Economics and Finance

Coping with the ageing of the population without major economic disruption is undoubtedly one of the major challenges facing the global economy and world financial markets both now and for the coming decades. In this context, this book assesses the major economic issues raised by occupational pension funds, as they have arisen in twelve OECD countries — the US, the UK, Germany, Japan, France, Italy, Canada, Australia, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, as well as in Chile and Singapore. Particular emphasis is placed on the performance of funds in financial markets, the influence on funds of fiscal and regulatory conditions, and the consequences of funds' development for capital markets, corporate finance, and international investment. The relationship with social security, the comparative advantages of defined benefit and defined contribution funds, and the role of funds in developing countries are also examined in detail.

Research on poverty in rich countries relies primarily on household income to capture living standards and distinguish those in poverty, and this is also true of official poverty measurement and monitoring. However, awareness of the limitations of income has been heightening interest in the role that non-monetary measures of deprivation can play. This book takes as its starting-point that research on poverty and social exclusion has been undergoing a fundamental shift towards a multidimensional approach; that researchers and policy-makers alike have struggled to develop concepts and indicators that do this approach justice; and that this is highly salient not only within individual countries (including both Britain and the USA) but also for the European Union post-enlargement. The difficulties encountered in applying a multidimensional approach reflect limitations in the information available but also in the conceptual and empirical underpinnings provided by existing research. The central aim of this book is to contribute to the development of those underpinnings and to productive ways of employing non-monetary indicators of deprivation. The book maps out the current landscape and the best way forward, concluding by offering a critical evaluation of the EU's 2020 poverty reduction target.

Land acquisition for industry and infrastructure has become a source of major conflict in the last half decade in India. Sites like Singur, Nandigram, Niyamgiri, and Maha Mumbai, and phenomena like the Maoist insurgency are well-known. Some believe that land acquisition is the ‘biggest problem’ in India’s growth path. It is a central political issue in several states. A new land acquisition bill with serious long-term consequences is making its way through parliament. Stories about acquisition are in newspapers and on television every day. This book brings clarity, depth, and understanding to this contentious and chaotic issue. It asks: What are the facts about land acquisition and the related conflicts? How did the situation reach this impasse? What are the ways forward? The explanations are organized around three core themes: the price of land, the role of the state, and changes in land and information markets. The first section is an extensive survey of reality—of land acquisition conflicts (emphasizing selected notorious conflicts), land prices, and agents in the land acquisition process (emphasizing the role of civil society and political parties). The second section explains the origins of the conflicts and the role of the state, especially through the contradictions between the ‘giving’ state (which does land reforms) and the ‘taking’ state (which acquires land). The final section is an analysis of the reality of land markets in contemporary India, especially the rapid rise in the price of urban and rural land, and a critique of the emerging legal and policy approaches to resolving the crisis.

What is good government? Why do some governments fail? How do you implement political accountability in practice? What incentives do you need to put in place to ensure that politicians and public servants act in the public interest and not their own? These questions and many more are addressed in this book of intriguing Lindahl lectures. Economic analyses of government usually divide into two broad camps. One that emphasises government as a force for public good, which can regulate markets, distribute resources, and generally work towards improving the lives of its citizens. The other sees government as driven by private interests, susceptible to those with the power to influence its decisions, and failing to incentivise its officials to act for the greater public good. This book adopts a middle way between the two extremes, the Publius approach, which recognises the potential for government to act for the public good, but also accepts the fact that things often go wrong. It shares the view that there are certain institutional preconditions for effective government, but then proceeds to examine exactly what those preconditions are. The author emphasises that it is not just about designing an appropriate institutional framework, but also about understanding the way incentives work and the process by which the political class is selected.

The national economic concept of ‘public goods’ has its transnational analogue, which provides a signpost to the effective management of globalization processes. The pursuit of global public goods, along with the prevention of global public bads, will assist the attainment of a more equitable, and hence a more stable, world order, and should be seen as a vital complement to economic development aid.

This book discusses the systematic application of alternative evaluation methods to estimate the social benefits of publicly-financed research and development (R&D). The book argues that economic theory should be the guiding criterion for any method of program evaluation because it focuses attention on the value and the opportunity costs of the program. The evaluation methods discussed and illustrated are both economics and, for comparison, non-economics based. The book is motivated by four foundation chapters that discuss government's role in innovation from the perspective of economic theory, review public accountability issues from both a constitutional and an historical perspective, overview systematic approaches to program evaluation, and describe the evaluation metrics typically used. Four case studies illustrate the four alternative evaluation approaches discussed. These case studies are for the U.S. Advanced Technology Program's intramural research awards program, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology's research on wavelength references for optical fiber communications, the U.S. Malcolm Balridge National Quality Award, and the Advanced Technology Program's focused program on the integration of manufacturing applications.

Beginning in 2007, major subsidies and regulations intended to help the poor and unemployed were changed in more than a dozen ways. Many of these changes were reasonable reactions to economic events, with the intention of helping people endure the recession. But the increased redistribution itself also altered the path of the economy—and created employment losses according to age, skill and family composition—by dulling incentives for people to maintain their own living standards. This book presents evidence contradicting the Keynesian notions that work incentives suddenly stop mattering during a recession, or when the interest rate on Federal Funds approaches zero. This book uses prior results from labor economics and public finance to estimate that the labor market contracted two to three times more than it would have if redistribution policies had remained constant. In doing so, it offers novel interpretations of the interplay between unemployment and financial markets during the Great Recession of 2008–9.

The ruling class plays a major role in our societies. It makes possible what would otherwise be infeasible, by shifting out those constraints that stand in the way of long-term growth. Historically, economists devoted far less attention than sociologists to the study of ruling classes. Using the theoretical tools of economists, this book provides an understanding of what drives the formation of a ruling class, and the relationship between politics and business firms. Focusing on Italy, it uses labour economics to analyse the selection of the ruling class, the labour market of politicians, the allocation of managers' time, and their incentives, remunerations, and career paths. It draws on contributions from two teams of leading scholars and on research undertaken by the Fondazione Rodolfo DeBenedetti. Part I focuses on the labour market of politicians. It uses detailed information on personal characteristics, incomes, performance in office, and career paths (before, as well as after, the Parliamentary mandate) of all the politicians elected to the Italian Lower Chamber (Camera) between 1948 and 2008. Part II is devoted to the managerial class. It includes cross-country surveys of managers across a sample of European countries, surveys carried out in cooperation with the largest union of managers in the service sector, social security records, and, for the first time, surveys on the allocation of time of top executives.