This book focuses on the role of economic and political institutions in economic development. The book offers fresh perspectives on the issues facing less-developed countries and the elements influencing their outcomes. The text includes chapters on democracy, property rights, and economic freedom, and uses diverse methodology such as case studies, spacial econometrics, and cross-country analysis. The volume features the work of prominent scholars in the area of institutional analysis such as Mohammed Akacem, Christopher Coyne, and Andrew Young as well as a number of junior scholars. This book will be useful for researchers and students interested in economic development and institutional analysis in general, in addition to individuals with a specific focus on countries or regions such as Iraq or sub-Saharan Africa.

The book aims to present "traditional features" of regional science (as geographical concepts and institutions), as well as relatively new topics such as innovation and agglomeration economies. In particular it demonstrates that, contrary to what has been argued by recent economics literature, both geography and institutions (or culture) are relevant for local development. In fact, these phenomena, along with the movement of goods and workers, are among the main reasons for persisting development differentials. These intriguing relationships are at the heart of the analysis presented in this book and form the conceptual basis for a promising institutional approach to economic geography.

This book is a major contribution to the study of political economy. With chapters ranging from the origins of political economy to its most exciting research fields, this handbook provides a reassessment of political economy as it stands today, whilst boldly gesturing to where it might head in the future. This handbook transcends the received dichotomy between political economy as an application of rational choice theory or as the study of the causes of societies' material welfare, outlining a broader field of study that encompasses those traditions. This book will be essential reading for academics, researchers, students, and anyone looking for a comprehensive reassessment of political economy.

How are the economic policies which developing countries adopt selected and how do they change? Who are the key players in economic development policies? Professor Anil Hira answers these questions head on by suggesting new ways of looking at how ideas affect economic policy. He first traces the way that ideas become wedded to interest groups over time, and he interprets the debate over economic development policy as a series of changes in idea-interest networks, often marked by crises. He then looks closely at economic idea entrepreneurs. Through concrete case studies of networks in Latin America, with a focus on Chilean economic policy, Hira explains not only how ideas are introduced, but which ones win out in the economic policy process and why. He introduces the concept of economic knowledge networks to understand groups of economists wedded to certain sets of ideas, such as neoliberalism or structuralism. Economic knowledge networks extend beyond Latin America and can be found in such diverse places as Indonesia and Egypt. Hira identifies the characteristics of these groups and shows how they create political action through their organizational activities and ideas. Hira not only sheds light on how ideas affect economic policy, but also provides an inside story on the groups responsible for the new economic revolution that is sweeping Latin America and transforming the regional economy. An important resource for scholars, students, and policy makers involved with international political economy, emerging economies, and Latin American studies.

Decentralism of political power to regions and local government occurs worldwide in response to demands from the periphery. Such devolution of power raises a number of problems - political, financial, and legal. By gathering together important papers from a series of workshops sponsored by the SNS Constitutional Project and the Center for European Integration Studies, this volume presents a number of these problems from a truly interdisciplinary perspective. The authors believe that fiscal federalism, while originating in formally federal states, is relevant also to the analysis of state-local relationships in unitary states with some degree of regional or local authority. Among the topics they cover are the division of responsibilities and powers of taxation, bailouts, systems of equalization, and state grants, as well as problems related to democracy and citizens' rights. While the book's primary focus is Nordic, its international perspective is enhanced by contributions from Europe, Canada, and the U.S.

This book challenges the hegemonic view that economic calculation represents the ultimate rationality. The West legitimises its global dominance by the claim to be a rational, democratic, science-based and progressive civilisation. Yet, over the past decades, the dogma of economic rationality has become an ideological black hole whose gravitational pull allows no public debate or policy to escape. Political leaders of all creeds are held in its orbit and public language is saturated by it. This dogma has pervaded all spheres of life, ushering the age of post-rationality, especially in English speaking countries. The authors discuss several aspects of post-rational global capitalism still dominated by the Anglosphere: hyper-competition, hyper-consumption, inequality, volatile global financial markets, environmental degradation and the unforeseen effects of the internet-mediated communication revolution. The book concludes by discussing some utopian and dystopian future scenarios and asking whether the West can transcend its crisis of rationality.

