Search results for ""Agenda Publishing""

The UN's urban sustainability goal (#11) is fundamental to the global sustainable development agenda. David Simon explains the anatomy and dynamics of SDG 11, and critically assess how it is being used and understood in different local, regional and national contexts. Supported by case studies throughout, Simon considers how SDG 11 interacts with other Sustainability Development Goals and how competing indicators, other external constraints, as well as lack of political will can present tough challenges to implementation. He provides a balanced and dispassionate analysis, highlighting problems and limitations alongside positive applications. A key aspect of the unfolding story of the SDGs is how they play out in practice. Although some of the connections and complementarities were designed, others are shown to have emerged by default. Drawing on lessons learnt so far, Simon considers how realistic sustainability goals are for cities and human settlements worldwide, and asks how different will cities be by the end of the SDG's 15-year lifespan in 2030? Written for students, policy-makers and practitioners, the book provides an authoritative assessment of one of the most important and integrative SDGs.

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UK workers are stuck in a low-pay, low-productivity rut, with far too many people working in poor quality, insecure jobs, with little training or chance of getting on. Katy Jones and Ashwin Kumar question the mantra that “work is the best way out of poverty” and examine the in-work poverty that now defines employment for many. The state’s engagement with people out of work is shown to ignore the needs of lone parents and disabled people, and has little concern for skills and career progression. When coupled with the degradation of social infrastructure, such as child care and transport, the barriers to quality work can become insurmountable. Jones and Kumar’s insightful analysis reveals the need to move away from positioning unemployment as a “behavioural problem” to be corrected by coercive labour market policies to one that considers the wider obstacles to better paid, quality jobs.

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How do we and how should we engage with the natural environment through the concepts of rights and responsibilities? Michael Cox develops a theory and practice of environmental property rights, moving beyond simplistic assumptions that do not reflect the diversity of arrangements we see in the world.

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Corruption takes many different forms and the systems that enable it are complex and challenging. To best understand corruption, one needs to examine how it operates in practice. Understanding Corruption tells the story of how corruption happens in the real world, illustrated through detailed case studies of the many different types of corruption that span the globe. Each case study follows a tried and tested analytical approach that provides key insights into the workings of corruption and the measures best used to tackle it. The case studies examined include examples of corporate bribery, political corruption, facilitation payments, cronyism, state capture, kleptocracy, asset recovery, offshore secrecy, reputation laundering and unexplained wealth, and actors include businesses, governments, politicians, governing bodies and public servants.

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*** WINNER OF THE 2023 UACES BEST BOOK PRIZE *** The UK's decision to leave the EU has opened up huge existential questions for Northern Ireland as it marks its centenary. Constitutional conflict in Northern Ireland had been regarded as largely resolved and settled, but Brexit has altered the wider constitutional framework within which the 1998 Good Friday Agreement is situated. With the question of Irish unity gaining renewed and sustained traction, and with trade, relationships and politics across "these islands" in a state of flux, Northern Ireland approaches a constitutional moment. Murphy and Evershed examine the factors, actors and dynamics that are most likely to be influential, and potentially transformative, in determining Northern Ireland’s constitutional future. This book offers an assessment of how Brexit and its fallout may lead to constitutional upheaval, and a cautionary warning about the need to prepare for it.

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Although there is no overt ideological battle in the twenty-first century, citizens in every latitude register growing dissatisfaction with the results delivered by their governments. In the West they increasingly turn to populist forces to seek an easy respite to the frustration caused by the failures of democracy. Other models of governance, such as China’s "autocratic capitalism", rest on technocratic command and control methods that are disdained in the West but whose global appeal is growing mostly due to their perceived ability to deliver. No matter how and where they are practised, these alternatives seem to offer only partial and unsatisfactory answers to increasingly complex questions of governance. In a world ravaged by pandemics and climate crises, migration flows and cyberwars, rigid rule-making imparted from above or populist over-simplifications brewing from below can only represent the extremes of a more sophisticated picture of governing processes. In this book, Fabrizio Tassinari seeks to rediscover the methods, practices and limits of good governance. By taking inspiration from the Nordic region, where democratic governance has delivered some of its most impressive feats, he shows that populism and technocracy are not the causes of our political malaise; they represent skewed by-products of the most basic instincts in our body politic. They need not be suppressed but channelled and reconciled in our practices of governing.

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Over recent years it has become increasingly clear that the European Union is falling short of its promise to enhance social cohesion across the continent. Welfare state modernization has been at the centre of divisive debates over the redistribution of wealth and imbalances between a wealthy European core and its peripheries. Some see the policies and governance of the EU as part of the problem, others rather as the solution. This book examines the key issues facing the EU’s social policy-making. Each chapter focuses on a single challenge and explores the arguments and considerations that coalesce around it. The book helps students and researchers alike to understand how the EU operates and shapes social policy on multiple levels, and to better assess the EU’s role in supporting social cohesion.

