Browse

When firms and people are located near each other in cities and in industrial clusters, they benefit in various ways, including by reducing the costs of exchanging goods and ideas. One might assume that these benefits would become less important as transportation and communication costs fall. Paradoxically, however, cities have become increasingly important, and even within cities, industrial clusters remain vital. This book brings together chapters that examine the reasons why economic activity continues to cluster together despite the falling costs of moving goods and transmitting information. The studies cover a wide range of topics and approach the economics of agglomeration from different angles. Together they advance the understanding of agglomeration and its implications for a globalized world.

Between 1965 and 1985, the Western world and the United States in particular experienced a staggering amount of social and economic change. This book argues that the common thread underlying all these changes was the post-World War II baby boom—in particular, the passage of the baby boomers into young adulthood. The author focuses on the pervasive effects of changes in “relative cohort size,” the ratio of young to middle-aged adults, as masses of young people tried to achieve the standard of living to which they had become accustomed in their parents' homes despite dramatic reductions in their earning potential relative to that of their parents. She presents the results of detailed empirical analyses that illustrate how varied and important cohort effects can be on a wide range of economic indicators, social factors, and even on more tumultuous events including the stock market crash of 1929, the “oil shock” of 1973, and the “Asian flu” of the 1990s. The book demonstrates that no discussion of business or economic trends can afford to ignore the effects of population.

The first section of the book is concerned with how economics is, and should be used, in business. It stresses that the value of economics lies in being able to provide us with a better understanding of social and commercial issues, rather than help us forecast economic trends. Similarly, it provides a direction for the development of management science as a means of understanding the behaviour of firms.

The second section of the book examines the application of economics to the central strategic issues facing firms – their choice of activities and markets. It provides an exposition of the resource‐based theory of strategy, which examines the dynamics of the successes and failures of firms by reference to their distinctive capabilities.

The next section develops some broader themes that are suggested by the resource‐base view of strategy that recognizes the importance of corporate personality. This perception implies that large companies are fundamentally social institutions and the economic and social consequences of this result are examined.

The final section is a collection of shorter essays, which are designed to illustrate how business economics can be used to analyse a range of individual commercial issues such as pricing positioning and the evolution of industry structure.

For much of human history, most of the population lived and worked on farms but today, information about livestock is hard to come by. When romanticized notions of an agrarian lifestyle meet with the realities of the modern industrial farm, the result is often a plea for a return to antiquated production methods. The result is a brewing controversy between animal activist groups, farmers, and consumers that is currently being played out in ballot boxes, courtrooms, and in the grocery store. Where is one to turn for advice when deciding whether to pay double the price for cage-free eggs, or in determining how to vote on ballot initiates seeking to ban practices such as the use of gestation crates in pork production or battery cage egg production? At present, there is no clear answer. What is missing from the animal welfare debate is an objective approach that can integrate the writings of biologists and philosophers, while providing a sound and logical basis for determining the consequences of farm animal welfare policies. What is missing in the debate? This book journeys from the earliest days of animal domestication to modern industrial farms. Delving into questions of ethics and animal sentience, the book use data from ingenious consumers' experiments conducted with real food, real money, and real animals to compare the costs and benefits of improving animal care. It shows how the economic approach to animal welfare raises new questions and ethical conundrums, as well as providing unique and counter-intuitive results.

Chapters 1 to 5 discuss types, trends, and basic economics and psychology of consumer credit use, including credit demand, credit supply, theories from behavioral economics, and financial intermediation. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on how credit use can be productive for individuals (that is, wealth-increasing when there is a positive net present value to the transaction) and how it can change the timing of consumption to a preferred pattern. Individuals intuitively realize this, and survey evidence suggests that most uses of consumer credit involve productive purposes. Some uses of consumer credit may on occasion be less productive, even to the point of involving some sort of underlying irrational decision making, but irrationality is by no means the expectation or the norm. Chapters 5 to 8 then examine in considerable detail the credit production process known as financial intermediation. These chapters review how the development of consumer credit and its institutions reflect ongoing attempts to reduce the cost of the production process leading to technological change, evident in credit scoring, credit bureaus, and credit cards. Chapter 8 looks closely at specialized credit products sometimes known as fringe products. Chapters 9 to 13 examine the nature and effects of federal and state regulation of consumer credit. Chapter 12 includes ancillary products such as debt protection, including credit insurance, and a credit substitute in the form of automobile leasing. Chapter 13 examines what happens when things go seriously wrong, the domain of credit counseling and the consumer bankruptcy system. Chapter 14 provides a conclusion.

