This timely book will explain, via a number of thematic and case studies, that international economics is not an independent terrain of economic activity reproducing itself throughout history, but a complex articulation of social, political and culturally determined actions that are inextricably linked. Chapters will address the role of dominant global powers in the making of global industrial and monetary relations, and, in particular, ways in which, and the degrees to which dominant economic and military powers, such as the USA, tend to shape the domestic economic environments of lesser powers after their own image. Supplementing the chapters will be a comprehensive A - Z glossary section, which will include key International Political Economy terms, e.g. international debt, European free trade area, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, IMF, GATT-WTO, Foreign exchange, fixed exchange rates, floating exchange rates, reserve currency, gold-dollar parity, multinational corporation, preferential trade agreement, hedge funds, etc. Entries will be cross-referenced for ease of use. This book will be ideal for researchers and students in the areas of politics, international relations and international economics, as well as for academics, economists, business people, and those with an interest in the workings of international political economy.

"It is, perhaps, worth stressing that economic problems arise always and only in consequence of change. So long as things continue as before, or at least as they were expected to, there arise no new problems requiring a decision, no need to form a plan. " (Hayek, 1945, p. 523) This book is based on my research for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy which I received from Lancaster University, England in the second half of 1997. It is an analysis of the structural transformation of the economic system in East Germany and the behavioural relations these changes imply. The approach of institutionalised transformation (not the least by the creation of the Treuhandanstalt) is examined with a theory-based framework which is derived from system-theoretical, evolutionary and constitutional-ethical considerations as well as from the newly developed adjustment model which has been constructed as a dynamic transformation approach. A relationship between norm changes, the new institutional framework of the economic system and the compatibility of the latter with changes of the remaining partial societal systems is recognised. Rigidity factors in the system's flexibility to react as well as the adjustment of economic behaviour to structural changes are analysed. The "marginal product of system change" is defined (section 2. 8. 2).