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Thirty percent of foreign development aid is channeled through NGOs or community-based organizations to improve service delivery to the poor, build social capital, and establish democracy in developing nations. However, growing evidence suggests that aid often erodes, rather than promotes, cooperation within developing nations. This book presents a rare, micro level account of the complex decision-making processes that bring individuals together to form collective-action platforms. It then examines why aid often breaks down the very institutions for collective action that it aims to promote. The book identifies concrete measures to check the erosion of cooperation in foreign aid scenarios. Pakistan is one of the largest recipients of international development aid, and therefore the empirical details presented are particularly relevant for policy. The book's argument is equally applicable to a number of other developing countries, and has important implications for recent discussions within the field of economics.

This book offers an interpretation of the Chinese monetary system, charting its evolution by examining key moments in history – from BCE 600 up to the present. It places these moments in international perspective by comparing primary sources in multiple languages and across three millennia. The book begins exploring the trajectory of Chinese currency at the birth of coinage around the world and ends with the implications of the current global financial crisis for China and the rest of the world. Its narrative highlights the way that Chinese money developed in relation to the currencies of other countries, paying special attention to the origins of paper money, the relationship between the West’s ascendancy and its mineral riches, the linkages between pre-modern finance, debasement, and then inflation with the emergence of nation-statehood. The book then looks ahead to the possible globalization of the RMB, the currency of the People’s Republic of China against the backdrop of growing global uncertainties as to America’s federal debt.

This book presents an economic analysis of decisions made by criminals and victims of crime before, during, and after a crime or victimization occurs. Its main purpose is to illustrate how the application of analytical tools from economics can help us to understand the causes and consequences of criminal and victim choices, aiding efforts to deter or reduce the consequences of crime. By examining these decisions along a logical timeline over which crimes take place, we can begin to think more clearly about how policy effects change when it is targeted at specific decisions within the body of a crime. This book differs from others by recognizing the timeline of a crime, paying particular attention to victim decisions, and examining each step in the crime cycle at the micro-level. It demonstrates that criminals plan their crimes in systematic, economically logical ways; that deterring the destruction of criminal evidence may deter crime in general; and that white-collar criminals exhibit recidivism patterns not unlike those of street criminals. It further shows that the degree of criminality in a society motivates a variety of self-protection behaviors by potential victims; that not all victim resistance makes matters worse (and some may help); and that victims who report their crimes do not receive high returns for going to the police, helping to explain why some crimes ultimately go unreported.

This book challenges the static, ahistorical models on which economics continues to rely. These models presume that markets operate on a “frictionless” plane where abstract forces play out independent of their institutional and spatial contexts, and of the influences of the past. In reality, at any point in time exogenous factors are themselves outcomes of complex historical processes, and are shaped by institutional and spatial contexts, which are “carriers of history,” including past economic dynamics and market outcomes. To examine the connections between gradual, evolutionary change and more dramatic, revolutionary shifts, the text takes on a wide array of historically salient economic questions—ranging from how formative, European encounters reconfigured the political economies of indigenous populations in Africa, the Americas, and Australia to how the rise and fall of the New Deal order reconfigured labor market institutions and outcomes in the twentieth-century United States. These explorations are joined by a common focus on formative institutions, spatial structures, and market processes. Through historically informed economic analyses, contributors recognize the myriad interdependencies among these three frames, as well as their distinct logics and temporal rhythms.

For decades, the traditional approaches to business valuation (market, asset, and income) have taken center stage in the assessment of the firm. This book presents an expanded valuation toolkit, consisting of nine well-defined valuation principles hailing from the fields of economics, finance, accounting, taxation, and management. It ultimately argues that the “value functional” approach to business valuation avoids most of the shortcomings of its competitors, and more correctly matches the actual motivations and information held by stakeholders. To remedy the shortcomings of existing theory, the author proposes a new definition of the firm that is consistent with the principle that entrepreneurs maximize value, not profit.

