Handbook of Social Economics SET: 1A, 1B


Book Description

How can economists define and measure social preferences and interactions? Through the use of new economic data and tools, our contributors survey an array of social interactions and decisions that typify homo economicus. Identifying economic strains in activities such as learning, group formation, discrimination, and the creation of peer dynamics, they demonstrate how they tease out social preferences from the influences of culture, familial beliefs, religion, and other forces. Advances our understanding about quantifying social interactions and the effects of culture Summarizes research on theoretical and applied economic analyses of social preferences Explores the recent willingness among economists to consider new arguments in the utility function




The Handbook of Organizational Economics


Book Description

(E-book available via MyiLibrary) In even the most market-oriented economies, most economic transactions occur not in markets but inside managed organizations, particularly business firms. Organizational economics seeks to understand the nature and workings of such organizations and their impact on economic performance. The Handbook of Organizational Economics surveys the major theories, evidence, and methods used in the field. It displays the breadth of topics in organizational economics, including the roles of individuals and groups in organizations, organizational structures and processes, the boundaries of the firm, contracts between and within firms, and more.




The Political Economy of Lobbying


Book Description

Lobbying is not only the subject of ongoing, heated debates in politics and the public sphere but has also been a focus of the social sciences for decades. This edited volume provides an overview of the current state of research on lobbying from the perspective of Public Choice as a subfield of political science and economics. After a brief introduction to the field, Part I provides an overview of basic concepts and political-economic theories of lobbying from the standpoints of various subfields of Public Choice. Subsequently, Part II investigates the various channels used by interest groups to influence policymakers, such as party donations, informational lobbying, hiring politicians, etc. These chapters also discuss the possibilities and limits of regulating the respective channels. Lastly, Part III sheds light on lobbying in selected regions (i.e., the United States, European Union, Russia, and China).




Handbook of Development Economics


Book Description

Handbooks of development economics/ edit. Chenery.-v.1.




Endogenous Public Policy and Contests


Book Description

This book focuses on the role of interest groups and their lobbying efforts in public policy. It applies strategic contest theory as the basic methodology and clarifies the fundamental parameters that determine the behavior of the government and the interest groups. It illustrates the proposed approach in five specific cases: determination of monopoly price, privatization policy, migration quotas, minimum wage and promotion in tournaments.




Group Lending with Heterogeneous Types


Book Description

Group lending has been widely adopted in the past thirty years by many microfinance institutions as a means to mitigate information asymmetries when delivering credit to the poor. This paper proposes an empirical method to address the potential omitted-variable problem resulting from unobserved group types when modeling the repayment behavior of group members. We estimate the model using a rich dataset from a group-lending program in India. The estimation results support our model specification and show the advantages of relying on a type-varying method when analyzing the probability of default of group members. In particular, our model helps to better understand the factors driving repayment behavior, which may differ across group types, and shows a higher predictive power than standard single-agent choice models.




Handbook of Defense Economics


Book Description

The second volume of the Handbook of Defense Economics addresses defense needs, practices, threats, and policies in the modern era of globalization. This new era concerns the enhanced cross-border flows of all kinds (e.g., capital and labor flows, revolutionary rhetoric, guerrillas, and terrorists) including the spillovers of benefits and costs associated with public goods and transnational externalities (i.e., uncompensated interdependencies affecting two or more nations). These ever-increasing flows mean that military armaments and armies are less able to keep out security threats. Thus, novel defense and security barriers are needed to protect borders that are porous to terrorists, pollutants, political upheavals, and conflicts. Even increased trade and financial flows imply novel security challenges and defenses. Globalization also underscores the importance of a new set of institutions (e.g., the European Union and global governance networks) and agents (e.g., nongovernmental organizations and partnerships).This volume addresses the security challenges in this age of globalization, where conflicts involve novel tactics, new technologies, asymmetric warfare, different venues, and frightening weapons. Volume 2 contains topics not covered in volume 1 – i.e., civil wars, peacekeeping, economic sanctions, the econometrics of arms races, conversion, peace economics, and the interface of trade, peace, and democracy. Volume 2 also revisits topics from volume 1, where there has been a significant advancement of knowledge – i.e., conflict analysis, terrorism, arms races, arms trade, military manpower, and arms industries. All of the main securities concerns of today are analyzed. Chapters are written by the leading contributors in the topic areas.*Up-to-date surveys on the pressing defense issues: theoretical, empirical and policy issues.*Coverage of theoretical and empirical studies of terrorism.*Contributions by the leading researchers in the field of defense economics.




Lecture Notes In Experimental Economics


Book Description

Experimental economics involves the use of controlled, experimental methods both in the laboratory and the field to better comprehend how individuals and groups make economic decisions and to more clearly identify causal relationships. This book takes the reader to the frontier of research in this exciting and rapidly growing field. Unlike other texts, this book discusses both the methodology of experimental economics and some of the main application areas.The material is organized as a series of 12 chapters or lectures that can be covered in a single academic term. The first five chapters cover the reasons for experimentation as well as basic experimental methodology. The last seven chapters discuss applications of experimental economics to areas such as game theory, public economics, social preferences, auctions and markets. The book assumes only a basic knowledge of economics and game theory and is written at a level that is suitable for advanced undergraduate, master's or PhD students.




Membership Based Organizations of the Poor


Book Description

This highly topical volume, with contributions from leading experts in the field, explores a variety of questions about membership based organizations of the poor. Analyzing their success and failure and the internal and external factors that play a part, it uses studies from both developed and developing countries. Put together by a group of prestigious editors, the contributors address a range of questions, including: What structures and activities characterize MBOPs? What is meant by success and what factors account for success? What are the internal (governance structure and leadership) and external (policy environment) factors that account for success? Are these factors replicable across countries or even within countries? What are the constraints to successful MBOPs expanding, or to new ones being formed? What sort of policy environment enables the success of MBOPs and the formation of successful MBOPs? What types of institutional reforms are needed to ensure the representation of the poor through their own MBOs? This is an insightful work, that will be invaluable for students and researchers studying or working in the areas of international and development economics and development studies.




Groups and Markets


Book Description

This monograph studies multi-member households or, more generally, socio-economic groups from a purely theoretical perspective and within a general equilibrium framework, in contrast to a sizeable empirical literature. The approach is based on the belief that households, their composition, decisions and behavior within a competitive market economy deserve thorough examination. The authors set out to link the formation, composition, decision-making, and stability of households. They develop general equilibrium models of pure exchange economies in which households can have several, typically heterogeneous members and act as collective decision-making units on the one hand and as competitive market participants on the other hand. Moreover, the more advanced models combine traditional exchange (markets for commodities) and matching (markets for people or partners) and develop implications for welfare, social structures, and economic policy. In the field of family economics, Hans Haller and Hans Gersbach have pioneered a ‘market’ approach that applies the tools of general equilibrium theory to the analysis of household behavior. This very interesting book presents an overview of their methods and results. This is an inspiring work. Pierre-André Chiappori, Columbia University, USA The sophisticated, insightful and challenging analysis presented in this book extends the theory of the multi-person household along an important but relatively neglected dimension, that of general equilibrium theory. It also challenges GE theorists themselves to follow Paul Samuelson in taking seriously the real attributes of that fundamental building block, the household, as a social group whose decisions may not satisfy the standard axioms of individual choice. This synthesis and extension of their earlier work by Gersbach and Haller will prove to be a seminal contribution in its field. Ray Rees, LMU Munich, Germany