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The fishing industry’s critical dependence on the natural environment makes it very different from other economic sectors. How it can optimally exploit a common resource while ensuring its sustainability raises many economic challenges. This book, suitable for undergraduate and postgraduate courses on fisheries economics and management, provides an introduction to the economics of the fishing industry and the role of fisheries in the world economy. The book’s primary focus is on capture fisheries, although the discussion brings in wider aquaculture for comparative analysis. The key economic concepts that drive the industry, most notably sustainable yield, are explained in detail, before examining how the industry puts them into practice in a complex regulatory environment. The variability of fish stocks is considered and case studies of some spectacular stock crashes are discussed. The law of the sea is explained and how the movement of fish stocks across ocean boundaries has created regulatory bodies to manage international fisheries. At the heart of this management lies the quota system and the book outlines how it works and how, controversially, such quotas have become transferable. The book offers readers a comprehensive and rigorous guide to the economic considerations motivating the industry and highlights the environmental challenges facing the sector as global consumption of fish continues to rise.

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In the debates about the UK’s future relationship with the European Union, all sorts of possible alternatives have been bandied about, from “Singapore on the Thames” to “Canada Plus”, from “Switzerland” to “Ukraine”, from “Norway” to “Australia”. But what do these alternative relationship models really consist of and would they be viable for the UK? Martin Westlake brings together distinguished contributors to examine these various options, real and potential, and to consider whether they would offer a workable solution for the continued relationship between the EU and post-Brexit Britain. These essays offer expert insight into the scale and challenge of the practical issues facing Britain as it seeks to establish a new future with its largest trading partner.

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Conventional economic thought sees the economy as the sum of market transactions carried out by rational individuals deciding how to allocate their resources among the various things on offer that would satisfy their desires. Economic anthropologists see things differently. For them, the focus is the activities, relationships and systems through which objects are produced, circulate among people and ultimately are consumed, which take different forms in different societies and even in different parts of the same society. In this way, economic anthropology takes the rational market actors of conventional economic thought and places them in the world of people, relationships, systems, beliefs and values that begins with production and ends with consumption. This accessible and authoritative introduction to the field of economic anthropology offers students a fresh and fascinating way of looking at the economic world.

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Conventional economic thought sees the economy as the sum of market transactions carried out by rational individuals deciding how to allocate their resources among the various things on offer that would satisfy their desires. Economic anthropologists see things differently. For them, the focus is the activities, relationships and systems through which objects are produced, circulate among people and ultimately are consumed, which take different forms in different societies and even in different parts of the same society. In this way, economic anthropology takes the rational market actors of conventional economic thought and places them in the world of people, relationships, systems, beliefs and values that begins with production and ends with consumption. This accessible and authoritative introduction to the field of economic anthropology offers students a fresh and fascinating way of looking at the economic world.

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Finance has long been an integral part of the capitalist economy, yet since the 1970s the realm of finance has burgeoned, reaching well beyond its traditional funding roles. Finance now reaches into all aspects of economic life from the everyday activity of the individual, to the behaviour of corporations and the decisions made for society as a whole. The power and fragility of the financial sector are seen by the simple fact that when things go wrong, it can bring down banks, currencies, and governments, plunging countries into generations of debt and hardship. Malcolm Sawyer offers a comprehensive survey of the impact of financialization on economic growth and society. The book draws on and distills a remarkable range of research to provide readers with a guide to current thinking about the place of finance in the wider macroeconomy and considers the prospects for definancialization and a future role that is less pervasive.

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At a time when both China’s role in the world is becoming the focus of international business strategy and Brexit is pushing the UK to look to the rest of the world for trade and investment, Kerry Brown assesses the potential for a new “golden age” of UK–China relations. For too long, Brown argues, China has been regarded with indifference by the UK, despite a well-established relationship stretching back some 200 years. Now, more than ever, Britain needs to actively engage with China and seek to understand China’s ambitions. This entails a radical change of mindset, vocabulary and attitude, as well as establishing a clear vision of what the UK wants from a resurgent global China, beyond trade and money. Brown shows that our future relationship with China is deep with symbolic meaning and will have reverberations throughout the world, as either a sobering example of what a world run on Chinese values might look like, or as a model of how to successfully rebalance a sudden asymmetrical dependence on a newly powerful China. It is one, however, that requires the UK to question some of its own national myths and the story it tells about itself, as well as to learn about a new power with a very different history and set of values.

