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This book explores the history and current practice of food sharing. Illustrated by rich case studies from around the world, the book uses new empirical data to set an agenda for research and action. The book will be an important resource for researchers, policy makers and sharing innovators to explore the impacts and sustainability potential of such sharing for cities.
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This open access book explores key issues and presents recent case studies in areas of importance for the transition to a circular model of development in emerging African countries that will minimize resource consumption and waste production. The topics covered include the development of sustainable housing models, energy and environmental issues in building design and technical systems, recycling for a sustainable future, models for humanitarian emergencies, and low-cost and web-based digital tools with applications in architecture and archaeology.
The aim is to contribute to a necessary paradigm shift with respect to urban planning and usage of territories, moving from a linear urban metabolism based on the “take, make, dispose” approach to a circular metabolism. Such a change requires a focus on the relationship between the architectural, urban, and physical aspects of new developments, climate, and energy demand, as well as the identification and integration of strategies and infrastructures to achieve a high level of efficiency and self-sufficiency. The book will appeal to all with an interest in sustainable development in the African context.
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Infrastructure Investment in Indonesia: A Focus on Ports presents an important and original collation of current material investigating the efficient facilitation of major infrastructure projects in Indonesia and Australia, with an emphasis on infrastructure investment and a focus on port planning and development.
This interdisciplinary collection—spanning the disciplines of engineering, law and planning—draws helpfully on a range of practical and theoretical perspectives. It is the collaborative effort of leading experts in the fields of infrastructure project initiation and financing, and is based on international research conducted by the University of Melbourne, Universitas Indonesia and Universitas Gadjah Mada.
The volume opens with a macroscopic perspective, outlining the broader economic situations confronting Indonesia and Australia, before adopting a more microscopic perspective to closely examine the issues surrounding major infrastructure investment in both countries. Detailed case studies are provided, key challenges are identified, and evidence-based solutions are offered. These solutions respond to such topical issues as how to overcome delays in infrastructure project initiation; how to enhance project decision-making for the selection and evaluation of projects; how to improve overall efficiency in the arrangement of project finance and governance; and how to increase the return provided by investment in infrastructure. Special focus is given to proposed improvements to the portal cities of Indonesia in the areas of major infrastructure project governance, policies, engagement, operation and processes.
By rigorously investigating the economic, transport, finance and policy aspects of infrastructure investment, this book will be a valuable resource for policy makers and government officials in Indonesia and Australia, infrastructure investment organisations, and companies involved in exporting services between Indonesia and Australia. This book will also be of interest to researchers and students of infrastructure planning and financing, setting a solid foundation for subsequent investigations of financing options for large-scale infrastructure developments.
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This open access book examines the future of inequality, work and wages in the age of automation with a focus on developing countries. The authors argue that the rise of a global ‘robot reserve army’ has profound effects on labor markets and economic development, but, rather than causing mass unemployment, new technologies are more likely to lead to stagnant wages and premature deindustrialization. The book illuminates the debate on the impact of automation upon economic development, in particular issues of poverty, inequality and work. It highlights public policy responses and strategies–ranging from containment to coping mechanisms—to confront the effects of automation.
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This open access book explores the concept of Industry 4.0, which presents a considerable challenge for the production and service sectors. While digitization initiatives are usually integrated into the central corporate strategy of larger companies, smaller firms often have problems putting Industry 4.0 paradigms into practice. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) possess neither the human nor financial resources to systematically investigate the potential and risks of introducing Industry 4.0. Addressing this obstacle, the international team of authors focuses on the development of smart manufacturing concepts, logistics solutions and managerial models specifically for SMEs. Aiming to provide methodological frameworks and pilot solutions for SMEs during their digital transformation, this innovative and timely book will be of great use to scholars researching technology management, digitization and small business, as well as practitioners within manufacturing companies.
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This book presents the "New Vision 2050," which adds the concept of the “platinum society” to the “Vision 2050”. The 20th century was a century in which energy led the development of material civilization, resulting in deletion of resources, global warming and climate change. What form should sustainable material and energy take to protect the Earth? The "Vision 2050" was established 20 years ago as a model that we should pursue for the next half century. Fortunately, the world is on course for the Vision 2050. The 21st century will be a century in which we seek qualitative richness, with the Vision 2050 as the material basis. That is, a “platinum society” that has resource self-sufficiency and resource symbiosis, and where people remain active throughout their lives and have a wide range of choices and opportunities for free participation. Since the author presented the concept of "Vision 2050" in 1999, the idea has been introduced in two books entitled Vision 2050: Roadmap for a Sustainable Earth (2008) and Beyond the Limits to Growth: New Ideas for Sustainability from Japan (2014). The latter includes a chapter that sheds light on the concept of a “platinum society”. In this publication, the author presents the "New Vision 2050" in more detail.
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On 11 September 1973, the Chilean Chief of the Armed Forces Augusto Pinochet overthrew the Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende and installed a military dictatorship. Yet this is a book not of parties or ideologies but public history. It focuses on the memorials and memorialisers at seven sites of torture, extermination, and disappearance in Santiago, engaging with worldwide debates about why and how deeds of violence inflicted by the state on its own citizens should be remembered, and by whom. The sites investigated — including the infamous National Stadium — are among the most iconic of more than 1,000 such sites throughout the country. The study grants a glimpse of the depth of feeling that survivors and the families of the detained-disappeared and the politically executed bring to each of the sites. The book traces their struggle to memorialise each one, and so unfolds their idealism and hope, courage and frustration, their hatred, excitement, resentment, sadness, fear, division and disillusionment. ‘This is a beautifully written book, a sensitive treatment of the issues and lives of those who have faced a great deal of loss, most often as unsung heroes, in what are now recognized as Chilean sites of memory. The book is a testament to people who have not been asked to speak, until Peter Read and Marivic Wyndham ask them to tell their stories. They do not shy away from hard tensions about memorialization, the difficulties of challenging a powerful state and the long and arduous struggles to ensure less powerful voices are heard.’ — Professor Katherine Hite, Frederick Ferris Thompson Chair of Political Science, Vassar College, USA.
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Ukraine is a 'border' society, situated culturally and socio-politically between Eurasian and Euro-Atlantic poles of attraction. The influence of these two distinct cultures can be seen throughout Ukrainian society, but particularly in its migration patterns. In this book, Dr Hab. Y. Bilan analyses external migration from Ukraine using the system analysis approach combining econometric analysis and statistical modelling, historiographical and institutional analyses along with quantitative and qualitative sociological analysis with special attention to media discourse and congregational, demographic, gender and regional dimensions.
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Interest in world history has never been greater—both among historians and the reading public. Globalization has coaxed historians out of their fixation on all things national, which has characterized historical research since the nineteenth century. But with this new global field of research has come new methodological problems. It is high time that these problems were tackled, if only to develop methods to ensure that world-historical research strives for the same high quality and standards as any other field of historical study. This book addresses all these problems in detail, with a particular emphasis on solutions. The contributors discuss how the progress made in the sciences, which offer unique access to new types of source material, can best be used by the historians of global processes. These are sources that demand an awareness of both their advantages and their drawbacks. The same is true of the secondary sources, which are the basis of most world-historical overviews and syntheses. Primary and secondary sources alike require shrewd handling in a way not seen before. Similarly, the calculations and comparisons essential to world history must be harmonized, and historians have to acknowledge that the information they are working from is often of variable quality and detail. Linguistic and cultural differences must also be analysed systematically whenever historians seek the recurring traits in human history, much as they must be alert to the strong ideological interests that all too often distort scholarly results. Solutions to these and the other methodological problems are hammered out in this book. Whether researchers, students, or interested readers, anyone keen to sharpen their critical thinking about world history will find there is much to take away from this book.
