This book discusses the developments in trade theories, including new-new trade models that account for firm level trade flows, trade growth accounting using inverse gravity models (including distortions in gravity models), the impact of trade liberalization under the aegis of regional and multilateral liberalization efforts of economies using partial and general equilibrium analysis, methodologies of constructing ad valorem equivalents of non-tariff barriers, volatility spillover effects of financial and exchange rate markets. The main purpose of the book is to guide researchers working in the area of international trade, especially focused on empirical analysis of trade policy issues by updating their knowledge on issues related to trade theory, empirical methods, and their applications. The book would prove useful for policy makers, academicians, and researchers.
These conference proceedings cover an outstanding view for academics and professionals to share research findings on the latest developments in real estate and construction management. The Chinese Research Institute of Construction Management (CRIOCM) in collaboration with Chongqing University organized CRIOCM2014, the 19th International Symposium on “Advancement of Construction Management and Real Estate.” The proceedings collect 105 selected papers addressing the following key themes: Sustainable Urbanization, Sustainable Construction, Urban Construction and Management, Affordable Housing, Urban Land Development and Utilization, Management for Large Infrastructure Projects, Green Construction Materials and Construction Waste Management, Development and Management for Mountainous Towns, Advancement of Construction Project Management, Redevelopment in Disaster Areas, Law and Policies for Construction and Real Estate, Information Technology for Construction Management and Real Estate and lastly Other Topics.
Steve Isser provides a generalist history of electricity policy from the 1978 Energy Policy Act to the present, covering the economic, legal, regulatory, and political issues and controversies in the transition from regulated utilities to competitive electricity markets.
In many discussions of nations' development, we often focus on their economic and social development. Is it becoming wealthier? Is its society modernizing? Is it becoming more technologically sophisticated? Are social outcomes improving for the broad mass of the public? The process of development policy implementation, however, is always and inevitably political. Put simply, regime type matters when it comes to deciding on a course of development to follow. Further, political institutions matter. When a government's institutional capacity is low, the chances of success severely decline, regardless of the merits of the development plan. In The Oxford Handbook of the Politics of Development, two of America's leading political scientists on the issue, Carol Lancaster and Nicolas van de Walle, have assembled an international cast of leading scholars to craft a broad, state-of-the-art work on this vitally important topic. This volume is divided into five sections: major theories of the politics of development, organized historically (e.g. modernization theory, dependency theory, the Washington consensus of 'policies without politics,' etc.); key domestic factors and variables; key international factors and variables; political systems and structures; and geographical perspectives, inclusive of regional dynamics. A comprehensive and cross-regional examination on key issues of political development, this Handbook not only provides an authoritative synthesis of past scholarship, but also sets the agenda for future research in this discipline.
This volume is the culmination of Institute investigations on the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and development. Today, more than one-third of world trade takes place in the form of intrafirm transactions—that is, trade among the various parts of the same corporate network spread across borders—and the bulk of technology is transferred within the confines of integrated international production systems. This means that FDI and the operations of multinational corporations have become central to the world economy at large. Nowhere is this more important than for developing countries. But as Theodore Moran argues in this new volume, FDI is not a single phenomenon. FDI has such different impacts in the extractive sector, infrastructure, manufacturing and assembly, and services—and presents such distinctive policy challenges—that each broad category of FDI must be treated on its own terms. Indeed, past studies that have aggregated all FDI flows together to try to find some unique relationship to host-country growth or welfare have led to unreliable substantive findings and, sometimes, mistaken policy conclusions. Moran examines each of the principal forms of FDI, extracts the best from previous analysis, and offers new findings and perspectives about how benefits from FDI in each sector can be enhanced and potential damages limited or eliminated.
Focuses on the different methods that economic science has employed in order to detect and measure barriers to entry. This book presents a chronological analysis of competing Harvard and Chicago Schools' interpretations of this phenomenon.
This book covers the main topics that students need to learn in a course on Industrial Organization. It reviews the classic models and important empirical evidence related to the field. However, it will differ from prior textbooks in two ways. First, this book incorporates contributions from behavioral economics and neuroeconomics, providing the reader with a richer understanding of consumer preferences and the motivation for many of the business practices we see today. The book discusses how firms exploit consumers who are prone to making mistakes and who suffer from cognitive dissonance, attention lapses, and bounded rationality, for example and will help explain why firms invest in persuasive advertising, offer 30-day free trials, offer money-back guarantees, and engage in other observed phenomena that cannot be explained by the traditional approaches to industrial organization. A second difference is that this book achieves a balance between textbooks that emphasize formal modeling and those that emphasize the history of the field, empirical evidence, case studies, and policy analysis. This text puts more emphasis on the micro-foundations (i.e., consumer and producer theory), classic game theoretic models, and recent contributions from behavioral economics that are pertinent to industrial organization. Each topic will begin with a discussion of relevant theory and models and will also include a discussion of concrete examples, empirical evidence, and evidence from case studies. This will provide students with a deeper understanding of firm and consumer behavior, of the factors that influence market structure and economic performance, and of policy issues involving imperfectly competitive markets. The book is intended to be a textbook for graduate students, MBAs and upper-level undergraduates and will use examples, graphical analysis, algebra, and simple calculus to explain important ideas and theories in industrial organization.
