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This book reviews the current trends and challenges of regional integration and trade in Africa. It provides valuable policy recommendations aimed at stimulating the debate among the government, private sector and development community on the ways to promote regional trade for Africa's economic development.

The volume is at the forefront of the academic and policy debates on effective labour regulation, offering innovative approaches to research and policy. It is an interdisciplinary response to the central challenges that face modern labour regulation and draws on contributions by leading experts in a range of disciplines.

Emerging Europe has suffered a severe economic crisis in recent years, and is only gradually recovering; the prospects for a convergence with the rest of the EU are still uncertain. In this book policymakers, high-level practitioners and experts from central banks identify the main reasons for the crisis and the challenges for the recovery process.

The book describes the birth and growth of financial institutions and stock exchanges in Scandinavia and Finland from 1656 to 2010, including their banking crises and the history of banking regulation. It argues that quantitative regulations cannot, in the long run, produce the desired results and bear the seeds of future financial crises, From the establishment of the first financial institutions to the latest bank rescues, this book traces the origins, development, regulation, and trajectory of the framework for capital market institutions and activities in the Nordic region. This evolution is examined from a broader comparative perspective, in the context of similar events and stages in Europe more widely. In so doing, it analyses some broader issues in economic history. For example, it demonstrates that there has been little difference between the balance sheet ratios of failed banks and surviving banks. Moreover, it is highly critical of the 'Basel II' accord and questions the widespread myth of the omnipotence of central banks. It also warns that overly tight regulation will not prevent future bank failures, and may even produce other and no less palatable problems. The book will appeal to everyone with an interest in the historical sociology of capitalism, as well as those wanting a handy reference guide on the history of finance in Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland

Annotation The determinants of economic growth and development are hotly debated among economists. Financial crises and failed transition experiments have highlighted the fact that functioning institutions are fundamental to the goal of achieving economic growth. The growth literature has seen an abundance of empirical studies on the influence of institutions and the mechanisms by which institutions affect development. This CESifo volume provides a systematic overview of the current scholarship on the impact of institutions on growth. The contributors, all internationally prominent economists, consider theoretical and empirical relationships between institutions and growth. Concepts covered include "appropriate institutions" (the idea that different institutional arrangements are appropriate at different stages of economic development); liberalized credit markets; the influence of institutions on productivity; institutional and regulatory reforms in the OECD; how innovation and entrepreneurship influence growth (including an analysis of patent activity in the United States from 1790 to 1930); the endogeneity of institutions as seen in the recruitment of elites by higher education institutions; the effect of economic development on transitions to democracy; and technology adoption in agriculture. Contributors:Philippe Aghion, Costas Azariadis, Elise S. Brezis, Matteo Cervellati, François Crouzet, David de la Croix, Theo S. Eicher, Piergiuseppe Fortunato, Cecilia García-Peñalosa, Thorvaldur Gylfason, Murat Iyigun, B. Zorina Khan, Giuseppe Nicoletti, Dani Rodrik, Stefano Scarpetta, Kenneth L. Sokoloff, Uwe Sunde, Utku Teksoz, Gylfi Zoega.

This single-volume comprehensive compilation of documents integrates institutional labour history (movements and trade unions) with aspects of social and cultural history, as well as charting changes in trade union and managerial practices, and integrating the economics and politics of labour history. It includes documents that treat household relations as well as industrial relations; women as domestic workers and unpaid household labour as well as factory workers; and African American, Hispanic American (especially Mexican and Mexican American), and Asian workers as well as white workers. American Labor offers readers an insight into the full spectrum historically of workers, their daily lives, and the movements that they created

Privatization was the fundamental pillar of transition from plan to market in former socialist countries. But little is known about the fate of companies that were privatized in large scale privatization schemes such as mass privatization or management-employee buyouts. This is the first original study aiming to fill this gap. It assesses wholesale privatization schemes in three leading transition countries - the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovenia - in terms of the evolving concentration of ownership and relations to firm performance.

