Search results for ""edward elgar publishing ltd""

This lucid, up-to-date book takes a fresh look at the application of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) to environmental problems ranging from wildlife protection to global warming. Cost-Benefit Analysis and the Environment is structured into two parts. Part one provides a critical up-to-date account of the theory and practice of CBA as applied to the environment. Part two focuses on a number of specific case studies, in particular ozone damage to agricultural crops, wilderness land use, recreation and nitrate pollution. The application of CBA to the greenhouse effect is used to illustrate the limitations of the method. The book summarizes the major problems CBA faces in environmental application. This book will be highly relevant for the growing number of undergraduate and post-graduate courses in environmental economics and management, as well as being of interest both to academics researching in these areas, and to other professionals concerned with project appraisal and the environment.

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The concept of quality measurement is revived and given new meaning in this innovative new book. Steven Payson argues that quality measurement is an important issue in the study of price indices and in the additional areas of product innovation and evolutionary change. The user-value definition of quality is forcefully defended against the producer-cost definition, and a new method of measurement is introduced - the representative good approach (RGA). The RGA provides a new means for measuring quality over long periods of time by examining historical documents. A discussion of evolutionary change lays the groundwork for the identification of two processes: quality improvement and cost reduction. Using data from the Sears Catalog, quality improvement and cost reduction rates are estimated for five goods between 1928 and 1993: shoes, sofas, gas ranges, window fans and air conditioners, and cameras. The results are dramatic, supporting ground-breaking hypotheses on the determinants of quality improvement and cost reduction.

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What is the origin of game preferences and payoffs, how are they aggregated and what are the implications of interdependent preferences? What is the importance of information for building game models? How can game models be used to analyse empirical cases? At the cutting edge of current modelling in international relations using non-cooperative game theory, this collection of original contributions from political scientists and economists explores some of the fundamental assumptions of game theory modelling. It includes a theory of game payoff formation, a theory of preference aggregation, thorough discussions of the effects of interdependence between preferences upon various game structures, in-depth analyses of the impact of incomplete information upon dynamic games of negotiation, and a study using differential games. Numerous illustrations, case studies and comparative case studies show the relevance of the theoretical debate. The chapters are organised to allow readers with a limited knowledge of game theory to develop their understanding of the fundamental issues.Containing theoretical discussion of the basic game theory assumptions - as well as means of going beyond them - Game Theory and International Relations will be welcomed by all those interested in the empirical application of game theory models in international relations.

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Markets and the state are usually seen as opposed to each other as instruments of economic development. This important new book attempts to go beyond the state-market debate, which it sees as largely the intellectual legacy of neoclassical economics, and the related pendulum swings of opinion favouring one against the other. Arguing that development can be hindered and fostered by both the state and markets, the contributing authors suggest that the real challenge is not to choose between them but to find ways in which their virtues can be utilized jointly to further the goals of development. The first part provides some general perspectives which critically analyse mainstream neoclassical views on states and markets while also providing some alternative approaches. The contributors to the second part examine state-market interaction in Latin America, South Korea and India.

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The rapid development of a series of technologically advanced, industrial economies in the post-war period has challenged conventional understandings of economic growth. The emergence of these economies has reinvigorated the long-standing debate about why some countries grow quickly, and reach high levels of productivity, while others fall behind. Until the emergence of the new growth theory, few neoclassical economists focused upon this important issue despite the existence of a rich tradition among economic historians and economists from more heterodox traditions. The Dynamics of Technology, Trade and Growth draws upon contributions of scholars from different theoretical backgrounds to discuss why economies succeed, or fail, in creating the infrastructure, finance and technology to develop rapidly and 'catch-up' with others. After an overview by the editors of theoretical and practical developments in the economics of convergence and divergence, the book features chapters which discuss the origins of the post-war catch-up and convergence boom, convergence in trade and sectoral growth, capital accumulation, investment and resource allocation, specialization, technological change, and the potential contribution of information and communication technologies. The distinguished contributors bring together in one volume a breadth of scholarship on economic growth, convergence and divergence, ensuring that this book will be widely read by economists interested in growth, technical change and economic development.

