This book addresses one of the enduring questions of democratic government: why do governments choose some public policies but not others? Political executives focus on a range of policy issues, such as the economy, social policy, and foreign policy, but they shift their priorities over time. Despite an extensive literature, it has proven surprisingly hard to explain policy prioritisation. To remedy this gap, this book offers a new approach called public policy investment: governments enhance their chances of getting re-elected by managing a portfolio of public policies and paying attention to the risks involved. In this way, government is like an investor making choices about risk to yield returns on its investments of political capital. The public provides signals about expected political capital returns for government policies, or policy assets, that can be captured through expressed opinion in public polls. Governments can anticipate these signals in the choices they make. Statecraft is the ability political leaders have to consider risk and return in their policy portfolios and do so amidst uncertainty in the public's policy valuation. Such actions represent the public's views conditionally because not every opinion change is a price signal. It then outlines a quantitative method for measuring risk and return, applying it to the case of Britain between 1971 and 2000 and offers case studies illustrating statecraft by prime ministers, such as Edward Heath or Margaret Thatcher. The book challenges comparative scholars to apply public policy investment to countries that have separation of powers, multiparty government, and decentralization.

Foresight has emerged as a key instrument for the development and implementation of research and innovation policy. The main focus of activity has been at the national level. Governments have sought to set priorities, to build networks between science and industry and, in some cases, to change their research system and administrative culture. Foresight has been used as a set of technical tools, or as a way to encourage more structured debate with wider participation leading to the shared understanding of long-term issues. In this comprehensive and critical Handbook, cross-cutting analytical chapters explore the emergence and positioning of foresight, common approaches and methods, organisational issues, and the scope for policy transfer and evaluation. Leading experts and practitioners contribute chapters analysing experiences in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the USA, Japan, China, Latin America, small European nations, Nordic countries and selected developing countries. The book concludes with consideration of the future of foresight itself. This fascinating Handbook will appeal equally to those wishing to apply foresight to their policy or strategy-making activities, and to those studying the theory and practice of foresight. The Handbook will be vital reading for policymakers considering, commissioning, or using foresight, companies eager to use public foresight, as well as academics and researchers in foresight, futures and STI policy and management communities.

Challenging the simplistic story by which feminism has become complicit in neoliberalism, this book traces the course of globalization of women's economic empowerment from the Global South to the Global North and critically examines the practice of empowering low-income women, primarily migrant, indigenous and racialised women. The author argues that women's economic empowerment organizations become embedded in the neoliberal re-organization of relations between civil society, state and market, and in the reconfiguration of relations between the personal and the political. Also examined are the contractual nature of institutional arrangements in neoliberalism, the ontological divide between economy and society, and the marginalisation of feminist economics that persists in the field of women's economic empowerment. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of social sciences, gender studies, sociology, and economics. This book is based on the author's doctoral dissertation at the Humboldt University of Berlin, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Product of a Post-doctoral research done at the University of Washington, (Seattle), USA, the present work is an attempt to conceptualise and analyse the postulates underlying India's Foreign Policy from its formative years in the early fifties to its maturation in the early eighties of the last century. It subjects the management of foreign relations by India to a full scale theoretical examination from the political economy angle-an exercise few scholars then or now have undertaken .Notions of security, national interest, diplomatic leverage, decision making process and so on have, in this work, been revisited in the decisive context of a domestic-external continuum in which forces of economic origin were seen as defining the rationale of a foreign policy that was supposed to take a developing nation to the fulfilment of its legitimate aspirations. At the same time, the innovations that were made with practically no earlier precedent to go by and the kind of institution building required for the purpose have been dealt with critically so as to bring out the interplay of domestic development aspirations and the art of ensuring policy independence by appropriate diplomacy. In the turbulent context of the Cold War the Indian experiment in the management of foreign relations and the positive gains it reaped in collectivising the principle of non-alignment did constitute a subject that demanded a non-conventional approach to get to the bottom of it. That is precisely what distinguishes the book by one of the most qualified experts in International Relations, enjoying intellectual acclaim both at home and abroad. The book starts with a theoretical discourse on the applicability or otherwise of the political economy approach as it stood at the time of writing. In subsequent chapters it examines a dependent economy's quest for an independent foreign policy, the central challenge before the external affairs ministry of the country. It needed, among other things handling of external aid, and foreign investment to recharge the developmental enterprises at home in a manner that would not interfere with the autonomy in judging and reacting to external events. Economic restructuring at home which brought a strong public sector as complementary to a fledgling private sector constituted an essential aspect. So also came up the new experiment of building a collective economic front with other developing nations. In its compact, yet well documented, analysis the book provides the most engaging scholarly presentation of the subject in all its relevant technicalities.

