This book makes original contributions to the literature on clusters, human capital, and regional development by focusing on the link between entrepreneurship and economic growth, aiming for a better understanding of the dynamics of growth determined by the entrepreneur's action in the regional space. The focus is therefore on critical reflection and rethinking the articulation between three levels of analysis of economic systems, namely entrepreneurship, human capital and regional development, which have not so far been perfectly articulated in the literature of reference on endogenous growth. Although there has been significant research so far into the success and failure of clusters, the implications of these multiple research efforts fail to provide political decision-makers and company managers with critical information about which mechanisms lie behind cluster success and also about how clusters survive and prosper. The innovative approaches presented in this book on entrepreneurship, human capital mobility and regional development have considerable potential to create new and original implications for decision-makers and managers. In terms of value added, this book contributes to the literature by seeking answers to the following questions: (i) Is the growth and success of clusters over time due to concentration and transmission of business competences through spin-offs located in a given regional space? (ii) Does increased density of job options outside the workplace contribute to increased mobility of human capital between firms located within clusters, and so improve coordination in the local labor market? (iii) Do spin-offs benefit from hiring workers from successful incumbents, inasmuch as those workers are expected to perform better than other workers from different origins? Integrating theoretical frameworks, empirical research, and regional case studies (from Portugal, Spain, Norway and Turkey), the editors and contributors demonstrate that the regional dynamics of industry growth are strongly influenced by the mobility of employees towards new firms.

In recent years, social innovation has experienced a steep career. Numerous national governments and large organisations like the OECD, the European Commission and UNESCO have adopted the term. Social innovation basically means that people adopt new social practices in order to meet social needs in a different or more effective way. Prominent examples of the past are the Red Cross and the social welfare state or, at present, the internet 2.0 transforming our communication and cooperation schemes, requiring new management concepts, even empowering social revolutions. The traditional concept of innovation as successful new technological products needs fundamental rethinking in a society marked by knowledge and services, leading to a new and enriched paradigm of innovation. There is multiple evidence that social innovation will become of growing importance not only concerning social integration, equal opportunities and dealing with the greenhouse effects but also with regard to preserving and expanding the innovative capacity of companies and societies. While political authorities stress the social facets of social innovation, this book also encompasses its societal and systemic dimensions, collecting the scientific expertise of renowned experts and scholars from all over the world. Based on the contributions of the first world-wide science convention on social innovation from September 2011 in Vienna, the book provides an overview of scientific approaches to this still relatively new field. Forewords by Agnes HUBERT (Member of theBureau of European Policy Advisers (BEPA) of the European Commission) and Antonella Noya (Senior Policy Analyst at OECD, manager of the OECD LEED Forum on Social Innovations)

In the 1990s, Yugoslavia, which had once been a role model for development, became a symbol for state collapse, external intervention and post-war reconstruction. Today the region has two international protectorates, contested states and borders, severe ethnic polarization and minority concerns. In this first in-depth critical analysis of international administration, aid and reconstruction policies in Kosovo, Jens Stilhoff Soerensen argues that the region must be analyzed as a whole, and that the process of state collapse and recent changes in aid policy must be interpreted in connection to the wider transformation of the global political economy and world order. He examines the shifting inter- and intracommunity relations, the emergence of a "political economy" of conflict, and of informal clientelist arrangements in Serbia and Kosovo and provides a framework for interpreting the collapse of the Yugoslav state, the emergence of ethnic conflict and shadow economies, and the character of western aid and intervention. Western governments and agencies have built policies on conceptions and assumptions for which there is no genuine historical or contemporary economic, social or political basis in the region. As the author persuasively argues, this discrepancy has exacerbated and cemented problems in the region and provided further complications that are likely to remain for years to come.

Beliefs held by US and European elites about unregulated markets and a currency union without fiscal union led to a transatlantic crisis unmatched in severity since the Great Depression. Leading scholars of elites analyze how elites have responded to the crisis, are altered by it and what this 'hour of elites' means for democracy.