Politicians, business leaders and citizens look with hope to the Latin American middle class for political stability and purchasing power, but the economic position of the middle class remains vulnerable. The contributors document the remarkable emergence of this middle group in Latin America, whose measurement turns out not to be an easy task.

This book presents selected papers from the 26th and 27th Eurasia Business and Economics Society (EBES) Conferences, held in Prague, Czech Republic, and Bali, Indonesia. While the theoretical and empirical papers gathered here cover diverse areas of economics and finance in various geographic regions, the main focus is on the latest research concerning banking and finance, as well as empirical studies on emerging economies and public economics. The book also includes studies on political economy and regional studies.

The book examines the economic crisis in the European Union and its consequences for European integration and the member states. Discussing the provisions introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon, from the effects of macroeconomic monitoring to the restraints produced by the Fiscal Compact, it offers an analysis of the European Union's current situation and the effects of the measures adopted to manage the crisis, also making reference to how Europe is perceived by its citizens. Moreover, the chapters offer thoughts on the European integration process, in particular the effects that the policies adopted to tackle the crisis have had on the economic and financial sovereignty of the member states. This detailed examination of the situation of the EU between the Treaty of Lisbon and the Fiscal Compact is characterized by an original multidisciplinary approach that offers an articulate reflection on the criticalities that affect the actions of both European and national institutions.

Over the past two decades, how has urban agriculture changed in sub-Saharan Africa? Is city farming now better integrated into environmental management and city governance? And, looking ahead, how might urban agriculture address the needs of the low-income households and modernizing cities of Africa? In this book, leading specialists in the fields of urban agriculture and urban environment present a unique collection of case studies that examines the growing role of local food production in urban livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa. Amongst many issues, the authors probe the changing role of urban agriculture, the risks and benefits of crop-livestock systems, and the opportunities for making locally produced food more easily available and more profitable. Concluding chapters reflect on the policy and governance implications of greater integration of urban natural resources and the built environment, an expanded role for urban agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa and the crucial role of women in urban food systems. "African Urban Harvest" will be of interest to decision-makers, development professionals, researchers, academics, and students and educators in urban planning, development studies, African studies, and environmental studies.

British monetary policy was reactivated in 1951 when short-term interest rates were increased for the first time in two decades. The book explores the politics of formulating monetary policy in the 1950s and the techniques of implementing it, and discusses the parallels between the present monetary situation and that of 1951.

This volume provides a comprehensive account of Wilhelm Roepke as a liberal political economist and social philosopher. Wilhelm Roepke (1899-1966) was a key protagonist of transatlantic neoliberalism, a prominent public intellectual and a gifted international networker. As an original thinker, he always positioned himself at the interface between political economy and social philosophy, as well as between liberalism and conservatism. Roepke's endeavors to combine these elements into a coherent whole, as well as his embeddedness in European and American intellectual networks of liberal and conservative thinkers, are a central theme throughout the book. The volume includes papers by international experts from a conference in Geneva on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Roepke's passing. The first part focuses on new biographical insights into his exile years in Istanbul and Geneva, while the second part discusses his business cycle theory in the context of the Great Depression, and the third part elaborates on his multifaceted social philosophy. Wilhelm Roepke was among the most important thinkers within the classical liberal revival post-WWII, with intriguing tensions between liberalism and conservatism. A highly recommended volume. -- Peter J. Boettke, 2016-2018 President of the Mont Pelerin Society and Professor of Economics and Philosophy, George Mason University This important collection of papers provides an in-depth assessment of Wilhelm Roepke's contributions, placing him in the context of his time. A fine contribution. -- Bruce J. Caldwell, Director of the Center for the History of Political Economy and Research Professor of Economics, Duke University

Gale explains why international negotiations have not produced a sustainable solution to tropical rainforest degradation. Using an innovative, critical approach to international regimes, the author analyzes the structure and operation of the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO). He shows how the timber industry and producing- and consuming-country governments created a blocking alliance that favoured developmentalist interests and ideas. The ITTO bolstered this alliance by permitting environmentalists merely to voice, but not to negotiate, their concerns.

