Economics and Finance

The book takes stock and looks ahead on the development and implementation of competition policy in the European Union (EU) fifty years after the Treaty of Rome. Competition policy has emerged as a key policy in the EU, since today there is consensus that competition is the driving force for economic efficiency and the welfare of citizens. In this period, merger control has been introduced (in 1989) and reformed (in 2004); case law has established Articles 81 and 82 as fundamental tools to control and prevent anti-competitive behavior; state aid control has consolidated and evolved towards a more economic approach; and the authority of the EC and the judicial review of the Court of First Instance (CFI) and the European Court of Justice (ECJ) are firmly established. The book provides an account of the more economic approach to competition policy and reflects the main areas of interest, learning, open issues, and progress in the area: the design of competition policy institutions; the evolution of the implementation of competition policy and its convergence or divergence with US practice; restrictive practices, cartels, abuse of dominance, merger control, state aids, the interaction of competition policy, and regulation; and studies its application to telecoms, banking, and energy sectors. All the chapters are covered by top specialists combining theoretical with practical knowledge and discussing the economic underpinnings of the application of the law and the main cases.

In a discipline such as economics, increasingly devoted to its computational content, the mathematical underpinnings of the computability assumptions of economic fundamentals have not been investigated systematically or reasonably exhaustively. In this book, such an attempt is made for the first time. Choice theory, adaptively rational behaviour, induction, learning, arithmetical games, computational complexity of decision processes, growth theory, and the theory of economic fluctuations are given recursion theoretic (i.e, computable) interpretations. Economic theoretic questions, posed recursion theoretically, lead to answers that are ambiguous: undecidable choices, uncomputable learning processes, algorithmically unplayable games, etc., become standard answers. The book also claims that a recursion theoretic formalization of economic analysis makes the subject intrinsically inductive and computational.

Macroeconomics increasingly uses stochastic dynamic general equilibrium models to understand theoretical and policy issues. Unless very strong assumptions are made, understanding the properties of particular models requires solving the model using a computer. This volume brings together leading contributors in the field who explain in detail how to implement the computational techniques needed to solve dynamic economics models. It is based on lectures presented at the 7th Summer School of the European Economic Association on computational methods for the study of dynamic economies, held in 1996. A broad spread of techniques is covered, and their application to a wide range of subjects discussed. The book provides the basics of a tool kit that researchers and graduate students can use to solve and analyse their own theoretical models. It is oriented towards economists who already have the equivalent of a first year of graduate studies or to any advanced undergraduates or researchers with a solid mathematical background. No competence with writing computer codes is assumed. After an introduction by the editors, it is arranged in three parts: I Almost linear methods; II Nonlinear methods; and III Solving some dynamic economies.

This book gives an analytical account of the technology for the monetary policy implementation of the European Central Bank. The issue is looked at from different perspectives, corresponding to different chapters. The first chapter addresses the issue from a theoretical point of view, taking both a positive and a normative approach and considering both normal and stressed conditions. The stabilization of a short-term rate of interest in normal conditions and the countering of liquidity risk in a financial crisis are considered the objectives of monetary policy implementation. The approach in the second chapter is historical, presenting a narrative of the creation of the framework for the implementation of monetary policy in the euro area. The analysis turns to empirical tools in the third chapter, where the experience of actually working with the technology for monetary policy implementation is dealt with. Finally a forward-looking approach is taken in the last, short chapter, which attempts to identify the future challenges of monetary policy implementation. Each chapter, except for the fourth, is written by different authors but both the editors and the authors have strived to present an organic analysis of the issue in which the different approaches complement each other. The book is by no means an official account, but could definitely not have been written had the authors not been so closely associated with the implementation of monetary policy in the euro area.

The purpose of this book is to introduce the substantial literature on consumption tax policy and the taxation of capital income, the early literature on optimal tax theory in dynamic overlapping generations' models, the more recent literature on optimal taxation in the Ramsey growth model and models of endogenous growth, and the literature on taxation in open economies. The book summarises the main arguments for and against consumption taxation, presents the main theoretical and empirical results of the technical literature, and, finally, extends the literature in a number of useful ways by complicating the models used to study tax issues. These extensions include bequeathing behaviour, the time consistency problem, the capital levy, charity and privately produced public goods, environmental externalities and renewable resources, durable goods and land, and money used in exchange and as an asset. Chapters are self-contained as far as possible, and each uses a variety of models rather than just one to study the issue at hand. Models and notation are explained each time they are used.