This book examines the politics of cancer, explains how our government is intrinsically tied to cancer research efforts, and documents how major political actors make cancer policy and are influenced in their decision making by political, social, scientific, and economic variables. Is whether we contract cancer—and whether we survive the disease, if we get it—largely just a result of good versus bad luck, or are these outcomes regarding cancer tied to the policies and actions of our federal government? Cancer-treating drug development and approval is overseen by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, billions of dollars of federal money are devoted towards cancer research, and exposure of citizens to potentially cancer-causing environments or chemicals is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency. Additionally, all of these factors can be affected by the political motivations of our most powerful politicians. The Politics of Cancer: Malignant Indifference analyzes the policy environment of cancer in America: the actors, the political institutions, the money, and the disease itself, identifying how haphazard U.S. government policy toward cancer research has been and how the president, Congress, government bureaucracies, and even the cancer industry have failed to meet timelines and make the expected discoveries. Whitman Cobb examines funding for the National Cancer Institute and the roles of the executive, Congress, policy entrepreneurs, and the bureaucracy as well as that of the state of cancer science. She argues that despite the so-called "war on cancer," no strategic, comprehensive government policy has been imposed—leading to an indecisive cancer policy that has significantly impeded cancer research. Written from a political science perspective, the book enables readers to gain insight into the realities of science policy and the ways in which the federal government is both the source of funding for much of cancer research and often deficient in setting comprehensive and consistent anti-cancer policy. Readers will also come to understand how Congress, the president, the bureaucracy, and the cancer industry all share responsibility for the current state of cancer policy confusion and consider whether pharmaceutical companies, for-profit cancer treatment hospitals, and interest groups like the American Cancer Society have a personal incentive to keep the fight alive.

The book examines the 'Pink Tide' of leftist governments in Latin America struggling against neoliberal hegemony from a critical International Political Economy perspective. Focusing particularly on Venezuela and Brazil, it evaluates the transformative and emancipatory potentials of their political projects domestically, regionally and globally.

This book offers a collection of original, state-of-the-art essays addressing various aspects of the economic analysis of inequality, deprivation, poverty measurement and social polarization, at both the theoretical and empirical level. Written by leading authorities in the fields of distributional analysis and normative economics, the respective chapters present detailed overviews of cutting-edge literature, as well as stand-alone research. Compiled as a tribute to Satya Ranjan Chakravarty's lifetime contributions in the fields of normative economics and distributional analysis, it represents an indispensable resource for researchers, policymakers and doctoral students working on issues pertaining to income/wealth distribution, social inclusion and poverty reduction.

The First and Second Industrial Revolutions were about energy: steam power revolutionized 19th-century Great Britain and electric power revolutionized 20th-century America. Yet political economy, the science of wealth born of the First Industrial Revolution, is devoid of energy, focusing instead on machinery or capital. According to basic mechanics, tools per se are not productive, as they are not source of energy. This book uses basic mechanics and thermodynamics to reexamine the rise of political economy as the science of wealth in the 19th and 20th centuries. The study shows that the failure of generations of political economists to formally incorporate energy into their models of production and distribution has led to the unfortunate state in which economics currently finds itself. With the inclusion of energy, important insights result. For instance, the Solow Residual in both 19th-century Great Britain and 20th-century America disappears.

Unlike previous critiques of political economy, this analysis is constructive in nature, using past shortcomings and oversights as a springboard to a more consistent model of economic activity, especially production. The book is the first of its kind to use basic physics and thermodynamics as a guide to the First and Second Industrial Revolutions, and more importantly, to show how political economists from Smith to Fisher have attempted to understand these two energy-based Industrial Revolutions.

Margot P. C. Weijnen, Zofia Lukszo and Geert Deconinck Abstract The infrastructures for electric power and information and telecommunication services are critical enablers for all economic activity. Both of these infrastructure systems evolved over time as networks-of-networks in an institutionally fr- mented landscape. In understanding and steering the emergent behaviour of these infrastructure systems both their physical network complexity and their social n- work complexity pose a formidable challenge. On top of the socio-technical c- plexity of the electricity infrastructure and the information and telecommunication infrastructure as such, the two infrastructure systems show unprecedented mutual interdependency. Unravelling this multi-level interdependency and identifying strategies to curb the new risks and vulnerabilities it implies for the reliability of electric power services is the goal of this book. It clearly shows that technical so- tions alone will not suffice to ensure the future reliability and security of electricity infrastructure operations. Keywords Cybersecurity * infrastructure vulnerability * infrastructure depend- cies * power systems 1. 1 Infrastructures Are Critical Infrastructures are the backbone of the economy and society. Especially the network bound infrastructures operated by public utilities and network industries provide essential services that are enabling for almost every economic and social activity. M. P. C. Weijnen (*) and Z. Lukszo Technology Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology, P. O. Box 5015, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands e-mail: M. P. C. Weijnen@tudelft. nl; Z. Lukszo@tudelft. nl G. Deconinck K. U.