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Australia continues to be at the forefront of international work on measuring and promoting wellbeing, Ian Castles being a significant contributor over the last forty years as an official and academic. This book combines a selection of Castles’ important work with contemporary research from a range of contributors. The material is in four parts: 1. The role of economics in defining and promoting wellbeing 2. Measuring real income and wellbeing 3. Measuring inequality 4. Climate change and the limits to growth. The issues canvassed are both long-standing and current. Does economic growth contribute to wellbeing? How different is income to wellbeing? How do we measure societal wellbeing and take its distribution into account? The book will be of value to all those looking to informed debate on global challenges such as reducing poverty, sustaining the environment and advancing the quality of life, including politicians, commentators, officials and academics.
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This book provides an analysis of the global monetary system and the necessary reforms that it should undergo to play an active role in the twenty-first century. As its title indicates, its basic diagnosis is that it is an ad hoc framework rather than a coherent system—a ‘non-system’—which evolved after the breakdown of the original Bretton Woods arrangement in the early 1970s. The book places a special focus on the asymmetries that emerging and developing countries face within the current system, and therefore on the development dimensions of the global monetary system and of global monetary reform. The book proposes a comprehensive yet evolutionary reform of the system that includes: (i) provision of international liquidity through a system that mixes the multi-currency arrangement with a more active use of the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), the only true global currency that has been created; (ii) stronger mechanisms of macroeconomic policy cooperation, including greater cooperation in exchange rate management, and freedom to manage capital flows as a complement to counter-cyclical macroeconomic policy and other instruments of financial regulation; (iii) additional automatic balance-of-payments financing facilities, and the complementary use of swap and regional arrangements; (iv) a multilateral sovereign debt workout mechanism; and (v) major reforms of the system’s governance, based on a more representative apex organization, more equitable participation of emerging and developing countries in decision-making, and a network of global, regional, inter-regional, and sub-regional organizations.
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Economic losses from disasters are now reaching an average of US$250–$300 billion a year. In the last 20 years, more than 530,000 people died as a direct result of extreme weather events; millions more were seriously injured. Most of the deaths and serious injuries were in developing countries. Meanwhile, highly infectious diseases will continue to emerge or re-emerge, and natural hazards will not disappear. But these extreme events do not need to turn into large-scale disasters. Better and faster responses are possible. The authors contend that even though there is much generosity in the world to support the responses to and recovery from natural disasters, the current funding model, based on mobilizing financial resources after disasters take place, is flawed and makes responses late, fragmented, unreliable, and poorly targeted, while providing poor incentives for preparedness or risk reduction. The way forward centres around reforming the funding model for disasters, moving towards plans with simple rules for early action and that are locked in before disasters through credible funding strategies—all while resisting the allure of post-disaster discretionary funding and the threat it poses for those seeking to ensure that disasters have a less severe impact.
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"International financial crises have plagued the world in recent decades, including the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s, the East Asian crisis of the late twentieth century, and the global financial crisis of 2007-09. One of the basic problems faced during these crises is the lack of adequate preventive mechanisms, as well as insufficient instruments to finance countries in crisis and to overcome their over-indebtedness. Resetting the International Monetary (Non)System provides an analysis of the global monetary system and the necessary reforms that it should undergo to play an active role in the twenty-first century and proposes a comprehensive yet evolutionary reform of the system. Criticising the ad hoc framework- a ""(non)system""- that has evolved following the breakdown of the Bretton Woods arrangement in the early 1970's, Resetting the International Monetary (Non)System places a special focus on the asymmetries that emerging and developing countries face, analysing the controversial management of crises by the International Monetary Fund and proposing a consistent set of reform proposals to design a better system of international monetary cooperation. Policy orientated and structured to deal in a sequential way with the issues involved, it suggests provision of international liquidity through a system that mixes the multicurrency arrangement with a more active use of the IMF's Special Drawing Rights; stronger mechanisms of macroeconomic policy cooperation, including greater cooperation in exchange rate management and freedom to manage capital flows; additional automatic balance-of-payments financing facilities and the complementary use of swap and regional arrangements; a multilateral sovereign debt workout mechanism; and major reforms of the system's governance."
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This book contributes to the understanding of smallholder agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa through addressing the dynamics of intensification and diversification within and outside agriculture, in contexts where women have much poorer access to agrarian resources than men. It uses a longitudinal cross-country comparative approach, relying on the Afrint dataset—unique household-level longitudinal data for six African countries collected over the period 2002–2013/15. The book first descriptively summarizes findings from the third wave of the dataset. The book nuances the current dominance of structural transformation narratives of agricultural change by adding insights from gender and village-level studies of agrarian change. It argues that placing agrarian change within broader livelihood dynamics outside agriculture, highlighting country- and region-specific contexts is an important analytical adaptation to the empirical realities of rural Africa. From the policy perspective, this book provides suggestions for more inclusive rural development policies, outlining the weaknesses of present policies illustrated by the currently gendered inequalities in access to agrarian resources. The book also provides country-specific insights from Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, and Zambia.
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How can we design more sustainable industrial and urban systems that reduce environmental impacts while supporting a high quality of life for everyone? What progress has been made towards reducing resource use and waste, and what are the prospects for more resilient, material-efficient economies? What are the environmental and social impacts of global supply chains and how can they be measured and improved? Such questions are at the heart of the emerging discipline of industrial ecology, covered in Taking Stock of Industrial Ecology. Leading authors, researchers and practitioners review how far industrial ecology has developed and current issues and concerns, with illustrations of what the industrial ecology paradigm has achieved in public policy, corporate strategy and industrial practice. It provides an introduction for students coming to industrial ecology and for professionals who wish to understand what industrial ecology can offer, a reference for researchers and practitioners and a source of case studies for teachers.
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Public-private partnerships have become an important tool for delivering essential public goods, but critics fear that they erode public accountability. Making partnerships more accountable requires a clear understanding of what accountability means for partnerships and which mechanisms can be used to strengthen it.Accountability in Public Policy Partnerships develops a new model of accountability based on principal-agent theory. This model provides a firm normative foundation for accountability demands. At the same time, it shows which accountability standards apply to which kinds of partnerships. Norm-setting partnerships, for example, require strong mechanisms for participation, whereas implementation partnerships must focus on performance evaluation, competitive bidding and beneficiary feedback processes. The accountability model and standards developed in this book provide a guide for partnership practitioners who are developing the governance structures of their partnerships; they serve as benchmarks for evaluating partnerships; and they provide new inputs for the ongoing accountability debates in the public, the corporate and the civil society sectors.
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"The United States presents the greatest source of global geo-political violence and instability. Guided by the radical political economy tradition, this book offers an analysis of the USA’s historical impulse to weaponize communication technologies. Scott Timcke explores the foundations of this impulse and how the militarization of digital society creates structural injustices and social inequalities. He analyses how new digital communication technologies support American paramountcy and conditions for worldwide capital accumulation. Identifying selected features of contemporary American society, Capital, State, Empire undertakes a materialist critique of this digital society and of the New American Way of War. At the same time it demonstrates how the American security state represses activists—such as Black Lives Matter—who resist this emerging security leviathan. The book also critiques the digital positivism behind the algorithmic regulation used to control labour and further diminish prospects for human flourishing for the ‘99%’. Capital, State, Empire contributes to a broader understanding of the dynamics of global capitalism and political power in the early 21st century."
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Are financial crises embedded in IT? Can gender studies offer insights into financial reporting? Feminist theories and Science and Technology Studies (STS) can enrich a critique of financial crises in capitalism as the author argues their critical, political economic approaches to communication can help in understanding because they historicize technology and economy and how these are materially embedded. Current literature has neglected finance and capital’s gendered aspect – even – the ideology of a ‘crisis’. This book develops four themes: women as resources in financial markets and as producers of values; gender ideology and unequal distribution; machine production and distribution of financial information and the varied actuality of markets. Working with case histories of tulipmania, microcredit, Wall Street reporting and the role of ‘screens’, Bubbles and Machines argues that rather than calling financial crises human-made or inevitable they should be recognized as technological.