Prior to liberalization, there was little scope for predatory behaviour in the aviation market. However, following deregulation, new entrants sought to compete with entrenched incumbents. Low-cost carriers (LCCs) gained significant market share, which in turn provoked many different kinds of defensive response. Having put pressure on established carriers, low-cost airlines are themselves feeling the pressure of competition from new operators. While it is normal and natural for airlines to react to competition - modifying their services, the ways in which they offer them and their prices - when does aggressive commercial behaviour go too far and become predation? This book considers what exactly is meant by 'predation' in the aviation environment, and explores the strategies LCCs adopt in order to gain market share, as well as the strategies of the established airlines in response to competition from new entrants to the market. It also addresses the key question of what competition policy should do to ensure intensive competition. Competition versus Predation in Aviation Markets brings together contributions from around the world, from airlines, government agencies, leading academics and consultants, providing a wealth of perspectives on a business practice crucial to airline survival.
Competition policy is an integral and prominent part of economic policy-making in the European Union. The EU Treaty prescribes its member states to conduct economic policy ‘in accordance with the principle of an open market economy with free competition’. More precisely, the goal of EU competition policy is “to defend and develop effective competition in the common market” (European Commission, 2000: 7). Under its Commissioners van Miert, Monti and, most - cently, Kroes the EU Commission has stepped up its effort to pursue and achieve the aforementioned goal. A number of so-called hard-core cartels, such as the - torious “vitamin cartel” led by Roche, have been detected, tried in violation of Art. 81 of the Maastricht Accord and punished with severe fines. Also Microsoft was hit hard by the strong hand of the Commission having been severely fined for - ploiting a dominant market position. Economic analysis has been playing an increasingly significant role in the Commission’s examination of competition law cases. This holds true in particular for merger control. Here, however, the Commission has had to accept some poi- ant defeats in court, such as the Court’s reversals of Airtours-First Choice or GE- Honeywell. Among other things, the European Court of Justice found the e- nomic analysis as conducted by the EU’s Directorate General for Competition to be flawed and the conclusions drawn not to be convincing. These rejections by the courts have stirred up the scholarly debate on the conceptual foundations of Eu- pean competition policy.
Antitrust policy nominally plays an instrumental public interest role. The generally accepted notion is that it is a government instrument designed to intervene in relatively unregulated markets in order to preserve rivalry among independent buyers and sellers. Competition authorities are supposed to restrain business conduct that exercises monopoly power aimed at excluding competitors or exploiting consumers and clients. Thus it can be said - although few pro-market theorists make the insight explicit - that antitrust provisions reveal mistrust of the capacity of markets to promote social welfare. The inner logic, enforcement mechanisms, and practical outcomes of antitrust provisions are all intrinsically contradictory to the natural dynamic course of market functioning. In Dr. De Leon's challenging thesis, this mistrust of the market lies at the root of antitrust policy, giving rise always to a preference towards 'predicting' the result of impersonal market forces rather than interpreting the entrepreneurial behaviour which creates those forces. And it is in Latin America that he finds the powerful evidence he needs to support his case. From the formative years of Latin American economic institutions, during the Spanish Empire, economic regulations - far from being driven by the pursuit of promoting free trade and economic freedom - have been conceived, enacted and implemented in the context of deeply anti-market public policies, trade mercantilism and government dirigisme. The so-called "neoliberal" revolution of the 1990s triggered by the Washington Consensus did not really change the interventionist innuendo of these policies, but merely restated the social welfare goal to be achieved: the pursuit of economic efficiency. Dr. De Leon presents his case against the assumption that consumer welfare orientated policies such as antitrust do really promote entrepreneurship and market goals. Paradoxically, antitrust enforcement has undermined the transparency of market institutions, in the name of promoting market competition. The author's provocative analysis marshals several sets of facts in support of his thesis, including the actual functioning of antitrust policy as reflected in case law in various Latin American countries, the preference of merger control over other less intrusive forms of market surveillance, the constrained role of competition advocacy against government acts, and the ineffective institutional structure created to apply the policy. Among the many specific topics treated are the following: government immunity; strategic industries; state-owned enterprises; politically influential groups; measurement of market concentration; the burden of proof of social welfare benefits; the role of joint trade associations and professional guilds; institutional arrangements that favour collusion; selective distribution; sector regulation; erosion of property rights; marginal role of courts in the antitrust system; leniency programs; and privatized public utilities. The growing significance of Latin America in the context of economic globalization endows this book with huge international interest. Written by a leading authority on the topic, this is the first book that presents a detailed description of Latin American antitrust law and policy as it has been developed through numerous judicial opinions. A wide variety of audiences around the world will find it of extraordinary value: competition law specialists, scholars and students of the subject, policymakers and politicians in Latin America, as well as all interested lawyers, jurists, and economists.
