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There are many different types of convergence within economics, as well as several methods to analyse each of them. This book addresses the concept of real economic convergence or the gradual levelling-off of GDP (gross domestic product) per capita rates across economies. In addition to a detailed, holistic overview of the history and theory, the authors include a description of two modern methods of assessing the occurrence and rate of convergence, BMA-based and HMM-based, as well as the results of the empirical analysis. Readers will have access not only to the conventional econometric approach of β convergence but also to an alternative one, allowing for the convergence issue to be expre...
There has been a burgeoning interest in energy security in recent years due to the transformation of the energy landscape through deepening market deregulation, rising environmental challenges, growing energy hunger, and significant political changes. Depicting energy security as an evolving concept that absorbs economic and political conditions, this book adopts an economic approach to energy security in the international gas market. Uniquely, the book explores the theoretical assumptions and practical consequences attached to both demand and supply-side security in global energy markets. It investigates why energy exporters are so protective of independence in energy exports. The book also looks at the critically important issue of environmental aspects of energy security, particularly around climate change. It also analyses the potential for a cartel in the international gas market, similarly to the oil industry. This book will be of much interest to readers in energy economics, energy security, energy policy, IR/security studies, and relevant policy-makers.
Governments are regularly judged by their ability to deliver economic prosperity, however many policies fail to deliver their desired outcomes. Industrial Development examines historical examples of how governments have attempted to build productive capabilities and promote industrial learning. Each chapter shows a different way in which this is done whether it is imitating existing production technologies, building new advanced technologies, tapping into existing global chains or building their own value chains. The book looks at a wide spectrum of countries and industries from Silicon Valley to the early Asian model of building domestic industries. The book also reveals that academics and policy makers can be a major source of policy failure. This book makes an important contribution to our understanding of capability building, industrial development and economic growth and will be an essential reading for economists, policy makers and government officials making policy in a global economy.
Trying to explain the sources of Poland’s economic success and decouple it from simple stylized facts on economic convergence anchored in the neoclassical growth models, the chapters show how the Polish economy rapidly moved away from the communist economic system, which had ended up in an economic collapse.
Neoliberal economic reforms over the last four decades have altered the economic cartography of emerging market economies such as India, particularly in the context of international trade, investment and finance, and in terms of their effects on the real economy. This book examines the issues of financialization, investment climate and the impact of trade liberalization. By analysing these three features of neoliberal reform the book is unique, since it accommodates both a mainstream neoclassical approach and a non-mainstream political economy approach. The major questions answered by this book, cover three basic lines of enquiry pertaining to neoliberal reforms. They are (a) how financializ...
This book analyses the most recent trends in Foreign Direct Investment from the major Asian economies to the EU, focusing on China and Japan’s FDIs in the EU, and Poland in particular. The authors assert that, from a European perspective, there is a strong need for further Asian FDIs into EU nations, which will establish mutual benefits. This is the first book to explore the outflow of FDI from Asian nations to other countries, especially to EU member states, whereas the extant literature focuses on the inflow of FDI to Asian nations. The authors analyse a multidimensional range of issues, covering macroeconomics, finance, technology, and examine the governments, local authorities, and ins...
This book provides deep insight into the flow of foreign direct investment from Asia to Europe. It assesses the topic of trade and investment from the reverse direction, considering Asian countries as the capital investors in the EU countries. Each chapter analyses either the international trade or investment of one or more Asian countries in correlation with one or more European states. The book analyses a significant number of countries, which are included in various economic associations, such as the Visegrad Group, the Three Seas Initiative, the European Free Trade Association, or are states from the same geopolitical region – for instance, the Iberian Peninsula, Baltic States, and Nor...
In this forward-thinking book, Rafał Riedel and Jakub Anusik explore the dynamics and determinants of one of the most salient issues facing contemporary Europe: differentiated integration. Going beyond static models of differentiated integration in Europe built on legal-institutional criteria, Riedel and Anusik capture the dynamism of the system by employing both a political economy perspective and the varieties of capitalism framework. This title contains one or more Open Access chapters.
This book is a comparative study which sheds a new empirical and theoretical light on the nature of post-communist capitalism in 11 EU new member countries of Central and Eastern Europe, or CEE11. Extending and modifying a well-established conceptual framework for comparative capitalism rooted in new institutional economics and economic sociology, it offers a better explanation for transition-specific and path-dependent factors inherent to systemic transformation. Based on a vast dataset, the book therefore illuminates the (dis)similarities among the institutional architectures in the EU countries. Thus, the book argues that the evolving capitalism in Central and Eastern Europe exhibits stro...
This book provides a comprehensive outlook on the state and role of consumer credits in the European economy and households. It underlines the role of consumerism and digitalisation, in the framework of legislation. It covers two major turns in consumer credit evolution: the 2008 crisis and Covid pandemic. The first had socio-economic sources, the second one was an external event, but provoked important changes in consumer behaviour. Lockdowns deepened the preference for digital financial products. FinTech and BigData operators acquired broader opportunities with the development of distance services. These new financial services need adapted legislation. The recently published project of Consumer Credits Directive covers new means of communication, such as smartphones, and extends rules to new ways of crediting, like crowdfunding. Consumer credit availability changed the behaviour of households. The propensity of poorer households to save faded due to the ease of getting credit. However, financial insecurity during the Coronavirus pandemic made households limit credits and build precautionary savings.