This book presents standard intermediate microeconomics material and some material that, in the authors' view, ought to be standard but is not. Introductory economics material is integrated. Standard mathematical tools, including calculus, are used throughout. The book easily serves as an intermediate microeconomics text, and can be used for a relatively sophisticated undergraduate who has not taken a basic university course in economics.
Preston McAfee, Caltech Tracy Lewis, Duke University
Archeological and written records of human existence suggest that obtaining the material means to satisfy wants has been a perpetual problem. Food and shelter are requirements of human life. Other goods satisfy a range of human desires and give pleasure or utility to individuals. The study of ways that humans deal with these problems of provisioning is called “economics.”
Information Systems for Business and Beyond
If you are reading this, you are most likely taking a course in information systems, but do you even know what the course is going to cover? When you tell your friends or your family that you are taking a course in information systems, can you explain what it is about? For the past several years, I have taught an Introduction to Information Systems course. The first day of class I ask my students to tell me what they think an information system is. I generally get answers such as “computers,” “databases,” or “Excel.” These are good answers, but definitely incomplete ones. The study of information systems goes far beyond understanding some technologies. Let’s begin our study by defining information systems.
An introductory textbook in business that covers a variety of topics: The Foundations of Business, Economics and Business, Ethics and Social Responsibility, Business in a Global Environment, Forms of Business Ownership, Entrepreneurship: Starting a Business, Management and Leadership, Structuring Organizations, Operations Management, Motivating Employees,Managing Human Resources, Union/Management Issues, Marketing: Providing Value to Customers, Pricing Strategy, Hospitality and Tourism, Accounting and Financial Information, and Personal Finances.
This book is designed to help you internalize the basics of money and banking. There is a little math, some graphs, and some sophisticated vocabulary, but nothing terribly difficult, if you put your brain to it. The text’s most important goal is to get you to think for yourselves. To fulfill that goal, each section begins with one or more questions, called Learning Objectives, and ends with Key Takeaways that provide short answers to the questions and smartly summarize the section in a few bullet points. Most sections also contain a sidebar called Stop and Think. Rather than ask you to simply repeat information given in the chapter discussion, the Stop and Think sidebars require that you apply what you (should have) learned in the chapter to a novel situation. You won’t get them all correct, but that isn’t the point. The point is to stretch your brain. Where appropriate, the book also drills you on specific skills, like calculating bond prices. Key terms and chapter-level objectives also help you to navigate and master the subject matter. The book is deliberately short and right to the point. If you hunger for more, read one or more of the books listed in the Suggested Reading section at the end of each chapter. Keep in mind, however, that the goal is to internalize, not to memorize. Allow this book to inform your view of the world and you will be the better for it, and so will your loved ones.
This text has an attitude: that in addition to providing sources of practical information, it should introduce you to a way of thinking about your personal financial decisions. This should lead you to thinking harder and farther about the larger and longer consequences of your decisions. Many of the more practical aspects of personal finance will change over time, as practices, technologies, intermediaries, customs, and laws change, but a fundamental awareness of ways to think well about solving financial questions can always be useful. Some of the more practical ideas may be obviously and immediately relevant—and some not—but decision-making and research skills are lasting.
International Finance : Theory and Policy
Theory and Policy The International Finance
Preface Traditionally, intermediate-level international economics texts seem to fall into one of two categories. Some are written for students who may one day continue on in an economics PhD program. These texts develop advanced general equilibrium models and use sophisticated mathematics. However, these texts are also very difficult for the average, non-PhD-bound student to understand. Other intermediate texts are written for noneconomics majors who may take only a few economics courses in their program. These texts present descriptive information about the world and only the bare basics about how economic models are used to describe that world.
This textbook and its accompanying spreadsheet templates were designed with and for students wanting a practical and easy-to-follow guide for developing a business plan. It follows a unique format that both explains what to do and demonstrates how to do it.
The Sustainable Business Case Book provides readers with a broad overview of the core concepts of sustainability and sustainable business practice. It is intended for use in undergraduate business courses and will also be of interest to students in environmental studies, engineering, urban planning, and government. This book is not meant to exhort all business people on the path to sustainability enlightenment but to highlight some of the benefits, opportunities, and challenges associated with sustainable business practices. What distinguishes this book is that it provides a conceptual foundation to promote understanding of sustainability concepts and frameworks and also discusses real-world business examples of sustainability in action. It is believed that this is the best way to teach sustainability as it applies to the business world—a conceptual foundation with practical application. Sustainable business involves businesses operating with interest and concern for their long-term economic, environmental, and social impact. For-profit businesses focus first and foremost on their own economic bottom line, oftentimes, with a short-term perspective. However, with a sustainability perspective, businesses also consider a longer-term and broader triple bottom line that takes into account not only company profits but also environmental and social impacts. The economic, environmental, and social perspectives are increasingly interrelated and relevant for businesses.
Finishing Global Farm Trade Reform: implications for developing countries
This study reviews policy developments in recent years and, in the light of that, explores ways in which further consensus might be reached among WTO members to reduce farm trade distortions — and thereby also progress the multilateral trade reform agenda. Particular attention is given to ways that would boost well-being in developing countries, especially for those food-insecure households still suffering from poverty and hunger.
Why do people pay tax? And why do they avoid doing so? There are many disciplines that try to answer these questions—economics, law, accounting, psychology. They use a wide variety of methods and come up with a similarly diverse array of solutions and theories which revenue authorities apply more or less successfully. Yet tax research is not only a contested field; taxation is for most nations and states a necessity for providing funds that finance infrastructure and services for their citizens. This book adds to the literature on tax ompliance by proposing an anthropological perspective, honing in on the reciprocal relations that tax, as with any exchange, can be seen to create. The book is based on ethnographic encounters—being and speaking with taxpayers, tax cheaters and tax collectors.
The Economics of Quarantine and the SPS Agreement
This collection resulted from an international workshop funded and organised by Biosecurity Australia, the agency of government responsible for analysing Australia's quarantine import risks and for negotiating multilateral SPS rules and less restrictive access to overseas markets for Australian produce. The workshop, which was held at the Melbourne Business School on 24-25 October 2000, brought together a distinguished group of applied economists and quarantine policy analysts whose focus involves regions as disparate as Europe, North America, Africa, Asia and New Zealand, in addition to Australia. The editors are very grateful to the authors for preparing, presenting and then revising their papers promptly following the workshop; to David Robertson for organising the venue and for summing up the workshop and the proceedings; to all the paper discussants and especially Richard Snape whose paper with David Orden (Chapter 10) was born and developed during the workshop discussion; to Jane Russell of Adelaide University's Centre for International Economic Studies for ably assisting the editors in producing this volume to a tight deadline; and to Biosecurity Australia for resourcing both the workshop and this proceedings volume.
