Each year, thousands of businesses file for bankruptcy protection because managers fail to efficiently organize the company's operations, misread market trends, pay inadequate attention to product quality, or misinterpret the activities and intentions of rival companies. Perhaps they fail to formulate optimal advertising or financing strategies, procure raw materials and components at least cost, or provide adequate incentives to motivate workers to put forth their best efforts. Managerial economics is the application of economic principles to topics of concern to managers. This textbook develops a framework for predicting managerial responses to changes in the business environment. It combines the various business disciplines with quantitative methods to identify optimal solutions to more efficiently achieve a firm's organizational objectives. The topics discussed in this textbook are readily accessible to students with a background in the principles of microeconomics and business mathematics. The selection and organizations of topics makes the textbook appropriate for use in a wide range of curricula by students with different backgrounds.

What does a nation owe its military veterans? Gratitude, esteem, land grants, medical care, pensions, higher education? Or is serving in the armed forces of one's country an obligation to be undertaken without any expectation of compensation? If veterans are to receive government aid, should a distinction be made between those who served in wartime or faced enemy fire and those who saw neither war nor combat? These questions have been answered in varying ways by the American people and their elected representatives since the Revolutionary War. Paid Patriotism? explores the genesis and growth of soldiers' pensions throughout the nineteenth century, the Bonus experiment after the First World War, the passage and consequences of the GI Bill of Rights, the growth of the nation's system of veterans' hospitals, the evolution of veterans' programs during the Cold War and Vietnam, the post-9/11 GI Bill, and contemporary scandals and reform efforts within the veterans' bureaucracy, from its promotion to a cabinet department to wrongdoing in the Veterans Health Administration. James T. Bennett examines the complex and politically charged history and heated present-day debate of what the late columnist William Safire called the "most sacred cow" in Washington: the veterans' bureaucracy. In the end, the United States and its citizens owe veterans a debt. But how has and how should that debt be honored-and at what cost?

Free market capitalism has created a divided American society. Conservative economic and social policy thinking drove the Right's Project from 1980 to its collapse in 2008, leaving the world in ruins and fascism on the march. The Vision of a Real Free Market Society challenges the Left to create new forms of the market economy that promote efficiency and equality while permanently thwarting concentrated power. Many recent commentators have offered policy recommendations based on existing economic institutions. By contrast, this book calls for root-and-branch changes to the inherent structure of American capitalism. The Vision of a Real Free Market Society: Re-Imagining American Freedom presents a Left-egalitarian case for limited government that overcomes the failures of conservatism while rescuing economic justice from the weaknesses of tax and transfer liberalism. The book explains why the system fails so many Americans in so many different ways, and outlines how we can build a better economy that simultaneously promotes freedom and social justice while crippling the powers of America's oligarchs. Exploring the idea of a left-wing case for strong but small government, the book makes the case for fundamental reforms that will lead to a truly free and fair society. This provocative book will be of great relevance to anyone with an interest in politics, philosophy or economics, and will challenge readers to rethink their assumptions concerning the prospects for combining justice with fairness in the modern world.

This book analyses reforms to retirement policies in Japan and South Korea, especially in the context of rapid population ageing. A defining feature of the labour markets and workplaces in these two nations, and the lives of workers and families, is involuntary retirement at relatively young ages. The book explains past developments and recent reforms of retirement policies both in the two countries, as well as in a cross-national comparative manner. At the core of the book is an examination of the social, economic and political conflicts around retirement, such as between younger and older workers, between employers and governments, and between employers and workers. The policy recommendations offered apply not only to Japan and South Korea, but also to other nations such as China. The volume is of value particularly for those interested in labour markets and workplaces, population ageing and contemporary East Asia, in addition to those studying retirement and pensions. Policymakers, business leaders, worker organizations, researchers and students will benefit from the insights about the past, present and future of retirement.

