For over fifty years, Eli Schwartz has inspired generations of economists through his prolific publications and dedicated in teaching. In 2008, the Martindale Center for the Study of Private Enterprise at Lehigh University invited prominent academics and practitioners-including Nobel Prize recipients, Robert Solow and Harry Markowitz, and former Chairman of the Economic Advisers to Ronald Reagan, Murray Weidenbaum-to contribute pieces that reflect their own approaches to issues that Schwartz has explored over the long span of his career. The twelve original essays cover a range of topics, including tax reform, corporate finance, fiscal policy, banking, economic growth, and globalization, representing a variety of methodologies, including economic theory, econometrics, and case analysis. The collection emphasizes the underlying connections among seemingly disparate facets of economic activity, and underscores the tremendous influence of Schwartz on economic analysis, policy, and leadership today.

This book demonstrates how housing systems are built from political struggles over the distribution of welfare and wealth. The contributors analyze varieties of residential capitalism through a range of international case studies, as well as investigating the links between housing finance and the current international financial crisis.

Basic Income in Japan is the first collective volume in English entirely devoted to the discussion of Japan's potential for a basic income program in the context of the country's changing welfare state. Vanderborght and Yamamori bring together over a dozen contributors to provide a general overview of the scholarly debate on universal and unconditional basic income, including a foreword by Ronald Dore. Drawing on empirical data on poverty and inequality as well as normative arguments, this balanced approach to a radical idea is essential reading for the study of contemporary Japan.

This book examines alternative economic policies for the European Union in the aftermath of the rejection of the European Constitution. The subject range includes macroeconomic policy and the European Constitution, EU financial integration, the reform of European regional policy, assessment and alternative proposals on European structural policies and labour market policies in the European Union.

The Making of a Post-Keynesian Economist: Cambridge Harvest gathers up the threads of the last decade of the author's twenty eight years in Cambridge, before his return to Australia. The essays include autobiography, theory, review articles, surveys, policy, intellectual biographies and tributes, and general essays.

The family can be a model of loving support, a crucible of pathology, or some blend of the two. Across disciplines, it is also the basic unit for studying human relationships, patterns of behavior, and influence on individuals and society. As family structures evolve and challenge previous societal norms, new means are required for understanding their dynamics, and for improving family interventions and policies. Emerging Methods in Family Research details innovative approaches designed to keep researchers apace with the diversity and complexities of today's families. This versatile idea-book offers meaningful new ways to represent multiple forms of diversity in family structure and process, cutting-edge updates to family systems models and measurement methods, and guidance on the research process, from designing projects to analyzing findings. These chapters provide not only new frameworks for basic research on families, but also prime examples of their practical use in intervention and policy studies. Contributors also consider the similarities and differences between the study of individuals and the study of family relationships and systems. Included in the coverage: Use of nonlinear dynamic models to study families as coordinated symbiotic systems. Use of network models for understanding change and diversity in the formal structure of American families. Representing trends and moment-to-moment variability in dyadic and family processes using state-space modeling techniques. Why qualitative and ethnographic methods are essential for understanding family life. Methods in multi-site trials of family-based interventions. Implementing the Multiphase Optimization Strategy (MOST) to analyze the effects of family interventions. Researchers in human development, family studies, clinical and developmental psychology, social psychology, sociology, anthropology, and social welfare as well as public policy researchers will welcome Emerging Methods in Family Research as a resource to inspire novel approaches to studying families.

