This book examines the extent to which, and the ways in which, regulatory barriers to trade in banking services can be liberalized under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The interface between regulation and trade liberalization is one of the foremost issues confronting the multilateral trading system. Although the regulation of services can create impediments to trade, such measures are often not intended to discourage trade but rather to attain other policy objectives. Therefore, in fulfilling the agenda of the GATS to open services markets, WTO Members have to address regulatory impediments to trade without undermining the ability of states to regulate their services sectors. The book explores how the tension between national regulatory autonomy and trade liberalization in banking services can be managed in the context of the multilateral trading system. It recognizes that the reduction of regulatory barriers to trade in banking services under the GATS is a challenging undertaking because of the heavily regulated nature of the sector and the important role of regulation in the industry. The book examines why the banking sector is regulated and how the regulation of banking can impede trade in services, taking into account the regulatory reforms ensuing from the financial crisis. It provides an overview of the framework the GATS provides for the liberalization of trade in banking services and examines the specific commitments that WTO Members have undertaken to open their banking markets, focusing on the commitments of the EU, USA, India, and China. It assesses the existing disciplines in the GATS on discriminatory and non-discriminatory regulation in the banking sector and investigates how the WTO can address regulatory barriers to trade in banking services through additional disciplines on domestic regulation and recognition of prudential measures. The book also examines the extent to which the conclusions drawn with respect to banking services are equally applicable to insurance and securities services.
This is a book about the risks and rewards of home ownership in the 21st century. Using a range of vivid examples, it shows how housing markets work to concentrate wealth into property, how the role of mortgage markets has changed, and how financial markets have failed to manage the credit and investment risks to which home occupiers are exposed. A clear-sighted view of the problems of the housing economy, Safe as Houses? makes complex economic ideas accessible to an interdisciplinary readership. It exposes a kaleidoscope of overlapping markets whose workings tie the meagre budgets of the poorest home-buyers to the massive turnover of the world's largest financial exchanges. Home ownership is a risky business. But in a thought-provoking analysis, Susan Smith argues that the precarious financial position of the average home-occupier may benefit as much from the cautious use of innovative instruments as from the wholesale dismantling of financial capitalism. Interdisciplinary in style, drawing from cultural economy, material sociology, and economic anthropology, as well as from mainstream housing economics, this book provides a clear analysis of the housing market in the current financial crisis, with a practical edge, engaging with policy, practice, and everyday life.
Millions of people worldwide live in poverty. Why is that? What has been done about it in the past? And what is being done about it now? Poverty: A Very Short Introduction explores how the answers to these questions lie in the social, political, economic, educational, and technological processes that impact all of us throughout our lives—from the circumstances of birth and gender to access to clean water and whether it is wartime or peacetime. The degree of vulnerability is all that differentiates us. This VSI looks at the history of poverty, the practical and analytical efforts made to eradicate it, and the prospects for further poverty alleviation in the future.
The first book length study of property-owning democracy, Republic of Equals argues that a society in which capital is universally accessible to all citizens is uniquely placed to meet the demands of justice. Arguing from a basis in liberal-republican principles, this expanded conception of the economic structure of society contextualizes the market to make its transactions fair. The author shows that a property-owning democracy structures economic incentives such that the domination of one agent by another in the market is structurally impossible. The result is a renovated form of capitalism in which the free market is no longer a threat to social democratic values, but is potentially convergent with them. It is argued that a property-owning democracy has advantages that give it priority over rival forms of social organization such as welfare state capitalism and market socialist institutions. The book also addresses the currently high levels of inequality in the societies of the developed West to suggest a range of policies that target the New Inequality of our times. For this reason, the work engages not only with political philosophers such as John Rawls, Philip Pettit and John Tomasi, but also with the work of economists and historians such as Anthony B. Atkinson, Francois Bourguignon, Jacob S. Hacker, Lane Kenworthy, and Thomas Piketty.
