Economics and Finance (R0)

This book presents the most compelling arguments for and against implementing a basic income guarantee today, in the voice of proponents and critics, in alternating chapters. Tables, figures, and pictures illustrate the key concepts and evidence, which include benefit cliffs and disincentive deserts, time series macroeconomic data, business, economic, and technological change (BETC), artificial intelligence and other general purpose technologies, along with advanced robotics, the environmental Kuznets Curve, income distributions, democracy, social justice, dependence, autonomy, and economic freedom. A neutral, non-partisan tone introduction defines UBI and covers the history of universal income plans, while the conclusion summarizes the main arguments for and against UBI before surveying alternative policies, including universal basic asset, credit, service, job, and training plans.

This is an open access book.

The book explores the concept of ‘intimate capitalism’ within the context of the rising cultural and creative industries. The assimilation of culture with capitalism has produced a mass culture that socialises people with the culture of capitalism, effectively domesticating and controlling the masses by establishing an intimate relationship between labor and working conditions. Intimate capitalism is a new form of capitalism where workers invest their labor and work overtime due to an affective connection to the cultural product they are working on or an intimacy with the cultural working conditions. It critically examines the narratives surrounding the creative economy, as well as digital innovations within cultural industries, to highlight how they are reinforcing and perpetuating exploitative working conditions. The erosion of workers’ rights under intimate capitalism is examined to show how cultural industries seek to dominate the lives of those working within them, leading to an increased commodification of culture and institutionalisation of creative assets in the name of economic growth and development.

This book offers a critical framework for understanding intimate capitalism and outlines its impact on workers, particularly those within developing economies. It will be relevant to students and researchers interested in cultural economics, the political economy, and labour economics.

This book, the first of two volumes, comes to life through the transcription of captivating classroom lectures spanning several years, providing a comprehensive overview of the core topics within Austrian economics. With a focus on microeconomics, it explores foundational ideas within Austrian economics, including human action, entrepreneurship, competition theory, and price theory, to give readers a deep understanding of each topic unravelling complex economic concepts with clarity and precision. Economic uncertainty, rationality, marginal utility, productivity, exchange interactions, valuation, price determination, and monopoly are also discussed. Through a seamless blend of theory and real-world examples, readers are invited to challenge conventional wisdom and explore the implications of Austrian economics on society and individual freedom.

This book offers an accessible and engaging synthesis of Austrian economics that redefines the topic within modern economics. It will be relevant to students, teachers, and scholars of many other academic institutions around the world, interested in the approach of the Austrian School of economics and its relevance in today’s ever-evolving world.

This edited book provides a comprehensive and integrated understanding of the public sector’s role in building economic and social resilience. It focuses on how public finance and economic policy can best support countries’ ability to absorb emerging shocks as well as adapt to evolving circumstances.

The experiences of recent years, including multiple fiscal crises and the global pandemic, have shown that most economies are not prepared for rapidly changing conditions where uncertainty is a recurring theme. At the same time, social trust in public institutions has been eroding globally. Through a variety of perspectives, such as the role of taxation, social safety nets, public sector employment, public budgeting, and urban development, the book critically assesses existing weaknesses in the public sector and identifies solutions to foster resilience against future uncertainty. Against a political and economic context of increasing inequality and instability, the chapters demonstrate how public finance can help create the conditions for a stronger economy that supports economic stability and the labour market, encourages infrastructure and innovation, and promotes public health and environmental protection. This book is a fascinating read for academics in public finance, accounting, welfare economics, and labour economics, as well as professionals working in the spheres of public policy and governance.

This edited volume discusses the concept of resilient cities within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. Written by an international panel of scholars and experts, the book presents theoretical approaches, identifies risk factors, and suggests policies for building resiliency in a region of the world undergoing rapid urbanization. Chapters cover a diverse range of topics, including innovative concepts and studies in resilient city design, the interaction of social, entrepreneurial, governmental, and ecological transformations in the GCC region, and international best practices for risk reduction. Coupling rigorous economic analysis and practical policy implications, this book will be useful for students and academics of finance, governance, energy and resource economics, and climate change, as well as policymakers, community leaders, and risk reduction professionals.

This is an open access book.