International trade often inspires intense conflict between workers and their employers. In this book, Adam Dean studies the conditions under which labor and capital collaborate in support of the same trade policies. Dean argues that capital-labor agreement on trade policy depends on the presence of 'profit-sharing institutions'. He tests this theory through case studies from the United States, Britain, and Argentina in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries; they offer a revisionist history placing class conflict at the center of the political economy of trade. Analysis of data from more than one hundred countries from 1986 to 2002 demonstrates that the field's conventional wisdom systematically exaggerates the benefits that workers receive from trade policy reforms. From Conflict to Coalition boldly explains why labor is neither an automatic beneficiary nor an automatic ally of capital when it comes to trade policy and distributional conflict.

This book presents an integrated jurisprudential critique of neoclassical microeconomic theory. It explains what is 'really wrong' with the theory both descriptively, as well as normatively. The criticism presented is based on questions of jurisprudence, and on neoclassical theory's sins of omission and commission concerning the underlying system of property and contract. On the positive side - while the presentation is almost entirely non-mathematical - the book contains the first mathematical treatment of the fundamental theorem about property and contract in jurisprudence that underlies a market economy. The book follows the tradition of John Stuart Mill as the last major political economist who considered the study of property rights as an integral part of economic theory. The conceptual criticisms presented in this book focus on the descriptive and normative misconceptions about property and contracts that are deeply embedded ideology in neoclassical economics, not to mention in the broader society. The book recognizes that the idealized microeconomic theory is not descriptive of reality and focuses its criticism on conceptual mistakes in the theory, which are even clearer due to the idealized nature of the theory. Therefore, the book is a must-read for scholars, researchers, and students interested in a better understanding of jurisprudence in economics, neoclassical microeconomic theory, and political economy in general.

Providing extensive surveys on the most recently developed themes of individual and social well-being, this Handbook offers a comprehensive treatment of less traditional approaches to empirical and theoretical research. The novel complementary perspective by which each topic is addressed presents a broader outlook on the various dimensions of inequality and well-being. Each topic is assessed through two accompanying chapters: first, a detailed study of the theoretical approaches, followed by a supporting chapter of empirical findings. The original contributions cover themes ranging from human development to social exclusion, and from going beyond GDP as the primary indicator of progress to evaluating the persistence of poverty. The chapters also address measures of vulnerability and economic insecurity. The Handbook emphasizes the distributional aspects of inequalities across different groups through the analysis of polarization, segregation, and social fractionalization. This is an excellent Handbook for postgraduates and researchers in the social sciences and economics. The contributions rethink some of the traditional theories and models for measuring inequality and well-being, and push the boundaries for future research. The policy-relevant insights will also be of great use for social policy professionals and analysts. Contributors include: C. Balestra, L. Bellani, R. Boarini, C. Calvo, B. Cantillon, O. Canto, L. Ceriani, S. Chakravarty, N. Chattopadhyhay, M. Ciommi, C. del Rio, I. Dutta, A. Fusco, A. Gabos, C. Gigliarano, E. Giovannini, T. Goedeme, C. Gradin, A.-C. Guio, M. Hoy, C. Lasso de la Vega, R. Mora, L. Osberg, N. Rohde, T. Rondinella, N. Ruiz, E. Savaglio, S. Seth, J. Silber, K.K. Tang, I. Toth, S. Vannucci, P. Verme, A. Villar, O. Volij, G. Yalonetzky, B. Zheng

