The frequency and repetition of economic crises over the last hundred years demands an analysis that allows us to discover the root causes of these situations and the problems they have generated in the world economy. This book investigates these cycles throughout the 20th and the early 21st century. Economic crises can be the result of political or military conflict, but they have also been the consequence of bad practices, unbridled speculation, excessive greed or poor management by the rulers and leaders of nations. The contributors to this volume analyse the causes and consequences of economic crises from the Great Depression to the present day, incorporating post-World War II reconstruction, the oil crisis of the 1970s and the "lost" Latin American decade of the 1980s, among others. This longer-term view allows the book to provide insights into understanding economic cycles in the long run, not just at a specific moment in time, and the ways in which they have spread internationally. This historical analysis also helps to shed new light on the current covid-impacted situation, as it provides another reading of the main crises of recent centuries and their causes and consequences, as well as the measures and policies adopted to overcome the difficulties. This book will be of significant interest to readers in economic history, business history, politics, and economics and history more broadly.

The figure of the entrepreneur has become a relevant factor that explains the process of growth and economic development. Rising unemployment rates have generated among institutional and private agents, a significant interest in promoting entrepreneurship as a formula to eradicate this social scourge of unemployment. Active policies that favor business culture and initiative are being promoted in all areas. In the university world, academic research has multiplied the work on entrepreneurship, a term that includes a triple meaning: the figure of the entrepreneur, the business function and the creation of companies. This versatile meaning must be based on a consistent theory about the company and the entrepreneur. This book presents specific cases of companies and entrepreneurs that have had their role throughout the history of Spain. The intention is to show the techniques and learning acquired by those agents, which have allowed a considerable advance in the knowledge of the structure and business development. This book brings together the research carried out by its authors with primary sources and makes it accessible to a wide audience-Spanish and Latin American-and will be of value to researchers, academics, and students with an interest in Spanish entrepreneurship, business, and management history.

The figure of the entrepreneur has become a relevant factor that explains the process of growth and economic development. Rising unemployment rates have generated among institutional and private agents, a significant interest in promoting entrepreneurship as a formula to eradicate this social scourge of unemployment. Active policies that favor business culture and initiative are being promoted in all areas. In the university world, academic research has multiplied the work on entrepreneurship, a term that includes a triple meaning: the figure of the entrepreneur, the business function and the creation of companies. This versatile meaning must be based on a consistent theory about the company and the entrepreneur. This book presents specific cases of companies and entrepreneurs that have had their role throughout the history of Spain. The intention is to show the techniques and learning acquired by those agents, which have allowed a considerable advance in the knowledge of the structure and business development. This book brings together the research carried out by its authors with primary sources and makes it accessible to a wide audience-Spanish and Latin American-and will be of value to researchers, academics, and students with an interest in Spanish entrepreneurship, business, and management history.

Accounting and Debt Markets: Four Pieces on the Role of Accounting Information in Debt Markets provides novel and up-to-date evidence on the role of accounting information in debt markets Companies and organisations worldwide rely heavily on debt markets for short, medium and long-term financing, and debt markets and financial intermediaries have significant effects on the real economy. Accounting information has various functions in debt markets, including inter alia, informing pricing decisions and credit ratings, determining the allocation of creditor control rights and establishing bank capital adequacy requirements. The chapters in this book provide illustrative discussion, analysis and evidence on the importance of accounting information in credit markets. The first of the four pieces reflects on how a conservative financial reporting system helps firms obtain debt funds and with better conditions, and why this is the case. The second examines the effects of accounting disclosure on credit ratings of private companies and shows that accounting information is useful for credit rating agencies. The two final pieces reflect on how banks should account for credit losses, and on how regulators are tackling this issue. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Accounting and Business Research.

Polyoxometalates are anionic metal-oxo nanoclusters, which constitute a unique class of compounds owing to their rich solution equilibria and their unique compositional, electronic, reactive, and structural diversity. This book reviews metal-oxide cluster chemistry by covering topics ranging from fundamental aspects (i.e., structure, properties, self-assembly processes, derivatization) to functional materials that incorporate these molecular units, as well as their applications in the fields of current socioeconomic interest, such as energy storage systems, catalysis, molecular electronics, and biomedicine. Edited by prominent researchers in the field of polymer and polyoxometalate chemistries, the book compiles contributions from some of the most distinguished and promising scientists worldwide in such a way that it will appeal to a general readership involved in research areas related to chemistry and materials science.