This edited volume provides a comprehensive exploration of the Persian Gulf, covering historical naming and trade relationships, political and military strategies, and the impact of tribal systems on regional security. It spans from the Sassanid period to modern times, examining the role of the Maritime Silk Road and the strategic importance of water resources. Through contributions from various experts, the book offers a multi-dimensional view of the Persian Gulf, making it an essential resource for scholars and students interested in the region's complex dynamics.

Despite significant theoretical advances in social and behavioural macroeconomics, little has been done to synthesise the disparate developments in these fields and point the way forward to future research directions and policy implications.  This book reviews, unifies and extends diverse strands of thinking and shows how these theories can be used to improve macroeconomic modelling for policy development in a range of spheres.

The book explores how the most empirically relevant socio-behavioural traits can widen the scope of macroeconomics to fruitfully address new issues and challenges, such as rising inequality, the change in the functional distribution of income (labour and capital shares), and a further understanding of the government spending multiplier. Chapters also address more traditional topics such as macroeconomic policy effectiveness, growth, saving and labour supply. Other, more open-ended themes of the book include whether the concept of individual rationality should be complemented by collective rationality; whether socio-behavioural traits underlie socially inefficient outcomes such as tragedies-of-the-commons, rat races, financial crises and global warming; and whether such traits can provide new foundations for (New) Keynesian macroeconomics.

This book will be essential reading for advanced researchers and students working in macroeconomics and other social sciences, including psychology and politics, as well as those working on the theoretical end of public policy.

By evaluating previous public management research through Marxist concepts, this textbook offers innovative solutions to public service problems. It updates Marx’s framework to reflect the growth of public services, transitioning from abstract state notions to concrete service analysis. 

Addressing two critical gaps, the book highlights the benefits of a Marxist approach to public services and presents Marxist ideas to examine these services at a micro level. It demonstrates the relevance of Marxist frameworks for public service professionals, critically reviews current public management knowledge, and sheds light on the dynamic nature of public services against the background of neoliberalism. While doing so, the book goes beyond a Eurocentric perspective, providing cases and practical examples from developed and developing countries, with an additional focus on Asian practices.

Written by an award-winning author with years of practical experience and designed for graduate and advanced undergraduate students, each chapter sets clear learning objectives and reviews existing tools and frameworks. The chapters also present new ways of improving public services, encouraging readers to apply Marxist concepts to their contexts and cultures. This will also make this book a practical resource for practitioners and professionals, seeking to resolve their grounded public services issues.

The book is devoted to the scientific study of the international experience and prospects of the sustainable development of business in the economy of the digital technological mode. It outlines the imperatives of the sustainable development of business in the economy of the digital technological mode. The role of environmental innovations in the sustainable development of business in the context of the spheres of the economy of the digital technological mode. The international experience of the international development of business in the economy of the digital technological mode is considered and discussed. The practical and case experience of the sustainable development of business in the economy of the digital technological mode in Central Asia is given. The prospects are outlined, and recommendations are offered for the sustainable development of business in the economy of the digital technological mode.

This book addresses a little-studied area of the history of tourism, religious tourism, and pilgrimage and introduces a comprehensive economic analysis of their development from elite pursuits to a mass phenomenon. Focusing on Rome, Lourdes, and the Holy Land as destinations, the book showcases religious tourism as a key precursory factor in mass tourism in Italy and Europe. Departing from conventional historiographical timeframes, the authors demonstrate that the surge in tourism during the Italian “economic miracle” did not arise ex novo at that time but was part of a longer process of transformation originating prior to the Second World War. Diverse factors are discussed such as the social and economic role of the Catholic Church, its relationship to tourism, revolutions in transport technologies, rising wages, and increasing leisure time. Key questions are explored regarding religious travel (who, when, how) and how it gained momentum in the first half of the twentieth century. Drawing on a wealth of unpublished sources, many from the Vatican Archives, the book uncovers new religious, social, and cross-cultural perspectives and contexts for studying the economic history of tourism. 

This open access edited volume discusses the impact of digitalization on taxation, using the Swedish welfare state model as a lens through which to examine the disruptive effect of new technologies on traditional tax models. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, it integrates perspectives from economics, law, audit, and public policy to shed light on contemporary challenges in taxation.