This book is a clarion call to sports fans. It proposes a significant restructuring of sports leagues. The book sets out a rational program for a revolution that will serve the best interests of the fans and of the sport itself. But the book is not Marxist: it shows how a revolution in the organization of sports might even benefit the owners. By harnessing the power of markets, sports leagues can be made both more responsive to the needs of the fans, and more efficient. Many years were spent before this bok was written evaluating the ways in which leagues work across the globe. Drawing on an extensive study of leagues, the book boils down a plan to two major reforms. Borrowing from NASCAR, the book proposes that team owners should not own sports leagues as well. Rather, league ownership should be separate. The second proposal is drawn from soccer: introduce competition through a promotion and relegation system. In this type of system, the worst teams in the league are kicked out at the end of the season and replaced by the best-performing teams in the next division down. This gives poor performing teams incentive to step up their game, and allows fresh blood to enter the leagues if the poor performers fail to do so.

Although organ transplants provide the best, and often the only, effective therapy for many otherwise fatal conditions, the great benefits of transplantation go largely unrealized because of failures in the organ acquisition process. In the United States, for instance, more than 10,000 people die every year either awaiting transplantation, or as a result of deteriorating health exacerbated by the shortage of organs. Issues pertaining to organ donation and transplantation represent, perhaps, the most complex and morally controversial medical dilemmas aside from abortion and euthanasia. However, these quandaries are not unsolvable. This book proposes compensating organ donors within a publicly controlled monopsony. This proposal is quite similar to current practice in Spain, where compensation for cadaveric donation now occurs “in secret,” as this text reveals. To build their recommendations, the authors provide a medical history of transplantation; a history of the development of national laws and waiting lists; a careful examination of the social costs and benefits of transplantation; a discussion of the causes of organ shortages; an evaluation of “partial” reforms tried or proposed; and an extensive ethical evaluation of the current system and its competitors.

This book starts from the observation that the rise of China, India and other newly industrializing countries constitutes a triumph of industrialization in that it is lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. At the same time it confronts the “inconvenient truth” that the model of industrialization utilized so far, based on fossil fuels and extensive resource throughput, cannot scale to accommodate the needs of billions more people. Since it is unthinkable that China et al should be told that they are not allowed to grow their way out of poverty, the only solution lies in finding a new development model. This book argues that such a model is indeed being pursued – a “green growth” model – and that the principal exponent of such a transformation is China itself. It argues that the transformation is occurring not just at the level of macro policies but fundamentally at the level of new energy systems, new resource circulating systems, and new systems of eco-finance channeling investment in these new directions. Against those who hold that carbon taxes and carbon markets should be allowed to lead this transition, the book points to the efficacy of China’s approach in utilizing strong state interventions to guide the system onto a new, renewable (green) trajectory, even as it grows the coal-fired (black) trajectory as well. The book is neither optimistic nor pessimistic but realist in its evaluation of the forces unleashed, constituting a vast uncontrolled experiment whose outcome is anything but determined.

This book provides an in-depth economic and policy analysis of Hispanic entrepreneurs in the first decade of the 2000s. This book captures a flavor of issues related to the business cycle, economic outcomes (such as employment, sales, and contributions to tax coffers), socio-demographic characteristics, access to financial capital, the use and importance of digital technology, and public procurement and other policies affecting Hispanic business owners in the early 2000s. One distinguishing feature of this book is that it provides a comprehensive empirical analysis of many of these issues for specific Hispanic populations, such as men versus women, immigrants versus natives, and across Hispanic sub-groups (Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Salvadorans). The first decade of the 2000s witnessed the dramatic growth in the Hispanic population and the intensification of their entrepreneurial tendencies. If these demographic changes continue as the 2000s unfold, Hispanic entrepreneurship will become an increasingly vital component of American job creation and to the economic direction of the nation.

