This invaluable text assesses the current research on the causes of both war and peace. In this revised third edition - now with a brand new chapter on the Russian-Ukraine War - leading international relations scholars explore the role of territorial disputes, power, alliances, arms races, rivalry, and nuclear weapons in bringing about war; the outcomes and consequences of war; and the factors that promote peace, including democracy, norms, capitalist economies, and stable borders. The revised third edition includes a section on emerging trends in research on cyber war, the environment and climate change, leaders, war financing, and trends in interstate conflict. Reviewing fifty years of scientific research, the contributors provide an accessible and up-to-date overview of current knowledge and a road map for future research.
"This book is about the economy, rather than economics. It explores the structures, inner workings and problems of modern economies, showing how the organisations and networks that shape the structure of the economy are arranged to provide society with goods and services. At the centre of the analysis there is the economic system, characterised by organisational components carrying out economic functions (production, consumption, distribution, and establishment and control of the economic activities as well as provision of public goods and services), and by a co-evolving dynamic with the state. The economic system is thus a 'machine' that modern states have organised through their laws and international agreements. The book incorporates a historical approach which reveals the varieties, structure and evolution of capitalism as the defining economic system of the modern age. Ultimately, the book demonstrates that the economic sphere and the political sphere are the two powers ruling people's lives: the economy is the result of their interactions. This book will be of great interest to readers in political economy, economics, sociology and political science"--
AbstractWhy do firms demand antidumping protectionism? Contemporary literature highlights a plethora of causal mechanisms within the data-generating process, including retaliatory motives, exchange rate appreciations, business cycles, and deindustrialization. I argue that countries that are economically integrated into global markets should be associated with less demand for antidumping trade remedies. In particular, countries with higher levels of trade and financial flows should receive fewer petitions for antidumping trade remedies from firms overall, ceteris paribus. I test this theoretical argument with a series of de facto globalization indicators collected from thirty-three countries between 1978 and 2022, finding support for these arguments.
"This century is touted as the "Asian Century," where the strong economic performance of Asian economies has accounted for much of the growth in the world. Over the last several years, Asian cities such as Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore and Tokyo have also gained importance as global financial hubs. What are the implications of the shift in global economic focus to Asia, and where are the growth opportunities? This book aims to provide a broad understanding of the economic developments in the region, from the rise of the East Asian dragons to the developing nations that are poised to be the next sources of significant growth, by introducing the key economic features of Asian economies through historical and contemporary case studies and presenting analytical concepts with which to understand these diverse economies."
Abstract Households in developing economies have greater access to formal credit today than at any point in history, owing to the global expansion of microfinance and recent innovations in consumer finance, such as digital lending. While this has improved the ability to smooth consumption and invest in productive activities, it has also raised concerns about over-indebtedness. Against this background, this article reviews and extends the literature on debt relief for households in developing countries. We begin by laying out a simple stylized model that illustrates the costs and benefits of debt relief and use the model to guide our review of the evidence on various relief policies, such as debt forbearance, debt forgiveness, and personal bankruptcy. We additionally present survey evidence from a population of microfinance and bank borrowers with recent exposure to debt relief. The results highlight that an important channel through which discretionary debt relief policies, which are common in developing countries, affect credit market outcomes is their impact on borrower expectations. The development of legal bankruptcy institutions that offer a rules-based avenue to discharge unsustainable debts can reduce such distortions and alleviate the credit market inefficiencies that have often accompanied debt relief initiatives in developing economies.
AbstractWe study the role of bargaining as a barrier to migration in the equilibrium of a two‐region world with imperfectly competitive labour markets. Equilibrium migration is jointly determined by relative labour market bargaining powers, productivity and costs of migration. If migrants complement host factors, higher migration generally benefits both source and host economies. An enhancement of the bargaining power of typically weak migrant workers in host regions improves welfare.