Over the past decade, knowledge assets and intellectual capital have been attracting an increasing amount of attention, not only from academics and CEOs, but also from national policy makers. To date, most studies of intellectual capital have focused at the organizational level, with an emphasis on explaining the role of "intangible assets" as a differentiator between accounting value and market value as a possible source of corporate competitive advantage. More recently, pioneers in the field, including the authors of this book, have begun to apply these methodologies to a broader scope, with the objective of comparing the intellectual capital indices at the national or regional level. As a result, an increasing number of world organizations and researchers are commissioned to investigate this future-oriented crucial national issue. Yet, the linkage between the value of intangible assets and how to quantify or benchmark it is still tenuous, not to mention easily misunderstood by a layman for guiding better decision making. With the belief that numbers talk and statistics hide valuable information, this book serves to present the authors' research findings, covering 14 years (1995-2008) of intellectual capital information, comprised of human capital, market capital, process capital, renewal capital, and financial capital for 40 countries. The last three chapters go beyond analysis of current intellectual capital factors, and present practical tools for launching initiatives at the national level. The book will serve as an essential resource for researchers, policy makers, and business leaders concerned with issues of economic growth and competitiveness, innovation, and business creation.

This volume focuses on frontiers in regional research and identifies trends and future developments in the areas of innovation, regional growth and migration. It also addresses topics such as mobility, regional forecasting, and regional policy, and includes expert contributions on disasters, resilience, and sustainability. Building on recent methodological and modelling advances, as well as on extensive policy-analysis experience, top international regional scientists identify and evaluate emerging new conceptual and methodological trends and directions in regional research. This book will appeal to a wide readership, from regional scientists and economists to geographers, quantitatively oriented regional planners and other related disciplines. It offers a source of relevant information for academic researchers and policy analysts in government, and is also suitable for advanced teaching courses on regional and spatial science, economics and political science.

This book explains the complex and paradoxical process of economic integration and political divergence in current relations between Taiwan and mainland China. It analyzes the dynamics of economic statecraft between the two sides and the conflicts between state objectives and business interests in the context of globalization and regional economic integration.

Productive transformation requires seizing the opportunities available and opening new ones in a competitive world. Rethinking Productive Development examines the market failures impeding transformation and the government failures that may make the policy remedies worse than the market illness. To address market failures, the authors propose a simple conceptual framework based on the scope and nature of the policy approach. They then systematically analyze country policies through this lens in key areas such as innovation, new firms, financing, human capital, and internationalization to show the power of this way of thinking. Still, the book warns that policymakers cannot be sure what the right policy interventions are and must set up a process to discover them that calls for public-private collaboration. Recognizing that the risk of capture needs to be checked and that even the best policies will fail without the technical, organizational, and political capacity to implement them, the book concludes with ideas on how to design institutions fostering the right incentives and how to grow public sector capabilities over time.

"This anthology gives a historically aware overview of the political and economic issues facing African women since Independence. It incorporates gender and transnational theory in its theoretical discussion of African women from the perspective of political economy. The three main themes are African feminism, women and work, and women and politics. The issue of women's control over labor is central, as is a comparative perspective of women's political movements. Written by Africans and Africanists, this significant and much-needed work is an examination of these themes and a critical evaluation of materialist thought on the political and economic aspects of African women's studies"--Provided by publisher.

This edited volume seeks to provide a critical and technical look at international political economy indices (PEIs). It examines measurement issues, relates PEIs to economic theory, and suggests better measures than those currently used.

The collection considers several aspects of the transformation of the former state socialist countries: social and economic outcomes; forces in the transformation process; problems of consolidation of the new regimes; and alternative scenarios. Comparisons are made between the successful central European countries now members of the European Union with those of the former Soviet Union. The impact of the collapse of the USSR and the course of transformation is considered on China, Cuba, and North Korean. The book also contemplates the alternative types of society that might replace state socialism, particularly state capitalism and market socialism.

This book looks at developmental pathways to poverty reduction that emphasize employment-centred structural change, social policies that both protect citizens and contribute to economic development, and types of politics that support economic transformation and participation of the poor in growth processes.

This study provides up-to-date coverage of the most important domestic and external political and economic influences on Japanese trade policy, as well as the evolutionary dynamics of that policy in the post-war period.