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This volume provides the most important essays and papers on urban and regional policy, making it a convenient summary of the key theories, approaches and research results.The study of sub-national politics is no longer mainly concerned with the urban political decision-making process and now focuses on the political, economic and social preconditions for urban policy. As the articles and papers reprinted in this volume demonstrate, local and regional politics are increasingly important features of most Western democracies. Economic and political life are more and more determined by changes occurring at the local, regional and global levels rather than at the national level. This volume seeks to cover the most important elements of research on local government with a particular emphasis on different approaches and theories of urban political economy. The volume covers, in turn, the study of urban politics and government, theories of local government, central-local relationships and local autonomy, local politics, the political economy of local government and regional policy.

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New Approaches to Welfare Theory draws on recent work from the sociology of social action, feminist literature and critical social theory, to counter the current impasse in social policy. Interdisciplinary in scope and including work by economists, psychologists, philosophers and social workers, it offer insights into the meaning and dynamics of claimsmaking in modern society.The introduction examines the claims which groups - especially groups of marginalised people - make against institutions, the problems they have in articulating their aspirations and needs, and the structured institutional responses to their claims. This is followed by a series of papers on the problem of establishing the moral justifiability of claims, including contributions from both the contractarian and utilitarian approaches. Later sections concentrate on the constraining and enabling effects of social structures on claimsmaking - including the various excluding and filtering institutional responses - and the interactions both of claimsmakers with political institutions and of social groups with institutional patterns. The volume concludes with an afterword by the editors discussing the relationship between the universalist and particularist approaches, the two perspectives on the moral dimensions of welfare which feature most prominently in the book. The essays and papers in this book draw upon a broad background of research, teaching and practical experience by a distinguished group of scholars. New Approaches to Welfare Theory will be welcomed by students and researchers, as well as by social workers and policymakers, as an enlightening and instructive discussion of the problems and implications of an approach to welfare from the perspective of social action.

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American Economists of the Late Twentieth Century is a collection of essays on the work of 22 contemporary US economists. The essays summarize, place in perspective and appraise the work of a diverse array of accomplished scholars whose writings respresent the best, the most promising and the most innovative in the US. The economists whose work is discussed include Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Paul Davidson, Nancy Folbre, Robert H. Frank, Robert Heilbroner, David Kahneman and Amos Tversky, Paul Krugman, William Lazonick, Gregg Lewis, Richard R. Nelson and Sidney G. Winter, Mancur Olson, Nathan Rosenberg, Thomas Schelling, Vernon Smith, Robert A. Solo, Joseph Stiglitz, Richard Thaler, Lester Thurow and Oliver E. Williamson. The emphasis of the collection is on both the quality and diversity of the work - of different ways of doing economics as it is presently practised.Warren J. Samuels has brought together a series of original essays written by economists who are distinguished in their own right. Historians of economic thought, methodologists, general economists and specialists in the fields represented by the subjects will welcome American Economists of the Late Twentieth Century as a significant contribution to our understanding of contemporary American economic scholarship.

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The Politics of the Environment brings together 25 classic essays on the political theory of the environment, ranging across environmental philosophy and political, social, legal and economic aspects of environmental action. Prefaced by an editorial introduction situating these materials in the context of the ongoing environmentalist debates, this collection provides beginners with a comprehensive introduction and specialists with a useful reference edition of widely dispersed materials on which any subsequent contributions must build.

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The role of the peasant has been a major theme for agricultural economists throughout the ages. 'Irrational' decision-making among peasants was as likely to worry scholars in medieval Islam as in twentieth-century Brazil or eighteenth-century France. The efficiency of smallholdings as units of production was as important in nineteenth-century Germany and Mexico as in twentieth-century India and sub-Saharan Africa.In The Peasant in Economic Thought, a distinguished group of scholars examines the role of the peasant in agricultural economies from a variety of cultural and disciplinary perspectives. Beginning with a paper on the peasant proprietor in classical economics, the volume continues with work on Friedrich List, Thomas Robert Malthus and Thomas Chalmers, J.S. Mill and the Hutterites of Manitoba, rent in Fabian economics, and the peasant in nineteenth century Mexican liberal thought. Later papers focus on the Brazilian peasantry in nineteenth century economic thought, land in Medieval Islamic thought and decision-making in contemporary African peasant households.Economists, historians and environmentalists trace lines of influence - centring on John Stuart Mill's liberalism and Auguste Comte's positivism - which affected debate in England, Latin America, Canada, India and sub-Saharan Africa.