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This book presents the results from the Japanese Fisheries Research Agency’s 3-year intensive monitoring of radionuclides in a variety of fish, plankton, benthos, and their living environments after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FNPP) accident in March 2011. The book reveals the dynamics of contamination processes in marine and freshwater fish, mediated by the contamination of water, sediments, and food organisms; it also clarifies the mechanisms by which large variations in the level of contamination occurs among individual fish. Most importantly, the book includes a large amount of original measurement data collected in situ and for the first time assesses diffusion of radiocesium across the Pacific using both in situ data and a numerical simulation model. Also introduced are several new approaches to evaluate the impact of the release of radionuclides, including the measurement of radiation emission from an otolith section to identify the main period of contamination in fish. The FNPP accident represents a rare instance where the environmental radioactivity level was elevated steeply through atmospheric fallout and direct discharge of radioactive water into the sea over a short period of time. Replete with precise scientific data, this book will serve as an important resource for research in fields such as fishery science, oceanography, ecology, and environmentology, and also as a solid basis for protecting fisheries from damage resulting from harmful rumors among the general public.
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Game theory addresses situations with multiple agents in which the outcome of an agent’s act depends on the acts of the other agents. The agents may be mindless organisms. Epistemic game theory addresses games in which the agents have minds. An agent reasons about the acts of other agents and—if the other agents observe the agent’s act—reasons about the other agents’ responses to the act. The agents use logic to draw conclusions about the prospects of the acts that they can perform. This Special Issue of Games deals with epistemic game theory and the contributions that logic makes to an agent’s practical reasoning about the strategy to adopt in a game. Although behavioral studies are relevant, the emphasis is on rational reasoning. Models of such reasoning may deal with cognitively ideal agents as well as humans. Possible topics include the players’ common knowledge of their game and their rationality; reasoning that supports the players’ in playing their part in a Nash equilibrium of the game; backwards induction, its results, and the conditions that support it; forward induction; learning in sequential games or in repetitions of games; Hintikka models and Kripke models of agents’ information; applications of modal logic’s methods to epistemic logic; interactive epistemology; Bayesian game theory and Bayesian equilibrium; and games with imperfect, incomplete, or asymmetric information.
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The Chinese economy is undergoing profound change in policy and structure. The change is necessary to increase the value of growth to the Chinese
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Production ergonomics – the science and practice of designing industrial workplaces to optimize human well-being and system performance – is a complex challenge for a designer. Humans are a valuable and flexible resource in any system of creation, and as long as they stay healthy, alert and motivated, they perform well and also become more competent over time, which increases their value as a resource. However, if a system designer is not mindful or aware of the many threats to health and system performance that may emerge, the end result may include inefficiency, productivity losses, low working morale, injuries and sick-leave. To help budding system designers and production engineers tackle these design challenges holistically, this book offers a multi-faceted orientation in the prerequisites for healthy and effective human work. We will cover physical, cognitive and organizational aspects of ergonomics, and provide both the individual human perspective and that of groups and populations, ending up with a look at global challenges that require workplaces to become more socially and economically sustainable. This book is written to give you a warm welcome to the subject, and to provide a solid foundation for improving industrial workplaces to attract and retain healthy and productive staff in the long run.
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“China is so large that its trading interests and influence are global. But its interests are disproportionately powerful in its immediate Western Pacific and Asia Pacific partners. The evolution of China’s economic relationships with its Asia Pacific partners, in which APEC came to play a significant role in the 1990s, is thus a central part of the story of China’s rapidly growing and changing interaction with the global economy.” - Ross Garnaut APEC is an important forum thorugh which China can demonstrate its commitment to economic openness. APEC has also been an important vehicle for China’s trade liberalisation on the way towards accession to the WTO. In facilitating trade liberalisation, APEC and te WTO are mutually reinforcing. APEC prepares China for the WTO and WTO accession encourages China’s active participation in the APEC process. Both APEC membership and WTO accession help with the huge task of China’s domestic reform. This book sets out China’s strategic interests in APEC in the lead-up to the APEC summit in Shanghai in 2001. Contributors include leading Chinese economists from the APEC Policy Research Centre in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences–Zhang Yunling, Zhang Jianjun, Sun Xuegong, Li Kai, Chen Luzhi, Zhou Xiaobing, Zhao Jianglin–and from the Asia Pacific School of Economics and Management at The Australian National University–Peter Drysdale, Ligang Song, Ross Garnaut, hristopher Findlay, Andrew Elek, Yongzheng Yang, Yiping Huang, K.P. Kalirajan, Hadi Soesastro and Chen Chunlai.
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‘H.W. Arndt has been Australia’s leading scholar of Asian economic development for over thirty years’ - Former World Bank President James D Wolfensohn. The year of Heinz Wolfgang Arndt’s birth, 1915, was not a good time for a German boy to be born. His country was soon to be defeated in a great war, his school years were shadowed by the rise of Hitler. Yet when Heinz’s long-buried Jewish background led his academic father to lose his chair in chemistry and flee to Oxford, Heinz followed. As Heinz put it, the calamity of Hitler’s rise to power led him to ‘the incredible good fortune of an Oxford education and a life spent in England and Australia.’ This was a man of inexhaustible energy and optimism, who returned from months behind barbed wire interned in Canada to write a historical classic—The Economic Lessons of the Nineteen-Thirties. He seized the opportunity of an unexpected job offer to set off with his young family for Sydney where he quickly established himself as a leading authority on the Australian banking system, embarked on his fifty year career as a gifted university teacher and enjoyed the first of many vigorous forays as a public intellectual. But it was at ANU that Heinz took the bold step which led him to become the Grand Old Man of Asian Economics. In 1966, just after the Sukarno coup and the year of living dangerously, he determined the time had come to study the Indonesian economy. It took all his charm, persistence and formidable intellect to persuade the Indonesians to open their doors to him. The result was a world-leading centre of Indonesian economics which greatly contributed to the development of modern Indonesia.
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Aftershocks was written in the midst of the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Although it would be premature to presume to identify the repercussions of the crisis, it is clear that it will have profound aftershock effects in the political, economic, and social spheres. The book contains essays based on semi-structured interviews with leading scholars, European politicians and representatives from the world of business. They reflect on the origins of the crisis as well as the possible social, economic, and political transformations it may engender.
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In the light of the deepening crisis of capitalism and continued non-Western capitalist accumulation, Henry Heller re-examines the debates surrounding the transition from feudalism to capitalism in Europe and elsewhere. Focusing on arguments about the origin, nature and sustainability of capitalism, Heller offers a new reading of the historical evidence and a critical interrogation of the transition debate. He advances the idea that capitalism must be understood as a political as well as an economic entity. This book breathes new life into the scholarship, taking issue with the excessively economistic approach of Robert Brenner, which has gained increasing support over the last ten years. It concludes that the future of capitalism is more threatened than ever before. The new insights in this book make it essential reading for engaged students and scholars of political economy and history.
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I had the good fortune to grow up in a wonderful area of Jerusalem, surrounded by a diverse range of people: Rabbi Meizel, the communist Sala Marcel, my widowed Aunt Hannah, and the intellectual Yaacovson. As far as I'm concerned, the opinion of such people is just as authoritative for making social and economic decisions as the opinion of an expert using a model. Part memoir, part crash-course in economic theory, this deeply engaging book by one of the world's foremost economists looks at economic ideas through a personal lens. Together with an introduction to some of the central concepts in modern economic thought, Ariel Rubinstein offers some powerful and entertaining reflections on his childhood, family and career. In doing so, he challenges many of the central tenets of game theory, and sheds light on the role economics can play in society at large. The book is as thought-provoking for seasoned economists as it is enlightening for newcomers to the field. Sylvia Nasar, author of A Beautiful Mind, describes Economics Fables as a "wonderfully inviting introduction to game theory, rich in personalities, history and sense of place. Ariel Rubinstein is not only a brilliant theorist with a knack for lucid exposition, but a gifted storyteller. Students will find the ideas surprisingly accessible. Aspiring scholars, wondering whether a life of the mind is worth pursuing, will find his personal journey of intellectual discovery thrilling.
