This volume systematically details both the basic principles and new developments in Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), offering a solid understanding of the methodology, its uses, and its potential. New material in this edition includes coverage of recent developments that have greatly extended the power and scope of DEA and have lead to new directions for research and DEA uses. Each chapter accompanies its developments with simple numerical examples and discussions of actual applications. The first nine chapters cover the basic principles of DEA, while the final seven chapters provide a more advanced treatment.

The productivity of a business exerts an important influence on its financial performance. A similar influence exists for industries and economies: those with superior productivity performance thrive at the expense of others. Productivity performance helps explain the growth and demise of businesses and the relative prosperity of nations. Productivity Accounting: The Economics of Business Performance offers an in-depth analysis of variation in business performance, providing the reader with an analytical framework within which to account for this variation and its causes and consequences. The primary focus is the individual business, and the principal consequence of business productivity performance is business financial performance. Alternative measures of financial performance are considered, including profit, profitability, cost, unit cost, and return on assets. Combining analytical rigor with empirical illustrations, the analysis draws on wide-ranging literatures, both historical and current, from business and economics, and explains how businesses create value and distribute it.

This thought-provoking book explores the influences of market competition and diverse behaviors of economic agents on economic performance, particularly dynamic economic performance. Clem Tisdell illustrates - within evolutionary, dynamic and static contexts - how diversity can improve or impede economic performance. He addresses the fact the role of diversity in improving economic performance has been neglected by economic theorists by making economic diversity a focal point of economic analysis. In particular, special attention is given to the value of economic diversity and economic imperfections in improving the performance of economic processes in particular identified situations. Limitations of using market-like mechanisms for managing public bodies and business firms are discussed and the value of business cooperation (economic mutualism) as a means for improving economic performance is examined. It is also observed that as economies develop, different forms of economic competition and business cooperation evolve. Challenging yet accessible, this book will prove a stimulating read for academics and students in the fields of economics, industrial organization and business and management.

Microeconomics and Behaviour, third edition, is an accessible yet intellectually challenging and engaging textbook for students. It develops core analytical and technical tools and embeds them in a collection of real-world examples and applications to illuminate the power and versatility of the economic way of thinking. With this approach, students develop economic intuition and are stimulated to think more deeply about the technical tools they learn, and to find more interesting ways to apply them. This enables students to not just understand microeconomics, but to think like economists themselves, and to develop a lasting interest in the discipline. Key Features * Fully updated chapters, including new and expanded material on international labour markets, the gig economy, behavioural game theory and nudge theory. * Extensive pedagogical features such as examples, key terms and definitions, in-chapter exercises, chapter summaries, and review questions and problems. * Economic Naturalist examples that show how economic principles can be used to explain experiences and observations of everyday life. New examples include: "Why do firms benefit from the gig economy?", "Why is self-checkout becoming the norm in shops?", and "Why do online retailers have flagship stores?". Connect (R) Resources Available with McGraw-Hill Education's Connect (R), the well-established online learning platform, which helps faculty and institutions improve student outcomes and course delivery efficiency. In addition to maths tutorials and SmartBook, the awardwinning adaptive reading experience, the new Connect (R) features for this edition include: * Economic Application Based Activities that provide students with valuable practice, using problem solving skills to apply their knowledge to realistic scenarios. Students progress from understanding basic concepts to using their knowledge to analyse complex scenarios and solve problems. * Economic Naturalist graphing questions which have been newly developed to complement this key pedagogical feature from the textbook. * Interactive Graphs that help students see the relevance of the subject matter by providing visual displays of real data for students to manipulate. All graphs are accompanied by assignable assessment questions and feedback for students. To learn more, visit mheducation.co.uk/connect

Governments typically build and maintain public infrastructure, which they fund through taxes. But in the past twenty-five years, many developing and advanced economies have introduced public-private partnerships (PPPs), which bundle finance, construction, and operation into a long-term contract with a private firm. In this book, the authors provide a summary of what, they believe, are the main lessons learned from the interplay of experience and the academic literature on PPPs, addressing such key issues as, when governments should choose a PPP instead of a conventional provision, how PPPs should be implemented, and the appropriate governance structures for PPPs. The authors argue that the fiscal impact of PPPs is similar to that of conventional provisions and that they do not liberate public funds. The case for PPPs rests on efficiency gains and service improvements, which often prove elusive. Indeed, pervasive renegotiations, faulty fiscal accounting, and poor governance threaten the PPP model.