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Despite being invariably misunderstood by anglophones and often derided in the English-language financial press, the French economy is one of the world’s major economies. For many years characterized by a distinctive economic model in which the French state intervened to correct or prevent market failures, as France has embraced the global market, its economy has increasingly converged with the western norm, but it remains different from its neighbours, particularly Germany and the UK, in a number of important respects. This general economic history of modern France – the first in the English language for nearly twenty years – provides an authoritative analysis of the workings of the modern French economy since its postwar reforms through to the present day. The book explores the monetary and fiscal policies of successive governments and the country’s economic performance through a variety of indicators. In particular the book considers the attempts by the state to correct the regional imbalances associated with the contraction of agriculture and the decline of historically important industries as well as mitigating the dominance of Paris. The parts played by demographic change, migration, inequality, and the European project in French economic development are also investigated alongside the strength and competitiveness of key industries like finance, energy and transport.

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The term "market" originally portrayed a public space for economic transactions but the term has since evolved into an abstract and disputed idea. Despite modern markets seemingly omnipresent nature, their specific geographies have undergone relatively little analysis. This collection of new essays rediscovers the physical space that markets inhabit and explore how the impact of political, social and economic factors determine the shape of a particular market space. The essays present new research from the fields of geography, economics, political economy and planning and provide valuable case study material to show how markets are contested, constructed and placed. Rather than separate markets from the surrounding society and state, these essays connect markets to their wider context and showcase how economic geography can combine with other disciplines to throw new light on spaces of exchange.

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With its emphasis on the centrality of fundamental uncertainty and the resulting desire for liquid assets, post-Keynesian economics offers important insights into understanding how modern economies work, placing money and banking at their heart, exactly as any realistic account would do. In this advanced introduction, Matteo Iannizzotto revisits the contributions of post-Keynesian ideas to such central issues as the inescapable condition of uncertainty in economic decisions, the theory of liquidity preference, effective demand, endogenous money supply, and the financial instability hypothesis. In each case, the author traces the foundations in the work of Keynes and presents the strength of post-Keynesian ideas of later authors like Kaldor, Minsky and Weintraub in comparison with the corresponding models of mainstream economics and shows their greater explanatory power particularly in the light of the recent global financial crisis.

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The benefits of globalization have long been trumpeted by right-wing and centre-left politicians and is enshrined in the neoliberal consensus of western democracies. However, in recent years, conservative rhetoric has turned increasingly anti-globalization. Ray Kiely examines this new trend, in particular the discourse of “winners” and “losers” of globalization that has emerged since the financial crisis, and which has been used by conservative politicians in the United States and the UK to reflect real and imagined threats to domestic economies and national identity. The book examines new US and UK conservative movements (alongside earlier traditions) and the development of conservative ideas, in particular projects for renewal, that have shaped responses to globalization that challenge neoliberal and third way approaches. The nostalgia for a former supposed age of economic and societal harmony, which has characterized this conservative anti-globalization response is given particular attention. The popular mantras of deregulation and economic nationalism that loomed large in both the election of Donald Trump and the UK’s Brexit vote are shown to be potent examples of the success of this new conservative (anti-)globalization rhetoric. As well as examining the changing nature of Anglo-American conservatism, the book also offers an insightful account of the wider resurgence of populism.

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Collective bargaining has been a major force in delivering social justice and decent work in the workplace. However, the role of collective bargaining in achieving gender equality in the workplace is relatively under-researched. In this book, Jane Pillinger and Nora Wintour investigate the complex and expanding area of collective union action for women’s rights in the workplace. They explore how the feminization of unions in both developing and developed countries is changing bargaining agendas to address such issues as equal pay for work of equal value, work–life balance, maternity and parental leave rights, non-discrimination in access to employment, and the spill-over of domestic violence into the workplace. The authors examine recent policy developments by the International Labour Organization, the United Nations, and the European Union, alongside many examples of national and industry-specific collective agreements to showcase how collective bargaining can be an effective tool for progressing equality in the workplace.

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The comparative analysis of socialist and capitalist economic systems has given rise to a voluminous literature in the history of economic thought, yet detailed analysis of the “market socialism” model, which seeks to imitate the functional efficiency of capitalism by simulating a competitive economy, has been relatively neglected. In this work, Mateusz Machaj seeks to redress this imbalance by providing an in-depth examination of one of the defining issues that separates capitalism from socialism – the system of ownership, or property rights – which, when explored, highlight fundamental problems in the market socialism model. Taking a broadly Austrian perspective, he shows that the mechanism of efficiency in market socialism is unable to play the part ascribed to it by its theoreticians, because it disregards the fact that property rights are fundamental to the shaping of prices and thus the abolition of ownership in market socialism makes its mechanism of efficiency a fiction. Indeed, the author argues, the economic terms used in the model of market capitalism only mirror the names of the real economic variables that cause capitalism to be efficient, not their functions. The books offers new and original insights into the theory of competition, theories of pricing, property laws, the relation between law and economics, as well as the economics of the market socialism model. It will be of interest to a wide range of heterodox economists.