This is the first comprehensive study of the reception of classical architecture in different regions of the world. Exploring the impact of colonialism, trade, slavery, religious missions, political ideology and intellectual/artistic exchange, the authors demonstrate how classical principles and ideas were disseminated and received across the globe. By addressing a number of contentious or unresolved issues highlighted in some historical surveys of architecture, the chapters presented in this volume question long-held assumptions about the notion of a universally accepted 'classical tradition' and its broadly Euro-centric perspective. Featuring thirty-two chapters written by international scholars from China, Europe, Turkey, North America, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand, the book is divided into four sections: 1) Transmission and re-conceptualisation of classical architecture; 2) Classical influence through colonialism, political ideology and religious conversion; 3) Historiographical surveys of geographical regions; and 4) Visual and textual discourses. This fourfold arrangement of chapters provides a coherent structure to accommodate different perspectives of classical reception across the world, and their geographical, ethnographic, ideological, symbolic, social and cultural contexts. Essays cover a wide geography and include studies in Italy, France, England, Scotland, the Nordic countries, Greece, Austria, Portugal, Romania, Germany, Poland, India, Singapore, China, the USA, Mexico, Brazil, New Zealand and Australia. Other essays in the volume focus on thematic issues or topics pertaining to classical architecture, such as ornament, spolia, humanism, nature, moderation, decorum, heresy and taste. An essential reference guide, The Routledge Handbook on the Reception of Classical Architecture makes a major contribution to the study of architectural history in a new global context.

This book focuses on reconceptualising the teaching of STEM education through dialogue and transformative learning, presenting examples of research from Mexico and the UK. It centres on research which introduces critical pedagogies in the teaching of STEM, where in the past there has been an over-emphasis on content and a technicist perspective on science. The research in this book considers critical and dialogic approaches to teacher education for STEM subjects and emphasises the crucial role that teachers play in improving life chances for marginalised young people and their communities. STEM education is not just a way of improving a country's GDP, but if taught through dialogic and transformative pedagogies it can enable teachers to empower students to improve their own lives. The collaboration between these two countries is timely and comes as Mexico is developing and emerging as a key global economic nation. The work presented here engages in theoretical and empirical work that has application beyond the two countries. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Education for Teaching.

Accounting and Debt Markets: Four Pieces on the Role of Accounting Information in Debt Markets provides novel and up-to-date evidence on the role of accounting information in debt markets Companies and organisations worldwide rely heavily on debt markets for short, medium and long-term financing, and debt markets and financial intermediaries have significant effects on the real economy. Accounting information has various functions in debt markets, including inter alia, informing pricing decisions and credit ratings, determining the allocation of creditor control rights and establishing bank capital adequacy requirements. The chapters in this book provide illustrative discussion, analysis and evidence on the importance of accounting information in credit markets. The first of the four pieces reflects on how a conservative financial reporting system helps firms obtain debt funds and with better conditions, and why this is the case. The second examines the effects of accounting disclosure on credit ratings of private companies and shows that accounting information is useful for credit rating agencies. The two final pieces reflect on how banks should account for credit losses, and on how regulators are tackling this issue. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Accounting and Business Research.

This is the first comprehensive study of the reception of classical architecture in different regions of the world. Exploring the impact of colonialism, trade, slavery, religious missions, political ideology and intellectual/artistic exchange, the authors demonstrate how classical principles and ideas were disseminated and received across the globe. By addressing a number of contentious or unresolved issues highlighted in some historical surveys of architecture, the chapters presented in this volume question long-held assumptions about the notion of a universally accepted 'classical tradition' and its broadly Euro-centric perspective. Featuring thirty-two chapters written by international scholars from China, Europe, Turkey, North America, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand, the book is divided into four sections: 1) Transmission and re-conceptualisation of classical architecture; 2) Classical influence through colonialism, political ideology and religious conversion; 3) Historiographical surveys of geographical regions; and 4) Visual and textual discourses. This fourfold arrangement of chapters provides a coherent structure to accommodate different perspectives of classical reception across the world, and their geographical, ethnographic, ideological, symbolic, social and cultural contexts. Essays cover a wide geography and include studies in Italy, France, England, Scotland, the Nordic countries, Greece, Austria, Portugal, Romania, Germany, Poland, India, Singapore, China, the USA, Mexico, Brazil, New Zealand and Australia. Other essays in the volume focus on thematic issues or topics pertaining to classical architecture, such as ornament, spolia, humanism, nature, moderation, decorum, heresy and taste. An essential reference guide, The Routledge Handbook on the Reception of Classical Architecture makes a major contribution to the study of architectural history in a new global context.