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In the aftermath of the debates between Keynesians and monetarists, this book provides a lucid, concise overview of the most recent developments in monetary theory. Professor Visser has written an up-to-date survey which discusses major issues such as crowding out, the new classical macroeconomics, the breakdown of the stable money demand function, buffer stocks and currency substitution.Currency problems in general have come to the fore after the collapse of the Bretton-Woods system. The book addresses topical issues including Hayek's proposal to denationalize money as well as theoretical issues, such as the search for the microfoundations of monetary theory. This is an important, up-to-date survey of recent developments in monetary theory, and the economic reasoning which underlies it. The use of mathematics has been kept to a minimum.

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In this far-reaching and insightful monograph, Richard Wagner exposes the failure of the United States constitution to overcome the tyranny of the majority so feared by the Founding Fathers. Recognising that to the extent a written parchment is enforceable, it is through the construction of a self-supporting balance of private interests, Professor Wagner sketches a balance between the principles of good constitutional order and the placement of guns of self-interest necessary for the preservation of the rights to life, liberty and property. He concludes his analysis with an assessment of the prospects of converting the rent-seeking state into an entrepreneurial state self-interestedly committed to classical liberal principles of constitutional order.The author clearly demonstrates why the tyranny of the majority cannot be prevented by constitutional parchment unless the institutions of society are designed to offer complementary support to limited government and the rule of law. Parchment, Guns and Constitutional Order offers a solution designed to harness the political process to that objective.

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This essential book collects together, for the first time, the writings of Deirdre McCloskey on economic history and the rhetoric of economics. The essays have been presented to show McCloskey's evolution over time: from economist to critic, positivist to postmodernist, conventional economist to feminist economist, man to woman. Measurement and Meaning in Economics allows the reader to experience an astonishing personal and intellectual journey with one of today's most fascinating economists.McCloskey argues that economics has become ahistorical and narrowly scientific, which is a harmful development for a moral science. In all of the papers presented in this volume she writes with historical consciousness and critical understanding, in an attempt to repair the dysfunctional relationship between economics and the humanities.This book should be read not only by students and scholars of economic history and philosophy, but by all those concerned with the state of economics and its place in the social sciences.

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These volumes bring together important recent works by economists and philosophers on foundational topics; including the idea of utility and the role of preferences; interpersonal comparability and the commensurability of values, the relationship between rationality and morality, the status of rules, rights and norms, and fairness and equality.These readings collected here provide an overview of the key structural issues at the interface of ethics and economics. This reference collection will be welcomed by all those with an interest in economics and philosophy.

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This distinguished collection - selected and introduced by Marc Jarsulic - demonstrates the contribution that non-linear techniques can make to our understanding of business cycles.

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The Public Choice Approach to Politics presents some of Dennis Mueller's most important contributions to public choice and public economics. Employing the contractarian-constitutional methodology of public choice, Professor Mueller examines the properties of several voting methods and representation systems as well as questions of equity and justice. Constitutional issues, such as the nature of constitutional rights and the elements for an ideal constitution, are also addressed. The essays in this collection include discussions of Pareto optimal redistribution, the redistribution over time of the benefits from collective action, Rawls's social contract, the social discount rate, and the relationship between contractarianism and different concepts of morality. The volume also includes chapters on the methodology of public choice, the work of James Buchanan and the Virginia School and a survey of the public choice literature.This book brings together in one place Dennis Mueller's key articles and papers on public choice, making it of interest to all economists and political scientists working in this area, as well as to sociologists, philosophers and lawyers.