When Lee Kuan Yew died recently, the world media turned its attention to the nation he led for decades: Singapore. Lee Kuan Yew's revolutionary transformation of Singapore from a poor and corrupt colonial backwater into an economic powerhouse renowned for its wealth, order, and rectitude is one of the great--and most surprising--stories of modern era. In Singapore: Unlikely Power, John Perry provides an evenhanded and authoritative history of the island nation that ranges from its Malay origins to the present day. Blessed with a natural deepwater port that is shielded by mountain ranges from oceanic storms and which sits along one of the most strategic straits in the world, Singapore has served as a major shipping entrepot throughout modern history. The first great naval power to exploit the island's strategic location was China, and during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries thousands of Chinese emigrated to Singapore. The most famous colonizer, though, was Britain, which ruled Singapore until the 1960s except for when the Japanese occupied it during World War Two. From the early nineteenth century onward, Singapore was a vital node in the global economy, which relied on oceanic shipping and the protection of the British Navy. Perry covers all of this before turning to the era of independence, which began in the 1960s. Plagued with the usual assortment of ills that former colonies in the tropics suffered from--corruption, inequality, lack of an educated population--Singapore improbably vaulted from essentially third-world status into a first world dynamo over the course of three decades. In the process, longtime leader Lee Kuan Yew did many things that other post-colonial leaders shunned. He embraced the colonial past, established close ties with its World War Two tormentor (Japan), and adopted a resolutely pragmatist approach to economic development rather than following any one fashionable ideological program. Today, it is one of the wealthiest and best educated countries in the world, and it is a model regime for states looking to develop rapidly but which are relatively unconcerned with freedom or democracy (although Singapore itself is a democracy). In sum, this is an accessible, comprehensive, and indeed colorful overview of a city-state that has perfected one of the most influential political-economic models in the world.
Across Europe, market mechanisms are spreading into areas where they did not exist before. In public administration, market governance is displacing other ways of coordinating public services. In social policy, the welfare state is retreating from its historic task of protecting citizens from the discipline of the market. In industrial relations, labor and management are negotiating with an eye to competitiveness, often against new non-union market players. What is marketization, and what are its effects? This book uses employment services in Denmark, Germany, and Great Britain as a window to explore the rise of market mechanisms. Based on more than 100 interviews with funders, managers, front-line workers, and others, the authors discuss the internal workings of these markets and the organizations that provide the services. This book gives readers new tools to analyse market competition and its effects. It provides a new conceptualization of the markets themselves, the dilemmas and tradeoffs that they generate, and the differing services and workplaces that result. It is aimed at students and researchers in the applied fields of social policy, public administration, and employment relations and has important implications for comparative political economy and welfare states. Contributors to this volume - Lisa Schulte, PhD Candidate, University of Greenwich Business School Graham Symon, Principal Lecturer in Human Resources and Organisational Behaviour, University of Greenwich Johannes Kirsch, Junior Researcher, Universitat Duisburg-Essen
In the Mexican city of Puebla, several decades ago, there lived an old American as wealthy as a Rockefeller. He strode the streets with a purposeful step and his head slightly bowed, as though he wished not to be interrupted. For daily visits to his country club, he had his chauffeur drive him, in one of his second-hand Packards. But he walked often enough that his aspect was familiar to all who lived or worked near his downtown home: tall and well-built, cropped hair beneath a black fedora, and seeming always to wear the same black tie and shabby dark suit. His head was large and solid, like a marble bowling ball, the roundness interrupted by a stern jaw and heavy chin. His blue eyes were sharp. William O. Jenkins, said to be the richest man in Mexico, had an austere routine. He rose early and worked all morning in his office, which shared the same vast space as his apartment: the penthouse above Puebla's leading department store. Though his assets included several hundred movie theaters, substantial rural and urban real estate, various textile mills, and Mexico's second-largest bank, his entire staff consisted of a personal assistant, an accountant, and a secretary. People who came to him for money - a farmer hoping for a loan, a businessman seeking venture capital, a state governor keen for him to finance a school - all had to climb the ninety stairs to his rooms. Even as an octogenarian, he refused to install an elevator, for he was a champion of physical fitness and advancement by merit. And of course he was frugal. On more than one occasion, visitors entered his office to find him peeling an unmarked stamp from an envelope. He would explain: I hate to see anything go to waste. The biography looks at the significance of William Jenkins within the formative period of the Mexican Revolution and the several decades of political institutionalization and evolution that follow it. The author shows Jenkins' involvement, particularly in the state of Puebla, in politics and economics, and details his ability to survive and keep and develop major holdings despite the anti-American ethos of the Revolution itself. It also delves deeply into his personal life and the choices that he made between the well-being of his wife and daughters and his own desire to maintain his important social, political, and economic position in Mexico. It explores at length Jenkins's kidnapping in 1919 which some U. S. politicians tried unsuccessfully to exploit to cause U. S. intervention in Mexico. At the same time, it explores anti-American sentiment in Mexico extensively, and it also discusses a kind of Black Legend that developed around Jenkins that lasted for many years, indeed, until the present. Nevertheless, he shows that Jenkins overcame the setbacks and bad publicity to become exceptionally wealthy and active in many areas, ranging from sugar production to the development of a huge and virtually monopolistic network of movie theaters in the country. However singular his persona, Jenkins illustrated how much the revolutionary state depended on the business elite: at first for its very survival, then for the ascendance and supremacy of its conservatives, whose ideological descendants remain in power today. This book is a larger than life biography featuring Mexican history, American history of the late 19th/early 20th century, borderlands history, the history of business, and US-Mexican diplomatic history. Written with verve, it should appeal to general readers interested in business history, readers of biography, and those interested in the Mexican Revolution.