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The discourse surrounding prostitution is increasingly one of sexual commerce, transaction and commercial exchange. The “sex economy” and the consumer demand for it is often discussed both as a legitimate economic business, in which women have control, and as employment comparable to other forms of low-paid work. So much so, that in some countries it is being seen as a service that should be regulated and given a labour-rights framework. Drawing on extensive and detailed research, Monica O’Connor challenges the suggestion that the sale of women’s bodies as commodities can ever be acceptable, and that the male consumer has an acceptable right to buy sexual acts from another person. She disproves the claim that "sex work" is a lucrative occupation for impoverished women and girls that can be considered for regulation as part of the normal economy. She lays bare the harm that "normalising" the sex trade does on women’s lives, gender equality and on society as a whole, and exposes the realities that constrain and control women locked in prostitution, debunking the notions of choice and agency.

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To understand the Labour Party today one needs to appreciate how people in the party have reacted to the New Labour legacy. Karl Pike examines the efforts each of the three leaders have made in reforming the party's ideology, its democracy and organization and their political style and approach to the leadership.

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Lost in Ideology maps the ideological terrain of the past 200 years and asks whether the current disorientation engulfing the world's liberal democracies is in no small part ideological in origin.

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In 1969 a small group of US scholars began discussing the possibility of starting a consortium of Western European Studies programmes. Europe was increasingly becoming an object of study and it was felt that greater coordination of the intellectual effort would help avoid duplication and further the acceleration of research. So began the Council for European Studies. In commemoration of the founding of the Council fifty years ago, this volume brings together some of the most influential Europeanists writing today to take stock of the subject and to consider the most fruitful avenues for future research. With European democracy seemingly under threat from populism on the left and the right, the economies of countries still struggling to emerge from a decade of recession and stagnating growth, environmental concerns paramount and the quest for social cohesion a distant goal, the contributors to this volume bring their insight to bear on the fertile ground that the EU and the continent more broadly offer researchers. The contributors – drawn from 52 institutions across the globe – present a wide range of perspectives on Europe’s past and present, and the key challenges facing its future, such as immigration, multiculturalism, nationalism and integration. Although it remains to be seen whether Europeans will continue to promote the dream of union or whether they will retreat back into their nation states, these essays offer valuable insights into how Europe might respond and the changing nature of what it means to be a European.

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Time’s mysteries seem to resist comprehension and what remains, once the familiar metaphors are stripped away, can stretch even the most profound philosopher. In Of Time and Lamentation, Raymond Tallis rises to this challenge and explores the nature and meaning of time and how best to understand it. The culmination of some twenty years of thinking, writing and wondering about (and within) time, it is a bold, original and thought-provoking work. With characteristic fearlessness, Tallis seeks to reclaim time from the jaws of physics. For most of us, time is composed of mornings, afternoons and evenings and expressed in hurry, hope, longing, waiting, enduring, planning, joyful expectation and grief. Thinking about it is to meditate on our own mortality. Yet, physics has little or nothing to say about this time, the time as it is lived. The story told by caesium clocks, quantum theory and Lorentz coordinates, Tallis argues, needs to be supplemented by one of moss on rocks, tears on faces and the long narratives of our human journey. Our temporal lives deserve a richer attention than is afforded by the equations of mathematical physics. The first part of the book, “Killing Time” is a formidable critique of the spatialized and mathematized account of time arising from physical science. The passage of time, the direction of time and time travel are critically examined and the relationship between mathematics and reality, and the nature of the observer, are explored. Part 2, “Human Time” examines tensed time, the reality of time as it is lived: what we mean by “now”, how we make sense of past and future events, and the idea of eternity. With the scientistic reduction of time set aside and lived time reaffirmed, Tallis digs deeper into the nature of time itself in the final part, “Finding Time”. Questions about “the stuff” of time – such as instants and intervals – about time and change, and the relationship between objective and subjective time, open on to wider discussions about time and causation, the irruption of subjectivity and intentionality into a material universe, and the relationship between time and freedom. For anyone who has puzzled over the nature of becoming, wondered whether time is inseparable from change, whether time is punctuate or continuous, or even whether time, itself, is real, Of Time and Lamentation will provoke and entertain. Those, like Tallis himself, who seek to find a place at which the scientific and humanistic views of humanity can be reconciled, will celebrate his placing of human consciousness at the heart of time, and his showing that we are “more than cogs in the universal clock, forced to collaborate with the very progress that pushes us towards our own midnight”.