This book provides an in-depth investigation of the link between human capital and economic growth. The book examines the determinants of economic growth through a historical overview of the concept of human capital. The text fosters an understanding of the connection between human capital and economic growth through the exploration of different theoretical approaches, a review of the literature, and the application of nonlinear estimation techniques to a comprehensive data set. The book discusses nonparametric econometric techniques and their application to estimating nonlinearities—which has emerged as one of the most salient features of empirical work in modeling the human capital–growth relationship, and the process of economic growth in general.

This book presents readers with an exercise in modeling human ways of being—thinking, feeling, acting. It does not merely introduce models, but also attempts to teach modeling, and to produce, within the reader, the predispositions and attitudes of the modeler: a distance from the individual whose behavior is modeled, an engineering approach to the model-building process, a (self)-critical approach to the model testing and elaboration process, and a pedagogical and a therapeutic approach to enacting and communicating models. The author makes the process and the phenomenon of modeling transparent and explicit, and clarifies the reasons for which modeling human behavior has to be an interactive process between the modeler and the modeled. This perspective situates the book at the intersection of analytical and computational thinking about rationality, reasoning, choice and thinking, and the tradition of action science and action research.

This book attempts to distill econometrics into a form that preserves its essence, but that is acceptable—and even appealing—to the student's intellectual palate. It insists on rigor when it is essential, but it emphasizes intuition and seizes upon entertainment wherever possible. The book is motivated by three beliefs. First, students are, perhaps despite themselves, interested in questions that only econometrics can answer. Second, through these answers, they can come to understand, appreciate, and even enjoy the enterprise of econometrics. Third, this text, which presents select innovations in presentation and practice, can provoke readers' interest and encourage the responsible and insightful application of econometric techniques. In particular, the book gives readers many opportunities to practice proofs—which are challenging, but which it has been found to improve reader comprehension. Learning from proofs gives readers an organic understanding of the message behind the numbers, a message that will benefit them as they come across statistics in their daily lives.

This book introduces the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant—in particular, the concepts of autonomy, dignity, and character—to economic theory, explaining the importance of integrating these two streams of intellectual thought. Mainstream economics is rooted in classical utilitarianism, recommending that decision makers choose the options that are expected to generate the largest net benefits. For individuals, the standard economic model fails to incorporate the role of principles in decision-making, and also denies the possibility of true choice, which can be independent of preferences and principles altogether. For policymakers, standard decision-making frameworks recommend tradeoffs that are beneficial in terms of material goods or wealth, but may be morally questionable from a more person-centered perspective. Integrating Kantian ethics affects economics in three important ways. This integration allows for a more complete understanding of human choice, incorporating not just preferences and constraints, but also principles and strength of will or character. It demonstrates the broader impact of welfare economics, which generates policies that affect not only persons' well-being, but also their dignity and autonomy. Finally, it reconciles the traditional, individualist stance in economic models of choice with the social responsibility emphasized by many systems of philosophical ethics and heterodox schools of economics.

Recently, a growing body of work on “law and finance” and “legal origins” has highlighted the role of formal legal institutions in shaping financial institutions. However, these writings have focused largely on Europe, neglecting important non-Western traditions that prevail in a large part of the world. This book brings together a group of leading scholars from economics, economic history, law, and area studies to develop a unique, global and, long-term perspective on the linkage between law and economic change. Covering the regions of Western Europe, East and South Asia, and the Middle East, the chapters explore major themes regarding the nature and evolution of different legal regimes; their relationship with the state or organized religion; the definition and interpretation of ownership and property rights; the functioning of courts, and other mechanisms for dispute resolution and contract enforcement; and the complex dynamics of legal transplantations through processes such as colonization. The text makes clear that the development of legal traditions and institutions—as embodiments of cultural values and norms—exerts a strong effect on long-term economic change. And it demonstrates that a good understanding of legal origins around the world enriches any debate about Great Divergence in the early modern era, as well as development and underdevelopment in 19th–20th-century Eurasia.