Bioeconomy: Shaping the Transition to a Sustainable, Biobased Economy
Broadens your understanding of a sustainable economy Simplifies multidisciplinary approaches for the transition to a Bioeconomy Combining principles from agriculture, biotechnology and macroeconomics
eMarketing the Essential Guide to Online Marketing
This book may have my name on the cover, but in comparison to the enormous number of contributors my role has been minimal to say the least. I am largely the project champion. From the smart contributors in our early Quirk days and now the very brainy team at Red & Yellow, I have been very fortunate to have been able to convince these dedicated folks to give of their time to this exceptionally impactful cause. We have also been so grateful to have received enthusiastic input from great minds across our community and industry, which has just been a wonderful experience. These selfless people are too numerous to mention here, but I will heap them with the appropriate praise when we release the final copy of the book early next year. In acknowledgment of the massive impact our contributors have had on this book, for this 10th anniversary edition we have decided to go fully “open source”. Not only will the final book be freely available online for download, but we are also opening up this Beta version to our truly global audience, for comment and contribution. Instead of working with a fairly closed set of contributors, as we have traditionally done, we are now giving you, our educators, students or just general knowledge hounds, the opportunity to help us make this book even better. Each of these Beta chapters are available for download and comment. We want to hear from you on what you think needs to be added, changed or left out. What could we have explained better? What clever digital marketing tactic did we forget to include? What social platform needs more attention and ultimately how could we improve our book and its pedagogy to create an even better learning experience for our students?
The topic of entrepreneurial cognition has fascinated us and motivated our research over the last two decades. Although this research has resulted in publications in the top entrepreneurship, strategy, management, and psychology journals, we thought now would be a good time to pause, reflect on our work, and bring these individual pieces of the puzzle together to provide a cohesive big picture of entrepreneurial cognition. This book is the culmination of our motivation to provide this big picture.
Food Price Policy in an Era of Market Instability: A Political Economy Analysis
Food price volatility is one of the major challenges facing current and future global food systems. Since 2006, global food prices have fluctuated greatly around an increasing trend and price spikes were observed for key food commodities such as rice, wheat, and maize. The full or partial transmission of these global food price changes to individual developing countries, together with domestic food price changes, caused by domestic factors such as extreme weather events and market disruptions, caused governments to respond in a variety of ways. While there is ample description of the nature, content, and causes of food price fluctuations during the last 5 to 7 years, very little is known about the processes that led to policy responses or the relative power and behaviour of the participating stakeholder groups. Understanding how and why governments responded as they did is important to enhance the existing knowledge of the political economy of food price policy and to assist governments in their policy-making as they confront future food price fluctuations. This book presents results from political economy studies of food price policy in 14 developing countries as well as the United States and the European Union.
Introduces you to the study of international business. After reading a short case study on Google Inc., the Internet search-engine company, you’ll begin to learn what makes international business such an essential subject for students around the world. Because international business is a vital ingredient in strategic management and entrepreneurship, this book uses these complementary perspectives to help you understand international business. Managers, entrepreneurs, workers, for-profit and nonprofit organizations, and governments all have a vested interest in understanding and shaping global business practices and trends. Section 1.1 "What Is International Business?" gives you a working definition of international business; Section 1.2 "Who Is Interested in International Business?" helps you see which actors are likely to have a direct and indirect interest in it. You’ll then learn about some of the different forms international businesses take; you’ll also gain a general understanding of the globalization debate. This debate centers on (1) whether the world is flat, in the sense that all markets are interconnected and competing unfettered with each other, or (2) whether differences across countries and markets are more significant than the commonalities. In fact, some critics negatively describe the “world is flat” perspective as globaloney! What you’ll discover from the discussion of this debate is that the world may not be flat in the purest sense, but there are powerful forces, also called flatteners, at work in the world’s economies. Section 1.5 "Ethics and International Business" concludes with an introductory discussion of the relationship between international business and ethics.
Principles of Microeconomics has been developed to meet the scope and sequence of most introductory microeconomics courses. At the same time, the book includes a number of innovative features designed to enhance student learning. Instructors can also customize the book, adapting it to the approach that works best in their classroom.
Production Ergonomics: Designing Work Systems to Support Optimal Human Performance
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
Global Economic Prospects Broad-Based Upturn, but for How Long?
The global economy is in a broad-based cyclical recovery. Investment, manufacturing and trade are on the rebound. Financing conditions are benign, monetary policies are generally accommodative, and the worst impacts of the recent commodity price collapse have begun to dissipate. However, the global economic outlook remains clouded by a number of risks. These include the possibility of financial market disruptions, rising protectionist sentiment, and heightened geopolitical tensions. Of particular concern is evidence of subdued productivity and slowing potential growth. In addition to discussing global and regional economic developments and prospects, this edition of Global Economic Prospects includes a chapter on the causes of the broad-based slowing of potential growth and suggests remedies. The report also contains Special Focus sections on the impact of the 2014-2016 oil price collapse and the relationship between education demographics and global inequality. Global Economic Prospects is a World Bank Group Flagship Report that examines global economic developments and prospects, with a special focus on emerging market and developing countries, on a semiannual basis (in January and June). The January edition includes in-depth analyses of topical policy challenges faced by these economies, while the June edition contains shorter analytical pieces.
Cultural Integration of Immigrants in Europe
Economics, finance, business and management, Economics, Political economy
The concepts of cultural diversity and cultural identity are at the forefront of the political debate in many western societies. In Europe, the discussion is stimulated by the political pressures associated with immigration flows, which are increasing in many European countries. The imperatives that current immigration trends impose on European democracies bring to light a number of issues that need to be addressed. What are the patterns and dynamics of cultural integration? How do they differ across immigrants of different ethnic groups and religious faiths? How do they differ across host societies? What are the implications and consequences for market outcomes and public policy? Which kind of institutional contexts are more or less likely to accommodate the cultural integration of immigrants? All these questions are crucial for policy makers and await answers. This book aims to provide a stepping stone to the debate. Taking an economic perspective, this edited book presents a current, comparative picture of the process of cultural integration of immigrants across Europe. It documents the main economic debates on the causes and consequences of cultural integration of immigrants, and provides detailed descriptions of the cultural and economic integration process in seven main European countries, including France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. It also compares the European context with the integration of immigrants in the United States.