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The authors take a detailed look at the economic competence and financial literacy of young adults, especially of those who start an apprenticeship or who take up their studies at a university. Economic competence and financial literacy are of special interest within this group, because these young people are – mostly for the fi rst time in their lives – responsible for autonomously managing their own fi nancial affairs and deal with economic challenges.
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This book examines how China can increase the share of natural gas in its energy system. China’s energy strategy has global ramifications and impact, and central to this strategy is the country’s transition from coal to gas. The book presents the culmination of a two-year collaboration between the Development Research Center of the State Council (DRC) and Shell.
With the Chinese government’s strategic aim to increase the share of gas in the energy mix from 5.8% in 2014 to 10% and 15% in 2020 and 2030 respectively, the book outlines how China can achieve its gas targets. Providing both quantifiable metrics and policy measures for the transition, it is a much needed addition to the literature on Chinese energy policy. The research and the resulting recommendations of this study have fed directly into the Chinese government’s 13th Five-Year Plan, and provide unique insights into the Chinese government and policy-making.
Due to its global impact, the book is a valuable resource for policy makers in both China and the rest of the world.
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This book brings together a range of ideas and theories to arrive at a deeper understanding of inequality in Latin America and its complex realities. To so, it addresses questions such as: What are the origins of inequality in Latin America? How can we create societies that are more equal in terms of income distribution, gender equality and opportunities? How can we remedy the social divide that is making Latin America one of the most unequal regions on earth? What are the roles played by market forces, institutions and ideology in terms of inequality?
In this book, a group of global experts gathered by the Institute for the Integration of Latin America and the Caribbean (INTAL), part of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), show readers how various types of inequality, such as economical, educational, racial and gender inequality have been practiced in countries like Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Mexico and many others through the centuries.
Presenting new ideas, new evidence, and new methods, the book subsequently analyzes how to move forward with second-generation reforms that lay the foundations for more egalitarian societies. As such, it offers a valuable and insightful guide for development economists, historians and Latin American specialists alike, as well as students, educators, policymakers and all citizens with an interest in development, inequality and the Latin American region.
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The authors of this book advise the economies of the European Union to become more entrepreneurial in promoting innovation and economic growth. The authors propose a reform strategy with respect to several aspects to achieve this goal. Starting with the rule of law and the protection of property rights; the tax system; the authors deal with regulations governing savings, capital and finance, and the organization of labor markets and social insurance systems. Framework strategies related to the regulations governing goods and service markets, bankruptcy and insolvency are also put forward. A core understanding and future path is also provided towards R&D, commercialization and knowledge spillovers; human capital investments; and informal institutions
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Presenting rigorous and original research, this volume offers key insights into the historical, cultural, social, economic and political forces at play in the creation of world-class ICT innovations in Kenya. Following the arrival of fiber-optic cables in 2009, Digital Kenya examines why the initial entrepreneurial spirit and digital revolution has begun to falter despite support from motivated entrepreneurs, international investors, policy experts and others. Written by engaged scholars and professionals in the field, the book offers 15 eye-opening chapters and 14 one-on-one conversations with entrepreneurs and investors to ask why establishing ICT start-ups on a continental and global scale remains a challenge on the “Silicon Savannah”. The authors present evidence-based recommendations to help Kenya to continue producing globally impactful ICT innovations that improve the lives of those still waiting on the side-lines, and to inspire other nations to do the same.
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This book provides an original and challenging analysis of one of the most pressing social issues of our times: intergenerational inequality. Based on recent mixed-method research, it explores the extent and scope of generational divides through an up-to-date analysis of the changing opportunities for young people in Britain across different life domains. A central question addressed is whether current changes are best understood as growing inequalities within and across age groups, or whether we face a genuine intergenerational decline over the life course of this and future generations of youth. Andy Green’s controversial manifesto for intergenerational equity includes replacing higher education fees with a tax on graduates of all ages; the introduction of capital gains tax on sales of first homes; voting at 16, and a new charter of rights for private tenants.
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In this book, the authors present a challenge for future research to build a stronger, more complete understanding of entrepreneurial phenomena. They argue that this more complete picture of entrepreneurial phenomena will likely come from scholars who undertake at least some trailblazing projects; from scholars who broaden the range of research questions, the potential outcomes of entrepreneurial action, and the selection and combination of research methods; and from researchers who avoid the endless debates about the margins of the field and its sub-fields or about whether one theoretical or philosophical lens is superior to another. This book offers suggestions for future research through a variety of topics including prosocial action, innovation, family business, sustainability and development, and the financial, social, and psychological costs of failure. It promises to make an important contribution to the development of the field and help academics, organizations, and society make useful contributions to the generation of entrepreneurial research.
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This open access book utilizes new data to thoroughly analyze the main factors currently shaping the African housing market. Some of these factors include the supply and demand for housing finance, land tenure security issues, construction cost conundrum, infrastructure provision, and low-cost housing alternatives. Through detailed analysis, the authors investigate the political economy surrounding the continent’s housing market and the constraints that behind-the-scenes policy makers need to address in their attempts to provide affordable housing for the majority in need. With Africa’s urban population growing rapidly, this study highlights how broad demographic shifts and rapid urbanization are placing enormous pressure on the limited infrastructure in many cities and stretching the economic and social fabric of municipalities to their breaking point. But beyond providing a snapshot of the present conditions of the African housing market, the book offers recommendations and actionable measures for policy makers and other stakeholders on how best to provide affordable housing and alleviate Africa’s housing deficit. This work will be of particular interest to practitioners, non-governmental organizations, private sector actors, students and researchers of economic policy, international development, and urban development.
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This open access book introduces the human development model to define disability and map its links with health and wellbeing, based on Sen’s capability approach. The author uses panel survey data with internationally comparable questions on disability for Ethiopia, Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda. It presents evidence on the prevalence of disability and its strong and consistent association with multidimensional poverty, mortality, economic insecurity and deprivations in education, morbidity and employment. It shows that disability needs to be considered from multiple angles including aging, gender, health and poverty. Ultimately, this study makes a call for inclusion and prevention interventions as solutions to the deprivations associated with impairments and health conditions.
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This open access book explores the formation and socio-spatial trajectories of large housing estates in Europe. Are these estates clustered or scattered? Which social groups originally had access to residential space in housing estates? What is the size, scale and geography of housing estates, their architectural and built environment composition, services and neighbourhood amenities, and metropolitan connectivity? How do housing estates contribute to the urban mosaic of neighborhoods by ethnic and socio-economic status? What types of policies and planning initiatives have been implemented in order to prevent the social downgrading of housing estates?
The collection of chapters in this book addresses these questions from a new perspective previously unexplored in scholarly literature. The social aspects of housing estates are thoroughly investigated (including socio-demographic and economic characteristics of current and past inhabitants; ethnicity and segregation patterns; population dynamics; etc.), and the physical composition of housing estates is described in significant detail (including building materials; building form; architectural and landscape design; built environment characteristics; etc.). This book is timely because the recent global economic crisis and Europe’s immigration crisis demand a thorough investigation of the role large housing estates play in poverty and ethnic concentration. Through case studies of housing estates in 14 European centers, the book also identifies policy measures that have been used to address challenges in housing estates throughout Europe.