Most of the established theories of economics, particularly of international trade, became obsolete in the new world trade and production architecture. How, in these new circumstances, will host nations organize their economic resources? This book analyzes some prominent countries in the world to examine the issue.

The arguments over the economic policies of the Reagan Administration will continue until sufficient time has elapsed for a consensus to be possible. In the meantime, it is necessary for contemporary scholars to record their opinions as a base for the consensus. Campagna has recorded his conclusions based on considerable research on Reagan Administration policies. He begins by describing what was planned by the government. From there, he discusses what actually happened, and devotes the remainder of the work to his opinion of what has been left with which the future must deal. Campagna concludes that the Reagan economic policies failed. He establishes a position for others to attack or defend in their own publications in the continuing argument.

Using a mix of quantitative methods and case study research, this book critically assesses the impact of party governments in different institutional settings on welfare state generosity and labour market reforms. Its key findings contradict earlier established views on the impact of leftist governments on welfare state policies. Specifically, left-wing governments are pursuing clientelistic policies when facing high institutional constraints and austerity and turn out to cater towards the core workforce rather than designing policies for the full range of labour market participants.

In 1989 the post-Communist countries of Eastern Europe opened their economies by establishing more open exchange rate policies and exchange controls and eliminating prohibitive tariffs and quotas. Now trying to join the integrated world economy, they are facing the challenge of finding strategic alliances and attracting foreign capital. This book analyzes economic policy in Eastern Europe with a focus on the financial arrangement of currency boards. It examines the main challenges facing East European countries, their economic policy strategies, the main challenges to the economies that adopted currency boards, and whether currency boards were a solution.

The book is organized into two parts. Part I addresses the challenges to economic policy in Eastern Europe, and Part II turns to the discussion of currency board arrangements.

This collection reflects on the international political economy of media and the valuable lessons to be learned from the media reforms currently taking place across South America. The contributors present a range of theoretical and methodological perspectives on the ongoing battle for media space in South America, and the volume includes a foreword by Ernesto Laclau.

This book examines the transformation of the state in Central and Eastern Europe since the end of communism and adoption of market oriented reform in the early 1990s, exploring the impact of globalization and economic liberalization on the region's states, societies and political economy. It compares the different policies and national strategies adopted by key Central and Eastern European states, including the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia, showing how initial internally oriented strategies of market reform, privileging domestic sources of investment, had by the late 1990s given way to externally oriented strategies emphasising the promotion of competitiveness by attracting foreign investment. It explores the reasons behind this convergence, considering the influence of internal and external forces, and the roles of interests, institutions and ideas. It argues that internationalization of the state is forged in the processes through which domestic groups linked to transnational capital attain domestic influence necessary to shape state policy and strategy. These groups - the comprador service sector in particular - constitute and organize political, social and institutional support of the competition state in the region. Overall, this book not only provides a detailed account of the political economy of post-communist transformation in Central and Eastern Europe, but also the processes by which states adapt to the forces of globalization.

Multilevel marketing and pyramid schemes promote the idea that participants can easily become rich. These popular economies turn ordinary people into advocates of their interests and missionaries of the American Dream. Marketing Hope looks at how different types of get-rich-quick schemes manifest themselves in a Siberian town. By focusing on their social dynamics, Leonie Schiffauer provides insights into how capitalist logic is learned and negotiated, and how it affects local realities in a post-Soviet environment.

50 years ago, World Bank President Robert McNamara promised to end poverty. Alleviation was to rely on economic growth, resulting in higher incomes stimulated by Bank loans processed by deskbound Washington staff, trickling down to the poorest. Instead, child poverty and homelessness are on the increase everywhere. In this book, anthropologist and former World Bank Advisor Glynn Cochrane argues that instead of Washington's "management by seclusion," poverty alleviation requires personal engagement with the poorest by helpers with hands-on local and cultural skills. Here, the author argues, the insights provided by anthropological fieldwork have a crucial role to play.