In this challenging book, John King makes a sustained and comprehensive attack on the dogma that macroeconomic theory must have 'rigorous microfoundations'. He draws on both the philosophy of science and the history of economic thought to demonstrate the dangers of foundational metaphors and the defects of micro-reduction as a methodological principle. Strong criticism of the microfoundations dogma is documented in great detail, from some mainstream and many heterodox economists and also from economic methodologists, social theorists and evolutionary biologists. The author argues for the relative autonomy of macroeconomics as a distinct 'special science', cooperating with but most definitely not reducible to microeconomics. The Microfoundations Delusion will prove a stimulating and thought-provoking read for scholars, students and researchers in the fields of economics, heterodox economics and history of economic thought.

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.

'This is an exceptional work that is the result of an outstanding selection of the best papers on agglomeration and innovation given at the 10th anniversary of the Udevalla conference. It is the finest set of conference papers I have seen in the past 25 years. These are artfully woven together into three primary areas. The first focuses on the role of knowledge and innovation in entrepreneurship; the second incorporates the institutional environment while the third looks at the international context. I recommend this collection to academics, students and all who are interested in the role of creativity and innovation in entrepreneurial development. Not only are these the very best researchers in the field, but the materials are presented in a clear and concise manner, making it an outstanding base for advanced courses in this area. This work combines some of the best writings by top-notch authors sharing the sharpest insight into the complex area of the role of human capital in structuring agglomerative advantages. I take my hat off to the fine editorial work represented in this volume.' - Kingsley E. Haynes, George Mason University 'The book provides a remarkable contribution on the role of human capital as major creator of knowledge, interpreted as abilities, capabilities, methods, creativity and persistency in identifying and solving problems by collecting, selecting, interpreting and applying existing knowledge and information. The laws of increasing returns to human capital - among which urban agglomerations as magnets which attract persons who embody knowledge - are conceptually searched and empirically verified. The book answers questions such as: Why do highly educated people, i.e. the carriers of human capital, tend to concentrate in large agglomerations? What are the agglomerative forces? and How does this agglomeration of human capital impact different types of economic activities and in particular their location behaviour? Important normative implications are thus derived from such a collected effort.' - Roberta Capello, Politecnico di Milano, Italy This original and instructive new book defines and explores the concept of knowledge as the talent, skills, know-how and understanding embodied in individuals. The distinguished contributors advance the current research frontier in three novel directions which focus on: the role of human capital and talent for creativity, entrepreneurship and regional development; the role of institutions for the behavior of firms and entrepreneurs; and the influence of the global context on the location, export and innovation behavior of firms in a knowledge economy. They also address critical questions that underpin the emerging knowledge economy: - Why does human capital and talent tend to agglomerate in large urban regions? - How does this agglomeration affect the location of different types of economic activities? - How does this agglomeration affect regional growth? Presenting the state of the art in the field of knowledge economics, this book will prove a stimulating and challenging read for scholars and researchers with an interest in economics, business and management, and regional and urban studies. Contributors: M. Andersson, C. Autant-Bernard, P. Billand, G.A.S. Cook, U. Grasjo, J.J. Gutierrez, T. Hatori, B. Johansson, S. Johansson, C. Karlsson, K. Kobayashi, H. Loof, N. Massard, K. Matsushima, P. Nijkamp, D. Nilsson, K. Nystrom, M. Olsson, N.R. Pandit, M. Sahin, R.J. Stimson, R.R. Stough, A. Todiras