"Drawing on modern economic theory, this book provides new insights into the economic development of ancient economies and the sustainability of their development. The book pays particular attention to the economics of hunting and gathering societies and their diversity. New ideas are presented about theories of the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture, including Childe's theory of this development. The Agricultural Revolution was a major contributor to economic development because in most cases, it generated an economic surplus. However, as shown, income inequality was a necessary condition for the use of this surplus to promote economic development and to avoid the Malthusian population trap. This inequality was evident in the successful operation of the palatial economies of the Minoan and Mycenaean states. Nevertheless, some post-agricultural economies proved to be unsustainable, and they 'mysteriously' disappeared. This happened in the case of the Silesian Únětice culture and population. Economic and ecological reasons for this are suggested. The nature of economic development altered with increased trade, the use of barter, and subsequently the supply of money to facilitate this trade. These developments are examined in the context of the palatial economies of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Elsewhere, multinational business made a substantial contribution to the economic growth of Phoenicia, where international trade was not determined by its natural resource endowments. Thus, Phoenician economic exchange and development provides a different set of insights. The book makes an important contribution to the understanding of the evolution of human societies and will therefore be of interdisciplinary interest including economists (especially economic historians), anthropologists and sociologists, some archaeologists, and historians"--
"Drawing on modern economic theory, this book provides new insights into the economic development of ancient economies and the sustainability of their development. The book pays particular attention to the economics of hunting and gathering societies and their diversity. New ideas are presented about theories of the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture, including Childe's theory of this development. The Agricultural Revolution was a major contributor to economic development because in most cases, it generated an economic surplus. However, as shown, income inequality was a necessary condition for the use of this surplus to promote economic development and to avoid the Malthusian population trap. This inequality was evident in the successful operation of the palatial economies of the Minoan and Mycenaean states. Nevertheless, some post-agricultural economies proved to be unsustainable, and they 'mysteriously' disappeared. This happened in the case of the Silesian Únětice culture and population. Economic and ecological reasons for this are suggested. The nature of economic development altered with increased trade, the use of barter, and subsequently the supply of money to facilitate this trade. These developments are examined in the context of the palatial economies of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Elsewhere, multinational business made a substantial contribution to the economic growth of Phoenicia, where international trade was not determined by its natural resource endowments. Thus, Phoenician economic exchange and development provides a different set of insights. The book makes an important contribution to the understanding of the evolution of human societies and will therefore be of interdisciplinary interest including economists (especially economic historians), anthropologists and sociologists, some archaeologists, and historians"--
The article examines the reasons for the adoption of fiscal rules in advanced economies, their main types, evolution and results of application. In the practice of fiscal policy over the past decades, there has been a steady trend towards budget deficits. There are two main reasons that explain this widespread deficit bias phenomenon: the tendency to push out the financial discipline burden to future governments or even to future generations and the interplay of political processes and interest group activities (common pool effect). Chronic budget deficits and growing public debts have prompted many countries to adopt certain national and supranational (in the EU) fiscal rules – long-lasting constraints on fiscal policy through numerical limits on main budgetary aggregates: budget balance, debt, expenditure or revenue. Fiscal rules can promote financial discipline and reduce the deficit bias in several ways. This influence on fiscal behavior arises from their capacity to "tie the hands" of policymakers and to be a useful signaling tool, helping to reduce the asymmetry of information between policymakers and voters. But the compliance track record with fiscal rules is relatively poor. They have failed to provide sufficient fiscal discipline: the deficit bias persists and the debt-to-GDP ratio in most advanced economies continues to grow. The adopted budget rules are periodically suspended, they are subject to revision, sometimes formally implemented by applying the creative accounting, policymakers use them as a tool of political bargaining. Ultimately, fiscal discipline does not depend on the existence of rules, but on the willingness of politicians to comply with this discipline.
It has been argued that the different ways human resource management is conducted in different countries can be at least partly explained by theories of comparative capitalisms. Earlier work has highlighted much diversity between coordinated market economies, but the liberal markets are commonly assumed to represent a more coherent category. This article scrutinizes the latter assumption more closely by examining differences between the liberal market economies in their approaches to HRM. The authors find that the USA displays greater centralization in human resource management practices, higher turnover rates and less delegation to employees, than in the UK and Australia; this being associated with differences in institutional realities. The study highlights how, under a broad institutional archetype, specific systemic features may exert strong effects on specific HRM practices and challenges assumptions of close institutional coupling in the most advanced economies.