The organization of individuals into networks and groups is of fundamental importance in many social and economic interactions. Examples range from networks of personal contacts used to obtain information about job opportunities to the formation of trading partnerships, alliances, cartels, and federations. Much of our understanding of how and why such networks and groups form, and the precise way in which the network or groups structure affects outcomes of social and economic interaction, is relatively new. This volume collects some of the central papers in this recent literature, which have made important progress on this topic.

This book is a compilation of selected papers presented at the ISI (Indian Statistical Institute) Platinum Jubilee Conference on Comparative Development held at the ISI, Delhi, India. The papers cover new and well-established topics in development economics. Some of these include political economy, role of public outrage in delivering justice and the political economy of general strikes, economics of happiness, economics of labour, agricultural economics, macroeconomics and public finance. These topics are analyzed from the perspective of developing countries. The book will be of interest to both researchers and graduate students in development economics.

When Murat Sertel asked us whether we would be interested in organizing a special issue of the Review of Economic Design on the formation of networks and groups, we were happy to accept because of the growing research on this important topic. We were also pleasantly surprised at the response to our request for submissions to the special issue, receiving a much larger number of sub missions than we had anticipated. In the end we were able to put together two special issues of insightful papers on this topic. Given the growing interest in this topic, we also decided (with encouragement from Murat) to combine the special issues in the form of a book for wider dissemination. However, once we had decided to edit the book, it was natural to move beyond the special issue to include at least some of the papers that have been influential in the literature on the formation of networks. These papers were published in other journals, and we are very grateful to the authors as well as the journals for permission to include these papers in the book."

Science, Technology and Applications of Metal Additive Manufacturing provides a holistic picture of metal Additive Manufacturing (AM) that encompasses the science, technology and applications for the use of metal AM. Users will find design aspects, various metal AM technologies commercially available, a focus on merits and demerits, implications for qualification and certification, applications, cost modeling of AM, and future directions. This book serves as an educational guide, providing a holistic picture of metal AM that encompasses science, technology and applications for the real-life use of metal AM.

Additive Manufacturing of Titanium Alloys: State of the Art, Challenges and Opportunities provides alternative methods to the conventional approach for the fabrication of the majority of titanium components produced via the cast and wrought technique, a process which involves a considerable amount of expensive machining. In contrast, the Additive Manufacturing (AM) approach allows very close to final part configuration to be directly fabricated minimizing machining cost, while achieving mechanical properties at least at cast and wrought levels. In addition, the book offers the benefit of significant savings through better material utilization for parts with high buy-to-fly ratios (ratio of initial stock mass to final part mass before and after manufacturing). As titanium additive manufacturing has attracted considerable attention from both academicians and technologists, and has already led to many applications in aerospace and terrestrial systems, as well as in the medical industry, this book explores the unique shape making capabilities and attractive mechanical properties which make titanium an ideal material for the additive manufacturing industry.