This book offers an assessment of new opportunities available for the agricultural sector and provides technical assistance to the Greek authorities with regards to its rural development and fishery sector. Karantininis follows a value chain approach and analyzes the Greek agri-food industry, breaking it down vertically and horizontally. Vertically, the Greek agri-food chain is stripped to its main upstream and downstream components: inputs, primary production, distribution and retail. Horizontally, the agri-food value chain is analyzed in terms of size, ownership, governance and space. The author pays special attention to policy formation, policy implementation, the political and industrial structure, land and credit markets, education, extension and research. The author focuses on this through three subcategories of fruits and vegetables, aquaculture and olive oil. A number of opinions and recommendations are presented in each section, concluding with propositions for a new institutional structure for Greek agriculture.

Zakat, a religious obligation in the form of almsgiving, is highly important both in Islam and in the Islamic economy. As Muslim communities face financial hardships around the world, Zakat has emerged as a vital component within these communities and could play a major role in sustainable economic development by helping society to alleviate poverty and promote social equality. Impact of Zakat on Sustainable Economic Development is a pivotal reference source that contributes practical solutions and knowledge production in alleviating poverty in Muslim countries by adopting Islamic approaches to contemporary socio-economics and the importance of Zakat in sustaining development and supporting the welfare of society. Featuring coverage on a wide range of topics such as corporate governance, ethics, and sustainable economic development, this book is ideally designed for economists, government officials, regulators, entrepreneurs, financial professionals, religious authorities, researchers, academicians, and students at the postgraduate level.

Indonesia is Southeast Asia's largest economy and freest democracy yet vested interests and local politics serve as formidable obstacles to infrastructure reform. In this critical analysis of the politics inhibiting infrastructure investment, Jamie S. Davidson utilizes evidence from his research, press reports and rarely used consultancy studies to challenge mainstream explanations for low investment rates and the sluggish adoption of liberalizing reforms. He argues that obstacles have less to do with weak formal institutions and low fiscal capacities of the state than with entrenched, rent-seeking interests, misaligned central-local government relations, and state-society struggles over land. Using a political-sociological approach, Davidson demonstrates that 'getting the politics right' matters as much as getting the prices right or putting the proper institutional safeguards in place for infrastructure development. This innovative account and its conclusions will be of interest to students and scholars of Southeast Asia and policymakers of infrastructure investment and economic growth.

The Economic Report of the President provides valuable information about the present state of the U.S. economy and its future course. The Economic Report is issued by the Executive Office of the President and the Council of Economic Advisers and transmitted to Congress no later than 10 days after the submission of the Budget of the United States Government. It includes: Current and foreseeable trends and annual numerical goals concerning topics such as employment, production, real income and federal budget outlays. Employment objectives for significant groups of the labor force. Annual numeric goals. A program for carrying out program objectives. For more than 70 years, the Economic Report has provided a nearly contemporaneous record of how administrations have interpreted economic developments, the motivation for policy actions, and the results of those interventions. Included in the Economic Report of the President is the Annual Report of the Council of Economic Advisers. Each year, the Council of Economic Advisers submits this report on its activities during the previous calendar year in accordance with the requirements of the Congress as set forth in section 10(d) of the Employment Act of 1946 as amended by the Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of 1978.

This book provides information and resources to city planners and other public policy officials on the importance of smart sustainable cities and their relationship with urban knowledge-based economy. It answers important topical questions relating to urban sustainable development and human well-being, namely, how can we implement policies and programs that can make cities “smart� and boost their knowledge-based development? How can such programs reduce inequalities and enhance the environment where people live and work? The authors suggest a new approach to the creation of sustainable smart cities, not only in metropolises but also in smaller urban spaces. They advance the body of knowledge in entrepreneurship literature by examining both the European regional understanding of entrepreneurship and the quality of life and well-being at city levels. They also provide synthetic indexes to assess the relationship between perceived quality of life and entrepreneurship.  This book stimulates the debate on the role of smart cities in promoting entrepreneurship, which is a currently under-investigated topic in Europe, and is of interest to a wide range of practitioners, professionals and academics in the area of well-being and quality of life research, urban studies, public policy, and sustainable development.  

