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Books > Business & Economics > Economics > Microeconomics
Many social scientists have explored the economic success of Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, each of which has experienced dramatic economic growth over a relatively short period of time. M. Shahid Alam presents a controversial thesis by emphasizing the interventionist character of the export-oriented approach to the success of these three countries. Concern with the rapid development of comparative advantage in the industries they have promoted has, he believes, distinguished these three economies. This concern has led to both market and non-market interventions with the trade regime, capital markets, market structures, etc. The book explores how Taiwan and Korea changed from import substitution to the export-oriented approach with significant success. The point is made that export-oriented economies make more demands on the government, so that success in different countries cannot be assured. The book begins with an examination of export-oriented economies and the reasons for their success. Three separate chapters follow detailing the structure, choice and implementation of economic policies in South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. Finally, the book assesses export-oriented strategies and their application to other countries. Students and scholars of economics, business, and political science, will find this thought provoking book a source of stimulating ideas. In addition, the book has the potential for being used as a text for graduate and advanced undergraduate courses on East Asian economics and comparative economic development.
In recent years, the idea of "nudges" - small changes in individual choice architecture that do not involve incentives or coercion - has entered policy discourse and practice to address various problems ranging from energy usage to retirement savings. However, how nudges can be incorporated into regulatory practice, and whether the experimental methodologies used to design nudges are still appropriate when they are being used as a regulatory instrument is still an unexplored issue. As this book shows, the translation of ideas into the world of regulation is not so simple and straightforward. By analysing the different experimental alternatives that regulators can use when designing nudges and through a close analysis of a real-world example - the case of the European Union tobacco warnings - this book proposes an alternative design process more in tune with the reality of regulation. The book explores the implications of iterative experimental methodologies and processes for regulators, concluding with a call for an alternative nudging's design process tailored to the regulatory space. This book is crucial for researchers and policy-makers interested in the incorporation of nudging into regulation and anyone interested in the implications of behavioural economics - and evidence more generally - for regulatory design.
Applied Microeconomic Theory presents a seminal collection of the author's influential papers in a number of areas of applied microeconomic theory. This invaluable volume contains a selection of both published and unpublished papers written over a period of thirty years and reveals Curtis Eaton's profound economic insight and ability. Topics covered include: * Strategic market structure. Beginning with Eaton's pioneering 1975 paper on pre-emption by product proliferation in a differentiated oligopoly and ending with his paper - in collaboration with Nicholas Schmitt - on the implications for market structure of flexible manufacturing published in 1995. * Efficiency wages, including two of the very earliest papers on the subject written in collaboration with William White. * Theory of price in both labour and output markets. * Collusive behavior, including a number of important papers written in collaboration with Mukesh Eswaran.
This book analyses the advantages and disadvantages of the banking system reforms with particular reference to centrally planned economies. The book reviews the socialist banking reforms and analyses their financial problems. Employing a critical exposition of banking theories, it assesses current financial disorders and takes issue with some established theories.
This book is a timely exploration of an unprecedented, cataclysmic pandemic episode. It examines certain critical aspects of socio-scientific theory across a variety of diverse themes, and through an epistemic lens. The book investigates the general theory of pandemic episodes and their adverse long-term effects on human and environmental wellbeing. It includes an in-depth study of COVID-19 but also looks to the future to contemplate potential pandemics to come. The existing approach to the study of pandemics is critically examined in terms of the prevalent isolated and thus mutated way of viewing human and mechanical relations in the name of specialization and modernity. The book presents a novel model of science-economy-society moral inclusiveness that forms a distinctive theoretical approach to the issue of normalizing all forms of pandemic challenges. It is methodologically different from existing economic theory, including the critical study of microeconomic foundations of macroeconomics. Human and environmental existence along with its multidisciplinary outlook of unity of knowledge between modernity, traditionalism, and socio-cultural values is emphasized in the treatment and cure of pandemic episodes. The book is a unique reference work, offering fresh wisdom within the moral methodological worldview.
It is often said that everyone understands precisely what is meant by the notion of probability-except those who have spent their lives studying the matter. Upon close scrutiny, the intuitively obvious idea of probability becomes quite elusive. Is it a subjective or objective concept? Are random variables simply improperly measured deterministic variables, or inherently random? What is meant by the phrase "other things held constant" that often appears in descriptions of probability? These questions involve fundamental philosophical and scientific issues, and promise to elude definitive answers for some time. The same type of difficulty arises when attempting to produce a volume on microeconomic theory. The obvious first question-what is microeconomic theory?--
This text provides an integrated treatment of financial and operating strategies to exchange rate variability. The book analyzes theory and evidence on strategies for firms in handling exchange rate variability. The choice of price setting currency, when and how to adjust prices, the limitations of hedging and segmentation of national markets are some of the issues analyzed. The book investigates the impact of EMU. The non-technical presentation also makes it well suited to MBA students, practitioners or researchers who want an accessible synthesis of research in this area of economic theory and practice.
