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.

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.

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.

Transaction cost economics began to take shape around thirty years ago and has since been established as an essential tool used to illuminate a wide range of problems in economics and other social sciences. This paperback reader for students and scholars presents, in a convenient and accessible form, the articles which together form the foundations of research in transaction cost economics.The volume is divided into three parts: the first part presents the background to the field and includes those path-breaking papers from Coase (1937 and 1972), Williamson (1971) and Alchian and Demsetz (1972). The second part addresses the apparatus of transaction cost economics and includes papers on the structure and limits of firms. The third part presents the applications of transaction cost economics to firm behavior, investment decision-making, contract bidding, regulation and legislation. The editors, themselves distinguished scholars in the field, have written a new introduction which sketches the history of research in the field and offers some thoughts about the future of transaction cost economics.

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 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.

The first part of the book is devoted to an historical survey of what has been written regarding Britain's policy problems since 1946: problems such as full employment, the sources and methods of controlling inflation and the measures to promote economic growth. At an international level, issues such as economic relations with Europe and the question of devaluation are considered. The subsequent part of the book considers how far economists' recommendations regarding policies have been derived from well-tested theories, or how far they have been based on speculation, guesswork or judgement.

Although mercers have long been recognised as one of the most influential trades in medieval London, this is the first book to offer a comprehensive and detailed analysis of the trade from the twelfth to the sixteenth century. The variety of mercery goods (linen, silk, worsted and small manufactured items including what is now called haberdashery) gave the mercers of London an edge over all competitors. The sources and production of all these commodities is traced throughout the period covered. It was as the major importers and distributors of linen in England that London mercers were able to take control of the Merchant Adventurers and the export of English cloth to the Low Countries. The development of the Adventurers' Company and its domination by London mercers is described from its first privileges of 1296 to after the fall of Antwerp. This book investigates the earliest itinerant mercers and the artisans who made and sold mercery goods (such as the silkwomen of London, so often mercers' wives), and their origins in counties like Norfolk, the source of linen and worsted. These diverse traders were united by the neighbourhood of the London Mercery on Cheapside and by their need for the privileges of the freedom of London. Extensive use of Netherlandish and French sources puts the London Mercery into the context of European Trade, and literary texts add a more personal image of the merchant and his preoccupation with his social status which rose from that of the despised pedlar to the advisor of princes. After a slow start, the Mercers' Company came to include some of the wealthiest and most powerful men of London and administer a wide range of charitable estates such as that of Richard Whittington. The story of how they survived the vicissitudes inflicted by the wars and religious changes of the sixteenth century concludes this fascinating and wide-ranging study.

Microeconomic Theory: A Heterodox Approach develops a heterodox economic theory that explains the economy as the social provisioning process at the micro level. Heterodox microeconomics explores the economy with a focus on its constituent parts and their reproduction and recurrence, their integration qua interdependency by non-market and market arrangements and institutions, and how the system works as a whole. This book deals with three theoretical concerns. Due to the significance of the price mechanism to mainstream economics, a theoretical concern of the book is the business enterprise, markets, demand, and pricing. Also, since heterodox economists see private investment, consumption and government expenditures as the principal directors and drivers of economic activity, a second theoretical concern is business decision-making processes regarding investment and production, government expenditure decisions, the financing of investment, the profit mark-up and the wage rate, and taxes. Finally, the third theoretical concern of the book is the delineation of a non-equilibrium disaggregated price-output model of the social provisioning process. This book explores the integration of these various theories with a theoretical model of the economy and how this forms a theory that can be identified as heterodox microeconomics. It will be of interest to both postgraduates and researchers.