The economy of ancient Rome, with its money, complex credit arrangements, and long-range shipping, was surprisingly modern. Yet Romans also exchanged goods and services within a robust system of gifts and favors, which sustained the supportive relationships necessary for survival in the absence of the extensive state and social institutions. In Gift and Gain: How Money Transformed Ancient Rome, Neil Coffee shows how a vibrant commercial culture progressively displaced systems of gift giving over the course of Rome's classical era. The change was propelled the Roman elite, through their engagement in shipping, moneylending, and other enterprises. Members of the same elite, however, remained habituated to traditional gift relationships, relying on them to exercise influence and build their social worlds. They resisted the transformation, through legislation, political movements, and philosophical argument. The result was a recurring clash across the contexts of Roman social and economic life. The book traces the conflict between gift and gain from Rome's prehistory, down through the conflicts of the late Republic, into the early Empire, showing its effects in areas as diverse as politics, government, legal representation, philosophical thought, public morality, personal and civic patronage, marriage, dining, and the Latin language. These investigations show Rome shifting, unevenly but steadily, away from its pre-historic reliance on relationships of mutual aid, and toward to the more formal, commercial, and contractual relations of modernity.
Honours fulfil one of the most fundamental desires of human beings, namely, to be recognised and held in esteem by others. There are thousands of awards in all areas of society: the state, arts and media, sports, religion, the voluntary sector, academia, and business. Awards are well visible, can raise the recipients' intrinsic motivation and creativity, and establish a bond of loyalty to the giver. They have distinct advantages over money and other rewards. Presenting empirical evidence using modern statistical techniques Honours versus Money argues that awards can significantly raise performance in different contexts even if they are purely symbolic, recommending how this can be used in practice. It makes the case for reorienting our focus- away from the monetary or material dimensions of work and private life, and towards the symbolic dimensions to celebrate and shine a light on merit and achievement. Honours versus Money discusses award bestowals in their different forms and facets, including as signals and as components of organisations' human resource strategies. It opens our perspective for motivational strategies beyond money, while also outlining their potential pitfalls.
This study examines the darker side of England's culture of economic improvement between 1640 and 1720. It is often suggested that England in this period grew strikingly confident of its prospect for unlimited growth. Indeed, merchants, inventors, and others promised to achieve immense profit and abundance. Such flowery promises were then, as now, prone to perversion, however. This volume is concerned with the taming of incipient capitalism - how a society in the past responded when promises of wealth creation went badly wrong. The notion of 'projecting' played a key role in this process. Thriving theatre, literature, and popular culture in the age of Ben Jonson began elaborating on predominantly negative images of entrepreneurs or 'projectors' as people who pursued Crown's and their own profits at the public's expense. This study examines how the ensuing public distrust came to shape the negotiation in the subsequent decades over the nature of embryonic capitalism. The result is a set of fascinating discoveries. By scrutinising greedy 'projectors', the incipient public sphere helped reorient the practices and priorities of entrepreneurs and statesmen away from the most damaging of rent-seeking behaviours. Far from being a recent response to mainstream capitalism, ideas about socially responsible business have long shaped the pursuit of wealth, power, and profit. Taming Capitalism before its Triumph unravels the rich history of broken promises of public service and ensuing public suspicion - a story that throws fresh light on England's 'transition to capitalism', especially the emergence of consumer society and the financial revolution towards the end of the seventeenth century.
