After 25 years of expansion and liberalisation in the post-war period, social security policies in industrial countries have been encountering stresses and strains in the 1970s and 1980s in an environment of slower economic growth, concern over inflation and high unemployment. This has led to intensified controversy between conservatives, who blame economic instability on the generosity of the welfare state and liberals who defend the role of social security programmes in contributing to economic stability and preventing people from falling into poverty. The discussion focuses on questions such as the relative merits of earnings-related, income-tested and universal benefits; who bears the financial burden; and the impact of social security benefits on incentives to work. Among the controversial issues receiving considerable attention are the arguments over the persistence of high unemployment in Western Europe, the attacks on 'entitlements' that benefit the middle class and the growing problem of disadvantaged youth, especially in the ghetto areas of large cities in some of the Western European countries and in the United States.

This book provides a systematic presentation of new microeconomic theories of imperfect information. Each chapter explores a particular type of informational asymmetry and reviews major papers. Wherever possible the theories are compared with experimental evidence. An extensive bibliography is included. Part I, statics, begins with an examination of how imperfect price or quantity information on the buyer's side provides new explanations of phenomena such as price dispersion and sales or resale price maintenance. A thorough discussion of private value auctions and common value auctions follows. Subsequent chapters investigate the links between uncertainty about personal characteristics and job signaling, incomplete insurance coverage, and credit rationing by banks. Part II, dynamics, relates the dynamics of collusion, predation, and market efficiency to the transmission, pooling, and aggregation of private information. Game theoretic findings and their implications for antitrust policy are included.

Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is the systematic and analytical process of comparing benefits and costs in evaluating the desirability of a project or programme - often of a social nature. It attempts to answer such questions as whether a proposed project is worthwhile, the optimal scale of a proposed project and the relevant constraints. CBA is fundamental to government decision making and is established as a formal technique for making informed decisions on the use of society's scarce resources. This timely sixth edition of the classic Cost-Benefit Analysis text continues to build on the successful approach of previous editions, with lucid explanation of key ideas, simple but effective expository short chapters and an appendix on various useful statistical and mathematical concepts and derivatives. The book examines important developments in the discipline, with relevant examples and illustrations as well as new and expanded chapters which build upon standard materials on CBA. Highlights include: updated historical background of CBA extended non-market goods valuation methods the impact of uncertainty evaluation of programmes and services behavioural economics decision rules and heuristics CBA and regulatory reforms CBA in developed and developing countries value of household production other topics frequently encountered in CBA, such as costs of diseases and air pollution, and value of statistical life. This book is a valuable source and guide to international funding agencies, governments, interested professional economists and senior undergraduate and graduate students. The text is fully supported by a companion website, which includes discussion questions and PowerPoint slides for each chapter.

The book discusses, elaborates on and answers questions to the following points: Firstly, what has changed through the information technology represented by software, Internet and big data? How do these changes effect the production relationships, the production mode and the industrial development model? Can China realize a "great-leap-forward" in economic development by promoting such a new Internet economy? Secondly, what is the format shown by the Internet economy? Is the Internet economy a market economy, or a planned economy, or is it an economic complex format which combines the planned economy and the market economy? What is the structure of the future economy? Which entities will compete with each other throughout the industries? What is the format of the future financial investment industry? Why does the Internet economy have a revolutionary impact on the economic base and the superstructure? Thirdly, let us look back on the traditional manufacturing industry. What on earth is the core value of the manufacturing industry? How is the core technology and core value of manufacturing realized? Why can it be that the industrial Internet will become a rare historical opportunity for China's manufacturing industry and economy to achieve a "great-leap-forward" development? Finally, in the big economic tide of Internet and big data, what are the future variables of China's economy? What is the established economic policy of the United States for the global economy and industries? How should the economic variables of the United States be best dealt with, those that are determined as "US priority" and "the return of manufacturing industry" strongly promoted by the U.S. President Trump?