This book analyses the World Bank's provision of technical assistance from 1946 to the present day. It argues that the relational dynamics between technical assistance provider and recipient affects the legitimacy of policy norms travelling from the 'international' to the 'domestic'. Beginning from the constructivist position that 'development' is a social construct, the author contends that successful policy movement via technical assistance depends on the recipient's perception of the validity of policy reforms, with perception being influenced by the way those ideas and practices are presented, packaged, and transferred. In advancing this argument, Bazbauers analyses four pillars of World Bank technical assistance: technical assistance components (advisory services incorporated within lending operations), stand-alone technical assistance projects (projects designed to solely deliver technical assistance), survey missions (activities involved in measuring the development status of developing countries), and training institutes (the courses of the Economic Development Institute and World Bank Institute).

Centering its study around three explanatory variables - actors, institutions and ideas - this book argues that Russia's hybrid institutional environment reduces the competition of policy ideas, both at the stage of policy elaboration by the community of state and non-state policy experts, and also at the stage of policy adoption by parliament.

This book offers a selection of research papers and case studies presented at the 3rd international conference "Smart and Sustainable Planning for Cities and Regions", held in December 2019 in Bolzano, Italy, and explores the concept of smart and sustainable planning, including top contributions from academics, policy makers, consultants and other professionals. Innovation processes such as co-design and co-creation help establish collaborations that engage with stakeholders in a trustworthy and transparent environment while answering the need for new value propositions. The importance of an integrated, holistic approach is widely recognized to break down silos in local government, in particular, when aimed at achieving a better integration of climate-energy planning. Despite the ongoing urbanization and polarization processes, new synergies between urban and rural areas emerge, linking development opportunities to intrinsic cultural, natural and man-made landscape values. The increasing availability of big, real-time urban data and advanced ICT facilitates frequent assessment and continuous monitoring of performances, while allowing fine-tuning as needed. This is valid not only for individual projects but also on a wider scale. In addition, and circling back to the first point, (big) urban data and ICT can be of enormous help in facilitating engagement and co-creation by raising awareness and by providing insight into the local consequences of specific plans. However, this potential is not yet fully exploited in standard processes and procedures, which can therefore lack the agility and flexibility to keep up with the pulse of the city and dynamics of society. The book provides a multi-disciplinary outlook based on experience to orient the reader in the giant galaxy of smart and sustainable planning, support the transposition of research into practice, scale up visionary approaches and design groundbreaking planning policies and tools.

This collection addresses the path to a new prosperity after the Great Recession. The contributors ask that if the 2008 crisis proved the unsustainability of the neoliberal development model, what does well-being mean today in advanced western democracies? What kind of production and consumption will be a feature of the coming decades? What are the financial, economic, institutional and social innovations needed to reconcile economy and society after decades of disembedding? The Crisis Conundrum offers an interdisciplinary interpretation of the crisis as an opportunity to reform capitalism and consumption societies, structurally as well as culturally. Students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including sociology, economics, development studies and European studies, with find this book of interest.

This book offers important new insights into recent advances and perspectives in the field of political economy of development in Southeastern European countries. In addition, it provides theoretical and empirical contributions to political economy of development in an international context. Written by authors from Greece, Serbia and Turkey, the book covers a broad spectrum of topics - from macroeconomics and economic policy to international political economy and globalization. Presenting new and original ideas, this is a valuable resource for anyone wishing to gain a deeper understanding of political economy of development in Southeastern Europe: academicians, policymakers and business practitioners.

This volume provides theoretical treatments of remittance on how its development potential is translated into reality. The authors meticulously delve into diverse mechanisms through which migrant communities remit, investigating how recipients engage in the development process in South Asia.

Linda Matar examines Syria's failure to promote employment-generating investment prior to the uprising. Tackling the thorny issue of the inapplicability of modern investment theory to a developing country, she situates the analysis of investment in Syria in its historical context and examines the socioeconomic structure and political preconditions that set the course of capital accumulation. Matar argues that the class in charge of development, which oversaw the allocation of resources during the Hafiz and Bashar Assad regimes, precipitated a crisis of capital accumulation. Difficult-to-access data and information compiled from fieldwork reveal how neoliberal reforms failed to build productive capacity and instead enriched a few through short-term speculative and mercantile ventures. Productive investment in Syria prior to the uprising lurched downward, and the key related socio-economic variables followed. These deteriorating conditions contributed to the social explosion in 2011. Exploring the poor quality and quantity of investment, this study probes how the cant of the free market served as a veneer behind which the institutional decisions distorted income distribution in a way that would inevitably lead to collapse.