Lifecycle Events and Their Consequences: Job Loss, Family Change, and Declines in Health brings together leading scholars to study the impact of unexpected life course events on economic welfare. The contributions in this volume explore how job loss, the onset of health limitations, and changes in household structure can have a pronounced influence on individual and household well-being across the life course. Although these events are typically studied in isolation, they frequently co-occur or are otherwise interrelated. This book provides a systematic empirical overview of these sometimes uncertain events and their impacts. By placing them in a unified analytical framework and approaching each of them from a similar perspective, this book illustrates the importance of a coherent approach to thinking about the inter-relationships among these shifts. Finally, this volume aims to set the future research agenda in this important area.

This book examines technological advance and market regulation in the health industries of nations such as India, Brazil, South Africa, Nigeria, and China. Pharmaceutical and life science industries can reinforce economic development and industry growth, but not necessarily positive health outcomes. Yet well-crafted industrial and health policies can strengthen each other and reconcile economic and social goals. This book advocates moving beyond traditional market failure to bring together three uncommonly paired themes: the growth of industrial capabilities, the politics of health access, and the geography of production and redistribution.

The worldwide spread of neoliberalism has transformed economies, polities, and societies everywhere. In conventional accounts, American and Western European economists, such as Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, sold neoliberalism by popularizing their free market ideas and radical criticisms of the state. Rather than focusing on the agency of a few prominent, conservative economists, this book reveals a dialogue among many economists on both sides of the Iron Curtain about democracy, socialism, and markets. These discussions led to the transformations of 1989 and, unintentionally, the rise of neoliberalism. The book takes a truly transnational look at economists' professional ideas over 100 years across the capitalist West and the socialist East. Clearly translating complicated economic ideas and neoliberal theories, it presents a significant reinterpretation of Cold War history, the fall of communism, and the rise of today's dominant economic ideology.

Why do some societies achieve high standards of living, relatively broad access to education and quality health care, serviceable infrastructure, predictable and largely impersonal legal procedures, and relatively accessible avenues to peaceful political expression, while others stagnate with guarded islands of extravagant wealth, surrounded by oceans of poverty, corrupt autocratic systems, and simmering conflicts—or even full-blown civil wars? Why, did South Korea, a dictatorship that faced devastating war from 1950-1954, and whose 1960 GDP per capita was half that of Mexico and twice that of India, have, by 2015, a per capita GDP that exceeded Mexico’s by a factor of three and India’s by a factor of 17—in addition to a largely peaceful transition to democracy? How might a society, trapped in stagnation, corruption, and repression, initiate and sustain processes of economic and political development?

The environmental justice literature convincingly shows that poor people and minorities live in more polluted neighborhoods than do other groups. These findings have sparked a broad activist movement, numerous local lawsuits, and several federal policy reforms. Despite the importance of environmental justice, the topic has received little attention from economists. And yet, economists have much to contribute, as several explanations for the correlation between pollution and marginalized citizens rely on market mechanisms. Understanding the role of these mechanisms is crucial to designing policy remedies, for each lends itself to a different interpretation to the locus of injustices. Moreover, the different mechanisms have varied implications for the efficacy of policy responses—and who gains and loses from them. This book further evaluates why underprivileged citizens are overexposed to toxic environments and what policy can do to help.

This book is a study of economic history. It describes what is perhaps the most crucial time for development economics: the birth of the “third world,” the creation of development economics as a discipline, and the establishment of the World Bank's leading role in development. Using previously unavailable archival material, the text takes a close look at the years during which the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development—now known as the World Bank—turned its attention from reconstruction to development, having been upstaged by the Marshall Plan. The author describes the “Currie Mission” to Colombia (1949–1954), the World Bank's first general survey mission in a developing nation. With the Currie Mission as a starting point and a case study, he analyzes the complexities of the Bank's first steps toward economic and social development in poorer nations, and helps the reader understand some foundational questions about development that are still of great relevance today. The book is essential reading for anyone interested in the economic history of international development as a lens for better understanding current development issues.