The authors present a new formal framework for finding the long-run competitive market equilibrium through short-run equilibria by exploiting the operating policies and plant valuations. This "short-run approach" develops ideas of Boiteux and Koopmans. Applied to the peak-load pricing of electricity generated by thermal, hydro and pumped-storage plants, it gives a sound and practical method of valuing the fixed assets-in this case, the river flows and the geological sites suitable for reservoirs. Its main mathematical basis is the producer's short-run profit maximization programme and its dual; their solutions have relatively simple forms that can greatly ease the fixed-point problem of solving for the general equilibrium. Since the optimal values (profit and cost functions) are usually nondifferentiable-this is so when there are joint costs of production such as capacity constraints-nonsmooth calculus is employed to resolve long-standing discrepancies between textbook theory and industrial reality by giving subdifferential extensions of basic results of microeconomics, including the Wong-Viner Envelope Theorem.

Do marijuana users cut back on consumption when the price rises? To what degree is marijuana consumption related to drinking and tobacco usage? What would happen if marijuana were legalised and taxed in the same way as alcohol and tobacco? Is marijuana priced in a similar way to other goods? Economics and Marijuana deals with these and other questions by drawing on a rich set of data concerning the consumption and pricing of marijuana in Australia, a country where the drug has been decriminalised in some, but not all, states. The book applies the economic approach to drugs to analyse consumption, pricing and the economics of legalising the use of marijuana. The result is a fascinating analysis of this widely used, but little understood illicit drug that provides much needed information and policy advice for a wide range of readers, including economists, policy makers and health professionals.

This book provides a detailed introduction to the theoretical and methodological foundations of production efficiency analysis using benchmarking. Two of the more popular methods of efficiency evaluation are Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), both of which are based on the concept of a production possibility set and its frontier. Depending on the assumed objectives of the decision-making unit, a Production, Cost, or Profit Frontier is constructed from observed data on input and output quantities and prices. While SFA uses different maximum likelihood estimation techniques to estimate a parametric frontier, DEA relies on mathematical programming to create a nonparametric frontier. Yet another alternative is the Convex Nonparametric Frontier, which is based on the assumed convexity of the production possibility set and creates a piecewise linear frontier consisting of a number of tangent hyper planes. Three of the papers in this volume provide a detailed and relatively easy to follow exposition of the underlying theory from neoclassical production economics and offer step-by-step instructions on the appropriate model to apply in different contexts and how to implement them. Of particular appeal are the instructions on (i) how to write the codes for different SFA models on STATA, (ii) how to write a VBA Macro for repetitive solution of the DEA problem for each production unit on Excel Solver, and (iii) how to write the codes for the Nonparametric Convex Frontier estimation. The three other papers in the volume are primarily theoretical and will be of interest to PhD students and researchers hoping to make methodological and conceptual contributions to the field of nonparametric efficiency analysis.

In development literature Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is traditionally considered to be instrumental for the economic growth of all countries, particularly the developing ones. It acts as a panacea for breaking out of the vicious circle of low savings/low income and facilitates the import of capital goods and advanced technical knowhow. This book delves into the complex interaction of FDI with diverse factors. While FDI affects the efficiency of domestic producers through technological diffusion and spill-over effects, it also impinges on the labor market, affecting unemployment levels, human capital formation, wages (and wage inequality) and poverty; furthermore, it has important implications for socio-economic issues such as child labor, agricultural disputes over Special Economic Zones (SEZ) and environmental pollution. The empirical evidence with regard to most of the effects of FDI is highly mixed and reflects the fact that there are a number of mechanisms involved that interact with each other to produce opposing results. The book highlights the theoretical underpinnings behind the inherent contradictions and shows that the final outcome depends on a number of country-specific factors such as the nature of non-traded goods, factor endowments, technological and institutional factors. Thus, though not exhaustive, the book integrates FDI within most of the existing economic systems in order to define its much-debated role in developing economies. A theoretical analysis of the different facets of FDI as proposed in the book is thus indispensable, especially for the formulation of appropriate policies for foreign capital.