This book is based on detailed historical research in the USA and Germany, and represents a challenge to current orthodoxy on corporate governance. It is a challenging and informed examination of the links between the general business environment and the operations, decisions, and organizations of firms. The author also explores the links between corporate governance and innovation. The eight chapters are: Innovation, resource allocation, and governance; Transforming the debates on corporate governance; The foundations of managerial control in the USA; The post‐war evolution of managerial control in the United States; Challenges to post‐war managerial control in the USA; US corporate responses to new challenges; From managerial to contested control in Germany; and The emerging challenges to organizational control in Germany.

Among the questions tackled by Simon Domberger in this book are the following: When should organizations contract out services traditionally produced in‐house? Is outsourcing another ephemeral management fad, or is it an efficient and effective means of delivering services and of adding value? What are the characteristics of strategically sound contracting decisions? And how can organizations prosper from the outsourcing revolution? The book is based on over a decade of research and consulting experience, and its conclusions have many practical implications. It develops an analytical decision‐making framework for the assessment of contracting options, and has relevance in both the private and public sectors. It contains many illustrations and over 30 international case studies; over 50 companies and public sector organizations are discussed, including Microsoft, BP, Marks & Spencer and Samsung. The book is divided into four parts. Part I begins by considering the ‘make or buy’ decision, and this is followed by a discussion of the shifting boundaries of organizations, which revisits some of the critical issues underlying the theory of the firm. Part II examines in detail the benefits and costs of contracting. Part III examines the strategic aspects of contracting, involving the implementation of actual policies. Part IV looks at structural change associated with contracting, at the level of both individual sectors and the whole economy. Each chapter has a guide to further reading at its end.

This book brings a variety of perspectives—cultural, economic, political, and religious-philosophical—and years of field experience to this study about people who borrow and lend in the interior of Africa. It focuses on the efforts of Luo-speaking people and others in Kenya to make sense of, and cope with, foreign interventions in the form of credit. The book also reveals that contemporary financial aid programs in western Kenya are deeply rooted in colonial and early postcolonial history, and examines how credit begins to appear in the three faces of usury, charity, and fantasy. It notes the important role of women in Kenyan farming and argues that they should be “adequately represented” as recipients of training and extension. The book discusses the loan repayment under the Integrated Agricultural Development Project and the Smallholder Production Services and Credit Project, and compares the tobacco-growing project of British American Tobacco with government and international aid agencies' projects in Kenya, focusing on the subject of credit and discredit. Its conclusions challenge the conventional wisdom of the past half century (including perennial World Bank orthodoxy) about the need for credit among African farming people.

Anjan Mukherji, arguably one of India's most distinguished economists, is known for his research on the stability of the Walrasian tatonnement, its relation to the weak axiom of revealed preference, the effect of choice of the numeraire and its relation to the Edgeworth-Uzawa barter process. Two of his recent papers, ‘Global Stability Conditions on the Plane: A General Law of Demand’ (2007) and ‘The Stability of a Competitive Economy: A Reconsideration’ (2008), have yielded especially interesting results. This book explores various aspects of economic theory and quantitative techniques as well as their applications and relevance to policymaking. Chapters deal with a wide range of topics such as Markovian equilibria in a dynamic general equilibrium model with heterogeneous consumers, monotone Markov models, multiple equilibria in a dynamic two-country model, observability of chaotic economic dynamics in the Matsuyama model, a simple exposition of learning by doing in endogenous growth theory, economic growth and the quality of teachers in a public education system, wealth effects, investment-led growth cycles, distraction and incentives, liquidity preference and information, coordination in teams, decomposition of accident loss and efficiency of negligence rule, international cartels and spheres of influence, price competition in a mixed duopoly, recommended play versus costly punishments in a laboratory public goods game, and India's monetary policy accommodation during the global crisis. It also examines private investment in human capital and industrial development, focusing on the Indian software industry, and arranged marriage, co-residence and female schooling in India.

This book concerns working hours - in the past and in the present, in America and in Britain. The focus is on the relationship between working hours and outcome , such as production and health. Proportional increases in working hours are shown to result in smaller proportional increases in production, and the benefits in output of long working hours may not offset the consequences of long hours for the health and quality of life of workers. A distinction is made between nominal hours (those that individuals are observed to be working) and effective hours (those that are effective in producing goods and that are compatible with good health). The meaning of the link between hours and average hourly earnings receives particular attention. Firms are encouraged to experiment with different hours..

Business strategy is becoming increasingly ’pluralist’, drawing on the insights of different disciplines and business practice in different parts of the world. This book brings together, under three main headings, the work and ideas of leading international scholars working in the field: Part I, Technology in the firm (4 chapters); Strategy/organization (6 chapters); and Part III, Regions (8 chapters). The purpose of the book is to explore, from different perspectives, the dynamic interplay between the technology of a firm, its strategies, organizational choices, and issues of place, region, and location. The volume is an edited version of the revised papers that were originally presented at the Third Prince Bertil Symposium on the Dynamic Firm, in Stockholm, in June 1994.