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The Handbook of Economic Methodology is a major multidisciplinary reference work on the developing field of economic methodology. It consists of more than a hundred specially commissioned essays by leading scholars from around the world. This definitive volume provides detailed and authoritative coverage of crucial topics and issues that have developed in recent decades and introduces a variety of emerging themes which economic methodologists have begun to explore. This comprehensive Handbook includes a variety of substantive entries in which experts in the field summarise past achievements in economic methodology and indicate the direction of future research. They provide biographical entries to introduce important economists, methodologists and philosophers. The volume also focuses on economic issues to which economic methodology is central and wider intellectual themes that have impinged on economic methodology, from general movements in intellectual history to broad philosophical themes. Orthodox and heterodox approaches to economics and epistemological, ontological, logical and normative dimensions of economic methodology are discussed and evaluated. This magnificent reference work presents a state-of-the-art analysis of the evolution of economic methodology as well as prospects for its future development. The Handbook of Economic Methodology will be indispensable to those with an interest in economic methodology, the philosophy of economics and the history of economic thought.

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This important book offers an overview of Spanish economic development in the last hundred years. It supplies the reader with a variety of papers which deal both with the central issue of Spanish economic history, namely the relative backwardness of the economy, and with specific topics, including demography, human capital formation agriculture, industry, economic policy and finance. The editors have written a new introduction to accompany the volume.

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This volume brings together some of the most important articles on the topic of financial intermediaries. Financial Intermediaries puts recent developments into an appropriate historical setting, with seminal works by Edgeworth, Arrow, Gurley, Shaw, Baumol, Tobin and Stigler combined with more recent ones by Fischer, Black, Weiss and Stiglitz.

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Transforming Socialist Economies presents - for the first time - an account of the initial attempts to transform the centrally planned economies of Czechoslovakia and Poland into modern capitalist economies.Both countries have adopted 'shock therapy' aimed at the fastest possible transition but with disappointing results. Poland appears to be on the brink of permanent depression and political paralysis. Czechoslovakia is only now beginning to show the first signs of economic recovery and faces the prospect of partition. In seeking to explain these disappointing results, Dr Myant critically analyses recent economic performance and past attempts at economic reform. He shows the weaknesses in the theory behind 'shock therapy', considers the political processes that led to its adoption and analyses its impact on the economy, on relations in the workplace and on political life. The result is a provocative and enlightening view of economic reform which will be essential reading for economists and political scientists.

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In an age of intense international competition, enterprises, regions and nations depend on their organizational capabilities to gain competitive advantage in global markets.This volume brings together critical scholarly contributions to historical and contemporary debates over the origins and characteristics of organizational capabilities that result in competitive advantage. Included are case studies drawn from textiles, chemicals, automobiles, computers and agriculture that illustrate how organizational capabilities generate sustained competitive success. In a new introduction, the editors, who have themselves been in the forefront of analysing the dynamics of innovation and industrial development, provide a state-of-the-art survey of the subject.

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This two-volume set brings together for the first time a collection of seminal writings dealing with the development of competition policy in Europe, the United States and Japan. It begins by reproducing the writings of leading philosophers and scholars on the rationale and desirability of competition in market economies. These interpretations range in time of origin from ancient Greece through to Adam Smith and James Madison to very recent contributions in the competition policy debate. Having established relevant philosophical foundations, the compendium presents analyses by leading British, American, German and Japanese scholars on the interpretation and administration of laws concerning price-fixing and other restrictive agreements, market dominance and monopolization, predatory practices and mergers.

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From an international perspective the Swedish economy has some unique features and therefore affords a most interesting model for researchers in economic history. The country has experimented with numerous economic strategies including pre-Keynesian policies in the 1930s, active labour market policies and an extensive welfare system. This book covers the most important aspects of the Swedish economy: two brief sections concerning historiography and offering a general background to the subject are followed by a selection of articles on demography, migration, the labour market, agriculture, industrialization, transport, trade, industrial organization, finance and economic policy. The volume brings together a unique and comprehensive collection of the most significant studies on the development of the Swedish economy since 1870. Several of the contributions appear for the first time in English.