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The advent of digital stablecoins and the continuing decline of cash are prompting central banks across the world to explore developing their own digital currencies. Although few have launched so far, the potential for central bank digital currency (CBDC) promises a revolution in banking. Michael Lloyd considers the opportunities and threats that the arrival of CBDCs will have for commercial banking and the world’s monetary system. The choices facing central banks regarding the use, design and technology of digital currencies are examined as well as the potential impacts on consumer security and privacy.

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Enough! insists there is enough for all. Creating such a future is not about producing more or living with less. Instead, it starts with rethinking our politics, economics and approach to livelihoods. Mary Lawhon and Tyler McCreary develop a “modest approach” to justice and sustainability, drawing on ecology and postcolonial theory, as well as their research on infrastructure in African cities and the Canadian north. The authors chart a pathway beyond modernist and arcadian environmentalisms, emphasizing uncertainty while holding onto hope for creating better worlds. The chapters tack between conceptual contours, concrete examples, proposed inventions, and personal narrative. Theorizing from the struggles of the global south and Indigenous peoples, Enough! proposes delinking livelihoods from work through a redistributive basic income, which enables enough without overreliance on modern states. It also enables us to prevent conflicts over jobs, reduce some types of production, and deploy resources towards building postcapitalist worlds.

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During four decades of fast-paced economic growth, China’s ascent has reverberated across the full social spectrum, from international relations to technology, from trade to global health, from academia to climate change. Despite disrupting the long-established cultural and political constructs of the postwar liberal international order, Beijing’s power remains uneven and limited internationally, whereas the rise of China has been the object of much frenzied reaction within Western civil society. The hostility and new cold war with the United States is a major factor in fuelling debate and speculation. This book explores the uncertainties and dilemmas China’s rise has fuelled for both the US-sponsored liberal order and the Chinese communist elites that are responsible. It provides the tools to understand the contemporary political and media turmoil about China, its causes and its trajectories. It interprets the rise of China through the lenses of global politics and the uneven and combined development of capitalism and its encounter with the authoritarian, one-party system of the Chinese polity.

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The past two decades have seen a rapid rise in large-scale, state-led transnational investment from countries as different as China, Norway and Russia. By bundling economic resources, these countries have entered global markets through massive state-led investments. This transformation of states into global economic actors is historically unprecedented and presents a major challenge for how states relate to each other in the international system. Milan Babic examines how states have become major corporate owners in the global economy and unpacks the lasting effects of this on our understanding of the state and international politics. Drawing on research into the largest firm-level dataset on state ownership to date, in combination with in-depth historical and conceptual analysis, the book offers a comprehensive analysis of the rise of the state in the global economy and its present and future consequences for international relations.

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This collection of essays aims to better understand what researchers do when they practice research. The team of contributors – which includes human geographers, urban planners and environmental scientists – expose various epistemological, ontological and methodological challenges to pin down what practices "are". The essays showcase how practice theory can help spatial scientists generate new and future-oriented insights on debates such as mobility, relationality, and forms of critical spatial practice. In this way, the book reinforces a specifically geographic and spatial account that is needed for the development of practice theory while also shining new light on current debates within practice theory on power, politics and space. The book positions practices as the point of departure to study and conceptualize socio-spatial life.

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The nature of conservative ideology is and will continue to be warmly contested. In this short history, Mark Garnett contends that the disagreements have been particularly strong in the instance of British conservatism because the ideological label continues to be used by a prominent political party. Whether hostile or friendly in intent, commentators on conservatism have found it difficult to avoid the assumption that British "conservatism" must, at all times, be reflected at least to some degree in the policy platforms of the Conservative Party. This book presents an account of British conservatism which avoids the usual confusion between the ideology and the stated principles of a party which prides itself on an ability to change its views according to circumstances. It shows, since the Tory Party adopted the name "Conservative" in the 1830s it has become increasingly difficult to associate its varying positions with a coherent "conservative" position, so that it is more profitable to discuss its ideological history from the perspective of liberalism and nationalism. This argument is presented by tracing the histories of the party and the ideology in separate chapters, whose themes and cast of characters rarely coincide.

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Although the asset management industry has come under increasing scrutiny since the financial crisis it still remains poorly understood and investment scandals continue to headline in the financial press. Whereas most literature on the industry focuses on the technical end – how managers invest and what tips others can glean – this book explores the way these businesses operate as businesses and how they make their money. The book explains how the industry is organized, how firms generate revenues through various types of fund, fees and charges and what cost pressures they face. It investigates the nature of their client relationships, the role played by star investors and the requirement for firms to integrate non-financial considerations into their investment process. The inherent tensions and potential conflicts of interest within asset managers that seek to keep both clients and shareholders happy is also examined. The book concludes by considering how the industry is evolving, the role of regulation and where it is struggling to change. Suitable for students of business and finance, those working in allied areas of the finance sector, and for anyone with a general interest in how financial institutions and markets operate, the book offers readers a balanced and incisive guide to the economics of an industry that globally controls more than $100 trillion of financial assets and a critical appraisal of the sector’s future.

