This textbook provides an important and fresh approach to the understanding of microeconomic policy. Microeconomic Policy links principles to settings and shows how theory compliments policy and vice-versa. By linking theory to policies and application, this text will enable students to acquire proficiency and recognise balance in policy analysis and preparation. It contains comprehensive coverage of a broad range of policy areas including:
* competition and technology policy
* information and governance policy
* industrial and environmental policy
* social and income policy
* public sector failure and reform.


eBook available with sample pages: HB:0415236002

Societal grand challenges have taken a toll on humanity, which finds itself at a crossroads. The concentration of wealth and economic inequality, the dominance of Big Tech firms, the loss of privacy and free choice, and the overconsumption and abuse of natural resources have been reinforced by globalization. Regulation, legislation, international treaties, and government and corporate policies have fallen short of offering sufficient remedies. This book identifies the root cause of these problems and offers a bold solution: a new economic system, free from the design flaws that have contributed to these societal grand challenges. The proposed cooperative economy is an ethical community-driven exchange system that relies on collective action to promote societal values while accounting for resource constraints. Unlike the modern economic system that is predominantly driven by opportunistic behavior, the cooperative economy moves away from a materialistic orientation and follows a more balanced perspective that leverages prosocial behavior. The book explains how this new system adopts design principles that promote self-sufficiency of communities, sustainability and entrepreneurship while limiting overconsumption and excessive profit-making. It enhances economic equality by leveraging price subsidization and by restricting salary differences. The book describes how the system serves the interests of consumers, vendors, and employees while preventing the accumulation of power by the platform owner who operates this system. This book is invaluable reading for policymakers who have been searching for solutions to some of the grand challenges that our society faces, and to managers who have sought alternative ways to cope with platform ecosystems, resource shortages, and supply chain disruptions. It revisits long-held assumptions, offering a treatise and food for thought, as well as a plan for concrete action. The book is also highly relevant to scholars and students in the study of economics, strategy, innovation, and public policy and to all readers who are concerned about the future of our planet and society.

Andreff and his contributors bring a strong dose of reality to the economic modelling of sports leagues. Disequilibrium Sports Economics provides an intellectually compelling opening and a theoretically necessary antidote to the study of sports economics.' - Andrew Zimbalist, Smith College, US'This is an interesting book worth reading for every sports economist because it introduces a thought provoking approach to the growing field of sports economics. The authors show how disequilibrium economics may improve our understanding of puzzling economic phenomena in sports. I congratulate the editor and the contributors for this new book and the novel perspectives provided therein!' - Helmut M. Dietl, University of Zurich, Switzerland 'I felt great intellectual excitement after getting acquainted with this volume. The high quality papers by Wladimir Andreff and his co-authors are more significant than the topic indicated modestly by the title; they may not only urge economists of sport to reconsider their earlier theories, but may also provide inspiration and a new momentum to the wide research program on disequilibrium and the soft budget constraint.' - Janos Kornai, Harvard University, US and Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary 'This book sounds like a theoretical breakthrough towards a new approach in sports economics that generates important insights into the issue of financial fair play in football.' - Andrea Traverso, Head of Club Licensing and Financial Fair Play, UEFA 'This path-breaking volume contains novel analysis of problems of critical importance to sports clubs, leagues, fans and academics interested in sports.' - Robert Simmons, Lancaster University Management School, UK For decades, sports economics has been set within the framework of equilibrium economics, in particular when modelling team sport leagues. Based on a conviction that this does not reflect real life, this book addresses a gap in the literature and opens up a new research area by applying concepts drawn from disequilibrium economics. It is divided into two parts, the first of which focuses on economic disequilibrium in sports markets and competitive imbalance in sporting contests. The second part concentrates on soft budget constraints and their consequences for club governance and management. This pioneering book is the first to tackle non-mainstream economics in sport and offers a first approach to disequilibrium sports economics. Providing a new metric of competitive balance and opening up new avenues of future research, this is essential reading for economists and those researching sport across many disciplines. Contributors: W. Andreff, E. Franck, J.-P. Gayant, N. Le Pape, R.D. Macdonald, K. Nielsen, R.K. Storm, G.N. Tuck, D. van Reeth, A.R. Whitten