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This edited volume is concerned with the evolution and achievements of cooperation in research and innovation between Africa and Europe, and points to the need for more diversified funding and finance mechanisms, and for novel models of collaboration to attract new actors and innovative ideas. It reflects on the political, economic, diplomatic and scientific rationale for cooperation, while also examining practical developments, illustrated with examples, in the fields of food security, health, and climate change. The need to mobilise scientific knowledge and to ensure equality and fairness in the cooperation are recurrent themes. Africa-Europe Cooperation in Research and Innovation is essential reading for policy makers and researchers in international relations and science diplomacy.
Andrew Cherry is Senior Scientific Officer at the Association of Commonwealth Universities. He currently manages projects on fostering international collaboration in research and innovation, and has coordinated both the CAAST-Net and CAAST-Net Plus projects since 2008.
James Haselip is Senior Researcher at the UNEP DTU Partnership in Copenhagen. He works on the transfer and diffusion of low carbon and cleaner energy technologies in non-OECD markets.
Gerard Ralphs is Programme Manager and Policy Analyst at the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa. He works on South Africa’s national surveys of R&D and innovation performance.
Isabella E. Wagner is Researcher and Project Coordinator at the Centre for Social Innovation, Austria. She is conducting projects on international cooperation in research and innovation with one specific focus on Africa.
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This open access book offers something for everyone working with market segmentation: practical guidance for users of market segmentation solutions; organisational guidance on implementation issues; guidance for market researchers in charge of collecting suitable data; and guidance for data analysts with respect to the technical and statistical aspects of market segmentation analysis. Even market segmentation experts will find something new, including a vast array of useful visualisation techniques that make interpretation of market segments and selection of target segments easier.
The book talks the reader through every single step, every single potential pitfall, and every single decision that needs to be made to ensure market segmentation analysis is conducted as well as possible. All calculations are accompanied not only with a detailed explanation, but also with R code that allows readers to replicate any aspect of what is being covered in the book using R, the open-source environment for statistical computing and graphics.
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This open access book applies for the first time emerging concepts of socioeconomics to analyse an economic sector, namely agriculture. It considers the rational choices of all actors in the system (just as agricultural economists do) and their cultural preferences and constraints (just as rural sociologists do). Socioeconomic concepts are subsequently used to structure agricultural issues with regard to the three governance mechanisms (hierarchy, markets, and cooperation), and different agricultural systems are presented and compared. The book will be of interest to social scientists with various backgrounds, and seeks to break down the barriers of single-disciplinary thinking.
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The conventional approach to risk communication, based on a centralized and controlled model, has led to blatant failures in the management of recent safety related events. In parallel, several cases have proved that actors not thought of as risk governance or safety management contributors may play a positive role regarding safety. Building on these two observations and bridging the gap between risk communication and safety practices leads to a new, more societal perspective on risk communication, that allows for smart risk governance and safety management.
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Economists have long sought to maximise economic growth, believing this to be their best contribution to improving human welfare. That approach is not sustainable in the face of ongoing issues such as global climate change, environmental damage, rising inequality and enduring poverty. Alternatives must be found.
This open access book addresses that challenge. It sets out a wellbeing economics framework that directly addresses fundamental issues affecting wellbeing outcomes. Drawing inspiration from the capabilities approach of Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen, the book demonstrates how persons can enhance prosperity through their own actions and through collaboration with others.
The book examines national public policy, but its analysis also focuses on choices made by individuals, households, families, civil society, local government and the global community. It therefore offers important insights for anyone concerned with improving personal wellbeing and community prosperity.
Paul Dalziel is Professor of Economics and Deputy Director of the Agribusiness and Economics Research Unit at Lincoln University, New Zealand.
Caroline Saunders is Professor of Trade and Environmental Economics and Director of the Agribusiness and Economics Research Unit at Lincoln University, New Zealand.
Joe Saunders is Assistant Professor in Post-Kantian Philosophy at the University of Durham, UK.
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This book investigates why, despite more and more resources devoted to safety training, expectations are not entirely met, particularly in the industrial sectors that have already achieved a high safety level. It not only reflects the most precious viewpoints of experts from different disciplines, different countries, with experiences in various industrial fields at the cutting edge of theories and practices in terms of safety, professionalization and their relationships. It also consolidates the positioning of the Foundation for an Industrial Safety Culture, highlighting what is currently considered at stake in terms of safety training, taking into account the system of constraints the different stakeholders are submitted to. It reports some success stories as well as elements which could explain the observed plateau in terms of outcome. It identifies some levers for evolution for at-risk industry and outlines a possible research agenda to go further with experimental solutions.
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At present, how to develop industries is a burning issue in Africa, where population growth remains high and economic development has thus far failed to provide sufficient jobs for many, especially young people and women. The creation of productive jobs through industrial development ought to be a central issue in steering economic activity across the continent.
The authors of this book, consisting of two development economists and five practitioners, argue that the adoption of Kaizen management practices, which originated in Japan and have become widely used by manufacturers in advanced and emerging economies, is decisively the most effective first step for industrial development in Africa.
This open access book discusses what Kaizen management is, why it is applicable to Africa, and why it can provide Africa with a springboard for sustainable economic growth and employment generation.
Keijiro Otsuka is Professor at the Graduate School of Economics, Kobe University, Japan, and Chief Senior Researcher at the Institute of Developing Economies, Japan.
Kimiaki Jin is Senior Assistant Director of the Industrial Development and Public Policy Department at the Japan International Cooperation Agency, Japan.
Tetsushi Sonobe is Vice President and Chair of the PhD Program Committee, Director of the GRIPS Global Governance Program and Professor of Development Economics at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS), Japan.
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This open access book provides answers to key open questions concerning competition policy in emerging economies, with a focus on South Eastern Europe. The contributions address two major issues. One is the design of competition policy and the national competition authorities that enforce it, including the topics of competition advocacy and state aid control; the other is the use of economic methods in competition law enforcement, especially in the cases of relevant market definition and merger control.
Many lessons learned in the countries of South Eastern Europe can be applied to the emerging markets of other regions. As such, the findings presented here will be highly relevant for officials and staff at national competition authorities, advisers to legislators shaping national competition policy, competition law professionals, and university students alike.
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This edited volume examines how economic processes have worked upon social lives and social realities in Latin America during the past decades. Through tracing the effects of the neoliberal epoch into the era of the so-called pink tide, the book seeks to understand to what extent the turn to the left at the start of the millennium managed to challenge historically constituted configurations of inequality. A central argument in the book is that in spite of economic reforms and social advances on a range of arenas, the fundamental tenants of socio-economic inequalities have not been challenged substantially. As several countries are now experiencing a return to right-wing politics, this collection helps us better understand why inequalities are so entrenched in the Latin American continent, but also the complex and creative ways that it is continuously contested. The book directs itself to students, scholars and anyone interested in Latin America, economic anthropology, political anthropology, left-wing politics, poverty and socio-economic inequalities.
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What are the challenges and action points for agricultural sustainability in Sub-Saharan Africa? This collection of papers offers technical analyses, policy recommendations and an overview of success stories to date. Each carefully selected paper provides valuable insights for improved policy making and defines relevant strategic priorities on Africa’s sustainable transformation process, which is in line with the international development agenda. Although agriculture remains the main source of income for Africa’s population, the sector is rain-fed subjecting it to the vagaries of weather and climate change. This volume demonstrates the rationale of developing a competitive, inclusive and sustainable agribusiness sector for Africa’s food security and structural transformation.
From the impact of Bioenergy crop adoption and Drought Index Insurance to Agro-Industrialization, this volume is important reading for individual researchers, academic associations and professional bodies interested in African agricultural development.