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Almost everyone agrees on the need to transition the global economy to net zero. But how do we do it? And how do we do it faster? If you feel demoralized, depressed or confused about the climate crisis this book will provide answers – and ones that don’t involve punishing lifestyle changes, the end of capitalism, or a much higher tax bill. Supercharge Me is grounded in relentless realism about how governments, businesses and individuals actually behave. It draws lessons from what has worked so far: extreme positive incentives and smart regulations. Through a series of fast-paced dialogues, the authors introduce practical ideas for change that will embolden activists, reinvigorate the disheartened, and reframe the climate crisis as an opportunity.

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Political Racism conceptualizes a distinctive form of racism – intentional, organized hostility mobilized by political actors – and examines its role in the Brexit conflict and in the rise of a new nationalist politics in the UK. In a compelling analysis the book argues that Powellite anti-immigrant racism, reinterpreted in numerical terms, was combined with anti-East European and anti-Muslim hostility to inform the Vote Leave victory. This type of racism, which has a special significance in societies where racism has been delegitimized, is shown to have further shaped the form of EU withdrawal and also the government’s post-Brexit policies.

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The European welfare systems, established after the Second World War, have been under sustained attack since the late 1970s from the neoliberal drive towards a small state and from the market as the foremost instrument for the efficient allocation of scarce resources. After the 2008 financial crash, Europe’s high tax and generous benefits welfare states were, once again, blamed for economic stagnation and political immobilism. If anything, however, the long decade of the Great Recession proved that the welfare state remained a fundamental asset in hard times, stabilizing the economy, protecting households and individuals from poverty, reconciling gendered work and family life, while improving the skills and competences needed in Europe’s knowledge economy and ageing society. Finally, the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic has, unsuprisingly, brought back into the limelight the productive role of welfare systems in guaranteeing basic security, human capabilities, economic opportunities, and democratic freedoms. In this important contribution, Anton Hemerijck and Robin Huguenot-Noël examine the nature of European welfare provision and the untruths that surround it. They evaluate the impact of the austerity measures that followed the Great Recession, and consider its future design to better equip European societies to face social change, from global competition to accelerated demographic ageing, the digitalization of work and climate change.

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Mexico City is the second largest city on the American continent, the most populous Spanish-speaking city in the world and the richest city, in terms of GFP, in Latin America. The authors explore the political structures, demography, economy, social issues and public administration that make this megacity distinctive. Unique and vibrant, Mexico City has been run since the 1990s by left-wing parties with more progressive social and egalitarian concerns about urban problems, and new proposals for different types of state participation. Political changes at the city level has led to changes and fresh approaches in some aspects of social life, including the creation of important local, grass-roots institutions. The book offers quantitative and qualitative assessments of the spatial structure of the city and its distribution of poverty and poor economic outcomes, alongide transportation provision, housing. Deindustrialization and the growth of the service sector alongside an expanding informal economy are also shown to be important dynamics in the economic restructuring of the city.

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The music industry is one of the most dynamic and fascinating business sectors. Its business model has had to evolve and adapt to continually changing technologies that impact at every level from distribution to artist management. Its latest challenge has been the closure of live music venues during the Covid-19 pandemic. The second edition of this much used introduction to the economic workings of the music business has been updated to include analysis of the impact of the pandemic as well as new trends in the industry, such as the increasing dominance of tech companies and big data and the growing importance of collective management organizations as market players, which has impacted on new business contracts. At a time when live performance outstrips music sales as the primary source of income for today’s musicians, this new edition also examines how different stakeholder positions have shifted. The book remains a rigorous presentation of the industry’s business model, the core sectors of publishing, recording and live music, and the complex myriad of licensing and copyright arrangements that underpin the industry. The revenue streams of recording companies are analysed alongside the income stream of artists to show how changing formats and distribution platforms impact both industry profit margins and artists’ earnings.

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This introduction to one of the key areas of behavioural economics – social preferences – explains in clear, nontechnical language how particular groups of experiments have been used by behavioural economists to shed light on the processes of economic decision making. These include bargaining games, trust games and public good games. The significance of determinants such as punishment, sanctioning, emotion, cooperation, reciprocity, leadership, framing and cross-cultural differences are demonstrated and explained, and students are provided with the understanding and resources needed to replicate the experiments themselves.