This book is about change in Central and Eastern Europe, and about how we think about social and economic change more generally. In contrast to the dominant 'transition framework' that examines organizational forms in Eastern Europe according to the degree to which they conform to, or depart from, the blueprints of already existing capitalist systems, this book examines the innovative character, born of necessity, in which actors in the post-socialist setting are restructuring organizations and institutions by redefining and recombining resources. Instead of thinking of these recombinations as accidental aberrations, the book explores their evolutionary potentials.
The starting premise of Restructuring Networks in Post-Socialist Societies is that the actual unit of entrepreneurship is not the isolated individual personality but the social network that links firms and the actors within them. Drawing insight from evolutionary economics and from the new methods of network analysis, leading sociologists, economists, and political scientists report on changes in organizational forms in Hungary, Poland, Eastern Germany, Russia, and the Czech Republic.

This text is directed at researchers, decision makers and students who are interested in the wider economic development impacts of transport.

List of Participants - Acknowledgements - Foreword; D.Crabtree - SESSION 1 - Introduction; J.J.Hughes - Keynes, Economic Development and the Developing Countries; A.P.Thirlwall - Some Reflections by a Keynesian Economist on the Problems of Developing Countries; W.B.Reddaway - Discussant; H.Singer - What Keynes and Keynesianism Can Teach Us about Less Developed Countries; H.Singer - SESSION 2 - Introduction; M.J.C.Vile - Bancor and the Developing Countries: How Much Difference Would it Have Made? J.Williamson - Discussant; G.Bird - Introduction; M.J.C.Vile - International Keynesianism: The Problem of the North-South Divide; E.Heath - Discussant; I.M.D.Little - Discussion - Index

This book focuses on the empirical analysis of productivity in services at the firm level. Productivity studies are still scarce in services, especially in view of the major role of the services sector in modern developed economies and the increasing concern about its performance. The services industries studied in this volume are quite diverse, with a strong representation of financial services. All analyses are performed on the microlevel, being based on cross-sectional or panel data for samples of firms of widely varying sizes. They focus on a variety of topics ranging from comparing the efficiency of different categories of service firms or exploring the impact of mergers and deregulation on productivity performance to assessing the magnitude of returns to scale and scope or investigating the properties of different parametric or nonparametric methods to estimate cost and production functions. Perhaps the most valuable feature of all these studies is the authors' care and ingenuity in putting the data together, measuring variables and extracting relevant information. After reading the book, one is inclined to consider that services may not be all that different from goods.

This challenging book tackles one of the most fundamental questions in economics: Why are commercial organizations more efficient than organizations in the public domain? It is generally accepted that the traditional answer (the fact that commercial organizations maximize profits) does not necessarily hold true. Finding a solution to this anomaly, as this book attempts to do, should therefore be a prime concern in economics. The authors believe the answer lies in the fact that even in a completely stable environment, all organizations will eventually fail irreparably. Organizations operating in the market are more efficient because, once in decline, they are 'free to fail' and allowed to be disassembled or even replaced. Public organizations that fail are more often than not protected and allowed to continue even though their efficiency is questionable. This fascinating and thought-provoking book will provide a stimulating read for academics and students with an interest in economics, business and management and public policy. Contents: Preface 1. Introduction 2. Key Concepts 3. The Historic Debate 4. Profit Maximization is Only Part of the Answer 5. Organizational Mortality and its Fruits 6. Causes of Organizational Failure 7. Uncontrollability 8. Empirical Evidence 9. The Soft Constraint Syndrome 10. When Left to its Own Devices 11. Necrosis and Apoptosis 12. Why Public Organizations? Appendix: The Dutch Affair or the Destructive Power of Organizational Warfare References Index

The fourteen papers presented in this volume are thought-provoking studies of the economic adjustment of Latin America to the difficult external environment of the 1980s. The anthology evolved out of a group of papers presented at the Third Dominican Republic Conference on International Debt and Adjustment in 1986. A number of the papers were updated and are presented here along with new ones written especially for this collection. The debt problems of Latin America form the background for the analyses undertaken by the articles in the book. The articles go beyond description of the debt problems to offer insights on the more fundamental long-range problems facing policy makers in the region. Positive analyses into the nature of the adjustment process and insights into future institutional changes that could improve the functioning of the Latin American economies highlight the book.