Good Corporation, Bad Corporation: Corporate Social Responsibility in the Global Economy
This textbook provides an innovative, internationally-oriented approach to the teaching of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and business ethics. Drawing on case studies involving companies and countries around the world, the textbook explores the social, ethical and business dynamics underlying CSR in areas such as: global warming, genetically-modified organisms (GMO) in food production, free trade and fair trade, anti-sweatshop and living-wage movements, organic foods and textiles, ethical marketing practices and codes, corporate speech and lobbying, and social enterprise. The book is designed to encourage students and instructors to challenge their own assumptions and prejudices by stimulating a class debate based on each case study.
The financial crisis has opened up a global debate on the taxation of the financial sector. A number of international policy initiatives, most notably by the G20, have called for major changes in the tax treatment of financial institutions and transactions as well as individuals working in the financial sector. This book examines how tax policies contributed to the financial crisis and whether taxation can play a role in the reform efforts under way to establish a sounder and safer financial system. The book looks at the pros and cons of various tax initiatives, including limiting the tax advantages to debt financing, special taxes on the financial sector and financial transactions taxes.
eMarketing The Essential Guide to Online Marketing
Die Welt der Commons : Muster gemeinsamen Handelns
The logic of capitalism is that of dividing and sharing. Only that in capitalism, people do not share, but rather, they themselves are divided up. For this reason, the British historian E.P. Thompson claims that »it was always a problem to explain the commons with capitalist categories«. Whoever enters into the world of the commons encounters another logic, another language and other categories. In this volume, authors from all continents investigate the anthropological foundations of the commons, and propose them at the same time as concrete utopias (E. Bloch). They make it possible to understand that everything is, or can become, commons: through processes of shared responsibility, in laboratories for self-organization and through freedom in solidarity. Commoners realize that which is already possible today, and will become obvious tomorrow. This is shown by over 40 examples from across the world. This book expands our notions of the possible when it comes to the organization of economics and society. With contributions by Nigel Gibson, Marianne Gronemeyer, Helmut Leitner, Etienne Le Roy, Andreas Weber, Rosa Luxemburg, Anne Salmond, David Sloan Wilson and more.
Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Business and Finance
Theme: ‘Creating futures: Sustainable economies?’ Purpose: To share continuous and collaborative research outputs that review existing strategies and to propose mechanisms for the likely achievement of a sustainable economy that is unique but inclusive to different entities in the world. Target audience: This year’s 7th International Conference on Business and Finance (ICBF) continues its tradition of being the premier forum for presentation of research results and experience reports on contemporary issues of finance, accounting, entrepreneurship, business innovation, big data, e-Government, public management, development economics and information systems, including models, systems, applications, and theory. Editorial Policy: All papers were refereed by a double blind reviewing process in line with the South African, Department of Higher Education Training (DHET) refereeing standards. Papers were reviewed according to the following criteria: relevance to conference themes, relevance to audience, contribution to scholarship, standard of writing, originality and critical analysis
eMarketing The essential guide to digital marketing 4th Edition
eMarketing The essential guide to marketing in a digital world 5th Edition
eMarketing The Essential Guide to Online Marketing 2th Edition
Macroeconomics: Theory, Markets, and Policy provides complete, concise coverage of introductory macroeconomics theory and policy. It examines the Canadian economy as an economic system, and embeds current Canadian institutions and approaches to monetary policy and fiscal policy within that system. The text observes short-run macroeconomic performance, analysis, and policy motivated by the recessions of the early 1980s and 1990s, the financial crisis and recession of 2008-2009, and the prolonged recovery in most industrial countries. A traditional Aggregate Demand and Supply (AD-AS) model is introduced, and a basic modern AD-AS model is developed. Numerical examples, diagrams, and basic algebra are used in combination to illustrate and explain economic relationships. Students learn about: the importance of trade flows, consumption, and government budgets; money supply; financial asset prices, yields, and interest rates; employment and unemployment; and other key relationships in the economy. Canadian and selected international data are used to provide real world examples and comparisons. This text is intended for a one-semester course, and can be used in a two-semester sequence with the companion text, Microeconomics: Markets, Methods, and Models. The three introductory chapters and the International Trade chapter (Chapter 15) are common to both books.
Microeconomics: Markets, Methods and Models
Microeconomics: Markets, Methods and Models provides a concise, yet complete, coverage of introductory microeconomic theory, application and policy in a Canadian and global environment. Our beginning is orthodox: we explain and develop the standard tools of analysis in the discipline. Economic policy is about the well-being of the economy’s participants, and economic theory should inform economic policy. So we investigate the meaning of ‘well-being’ in the context of an efficient use of the economy’s resources early in the text. We next develop an understanding of individual optimizing behaviour. This behaviour in turn is used to link household decisions on savings with firms’ decisions on production, expansion and investment. A natural progression is to explain production and cost structures. From the individual level of household and firm decision making, the text then explores behaviour in a variety of different market structures. Markets for the inputs in the productive process – capital and labour – are a natural component of firm-level decisions. But education and human capital are omnipresent concepts and concerns in the modern economy, so we devote a complete chapter to them. The book then examines the role of a major and important non-market player in the economy – the government, and progresses to develop the key elements in the modern theory of international trade. Opportunity cost, a global economy and behavioural responses to incentives are the dominant themes.
Accounting Principles: A Business Perspective
Accounting Principles: A Business Perspective uses annual reports of real companies to illustrate many of the accounting concepts in use in business today. Gaining an understanding of accounting terminology and concepts, however, is not enough to ensure your success. You also need to be able to find information on the Internet, analyze various business situations, work effectively as a member of a team, and communicate your ideas clearly. This text was developed to help you develop these skills.
The purpose of accounting is to provide a means of recording, reporting, summarizing, and interpreting economic data. In order to do this, an accounting system must be designed. A system design serves the needs of users of accounting information. Once a system has been designed, reports can be issued and decisions based upon these reports are made for various departments. Since accounting is used by everyone in one form or another, a good understanding of accounting principles is beneficial to all.
Professional Education, Testing and Certification Organization International
The development of accounting concepts and principles is closely related to the economic growth of the United States, as businesses grew in size, and outsiders increased their demand for financial information. Accounting principles focus on the users of accounting information. Principles have developed over a long period of time, and are continuously subject to revision as information needs change. It is the responsibility of accounting professionals, teachers and accounting organizations to keep accounting principles up-to-date, relevant and useful.
Connexions, Rice University, Houston, Texas
Dull Disasters? How planning ahead will make a difference
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.
