Economics books

Recent years have witnessed a dramatic surge in applied econometric work in health economics, enhanced by the availability of large micro and macro data sets as well as the rapid development of new techniques and tools in econometrics. Health economics is an important and challenging area of research for applied econometricians, due to complexity embedded in the data, arising from issues such as nonlinearity of models, the presence of individual-level unobserved heterogeneity as well as time and cross sectional dependencies. This book covers a wide range of existing and emerging topics in applied health economics. These include: behavioural economics, medical care risk, social insurance, discrete choice models, cost-effectiveness analysis, health and immigration, vignette approach, response of parental investments to child’s health at birth, determinants of innovation in the pharmaceutical industry, hospital competition, use of administrative data, spatial health econometrics, health expenditure, and networks.

This volume of Research in Law and Economics contains articles that address important legal and economic developments in the areas of healthcare, intellectual property and labor settlements, competitive effects, cartel overcharges, and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”). Four of the articles were initially presented at a conference on healthcare competition in Washington, D.C., which was sponsored by the American Antitrust Institute, this journal, and Navigant Economics. These articles explore practices that are under challenge in pharmaceuticals, where the Federal Trade Commission has been extremely active, as well as issues involving hospital and health insurance mergers. They are followed by a long and detailed discussion of the current and historic role of economists and economic analysis at the Federal Trade Commission. The next two articles analyze different aspects of the French economy, pre-trial labor settlements and the impact of e-commerce on franchisees. The volume ends with three technical economics articles – one on “upward pricing pressure”, one on estimating price increases in cartel cases, and one critiquing a “meta-analysis” of research on the effectiveness of U.S. merger regulation. Taken together, these articles raise questions about appropriate competition policy, how to evaluate settlements and other firm behavior, and where economics and competition policy are headed.

The application of continuously changing ubiquitous computing and network technologies and the ensuing new networked society is challenging the traditional perspectives of what is human and social capital. Human Capital and Assets in the Networked World extends the discussion of the interaction between multiple types of capital among different actors over different time frames, assuming that the nature of such interaction is dynamically modified resulting from the adaptation by individuals and organizations of the new technologies. Such interaction of a multilevel system is enabled for example by the pervasive mobile technologies and the internet of things and ‘blockchain’ technologies. Featuring contributions from leading scholars in the field, the book discusses human capital and human assets from a connectionist perspective, focusing on the growing infusion of the traditional human capital and social and knowledge-based systems. It goes beyond the current literature by providing a platform for a broad scope of discussion regarding human capital and assets, and more importantly, by encouraging a multidisciplinary fusion between diverse academic disciplines. Multi-level and multi-discipline chapters are represented, as well as when appropriate, plurality of empirical methods from diverse disciplines that are enhancing the opportunity for the building of a holistic theory of human capital and assets in the new networked society. The book also broadens the human capital praxis framework introduced and used by Russ, into the new networked society focusing on definitions, management, value creation, valuation and reporting of human capital and assets. Human Capital and Assets in the Networked World provides researchers and students in all disciplines of management with a wide-ranging reference and will provide new insights of developing and managing talent in the the new networked economy that could be applied by advanced practitioners to augment company success.

Volume 36A of Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology features a symposium on Bruce Caldwell’s Beyond Positivism after 35 years. Contributors to the symposium include Kevin Hoover, Wade Hands, Tony Lawson, and Peter Boettke. The volume also features general-research essays from Luis Mireles-Flores and Alain Marciano. Luca Fiorito presents a new discovery from the archives.

Volume 36B of Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology features a symposium reflecting on the significance of Mary Morgan's contributions to the history and philosophy of economics. Symposium participants include guest editors Marcel Boumans and Hsiang-Ke Chao, as well as Harro Maas, Tiago Mata, Gerardo Serra, and Andrej Svorencík. The volume also features the next installment of Charles R. McCann, Jr. and Vibha Kapuria-Foreman's continuing project on the neglected Chicago economist, Robert Franklin Hoxie.