The papers are divided into major topics of concern. The transmission of external shocks to the region and instability to the financial markets are covered. Fiscal constraints, labor market adjustment, exchange rates, and the political economy of adjustment as each relates to the external shocks of the 1980s are investigated. A major essay by Montague Lord shows Latin American potential to reap substantial gains by pursuing policies to encourage expansion of its resource-based comparative-advantage activities. The essays in "Latin American Debt and Adjustment" provide a starting point for the consideration of some of the deeper problems that need to be addressed by any meaningful attempt to improve the market-oriented economies of the region.

A new approach to explaining the existence of firms and markets, focusing on variability and coordination. It stands in contrast to the emphasis on transaction costs, and on monitoring and incentive structures, which are prominent in most of the modern literature in this field. This approach, called the variability approach, allows us to: show why both the need for communication and the coordination costs increase when the division of labor increases; explain why, while the firm relies on direction, the market does not; rigorously formulate the optimum divisionalization problem; better understand the relationship between technology and organization; show why the size' of the firm is limited; and to refine the analysis of whether the existence of a sharable input, or the presence of an external effect leads to the emergence of a firm. The book provides a wealth of insights for students and professionals in economics, business, law and organization.

`The book is an excellent example of the application of modern econometric techniques to Chinese data, some of which was especially collected for the research. The results throw new light on aspects of industrial sector reform in China. The book deserves wide attention from those interested in the economic reforms in China, especially those interested in the implications of the reforms for industrial sector efficiency and productivity growth.' - Christopher Findlay, University of Adelaide As the rural township, village and private enterprises are becoming more and more significant in the Chinese economy, this book focuses on the comparison of the rural (non-state) and state firms in terms of performance. The analysis is based on the empirical results from estimating various production functions applied to cross-section and panel data. Both aggregate and firm-specific efficiencies are examined in the case studies, exploring potential sources of efficiency differentials such as ownership, scale, factor intensity, location and economic reforms. Special attention is also paid to the regional comparison of industrial development and performance. The implications of the findings in the book for economic and reform policy are thus highlighted.

This book uses a unique survey of manufacturing firms in Zimbabwe to analyze firm-level responses to economic liberalization. The focus on labor and financial markets, investment behaviour, the determinants of entrepreneurship, productivity growth and efficiency, export performance, firm growth, and resource shifts between different manufacturing activities. Understanding these determinants is crucial to evaluating the success or failure of structural adjustment.

Deftly attacking by logic and statistics the dominant pessimism concerning future US economic and military power, Ross instead sees greater progress over the next two or three decades than during the last--a fifth rising phase of a Kondratiev cycle. The central force will consist of a surging rate of technological advance resulting from such innovations as the electronic computer in combination with solid state application; energy-related superconductivity and fusion; biotechnology and space; etc. . . .An excellent, sprightly, and scholarly reply to recent doomsayers. "Choice"

This groundbreaking work challenges pessimistic views of the U.S. economy, arguing instead that the U.S. is on the brink of a radical economic and social transformation, primarily caused by technological advance. According to Ross, the American economy, like other market-oriented economies, is subject to long waves, or cycles. In the early 1990s, he asserts, the U.S. economy will experience the beginning of a rising phase of a long wave, with the economy growing for two or three decades. The fundamental underlying cause of the booming economy will be the momentum associated with an unprecedented rate of technological advance; it will be associated with an increase in the standard of living of the average American beyond current expectations. Written in a style accessible to both scholars and educated lay readers, A Gale of Creative Destruction is an important counterweight to the recent spate of books which posit the impending collapse of the U.S. economy.