Marketing is the science of meeting the needs of a customer by providing valuable products to customers by utilizing the expertise of the organization, at same time, to achieve organizational goals. According to The American Marketing Association (htt p://www.marketingpower.com/AboutAMA/Pages/DefinitionofMarketing.aspx) Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. With this definition, it is important to realize that the customer can be an individual user, a company, or several people who contribute to the purchasing decision. The product can be a hard good, a service, or even an idea – anything that would provide some value to the person who provides an exchange. An exchange is most often thought of as money, but could also be a donation of time or effort, or even a specific action. A producer is often a company, but could be an individual or non-profit organization.
Through good economic times and bad, marketing remains the pivotal function in any business. Determining and satisfying the needs of customers through products that have value and accessibility and whose features are clearly communicated is the general purpose of any business. It is also a fundamental definition of marketing. This text introduces students to the marketing strategies and tools that practitioners use to market their products.
A central theme of this book is that there is, or should be, a constant struggle going on in every organization, business, and system. The struggle is fueled by the dynamic tension that exists between delivering Midas feature-rich versions of products and services using extravagant engineering and delivering low-cost Hermes versions of products and services using frugal engineering (see the following figure). Midas versions are high-end products for nonprice-sensitive consumers. Hermes versions are for price-sensitive consumers. The results of this dynamic tension between Midas versioning and Hermes versioning are Atlas products and services. Atlas products and services are designed for mainstream consumers. Atlas products and services incorporate the product design features that will attract the broadest customer base and will also be profitable. The driving force behind the development of Midas, Atlas, and Hermes versions is driven by the implicit creative genius that everyone possess and most businesses should possess as they engage in continuous learning-about and learn-by-doing activities.
Electronic Commerce: The Strategic Perspective
This book is written both for practitioners and business students. Managers wishing to understand how electronic commerce is revolutionizing business will find that our comprehensive coverage of essential business issues (e.g., pricing and distribution) answers many of their questions. Advanced business students (junior, seniors, and graduate students) will find that the blend of academic structure and practical examples provides an engaging formula for learning. The book’s title reflects some key themes that we develop. First, we are primarily concerned with electronic commerce, which we define as using technology (e.g., the Internet) to communicate or transact with stakeholders (e.g., customers). Second, we discuss how organizations must change in order to take advantage of electronic commerce opportunities. In this sense, our book offers the strategic perspective (i.e., the best way to operate a successful business in the 21st century). Third, with the growing importance of the Internet and related technologies, organizations must take electronic commerce into account when they are creating strategic plans. Thus, electronic commerce is a strategic perspective that all firms must adopt, both in the present and in the future. In other words, an organization that does not explicitly consider electronic commerce as a strategic imperative is probably making a crucial error. Here, we focus primarily on the opportunities and tactics that can lead to success in the electronic marketplace.
Fundamentals of Global Strategy A Business Model Approach
This book looks at the opportunities and risks associated with staking out a global competitive presence and introduces the fundamentals of global strategic thinking. We define crafting a global strategy in terms of change—how a company should change and adapt its core (domestic) business model to achieve a competitive advantage as it expands globally. The conceptual framework behind this definition has three fundamental building blocks: a company’s core business model, the various strategic decisions a company needs to make as it globalizes its operations, and a range of globalization strategies for creating a global competitive advantage. We use Pankaj Ghemawat’s well-known “AAA Triangle” framework to describe three generic approaches to global value creation. Adaptation strategies seek to increase revenues and market share by tailoring one or more components of a company’s business model to suit local requirements or preferences. Aggregation strategies focus on achieving economies of scale or scope by creating regional or global efficiencies; they typically involve standardizing a significant portion of the value proposition and grouping together development and production processes. Arbitrage is about exploiting economic or other differences between national or regional markets, usually by locating separate parts of the supply chain in different places. A business model is simply a description of how a company does business. It has four principal components: (a) market participation, that is, who its customers are, how it reaches them and relates to them; (b) the value proposition, or, what a companyoffers its customers; (c) the supply-chain infrastructure, that is, with what resources,activities, and partners it creates its offerings; and finally, (d) its management model, or, how it organizes and coordinates its operations. Globalization requires a company to make strategic decisions about each component of the business model. Market participation decisions include choosing which specific markets or segments to serve, domestically or abroad; what methods of distribution to use to reach target customers; and how to promote and advertise the value proposition. A company’s value proposition composes the core of its business model; it includes everything it offers its customers in a specific market or segment. This comprises not only the company’s bundles of products and services—it also affects how it differentiates itself from its competitors. Globalization decisions about the value proposition therefore touch the full range of tangible and intangible benefits a company provides to its customers (stakeholders). The value chain infrastructure dimension of the business model deals with such questions as, what key internal resources and capabilities has the company created to support the chosen value proposition and target markets; what partner network has it assembled to support the business model; and how are these activities organized into an overall, coherent value creation and delivery model? Finally, the management dimension is concerned with a company’s choices about a suitable global organizational structure and decision-making process. Creating a global mind-set is a key determinant of global success.
Global Business Strategy: A Systems Approach
The greatest dilemma facing the author of a textbook on international business strategy is estimating readers' knowledge of the domain. Should the author assume that the student already comprehends such subjects as international economics, international trade, and international finance? Or should the book deal extensively with these subjects before tackling management issues? After over fifteen years of teaching, I have come to recognize that the appropriate compromise is to provide a quick refresher on international economics, trade, and finance. For this reason, Global Business Strategy: A Systems Approach builds a good theoretical base before addressing the basic functions, or tasks, of global management. The philosophy underlying this work is that international managers are practitioners of economics and, in particular, its subdiscipline of international economics. Just as a good engineer must learn the science of physics before practicing engineering, and a physician the science of biology before practicing medicine, international managers must learn international economics before they can begin practicing global management.
Project Management from Simple to Complex
Faster, cheaper, and better has become the mantra of not only profit-making organizations seeking to increase market share and profits but also nonprofits and governmental organizations seeking to increase their value to clients. Organizations are increasingly using projects to meet these goals. Projects are goal directed and time framed, and when managed well, projects deliver on time and within budget. This book is about how to manage projects well. All projects have common characteristics: every project has a scope, budget, and schedule. Projects also differ. Understanding how projects differ and what that difference means to the management of the project is critical to successfully managing a project. Large, complex projects need project management tools, systems, and processes that are very different from the small and less complex project. Within this text, we provide a tool for profiling a project based on the complexity of the project and describe the different project management approaches needed for the difference in project profiles. Project management is complicated. In some ways, this is a good thing because students who learn how to manage projects well will find it a rewarding career, and there will always be a demand for their services. Project management is complicated because projects consist of many activities that are interrelated, and the actions taken in one activity affect several other aspects of the project. Project management is complex because project managers must understand several knowledge areas and develop a variety of tools and techniques to successfully manage a project. This complexity makes it challenging to learn about project management because regardless of which activity you begin to study, you need to know something about the other activities to which it is related.