The rise of militant jihadist groups is one of the greatest international security crises in the world today. In civil wars across the modern Muslim world, Islamist groups have emerged out of the ashes, surged dramatically to power, and routed their rivals on the battlefield. From North Africa to the Middle East to South Asia, these jihadist groups have seized large swaths of territory and consolidated political control over disparate ethnic and tribal communities. Out of the most broken and ungovernable places on earth, they have built radical new jihadist proto-states out of enduring anarchy. Why have these ideologically-inspired Islamists been able to build state-like polities out of enduring civil war stalemate, while so many other powerful armed groups have failed to gain similar traction? What makes jihadists win? In The Mosque and the Market, Aisha Ahmad argues that there are hard economic reasons behind Islamist success. By tracking the financial origins of jihadists in Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan, Mali, and Iraq she uncovers the secret role an important but often-overlooked class plays in bringing Islamist groups to power: the local business community. To uncover the hidden nexus between business and Islamist interests in civil war, Ahmad journeys into war-torn bazaars to meet with these jihadists and the smugglers who financed their rise to power. From the arms markets in the Pakistani border region to the street markets of Mogadishu, their stories reveal a powerful economic logic behind the rise of Islamist power in civil wars. Behind the fiery rhetoric and impassioned ideological claims is the cold hard cash of the local war economy. By bringing the reader from the mosque to the market, Ahmad explains exactly why business, far more than religion, explains the rise of militant Islamist power across the modern Muslim world.
Introduction to International Development integrates the work of leading experts from disciplines as varied as geography, history, sociology, political science, economics, gender studies, and anthropology. Contributed chapters present foundational overviews as well as in-depth coverage of issues at the heart of today's most pressing international debates. In addition to a new part focussed exclusively on the practice of international development with six new chapters on measuring poverty, planning projects, development ethics, humanitarian assistance, and global poverty reduction, this edition has new chapters on alternatives to development, gender and development, China and the emerging economies, and climate change.
Abstract Investment treaties are some of the most controversial but least understood instruments of global economic governance. Public interest in investment treaty arbitration is growing, and some developed and developing countries are beginning to revisit their investment treaty policies. This book synthesizes and advances the growing literature on the investment treaty regime by integrating legal, economic, and political perspectives. Based on an analysis of the substantive and procedural rights conferred by investment treaties, the book asks four basic questions. What are the costs and benefits of investment treaties for investors, states, and other stakeholders? Why did developed and developing countries sign the treaties? Why should private arbitrators be allowed to review public regulations passed by states? And what is the relationship between the investment treaty regime and the broader regime complex that governs international investment?
Support strong assessment potential with this comprehensive Cambridge A Level Economics title. It was written to match the latest syllabus (9708) to ensure complete exam coverage. Up-to-date and international case studies will support understanding of current Economics practice, preparing students for assessment and their future careers. Specifically designed to give students confidence in their studies, and in preparation for their examination, it covers all the key concepts in the latest syllabus. In addition, you will receive online access to interactive activities to reinforce understanding and prepare students for exams.
Abstract This book examines the links between economic growth, changing employment conditions, and the reduction of poverty in Latin America in the 2000s. Its analysis answers the following broad questions: Has economic growth resulted in gains in standards of living and reductions in poverty via improved labour market conditions in Latin America in the 2000s, and have these improvements halted or been reversed since the international crisis of 2008? How do the rate and character of economic growth, changes in the various employment and earnings indicators, and changes in poverty and inequality indicators relate to each other? Our contribution is an in-depth study of the multi-pronged growth–employment–poverty nexus based on a large number of labour market indicators (twelve employment and earnings indicators and four poverty and inequality indicators) for a large number of Latin American countries (sixteen of them). The book presents a positive and hopeful set of findings for the period 2000 to 2012–13. Economic growth took place and brought about improvements in almost all labour market indicators and consequent reductions in poverty rates. But not all improvements were equal in size or caused by the same things. Some macroeconomic factors were associated with changes in labour market conditions, some of them always in the welfare-improving direction and others always in the welfare-reducing direction. Most countries in the region suffered a deterioration in at least some labour market indicators as a consequence of the international crisis of 2008, but the negative effects were reversed very quickly in most countries.