A typical consumer underestimates the benefits of future energy savings and underinvests in energy efficiency, relative to a description of the socially optimal level of energy efficiency. To alleviate this energy-efficiency gap problem, various programs have been implemented. In recent years, many governments have started providing consumers with subsidies on the purchases of eco-friendly products such as hybrid cars and energy efficient appliances. This book conducts a comprehensive analysis of the environmental subsidy programs conducted in Japan and examines their impacts on consumer product selection, consumer product use, and environmental outcome. The book also proposes recommendations for future environmental and industrial policies. The book's empirical findings will be of interest to those who are researching on and policymakers of environmental and industrial policies.

With the ever rising demand for meat around the world, the production of meat has changed dramatically in the past few decades. What has brought about the increasing popularity and attendant normalization of factory farms across many parts of the world? What are some of the ways to resist such broad convergences in meat production and how successful are they? This book locates the answers to these questions at the intersection between the culture, science and political economy of meat production and consumption. It details how and why techniques of production have spread across the world, albeit in a spatially uneven way. It argues that the modern meat production and consumption sphere is the outcome of a complex matrix of cultural politics, economics and technological faith. Drawing from examples across the world (including America, Europe and Asia), the tensions and repercussions of meat production and consumption are also analyzed. From a geographical perspective, food animals have been given considerably less attention compared to wild animals or pets. This book, framed conceptually by critical animal studies, governmentality and commodification, is a theoretically driven and empirically rich study that advances the study of food animals in geography as well as in the wider social sciences.

This book offers extensive and quality research on and original insights into China's internal regional dynamics. It provides a focused analysis of the internal dynamics and regional economic diversity of China covering the eastern, central and western regions through case study, data analysis and review of state-initiated policy measures. The book also identifies and analyses existing and potential challenges facing China's regions in their pursuit of sustainable development. Different regions in China have attempted to achieve fast economic growth and move up the industrial value chain through industrial restructuring and upgrading, inter-regional industrial transfer, urbanization or seeking central government's endorsement of new regional policies. The book examines the difference and similarities among local government policies to boost regional industrial and economic growth and assesses their implications and effectiveness. The author had conducted detailed studies in this field in order to bridge the existing research gap and the book will help to give rise to useful and illuminating discussion.

What does a nation owe its military veterans? Gratitude, esteem, land grants, medical care, pensions, higher education? Or is serving in the armed forces of one's country an obligation to be undertaken without any expectation of compensation? If veterans are to receive government aid, should a distinction be made between those who served in wartime or faced enemy fire and those who saw neither war nor combat? These questions have been answered in varying ways by the American people and their elected representatives since the Revolutionary War. Paid Patriotism? explores the genesis and growth of soldiers' pensions throughout the nineteenth century, the Bonus experiment after the First World War, the passage and consequences of the GI Bill of Rights, the growth of the nation's system of veterans' hospitals, the evolution of veterans' programs during the Cold War and Vietnam, the post-9/11 GI Bill, and contemporary scandals and reform efforts within the veterans' bureaucracy, from its promotion to a cabinet department to wrongdoing in the Veterans Health Administration. James T. Bennett examines the complex and politically charged history and heated present-day debate of what the late columnist William Safire called the "most sacred cow" in Washington: the veterans' bureaucracy. In the end, the United States and its citizens owe veterans a debt. But how has and how should that debt be honored-and at what cost?

The author has virtually incomparable experience in both providing trade policy advice to more than 25 countries on behalf of the World Bank and also publishing quality journal articles in most of those cases. In this volume, he focuses on his work on: (i) trade policies for countries making the transition from planned to market economies; (ii) his trade policy guideline papers for the World Bank on trade policies for poverty alleviation, uniform tariff policy, adjustment costs of trade liberalization, exchange rate overvaluation, globalization and technology transfer and rules of thumb on regional trade policies; (iii) multilateral, dynamic and environmental issues in trade policy using computable general equilibrium models; (iv) trade policy of the United States in the auto and steel industries; and (v) mathematical methods for modeling. The papers show an unusual combination of policy relevance, advice and impact, with rigor and international trade theory insights.The papers in this volume have appeared in many of the economics profession's more prestigious journals, including Econometrica, Review of Economic Studies, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Economic Journal, the Journal of International Economics, International Economic Review, European Economic Review, Canadian Journal of Economics, Economic Inquiry, the Journal of Comparative Economic, Review of International Economics, World Economy, the Southern Economic Journal, the World Bank Economic Review, the Japanese Economic Review and the Latin American Journal of Economics. In this book, the author elaborates on the articles by discussing some of the policy contexts for the requests for the work from developing and transition countries to the World Bank, the key trade theory or policy insights, policy recommendations and conclusions and the policy impacts.