In recent decades, the fields of financial mathematics and financial risk evaluation have undergone explosive development. Financial mathematics, broadly defined, is a class of applied mathematics devoted to modelling and analysing financial markets, and to aiding the management of financial resources. We focus on the analysis of financial derivatives; in particular, options for pricing and hedging.
Finance is an imprecise generalization that may encompass several branches of economics, law and general know-how on managing valuable assets. From simple currency and property to bonds and other more complex financial instruments. More specifically, one can state that through financial analysis and decisions, planed actions can be taken regarding the collection and use of those assets as to optimize financial resources toward the objectives of an organization (states, companies and businesses) or individual.
One standard definition for economics is the study of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. A second definition is the study of choice related to the allocation of scarce resources. The first definition indicates that economics includes any business, nonprofit organization, or administrative unit. The second definition establishes that economics is at the core of what managers of these organizations do. This book presents economic concepts and principles from the perspective of “managerial economics,” which is a subfield of economics that places special emphasis on the choice aspect in the second definition. The purpose of managerial economics is to provide economic terminology and reasoning for the improvement of managerial decisions. Most readers will be familiar with two different conceptual approaches to the study of economics: microeconomics and macroeconomics. Microeconomics studies phenomena related to goods and services from the perspective of individual decision-making entities—that is, households and businesses. Macroeconomics approaches the same phenomena at an aggregate level, for example, the total consumption and production of a region. Microeconomics and macroeconomics each have their merits. The microeconomic approach is essential for understanding the behavior of atomic entities in an economy. However, understanding the systematic interaction of the many households and businesses would be too complex to derive from descriptions of the individual units. The macroeconomic approach provides measures and theories to understand the overall systematic behavior of an economy. Since the purpose of managerial economics is to apply economics for the improvement of managerial decisions in an organization, most of the subject material in managerial economics has a microeconomic focus. However, since managers must consider the state of their environment in making decisions and the environment includes the overall economy, an understanding of how to interpret and forecast macroeconomic measures is useful in making managerial decisions.One standard definition for economics is the study of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. A second definition is the study of choice related to the allocation of scarce resources. The first definition indicates that economics includes any business, nonprofit organization, or administrative unit. The second definition establishes that economics is at the core of what managers of these organizations do. This book presents economic concepts and principles from the perspective of “managerial economics,” which is a subfield of economics that places special emphasis on the choice aspect in the second definition. The purpose of managerial economics is to provide economic terminology and reasoning for the improvement of managerial decisions. Most readers will be familiar with two different conceptual approaches to the study of economics: microeconomics and macroeconomics. Microeconomics studies phenomena related to goods and services from the perspective of individual decision-making entities—that is, households and businesses. Macroeconomics approaches the same phenomena at an aggregate level, for example, the total consumption and production of a region. Microeconomics and macroeconomics each have their merits. The microeconomic approach is essential for understanding the behavior of atomic entities in an economy. However, understanding the systematic interaction of the many households and businesses would be too complex to derive from descriptions of the individual units. The macroeconomic approach provides measures and theories to understand the overall systematic behavior of an economy. Since the purpose of managerial economics is to apply economics for the improvement of managerial decisions in an organization, most of the subject material in managerial economics has a microeconomic focus. However, since managers must consider the state of their environment in making decisions and the environment includes the overall economy, an understanding of how to interpret and forecast macroeconomic measures is useful in making managerial decisions.
Russell Cooper and Andrew John have written an economics text aimed directly at students from its very inception. You’re thinking, ”Yeah, sure. I’ve heard that before.“ This textbook, Economics: Theory Through Applications, centers around student needs and expectations through two premises: … Students are motivated to study economics if they see that it relates to their own lives. … Students learn best from an inductive approach, in which they are first confronted with a problem, and then led through the process of solving that problem. Many books claim to present economics in a way that is digestible for students; Russell and Andrew have truly created one from scratch. This textbook will assist you in increasing students’ economic literacy both by developing their aptitude for economic thinking and by presenting key insights about economics that every educated individual should know. How? Russell and Andrew have done thre e things in this text to accomplish that goal: Applications Ahead of Theory: They present all the theory that is standard in Principles books. But by beginning with applications, students get to learn why this theory is needed. Learning through Repetition: Important tools appear over and over again, allowing students to learn from repetition and to see how one framework can be useful in many different contexts. A Student’s Table of Contents vs. An Instructor’s Table of Contents: There is no further proof that Russell and Andrew have created a book aimed specifically at educating students about economics than their two tables of contents.
This book is intended for an undergraduate or MBA level Financial Accounting course. It covers the standard topics in a standard sequence, utilizing the Socratic method of asking and answering questions.
University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing
Growth and Competitive Strategy in 3 Circles
The 3-Circle model was developed over the past several years, initially in strategic planning for a university graduate program and in an executive MBA course designed to integrate the concepts of marketing and competitive strategy. Over the course of time, the 3-Circle model has been successfully used by hundreds of organizations throughout the world in establishing and growing their market positions. Many of the case examples in this book demonstrating applications of the 3-Circle model applications are from executives who have attended executive education training at the University of Notre Dame. The development of competitive strategy is difficult because there are a lot of moving parts, as well as hundreds of frameworks, that might potentially guide the effort. Executives appreciate how the 3-Circle model simplifies the integration of customer, firm, and competitor analysis to generate growth strategies. It also provides a common language and process for understanding and explaining competitive advantage and for identifying profitable growth strategy.
International Economics: Theory and Policy
This text strives to reach a median between these two approaches. First, I believe that students need to learn the theory and models to understand how economists understand the world. I also think these ideas are accessible to most students if they are explained thoroughly. This text presents numerous models in some detail, not by employing advanced mathematics, but rather by walking students through a detailed description of how a model’s assumptions influence its conclusions. Second, and perhaps more important, students must learn how the models connect with the real world. I believe that theory is done primarily to guide policy. We do positive economics to help answer the normative questions; for example, what should a country do about its trade policy or its exchange rate policy? The results from models give us insights that help us answer these questions. Thus this text strives to explain why each model is interesting by connecting its results to some aspect of a current policy issue. A prime example is found in Chapter 11 "Evaluating the Controversy between Free Trade and Protectionism" of this book, which addresses the age-old question of whether countries should choose free trade or some type of selected protection. The chapter demonstrates how the results of the various models presented throughout the text contribute to our understanding of this long-standing debate.