War Movies and Economics: Lessons from Hollywood's Adaptations of Military Conflict applies ongoing research in the relatively new genre of economics in popular media to Hollywood's war movies. Whether inadvertently or purposefully, these movies provide numerous examples of how economic principles often play an important role in military conflict. The authors of the chapters included in this edited collection work to illustrate economics lessons portrayed in adaptations such as Band of Brothers, Conspiracy, The Dirty Dozen, Dunkirk, Memphis Belle, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List, Spartacus, Stalag 17, and Valkyrie. Aspects of these stories show how key economic principles of scarcity, limited resources, and incentives play important roles in military conflict. The movies also provide an avenue for discussion of the economics of public goods provision, the modern economic theory of bureaucracy, and various game-theoretic concepts such as strategic moves and commitment devices. Where applicable, lessons from closely related fields such as management are also provided. This book is ideal reading for students of economics looking for an approachable route to understanding basic principles of economics and game theory. It is also accessible to amateur and professional historians, and any reader interested in popular culture as it relates to television, movies, and military history.

The chapters of this book provide a better understanding of wine economics, by addressing new issues such as sustainable development, food authenticity, financial expectations and consumption economics. Many of the discussed topics have been recently developed by economists (e.g. global warming and wine tourism) despite having been mostly covered by specialists in management, marketing and geography. Other fields correspond to new investigations of traditional topics, such as ranking wines or consumer behaviour, and new analyses in strategic choice (for example how to bottle wine or to sell bulk wine, to select grape varieties at replanting, to distinguish attitudes, intentions and behaviour in exporting). "Wine Economics" draws attention to the positioning of different market players and explores alternative regulations for public policy.

For one semester MBA Managerial Economics courses Economics for Managers presents the fundamental ideas of microeconomics and macroeconomics and integrates them from a managerial decision-making perspective in a framework that can be used in a single-semester course. To be competitive in today's business environment, managers must understand how economic forces affect their business and the factors that must be considered when making business decisions. This is the only book that provides business students and MBAs with a thorough and applied understanding of both micro- and macroeconomic concepts in a way non-economics majors can understand. The third edition retains all the same core concepts and straightforward material on micro- and macroeconomics while incorporating new case material and real-world examples that relate to today's managerial student.

Motivated people are crucial to create a sustainable competitive advantage for your company. Successful Management by Motivation shows that in a knowledge-based society, this goal cannot be achieved by extrinsic motivation alone. Pay for performance often even hurts because it crowds out intrinsic motivation like work morale. To succeed, companies have to find ways of fostering and sustaining intrinsic motivation. With the help of in-depth case studies, representative surveys, and analyses based on a large number of firms and employees, this joint work of business researchers and economists identifies the various aspects of motivation in companies and shows how the right combination of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation can be achieved.

This book is concerned with one of the major contemporary issues of industrial organization: the role of small business enterprise in a mature market economy. Key issues covered are start-up and its financial features; static and dynamic scale economies; enterprise case histories; small business strategy; competitive forces; strategic pricing policy; determinants of growth and survivial; and the political economy of fair trade and enterprise. The treatment is analytical and empirical, well grounded in business reality, and set within the context of the political economy of small business. It is based on a unique and extensive database of small business enterprise, containing over 40,000 data points gathered by field work within the firm. The book starts with a section on the database and then applies diverse methods; statistical analysis; enterprise and case histories; econometrics; and political economy. In this way, a particularly rich picture of the modern small business emerges, because it is viewed from different perspectives. By the importation of contemporary ideas from industrial economics, allied to the use of statistical, econometric and qualitative techniques on a relational database, this book brings new standards of rigour and insight into the study of small business enterprise, without losing touch with either the reality of the small business or the milieu within which it functions. The author brings to this work his long-standing research experience in industrial economics, and an established publication record in small business economics.