Ross takes a unique approach to the subject by integrating structural change in the American economy with technological advance in an international setting. To build his case, he analyzes the historical long waves the U.S. economy has already seen and examines the technological advances such as superconductivity and biotechnology. He shows that such major innovations have coincided with the rising phase of long waves. He also explores changes in the workforce, the diminution of racial and gender discrimination, the increasing interdependence of the world's economies, and the tremendous strides being made toward more democratization and more vibrant market-driven economies, arguing that each of these factors will act to help fuel economic growth in the 1990s and beyond. Based on his analysis, Ross concludes that optimism about the economic future is more than warranted and that today's children will be significantly better off than their parents.

This is the ninth volume in a series of studies on entrepreneurship, innovation and economic growth. The work looks at social and technological factors affecting mid-size businesses, including: education; job training; health policy; and, information technology.

Series Information:
Routledge Studies in Business Organizations and Networks

The globalization of the economy has become an irreversible, universally dominant trend. Industrialized and developing nations as well as countries in transformation have to face the challenge of building internationally competitive economic structures. One-sidedly liberalist economic policies do not lead to the emergence of systemic competitiveness. What is called for are active development strategies. But how are they to be implemented, and what is the state of the political governance capacity of societies in the context of the new world economy?

In recent years, the European Commission has attached increasing importance to the use of financial engineering instruments rather than traditional grant-based financing for the microcredit sector, considering these to be the most efficient option available. This book presents a study of capacity building and structural funds in public managing authorities for the microcredit sector. It presents two surveys to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the managing authorities' capacity building. The first survey investigates the authorities' need for and interests in capacity building activities, assessing the areas in which capacity building support is needed, and explores the different types of support offered. The second survey analyses the results of the microcredit and microfinance programming activity, investigating its target groups and other operational features. It examines the key monitoring and reporting issues involved in this activity, before analysing the regulatory framework of the microcredit and microfinance sector. This book presents an in-depth analysis of structural funds and their management by policy-makers in the European convergence regions. It explores the interests of managing authorities, microcredit institutions, operators and other financial intermediaries involved in microcredit programming activities, and offers some core strategic and operational recommendations for the use of structural funds in the microcredit sector.

Investment Banks, Hedge Funds, and Private Equity, Fourth Edition provides a real-world view of this fast-evolving field, reviewing and analyzing recent innovations and developments. This reference captures the actual work of bankers and professional investors, providing readers with templates for real transactions and insight on how investment banks, hedge funds, and private equity firms provide services to each other while creating opportunities for corporations and investors to raise capital, invest, hedge, finance, acquire, divest, and risk manage. For each type of institution, the business model, organizational structure, products, challenges, regulatory issues, and profit-making opportunities are explained. In addition, specific transactions are analyzed to make clear how advisory services, financings, investments, and trades produce profits or losses, and which types of risks are most commonly taken by each type of institution. Importantly, the linkage of investment banks, hedge funds, and private equity to corporations, governments, and individuals is described, enabling the reader to more clearly understand how these organizations impact them and how their products and services can be best utilized.

The Economic Impact of New Firms in Post-Socialist Countries analyses the emergence and contribution of new entrepreneurs in the transforming economies of Eastern Europe.Small firms and new enterprises are widely assumed to play an important role in the process of economic development and transformation. The contributors to this volume investigate how far small and newly founded enterprises have compensated for losses in employment and contributed to economic recovery in Eastern Europe. With analysis based on new empirical data, this extensive volume covers the situation in Russia, Estonia, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Romania and Slovenia as well as East Germany. Issues covered include attempts to stimulate entrepreneurship, guidelines for successful bottom-up transformation and the prospects for new and small firms in Eastern Europe. The Economic Impact of New Firms in Post-Socialist Countries will be welcomed for its detailed, empirically-founded discussion of entrepreneurship, micro-level studies of transition, small business economics and comparative economic systems.