Microeconomics studies the choices made by individuals under conditions of scarcity of resources and time and the interaction between different decision makers. Scarcity forces economic actors to choose one opportunity among many. Microeconomics with Spreadsheets starts with the mathematical preliminaries and covers consumer theory, producer theory, general equilibrium, game theory, market structure and economics of information.The reader will use numerical tools to analyse problems that cannot be analysed analytically. There is a natural synergy between rigorous proofs and numerical methods, since before using a numerical method one should also prove that a solution exists and analyse whether it is unique, and therefore be able to interpret properly the output of a program.

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 presents startling evidence that state monopolies can produce better outcomes than the free market. It provides an empirical comparison of the property insurance market in five European countries: Britain, Spain, France, Switzerland, and Germany. The market and cost structures of insurers in each country are described, and particular features of each market and the outcomes for customers examined. The regulatory frameworks vary widely from country to country and so do the market outcomes, both in terms of premium level and in terms of available insurance cover. In view of the increase in major floods and other forms of natural damage (such as subsidence) over the last decades, the non-availability of insurance cover in many competitive insurance systems is likely to become a major political issue. This book shows that state monopoly is an adequate policy response. Competitive insurance systems are shown to provide incomplete cover at a substantially higher cost. In mixed systems, where the private sector can obtain reinsurance from the state (such a system is being tried in France) the state tends to end up paying most of the costs (it reinsures most of the bad risks) while the private insurance companies keep most of the premium income. The book will be of interest to academic economists interested in privatization, regulation, the theory of the firm, and insurance; Policy-makers concerned with regulation and privatization; Insurance companies, regulators, and analysts.

Now in its fifth edition, Economic Approaches to Organisations remains one of the few texts to emphasize the importance of economic issues and developments in the study of organisations and management. It explains in a non-technical way different economic approaches such as behavioural theory of the firm, game theory, agency theory, transaction cost economics, economics of strategy and evolutionary approaches. This latest edition is packed with practical examples from real-world companies, helping you to understand how the concepts relate to economic and organizational problems happening in the world today.

The Retail and Food Services sectors play an important role in Singapore. They add to the vibrancy of the economy and contribute to the social well-being of Singaporeans. At the same time, they are often highlighted and scrutinised for their low productivity performance and high reliance on manpower. There is to date a lack of local literature that addresses the issues faced by the two sectors at the enterprise and worker levels.This timely book includes major topics in services productivity in the Singapore context, with emphasis on Retail and Food Services. Topics covered include the key productivity levers of the services sectors: holistic productivity measurement framework, effective entrepreneurship, manpower management, promotion by social media, marketing, costing process and accounting sophistication. These areas are explored through literature reviews and in-depth interviews with companies and consumers. The chapters also include recommendations for policy makers and industry stakeholders. Written in a simple and accessible manner, this book will serve as an insightful guide to researchers, policy-makers, industry practitioners and enterprises and those who are keen to learn from the Singapore experience.

This new volume explores two alternative economic theories - the classical theory and the marginalist or neoclassical theory- through a discussion between two eminent economists, Pierangelo Garegnani and Paul Samuelson. The key themes of the volume are the difference in approaches to the explanation of the distribution of income and relative prices, and therefore different approaches to all other economic problems, in particular capital accumulation and economic growth. The book discusses whether there is a 'classical' approach to the theory of value and distribution at the core of economic theory that is fundamentally different from the later marginalist or neoclassical theory. In the volume, the late Pierangelo Garegnani argues for the validity of Piero Sraffa's position on this issue, whilst the late noble laureate Paul Samuelson vehemently contests it. At a time of economic crisis, the future of the discipline is far from certain, and so it is extremely important to bring these debates back into the light, by reproducing them together for the first time. A comprehensive introduction by Heinz Kurz sets the debate in this context, and provides crucial background to the arguments.

