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"In Bankrupt in America, Mary and Brad Hansen show that examination of how Americans have used bankruptcy law and the history of the law itself offers important perspective on the history of bankruptcy in America. Using new statistical and documentary evidence, they illustrate the cycles of interaction between bankruptcy law's use and its own evolution. The authors first offer a broad overview of the laws at various levels governing the collection of debt and position their research in the literature on bankruptcy. They establish the need for a framework that integrates various lines of thought, and introduce of the methods of their approach, which incorporates new institutional economics and cliometrics, that is, the incorporation of econometric data analysis. They then illustrate the general path to bankruptcy by discussing the series of decisions that creditors and debtors make at every stage and how various formal and informal institutions influence these decisions. The core of the book will comprise a generally chronological narrative from 1898, when the first major federal bankruptcy law was enacted to an end point of 2005. Hansen and Hansen reach novel conclusions about causes and consequences of bankruptcy and raise nuances in the relationship between bankruptcy rates and economic growth. For instance, while higher bankruptcy rates are usually considered a negative, the authors show that higher bankruptcy may actually signal economic growth if it is due to an expansion of credit markets. Further, the authors contribute to our understanding of what drives differences in bankruptcy rates among states by illustrating the influence of the broader legal framework. Ultimately, this work find that long-run growth in personal bankruptcy is the result of growth in credit and that the study of legal governance provides useful viewpoints from which to draw out patterns in bankruptcy."

A survey is presented on the economics of education in 3 industrially developed regions of the world: North America, Western Europe & the USSR. Although the discipline has gained prominence only since the early '60's, significant work has been going on much longer, especially in the US, the UK & the USSR. The survey is concerned with major works in the areas of macro-, micro- & distributional economics, pointing to both accomplishments & shortcomings. Macroeconomic work includes studies on the contribution of education to economic growth & the concept of human capital, being concerned with education & labor productivity, rates of return & manpower planning, etc. Areas are pinpointed where important work remains to be done, such as investigating the potentialities of nonformal education for economic development, assigning more precise values to social benefits & costs of education, & determining the most desirable mix between general & occupational education. In the area of microeconomics, major work on production functions is critically reviewed, acknowledging the predominant role of US scholarship. The role of production function research for the equitable distribution of educational services is also stressed & attention is drawn again to areas needing further work such as more effective use of students' time, especially in higher education. In the 3rd area, distributional economics, problem areas include the effectiveness of social distribution of educational opportunities & the screening or sorting function of education & an assessment of the resulting social benefits. Another topic discussed is the distribution of income as a result of the operation of a particular educational system & its financing. Attention is finally drawn to the analysis of education as a consumer good. In the process theoretical & applied research, including statistical & econometric analyses of existing policies, are reviewed with indications about likely directions for future work in all 3 regions. AA.

Energy demand / Govinda Timilsina -- Energy and economic growth / David Stern -- Oil prices and the macroeconomy / Lance Bachmeier and Michael Plante -- Economics of renewable energy / Painuly J. Prasad and Norbert Wohlgemuth -- Energy efficiency and economy-wide rebound: realising a net gain to society / Lisa Ryan, Karen Turner, and Nina Campbell -- Economic impacts of energy transition / Christian Lutz and Ulrike Lehr -- Electricity market integration / Lillian M. de Menezes and Michael Tamvakis -- Analysis of macroeconomic impacts of energy security improvements in Asia / Deepak Sharma, Suwin Sandu, Muyi Yang -- Energy and climate / Richard S.J. Tol -- Carbon emissions and energy use / Yi-Ming Wei and Lan-Cui Liu -- Energy economics and environment of energy systems / Janie Ling-Chin, K. Rajendran, and A.P. Roskilly -- Renewable energy policy / Travis Roach -- The energy water nexus / Benjamin K. Sovacool -- Low carbon economy and smart grids / Cedric Clastres and Patrice Geoffron -- The role of carbon pricing in the Paris agreement / Izzet Ari and Ramazan Sari -- The impact of climate change and the social cost of carbon / Richard S.J. Tol -- Energy and the public: the economic relevance of citizens' engagement / Alessandro Sciullo, Anna Pellizzone -- Quality of life and energy use: Is there a fair energy use level? / Olcay Aydemir and Ugur Soytas -- Responsible investment / Aled Jones -- Energy economics as an energy justice dilemma: case studies of normative trade-offs in Malawi, Mexico, and Germany / Kirsten Jenkins, Shanil Samarakoon, and Paul Munro -- Oil spot and futures prices, Nikki Kantelis / Bradley T. Ewing -- Oil and stock prices / Perry Sadorsky -- The role of oil price volatility in the real and financial economy: a survey review / Nicholas Apergis -- Mutual funds and energy sector / Alper Gormus -- Oil prices and other energy commodities / Syed Basher -- Oil and agricultural commodity prices / Saban Nazlioglu -- Oil prices and exchange rates / Hassan Anjum and Farooq Malik -- Volatility spillovers on oil and forex markets / Jozef Baruník and Evzen Kocenda -- Economic and social challenges of smart grids / Daniela Velte and Guillermo Gil -- CGE models in energy economics / Ken'ichi Matsumoto and Shinichiro Fujimori -- A methodological framework for assessing macroeconomic impacts of energy security improvements in Asia / Deepak Sharma, Suwin Sandu, Muyi Yang -- Top-down and bottom-up models / Bora Kat -- Macro-econometric and structural models / Ulrike Lehr and Christian Lutz -- Index decomposition analysis: models and applications / Tian Goh and B.W. Ang -- Electricity price forecasting / Rafal Weron and Florian Ziel -- Paths and processes in complex electricity markets: the agent based perspective / Alessandro Sciullo, Elena Vallino, Martina Iori, and Magda Fontana -- Behavioral economics and energy market / Ozlem Ozdemir -- The use of foresight in energy policy / Erik Laes -- Multi-criteria decision analysis for energy policy / Laurence Stamford, Burcin Atilgan, Jasmin Cooper and Adisa Azapagic.

Firms are affected by the product demand. This leads to employment adjustments. In the literature we find only very few contributions investigating the issue whether internal adjustments are linked and which relationships exist with external adjustments. Are they of a complementary or substitutive nature? Furthermore, it is of interest to find out, whether we can observe an obvious trend and whether the adjustments are driven by cyclical movements. For this study we have an extensive data set of a large German manufacturing company, which supplies innovative products for the domestic and international market, provided on a monthly base from January 1999 to December 2005. The empirical analysis starts with descriptive statistics. We find that the employment adjustment cycle coincides only to a certain degree with the macroeconomic cycle. Internal and external adjustments are more characterized by complementarity than by substitution. Over the observed period we cannot detect analogous wage adjustments. It is noticeable that in 2003 compared with the years before the number of employees is substantially reduced. The econometric investigation is based on a two-stage approach. We start with a bivariate probit estimation in order to extract the relationship between the probability of overtime and of promotion. Unobserved variables have opposite effects on the former and the latter adjustment instrument. Furthermore, we detect a negative trend of internal employment adjustments. Cyclical effects are ambiguous. The next step, the determination of external adjustments with respect to overtime and promotion adjustments, is split into two estimates. On the one hand we do not distinguish between the type of external employment adjustment and on the other hand we use this information separating between quits, layoffs, workers with a cancellation agreement and with a transition into a transfer organisation. The first approach demonstrates that a promotion reduces the probability to leave the firm while overtime is positively associated with an external job change. This pattern holds generally speaking in the second, more detailed estimates. Quits are the exception. In this case we observe opposite effects. Finally, we cannot detect any influences of promotions on cancellation agreements.