"Microeconomic Theory Old and New: A Student's Guide" has two main goals. The first is to give advanced undergraduate and graduate students an understanding of the core model of economics: Walrasian general equilibrium theory. The text presents in detail the three building blocks of Walrasian theory--establishing Pareto efficiency in a barter economy, establishing the efficiency of competitive markets, and accounting for market failure. Each is discussed verbally, graphically, and using mathematics. After reading this book, students will have an understanding of how the seemingly disparate pieces of conventional economics fit together as a system. Although the text focuses on the intellectual framework of standard economic theory, relevant mathematical techniques are discussed.
The second goal is to present contemporary extensions and emerging alternatives to the Walrasian model. Some of the theoretical inconsistencies in the model are presented, drawing on the work of Samuelson, Boadway, Chipman and Moore, Ng, and Suzamura, among others. The text then presents challenges to the basic assumptions of the Walrasian system, posed by findings in behavioral economics and evolutionary game theory.
Understanding both the Walrasian system and the theoretical and experimental critiques of classical economics is essential to those who ultimately work within the traditional framework and to those looking for an alternative, making this a must read for all students of economics.

This book, first published in 1913, examines in detail the Tariff Reform crisis of January 1913. The sudden abandonment of decades of established policy was one of the most surprising events in British domestic politics.

This is the first full-length survey of current work which examines the compatibility of microeconomics and macroeconomics. Its particular distinction is that it makes accessible, to non-specialists, those extensive modern refinements of general equilibrium theory which are linked to macroeconomics and monetary theory. Part I traces the development and interlocking nature of two scientific research prgrams, macroeconomics and neo-Walrasian analysis. The five chapters in this part examine general equilibrium theory, Keynes' contribution, the 'neoclassical synthesis', and the Clower-Leijonhufvud contributions to questions of systemic coordination. The four chapters of Part II place recent work on the micro-foundations of macroeconomics within a taxonomic scheme of Walrasian equilibrium, Walrasian disequilibrium, Edgeworthian equilibrium, and Edgeworthian disequilibrium. Part III, a single chapter, provides an overview of the subject and ventures some conclusions.

This book discusses women-oriented microfinance initiatives in India and their articulation vis-is state developmentalism and contemporary neo-liberal capitalism. It examines how these initiatives encourage economically disadvantaged rural women to make claims upon state-provided microcredit and connect with multiple state institutions and agencie

The increasing capital flows in the emerging markets and developed countries have raised various concerns worldwide. One main concern is the impact of the sharp decline of capital flows - so-called sudden stops - on financial markets and the stability of banking systems and the economy. The sudden stops and banking crises have been identified as the two main features of most financial crises, including the recent Asian Financial Crisis and Global Financial Crisis. However, how capital flows and banking crises are connected still remains unanswered. Most current studies on capital flows are empirical work, which faces various challenges. The challenges include how data has been collected and measured in each country and how sensitive the results are to the data and the adopted methodologies. Moreover, the links between capital flows and banking systems have been neglected. This book helps provide some insight into the challenges faced by empirical studies and the lessons of the recent crises. The book develops theoretical analysis to deepen our understanding on how capital flows, banking systems and financial markets are linked with each other and provides constructive policy implications by overcoming the empirical challenges.

"Microeconomic Theory Old and New: A Student's Guide" has two main goals. The first is to give advanced undergraduate and graduate students an understanding of the core model of economics: Walrasian general equilibrium theory. The text presents in detail the three building blocks of Walrasian theory--establishing Pareto efficiency in a barter economy, establishing the efficiency of competitive markets, and accounting for market failure. Each is discussed verbally, graphically, and using mathematics. After reading this book, students will have an understanding of how the seemingly disparate pieces of conventional economics fit together as a system. Although the text focuses on the intellectual framework of standard economic theory, relevant mathematical techniques are discussed.
The second goal is to present contemporary extensions and emerging alternatives to the Walrasian model. Some of the theoretical inconsistencies in the model are presented, drawing on the work of Samuelson, Boadway, Chipman and Moore, Ng, and Suzamura, among others. The text then presents challenges to the basic assumptions of the Walrasian system, posed by findings in behavioral economics and evolutionary game theory.
Understanding both the Walrasian system and the theoretical and experimental critiques of classical economics is essential to those who ultimately work within the traditional framework and to those looking for an alternative, making this a must read for all students of economics.