labor and the time guarantee a robust ROI ahead of time? How do you decide how much of an investment should be funded? And what is the best way to sell usability to others?
In this completely revised and new edition, Randolph G. Bias (University of Texas at Austin, with 25 years experience as a usability practitioner and manager) and Deborah J. Mayhew (internationally recognized usability consultant and author of two other seminal books including The Usability Engineering Lifecycle) tackle these and many other problems. It has been updated to cover cost-justifying usability for Web sites and intranets, for the complex applications we have today, and for a host of products offering techniques, examples, and cases that are unavailable elsewhere. No matter what type of product you build, whether or not you are a cost-benefit expert or a born salesperson, this book has the tools that will enable you to cost-justify the appropriate usability investment.
.Includes contributions by a host of experts involved in this work, including Aaron Marcus, Janice Rohn, Chauncey Wilson, Nigel Bevan, Dennis Wixon, Clare-Marie Karat, Susan Dray, Charles Mauro, and many others;
.Includes actionable ideas for every phase of the software development process;
.Includes case studies from inside a variety of companies;
.Includes ideas from "the other side of the table," software executives who hold the purse strings, who offer thoughts on which proposals for usability support they've funded, and which ones they've declined."

This book examines transaction cost economics, the influential theoretical perspective on organizations and industry that was the subject of Oliver Williamson's seminal book, Markets and Hierarchies (1975). Written by leading economists, sociologists, and political scientists, the essays collected here reflect the fruitful intellectual exchange that is occurring across the major social science disciplines. They examine transaction cost economics' general conceptual orientation, its specific theoretical propositions, its applications to policy, and its use in systematic empirical research. The chapters include classic texts, broad review essays, reflective commentaries, and several new contributions to a wide range of topics, including organizations, regulations and law, institutions, strategic management, game theory, entrepreneurship, innovation, finance, and technical information.

This collection of essays examines the development of the American South from the end of the Civil War to the end of World War II. Written by both well-known and emerging scholars, the essays are divided into sections that address some of the major issues of that era, such as race relations, economic development, political reform, the roles of southern women, the messages of folk music, and the problems of the region's historians. Each article offers fresh insights or new information on its subject, and collectively the articles help to illuminate how the most traditional of American regions tried to cope with the forces of modernization.

The Microeconomics of Risk and Information covers the principal areas in the field, including risk aversion, simple portfolio theory, precautionary savings, production under risk, risk sharing in the Edgeworth box, adverse selection and moral hazard. Keeping to a strict two-dimensional environment and using only some basic calculus, this textbook is written principally for students of advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate courses in economics, finance, and other fields, who have studied microeconomics at the intermediate level. Compact and clear, the book reflects the author's twenty-year experience teaching the course in the one-semester format to students around the world.

Trading across borders, export intermediaries are specialized service firms that connect domestic manufacturers with overseas buyers. How do they do it? What determines their success or failure? Have they really lowered transaction costs for their clients, minimized agency costs, and possessed competitive resources and capabilities in world trade? Surprisingly, no study until now has answered these questions or has explored the underlying issues as thoroughly as Peng does here.

Peng develops an integrated model of export intermediary performance. He focuses on the nature of export transactions and manufacturer-intermediary relationships which may lead to agency problems, and underlines the importance of valuable, unique, and hard-to-imitate resources and capabilities for intermediaries' competitive advantages. Peng employs a distinct analytical approach that highlights three underlying themes--transactions, agents, and resources--then tests his model with six critical case studies and a 1,000-firm mail survey. Operators of export intermediaries seeking ways to improve their performance, aspiring entrepreneurs studying the export business for niche opportunities, manufacturing executives seeking top quality service from export intermediaries, and government officials in charge of export promotion and pertinent legislation--all will find Peng's book a useful examination of issues critical to their work.

This book studies the main causes, consequences and nature of the Asia-Pacific's new free trade agreement (FTA) trend, and its implications for the global economy. It explores the FTA policies of the region's trade powers and offers conceptual and theoretical perspectives on the relationship between economic bilateralism and regionalism.