Introduction to Contracts, Sales and Product Liability
This textbook provides context and essential concepts across the entire range of legal issues with which managers and business executives must grapple. The text provides the vocabulary and legal acumen necessary for businesspeople to talk in an educated way to their customers, employees, suppliers, government officials—and to their own lawyers. Traditional publishers often create confusion among customers in the text selection process by offering a huge array of publications. Once a text is selected, customers might still have to customize the text to meet their needs. For example, publishers usually offer books that include either case summaries or excerpted cases, but some instructors prefer to combine case summaries with a few excerpted cases so that students can experience reading original material. Likewise, the manner in which most conventional texts incorporate video is cumbersome because the videos are contained in a separate library, which makes access more complicating for instructors and students.
Governing Failure - Provisional Expertise and the Transformation of Global Development Finance
Jacqueline Best argues that the changes in International Monetary Fund, World Bank and donor policies in the 1990s, towards what some have called the 'Post-Washington Consensus,' were driven by an erosion of expert authority and an increasing preoccupation with policy failure. Failures such as the Asian financial crisis and the decades of despair in sub-Saharan Africa led these institutions to develop governance strategies designed to avoid failure: fostering country ownership, developing global standards, managing risk and vulnerability and measuring results. In contrast to the structural adjustment era when policymakers were confident that they had all the answers, the author argues that we are now in an era of provisional governance, in which key actors are aware of the possibility of failure even as they seek to inoculate themselves against it. This book considers the implications of this shift, asking if it is a positive change and whether it is sustainable. This title was made Open Access by libraries from around the world through Knowledge Unlatched.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK - New York, USA
Introductory Business Statistics is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of the one-semester statistics course for business, economics, and related majors. Core statistical concepts and skills have been augmented with practical business examples, scenarios, and exercises. The result is a meaningful understanding of the discipline, which will serve students in their business careers and real-world experiences.
Information technology project manager's competencies : an analysis of performance and personal competenciesInformation technology project manager's competencies : an analysis of performance and personal competencies
The purpose of this book is to shed light on the performance and personal competencies of information technology (IT) project managers in South Africa. Predictive models are built to determine what project managers consider the crucial competencies they should possess to deliver an IT project successfully. This investigation takes place in the context of poor IT project success rates globally and, in particular, in South Africa. This novel research seeks to extend the debate on project success beyond what merely constitutes success or failure, but seeks to find clarity in what IT project managers believe are the essential competencies in practice. This quantitative research gathered data by way of an online survey based on literature regarding the Project Management Competency Development Framework (PMCDF). The population consisted of IT project managers in South Africa. Four hundred and two respondents chose to share their insights. Through the use of descriptive and multivariate statistics, major competency factors were identified. These factors were used in structural equation modelling to build various validated predictive models. This book contributes to the current body of knowledge by uncovering the competencies that IT project managers consider themselves competent in. The structural equation models indicated predictors of perceived competence by IT project managers and where these perceived competencies differ from literature. Twelve managerial implications are highlighted in the final chapter that seek to draw the myriad of threads together into a coherent summary. It is apparent that IT project managers do not consider the PMCDF important in its entirety, but instead choose to focus on certain competencies. This book is intended for reading by fellow researchers as well as project and IT practitioners. These may include IT managers, IT executives, project managers, project team members, the project management office (PMO), general managers and executives that initiate and conduct project-related work. This body of work is original and has not been plagiarised, although certain concepts have been tested in peer reviewed academic work by way of conference proceedings. Instances of this have been referenced and cited. This book is in its first edition and has not been based on thesis work published previously
Critical Management Studies in the South African context
The purpose of the book is to establish the first formalised scholarly work on critical management studies (CMS) in the South African context. The book is a collection of seven chapters, six of which employ a conceptual methodology and one of which follows an interpretive paradigm employing qualitative methods of inquiry. CMS is a relatively young school of thought, arising in the early 1990s and still very much being a peripheral movement within the academic discipline of management. South Africa has very little scholarship on CMS as precious few scholars work in this space. Furthermore, publication opportunities are virtually non-existent as CMS is virtually unknown in the South African community of management scholars. Thus, this book represents the first academic work on CMS published in South Africa, written and reviewed by scholars who are familiar with the field. The primary target readership would be management academics, but it could also be a useful reference for postgraduate students in management. A digital similarities index report confirms the originality of the work and that it has not been plagiarised or published elsewhere.
Legal Aspects of Corporate Management and Finance
Legal Aspects of Corporate Management and Finance is an up-to-date textbook that covers key legal issues relating to corporate management and finance. The text is organized to permit instructors to tailor the materials to their particular approach. The authors take special care to engage students by relating law to everyday events with their clear, concise and readable style. After introductory chapters covering the legal environment of business, Legal Aspects of Corporate Management and Finance provides students with context and essential legal concepts relating to contracts, agency law, partnerships, corporations, commercial paper, debtors and creditors. The text provides the vocabulary and legal savvy students will need to talk in an educated way to customers, suppliers, employees, creditors, shareholders, government regulators and other stakeholders — and to their own lawyers.
Legal Aspects of Marketing and Sales is an up-to-date textbook that covers legal issues that students who will work in marketing or with marketing managers must understand. The text is organized to permit instructors to tailor the materials to their particular approach. The authors take special care to engage students by relating law to everyday events with their clear, concise and readable style. After introductory chapters covering the legal environment of business, Legal Aspects of Marketing and Sales provides students with context and essential legal concepts relating to contracts, sales, intellectual property, antitrust law and unfair trade practices. The text provides the vocabulary and legal savvy they will need to talk in an educated way to customers, suppliers, shareholders, government regulators and other stakeholders — and to their own lawyers.