This book focuses on reconceptualising the teaching of STEM education through dialogue and transformative learning, presenting examples of research from Mexico and the UK. It centres on research which introduces critical pedagogies in the teaching of STEM, where in the past there has been an over-emphasis on content and a technicist perspective on science. The research in this book considers critical and dialogic approaches to teacher education for STEM subjects and emphasises the crucial role that teachers play in improving life chances for marginalised young people and their communities. STEM education is not just a way of improving a country's GDP, but if taught through dialogic and transformative pedagogies it can enable teachers to empower students to improve their own lives. The collaboration between these two countries is timely and comes as Mexico is developing and emerging as a key global economic nation. The work presented here engages in theoretical and empirical work that has application beyond the two countries. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Education for Teaching.

This is the comprehensive account of the long and difficult road traveled to end the fifty-year armed conflict with the FARC, the oldest guerrilla army in the world; a long war that left more than eight million victims. The obstacles to peace were both large and dangerous. All previous attempts to negotiate with the FARC had failed, creating an environment where differences were irreconcilable and political will was scarce. The Battle for Peace is the story not only of the six years of negotiation and the peace process that transformed a country, its secret contacts, its international implications, and difficulties and achievements but also of the two previous decades in which Colombia oscillated between warlike confrontation and negotiated solution. In The Battle for Peace Juan Manuel Santos shares the lessons he learned about war and peace and how to build a successful negotiation process in the context of a nation which had all but resigned itself to war and the complexities of twenty-first-century international law and diplomacy. While Santos is clear that there is no handbook for making peace, he offers conflict-tested guidance on the critical parameters, conditions, and principles as well as rich detail on the innovations that made it possible for his nation to find common ground and a just solution.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Web Engineering, ICWE 2023, held in Alicante, Spain, during June 6-9, 2023. The 18 revised full papers and 7 short papers presented in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 77 submissions. They are organized in topical sections named: architecting the web in the cloud continuum; machine learning for web engineering; IoT and WoT engineering; user privacy engineering; user behaviour characterization; user centered technologies; tools and techniques for advanced web engineering; and web engineering practices and experiences.

This book presents a novel approach for studying the impact of leadership styles on supply chain resilience using a combination of transactional and transformational leadership. The book consists of two main sections: The first introduces key concepts and provides a framework for understanding the research problem and methodology. The second section presents five structural equation models developed and validated using data collected from a survey of managers and engineers in the Mexican Maquiladora Industry. These models explore the relationships between key variables, such as agility, flexibility, alertness, and efficiency, and how they are affected by different leadership styles. The findings of this study suggest that a combination of transactional and transformational leadership is highly effective in enhancing resilience and achieving better results during disruptive events. Written in a clear and accessible style, this book is an essential resource for scholars, researchers, and practitioners interested in supply chain management, leadership, and resilience. It contributes to the existing literature on these topics and provides practical insights for improving supply chain performance in today's complex and dynamic business environments.