Spatial Microeconometrics introduces the reader to the basic concepts of spatial statistics, spatial econometrics and the spatial behavior of economic agents at the microeconomic level. Incorporating useful examples and presenting real data and datasets on real firms, the book takes the reader through the key topics in a systematic way. The book outlines the specificities of data that represent a set of interacting individuals with respect to traditional econometrics that treat their locational choices as exogenous and their economic behavior as independent. In particular, the authors address the consequences of neglecting such important sources of information on statistical inference and how to improve the model predictive performances. The book presents the theory, clarifies the concepts and instructs the readers on how to perform their own analyses, describing in detail the codes which are necessary when using the statistical language R. The book is written by leading figures in the field and is completely up to date with the very latest research. It will be invaluable for graduate students and researchers in economic geography, regional science, spatial econometrics, spatial statistics and urban economics.

Most macroeconomists agree that we live in the age of microfoundations. The recent worldwide financial crisis may have emboldened critics of this microfoundational orthodoxy, but it remains the dominant view that macroeconomic models must go beyond supply and demand functions to the level of individual decision-making, taking into account the general dynamic environment where agents live. Microfoundations Reconsidered seeks to reassess how the relationship of micro and macroeconomics evolved over time. The highly regarded contributors to the book argue that the standard narrative of microfoundations is likely to be unreliable. They therefore re-examine the history of the relationship of microeconomics and macroeconomics, starting from their emergence as self-consciously distinct fields within economics in the early 1930s. They seek to go beyond the conventional history that is often told and written by practicing economists. From different perspectives they challenge the association of microfoundations with Robert Lucas and rational expectations and offer both a more complete and a deeper reading of the relationship between micro and macroeconomics. Microfoundations Reconsidered is a valuable addition to the macroeconomic research literature. It is ideally suited to students, scholars, researchers, and practitioners with an interest in macro and microeconomics and the history of economics. Contributors: M. De Vroey, P. Garcia Duarte, D.W. Hands, K.D. Hoover, R. Leonard, G.T. Lima, P.E. Mirowski

While this book contains numerous facts and empirical findings and touches on policy issues, its main contribution to the existing literature lies in the theoretical perspective it offers. The core of this book is a general equilibrium theory of labor and marriage presented in Chapter 2, which provides the conceptual framework for the rest of the chapters. Two major implications of the theory are sex ratio effects and compensating differentials in marriage. The book demonstrates how a few core concepts, linked via economic analysis, help explain a multitude of findings based on statistical analyses of data from a wide variety of cultures. It is hoped that readers of this book will improve their understanding of how marriage works to help us design better economic and social policies as well as help people live better and happier lives, making the book of interest to not only economists but sociologists and anthropologists as well.

This book tackles the problem of the insufficient and expensive charging infrastructure in Germany. It assesses the lack of charging infrastructure for electric vehicles with regard to regulatory and competition law, as well as economic aspects. The legal solutions proposed here could ultimately serve to offer e-motorists around the country highly efficient and competitively priced charging options.

Originally published in 1987, this book used data from Kisangani, Upper Zaire and North Kivu to demonstrate the emergence of an indigenous bourgeoisie of local capitalists without political position. These entrepreneurs invested in productive enterprise for the local market, managed and expanded their business in rational capitalist fashion, and were reproducing themselves as a class. The text discusses how the spiralling economic crisis in Zaire resulted in a severe decline in the administrative capacity of the state, but also opened up opportunities for social mobility. Reliance on anthropological methods of intensive fieldwork, personal contacts and collection of case histories created the basis for this study, forming an ethnography of local class formation and struggle.