Over the past decade, management accounting has seen changes not just within existing domains of the field but has also witnessed extensions outside its established realms of activity. Wider systemic transformations including changes in political regimes, novel conceptions of management controls, the impact of globalizing forces on commercial affairs, shifts in notions of effective knowledge management, governance and ethics, and technological advances, including the rise of broadband, have all impacted management accounting endeavours. The field is as fast changing as it has ever been. This book captures key facets of current thoughts, concerns, and issues in management accounting. The book consists of eighteen chapters. The topic areas covered in some chapters reflect established management accounting topics such as budgeting and responsibility accounting, contract theory analysis, contingency frameworks, performance measurement systems and strategic cost management which are considered within the perspective of changing concerns facing modern organizations and present day management thought. Other chapters deal with newly emerging concerns in management accounting, including network relations, integrated cost management systems, knowledge management pursuits, environmental management accounting and accounting and digitization. Each chapter encompasses discussions of basic premises complemented by insights from modern day practice, research, and thought.

This book is based on detailed historical research in the USA and Germany, and represents a challenge to current orthodoxy on corporate governance. It is a challenging and informed examination of the links between the general business environment and the operations, decisions, and organizations of firms. The author also explores the links between corporate governance and innovation. The eight chapters are: Innovation, resource allocation, and governance; Transforming the debates on corporate governance; The foundations of managerial control in the USA; The post‐war evolution of managerial control in the United States; Challenges to post‐war managerial control in the USA; US corporate responses to new challenges; From managerial to contested control in Germany; and The emerging challenges to organizational control in Germany.

This book is a detailed study of rural reform in China. After the death of Mao, and with the ascendency of Deng Xiaoping in 1978, China began a programme of agricultural reform intended to increase productivity. Three major changes moved the agricultural sector from a centrally planned system to a more market-oriented one. First was the replacement of collective teams by farming by households. Second, an increase in free markets for rural products, and an increase in state prices for farm products, and the partial elimination of the two-tier price system. Third were changes in the economic structure that facilitated greater productivity and a 250% increase in average real rural incomes between 1979 and 1986. This book is unique in that it studies a single township (Dahe in Hebei Province) in depth over the two periods, thus providing data about the effects of reform at village level.

Among the questions tackled by Simon Domberger in this book are the following: When should organizations contract out services traditionally produced in‐house? Is outsourcing another ephemeral management fad, or is it an efficient and effective means of delivering services and of adding value? What are the characteristics of strategically sound contracting decisions? And how can organizations prosper from the outsourcing revolution? The book is based on over a decade of research and consulting experience, and its conclusions have many practical implications. It develops an analytical decision‐making framework for the assessment of contracting options, and has relevance in both the private and public sectors. It contains many illustrations and over 30 international case studies; over 50 companies and public sector organizations are discussed, including Microsoft, BP, Marks & Spencer and Samsung. The book is divided into four parts. Part I begins by considering the ‘make or buy’ decision, and this is followed by a discussion of the shifting boundaries of organizations, which revisits some of the critical issues underlying the theory of the firm. Part II examines in detail the benefits and costs of contracting. Part III examines the strategic aspects of contracting, involving the implementation of actual policies. Part IV looks at structural change associated with contracting, at the level of both individual sectors and the whole economy. Each chapter has a guide to further reading at its end.

Written by an international team of authors, this book provides the first systematic account of the control of corporate Europe based on voting block data disclosed in accordance with the European Union's Large Holdings Directive (88/627/EEC). The study provides detailed information on the voting control of companies listed on the official markets in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the UK, and as a benchmark comparison, the US. The authors record a high concentration of control of corporations in many European countries, with a single blockholder frequently controlling more than 50% of the corporate votes. In contrast, a majority of UK‐listed companies have no blockholder owning more than 6% of shares. These chapters devoted to individual countries illustrate how blockholders can use legal devices to leverage their voting power over their cash‐flow rights or how incumbents prevent outsiders from gaining voting control.