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This lively and provocative look at the tension between economics and politics examines why so many mistakes in economic policy-making are made for political reasons and ignore the economic truths. Using short-term economic gains to ensure electoral success, argues Lorenzo Forni, inevitably spells macroeconomic disaster. Using the state budget, trade policy and monetary policy to prop up labour markets and the wider economy in order to boost voter approval ratings, while ignoring budget constraints can only result in longer recessions and economic downturns. Which then can incur the painful austerity measures needed to bring the economy back into balance. Forni looks at many unsustainable economic policies that have been implemented in parts of the world when the economic realities – there is no magic money tree! – would recommend a different and more prudent economic course.

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The European Central Bank administers monetary policy for the eurozone and is tasked with maintaining price stability by keeping inflation below 2 per cent. This brief mandate belies the complexity of managing the monetary policy for the 19 member states of the euro, not to mention the political implications thereof. This book sets out the history, development and day-to-day workings of this key institutional pillar of the European Union. It assesses its work, independence, the policies and instruments at its disposal and the evolution of its role during, and after, the eurozone crisis of 2010. Incomplete monetary union, Germany's hegemonic ambitions and different economic policies from individual member countries are shown to pose formidable challenges to the ECB's macroeconomic management.

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Credit rating agencies (CRAs) assess the creditworthiness of debt issuers on financial markets. They are private companies and the ratings they issue are judgements about the prospect of repayment of debt by an issuer in time and in full. A rating is not an investment recommendation, but it is an opinion about the creditworthiness of a financial product or an issuing bank, government, supra- or sub-national institution. In recent years CRAs have gained an authority in bond markets that far surpasses their original design. The financial crisis of 2008 thrust the CRAs into the spotlight as their highly rated financial products turned out to be toxic assets. CRAs were blamed not only for their excessively optimistic ratings, but also for their complicity in creating them. This short book introduces and explores the complex world of the credit rating industry: how it works, how it has evolved, the role it played in the financial crisis, and how it is regulated. Giulia Mennillo shows, as constitutive actors of global financial capitalism, CRAs have a social and political relevance that reaches well beyond finance into areas of transport, infrastructure, education and health and their impact is emblematic of the increasing financialization of our world.

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Over recent years, tabloid readers have become familiar with the concept of the "white working class", those thought to have been "left behind" by globalization, including immigration. Such sentiments were weaponized by politicians on all sides to fuel the anti-immigrant rhetoric of the Brexit campaign. And this racialized narrative has emerged repeatedly in mature democracies – in the political campaigns of Trump, Le Pen and others – and continues to gain traction in the guise of economic nationalism and populism. The need to understand the putative emergence of the white working class has become both intellectually significant and politically urgent. In Race and the Undeserving Poor, Robbie Shilliam does just this. He charts the development over the past 200 years of a shifting postcolonial settlement that has produced a racialized distinction between the "deserving" and "undeserving" poor, the latest incarnation of which is a distinction between a deserving, neglected white working class and "others" who are undeserving, not indigenous, and not white. Shilliam's analysis shows that the white working class are not an indigenous constituency, but a product of the struggles to consolidate and defend imperial order that have shaped British society since the abolition of slavery.

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The implications of Brexit for Northern Ireland are profound, given its history and geographical position as a land border with the European Union. Four decades of sectarian violence have been replaced by a period of sustained peace, economic growth and development, yet the trenchant political divide remains. The ongoing fractious relations within the Northern Irish Assembly threaten to derail any hope the region might have on influencing the discussion and direction of the Brexit negotiations. Mary C. Murphy offers a detailed and in-depth analysis of Northern Ireland’s relationship with the EU, the role the EU has played in rebuilding the region after the Troubles, and the challenges and opportunities that Brexit might offer Northern Ireland in terms of its fragile politics and economy. Northern Ireland has long occupied a greater political space than might seem warranted, given its size and relatively underdeveloped economy. This space may yet again become the most hotly contested and divisive topic in future Brexit negotiations, if it doesn’t in fact prove to be the key to the successful UK withdrawal and future relations with our European neighbours.

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Since Tsarist times, Russia’s leaders, rather than pursue economic growth for its own sake, have sought control over economic activity as a means to manage their own support base, respond to perceived security threats and to facilitate their wider geopolitical ambitions. Balancing the needs of an authoritarian state with the tentative and inconsistent use of the market has defined Russia’s modern economic history from the nineteenth-century Stolypin reforms to Lenin’s New Economic Policy through to the high Soviet years, Gorbachev’s perestroika, and Yeltsin and Gaidar’s shock therapy. And it is no more evident today than in Putin’s management of Russia’s natural resource-based economy. Yuval Weber provides a concise economic history of modern Russia, which explains how its economy works both at an economic level but also strategically serving its elites’ personal and political agendas. At a time when the global importance of Russia’s oil and gas reserves is in full view, the book examines the Russian Petrostate and considers the long-term challenges for an economy reliant on natural resources for its resilience. The country’s regional imbalances, the demands of its huge military-industrial complex and the legacy of centralization are considered alongside the rising consumerism of its citizens, and other human factors, such as ethnicity, health and demography. The book offers readers seeking to understand Russia’s economic resilience in an increasingly fractured global economy, an illuminating historical perspective on Russia’s political economy and the power structures underpinning Putin’s governance.