This fully updated third edition is devoted to the analysis of various Stochastic Dominance (SD) decision rules. It discusses the pros and cons of each of the alternate SD rules, the application of these rules to various research areas like statistics, agriculture, medicine, measuring income inequality and the poverty level in various countries, and of course, to investment decision-making under uncertainty. The book features changes and additions to the various chapters, and also includes two completely new chapters. One deals with asymptotic SD and the relation between FSD and the maximum geometric mean (MGM) rule (or the maximum growth portfolio). The other new chapter discusses bivariate SD rules where the individual's utility is determined not only by his own wealth, but also by his standing relative to his peer group. Stochastic Dominance: Investment Decision Making under Uncertainty, 3rd Ed. covers the following basic issues: the SD approach, asymptotic SD rules, the mean-variance (MV) approach, as well as the non-expected utility approach. The non-expected utility approach focuses on Regret Theory (RT) and mainly on prospect theory (PT) and its modified version, cumulative prospect theory (CPT) which assumes S-shape preferences. In addition to these issues the book suggests a new stochastic dominance rule called the Markowitz stochastic dominance (MSD) rule corresponding to all reverse-S-shape preferences. It also discusses the concept of the multivariate expected utility and analyzed in more detail the bivariate expected utility case. From the reviews of the second edition: "This book is an economics book about stochastic dominance. ... is certainly a valuable reference for graduate students interested in decision making under uncertainty. It investigates and compares different approaches and presents many examples. Moreover, empirical studies and experimental results play an important role in this book, which makes it interesting to read." (Nicole Bauerle, Mathematical Reviews, Issue 2007 d)

The extraordinary stories of low-income women living in São Paulo, industrial case studies and the details of three squatter settlements, and communities in the periphery researched in Simone Buechler’s book, Labor in a Globalizing City, allow us to better understand the period of economic transformation in São Paulo from 1996 to 2003.  Buechler’s in-depth ethnographic research over a period of 17 years include interviews with a variety of social actors ranging from favela inhabitants to Wall Street bankers. Buechler examines the paradox of a globalizing city with highly developed financial, service, and industrial sectors, but at the same time a growing sector of microenterprises, degraded labor, considerable unemployment, unprecedented inequality, and precarious infrastructure in its low-income communities. The author argues that informalization and low-income women’s labor are an integral part of the global economy.  Other countries are continuing to use the same kind of neo-liberal economic model even though once again with the latest global financial crisis, it has proven to be detrimental to many workers.  

The book provides an integrated approach to risk sharing, risk spreading and efficient regulation through principal agent models. It emphasizes the role of information asymmetry and risk sharing in contracts as an alternative to transaction cost considerations. It examines how contracting, as an institutional mechanism to conduct transactions, spreads risks while attempting consolidation. It further highlights the shifting emphasis in contracts from Coasian transaction cost saving to risk sharing and shows how it creates difficulties associated with risk spreading, and emphasizes the need for efficient regulation of contracts at various levels. Each of the chapters is structured using a principal agent model, and all chapters incorporate adverse selection (and exogenous randomness) as a result of information asymmetry, as well as moral hazard (and endogenous randomness) due to the self-interest-seeking behavior on the part of the participants.

This book aims to explain to the readers the basic idea of the general equilibrium theory, which forms the core of the current mainstream economics called neoclassical school. To understand this theory is absolutely necessary, either to study further or to criticize the contemporary economic theories. The author not only explains traditional theories, but also makes clear the many problems which are still unsolved. As a text book or reference book for those students who are studying microeconomics for the first time, the author recommends the use of Chapter 1, Chapter 2 (except section 9), Chapter 3 (from section 1 to section 3, section 6, section 11), Chapter 4 (from section 1 to section 4), Chapter 5 (from section 1 to section 5, section 8), Chapter 6 (except sections 6 and 7), Chapter 7 (from section 1 to section 5), Chapter 8 (from section 1 to section 6) and Chapter 9 (sections 1, 4 and 7). For more advanced readers, the author recommends the remaining sections and the literature recommended in the last part of each chapter. Problems given at the end of each chapter allow readers to confirm understanding of the content of the chapter and suggest to the readers more advanced studies. Incidentally, the author tried to avoid the use of the advanced mathematics. Only elementary knowledge of differential calculus and linear algebra are required to read this book.