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The book uses an economic lens to identify the main features of climate-smart agriculture (CSA), its likely impact, and the challenges associated with its implementation. Drawing upon theory and concepts from agricultural development, institutional, and resource economics, this book expands and formalizes the conceptual foundations of CSA. Focusing on the adaptation/resilience dimension of CSA, the text embraces a mixture of conceptual analyses, including theory, empirical and policy analysis, and case studies, to look at adaptation and resilience through three possible avenues: ex-ante reduction of vulnerability, increasing adaptive capacity, and ex-post risk coping.
The book is divided into three sections. The first section provides conceptual framing, giving an overview of the CSA concept and grounding it in core economic principles. The second section is devoted to a set of case studies illustrating the economic basis of CSA in terms of reducing vulnerability, increasing adaptive capacity and ex-post risk coping. The final section addresses policy issues related to climate change. Providing information on this new and important field in an approachable way, this book helps make sense of CSA and fills intellectual and policy gaps by defining the concept and placing it within an economic decision-making framework. This book will be of interest to agricultural, environmental, and natural resource economists, development economists, and scholars of development studies, climate change, and agriculture. It will also appeal to policy-makers, development practitioners, and members of governmental and non-governmental organizations interested in agriculture, food security and climate change.
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This open access edited book captures the complexities and conflicts arising at the interface of intellectual property rights (IPR) and competition law. To do so, it discusses four specific themes: (a) policies governing functioning of standard setting organizations (SSOs), transparency and incentivising future innovation; (b) issue of royalties for standard essential patents (SEPs) and related disputes; (c) due process principles, procedural fairness and best practices in competition law; and (d) coherence of patent policies and consonance with competition law to support innovation in new technologies.
Many countries have formulated policies and re-oriented their economies to foster technological innovation as it is seen as a major source of economic growth. At the same time, there have been tensions between patent laws and competition laws, despite the fact that both are intended to enhance consumer welfare. In this regard, licensing of SEPs has been debated extensively, although in most instances, innovators and implementers successfully negotiate licensing of SEPs. However, there have been instances where disagreements on royalty base and royalty rates, terms of licensing, bundling of patents in licenses, pooling of licenses have arisen, and this has resulted in a surge of litigation in various jurisdictions and also drawn the attention of competition/anti-trust regulators. Further, a lingering lack of consensus among scholars, industry experts and regulators regarding solutions and techniques that are apposite in these matters across jurisdictions has added to the confusion. This book looks at the processes adopted by the competition/anti-trust regulators to apply the principles of due process and procedural fairness in investigating abuse of dominance cases against innovators.
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This open access book discusses how Norwegian shipping companies played a crucial role in global shipping markets in the 20th century, at times transporting more than ten per cent of world seaborne trade. Chapters explore how Norway managed to remain competitive, despite being a high labour-cost country in an industry with global competition. Among the features that are emphasised are market developments, business strategies and political decisions
The Norwegian experience was shaped by the main breaking points in 20th century world history, such as the two world wars, and by long-term trends, such as globalization and liberalization. The shipping companies introduced technological and organizational innovations to build or maintain a competitive advantage in a rapidly changing world.
The growing importance of offshore petroleum exploration in the North Sea from the 1970s was both a threat and an opportunity to the shipping companies. By adapting both business strategies and the political regime to the new circumstances, the Norwegian shipping sector managed to maintain a leading position internationally.
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This volume analyzes the economic, social, and political challenges that emerging states confront today. Notwithstanding the growing importance of the ‘emerging states’ in global affairs and governance, many problems requiring immediate solutions have emerged at home largely as a consequence of the rapid economic development and associated sociopolitical changes. The middle-income trap is a major economic challenge faced by emerging states. This volume regards interest coordination for technological upgrading as crucial to avoid the trap and examines how various emerging states are grappling with this challenge by fostering public-private cooperation, voluntary associations of market players, and/or social networks. Social disparity is another serious problem. It is deeply rooted in history in the emerging states such as South Africa and many Latin American countries. However, income distribution is recently deteriorating even in East Asia that was once praised for its high economic growth with equity. Increasing pressure for political opening is another challenge for emerging states. This volume argues that the economic, social, and political problems are interwoven in the sense that the emerging states need to build political consensus in order to tackle the economic and social difficulties. Democratic institutions have not always been successful in this respect.
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This book addresses the issue of how a country, which was incorporated into the world economy as a periphery, could make a transition to the emerging state, capable of undertaking the task of economic development and industrialization. It offers historical and contemporary case studies of transition, as well as the international background under which such a transition was successfully made (or delayed), by combining the approaches of economic history and development economics. Its aim is to identify relevant historical contexts, that is, the ‘initial conditions’ and internal and external forces which governed the transition. It also aims to understand what current low-income developing countries require for their transition. Three economic driving forces for the transition are identified. They are: (1) labor-intensive industrialization, which offers ample employment opportunities for labor force; (2) international trade, which facilitates efficient international division of labor; and (3) agricultural development, which improves food security by increasing supply of staple foods. The book presents a bold account of each driver for the transition.
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This open access book modifies and revitalizes the concept of the ‘developmental state’ to understand the politics of emerging economy through nuanced analysis on the roles of human agency in the context of structural transformation. In other words, there is a revived interest in the ‘developmental state’ concept. The nature of the ‘emerging state’ is characterized by its attitude toward economic development and industrialization. Emerging states have engaged in the promotion of agriculture, trade, and industry and played a transformative role to pursue a certain path of economic development. Their success has cast doubt about the principle of laissez faire among the people in the developing world. This doubt, together with the progress of democratization, has prompted policymakers to discover when and how economic policies should deviate from laissez faire, what prevents political leaders and state institutions from being captured by vested interests, and what induce them to drive economic development. This book offers both historical and contemporary case studies from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Rwanda. They illustrate how institutions are designed to be developmental, how political coalitions are formed to be growth-oriented, and how technocratic agencies are embedded in a network of business organizations as a part of their efforts for state building.
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This collected volume represents the final outcome of the COST Action IS1104 “The EU in the new complex geography of economic systems: models, tools and policy evaluation”.
Visualizing the EU as a complex and multi-layered network, the book is organized in three parts, each of them dealing with a different level of analysis: At the macro-level, Part I considers the interactions within large economic systems (regions or countries) involving trade, workers migration, and other factor movements. At the meso-level, Part II discusses interactions within specific but wide-ranging markets, with a focus on financial markets and banking systems. Lastly, at the micro-level, Part III explores the decision-making of single firms, especially in the context of location decisions.
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Taking the business model as point of departure, this open access book explores how companies and organizations can contribute to a more sustainable future by designing innovative models that are both sustainable and profitable. Based upon years of research, it draws together theoretical foundations and existing literature on the topic of sustainable business alongside case studies and practical solutions. After examining the theoretical foundations of sustainable business model innovation, the authors present their own framework – RESTART. Consisting of seven factors, this framework can be the basis for restarting any business model. The final section outlines a research agenda for sustainable business informed by the perspectives and frameworks put forward in this book.
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A PDF version of this book is available for free in open access via the OAPEN Library platform, www.oapen.org. This book examines the emergence of both financial markets and carbon markets, and provides an in-depth investigation on the fundamental determinants of financial development.
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Debt as Power is a timely and innovative contribution to our understanding of one of the most prescient issues of our time: the explosion of debt across the global economy and related requirement of political leaders to pursue exponential growth to meet the demands of creditors and investors. The book is distinctive in offering a historically sensitive and comprehensive analysis of debt as an interconnected and global phenomenon.
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The editors present essential methods and tools to support a holistic approach to the challenge of system upgrades and innovation in the context of high-value products and services. The approach presented here is based on three main pillars: an adaptation mechanism based on a broad understanding of system dependencies; efficient use of system knowledge through involvement of actors throughout the process; and technological solutions to enable efficient actor communication and information handling.