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This volume brings together the most innovative and important work on implicit contract theory, a key area of research which has developed over the past 20 years. Implicit contract theory is concerned with the workings of the macro-labour market over business cycles and focuses on a series of key questions including, how economists can explain unemployment levels and employment fluctuations during recessions in terms of rational economic behaviour, and, why wages do not fall to clear the market.

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What will citizenship mean to the peoples of a new, wider Europe? Welfare state retrenchment and technological change in the work place are undermining social citizenship rights and provoking a critical assessment of the West European concept itself. In the light of these changes, what models can the democratic, industrialized states of the West offer the transitional economies of the East?This innovative book presents new work by an international group of leading social scientists offers historical analysis and empirical description, as well as theoretical and political assessments, of work and citizenship in Europe. It examines the erosion of the welfare state, the emergence of poverty and the underclass, and the rights and duties connected with social citizenship. After a review of labour rights and obligations in the former socialist countries, it also assesses the state of industrial citizenship. It asks why the technological transformation of work tends to create segmentation and exclusion and argues for a debate about economic citizenship rights.Work and Citizenship in the New Europe concludes with theoretical and political arguments in favour of specific social policies on work and citizenship, examining such issues as labour participation, basic income guarantees and durable economic growth.

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What impact do random events have on individuals? How do they adapt to living in an uncertain, stochastic environment? Risk and Uncertainty in Economics pays tribute to the significant contribution made by James L. Ford to our understanding of these questions.In keeping with Professor Ford’s own research interests, the essays in this volume include relevant, up-to-date research on a wide range of issues. Contributions by Michael Driscoll, Marcus Miller, David Peel and Somnath Sen consider the macroeconomic impact of risk and uncertainty. Colin Dodds, Atul Dar, Andrew Mullineux, Mansoob Murshed and David Dickinson evaluate various implications of risk and uncertainty for financial markets. John Hey, the late George Shackle, Prasanta Pattanaik and Richard Barrett contribute papers on decision making under risk and uncertainty, while Peter Phillips presents some new statistical results on the Dirichlet distribution.This book will be of interest to all economists who want to understand the importance of analysing the impact of risk and uncertainty in economics.

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Experimental economics is a rapidly growing and influential branch of the discipline. In this two volume set the editors have bought together nine topics, including methodological concerns, preference reversals, willingness to pay and willingness to accept, bargaining and auctions, which illustrate the progress made in this area and the current state of play. For each topic they have selected a series of important previously published papers, to which they have added an editorial commentary that sets them in context and indicates which directions future experimental work on these topics might most profitably take.

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This important volume illustrates the diversity of scholarship which has been directed towards understanding the complex process of technology transfer in its business context. The first part considers the theory and process of technology transfer as developed by economists, sociologists and historians. The remainder of the volume presents essays and excerpts on the agencies of technology transfer: artisans and professionals, the state, private business and multinational enterprise. The papers range from the eighteenth century to the present and cover industries from coal and textiles to computers and motor vehicles, in countries as diverse as Britain, the US, Japan, South Korea and India.

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In the mid-nineteenth century, France was the second industrial power in the world. However, she was soon to be overtaken by the US, Germany and Japan and also badly suffered from the World Wars and the depression of the 1930s. The literature in these volumes covers French economic development from 1870 to the present and will be indispensable especially to students of France and Western Europe and of twentieth century economics.

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Interest in Italy's development is warranted by the size of the country, the level of income it has achieved and the lessons its particular story may contain. The relevant literature is extensive and includes studies by social historians as well as by economic historians and economists. Most of the literature available is in Italian, although the work in English is growing. This compreheensive volume brings together in an easily accessible form the main articles, some of which are published here in English for the first time. The introduction aims to provide the non-Italian reader with a general overview of the discussion that forms the background to the essays collected. The volume contains chapters on the development process, agriculture, industrialization, technical progress, industrial policy, the macroeconomic framework and the issue of geographical and economic dualism.