This book proposes a new concept of "International Leadership with Chinese Characteristics" (ILCC) to interpret China's role in global governance. The author illustrates how the concept of ILCC is built on the basis of the discussion of Chinese political culture and Chinese worldview of international relations and develops a four-step interpretive process as a guidance for conducting the empirical analysis of the ILCC. The book also shows how Chinese elites conceptually construct and practically implement the ILCC in four case studies - G20, BRICS, Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)

How Nations Innovate compares how affluent capitalist economies differ in their patterns of technological innovation. Building on the 'varieties of capitalism' literature, this book goes beyond the traditional focus on 'radical versus incremental innovation' in existing scholarship, and takes the comparison of capitalism to an entirely new set of questions around technological innovation. For example, which type of capitalism engages in job-threatening innovation? Whose innovation widens income inequality? Whose innovation raises productivity? Which type of capitalism has more effective financial markets for innovation? Whose innovators emphasize 'control' rather than 'flexibility' during innovation? By addressing these questions, the author demonstrates that the way nations innovate often has deep, and sometimes counter-intuitive, implications for how they compare in many areas of socio-economic performance. For example, although venture capital is most active in Anglo-Saxon economies, it seems that venture-capital performance in stimulating innovation is also poorest in precisely these countries. On the issue of employment, the author argues that, whilst technological innovation in Anglo-Saxon economies creates jobs, innovation in European economies destroys jobs. Nations also differ in the nature of income inequality driven by innovation. While innovation pushes top earners further ahead of median earners in Anglo-Saxon economies, it drags bottom earners further behind the median in European economies. Finally, varieties of capitalism also differ in their ability to cope with the volatilities of innovation. While Anglo-Saxon economies face a trade-off between low volatility and high innovation output, these two goals seem jointly achievable in European economies.

Though the history of hikes in petroleum prices began in 1973 when the military government of Gen. Yakubu Gowon increased the price of petrol to 9 kobo per litre from the equivalent of 8.8 kobo that had prevailed before then, the politics and economics of removal of subsidies on premium petroleum products entered into the national lexicon in 1986 when the military administration of General Ibrahim Babangida announced that due to the devaluation of the Naira, the domestic price of fuel had become unsustainable cheap and was becoming a burden on the national purse. Ever since, most regimes in the country have toyed with the idea of removing the subsidies, with organised labour and the civil society usually vehemently opposed to the idea. In late 2011 the Jonathan administration announced plans to completely remove the subsidies but gave no timeline amid threats by organised labour, students and civil society groups to stoutly resist the move. On January 1 2012, the regime announced the removal of the subsidies and subsequently reiterated that its decision on the issue was irreversible. It however announced some measures, including the provision of buses, to help cushion the impact of the move. This volume takes a critical look at the politics and economics of the pro- and anti-subsidisation lobbies. It also examines the likely economic and social impacts of the move and its implications for the poor, the overall economy and the country's democratic project. _____________________________ Jideofor Adibe has been a Guest research fellow in a number of institutions across the world including the Centre for Development Research, Copenhagen, Denmark; the Nordic Institute for African Studies, Uppsala, Sweden, the Centre for Developing Area Studies, McGill University, Montreal, Canada and the Institute for Commonwealth Studies, University of London, UK. He currently teaches political science at Nasarawa State University, Keffi and also writes a weekly column for the Nigerian newspaper Daily Trust. He is equally a member of the paper's Editorial Board. _________