Romania stands at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Since 1990, when the country experienced the bloodiest revolution of all of the Warsaw Pact members, Romania has gone through withering change. While the formal transition from a totalitarian, communist state was completed in 2007 with Romania's accession into the European Union, the adaptation of the nation's people and business climate to a market-based economy is a daily occurrence. In the 2000's, in the lead up to EU accession, Romania was one of the largest recipients of Foreign Direct Investment in the world. While multinational corporations poured in hundreds of billions of dollars, there was also a restructuring of the way business was conducted. Western systems of management and organization-foreign to most Romanian academics and business people-almost overnight transformed the way the marketplace was perceived. Romania's entrepreneurs were quick to adapt to the new ways, leveraging new opportunities in the environment. Fortunes were made. Multinationals also burgeoned in Romania. Companies like Microsoft, General Electric, Timken, Kraft, P&G, Renault and dozens of others successfully took advantage of the possibilities created by a relatively well-educated population that was moving into the middle class. For the most part, however, researchers and scholars were caught off guard by the quickening pace of business change in Romania. Only until very recently has the academic community at large been able to wade through the murkiness and begin to see what the new landscape looks like. It is the purpose of this edited volume, which includes the work of some of Romania's finest business scholars, to provide even greater clarity to the current and future scene. Moreover, the experience in Romania helps shed light on the dynamics of economic and business transition throughout Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and other emerging regions, with implications for practice, policymaking, and research.

Many parts of the world are experiencing rapid demographic restructuring, resulting in an ageing population with increasingly significant work and care pressures on cohorts less able or willing to provide support. This book examines some of the important trends that have underpinned reductions in fertility, including delayed child-bearing and increased childlessness. It demonstrates how relationships between partners have resulted in new living arrangements with changing attitudes from marriage to co-habitation as the social norm, and it considers the health and well-being for particular at risk groups such as the elderly and stepparents as well as aspects of mobility such as household migration and commuting to school.

The book brings together a series of studies that all involve quantitative analyses of secondary data from censuses, surveys or administrative records. The trends and patterns reported provide new and interesting insights into behaviour of the household and the roles of adults and children, and point to questions of critical importance for practitioners and policy makers.

From Clans to Co-ops explores the social, political, and economic relations that enable the constitution of cooperatives operating on land confiscated from mafiosi in Sicily, a project that the state hails as arguably the greatest symbolic victory over the mafia in Italian history. Rakopoulos’s ethnographic focus is on access to resources, divisions of labor, ideologies of community and food, and the material changes that cooperatives bring to people’s lives in terms of kinship, work and land management. The book contributes to broader debates about cooperativism, how labor might be salvaged from market fundamentalism, and to emergent discourses about the ‘human’ economy.

Based on the findings of a large-scale, comparative research project, this book systematically assesses the institutional design and national influence of the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) on Social Inclusion and Social Protection, at the European Union (EU) level and in ten EU Member States. Besides offering novel empirical and theoretical insights into the operation and impact of the OMC, the book presents an up-to-date perspective on the future of social policy coordination within the Europe 2020 Strategy. The book is required reading for anyone concerned with understanding the contribution of new forms of governance to the past and future development of Social Europe.

"The Grand Convergence describes, evaluates, and advocates for sweeping changes in our global economic and political structure that would ensure the prospects of global human civilization as we confront an uncertain and hazardous future. It argues both for the Marshall Plan as well as for a limited federal world government to replace the quasi-anarchic international regime of today"--Provided by publisher.