El propósito de este trabajo es presentar una metodología para construir un Indicador Líder Compuesto del Producto Bruto Interno (PBI). El indicador agrega un conjunto de variables asociadas a la evolución futura del PBI, las que han sido previamente filtradas para evitar que incorporen relaciones espurias con la variable objetivo. Las ponderaciones han sido escogidas, luego de analizar varias opciones, asegurando que minimicen el error cuadrático medio de la predicción. Luego de analizar las propiedades estadísticas de cerca de 200 indicadores económicos, se identificó a 14 variables como aquellas que en conjunto pueden permitir una buena predicción del PBI con una anticipación de hasta 6 meses. Entre estas variables destacan el crédito del sistema bancario al sector privado, el índice de volumen físico de bienes intermedios, la producción y ventas de barras de construcción, la tasa de encaje efectivo, el ahorro en cuenta corriente del gobierno central, el índice de confianza de Apoyo y la tasa de interés activa en moneda extranjera a un año. A manera de ejemplo, el Sistema de Indicadores Líderes predice, utilizando información hasta marzo del 2002, que la economía en el primer semestre del 2002 crecerá a una tasa anual de 2,5% y que hacia el tercer trimestre del año continuará creciendo a un ritmo anual de 2,6%.

Richard Layard is one of Britain's foremost applied economists, whose work has had a profound impact on the policy debate in Britain and abroad. This book contains his most influential articles on education, equality and income distribution and on the lessons of economic transition in Eastern Europe. It is published along with a companion volume. Inequality argues that lifetime inequality is the basic inequality we should worry about. In this context education is a powerful instrument of redistribution, as well as a national investment. Cash redistribution has efficiency costs which can be calculated, but it may also serve to discourage inefficient over-work arising from each person's efforts to earn more than his neighbour. A final series of essays is based on Layard's recent work on reform strategies in Russia and Poland. The book opens with Richard Layard's personal credo 'Why I became an economist'.

An authoritative economic history of Sabah and Sarawak since the 19th century emphasising their distinctive colonial history and the attempts to modernise them since they became part of Malaysia in 1963. They remain dependent on the production and export of a relatively small range of primary products. The considerable scrutiny from environmentalists and international and local pressure groups of timber exports in particular is examined. The book's examination of economic strategy in these states since the 1880s, demonstrates that the roots of the problems in the 1980s lay in policies formulated in the wider context of capitalist economic growth.

Vietnam, along with China, stands out as a rare success story among transition economics. This authoritative study of the reform process since 1989 pays particular attention to the way the macroeconomics framework can contribute to an environment that encourages human development and helps to reduce poverty. Thus there are chapters on macroeconomics reforms, international trade policies, the role of the state, rural development, education and health, environmental issues and poverty and gender inequality. Although areas of weakness are indicated, emphasis is placed on the success Vietnam has experienced compared to other transition economies. The lessons of both the successes and failures of the reform process for policymakers elsewhere are outlined.

'... a well written book ... covering ... a vast amount of material ... well balanced between the theoretical and applied works. The authors are judicious and fair in providing a balanced treatment of the two alternative theories of growth performance: supply-oriented and demand-oriented. The book will serve as a guideline to researchers and policymakers ... as a textbook for upperdivision undergraduate and graduate courses.'- Kashi Nath Tiwari, Kennesaw State College This is the first book of its kind to argue in a consistent and comprehensive way the idea that a country's growth performance cannot be properly understood without reference to the performance of its tradeable goods sector and the strength of its balance of payments. It puts forward a demand orientated theory of why growth rates differ between countries where the major constraint on demand is the balance of payments. The book is critical of neoclassical growth analysis and provides an alternative theory of growth performance to the supply orientated approach of neoclassical theory. There are theoretical chapters comparing and contrasting neoclassical growth analysis with the new demand orientated approach, and empirical sections which apply the new model to regions and countries, including two case studies of the UK and Australia.