Over the past decade, a growing body of academic literature on the economics of road cycling has been amassed. This book is the first volume to bring together a majority of the academic research and knowledge on the economics and management of professional road cycling. Each chapter treats a particular economic aspect of the sport, from organizational structure to marketing, labor, game theory, and competitive balance. By discussing the existing research and complementing it with the newest concepts, ideas and data on professional road cycling, this book sets an agenda for further academic research while providing insights for all stakeholders in cycling: governments, cycling's governing bodies, team managers, race organizers, sponsors, media. Furthermore, the unique characteristics of the sport of cycling explored within this text inform broader management and industrial organization research, as they extend analyses of team labor, broadcast revenue generation, and sponsorship financing models. This book is equally of interest to academic researchers, students studying sports economics, and policy makers, such as race organizers, team managers, and sponsors.

This book takes a comprehensive look at Japanese firms engaging in export and foreign direct investment (FDI) and develops new methods and data to investigate the internationalization of firms, which is a focus issue in international trade. Using micro-level data, the book provides an introduction to theoretical and statistical analysis of internationalization modes of Japanese firms with productivity heterogeneity. It makes clear that although the productivity of internationalized Japanese firms is higher on average than that of firms serving only the domestic market, the difference in productivity between exporters and FDI firms is not as obvious in comparison with that of their counterparts in the United States and Europe. Focusing on this point, the book analyzes not only productivity heterogeneity among firms, but also the differences in firm-specific factors other than productivity: industry-specific factors, market-specific factors such as market size and variable and fixed costs for export, and FDI in destination countries. This in-depth investigation reveals how those factors make the modes of Japanese firms' internationalization different from those in the United States and Europe. Further analysis focuses on the effects of match quality, organizational and institutional factors in the market on firms' exports, and FDI. As an approach to the current trends in international trade, this book is unique in using detailed firm-level panel data drawn from Japanese government statistics.

This textbook on network economics provides essential microeconomic instruments for the analysis of network sectors like telecommunications, transport or energy. Network-specific characteristics emerge both on the cost side and benefit side, requiring network providers to develop innovative entrepreneurial competition strategies for costing, pricing, and investment. From a competition policy perspective, a number of interesting questions arise: In which parts of networks is competition functional? In contrast, where is an abuse of market power to be expected? What is the division of labor between cartel authorities and regulatory agencies? The book develops an analytical framework for all network industries which allows readers to study entrepreneurial strategies as well as regulation and competition policies for network industries.

Economists can use computer algebra systems to manipulate symbolic models, derive numerical computations, and analyze empirical relationships among variables. Maxima is an open-source multi-platform computer algebra system that rivals proprietary software. Maxima's symbolic and computational capabilities enable economists and financial analysts to develop a deeper understanding of models by allowing them to explore the implications of differences in parameter values, providing numerical solutions to problems that would be otherwise intractable, and by providing graphical representations that can guide analysis. This book provides a step-by-step tutorial for using this program to examine the economic relationships that form the core of microeconomics in a way that complements traditional modeling techniques. Readers learn how to phrase the relevant analysis and how symbolic expressions, numerical computations, and graphical representations can be used to learn from microeconomic models. In particular, comparative statics analysis is facilitated. Little has been published on Maxima and its applications in economics and finance, and this volume will appeal to advanced undergraduates, graduate-level students studying microeconomics, academic researchers in economics and finance, economists, and financial analysts.