This book contains a concise, simple, yet precise discussion of externalities, public goods and insurance. Rooted in the first fundamental theorem of welfare economics and in noncooperative equilibrium, it employs elementary calculus. The book presents established theory in novel ways, and offers the tools for the application of the social welfare criteria of efficiency and equity to environmental economics, networks, bargaining, political economy, and the pricing of public goods and public utilities.This innovative, user-friendly textbook will be of use over a broad range of disciplines. The applications found here include international global-warming issues (North vs. South model), and bargaining over externalities (Coase's theorem). This text also introduces the Wicksell-Lindahl model in its original form, which depicts the parliamentary negotiation between representative parties and provides an effective introduction to political economy. Later, these ideas are applied to the pricing of an excludable public good, revealing the theoretical connection between public utility pricing and the pricing of excludable public goods. The text integrates three forms of discourse: verbal, graphical, and formal. Elementary calculus is frequently used, allowing for clarity and precision; qualities that are often missing in conventional textbooks. The main text considers a finite number of consumers and appendices cover the continuum mathematical model, which is implicit in the references to the 'marginal consumer' found in traditional texts. The analysis found in Public Microeconomics is simple and operational, conducive to computationally easy examples and exercises. This textbook is ideally suited to graduate and upper-level undergraduate courses in economics, political science, policy and philosophy. Contents: Preface Foreword to Students 1. Introduction 2. Private Goods Without Externalities 3. Externalities 4. Public Goods 5. Public Utilities 6. Uncertainty and Asymmetrical Information Index

When people think of a grocery store, they have a multitude of images from a neighborhood shop on the corner to the modern-day supermarket. The grocery store has had a rich history, as business conditions have contributed to changes in both its economic and its architectural character. This book provides a history of the grocery store. Beginning with the public markets and general stores of our early cities and the general stores of small towns and hinterlands, this volume traces the evolution of the all-purpose grocery store with the advent of mass distribution, the growth of the supermarket, and the present-day convenience stores, co-ops, warehouse markets, hypermarkets, and wholesale clubs.

This monograph is a formal account of the structure and organization of a large Japanese advertising agency. Based on a year's fieldwork in a Tokyo-based agency, the book presents a case study of an advertising campaign to outline the complex relations that exist between different divisions (Account, Planning, Marketing, Creative) within an advertising agency, and between the agency and the client, on the one hand, and the agency and media, on the other.

The world economy has undergone a fundamental transformation in recent decades and theoretical structures inherited from the 1930s through the 1950s, while retaining large elements of truth, are inadequate to deal with current problems. Benjamin Higgins feels that for a society such as the United States a fiscal policy needs to be adopted that can deal simultaneously with existing unemployment and inflation. He suggests three possible governmental policies: stimulating a high rate of long-run growth, by use of reward innovations and by maintaining the highest possible level of scientific and technical activity; isolating regions that are generators of inflation and others that are pools for unemployment; and establishing a system of direct controls similar to those used in wartime. Higgins describes the transformation of the cogent prewar business cycle, with its "alternations" of inflation or unemployment, then a transitional period of underemployment equilibrium and secular stagnation, and finally, the strange new world of today, one with economic fluctuations in the form of shifting trade-off curves and loops. He then applies his new paradigm to current problems, showing why they cannot be managed through macroeconomic monetary and fiscal policy. Higgins offers case studies of efforts to fight inflation and unemployment, and to reduce regional gaps, to show their strengths and weaknesses. It can be said that unemployment always results from too many people chasing too few jobs, and inflation is always caused by too much money chasing too few goods and services. Beyond such banal generalizations, Higgins maintains there is no single cause for either unemployment or inflation, and thus no single cure can be prescribed for either, let alone for both at once. Nor is it to be expected that the appropriate cure will prove to be the same in all countries at all times. He suggests that an optimal blend of monetary and fiscal policy that will produce the "minimum discomfort" is a good start. "Employment Without Inflation" will be of direct policy interest to economists, sociologists, and national planners.