The book provides readers with a better understanding of the factors that influence decisions, and put forward solutions to facilitate the rapid adaptation to changes in the business environment and customer needs through intelligent upgrade interventions. Further, it examines a number of sample cases from various contexts including car manufacturing, utilities, shipping and the furniture industry. The book offers a valuable resource for both academics and practitioners interested in the upgrading of capital-intensive products and services.
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Big data are changing the way we work. This book conveys a theoretical understanding of big data and the related interactions on a socio-technological level as well as on the organizational level. Big data challenge the human resource department to take a new role. An organization’s new competitive advantage is its employees augmented by big data.
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This cutting edge text considers how Asian philanthropists and charitable organizations break with Western philanthropic traditions and examines the key traits and trends that make social investment in Asia unique. Based on 30 case studies of excellent social delivery organizations (SDOs) and social enterprises as well as interviews with ultra-high net-worth individuals throughout Asia, this book examines which characteristics and strategies lead to successful philanthropy and social delivery organizations. Providing evidence based findings on philanthropy, social investment and social delivery organizations in Asia, this book provides invaluable resources for those wishing to deepen their understanding of the sector and what this means for political and economic development in the region.
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This book defines the new field of "Bioeconomy" as the sustainable and innovative use of biomass and biological knowledge to provide food, feed, industrial products, bioenergy and ecological services. The chapters highlight the importance of bioeconomy-related concepts in public, scientific, and political discourse. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the authors outline the dimensions of the bioeconomy as a means of achieving sustainability.
The authors are ideally situated to elaborate on the diverse aspects of the bioeconomy. They have acquired in-depth experience of interdisciplinary research through the university’s focus on “Bioeconomy”, its contribution to the Bioeconomy Research Program of the federal state of Baden-Württemberg, and its participation in the German Bioeconomy Council.
With the number of bioeconomy-related projects at European universities rising, this book will provide graduate students and researchers with background information on the bioeconomy. It will familiarize scientific readers with bioeconomy-related terms and give scientific background for economists, agronomists and natural scientists alike.
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Given the manifold challenges of financial sectors in developing and transition countries, one might be tempted to believe that embarking on “green” finance is not a priority for financial systems development. However, there are a number of arguments against this view. Environmental finance, particularly energy efficiency and renewable energy (EERE) finance, can and should serve as an interface to other sub-sectors of financial sector promotion such as microfinance, housing finance or agricultural finance. For example, existing clients of financial institutions include small and medium-sized enterprises and households, and these are often suffering from high energy prices or have no access to sustainable energy supply. At the same time, these clients are vulnerable to extreme weather events, and often hit hardest by the impact of climate change. There are many other examples which show that the financial sector has an enormous potential to support “green” investments. In order to tap this potential on a sustainable basis, it is important to have a sound understanding which role financial institutions can and should play.
Likewise, financial institutions need to understand the demand side of environmental finance markets and the framework conditions in order to be able to design adequate financial products.
This book provides a blend of well-founded professional and scientific perspectives on the potential of Environmental finance in developing and transition countries.
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This book focuses on the achievements, current trends and further potential of microfinance to scale-up and serve many more clients with financial services that enable them to improve their living conditions. The book asks what it takes to achieve sustainable impact: to know your clients and to understand their needs, to treat them in a fair and transparent way, and to safeguard the synthesis between the financial and social dimension of sustainable microfinance. The book also sheds light on the future funding landscape and what is necessary to bring more commercial funders on board while ensuring that these new funders will continue the commitment to responsible finance.While being forward looking, the book reflects the debate on core values of microfinance, triggered by recent criticisms of an approach that was hailed as a panacea in the beginning and which had proved over time as one of the most effective models of development finance. These criticisms emerged over signs of overheating in some markets, particularly the 2010 events in Andhra Pradesh, and turned into an assumption of a worldwide microfinance crisis, putting seriously at stake the good reputation microfinance had enjoyed so far.
Half of the world, and 80 percent of the poor, are excluded from formal financial services. This means that they have to rely on the age-old, informal alternatives that can be unreliable and expensive. Microfinance 3.0 is a highly welcome contribution to the frontiers of financial inclusion – a world in which poor households in the informal economy can access and use the broad range of financial services they need to create livelihoods, smooth consumption, and better manage risks.
Tilman Ehrbeck, CEO CGAP (Consultative Group For The Poor)
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This open access book analyses the development problems of sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) from the eyes of a Korean diplomat with knowledge of the economic growth Korea has experienced in recent decades. The author argues that Africa's development challenges are not due to a lack of resources but a lack of management, presenting an alternative to the traditional view that Africa's problems are caused by a lack of leadership. In exploring an approach based on mind-set and nation-building, rather than unity - which tends to promote individual or party interests rather than the broader country or national interests - the author suggests new solutions for SSA's economic growth, inspired by Korea's successful economic growth model much of which is focused on industrialisation.
This book will be of interest to researchers, policymakers, NGOs and governmental bodies in economics, development and politics studying Africa's economic development, and Korea's economic growth model.
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This open access book asks why and how some of the developing countries have “emerged” under a set of similar global conditions, what led individual countries to choose the particular paths that led to their “emergence,” and what challenges confront them. If we are to understand the nature of major risks and uncertainties in the world, we must look squarely at the political and economic dynamics of emerging states, such as China, India, Brazil, Russia, and ASEAN countries. Their rapid economic development has changed the distribution of wealth and power in the world. Yet many of them have middle income status. To global governance issues, they tend to adopt approaches that differ from those of advanced industrialized democracies. At home, rapid economic growth and social changes put pressure on their institutions to change. This volume traces the historical trajectories of two major emerging states, China and India, and two city states, Hong Kong and Singapore. It also analyzes cross-country data to find the general patterns of economic development and sociopolitical change in relation to globalization and to the middle income trap.
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This open access Pivot demonstrates how a variety of technologies act as innovation catalysts within the banking and financial services sector. Traditional banks and financial services are under increasing competition from global IT companies such as Google, Apple, Amazon and PayPal whilst facing pressure from investors to reduce costs, increase agility and improve customer retention. Technologies such as blockchain, cloud computing, mobile technologies, big data analytics and social media therefore have perhaps more potential in this industry and area of business than any other. This book defines a fintech ecosystem for the 21st century, providing a state-of-the art review of current literature, suggesting avenues for new research and offering perspectives from business, technology and industry.
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This book presents research-based answers to some of the uncertainties that managers, investors, employees and policy makers face.
On its 75th anniversary, BI Norwegian Business School is undoubtedly a research-based school at the forefront of global research. Its research groups contribute excellent, original research that is at the international forefront appearing in top international journals while its graduates, more than any other school, populate CEO positions.
Being at the forefront requires that we look ahead, not merely celebrate past successes. This book does exactly that. It covers three themes:
1) The Digital organization, including algorithm-based decision making and management, digital labor, business models, corporate reputation and branding.
2) The governance of corporations, with specific reference to state-owned and family-owned firms and their auditing.
3) Decision making, incentives and innovation, covering issues such as employee motivation and creativity, environmental R;D, political decision making and customer experience.
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The aim of the Special Issue is to address some of the main challenges individuals and companies face in managing financial and actuarial risks, when dealing with their investment / retirement or business-related decisions.
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Aboriginal australian; Social conditions; Economic conditions
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The Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 shook the foundations of the global economy. What began as a localised currency crisis soon engulfed the entire Asian region. What went wrong and how did the Asian economies, long considered 'miracles', respond? How did the United States, Japan and other G-7 countries react to the crisis? What role did the IMF play? Why did China, which suffers from many of the same structural problems responsible for the crisis, remain conspicuously insulated from the turmoil raging in its midst? What explains Asia's remarkable recovery just three years after the crisis? In what fundamental ways did the Asian crisis serve as a catalyst to the current thinking about the 'new international financial architecture'? What lessons can be learnt from the crisis by other emerging economies? This book provides answers to all the above questions and more. It gives a comprehensive account of how the international economic order operates, examines its strengths and weaknesses, and what needs to be done to fix it. The book will be vital to students of economics, international political economy, Asian and development studies.