The economic systems of advanced capitalistic societies have been undergoing profound transformations brought about by the transition towards the so-called knowledge-based economy. Building upon Schumpeterian and Kuznetsian legacies, this new book argues that a focus on both the structural change approach and the economics of knowledge provides a fertile ground to better understand recent evolutions of economic environment, in which the change in the composition of the industrial structure has been characterized by the increasing importance of knowledge in economic activities. With this aim the book elaborates an integrated framework to analyzing the relationships between the different facets that characterize the process of structural change, and the dynamics of knowledge creation within industries and regions. Quatraro argues that a new dimension is to be added to concept of structural change, which refers to the internal structure of knowledge base, and propose both theoretical foundations and methodological tools for its analysis.
This is the new edition of the highly acclaimed Latin America in the 1930s , a text which has proved invaluable for teachers, researchers and students alike. The second edition has been revised and updated, including a new preface and updated statistical material, to form the second volume in An Economic History of Twentieth-Century Latin America . This book confronts the puzzle of Latin America's rapid recovery from the collapse in world markets and capital flows in the late 1920s. It shows how far the safety valves which made recovery possible in the 1930s were not available fifty years later. It documents the impact of crisis on the changing role of the state and on institutional development. The Central American case studies have been updated with significantly improved data.
With air transport becoming an increasingly vital part of the economy, the regulatory reform of this market has been a major development in European political economy. This book focuses on two market failures within the airline industry - market power and environmental externalities - and analyses how they have been affected by deregulation. The author employs economic models complemented by extensive empirical research, to demonstrate how the introduction of competition, brought about by liberalization, has resulted in considerable consumer benefits. The author argues that these benefits, such as increased choice through the expansion of operations, must be off set against increased environmental costs including greater noise pollution and emissions, not to mention the reduction of profits that often accompany market liberalization. In the process the book tackles a number of important issues including the background and history of airline regulation in the EU, the basic policy trade-off between monopoly power and external costs, monetary valuation of externalities, and the relationship between airline scheduling and external costs. Perhaps surprisingly, the author concludes that even in the presence of environmental costs, the introduction of competition in airline markets has resulted in net welfare improvements. Policymakers, as well as practitioners and researchers of environmental and transport economics, should draw great value from this original and pertinent volume.
Aggregation of individual opinions into a social decision is a problem widely observed in everyday life. For centuries people tried to invent the best' aggregation rule. In 1951 young American scientist and future Nobel Prize winner Kenneth Arrow formulated the problem in an axiomatic way, i.e., he specified a set of axioms which every reasonable aggregation rule has to satisfy, and obtained that these axioms are inconsistent. This result, often called Arrow's Paradox or General Impossibility Theorem, had become a cornerstone of social choice theory. The main condition used by Arrow was his famous Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives. This very condition pre-defines the local' treatment of the alternatives (or pairs of alternatives, or sets of alternatives, etc.) in aggregation procedures. Remaining within the framework of the axiomatic approach and based on the consideration of local rules, Arrovian Aggregation Models investigates three formulations of the aggregation problem according to the form in which the individual opinions about the alternatives are defined, as well as to the form of desired social decision. In other words, we study three aggregation models. What is common between them is that in all models some analogue of the Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives condition is used, which is why we call these models Arrovian aggregation models. Chapter 1 presents a general description of the problem of axiomatic synthesis of local rules, and introduces problem formulations for various versions of formalization of individual opinions and collective decision. Chapter 2 formalizes precisely the notion of rationality' of individual opinions and social decision. Chapter 3 dealswith the aggregation model for the case of individual opinions and social decisions formalized as binary relations. Chapter 4 deals with Functional Aggregation Rules which transform into a social choice function individual opinions defined as choice functions. Chapter 5 considers another model &endash; Social Choice Correspondences when the individual opinions are formalized as binary relations, and the collective decision is looked for as a choice function. Several new classes of rules are introduced and analyzed.
Managing New Product Development and Innovation provides a new approach to the microeconomics of innovation by measuring the technical quality of new products and guiding the managers of innovation and technology in the central considerations of today's knowledge-based companies. The volume features a selection of practical microeconomic tools for managing new product development and innovation. By quantifying product features and evaluating the costs and market value of improvements, a simple yet powerful conceptual framework is created. Using this framework, creative business models can be built, along with innovative products, services and processes that achieve marketplace success. The authors address five key questions facing managers of knowledge-based companies: * Which new features should be added to existing products? * Which radically new features should be innovated? * How can marketing and R&D be integrated? * How can the value of brand names be estimated and optimized? * How can the sophistication of product technology be measured - both at a given point in time and between two points in time? This path-breaking volume will be essential reading for managers of innovation, and will be warmly welcomed by teachers and advanced students with an interest in innovation and industrial economics.
