Inflation Expectations
Inflation Expectations

Author: Peter J. N. Sinclair

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2009-12-16

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 1135179778

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Inflation is regarded by the many as a menace that damages business and can only make life worse for households. Keeping it low depends critically on ensuring that firms and workers expect it to be low. So expectations of inflation are a key influence on national economic welfare. This collection pulls together a galaxy of world experts (including Roy Batchelor, Richard Curtin and Staffan Linden) on inflation expectations to debate different aspects of the issues involved. The main focus of the volume is on likely inflation developments. A number of factors have led practitioners and academic observers of monetary policy to place increasing emphasis recently on inflation expectations. One is the spread of inflation targeting, invented in New Zealand over 15 years ago, but now encompassing many important economies including Brazil, Canada, Israel and Great Britain. Even more significantly, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and the United States Federal Bank are the leading members of another group of monetary institutions all considering or implementing moves in the same direction. A second is the large reduction in actual inflation that has been observed in most countries over the past decade or so. These considerations underscore the critical – and largely underrecognized - importance of inflation expectations. They emphasize the importance of the issues, and the great need for a volume that offers a clear, systematic treatment of them. This book, under the steely editorship of Peter Sinclair, should prove very important for policy makers and monetary economists alike.

The Geography of Innovation
The Geography of Innovation

Author: M.P. Feldman

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-06-29

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 9401733333

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This book offers a geographic dimension to the study of innovation and product commercialization. Building on the literature in economics and geography, this book demonstrates that product innovation clusters spatially in regions which provide concentrations of the knowledge needed for the commercialization process. The book develops a conceptual model which links the location of new product innovations to the sources of these knowledge inputs. The geographic concentration of this knowledge fonns a technological infrastructure which promotes infonnation transfers, and lowers the risks and the costs of engaging in innovative activity. Empirical estimation confinns that the location of product innovation is related to the underlying technological infrastructure, and that the location of the knowledge inputs are mutually reinforcing in defining a region's competitive advantage. The book concludes by considering the policy implications of these fmdings for both private finns and state governments. This work is intended for academics, policy practitioners and students in the fields of innovation and technological change, geography and regional science, and economic development. This work is part of a larger research effort to understand why the location of innovative activity varies spatially, specifically the externalities and increasing returns which accrue to location. xi Acknowledgements This work has benefitted greatly from discussions with friends and colleagues. I wish to specifically note the contribution of Mark Kamlet, Wes Cohen, Richard Florida, Zoltan Acs and David Audretsch. I would like to thank Gail Cohen Shaivitz for her dedication in editing the final manuscript.

Perspectives on a Changing World Order
Perspectives on a Changing World Order

Author: Council on Foreign Relations

Publisher:

Published: 2020-06-08

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9780876090060

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The benefits of the U.S-led order and the many international agreements that the United States has championed to open up the world to the free flow of goods, services, ideas, and people, no longer look so promising. This shift has caused a public backlash against globalization not only in the United States but also in many Western countries. The major powers either do not comprehend the risks of the current transitional period or they do not have a clear vision for a new international order that will be broadly acceptable and thus considered legitimate by most other states. With these concerns in mind, the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations asked leading scholars from major power countries to address a common set of questions about the current international order.

Advanced Microeconomics for Contract, Institutional, and Organizational Economics
Advanced Microeconomics for Contract, Institutional, and Organizational Economics

Author: W. Bentley MacLeod

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2022-04-05

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 0262046873

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A graduate textbook on microeconomics, covering decision theory, game theory, and the foundations of contract theory, with a unique focus on the empirical. This graduate-level text on microeconomics, covering such topics as decision theory, game theory, bargaining theory, contract theory, trade under asymmetric information, and relational contract theory, is unique in its emphasis on the interplay between theory and evidence. It reviews the microeconomic theory of exchange “from the ground up,” aiming to produce a set of models and hypotheses amenable to empirical exploration, with particular focus on models that are useful for the study of contracts, institutions, and organizations. It explores research that extends price theory to the exchange of commodities when markets are incomplete, discussing recent developments in the field. Topics covered include the relationship between theory and evidence; decision theory as it is used in contract theory and institutional design; game theory; axiomatic and strategic bargaining theory; agency theory and the class of models that are considered to constitute contract theory, with discussions of moral hazard and trade with asymmetric information; and the theory of relational contracts. The final chapter offers a nontechnical review that provides a guide to which model is the most appropriate for a particular application. End-of-chapter exercises help students expand their understanding of the material, and an appendix provides brief introduction to optimization theory and the welfare theorem of general equilibrium theory. Students are assumed to be familiar with general equilibrium theory and basic constrained optimization theory.