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The Pacific Trade and Development (PAFTAD) conference series has been at the forefront of analysing challenges facing the economies of East Asia and the Pacific since its first meeting in Tokyo in January 1968. The 38th PAFTAD conference met at a key time to consider international economic integration. Earlier in the year, the people of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union and the United States elected Donald Trump as their next president on the back of an inward-looking ‘America First’ promise. Brexit and President Trump represent a growing, and worrying, trend towards protectionism in the North Atlantic countries that have led the process of globalisation since the end of the Second World War.
The chapters in the volume describe the state of play in Asian economic integration but, more importantly, look forward to the region’s future, and the role it might play in defending the global system that has underwritten its historic rise. Asia has the potential to stand as a bulwark against the dual threats of North Atlantic protectionism and slowing trade growth, but collective leadership will be needed regionally and difficult domestic reforms will be required in each country.
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This book delves into the widely held belief that the 21st century will be the "Asian Century" by examining the Asia's rapid economic development in the post-war era and the challenges it faces in forging ahead of world leaders in the West. The impact of the current turbulent global political climate on Asia is critically analyzed, employing a holistic and multidisciplinary approach, combining economic, social, political and geopolitical perspectives. Written in an accessible style, the book offers students, business, government, and civil society players powerful insights on Asia.
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Accountability, good government and public trust are intricately linked. Supreme Audit Institutions fulfil an exceptional role in the public domain, checking if governments spend their money properly. They are like 'watchdogs' for citizens and parliaments with the purpose of auditing public expenditure and examining the effectiveness of policies. They aim to strengthen the trustworthiness of government institutions, all the more so in fragile democracies. They do so, for instance, in striving to disclose cases of corruption, not just in the highest echelons of government, but also in everyday petty bribery. And they can be found counting houses, roads and water taps, to see if government's promises are being kept. On the occasion of the retirement of Saskia J. Stuiveling as the president of the Netherlands Court of Audit, eight (former) heads of audit institutions talk candidly about their work and innovations in the area of public auditing, about how the financial crisis affected their profession, about the advent of open data and about the need for new skills to audit the oil industry. Each of them - Faiza Kefi (Tunisia), Josef Moser (Austria), Terence Nombembe (South Africa), Heidi Mendoza (Philippines), Alar Karis (Estonia), David Walker (USA), John Muwanga (Uganda) and Abdulbasit Turki Saeed (Iraq) - has made a difference in his or her country, often under difficult, adverse and sometimes outright dangerous circumstances.
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China is so large that its trading interests and influence are global. But its interests are disproportionately powerful in its immediate Western Pacific and Asia Pacific partners. The evolution of China’s economic relationships with its Asia Pacific partners, in which APEC came to play a significant role in the 1990s, is thus a central part of the story of China’s rapidly growing and changing interaction with the global economy.” - Ross Garnaut
APEC is an important forum thorugh which China can demonstrate its commitment to economic openness. APEC has also been an important vehicle for China’s trade liberalisation on the way towards accession to the WTO.
In facilitating trade liberalisation, APEC and te WTO are mutually reinforcing. APEC prepares China for the WTO and WTO accession encourages China’s active participation in the APEC process. Both APEC membership and WTO accession help with the huge task of China’s domestic reform.
This book sets out China’s strategic interests in APEC in the lead-up to the APEC summit in Shanghai in 2001. Contributors include leading Chinese economists from the APEC Policy Research Centre in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences–Zhang Yunling, Zhang Jianjun, Sun Xuegong, Li Kai, Chen Luzhi, Zhou Xiaobing, Zhao Jianglin–and from the Asia Pacific School of Economics and Management at The Australian National University–Peter Drysdale, Ligang Song, Ross Garnaut, hristopher Findlay, Andrew Elek, Yongzheng Yang, Yiping Huang, K.P. Kalirajan, Hadi Soesastro and Chen Chunlai
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This book investigates recent policies introduced into Turkey which are designed to reduce state activities and open up the country to international investment and trade. This is done in the context of the UNs Millennium Development Goals continuing to stretch into the distant future amid the ongoing instability of the global financial system and economic pressures on the West. The focus is on agriculture and the major effects of a deliberate restructuring of an agrarian economy as seen through the lens of the peasant, the village and poverty. This unique socioeconomic review of Turkey, which is generally thought to be a contemporary success story of the neo-liberal paradigm, argues for a new understanding of the destructive effects of global capitalism. Some issues addressed are the effects on Turkey's countryside as its agricultural sector has been catapulted onto the world market, how farming has changed and what this has meant for small-scale enterprises. Also discussed is how rural communities have fared, capital relations have been transformed in the process and the impact this has had on the nation's poor. Finally, the ways in which neo-liberalism has guided government's response to the new social needs is discussed along with how Turkey's experience parallels similar developments worldwide. This serves as a window to the reality of development at a time when the philosophy for growth underpinning development is facing an increasingly profound crisis of confidence worldwide.
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This book contributes to the understanding of smallholder agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa through addressing the dynamics of intensification and diversification within and outside agriculture, in contexts where women have much poorer access to agrarian resources than men. It uses a longitudinal cross-country comparative approach, relying on the Afrint dataset—unique household-level longitudinal data for six African countries collected over the period 2002–2013/15. The book first descriptively summarizes findings from the third wave of the dataset. The book nuances the current dominance of structural transformation narratives of agricultural change by adding insights from gender and village-level studies of agrarian change. It argues that placing agrarian change within broader livelihood dynamics outside agriculture, highlighting country- and region-specific contexts is an important analytical adaptation to the empirical realities of rural Africa. From the policy perspective, this book provides suggestions for more inclusive rural development policies, outlining the weaknesses of present policies illustrated by the currently gendered inequalities in access to agrarian resources. The book also provides country-specific insights from Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, and Zambia.
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Public-private partnerships have become an important tool for delivering essential public goods, but critics fear that they erode public accountability. Making partnerships more accountable requires a clear understanding of what accountability means for partnerships and which mechanisms can be used to strengthen it. Accountability in Public Policy Partnerships develops a new model of accountability based on principal-agent theory. This model provides a firm normative foundation for accountability demands. At the same time, it shows which accountability standards apply to which kinds of partnerships. Norm-setting partnerships, for example, require strong mechanisms for participation, whereas implementation partnerships must focus on performance evaluation, competitive bidding and beneficiary feedback processes.
The accountability model and standards developed in this book provide a guide for partnership practitioners who are developing the governance structures of their partnerships; they serve as benchmarks for evaluating partnerships; and they provide new inputs for the ongoing accountability debates in the public, the corporate and the civil society sectors.
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Production ergonomics – the science and practice of designing industrial workplaces to optimize human well-being and system performance – is a complex challenge for a designer. Humans are a valuable and flexible resource in any system of creation, and as long as they stay healthy, alert and motivated, they perform well and also become more competent over time, which increases their value as a resource. However, if a system designer is not mindful or aware of the many threats to health and system performance that may emerge, the end result may include inefficiency, productivity losses, low working morale, injuries and sick-leave. To help budding system designers and production engineers tackle these design challenges holistically, this book offers a multi-faceted orientation in the prerequisites for healthy and effective human work. We will cover physical, cognitive and organizational aspects of ergonomics, and provide both the individual human perspective and that of groups and populations, ending up with a look at global challenges that require workplaces to become more socially and economically sustainable. This book is written to give you a warm welcome to the subject, and to provide a solid foundation for improving industrial workplaces to attract and retain healthy and productive staff in the long run.