An Economic Perspective on Trade Mark Law uses economic analysis to examine the capacity of a trade mark to stimulate and strengthen demand for marked products and the trade mark's role in marketing and business organization. It uses this perspective to evaluate the exclusive rights that trade mark owners enjoy and other issues in trade mark law. It will argue that the trade mark has enabled marketing to develop as a distinct form of economic activity and that the trade mark's flexibility as a structuring device has had a major impact on the evolution of the firm and on the organization of streams of economic activity. This invaluable book will appeal to academics, postgraduate and undergraduate students in the fields of trade mark law, business organization, intellectual property and law and economics. Solicitors and other professionals specializing in trade mark law and/or marketing will also find much to interest them in this insightful book. Contents: 1. Trade Marks in Modern Commercial Life; 2. The Legal Nature of a Trade Mark as a Marketing Resource and a Structuring Device; 3. The Marketing Power of Trade Marks; 4. Trade Marks and the Organization of Economic Activity; 5. An Economic Perspective on Trade Mark Law; 6. Concluding Thoughts; Index

This book brings together cutting edge contributions in the fields of international economics, micro theory, welfare economics and econometrics, with contributions from Donald R. Davis, Avinash K. Dixit, Tadashi Inoue, Ronald W. Jones, Dale W. Jorgenson, K. Rao Kadiyala, Murray C. Kemp, Kenneth M. Kletzer, Anne O. Krueger, Mukul Majumdar, Daniel McFadden, Lionel McKenzie, James R. Melvin, James C. Moore, Takashi Negishi, Yoshihiko Otani, Raymond Riezman, Paul A. Samuelson, Joaquim Silvestre and Marie Thursby.

This ground-breaking book addresses the problem of price disparities across countries and, for the first time, uses market structures as the central focus. The author also addresses the effects of trade barriers, input-output relations and economies of scale, factors often ignored by other studies, to determine what causes prices to vary across countries.A post-Keynesian markup pricing model incorporating market power, intermediate inputs and productivity differences is developed and tested using regression analysis. New data on sectoral price levels in Japan and the Republic of Korea and data on GDP and investment price levels for a large number of countries are used. The empirical evidence shows that wages, labor productivity, market power and economies of scale are the most important variables for the explanation of differing price levels across countries. The author finds little evidence for the importance of policy-induced trade barriers and competition policy in explaining this. This book will be useful for scholars of post-Keynesian economics and international economics.

The questions such as, 'why the focuses of national policies vary significantly across countries, although their sources of policies are to a great extent identical'; 'why national development experiences mostly cannot be transplanted successfully among countries'; 'why some ineffective institutions persist over long periods of time', have attracted numerous efforts. This book provides a new perspective and argues that the answers lie in the existence of the networks of institutions and thus of national systems of policies (NSP) within national frameworks. Institutions are the equilibria of games and exist as rules of games. Therefore, a basic setting is that institutions emerge endogenously from a series of social interactions, and the interacting human agents are connected and interdependent at the overlapping interaction platforms. National policies and developmental strategies can be modelled in this approach too. The networks of institutions describe the dynamic connected structure among institutions in the process of social interactions over time. Regarding the national policies response to the recent economic crises, this book argues that the difference comes from the distinct understandings of the tags of the policies, which highly depend on the distinct national contexts, such as national interests, cultural background, political systems and so forth. This book represents a significant contribution to the literature which will be essential reading for those interested in institutional economics, network theory, social structures and economic policy. In particular, the approach of applying network game theory in institutional emergence, and the terms developed, i.e. tags of institutions, and national systems of policies, in this book, are illuminating and deserve more attention.

First published in 1985, Advances in Monetary Economics draws together papers given at the 1984 Money Study Group Conference and additional papers presented in seminars of the same year. The book includes papers on theoretical, empirical and institutional aspects of monetary economics. Each chapter displays a concern with policy in the monetary sphere, both with regards to macroeconomic questions of monetary and fiscal management, and issues of policy at the microeconomic level towards financial institutions and markets. In doing so, the book highlights the importance of monetary economics in policy issues. Advances in Monetary Economics has enduring relevance for those with an interest in the history and development of monetary economics.