Uber's April 2016 launch in Buenos Aires plunged the Argentine capital into a frenzied hysteria that engulfed courts of law, taxi drivers, bureaucrats, the press, the general public, and Argentina's president himself. Economist and anthropologist Juan M. del Nido, who had arrived in the city six months earlier to research the taxi industry, suddenly found himself documenting the unprecedented upheaval in real time. Taxis vs. Uber examines the ensuing conflict from the perspective of the city's globalist, culturally liberal middle class, showing how notions like monopoly, efficiency, innovation, competition, and freedom fueled claims that were often exaggerated, inconsistent, unverifiable, or plainly false, but that shaped the experience of the conflict such that taxi drivers' stakes in it were no longer merely disputed but progressively written off, pathologized, and explained away. This first book-length study of the lead-up to and immediate aftermath of the arrival of a major platform economy to a metropolitan capital considers how the clash between Uber and the traditional taxi industry played out in courtrooms, in the press, and on the street. Looking to court cases, the politics of taxi licenses, social media campaigns, telecommunications infrastructure, public protests, and Uber's own promotional materials, del Nido examines the emergence of "post-political reasoning": an increasingly common way in which societies neutralize disagreement, shaping how we understand what we can even legitimately argue about and how.

Uber's April 2016 launch in Buenos Aires plunged the Argentine capital into a frenzied hysteria that engulfed courts of law, taxi drivers, bureaucrats, the press, the general public, and Argentina's president himself. Economist and anthropologist Juan M. del Nido, who had arrived in the city six months earlier to research the taxi industry, suddenly found himself documenting the unprecedented upheaval in real time. Taxis vs. Uber examines the ensuing conflict from the perspective of the city's globalist, culturally liberal middle class, showing how notions like monopoly, efficiency, innovation, competition, and freedom fueled claims that were often exaggerated, inconsistent, unverifiable, or plainly false, but that shaped the experience of the conflict such that taxi drivers' stakes in it were no longer merely disputed but progressively written off, pathologized, and explained away. This first book-length study of the lead-up to and immediate aftermath of the arrival of a major platform economy to a metropolitan capital considers how the clash between Uber and the traditional taxi industry played out in courtrooms, in the press, and on the street. Looking to court cases, the politics of taxi licenses, social media campaigns, telecommunications infrastructure, public protests, and Uber's own promotional materials, del Nido examines the emergence of "post-political reasoning": an increasingly common way in which societies neutralize disagreement, shaping how we understand what we can even legitimately argue about and how.

Existing histories of modern architecture typically give their highest praise to private houses and their most severe condemnation to architect-authored urban plans, often neglecting the built works that are no smaller than a single building and possibly as large as an urban block, the middle or institutional scale, where culturally significant urban transformation actually takes place. Urban architecture is a timely topic as today cities worldwide are suffering accelerated urbanisation, which is often dehumanising and destructive, especially to the unbuilt environment, airs, waters and soils. The middle or institutional scale is shown to activate and actualise latent potentials for cultural experience and environmental intelligence, allowing the city to surprise itself and delight in its discoveries. In Projecting Urbanity, David Leatherbarrow, via author-architect texts by his former doctorate students, lays out the basis for a revision of modern architecture's contribution to cities and their culture. Presenting a series of texts featuring buildings or their parts of various scales - from the construction detail, to the room or garden, to ensembles within a neighborhood - the contributors introduce concepts for contemporary and future urban architecture, together with richly indicative examples from the past several decades. While architecture cannot "solve" today's urban problems, it certainly has a role to play in their productive transformation, articulating opportunities for life and culture that are more humane, less wasteful, and more beautiful.

This two-wolume set (CCIS 1395-1396) constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Conference on Futuristic Trends in Network and Communication Technologies, FTNCT 2020, held in Taganrog, Russia, in October 2020.The 80 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 291 submissions. The prime aim of the conference is to invite researchers from different domains of network and communication technologies to a single platform to showcase their research ideas. The selected papers are organized in topical sections on communication technologies; security and privacy; futuristic computing technologies; network and computing technologies; wireless networks and Internet of Things (IoT).

This textbook summarizes the fundamentals of mass balance relevant for chemical engineers and an easy and comprehensive manner. Plenty of example calculations, schemes and flow diagrams facilitate the understanding. Case studies from relevant topics such as sustainable chemistry illustrate the theory behind current applications.