Volume 35B of Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology features a symposium on the economics of Piero Sraffa, guest edited by Scott Carter and Riccardo Bellofiore. The symposium includes new research from Professor Carter, as well as from John Davis, Nerio Naldi and Eleonora Lattanzi, Bertram Schefold, Andres Lazzarini and Gabriel Brondino, and Lucia Morra. Volume 35B also features general research contributions from Masazumi Wakatabe, and co-authors Eugene Callahan and Andreas Hoffman. Mary Furner, Matthew Frye Jacobson, Scott Scheall, and Charles R. McCann, Jr. offer unique perspectives on Thomas C. Leonard’s (2015) Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, and American Economics in the Progressive Era. Professor Leonard contributes a response essay.

Volume 35A of Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology features a symposium on historical epistemology, guest edited by Till Düppe and Harro Maas. The symposium includes new research from the guest editors, as well as from Loïc Charles and Christine Théré, Hsiang-Ke Chao, Tobias Vogelsang, and Thomas Stapleford. This internationally renowned cast of contributors offers a variety of perspectives on one of the major approaches in empirical philosophy of science and economic thought. Volume 35A also includes a new research paper by Cameron Weber on the paradoxical notion of value employed in the economics of art and culture. An archival piece by Marc Nerlove, winner of the John Bates Clark Medal in 1969, completes the volume. Originally written in the summer of 1953, when Nerlove was a 19-year-old graduate student serving as research assistant to Jacob Marschak and Tjalling Koopmans at the Cowles Commission, the paper relates the ideas of Cournot to the concept of Nash equilibrium. The paper was long-forgotten by Nerlove and has only recently been rediscovered among the Marschak Papers at UCLA. Olav Bjerkholt contributes a foreword to Nerlove’s archival piece.

Parietti addresses one of the most important topic scrutinized by the scholars of International Business. Distance between two countries is a multidimensional concept, including not only a geographical dimension but also other dimensions related to the culture, the administrative, political and economic aspects as shown by Ghemawat (2001) and its “CAGE” framework, as well as by Berry et al. (2010) and their nine dimensions of cross-national distance. In the last decade, van Tulder (2010) notes that the research tends to be oriented towards the institutional and governance distance between countries. Many scholars have emphasized the role of institutions in the internationalization process of firms (Cantwell et al., 2010; Dunning and Lundan, 2008; Van Hoorn and Maseland, 2016). Institutional distance has been used primarily to explain the location and entry mode choices based on the concept of “liability of foreignness” introduced by Zaheer (1995). Nevertheless, previous studies show contradictory results due to differences in terms of conceptualization and measurement of institutional distance.

This collective book offers a cross-country perspective on the internationalisation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Scholars from prestigious institutions in Europe, North America, Australia and China provide new insights on how SMEs develop and perform their international activities. Their innovative approach is particularly useful to understand the major role played by SMEs in today’s global economy. The authors identify key factors that facilitate the international expansion of SMEs. They explain how SMEs can succeed in their development in both mature and emerging economies. Their findings are based on quantitative surveys and in-depth case studies, and the resulting recommendations are provided to help SME managers increase the performance of their international activities.

The concept of an information economy is considered by some to be a new branch of economic theory, and by others as the next stage of development for an economy post-industrialization. Leading and developing economies are seeking to quickly develop a functional information economy in order to help overcome the consequences of the global financial crisis and ensure high global economic competitiveness. This book analyzes modern conceptual models of information economies, highlighting and examining their systemic contradictions and failings. It explores the disconnection between the readiness of the technical infrastructure for forming and developing the information economy, and an unprepared institutional and societal structure that is therefore unable to implement these processes and models. The editors present different approaches to solving these methodological and practical contradictions and lay out future models across different international contexts. They also provide recommendations for optimizing their theoretical model and improving its implementation in modern economic systems.