Microeconomics: Theory Through Applications
Russell Cooper and Andrew John have written an economics text aimed directly at students from its very inception. You’re thinking, ”Yeah, sure. I’ve heard that before.“ This textbook, Microeconomics: Theory Through Applications, centers around student needs and expectations through two premises: … Students are motivated to study economics if they see that it relates to their own lives. … Students learn best from an inductive approach, in which they are first confronted with a problem, and then led through the process of solving that problem. Many books claim to present economics in a way that is digestible for students; Russell and Andrew have truly created one from scratch. This textbook will assist you in increasing students’ economic literacy both by developing their aptitude for economic thinking and by presenting key insights about economics that every educated individual should know. How? Russell and Andrew have done three things in this text to accomplish that goal: 1. Applications Ahead of Theory: They present all the theory that is standard in Principles books. But by beginning with applications, students get to learn why this theory is needed. The authors take the kind of material that other authors put in ”applications boxes“ and place it at the heart of their book. Each chapter is built around a particular business or policy application, such as minimum wages, the stock exchange, and auctions. Why take this approach? Traditional courses focus too much on abstract theory relative to the interests and capabilities of the average undergraduate. Students are rarely engaged and the formal theory is never integrated into the way students think about economic issues. And traditional books are organized around theoretical constructs that mean nothing to students. The authors’ applications-first approach ensures that students will not see chapters with titles like ”Cost Functions“ or ”Short-Run Fluctuations“. They introduce tools and ideas as and when they are needed. Each chapter is designed with two goals. First, the application upon which the chapter is built provides a ”hook“ that gets students’ attention. Second, the application is a suitable vehicle a vehicle for teaching the principles of economics. 2. Learning through Repetition: Important tools appear over and over again, allowing students to learn from repetition and to see how one framework can be useful in many different contexts. Each piece of economic theory in this text is first introduced and explained in the context of a specific application. Most are re-used in other chapters, so students see them in action on multiple occasions. As students progress through the book, they accumulate a set of techniques and ideas. These are collected separately in a ”toolkit“ that provides students with an easy reference and also gives them a condensed summary of economic principles for examination preparation. 3. A Student’s Table of Contents vs. An Instructor’s Table of Contents: There is no further proof that Russell and Andrew have created a book aimed specifically at educating students about economics than their two tables of contents. The Student’s Table of Contents speaks to students, piquing their interest to involve them in the economics, and a Instructor’s Table of Contents with the economics to better help you organize your teaching—and frankly, you don’t need to get excited by economics, you already are.
Ethics is about determining value; it’s deciding what’s worth doing and what doesn’t matter so much. Business ethics is the way we decide what kind of career to pursue, what choices we make on the job, which companies we want to work with, and what kind of economic world we want to live in and then leave behind for those coming after. There are no perfect answers to these questions, but there’s a difference between thinking them through and winging it. The Business Ethics Workshop provides a framework for identifying, analyzing, and resolving ethical dilemmas encountered through working life.
Sustainability, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship
This book is suited for the Entrepreneurship or Innovation course with an emphasis on Sustainability or for a course devoted entirely to Sustainability. What are the trends and forces underlying the changing character of the business-environment relationship? How they are creating significant entrepreneurial opportunities for individuals and companies? Around the world, the movement toward ”sustainable development“ has caused many firms to adopt policies and practices that reflect what is sometimes called a ”sustainable business“ or ”triple bottom line“ approach. ”Triple bottom line“ refers to the demonstration of strong performance across economic, social, and environmental indicators. Those measures serve as indicators of fiduciary responsibility to a growing set of concerned investors and therefore can help ensure access to capital. They also enable innovators to lower costs, create strategic differentiation, reduce risk, and position themselves for competitive advantage over rivals less attuned to trends. The deep roots of sustainability thinking are now evident in widespread and increasingly visible activities worldwide, and Sustainability, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship explores this evolution; its necessity, its implications and its progression.
In a world that is becoming more virtual, more global, and more complex, the project manager’s ability to function in this environment becomes critical to the success of the project. Project Management from Simple to Complex explores project management within this complex, virtual, and global environment. This is not a standard textbook that was adapted to the new publishing paradigm; it was designed from the beginning to utilize its capabilities. The book is written in collaboration by an expert in Project Management and an expert in writing instructional textbooks and using technology for communicating online to create a unique learning environment that prepares students to manage projects in a global, multicultural, and online environment. Project Management from Simple to Complex features a new model for managing projects, as well as, exploration into the personal dynamics of project management and the role those dynamics play in project outcomes.
Small Business Management in the 21st Century
Small Business Management in the 21st Century offers a unique perspective and set of capabilities for instructors. The authors designed this book with a “less can be more” approach, and by treating small business management as a practical human activity rather than as an abstract theoretical concept. The text has a format and structure that will be familiar to you if you use other books on small business management. Yet it brings a fresh perspective by incorporating three distinctive and unique themes and an important new feature (Disaster Watch) which is embedded throughout the entire text. These themes assure that students see the material in an integrated context rather than a stream of separate and distinct topics. First, the authors incorporate the use of technology and e-business as a way to gain competitive advantage over larger rivals. Technology is omnipresent in today’s business world. Small business must use it to its advantage. We provide practical discussions and examples of how a small business can use these technologies without having extensive expertise or expenditures. Second, they explicitly acknowledge the constant need to examine how decisions affect cash flow by incorporating cash flow impact content in several chapters. As the life blood of all organizations, cash flow implications must be a factor in all business decision-making. Third, they recognize the need to clearly identify sources of customer value and bring that understanding to every decision. Decisions that do not add to customer value should be seriously reconsidered. Small Business Management in 21st Century boasts a new feature called Disaster Watch scenarios. Few texts cover, in any detail, some of the major hazards that small business managers face. Disaster Watch scenarios, included in most chapters, cover topics that include financing, bankers, creditors, employees, customers who don’t pay, economic downturns, and marketing mistakes.
Risk Management for Enterprises and Individuals
This book is intended for the Risk Management and Insurance course where Risk Management is emphasized. When we think of large risks, we often think in terms of natural hazards such as hurricanes, earthquakes or tornados. Perhaps man-made disasters come to mind such as the terrorist attacks in the U.S. on September 11, 2001. Typically we have overlooked financial crises, such as the credit crisis of 2008. However, these types of man-made disasters have the potential to devastate the global marketplace. Losses in multiple trillions of dollars and in much human suffering and insecurity are already being totaled, and the global financial markets are collapsing as never before seen. We can attribute the 2008 collapse to financially risky behavior of a magnitude never before experienced. The 2008 U.S. credit markets were a financial house of cards. A basic lack of risk management (and regulators' inattention or inability to control these overt failures) lay at the heart of the global credit crisis. This crisis started with lack of improperly underwritten mortgages and excessive debt. Companies depend on loans and lines of credit to conduct their routine business. If such credit lines dry up, production slows down and brings the global economy to the brink of deep recession—or even depression. The snowballing effect of this failure to manage the risk associated with providing mortgage loans to unqualified home buyers have been profound, indeed. When the mortgages failed because of greater risk- taking on the Street, the entire house of cards collapsed. Probably no other risk-related event has had, and will continue to have, as profound an impact world wide as this risk management failure. How was risk in this situation so badly managed? What could firms and individuals have done to protect themselves? How can government measure such risks (beforehand) to regulate and control them? These and other questions come to mind when we contemplate the consequences of this risk management fiasco. Standard risk management practice would have identified sub-prime mortgages and their bundling into mortgage-backed-securities as high risk. People would have avoided these investments or would have put enough money into reserve to be able to withstand defaults. This did not happen. Accordingly, this book may represent one of the most critical topics of study that the student of the 21st century could ever undertake. Risk management will be a major focal point of business and societal decision—making in the 21st century. A separate focused field of study, it draws on core knowledge bases from law, engineering, finance, economics, medicine, psychology, accounting, mathematics, statistics and other fields to create a holistic decision-making framework that is sustainable and value- enhancing. This is the subject of this book.