Throughout this century, economics as a discipline has not always been distinguished by its insightful treatment of temporal and spatial considerations. The exponents of neoclassical synthesis have often been criticized for failing to incorporate the dimension of time into their machinations, and while the concept of space has fared somewhat better, it still suffers from semantic debate. Structural and/or sectoral considerations have also been lacking, either encumbered by polemics or confounded by the inherited simplicities of the stage theorists. This work, which applies the analytical system of Joseph Schumpeter to spatial and structural dimensions, attempts to explain the role played by change in profit-seeking economies.

Following an introductory chapter that offers a brief description of the Schumpeterian dialectic and its explanation of how change occurs over time under capitalism, the book is divided into three main secions. The first addresses spatial considerations, covering ways in which Schumpeter's analysis can be applied to local and regional contexts in advanced economies; the dialectic in international economic processes, particularly the effect of multinational businesses on individual economies; and development prospects for Third World nations. Section two focuses on the structural dimension, specifically the emergence of service industries and Schumpeter's fears for the survival of capitalism. A hybrid overview of pole theory is also included. The final section offers reflections and a summary, and includes an assessment of the role of government in aiding or impeding change and an illustration of what governments can and cannot do to change their economies in the face of automatic capitalistic processes. This work will be a valuable reference source for courses in economic theory, economic policy, and political science as well as a useful addition to college, university, and public libraries.

The management of a water supply network can be substantially improved defining permanent sectors or districts that enhances simpler water loss detection and pressure management. However, the water network partitioning may compromise water system performance, since some pipes are usually closed to delimit districts in order not to have too many metering stations, to decrease costs and simplify water balance. This may reduce the reliability of the whole system and not guarantee the delivery of water at the different network nodes. In practical applications, the design of districts or sectors is generally based on empirical approaches or on limited field experiences. The book proposes a design support methodology, based on graph theory principles and tested on real case study. The described methodology can help water utilities, professionals and researchers to define the optimal districts or sectors of a water supply network.

Growth against Democracy: Savage Developmentalism in the Modern World, by H.L.T. Quan is a compelling interrogation of the ways in which we have thought about modernity, capitalism, and democracy, and how those ideas inform neoliberal economics, diplomacy, and impact human life. To explicate contemporary theories of development, Quan introduces the concept of "savage developmentalism," with its attendant distortions of the ideals of equality and freedom and assumptions that foment antidemocratic social and political forms. By outlining the pitfalls of security-obsessed developmental approaches, Growth against Democracy troubles the simple notion that modernity is inherently superior and development will benefit everyone. It shows how capitalists' needs for market, finance, and profitability often lead to development programs that engender expansionism, dispossession, and repression. Drawing on political theory, international political economy, critical ethnic studies, legal studies, and feminist analytics, this groundbreaking study exemplifies how multi-disciplinary scholarship best addresses the increasingly complex and multi-layered issues facing humanity today. It analyzes the linkages between development and national security, and provides sustained attention to the making of foreign policy, the development of capitalism and corporate globalization. The book highlights three critical examples of where savage developmentalism has eventuated worse living conditions, severe social repression, and displacement: Brazilian-Japanese economic relations in Brazil under military rule (1964-1985); China's aggressive courting of African good will and resources; and, the United States' reconstruction of Iraq. These three major historical cases represent some of the most momentous global development in the last sixty years, and never before have such powerful cases been analyzed in the same monograph. Growth against Democracy helps re-evaluate the promises of progress, security, and freedom, and broadens our ideas about and priorities for humane public policy at the national and global levels.

Mainstream economics almost completely ignores the role power plays in determining economic outcomes, which means it can only provide partial explanations of the distribution of wealth and income, and of the problems associated with inequality and poverty. For many, this is a fundamental failing that severely limits its relevance to the real world and is the source of much dissatisfaction with, and cynicism about, economics and economists. Ozanne explains how this neglect of power has come about over the past 150 years and why it is important. He reviews various definitions and theories of power from across the social sciences and proposes a new approach that could bring considerations of power back into standard economic theory and economics teaching. The approach is simple and intuitive, involving little more than re-envisioning the social welfare function as a 'political economy function'. However, if adopted in economics teaching, it could radically change the way young economists are taught to think about economic problems and lead to a 'return to political economy'.