This book covers a wide spectrum of issues in behavioural game theory (BGT), ranging from players' heterogeneity, social preferences and reciprocity, to learning, information and punishment in public good games. The book opens up the interdisciplinary aspects of BGT, and presents models which are tested through experimental methods.

This book focuses on the concepts of social capital, corporate social responsibility, and economic development in relation to economic theory of institutions and behavioural economics. It also takes a macroeconomic and empirical approach, on the relationship between social capital, ethical behaviour and economic development.

This text explores the rise of consumerism and the expanding variety of goods available in Japan. Japan is placed within the comparative context of the 'consumer revolution' in Europe and North America, contributing to the analysis of the ways in which consumption and everyday life change in the course of economic development.

This textbook presents the basics of game theory both on an undergraduate level and on a more advanced mathematical level. It is the second, revised version of the successful 2008 edition. The book covers most topics of interest in game theory, including cooperative game theory. Part I presents introductions to all these topics on a basic yet formally precise level. It includes chapters on repeated games, social choice theory, and selected topics such as bargaining theory, exchange economies, and matching. Part II goes deeper into noncooperative theory and treats the theory of zerosum games, refinements of Nash equilibrium in strategic as well as extensive form games, and evolutionary games. Part III covers basic concepts in the theory of transferable utility games, such as core and balancedness, Shapley value and variations, and nucleolus. Some mathematical tools on duality and convexity are collected in Part IV. Every chapter in the book contains a problem section. Hints, answers and solutions are included.

The human factor has received scant attention in modern Economics, however this volume redresses the balance by incorporating human psychology into economic analysis. This book constructs a new basic structure model of economic circulation based on a new flow-like concept of utility (diminishing utility) and analyzes the direct relationship between human psychology and economic fluctuation, while expanding it into a consistent explanation of the generation and the collapse of financial bubbles.

This book presents the findings and comparative analysis of seven case studies of non-governmental agencies providing business development services (BDS) to small and microenterprises across the developing world: from Bolivia, El Salvador, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. A range of different industries is examined, from food processing to light engineering. The studies focus on three common aspects of BDS: marketing, access to technology, and the development of business and management skills. The results are presented with regard to impact, sustainability and cost-effectiveness. Building Businesses with Small Producers makes an important contribution to the ongoing debate regarding market- and demand-based provision of non-financial services to small and microentrepreneurs and businesses in the developing world, a debate which originated in the success to date in standardizing and commercializing microfinance programmes. The editors and contributors raise questions about the limits of market-based BDS provision and challenge some current beliefs about good practice in BDS provision.

"Reverse Licensing" evaluates the transfer of technology to the U.S. as an alternative growth strategy for both small- and medium-sized U.S. manufacturing firms which need new and competitive technology and for foreign firms which are anxious to enter the U.S. market but lack the required resources for export and/or foreign direct investment. The first theoretical research on international technology licensing from the U.S. licensees' standpoint, this book examines reverse licensing as an alternative to reverse investment. In addition, a sample of 120 U.S. manufacturing firms which have actually utilized reverse licensing is used for empirical and statistical analysis.

This book challenges the generally accepted theories of classical economics, explaining why the expected utility theory, even if it were true, fails to be of much help in solving economic controversies.

Dealing with economic issues related to income and wealth among individuals, regions and countries, this book presents a general theory with endogenous capital, knowledge and preference changes for an economic system with heterogeneous households, multiple sectors, multiple regions and multiple countries.

In this groundbreaking new study, Whicker and Moore address an issue of critical importance to the future economic and political stability of the United States: how can this nation become more competitive in international markets. Drawing upon economic theory, political philosophy, and specific policy expertise, the authors organize their work around two principle themes: that just as the role of government in a changing world is evolutionary, policies must evolve to reflect shifting economic realities, and that previously hostile attitudes among U.S. management, labor, and government must be replaced by cooperation in order to ensure effective, long-term competitiveness abroad.