The concept of equilibrium is fundamental to economic theory, according to which, it exists when supply and demand are balanced. Equilibrium Models in Economics critically examines the major problematic assumptions employed to build equilibrium models. It gives particular attention to the assumptions used to characterize learning, knowledge and expectations. Lawrence Boland here explores whether equilibrium models can provide a realistic explanation of economic events and objects such as prices, market demands and market supplies. He traces how the different perspectives on equilibrium models represented by such creators as Kenneth Arrow, Robert Clower, and George Richardson influenced subsequent developments in economics. A key debate is about the comparative importance of whether equilibrium refers to a state of an actual economy or a property of a formal mathematical model. Another is the extent that the distinction between a model's exogenous vs. endogenous variables involves causality. Also explored are more recent efforts provided by behavioral, evolutionary, and complexity economics-whether they might change how economics is practiced in the future and how they could. Equilibrium Models in Economics is a trenchant exploration of how the discipline has grappled with attempts to understand and explain the way information, knowledge, and the expectations of actors participating in the economy influence outcomes and behavior. It presents a realistic, workable theory of knowledge and learning, simulating how decision makers and other actors operate in fast-changing equilibrium conditions.
In some cases of insurgency, the combat frontier is contested and erratic, as rebels target cities as their economic prey. In other cases, it is tidy and stable, seemingly representing an equilibrium in which cities are effectively protected from violent non-state actors. What factors account for these differences in the interface between urban-based states and rural-based challengers? To explore this question, this volume examines two regions representing two dramatically different outcomes. In West Africa (Liberia and Sierra Leone), capital cities became economic targets for rebels, who posed dire threats to the survival of the state. In Maoist India, despite an insurgent ideology aiming to overthrow the state via a strategy of progressive city capture, the combat frontier effectively firewalls cities from Maoist violence. This book argues that trade networks underpinning the economic relationship between rural and urban areas - termed 'interstitial economies' - may differ dramatically in their impact on (and response to) the combat frontier. It explains rebel predatory tendencies towards cities as a function of transport networks allowing monopoly profits to be made by urban-based traders. It explains combat frontier delineation as a function of the social structure of the trade networks: hierarchical networks permit elite-elite bargains that cohere the frontier. These factors represent what might be termed respectively the 'hardware' and 'software' of the rural-urban economic relationship. Of interest to any student of political economy and violence, this book presents new arguments and insights about the relationships between violence and the economy, predation and production, core and periphery.
In 1962, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring sounded an alarm: the natural environment is being dangerously degraded because of human activity. Ever since, environmental protection has been a major societal concern. A robust system of environmental laws has emerged in the United States, commercial activities are increasingly scrutinized for their environmental impact, and communities around the world are becoming aware of the environment as a global issue requiring international attention. The most important evidence comes from the environment itself: the planet is warming, water supplies are at risk, ecosystems are under stress, and species are being lost at an unprecedented rate. Environmental Protection: What Everyone Needs to KnowRG provides accessible information that will help readers navigate this complex and highly relevant subject. It gives background information on the origins and development of environmental protection; introductions to the main elements of environmental protection with concrete examples; the context for understanding current issues; definitions of key terms; scientific, legal, and economic underpinnings; and discussion of hot-button current issues from nanopollution to climate change. The reader will gain familiarity with phenomena like biodiversity, the greenhouse effect, fugitive emissions, and algal blooms while learning about the impact of landmark policy initiatives like the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Kyoto Protocol, and the Paris Agreement.
Are profits and sustainability compatible? This book brings unique perspectives to this key debate by exploring the history of green entrepreneurship since the nineteenth century, and its spread globally in industries including renewable energy, organic food, natural beauty, ecotourism, recycling, architecture, and finance. The book uses the lens of the extraordinary and often eccentric men and women who defied convention and imagined that business could help save the planet, rather than consume it. The social and religious beliefs that drove many of these individuals are explored as the book looks at how they overcame huge obstacles to execute their strategies. The green entrepreneurs seen here are shown to have created new markets and industries, and driven innovations in sustainable practices, even at times when most consumers and governments marginalized the entire subject. The struggles of early pioneers appear to have been rewarded by the growth of environmental awareness among consumers, business leaders, and others in recent years, but the Earth's environmental health continues to deteriorate. If profits and sustainability have proved challenging to reconcile, the book argues that one reason was how they were both defined.
Labor Economics: Principles in Practice provides a concise, tightly integrated, and engaging exploration of labor economics. Focusing on core principles and immersing students in real data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), Ken McLaughlin lays out a clear analytical framework for thinking about labor-market issues and policies. The book's entire presentation-- from the conversational tone to the practice questions within each section-makes labor economics highly accessible to more students.