Lombard Street is Walter Bagehot's famous explanation of the England central banking system established during the 19th century. At the time Bagehot wrote, the United Kingdom was at the peak of its influence. The Bank of England in London, was one of the most powerful institutions in the world. Working as an economist at the time, Walter Bagehot sets about explaining how the British government and the Bank of England interact. Leading on from this, he explains how the Bank of England and other banks - the Joint-Stock and Private banking companies - do the business of finance. Bagehot is not afraid to admit that life at the bank is usually quite boring, albeit punctuated by short periods of sudden excitement. The sudden boom of a market, or sudden fluctuations in the credit system, can create an excited demand for money. The eruption of an economic depression, which Bagehot aptly notes is rapidly contagious around different sectors of the economy, can also make working in the bank a lot less tedious.

This edited volume discusses the development of the new social and impact economy in ten countries around the globe. The new social and impact economy is an attempt to conceptualize developments after the 2008 economic crisis, which emphasized the pifalls of the Neo-Liberal economic system. In the aftermath of the crisis, new organizational entities evolved, which combined social and business objectives as part of their mission. Using data gathered by two recent international research projects-the ICSEM project and the FAB-MOVE project-the book provides an initial portrait of the forces at play in the evolution of the new social and impact economy, linking those to the past crisis as well as to Covid19 and comparing the emergence of the phenomenon in a varied group of countries. The book begins with an overview of the classical definitions of social economy and proposes a comprehensive concept of new social and impact economy, its characteristics, and sources. Ten country chapters as well as a comparative chapter on international social economy organizations follow. The volume concludes with an overall analysis of the data from the country chapters, forming a typology of social economy traditions and linking it to recent Post Capitalism trends. Creating a conceptual framework to analyze the new phenomena in social economy, this volume is ideal for academics and practitioners in the fields of social economy; social, economic and welfare policies; social and business entrepreneurship in a comparative fashion; social and technological innovation as well as CSR specialists and practitioners.

A major book from one of the most influential and well-known economists of the 20th century, who coined the term 'creative destruction' His students include famous economists such as Robert Solow and the former Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan and The Economist magazine even had a column called 'Schumpter' for many years Schumpeter launched the idea of the 'business cycle' in this book, which has become a permanent feature of thousands of curricula in business and economics Includes a new foreword by Richard Swedberg

This book examines the ability of the EU and European actor networks to coherently and effectively navigate, manage, and influence debates and policy on the international stage. It also questions whether increasing complexity across a range of critical global issues and networks has affected this ability. Engaging with the growing theoretical and conceptual literature on networks and complexity, the book provides a deeper understanding of how the European Union and European actors navigate within global networks and complex regimes across a range of regulatory, policy cooperation, and foreign and security policy issue areas. It sheds light on how far they are able to respond to and shape solutions to some of the most pressing challenges on the global agenda in the 21st century. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of EU/European and global networks and more broadly to European and EU studies, Global Governance, International Relations, International Political Economy, and Foreign Policy and Security Studies.

Our contemporary age is confronted by a profound contradiction: on the one hand, our lives as workers, consumers and citizens have become ever more monitored by new technologies. On the other, big business and finance become increasingly less regulated and controllable. What does this technocratic ideology and surveillance-heavy culture reveal about the deeper reality of modern society? Monitored investigates the history and implications of this modern accountability paradox. Peter Bloom reveals pervasive monitoring practices which mask how at its heart, the elite remains socially and ethically out of control. Challenging their exploitive 'accounting power', Bloom demands that the systems that administer our lives are oriented to social liberation and new ways of being in the world.

This open access book provides a readable narrative of the bubbles and the banking crisis Japan experienced during the two decades between the late 1980s and the early 2000s. Japan, which was a leading competitor in the world's manufacturing sector, tried to transform itself into an economy with domestic demand-led mature growth, but the ensuing bubbles and crisis instead made the country suffer from chronicle deflation and stagnation. The book analyses why the Japanese authorities could not avoid making choices that led to this outcome. The chapters are based on the lectures to regulators from emerging economies delivered at the Global Financial Partnership Center of the Financial Services Agency of Japan.