In August 1981, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) called an illegal strike. The new president, Ronald Reagan, fired the strikers, establishing a reputation for both decisiveness and hostility to organized labor. As Joseph A. McCartin writes, the strike was the culmination of two decades of escalating conflict between controllers and the government that stemmed from the high-pressure nature of the job and the controllers' inability to negotiate with their employer over vital issues. PATCO's fall not only ushered in a long period of labor decline; it also served as a harbinger of the campaign against public sector unions that now roils American politics.
Now available in paperback, Collision Course sets the strike within a vivid panorama of the rise of the world's busiest air-traffic control system. It begins with an arresting account of the 1960 midair collision over New York that cost 134 lives and exposed the weaknesses of an overburdened system. Through the stories of controllers like Mike Rock and Jack Maher, who were galvanized into action by that disaster and went on to found PATCO, it describes the efforts of those who sought to make the airways safer and fought to win a secure place in the American middle class. It climaxes with the story of Reagan and the controllers, who surprisingly endorsed the Republican on the promise that he would address their grievances. That brief, fateful alliance triggered devastating miscalculations that changed America, forging patterns that still govern the nation's labor politics.
Written with an eye for detail and a grasp of the vast consequences of the PATCO conflict for both air travel and America's working class, Collision Course is a stunning achievement.

The book provides a panoramic approach to social exclusion, with emphasis on structural causes (education, health, accidents) and on short term causes connected with the crisis which started in 2008. The picture emerging, based on econometric analysis, is that the crisis has widened the risk of social exclusion, from the structural groups, like disabled people and formerly convicted people, to other groups, like the young, unemployed, low skilled workers and immigrants, in terms of income, poverty, health, unemployment, transition between occupational statuses, participation, leading to a widening of socio-economic duality. It has also been stressed the relevance of definitions of socio-economic outcomes for the evaluation of the crisis, and their consequences to define interventions to fight socio-economic effects of the economic downturn. The adequacy of welfare policies to cope with social exclusion, especially during a crisis, has been called into question.

This book explores the opportunities and limits of currency cooperation in East Asia. Currency issues play an important role in the region. The Asian crisis of the late 90s was rooted in deficient currency arrangements. The Chinese RMB is not freely convertible yet, but policymakers in China nevertheless aim for a more international role of the Chinese currency. The recent change of direction in Japanese monetary policy caused a drastic depreciation of the Yen and led to warnings against a possible "currency war", thus demonstrating that currency issues can also easily lead to political frictions. Most trade in and with the East Asian zone on the other hand is still conducted in US $. Against this background different modes of currency cooperation serve the goal of smoothing exchange rate fluctuations and capital flows. They are an important element to promote financial stability and to reduce the transaction cost for foreign trade or investment. The contributions of this book analyze the environment and design of currency cooperation in East Asia and their effects from a macro-and microeconomic viewpoint.

Adopting a distinctive structural political economy approach, this book uniquely explains the blind spots of alternative political economy approaches to international aid, and presents an original framework for evaluating likely reformers' strength of commitment and potential alliances with donors.

After many years in which it appeared to be losing the pre-eminent position it had occupied in the lexicon of the social and human sciences, the term 'capitalism' has once again become a matter of critical concern, both theoretically and substantively, in a range of disciplinary fields. The global financial and environmental crises, and the shifting of economic power associated with the rise of the BRICs and the sovereign debt contagion in the Eurozone, for example, have all put the norms, practices, and devices of capitalist conduct back under the spotlight. Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello's The New Spirit of Capitalism has become a seminal text since its publication, sparking debate about the meaning, significance, and effects of contemporary changes in economic and organizational life, and becoming a reference point in political discussions about the welfare state, collective action in a 'networked' world, and reconciliation of the interests of social justice with the 'laws of the markets'. This edited book offers the first comprehensive attempt to examine the power and reach of Boltanski and Chiapello's argument, the text's theoretical and methodological perspectives, tools, and techniques, and to do so in relation to the development of neo-liberal capitalism in the period since its original publication and in particular the culmination of these developments in the ongoing crisis since the financial collapse of 2007-8. The volume provides both a balanced critique and overview of New Spirit, but also shows how it can be used in a variety of empirical studies to develop new insights into the functioning and regulation of capitalism in the contemporary era. The volume brings together leading scholars from a range of disciplinary fields such as Sociology, Management and Organization Studies, and Geography. Luc Boltanksi and Eve Chiapello also offer their thoughts on the continuing relevance of New Spirit over a decade after its publication, and in the context of contemporary global economic and political developments.