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Oskar Lange was one of the few economists able to observe first hand the three major economic systems that have been the hallmark of the 20th century. He learned about the economic backwardness of peripheral capitalism in pre-war Poland. Later he spent more than twelve years in the bastion of modern capitalism, the United States. After returning to Poland in 1948 he linked his fate to the creation and then reform of the Communist system.This important collection of Professor Lange's work, prepared by his disciple and close friend Tadeusz Kowalik, presents his most important work on the economic theory of socialism, economic planning, Marxism and 'bourgeois' economics. The volume makes an important contribution by improving access to the papers of an economist whose work was at the very heart of the intellectual conflict between socialism and capitalism in the late twentieth century.

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Income Distribution in a Corporate Economy offers a skilful examination of the influences of financial markets and imperfect competition on the distributive process. Unlike much of the earlier literature, it concentrates upon the short-run, making it suitable for empirical appraisal.After a thorough review of the theoretical and empirical literature of the past 30 years, Russell Rimmer uses a series of models to synthesize results from post Keynesian macroeconomics, investment theory and industrial economics. The final chapters contain an analysis of the short-run effects of changes in pricing strategies and increases in industrial concentration on income shares accruing to households and corporations. By presenting in one place the neo-classical and post Keynesian approaches, the book will serve both as a text and a foundation for future work on distribution. Students new to income distribution will be able to read the text as an introduction to the neoclassical and post Keynesian approaches. A novel contribution is the gathering together of early extensions of post Keynesian theory to the short run, including accounts of attempts to synthesise the major theoretical strands.

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Terror, Force and States offers a new theoretical explanation of the nature and causes of terror states. The theory is developed through a critical examination of the works of Bauman, Weber, Arendt, Friedrich and Brzezinski, as well as through detailed case studies of terror regimes including Nazi Germany, Stalin's Russia and Pol Pot's Cambodia.The view of force as a form of power is rejected by Rosemary O'Kane who carefully distinguishes between repressive and terror governments and, crucially, between totalitarian dictatorships and totalitarian regimes. The lessons drawn suggest that the Holocaust and modern genocide are not intrinsically related to modernity. Terror regimes, she argues, operate not through the state but from behind a state facade within a secret society. Economic crisis is given prominence in their explanation with the decisive explanatory factor argued to be the move from plans to substantive irrationality. Indeed it is the economic rationality of modern society, most particularly in respect of labour markets, which acts as the barrier to terror's rule.All those with an interest in politics, sociology, history and Holocaust and genocide studies will welcome this important book which generates a new theory of terror states.

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In this reassessment of the 19th century monetary theorist and banking reformer, Thomas Joplin, Professor O'Brien sets out to place his subject in a new perspective. He discusses Joplin's role as a reformer and his relationships with fellow economists and explores such issues as the problems of paper currency, the principle of metallic fluctuation, agricultural prices and the monetary system and the structure of banking. The book should be of interest to anyone interested in the development of monetary economics as well as to economic historians.

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The theme of economic decline has dominated research into the modern economic history of the United Kingdom. Scholars have charted its fall from pre-eminence since the late nineteenth century and the loss of its position as the world's leading industrial nation. This authoritative two volume set provides a representative selection of the seminal contributions which have stimulated debate and research on this topic, and demonstrates the variety of views and the richness and quality of research by British and American scholars on the development of the modern British economy.The first volume provides a broad overview of Britain's growth and examines the general problems of growth and decline from late Victorian and Edwardian times to the present. The final section and the opening sections of Volume II are devoted to the principal factors which have been advanced as explanations for Britain's apparent inability to sustain its competitive position. Volume I concludes with a selection of articles on the quality of perfomance of British entrepreneurs and managers and their response to technical change.Volume II covers major themes including the attitudes of labour and trades unions, the contribution of education, science and technology to economic growth, the influence of capital markets and imperialism, and the effects of international trade and demand on the British economy. In conclusion, some specific studies of key industries have been chosen to illustrate many of these general themes.

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Until 1973 all money in use was either a commodity or was linked to one. In this comprehensive two volume reference work Anna J. Schwartz has brought together the key articles on the theme of commodity monies. This invaluable collection discusses the forms and standards of commodity monies, their theoretical underpinning and their inherent problems.