Uncertainty could be associated with wisdom, enterprise, and discovery. In ordinary speech, however, it has mostly negative connotations. There is "fear of the unknown" and "ignorance is bliss;" there are maxims to the effect that "what you don't know doesn't hurt you" (or: "bother you") in several languages. This volume suggests that we need be bothered by the excessive confidence with which scientists, particularly social scientists, present some of their conclusions and overstate their range of application. Otherwise many of the questions that should be raised about all the major uncertainties attending a particular issue routinely may continue to be thwarted or suppressed. Down playing uncertainty does not lead to more responsible or surer action, it sidetracks research agendas, and leaves the decision makers exposed to nasty surprise. This volume demonstrates that recognizing the many forms of uncertainty that enter into the development of any particular subject matter is a precondition for more responsible choice and deeper knowledge. Our purpose is to contribute to a broader appreciation of uncertainty than regularly accorded in any of the numerous disciplines represented here. The seventeenth-century French philosopher Descartes, quoted in this volume, wrote that "whoever is searching after truth must, once in his life, doubt all things; insofar as this is possible. " White areas left on maps of the world in past centuries were a much more productive challenge than marking the end of the known world with the pillars of Hercules.
Research in Health Economics has developed into a separate discipline during the last 25 years. All this intense research activity has come about through the teaching of courses on health economics, mostly at graduate level. However, the Industrial Organization aspects of the health care market do not occupy a central place in those courses. We propose a textbook of health economics whose distinguishing feature is the analysis of the health care market from an Industrial Organization perspective. This textbook will provide teachers and students with a reference to study the market structure aspects of the health care sector. The book is structured in three parts. The first part will present the basic principles of economics. It will bring all readers to the required level of knowledge to follow subsequent parts. Part II will review the main concepts of health economics. The third part will contain the core of the book. It will present the industrial organization analysis of the health care market, based on our own research.
Railroads, our first large corporations, are rapidly adapting to the deregulated climate of the 1990s. As we approach the 21st century, this book tells the story of the changing role of railroads in our economy and how the law has changed to meet the new competitive environment. Topics include abandonment and extension, railway labor law, rail passenger service, short line spinoffs, special problems of railroad employment and parallel deregulatory activity in Canada. The authors deal with the changing railroad environment by describing the rail network of today, which has shrunk in route-miles but is in better shape than at any time since World War II. The changing role of rail employment is discussed, as well as government operation of Amtrak and commuter rail services. What regulation remains with the Interstate Commerce Commission and Federal Railroad Administration is described in detail. Finally, the authors go north of the border to show how Canada is facing rail deregulation and how Canadian railroads are playing a major part in the U.S. transportation scene. The authors close with a look at railroading as we approach the 21st century. Dooley and Thoms have written a comprehensive book for lawyers and rail enthusiasts alike.
Significant recent changes in the structure and composition of households make the study of the economic relationships within the household of particular interest for academics and policy-makers. In this context, Household Economic Behaviors, through its focus on theoretical and empirical chapters on a range of economic behaviors within the household, provides a new and timely viewpoint. Following the Introduction and one or two surveys which give a general background, the volume includes theoretical and empirical perspectives on allocation of available time within the household, monetary and non-monetary transfers between household members, and intra-household bargaining.
In a bold attempt to formulate a tentative, unified conceptual framework for the study of global development, the author tries to integrate numerous contributions from a variety of fields, including economics, sociology, anthropology, political science, moral philosophy, sociobiology, neurobiology, and others. He regrets the present compartmentalization of study of this topic, which leads to a lack of perspective in dealing with crucial planetary problems. . . . Truly an ambitious and courageous effort and a worthy project. Recommended for academic and public library collections dealing with development. "Choice" This book breaks important new ground in the international debate over development by presenting the first systematic attempt to map a unified theory of global development. Drawing from the fields of economics, sociology, political science, philosophy, and ethics, the author presents a unique cross-disciplinary perspective on international development that features a number of new concepts and approaches to development studies. Building upon a synthesis of three independent developments of the 1970s, Weigel contends that it is possible to construct a universal development norm and a universal moral principle which retain their credibility in both cross-cultural and transhistorical contexts. He argues further that when these principles are linked to a well-differentiated theory of basic human needs they provide a powerful normative framework for the integration of economic and political rights which can guide policymakers well into the 21st century. Certain to spark new debate among academicians and policymakers, Weigel's work makes a number of significant contributions, including: a comprehensive synthesis between moral philosophy and development studies; the most elaborate philosophical defense of the I.L.O's 'Basic Needs Approach' to date; an analysis of the nuclear arms race which utilizes the concept of stable strategies and presents a new theory of nuclear deterrence; a macroeconomic framework for basic needs program; an analysis of global parameters for development assistance; country studies which demonstrate the feasibility of Basic Needs programs for low-income countries; the application of the theory to a wide variety of topic areas such as paternalism, population control policies, the problem of political legitimation, and economic policies. Throughout, the author focuses on the concept of basic needs, arguing that the satisfaction of basic human needs must be the touchstone of all future development policies.