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The construction of housing, commercial property and infrastructure projects – roads, bridges, tunnels, railways, airports – for both the private and public sectors is one of the biggest industries in the world. It contributes around 10 per cent of world GDP, employs 7 per cent of the global workforce, and consumes around 20 per cent of the world’s energy. It is also a highly fragmented industry with very low profit margins and a high risk of failure for the many firms operating in its complex supply chain. Stephen Gruneberg and Noble Francis present an up-to-date analysis of how construction markets operate, how firms collaborate on projects, and how their business models work. They explore the many distinctive features of the economics of the industry, such as the use of cost-reduction rather than profit-maximizing behaviour, the processes of tendering and procurement, and the often cyclical nature of demand. Particular challenges for the industry, such as the frequency of disputes between firms and the low productivity of the sector, are shown to be the outcomes of a business model that tends to focus on the volatility of demand and managing risk at the expense of improving efficiency. As well as discussing industry-wide issues, the authors also examine how individual projects are costed. The book offers authoritative analysis and expert insight into the economics of a much misunderstood industry and is suitable for a range of courses in business schools and departments of architecture and the built environment.

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In this deeply researched and wide-ranging intellectual history, Matthew Watson exposes the essential flaw in the claims of economics imperialists. Their market models reveal mathematical truths only about themselves, not social truths related to the world of directly lived experiences.

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Doreen Massey was a creative scholar, inspiring teacher and restless activist. Her path-breaking thinking about space, place, politics and economy changed not only geography but the critical social sciences, initiating new ways of seeing, understanding and indeed transforming the world. This collection of commissioned essays, including from Doreen Massey’s long-time interlocutors and collaborators, explores both the generative sources and the continuing potential of her remarkably wide-ranging and influential body of work. It provides an unparalleled assessment of the political and social context that gave rise to many of Massey’s key ideas and contributions – such as spatial divisions of labour, power-geometries and the global sense of place – and how they subsequently travelled, and were translated and transformed, both within and outside of academia. Looking forward, rather than merely backward, the collection also highlights the many ways in which Massey’s formulations and frameworks provide a basis for new interventions in contemporary debates over immigration, financialization, macroeconomic crises, political engagement beyond academia, and more. Doreen Massey: Critical Dialogues is a testament to the continuing relevance of Doreen Massey’s work across a wide range of fields, serving as an invaluable companion to the new collection of Massey's own writings, The Doreen Massey Reader published simultaneously and also compiled by the editors.

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Repeated corruption scandals and the efforts of the international political community to find ways to counteract them have compelled economists, anthropologists and political scientists to confront corruption as a subject for serious academic research. This textbook introduces students to the field of corruption analysis and the challenges facing its researchers. The book explores the definitional challenges, the problems of measurement and the methodologies that underpin the standard corruption indices. The key drivers of corrupt practice are identified and the arguments used to understand the causes of corruption are outlined. The book looks at what works in the fight against corruption, including international conventions and organizations, and policy initiatives at the national level. The role of third sector organizations, the so-called “anti-corruption industry” and the work of citizen activists and “armchair auditors” are also explored. Analysing Corruption provides an authoritative and engaging introduction to a subject that is the largest public policy challenge that the state faces in many parts of the world. It is suitable for courses in politics, public policy, public administration, development studies and anthropology. It will also be of value to those working in NGOs and charities helping to shape anti-corruption thinking.

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What is the future for progressive politics in advanced capitalism? With its political fortunes so low, how might the Left move forward? These essays from leading left intellectuals – Dean Baker, Fred Block, David Coates, Hilary Wainwright, Colin Crouch, Wolfgang Streeck, Leo Panitch, Sam Gindin and Matthew Watson – reflect on the scale and nature of the task that the Left now faces and consider the following questions: • What in modern capitalism has brought the Left to this impasse?• What role has the Left played in its own failings?• What lessons can be learnt for progressive politics going forward?• What are the immediate options and how can they best be pursued? The views and opinions expressed vary, but all offer searching insights into the task the Left now faces. All point to the intellectual and practical experience on which the Left now needs to draw as it deals with its contemporary challenges. These essays represent a major statement on the future for centre-left politics and offer a frank appraisal of the Left’s current capacity to keep conservatism at bay and to strengthen radical politics again.

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