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Tourism is frequently seen as a way of creating new employment opportunities in those regions which have suffered from severe de-industrialization and major cutbacks in manufacturing industry.This important book - based on new and original research - examines the economic impact, measured in employment terms, of the North of England Open Air Museum at Beamish. The authors provide a detailed assessment of the direct, indirect and induced employment generated by the museum. The assessment of the museum's employment impact is placed firmly within the context of its historical development and of the region's tourism activity.Tourism, Museums and the Local Economy focuses on one particular museum, but the methodology and much of the discussion are widely applicable to the evaluation of other tourist attractions. The policy implications of the study are fully assessed by the authors who also make use of a series of international comparisons. The book will be of interest to economists, geographers and all those who have an interest in tourism, the arts and museums, and regional development. It will be an invaluable asset to planners and policymakers at both central and local government level.

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Professor Richard Quandt has made a unique contribution to the development of economics in the 20th century. The range and significance of his work has long required a collection of his essays which will allow his contribution to be assessed as a whole.Despite an early interest in microeconomic theory, Richard Quandt has devoted most of his career to econometrics and, in particular, to modal split estimation. More recently his work has focused on the econometrics of disequilibrium models with reference to both free market and planned economies. As well as presenting his many significant articles on microtheory, general econometrics, disequilibrium modelling, financial economics and the economics of planned economies, this collection will have a particular value for all scholars interested in the emergence of the new economies in Eastern Europe, a subject to which Professor Quandt has applied himself in recent years.This fascinating book includes an introduction by Professor Quandt describing his early life in Budapest and the circumstances which led him to study economics in America.

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Studies in Labor Supply, the second volume of Jacob Mincer's essays to be published in this series, focuses on the family context of labor supply especially that of women. Special attention is devoted to wage incentives and wage consequences of labor supply and to long term trends in the female labor force, a major social phenomenon of the twentieth century.Jacob Mincer's research reveals a rare combination of imaginative empirical analysis guided by a command of theory. His work and professional style have set the standard for empirical economics. This is especially true of his work on the labor force participation of married women.This is the second of two volumes containing carefully edited selections of Professor Mincer's most important essays, some of which are published here for the first time. Introductions to each volume provide overviews of the interconnections of the topics discussed, their conceptual coherence and empirical significance. Studies in Human Capital, the first volume of Professor Mincer's essays, is also available as part of this series.

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This important reference book provides a non-partisan introduction to rational expectations, traces its evolution through three decades, and puts a comprehensive annotated bibliography at the reader's fingertips. In the lengthy introduction, Redman examines in a non-technical way what it means to form expectations of variables rationally, explores the concept's ambiguities, and considers the numerous criticisms the concept has raised. She discusses the evolution of the concept with an emphasis on its association with new classical economics, reviews briefly the empirical findings and obstacles to testing rational expectations and puts the development into perspective within a broader scope of economics in general.The second part provides the reader with an annotated bibliography of over 470 significant books and articles on rational expectations.A Reader's Guide to Rational Expectations will be an essential reference guide for all economists who wish to keep abreast of the most recent developments in economic theory.

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In this important new book, Sheila Dow argues that money is integral to the economic process and that some common principles may be applied when analysing money's role at the regional, national and international levels. The importance of considering the spatial aspects of money's role has been highlighted by recent developments in Europe and elsewhere.Using a post Keynesian perspective, the first five chapters put forward a methodological and theoretical framework for a theory of money which combines endogenous credit creation and liquidity preference. The next five chapters analyse money's role in the economic process as it affects regional economies. The final two chapters adapt the theory in order to analyse finance and development in the international context, and as a basis for discussing possible international institutional reforms.Money and the Economic Process features some of Sheila Dow's most acclaimed articles and papers in this area, as well as including some new work which reveals the recent development of her thought.