Exam Board: OCR Level: A-Level Subject: Economics First Teaching: September 2015 First Exam: Summer 2016 Create confident, numerate and well-prepared students with skills-focused, topic-specific workbooks. - Prepare students to meet the demands of the 2015 OCR A-Level Economics specification by practising exam technique and developing literary and numeracy skills - Supplement key resources such as textbooks to adapt easily to existing schemes of work - Reinforce and apply topic understanding with flexible material for classwork or revision - Create opportunities for self-directed learning and assessment with answers to tasks and activities supplied online

swollen with deutschemarks and yen newly created to purchase unwanted dollars from the markets. When the Bundesbank and the Bank of Japan began to raise their interest rates to slow domestic monetary expansion, the fabric of international monetary cooperation began to unravel. Amid charge and counter-charge by disgruntled fmance ministers, the dollar dropped further and interest rates jumped upward, leading to panic in the stock market on Black Monday. Fortunately, a steady hand and generous supply of credit from the Federal Reserve System prevented massive bankruptcies among Wall Street brokerage houses and a collapse of the credit system. But the world-wide reverberations of the Wall Street crash exposed the underlying weaknesses of an economy based on foreign borrowing for all to see. Furthermore, the banking system is saddled with mountains of bad debts from the Third World and depressed parts of the American economy. A new Administration entering office in 1989 must deal with these problems, among others. Businesses and state and local governments need to know whether to focus their efforts on tax policy, investment, and improvements in education and worker training, or lobbying for protection from imports. The papers in this volume were chosen to explain the causes of present competitive problems in American industry and the factors that can lead to their gradual solution.

This is the first of a two volume collection of the late Julian Simon's important and radical contributions to a wide variety of economic problems. Often considered as controversial and unorthodox, these essays challenge conventional approaches. The book begins with introductory chapters in which the author discusses his background and experiences as a controversial scholar. Divided into six parts, the first part considers some basic concepts on issues such as welfare, natural resources, causality and product differentiation. The second part contains essays on managerial economics as well as general microeconomics including monopoly, duopoly and oligopoly. Advertising is discussed in the third part and industrial organization in the fourth. Part five focuses on policies for exchange and auction considering, among other issues, airline overbooking, and the final section features articles on macroeconomics. This collection of controversial essays will be welcomed by academics and students interested in unorthodox approaches to various economic theories and concepts.

The Middle East is at an unprecedented crossroads between the established Euro-centric system and the emerging Asian powerhouses like India and China. Their economies, policies and social structures are a half-way-house between these two dominant groups and are an important case study to examine in order to highlight future prospects and problems of the global system. The Middle East is an important missing piece in a huge global puzzle. This book makes a significant step towards understanding that puzzle and offers solutions for how to fully integrate this missing jigsaw piece into the global economic system. Analytical Peace Economics: The Illusion of War for Peace focuses on three critical issues in the Middle East that dominate discussions about their place in the global political economy: conflict, oil and (regional) development. Examining economic and social development in juxtaposition with conflict and peace, this book adapts, develops and applies historical, geographical, economic and psychological methods, creating a nuanced approach to the collective understanding of the economic and social dynamics in the region. By developing theoretical models and analysing empirical research, this book offers an economic analysis of the attempt to find peace through war and seeks to find alternative solutions. This book will be of interest to researchers, policy makers and doctoral students of economics, finance and social sciences as well as advanced undergraduate students of peace economics and development studies.

This book introduces special programs designed to enhance thinking and problem solving at the preschool, elementary, secondary, college, and graduate levels, as well as proven instructional methods to aid the elderly in retaining or regaining essential mental skills. The volume also considers difficult problems confronting psychology, including such disparate issues as the appropriate content of courses to develop thinking, resistance to the introduction of programs in schools and universities, and psychology's limitations on progress in these areas.