Air Transport Networks provides an economic analysis of the way in which the air transport industry operates and the nature of the policies that have been adopted to regulate the sector. The book covers domestic and international air transportation with an emphasis on airlines and includes discussions of related markets such as airports and air traffic control. The authors provide details of how the sector functions and the reasons why the airline industry performs as it does today and explore the ways in which governments have, over the years, attempted to manipulate air transport markets to meet political objectives. This volume will be warmly received by those interested in the operations and the influences that public policy has on the air transport sector. Air Transport Networks will also appeal to policymakers and to those working in the air transportation sector.
Attempting to reveal the real causes of the 1929 stock market crash, Bierman refutes the popular belief that wild speculation had excessively driven up stock market prices and resulted in the crash. Although he acknowledges some prices of stocks such as utilities and banks were overprices, reasonable explanations exist for the level and increase of all other securities stock prices. Indeed, if stocks were overpriced in 1929, then they more even more overpriced in the current era of staggering growth in stock prices and investment in securities. The causes of the 1929 crash, Bierman argues, lie in an unfavorable decision by the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities coupled with the popular practice known as debt leverage in the 1920s corporate and investment arena. This book extends Bierman's argument in an earlier book, "The Great Myths of 1929 and the Lessons to Be Learned" (Greenwood, 1991), in which he discussed and refuted seven myths about 1929 but could not explain the crash. He now believes he has a reasonable explanation. He also examines the actions of Charles E. Mitchell and Sam Insull and their subsequent unjust criminal prosecution after the crash of the 1929 stock market.
The book conducts a comparative study on the form of enterprise, focusing on broadly defined cooperative firms in comparison with conventional capitalist firms. It explores the essential advantages and disadvantages of the different types of firms and attempts to answer why capitalist firms are so prevalent in our economy. The book attempts to explain these questions from the viewpoint of "market failure" in the framework of standard microeconomic theory. In this analytical framework, it proposes an alternative system of business organization based upon consumer cooperatives and the market for their memberships, which can coexist consistently with the system of capitalist firms and the stock market within a single market economy. The existing studies of the cooperative sector have been rather ideological. The analytical framework that is presented in this book helps promote scientific exploration of cooperative and other types of firms, which are indispensable and potentially promising constituents of our society.
How can we effectively aggregate disparate pieces of information that are spread among many different individuals? In other words, how does one best access the ?wisdom of the crowd Prediction markets, which are essentially speculative markets created for the purpose of aggregating information and making predictions, offer the answer to this question. The effective use of these markets has the potential not only to help forecast future events on a national and international level, but also to assist companies in providing, for example, improved estimates of the potential market size for a new product idea or the launch date of new products and services. The markets have already been used to forecast uncertain outcomes ranging from influenza outbreaks to the spread of other infectious diseases, to the demand for hospital services, to the box office success of movies, climate change, vote shares and election outcomes, to the probability of meeting project deadlines. The insights gained also have many potentially valuable applications for public policy more generally. These markets offer substantial promise as a tool of information aggregation as well as forecasting, whether alone or as a supplement to other mechanisms like surveys, group deliberations, and expert opinion. Moreover, they can be applied at a macroeconomic and microeconomic level to yield information that is valuable for government and commercial policy-makers and which can be used for a number of social purposes. This volume of original readings, contributed by many of the leading experts in the field, marks a significant addition to the base of knowledge about this fascinating subject area. The book should appeal to all those with an interest in economics, forecasting or public policy, and in particular those with an interest in the study of money, investment and risk.
This volume rests on three thematic pillars: the limits of conventional macroeconomics; the long-run agenda of structural transformation and the development of capabilities. Islam and Kucera highlight the tenuous links of conventional macroeconomics with core development concerns. The chapters of this book enunciate an empirical approach to track the various sources of structural transformation and nurture the thesis that investment in infrastructure leads to the inculcation of capabilities, broadly defined to include knowledge accumulation, dissemination and application. The editors reinterpret social protection from the perspective of inclusive development and structural transformation. The volume examines secular trends in the functional distribution of income and explores their possible macroeconomic consequences by developing a two-country macroeconomic model for open economies. It seeks to establish whether growing inequality in many countries combined with stagnant real incomes is one of the sources of the global and financial crisis of 2007-2009.
This book is an impressive collection of essays that examines the economic crisis and political collapse that took place in Weimar Germany from 1924 to 1933. |
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