In the last three decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall, there has been a vast amount of study looking at transforming the planned economy to a market economy from both theoretical and empirical aspects. This book provides an overview and insight into transition economies in the recent decades and looks at key economics topics from the so-called "transition strategy debate" to environmental reform. The book also includes an analytical review and meta-analysis of the existing literature. By integrating theoretical discussions and synthesizing empirical findings in a systematic manner, this book may help to enlighten the debate on the timing, speed, and policy sequence of economic transition. The book will particularly appeal to researchers, policy makers, other practitioners, and under- and post-graduate students who are interested in transition economies in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Southeast Asia, and China. It aims to be read as an advanced reader.

Profits in the Long Run asks two questions: Are there persistent differences in profitability across firms? If so, what accounts for them? This book answers these questions using data for the 1000 largest US manufacturing firms in 1950 and 1972. It finds that there are persistent differences in profitability and market power across large US companies. Companies with persistently high profits are found to have high market shares and sell differentiated products. Mergers do not result in synergistic increases in profitability, but they do have an averaging effect. Companies with above normal profits have their profits lowered by mergers. Companies with initially below normal profits have them raised. In addition, the influence of other variables on long-run profitability, including risk, sales, diversification, growth and managerial control, is explored. The implications of antitrust policy are likewise addressed.

The spectacular economic growth experienced by China since 1978 has often been hailed as the "China Miracle". Many economists have tried to understand the forces behind China's phenomenal growth and the explanations can be divided into two broad schools of economic thought - one school of thought which includes Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman explains that market mechanism and deregulation led to China's success, while the other school of thought which include Justin Yifu Lin, the former Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President of the World Bank, explains that China's growth miracle is a unique model to itself defined by the Chinese government's prominent role. The Chinese government has been responsible in identifying and investing in industries that have contributed to economic growth. Some economists in the latter school even claim that the China Miracle cannot be explained by mainstream economics. This book examines both schools of thought and attempts to provide a synthesis of the two schools to explain the China Miracle. It looks at the Solow-Swan growth model, the Harrod-Domar model and transaction cost theory. It provides insights into whether and how China can sustain its growth and how developing countries may replicate China's success.

The current economic crisis has been assumed to reflect a cyclical problem, and some
economists have asked that it be dealt with 'fiscal stimulus packages', especially
packages associated with public spending. This action is similar to that of giving
steroids to a patient who suffers from a serious illness. It might make him or her feel
temporarily better, but it actually aggravates the illness.
Dollars, Euro's, and Debt suggests that an increase in public spending is the wrong
medicine, because it was precisely the increase in public spending that created some
of the structural problems that are now confused with, or have led to, the cyclical
slowdowns. The book argues that, over the years, and in a growing number of
countries, the high and increasing levels of public spending were, first and progressively,
being financed by higher tax levels and, subsequently, by increasing borrowing.
In the early years of the twenty-first century governments started facing strong
taxpayers' resistance to tax increases. Thus, they relied more and more on public
borrowing, pushing the public debts to high levels. More recently they started facing
stronger resistance by private lenders, that led to the progressive easing of monetary
conditions by central banks. The central banks' actions have made it difficult to
separate fiscal from monetary actions and have hidden some of the true deterioration
in the fiscal accounts. They have also increased future uncertainty and potential 'time
consistency' problems. The book evaluates the effects of 'fiscal stimulus packages',
especially when they start from precarious fiscal conditions, and presents a novel
'law of public expenditure growth', and suggests how that law may help in the design
of 'exit strategies' from the current crisis. It also discusses similarities and differences
between the monetary union that the euro and the monetary union that is the dollar.

Health, The Medical Profession, and Regulation presents new evidence concerning health and the environment, inequality of health in many countries, and the compatibility of different quality of life measurements, along with new solutions to problems of health policy. The book is grouped into three sections. Section I, comprising six papers, looks into the determinants of people's health. Section II consists of three papers and deals with the supply side of the market for health care services. Finally, Section III contains three contributions devoted to health regulation. The intended market for this volume includes, but is not limited to, health economists, policy makers, insurers, and governmental advisors who need to stay abreast of the latest developments in health services research worldwide.