This book presents the development of a theory of social goal-objective formation and its relationship to national interest and social vision under a democratic decision-choice system with imperfect information structure. It provides a framework for the application of fuzzy logic and its mathematics to the analysis in resolving conflicts in individual preferences in the collective decision-choice space without violence. The book demonstrates how to use fuzzy logic and its mathematics in the study of economics, social sciences and other complex systems. It also presents the use of collaborative tools of opposites, duality, polarity, continuum in fuzzy paradigm with its logic, laws of thought and mathematics in developing a new approach to the theory of political economy in order to enhance the constructs of social decision-choice theory.

As other industries, the global travel and tourism industry has been facing immense challenges and highly visible upheaval since the beginning of the new millennium. The International Tourism Exchange ITB Berlin, the world's leading travel trade show, aims at pinpointing the most important challenges, identifying the trends and offering a platform to solve pressing problems. The ITB Convention Market Trends & Innovations has developed into a centre of excellence and a driving force for the global travel and tourism industry, generating a much needed information platform. This compilation unites the highlights of the convention in articles prepared by renowned professionals and scientists from the industry. Readers may benefit from this comprehensive vision of the developments that are shaping the structure of the global tourism industry today and in the future. This book is indispensable for tourism and travel professionals as well as for academics and students anal- ing current global tourism and travel trends.

This book contains the refereed proceedings of the 2nd Advances in Business Research International Conference (ABRIC2016). Chapters in the book address the theme of Advancing Knowledge, Connecting the World, reflecting on the emerging issues in various business management fields and the interconnections of multiple disciplines for creating knowledge advancement. Papers were carefully reviewed and selected and grouped into four main themes: economic and finance, marketing and communications, management, and information technology in business. The book serves as a helpful resource for students and researchers of business management, especially in understanding issues and cases of business in emerging economies and markets.

This book investigates if and how agricultural market structures and farm constraints affect the development of dynamic food and cash crop sectors and whether these sectors can contribute to economic transformation and poverty reduction in Africa. The authors map the current cash and food crops supply chains in six African countries, characterizing their markets structures and domestic competition policies. At the farm level, the book studies the constraints faced by small holders to increase productivity and break out of a vicious cycle in which low productivity exacerbates vulnerability to poverty. In a series of micro case studies, the project explores how cooperatives and institutions may help overcome these constraints. This book will appeal to scholars and policy makers seeking instruments to promote increased agriculture productivity, resolve food security issues, and promote agribusiness by diversifying exports and increasing trade and competitiveness.

After over 30 years of reform and opening up, China's aggregate economic volume is now the second largest in the world. Over the past decade many provinces in the western region of China have implemented ecological migration projects of different scales, which have attracted considerable attention both in China and abroad. The projects indicate, first, that there is an urgent need for this type of endeavor: whether the goal is to reduce poverty or to protect the environment, we need to move the poor populations out of the ecologically fragile regions. Secondly, the projects indicate that the Chinese government is capable of meeting this need. Migration projects are complex and costly and without sufficient financial resources and systematic planning, migration may fail to reduce poverty, and could even aggravate it. The rapid economic growth in China, however, makes such migration projects viable.

This forcefully argued book offers a provocative picture of the political, intellectual, and economic forces that have shaped the history of the United States from its founding to the present day. Offering an extensive and in-depth critique of laissez-faire doctrine and a novel reformulation of the work of American System writers such as Daniel Raymond, Henry Carey, and Thorstein Veblen, author Donald Gibson traces America's rise to global supremacy. He examines how free-market ideology and the "establishment" networks exemplified by Wall Street and the Council for Foreign Relations combined to lead us to the political and economic crises that America faces at the dawn of the twenty-first century.

This work provides a consistent and empirically meaningful definition of surplus and suggests an analytical framework for studying economic growth and stagnation using that concept. The book also presents a case study of the role of surplus in economic growth. In the first part of the work, a method is developed emphasizing the links to classical economic theory and the logical flaws of the earlier works. The second part examines the role of surplus in one country, and tests the classical hypotheses about growth in the long run and in a cross-section of countries.