Advances in human genetics have begun to yield clinical benefits through the development of Precision Medicine (PM). The benefits of this innovation are promising, both through application of constitutional genetics detecting mutations that affect the risk of disease and tumor genetics, and malignancy-causing mutations susceptible to targeted therapies. While PM may ultimately be used in all aspects of medicine, to date, the most fruitful applications have been in maternal-fetal medicine and cancer. However, due to the complexity and cost of developing these innovations, and to privacy issues, advancing PM is a challenge in traditional clinical, reimbursement, and regulatory landscapes. Although much of the literature focuses on challenges in relating constellations of mutations to the identification of actual current or potential disease states, and to the efficacy of treatments, diffusion of PM also depends on many non-clinical factors. For example, how will information on accurate diagnosis and treatment success be disseminated, and who will bear the cost? How might physician training change to incorporate genetic, probability, statistics, and economic considerations? How can patients reconcile with the ethical and privacy concerns related to the availability of genetic information? Will the era of PM yield still more disparities in access to care? Will cost-effectiveness analysis need to change to better take into account patient heterogeneity? This volume explores the intersection of the scientific, clinical, and economic factors to consider in developing PM. We explore the theoretical and historical underpinnings of PM, discuss implementation issues, and present examples of real-world applications.

This book contains articles by leading economists in which they forecast the way in which economics will evolve in the new millennium. The three sections of the book concern the microfoundations of macroeconomics, markets and organization, and issues in econometrics. Each of these themes reflect a major interest of the GREQAM research group in Marseille. The book was published to celebrate the 10th birthday of the group.

Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) highlight its potential to affect productivity, growth, inequality, market power, innovation, and employment. In September 2017, the National Bureau of Economic Research held its first conference on the Economics of AI in Toronto. The purpose of the conference and associated volume is to set the research agenda for economists working on AI. The focus of the volume is on the economic impact of machine learning, a branch of computational statistics that has driven the recent excitement around AI. The volume also highlights key questions on the economic impact of robotics and automation, as well as the potential economic consequences of a still-hypothetical artificial general intelligence. The volume covers four broad themes: AI as a general purpose technology; the relationship between AI, growth, jobs, and inequality; regulatory responses to changes brought on by AI; and the effects of AI on the way economic research is conducted. In highlighting these themes, the volume provides several frameworks for understanding the economic impact of AI. In doing so, it identifies a number of key open research questions in a variety of research areas including productivity, growth, decision-making, jobs, inequality, market structure, privacy, trade, liability, political economy, econometrics, behavioral economics, and innovation.

Cluster policies have become very popular among policy makers over the last thirty years. However, the mechanisms at work behind cluster dynamics, the gains that can be expected from more clustering, and the determinants of cluster policies that are implemented are not so clear. This book addresses these issues theoretically and empirically on the French case. Studying France is interesting because there is a long tradition of strong government intervention regarding the location of economic activity and because French cluster initiatives are more or less unified across the country. From a theoretical point of view, spatial agglomeration brings gains until a certain point from which congestion effects can offset these gains, and under certain conditions, it is likely that firms tend to cluster too much. This raises questions about cluster policies that would aim at always increasing concentration. Moreover, cluster policies are very demanding in terms of information and are subject to many political economy issues. The empirical analysis on French firm‐level data confirms that, in the short run, firms reap gains from agglomeration until a given level of agglomeration from which congestion effects become more important. Given these agglomeration economies, the current geography in France does not seem vastly suboptimal. On the other hand, the analysis of the first cluster policy implemented in this country shows that traditional equity determinants of regional policies, instead of competitiveness considerations, were still in play. In that sense, while acknowledging the positive impact of spatial agglomeration on firm‐level performance, this book tends to tone down the worldwide enthusiasm for cluster policies.

However much people want esteem, it is an untradeable commodity: there is no way that I can buy the good opinion of another or sell to others my good opinion of them. But though it is a non-tradable good, esteem is allocated in society according to systematic determinants; people’s performance, publicity and presentation relative to others will help fix how much esteem they enjoy and how much disesteem they avoid. The fact that it is subject to such determinants means in turn that rational individuals are bound to compete with one another, however tacitly, in the attempt to control those influences, increasing their chances of winning esteem and avoiding disesteem. And the fact that they all compete for esteem in this way shapes the environment in which they each pursue the good, setting relevant comparators and benchmarks, and determining the cost that a person must bear–the price that they must pay–for obtaining a given level of esteem in any domain of activity.