Almost Hollywood, Nearly New Orleans: The Lure of the Local Film Economy
Early in the twenty-first century, Louisiana, one of the poorest states in the United States, redirected millions in tax dollars from the public coffers in an effort to become the top location site globally for the production of Hollywood films and television series. Why would lawmakers support such a policy? Why would citizens accept the policy’s uncomfortable effects on their economy and culture? Almost Hollywood, Nearly New Orleans addresses these questions through a study of the local and everyday experiences of the film economy in New Orleans, Louisiana—a city that has twice taken the mantle of becoming a movie production capital. From the silent era to today’s Hollywood South, Vicki Mayer explains that the aura of a film economy is inseparable from a prevailing sense of home, even as it changes that place irrevocably.
University of California Press, Oakland, California
Much of the information relevant to policy formulation for industrial development is held by the private sector, not by public officials. There is, therefore, fairly broad agreement in the development literature that some form of structured engagement—often referred to as close or strategic coordination—between the public and private sectors is needed, to assist in the design of appropriate policies and provide feedback on their implementation. There is less agreement on how that engagement should be structured, how its objectives be defined, and how success be measured. In fact, the academic literature provides little practical guidance on how governments interested in developing such a framework should go about doing it. The burden of this lack of guidance falls most heavily on Africa, where—despite twenty years of growth—lack of structural transformation has slowed job creation and the pace of poverty reduction. In 2014, the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) and United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) launched a joint research project: The Practice of Industrial Policy. The aim is to help African policy makers develop better coordination between public and private sectors in order to identify the constraints to faster structural transformation and design, implement, and monitor policies to remove them. This book, written by national researchers and international experts, presents the results of that research by combining a set of analytical ‘framing’ essays on close coordination with case studies of successful and unsuccessful efforts at close coordination in Africa and in comparator countries.
This book is inspired by, and dedicated to, Jill Rubery. Jill is a major figure in international debates on inequalities in work and employment. Her intellectual contributions are renowned for both their critical questioning of mainstream theoretical approaches, whether in economics, management, industrial relations or comparative systems, and their attention to real-world empirical detail. Jill’s intellectual roots are with the influential Cambridge economics group researching labour market segmentation in the late 1970s and 1980s during a period when Keynesian economic thought was being eclipsed by neoclassical economics modelling. The research was inter-disciplinary, grounded in data (mostly involving case studies of firms) and driven by an ambitious intellectual agenda that developed theory while also illuminating practical matters of relevance to policy-makers and practitioners.
Economics of Land Degradation and Improvement – A Global Assessment for Sustainable Development
This volume deals with land degradation, which is occurring in almost all terrestrial biomes and agro-ecologies, in both low and high income countries and is stretching to about 30% of the total global land area. About three billion people reside in these degraded lands. However, the impact of land degradation is especially severe on livelihoods of the poor who heavily depend on natural resources. The annual global cost of land degradation due to land use and cover change (LUCC) and lower cropland and rangeland productivity is estimated to be about 300 billion USD. Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) accounts for the largest share (22%) of the total global cost of land degradation.
Ephraim Nkonya --- Alisher Mirzabaev --- Joachim von Braun
Africa-EU Renewable Energy Research and Innovation Symposium 2018 (RERIS 2018)
This open access book presents the proceedings of the 2nd Africa-EU Renewable Energy Research and Innovation Symposium (RERIS 18), held in Maseru, Lesotho in January 2018. The symposium aimed to foster research cooperation on renewable energy between Africa and Europe – in academia, as well as the private and public sectors. Addressing thematic areas such as • Grid-connected renewable energy; • Decentralised renewable and household energy solutions; • Energy socioeconomics; and •
Mpholo, Moeketsi --- Steuerwald, Dirk --- Kukeera, Tonny
This Open Access book presents a pioneering research on brownfield redevelopment in mountain regions, and specifically in the European Alps. The origins and causes, the actual conditions as well as the future challenges and potentials of mountain brownfields are investigated from an interdisciplinary yet landscape-centered perspective. Through the reasoned combination of research-by-design methods and case-study analysis, the book explores the infrastructural relevance of these sites for the specific mountain territory, while advancing an innovative structuralist-systemic approach for their physical and functional transformation. The book includes, among others, a first transnational geo-mapping of Alpine brownfields, whose impressive outcomes in terms of site numbers and distribution can only confirm the urgency of this research.
Poverty and Distributional Impact of Economic Policies and External Shocks
Economists have had much to say about the impact of economic policies on growth, but little on their distributional consequences and poverty impact. The reorientation of development policy from structural adjustment to poverty reduction as the central objective thus called for new tools to examine distributional change. This book analyzes the poverty and distributional impact of policy changes and external shocks in three case studies from Latin America: Trade liberalization in Colombia and Brazil, and the gas boom in Bolivia. It uses an innovative approach that combines computable general equilibrium and microsimulation models.
Peter Lang International Academic Publishing Group
Empirical Analysis of Determinants, Distribution and Dynamics of Poverty
Poverty and inequality persist in many dimensions in the developing world. In order to understand the determinants of poverty and its distribution between and within countries, it is necessary to know its dimensions and the channels through which poverty and inequality affect human well-being. This book analyzes the spatial disparities of the outcomes and determinants of poverty, the interdependencies of dimensions of poverty, the distribution of progress in human development over the population and the dynamics of poverty risk over time.
Recent Trends and Developments in Econophysics
The current Special Issue brought out the newest trends in Econophysics that have made use of the most recent available tools, such as Big Data. The emphasis of the reprint is on deciphering the effects of current world events, such as the repercussions of the recent war conflicts, the oil and gas crises, the abrupt rise of the prices of commodities, the new findings in environmental issues, etc.
MDPI - Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
Agribusiness Agricultural science Economics
Revitalising the way the social sciences question agri-environmental governance, this book introduces ""the everyday governance approach"" as a means to improving the sustainability of agriculture and food systems. The ""everyday"" refers to localised practices, specific networks, and practical norms that emerge in a process of interaction, translation, and reinterpretation. The authors build this approach on assemblage thinking and theory, which focuses on the collective production of the social through complex sets of connections.
Jérémie Forney, Dana Bentia, Angga Dwiartama