The Great Leveler
The Great Leveler

Author: Walter Scheidel

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2018-09-18

Total Pages: 525

ISBN-13: 0691184313

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How only violence and catastrophes have consistently reduced inequality throughout world history Are mass violence and catastrophes the only forces that can seriously decrease economic inequality? To judge by thousands of years of history, the answer is yes. Tracing the global history of inequality from the Stone Age to today, Walter Scheidel shows that inequality never dies peacefully. Inequality declines when carnage and disaster strike and increases when peace and stability return. The Great Leveler is the first book to chart the crucial role of violent shocks in reducing inequality over the full sweep of human history around the world. Ever since humans began to farm, herd livestock, and pass on their assets to future generations, economic inequality has been a defining feature of civilization. Over thousands of years, only violent events have significantly lessened inequality. The "Four Horsemen" of leveling—mass-mobilization warfare, transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic plagues—have repeatedly destroyed the fortunes of the rich. Scheidel identifies and examines these processes, from the crises of the earliest civilizations to the cataclysmic world wars and communist revolutions of the twentieth century. Today, the violence that reduced inequality in the past seems to have diminished, and that is a good thing. But it casts serious doubt on the prospects for a more equal future. An essential contribution to the debate about inequality, The Great Leveler provides important new insights about why inequality is so persistent—and why it is unlikely to decline anytime soon.

Commodity Terms of Trade
Commodity Terms of Trade

Author: International Monetary Fund

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2009-09-01

Total Pages: 36

ISBN-13: 1451873522

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We compile a historical dataset covering nearly 40 years of booms and busts in the commodity terms of trade of over 150 countries. We discuss the characteristics of these events and their effects on macroeconomic performance and, in particular, compare the most recent commodity-price cycle with its historical precedents.

What We Owe Each Other
What We Owe Each Other

Author: Minouche Shafik

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2022-08-23

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 069120764X

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From one of the leading policy experts of our time, an urgent rethinking of how we can better support each other to thrive Whether we realize it or not, all of us participate in the social contract every day through mutual obligations among our family, community, place of work, and fellow citizens. Caring for others, paying taxes, and benefiting from public services define the social contract that supports and binds us together as a society. Today, however, our social contract has been broken by changing gender roles, technology, new models of work, aging, and the perils of climate change. Minouche Shafik takes us through stages of life we all experience—raising children, getting educated, falling ill, working, growing old—and shows how a reordering of our societies is possible. Drawing on evidence and examples from around the world, she shows how every country can provide citizens with the basics to have a decent life and be able to contribute to society. But we owe each other more than this. A more generous and inclusive society would also share more risks collectively and ask everyone to contribute for as long as they can so that everyone can fulfill their potential. What We Owe Each Other identifies the key elements of a better social contract that recognizes our interdependencies, supports and invests more in each other, and expects more of individuals in return. Powerful, hopeful, and thought-provoking, What We Owe Each Other provides practical solutions to current challenges and demonstrates how we can build a better society—together.

Impacts of COVID-19 on food security: Panel data evidence from Nigeria
Impacts of COVID-19 on food security: Panel data evidence from Nigeria

Author: Amare, Mulubrhan

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2020-08-11

Total Pages: 44

ISBN-13:

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This paper combines pre-pandemic face-to-face survey data with follow up phone surveys collected in April-May 2020 to quantify the overall and differential impacts of COVID-19 on household food security, labor market participation and local food prices in Nigeria. We exploit spatial variation in exposure to COVID-19 related infections and lockdown measures along with temporal differences in our outcomes of interest using a difference-in-difference approach. We find that those households exposed to higher COVID-19 cases or mobility lockdowns experience a significant increase in measures of food insecurity. Examining possible transmission channels for this effect, we find that COVID-19 significantly reduces labor market participation and increases food prices. We find that impacts differ by economic activities and households. For instance, lockdown measures increased households' experience of food insecurity by 12 percentage points and reduced the probability of participation in non-farm business activities by 13 percentage points. These lockdown measures have smaller impacts on wage-related activities and farming activities. In terms of food security, households relying on non-farm businesses, poorer households, those with school-aged children, and those living in remote and conflicted-affected zones have experienced relatively larger deteriorations in food insecurity. These findings can help inform immediate and medium-term policy responses, including social protection policies aiming at ameliorating the impacts of the pandemic, as well as guide targeting strategies of governments and international donor agencies by identifying the most impacted sub-populations.