The book presents a collective action perspective to explain how extraterritoriality functions and assess when, and to what extent, extraterritoriality is effective. A collective action perspective provides a new account of foreign anti-bribery laws and their extraterritorial enforcement that draws on theories discussed in the field of economic governance. Within this framework, the book offers an intensive analysis of US foreign anti-bribery law such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), international law as it emanates from the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention, and comparative insights into UK law and German law. To test the theory in practice, the book provides a unique data set of more than 40 foreign anti-bribery enforcement actions conducted by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and other examples from comparative jurisdictions. Extraterritoriality and International Bribery is ideal reading for academics and students with an interest in global governance, economic crime, criminology, and law and economics, as well as practitioners concerned with foreign anti-bribery enforcement, including compliance officers, lawyers, investigating and prosecuting authorities, and business leaders. The book also discusses governance alternatives existing outside international anti-bribery law and offers policy and legal reforms proposals. The book suggests a decentralized enforcement model with the delegation of some enforcement tasks to an external body as the most appropriate governance alternative.

Economists advise that the law should seek efficiency. More recently, it has been suggested that common law systems are more conducive of economic growth than code-based civil law systems. This book argues that there is no theory to support such statements and provides evidence that rejects a 'one-size-fits-all' approach. Both common law and civil law systems are reviewed to debunk the relationship between the efficiency of the common law hypothesis and the alleged inferiority of codified law systems. Legal Origins and the Efficiency Dilemma has six aims: explaining the efficiency hypothesis of the common law since Posner's 1973 book; summarizing the legal origins theory in the context of economic growth; debunking their relationship; discussing the meaning of 'common law' and the problems with the efficiency hypothesis by comparing laws across English speaking jurisdictions; illustrating the shortcomings of the legal origins theory with a comparative law and economics analysis; and concluding there is no theory and evidence to support the economic superiority of common law systems. Based on previous pieces by the authors, this book expands their work by including new areas of analysis (such as trusts), detailing previous analysis (such as French law versus common law in the areas of contract, property and torts), and updating for recent developments in the academic discourse. This volume is of interest to academics and students who study microeconomics, comparative law and foundations of law, as well as legal policy analysts.

This book attempts to shed light on why it is so difficult to develop and maintain successful businesses in the grocery e-commerce arena. Within the last five years, grocery e-commerce has experienced both consistent successes such as Tesco.com and irrevocable failures such as Webvan.com. Niels Kornum and Mogens Bjerre bring key researchers together to investigate the factors contributing to the success of grocery e-commerce, particularly in countries that had the earliest and most extensive experiences in this field: the USA, the UK and Scandinavia.The authors argue that grocery e-commerce is especially difficult to implement because it differs from other types of consumer sales in numerous aspects including low profit margins, low value density of products and high frequency purchases. As well as examining these unique characteristics, the authors present research on consumer behaviour, cross country comparisons and new empirical evidence in order to address the long-term prospects for the survival of grocery e-commerce. Recommendations as to how managers should respond to its challenges are also made. Academics, students and researchers focusing on marketing, consumer behaviour, logistics, e-commerce and business strategy will find this book to be a fascinating read.

This book is about the applicability of the high seas regime in the exclusive economic zone (EEZ). It analyses all the relevant provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and goes in depth about the very interesting and complex relationship that exists between the high seas and the EEZ. This book examines three cardinal freedoms of the sea: freedom of navigation, freedom of overflight, and freedom to lay submarine cables and pipelines.

"The Logic of Industrial Organization" discusses key themes in industrial relations, manufacturing, employment and investment and education for business administration. The book contains chapters on: the structure of industry; the efficiency of large-scale operation; planned and free consumption; forecasting and market research; competition; rationalization and nationalization; investment and employment; incentives to work and mobility; and stimulus to enterprise and administration.