Hidden in the multifarious interactions and exchanges of social life, then, there is a quiet force at work–a force as silent and powerful as gravity–which moulds the basic form of people’s relationships and associations. This force was more or less routinely invoked in the writings of classical theorists like Aristotle and Plato, Locke and Montesquieu, Mandeville and Hume and Madison. Sometimes it was invoked to explain why people behaved as they did, sometimes to identify initiatives whereby they might be persuaded to behave better. Although Adam Smith himself gave it great credence, however, the rise of economics proper coincided with a sudden decline in the attention devoted to the economy of esteem. What had been a topic of compelling interest for earlier authors fell into relative neglect throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This book is designed to reverse the trend. It begins by outlining the psychology of esteem and the way the working of that psychology can give rise to an economy. It then shows how a variety of social patterns that are otherwise anomalous come to make a lot of sense within an economics of esteem. And it looks, finally, at the ways in which the economy of esteem may be reshaped so as to make for an improvement–by reference to received criteria–in overall social outcomes. While making connections with older patterns of social theorizing, it offers a novel orientation for contemporary thought about how society works and how it may be made to work. It puts the economy of esteem firmly on the agenda of economic and social science and of moral and political theory.

The book explains what is meant by the term “Strategic Management of Place” and why it is important, and provides a motivation for this theme. In particular, while there is considerable interest and concern in the economic performance of a place, whether it is a town, city, region, or state, there is no field providing an intellectual framework for decision-making in a manner analogous to the field of strategic management for firms and organizations. This book posits a systematic and strategic framework to stimulate and guide practitioners, public policy leaders, and other individuals with a mandate to engage in the strategic management of their place in framing and implementing strategies designed to enhance the economic performance of their place. It is emphasized that this includes not just public officials, such as state and city economic development agencies, but also a much broader spectrum of practitioners, such as chambers of commerce, consulting firms, local activists, city leaders, and concerned citizens, as well as businesses with any kind of link or vested interest to a particular place. A particular focus is on how a strategy of entrepreneurship and innovation can be developed to enhance the competitiveness of a particular place.

Sheds some light on how markets develop. In particular, it suggests that the ‘new economy’ is not much different from the ‘old economy’ and that in general, the early evolution of markets can significantly shape their later structure. The main arguments are elaborated in four chapters, each of them extensively illustrated with product‐case studies (internet, automobiles, television, or mobile phones, etc.). Ch. 2 explores the drivers of innovation and concludes that new technologies are basically pushed on to the market from the supply side. Ch. 3 looks at the dynamics of entry in a new market. Ch. 4 deals with the emergence of a dominant design as a consensus good. Ch. 5 shows how the dominant design shapes the nature of the competition in the new mass market and describes the logistical growth pattern characteristic of most new markets. The last chapter is devoted to sketch out the basic features of market evolution that follow from the events in the early stages of development.

The book covers the modern developments in Evolutionary Game Theory, with an emphasis on economic contexts and applications. It begins with the basic ideas as they originated within the field of theoretical biology, focusing on the core notions of Evolutionarily Stable Strategy and Replicator Dynamics. Both the static and dynamic approaches of this biological literature are presented in detail, and the general analysis illustrated with numerous examples. It then proceeds to the formulation of a theoretical framework that is suitable for the study of social and economic phenomena from an evolutionary perspective. After a discussion of strictly deterministic dynamic models, stochastic perturbations are introduced in order to account for the social‐ and individual‐based sources of ‘noise’ (including aggregate shocks, agents’ experimentation, and population renewal), which play an important role in evolutionary processes.

Evolutionary Theory has become one of the leading approaches to understanding bounded rationality, learning, and change in complex social environments. The recent boom experienced by this discipline makes this book's systematic presentation of its fundamental contributions essential reading for any newcomer to the field. In addition, new avenues of research are suggested, and plentiful examples illustrate the theory's potential applications.

Corporate success derives from a competitive advantage, which is based on distinctive capabilities. Competitive advantage relates to the unique character of a firm's relationship with its suppliers, customers, or employees, which must be precisely identified and applied to the relevant markets. Distinctive capabilities as sources of competitive advantage can be separated into four broad categories.

Architecture refers to a network of relationships or implicit contracts within or around the firm. It adds value by helping to create organizational knowledge and routines, which enable the company to respond flexibly to changing circumstances and allow easy exchanges of information. Reputation is the main commercial mechanism for conveying information to consumers. By protecting and exploiting innovation, the company can derive competitive advantage, if it can appropriate the gains associated with it. A final potential source of competitive advantage not based on the distinctive capabilities of firms is a strategic asset that includes government‐mandated monopolies or other features of market structure, which restrict market access by competitors.

Firms that enjoy distinctive capabilities must seek to transform them into competitive advantages. To achieve this, distinctive capabilities must be sustainable and their benefits must be appropriated through corporate and competitive strategies. Corporate strategy is concerned with the businesses the firm is in, competitive strategy with its relationship with other firms in the businesses it chooses. In each case, the key measure of corporate success is the ability of the firm to add value to the resources it uses.