With Sweden as a central case study, the chapters in this book address broader concerns surrounding the impact of digital transformation on how states calculate and enforce tax, as well as the role of international coordination in reforming tax policy. The book covers many important topics such as financing public welfare, international attempts to combat issues concerning multinationals and consumption taxation, legitimacy and democratic implications, as well as how digitalization impacts firms’ and tax authorities’ tax administration. The effects of AI, automation and remote work are all considered, as well as how greater labor mobility is decreasing the emphasis on a geographical nexus for taxability and creating a need for urgent tax reform. Providing a diverse set of theoretical and policy considerations, this book will be essential reading for scholars, students and policymakers working in the spheres of tax law, the welfare state and public economics.

This book provides essential insights into national income accounting, balance of payments, foreign exchange markets, money supply and demand, and monetary policy principles.

Econometrician Edward E. Ghartey begins the book by covering national income accounting and balance of payments. Chapters take readers through the foreign-exchange market and rational expectations, covering functions of money, monetary aggregates, and the determinants of money supply and demand. The text delves into the microeconomic foundations of money demand in developing countries, including an applied study using real data. It addresses the limitations of traditional IS-LM models and introduces a new aggregate demand curve using the Taylor principle. The book further explores the Phillips curve, and Okun’s law to derive aggregate supply curve; and the effects of monetary policy in open economies.

Readers will gain a thorough understanding of complex economic concepts and models, including the development of new theoretical frameworks. The book provides practical examples and data analysis, making it a valuable resource for students and professionals seeking to deepen their knowledge of macroeconomics and monetary policy. It also includes discussions on exchange rate regimes, monetary policy interventions, and the role of central banks, offering insights into both theoretical and applied aspects of economics.

This edited volume examines the legal and economic world of the Romans through concepts, structures, and objects that reveal practices of standardization and localism. It explores the myriad ways in which the Roman Empire became an integrated political, social and economic system.  

Split across two volumes, the collection addresses the dynamic interaction between Rome and its provinces in developing institutions crucial to societal and economic development.  It challenges notions of uniformity, demonstrating how tensions between imperial standardization and local cultures could both drive innovative legal and economic practices and hinder empire-wide integration. The chapters explore broad questions from various disciplinary perspectives, including ancient economic history, law, papyrology, epigraphy and archaeology. Contributions cover diverse topics such as weights, measures, and coinage, legal practices, taxation, and cultural symbols. Each chapter investigates how, even as local communities adopted practices associated with Rome as a ruling power, local customs could, in turn, influence practices across the Empire. 

By illuminating these reciprocal relationships, this book recontextualizes Roman standardization—not merely as a tool of imperial domination but as evidence of diverse socioeconomic practices and cross-cultural exchanges. It will be a valuable resource for scholars of ancient economic history, classical archaeology, and ancient law, as well as anyone interested in the economy and culture of Ancient Rome.

This book is the first volume presenting carefully selected chapters from the proceedings of the 8th International Scientific Conference on Business and Economics (ISCBE), Tetovo, North Macedonia, which took place in May 2025. 

The chapters explore the interplay between green and digital transformations, highlighting how businesses and economies can leverage technology and innovation to achieve sustainability goals. They cover a wide range of areas relevant to contemporary business and economics issues such as sustainable business models, digital integration for green growth, economic policies for resilience, circular economy practices, and the role of finance in fostering sustainability.  

The book is an essential compass for business leaders to navigate the complex challenges posed by the impact of global economic tensions and competition on sustainability efforts.

The book aims to facilitate the development of circular bioeconomy education, research, policy, and engineering practices in global communities to benefit undergraduate and graduate students and professionals. The book is expected to guide future farming activities, reshape urban-rural relationships, promote economic regeneration, and improve science-based regulations and policies to ensure socio-demographic justice and resilience in climate-vulnerable communities. The book will stimulate the investment in new natural resource-based industries and contribute to addressing the challenges of climate change, nutrition security, biodiversity conservation, and realization of the net zero emission goal.

This book is open access.

This book presents an integrated theory of firms’ strategies and two types of policies, namely environmental policies, and merger control policies. It develops a framework to examine the intricate relationship between merger and acquisition (M&A) incentives, merger control policy, environmental policies, and firms’ sustainability practices. The chapters highlight the importance of policy coordination to underscore the link between M&A and environmental externality, and the link between merger policy and environmental policy. Drawing together related fields that are seldom linked in the literature, this volume offers a comprehensive and authoritative reference for scholars, graduate students, and policymakers.