Business : Economic Conditions

This book explores various aspects of the relationship between service industries and economic development in Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan, Singapore, India, Australia and New Zealand. It provides new sector-oriented and regional and national perspectives on services and development. more...

Price: $114.95

This significant new book analyses fundamental changes in society-nature interaction: the socioeconomic use of materials, energy and land. The volume presents a number of case studies addressing transitions from an agrarian to an industrial socioecological regime, analysed within the materials and energy flow accounting (MEFA) framework. It is argued that by concentrating on the biophysical dimensions of change in the course of industrialization, social development issues can be explicitly linked to changes in the natural environment. From the historical transition in Europe, to current transitions in developing countries, the book offers a broad and comprehensive analysis of transition processes across scales, from local to national. The comparison of historical and current assessments allows a theory of the underlying patterns of the agrarian-industrial transition to emerge. On this basis, future trends and possible pathways towards (or indeed further departures from) sustainability are discussed. more...

Price: $115.00

Offering new research on strategic factors in the development of the nineteenth century American economy—labor, capital, and political structure—the contributors to this volume employ a methodology innovated by Robert W. Fogel, one of the leading pioneers of the "new economic history." Fogel's work is distinguished by the application of economic theory and large-scale quantitative evidence to long-standing historical questions. These sixteen essays reveal, by example, the continuing vitality of Fogel's approach. The authors use an astonishing variety of data, including genealogies, the U.S. federal population census manuscripts, manumission and probate records, firm accounts, farmers' account books, and slave narratives, to address collectively market integration and its impact on the lives of Americans. The evolution of markets in agricultural and manufacturing labor is considered first; that concerning capital and credit follows. The demography of free and slave populations is the subject of the third section, and the final group of papers examines the extra-market institutions of governments and unions. more...

Price: $90.00

Two decades since the fall of the Berlin wall, Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, is experiencing the deepest contraction and is expected to see the weakest recovery in output among all emerging and developing economy regions a result of the global financial and economic crisis. Their commitment to open trade and financial integration as part of the transition from plan to market has brought many gains, but a combination of large global imbalances during this period and policy weaknesses in a number of countries made them vulnerable to the crisis. The global recession is expected to be deeper and more protracted than any in recent memory and will test the international community's commitment to both the middle income countries of emerging Europe with access to capital markets as well as the poorest countries of the former Soviet Union. Recovery from the crisis will require domestic policy reform in the countries and coordinated and sustained international collective action.After two decades, the business environment in transition countries increasingly resembles that of market economies at similar levels of per capita income. Strong private sector growth preceding 2008-2009 led to firms reporting infrastructure and skilled labor as being among the most important barriers to doing business for the first time since transition began. But rapid growth has also increased the costs to firms of weak market economy institutions, in part the product of legacy, especially in respect of the legal environment and corruption. Preparing for the recovery from crisis will require attention to these weaknesses in the enabling environment. more...

Price: $28.00

The rules and principles that have governed business for half a century are dead; what matters now, more than anything else, is creativity and ideas. In a thought-provoking look at the death of 'old' marketing, Mark Earls explores this sea change and shows how the new philosophy can be used to solve traditional marketing problems. He also provides detailed guidance for building an organization for which employees will choose to work - one within which creativity and ideas can flourish. more...

Price: $50.00