This book is based on the International Conference on Decision Economics (DECON 2019). Highlighting the fact that important decision-making takes place in a range of critical subject areas and research fields, including economics, finance, information systems, psychology, small and international business, management, operations, and production, the book focuses on analytics as an emerging synthesis of sophisticated methodology and large data systems used to guide economic decision-making in an increasingly complex business environment. DECON 2019 was organised by the University of Chieti-Pescara (Italy), the National Chengchi University of Taipei (Taiwan), and the University of Salamanca (Spain), and was held at the Escuela politecnica Superior de Avila, Spain, from 26th to 28th June, 2019. Sponsored by IEEE Systems Man and Cybernetics Society, Spain Section Chapter, and IEEE Spain Section (Technical Co-Sponsor), IBM, Indra, Viewnext, Global Exchange, AEPIA-and-APPIA, with the funding supporting of the Junta de Castilla y Leon, Spain (ID: SA267P18-Project co-financed with FEDER funds)

This book gathers the refereed proceedings of the 1st International Congress on Blockchain and Applications 2019, BLOCKCHAIN'19, held in Avila, Spain, in June 2019. Among the scientific community, blockchain and artificial intelligence are broadly considered to offer a promising combination that could transform the production and manufacturing industry, media, finance, insurance, e-government, etc. Nevertheless, there is no generally accepted approach, nor established best practices, for combining blockchain and artificial intelligence. The 21 papers presented here were carefully reviewed and selected from over 40 submissions. They highlight the latest advances in blockchain, artificial intelligence and their application domains, exploring innovative ideas, guidelines, theories, models, technologies, and tools, and identifying critical issues and challenges that researchers and practitioners will face in the near future. We wish to thank the sponsors: IEEE Systems Man and Cybernetics Society, Spain Section Chapter, and the IEEE Spain Section (Technical Co-Sponsor), IBM, Indra, Viewnext, Global Exchange, AEPIA, APPIA and AIR institute.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Practical Applications of Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, PAAMS 2019, held in Avila, Spain, in June 2019. The 19 regular and 14 demo papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 55 submissions. They deal with the application and validation of agent-based models, methods, and technologies in a number of key applications areas, including: Agronomy and Internet of Things, coordination and structure, finance and energy, function and autonomy, humans and societies, reasoning and optimization, traffic and routing.

This book contains the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Knowledge Management in Organizations, KMO 2019, held in Zamora, Spain, in July 2019. The 46 papers accepted for KMO 2019 were selected from 109 submissions and are organized in topical sections on: knowledge management models and analysis; knowledge transfer and learning; knowledge and service innovation; knowledge creation; knowledge and organization; information systems and information science; data mining and intelligent science; social networks and social aspects of KM; big data and IoT; and new trends in IT.

The special session on Decision Economics (DECON) is a scientific forum held annually, which is focused on sharing ideas, projects, research results, models, and experiences associated with the complexity of behavioural decision processes and socio-economic phenomena. In 2018, DECON was held at Campus Tecnologico de la Fabrica de Armas, University of Castilla-La Mancha, Toledo, Spain, as part of the 15th International Conference on Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence. For the third consecutive year, this book have drawn inspiration from Herbert A. Simon's interdisciplinary legacy and, in particular, is devoted to designs, models, and techniques for boundedly rational decisions, involving several fields of study and expertise. It is worth noting that the recognition of relevant decision-making takes place in a range of critical subject areas and research fields, including economics, finance, information systems, small and international business management, operations, and production. Therefore, decision-making issues are of fundamental importance in all branches of economics addressed with different methodological approaches. As a matter of fact, the study of decision-making has become the focus of intense research efforts, both theoretical and applied, forming a veritable bridge between theory and practice as well as science and business organisations, whose pillars are based on insightful cutting-edge experimental, behavioural, and computational approaches on the one hand, and celebrating the value of science as well as the close relationship between economics and complexity on the other. In this respect, the international scientific community acknowledges Herbert A. Simon's research endeavours to understand the processes involved in economic decision-making and their implications for the advancement of economic professions. Within the field of decision-making, indeed, Simon has become a mainstay of bounded rationality and satisficing. His rejection of the standard (unrealistic) decision-making models adopted by neoclassical economists inspired social scientists worldwide with the purpose to develop research programmes aimed at studying decision-making empirically, experimentally, and computationally. The main achievements concern decision-making for individuals, firms, markets, governments, institutions, and, last but not least, science and research. This book of selected papers tackles these issues that Simon broached in a professional career spanning more than sixty years. The Editors of this book dedicated it to Herb.