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This authoritative and encyclopaedic reference work provides a thorough account of the public choice approach to economics and politics. The Companion breaks new ground by joining together the most important issues in the field in a single comprehensive volume. It contains state-of-the-art discussions of both old and contemporary problems, including new work by the founding fathers as well as contributions by a new generation of younger scholars.The book reviews the literature of public choice, highlighting the common ground between all rational choice approaches to politics. It demonstrates the important impact of public choice on economics, political science, philosophy and sociology. It will be an indispensable source of reference for many years to the ideas, analytical methods and empirical research in the field.The Companion will serve as the standard reference work for all those engaged in the field of public choice and will be essential reading for politicians and policymakers, scholars in political science, public and social choice, as well as graduate students in economics, political science and public administration.

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The industrialized economies of the world have experienced a considerable diversity of economic experience since the shocks of the 1970s. The authors of this major study assess the institutional determinants of economic performance in a comparative analysis of OECD economies. They focus in particular on the role played by corporatist arrangements in such countries as Austria and the Scandinavian states. Corporatism and Economic Performance argues that economists often have a narrow view of the scope and function of corporatism, focusing on the extent to which collective bargaining is centralized, and ignoring the important role of durable, consensual policy making arrangements. The record of the corporatist economies is assessed and considerable evidence is found to show that they have borne the burden of economic adjustment over the last twenty years in a less inegalitarian way than other OECD economies, with lower rates of unemployment and greater economic stability. In an increasingly integrated world economy, the future prospects for corporatism look uncertain, although there is still a strong economic case for corporatist institutions. This book sheds new light on corporatism as a complex and multidimensional entity, examining the rationale, scope, performance and future prospects of corporatist institutions.

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Property rights lie at the heart of the economic success of any economy and the extent to which its citizens enjoy economic freedom. At a time when Eastern Europe is breaking free from the yoke of collectivist-socialist ideas, this book presents essays by four political economists evaluating a range of feasible reforms intended to breathe new life into constitutional republicanism. The first essay by James M. Buchanan grounds the defence of private property ownership in the protection that it affords to individual liberty. This is followed by a succinct but comprehensive account by Gordon Tullock of his research programme in rent seeking. This is a great and instructive contribution which skilfully draws out the dangerous implications of rent seeking for private property rights. A far-reaching and insightful essay by Richard E. Wagner exposes the failure of the United States constitution to overcome the tyranny of the majority so feared by the Founding Fathers: the author demonstrates why the tyranny of the majority cannot be overcome by a written constitution unless the institutions of society are designed to offer complementary support to limited government and the rule of law. In the final essay, Charles Rowley retraces the history of social choice theory, identifies the errors that it has promulgated and the corrective lessons that can be learned from the classical liberal philosophy that it has substantially ignored. Including essays by some of the most eminent scholars in the field, Property Rights and the Limits of Democracy makes an important and distinguished contribution to one of the most central issues in political economy in the late twentieth century.

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The methodology of economics has long been dominated by the writings of Karl Popper and Imre Lakatos, two outstanding philosophers of science in the post-war period. This major new book focuses on the application of Lakatosian principles of appraisal to modern economics. An international group of distinguished economists have applied Lakatos's methodology of scientific research programs to a variety of economic theories, such as game theory, demand theory, consumption analysis, job search theory, equilibrium unemployment theory, the new classical macroeconomics, experimental economics, Austrian economics, Walrasian stability analysis and Sraffian economics. The introduction and afterword by the editors place the papers in the context of the recent rapidly evolving methodological controversy in economics. Taken as a whole, the book makes a powerful statement of the case for assessing rival economic theories with the aid of an explicit philosophy of science.

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Part of a series presenting critical appraisals of influential economists from the age of Aristotle to the present. The individuals examined have shaped both the theory and practice of modern economics. Each volume combines classic statements by economists with the most recent research.

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Part of a series presenting critical appraisals of influential economists from the age of Aristotle to the present. The individuals examined have shaped both the theory and practice of modern economics. Each volume combines classic statements by economists with the most recent research.

Read more less

Part of a series presenting critical appraisals of influential economists from the age of Aristotle to the present. The individuals examined have shaped both the theory and practice of modern economics. Each volume combines classic statements by economists with the most recent research.

Read more less