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The remarkable speed at which microcredit has expanded around the world in the last three decades has piqued the curiosity of practitioners and theorists alike. By developing innovative ways of making credit available to the poor, the idea of microcredit has challenged many traditional assumptions about both poverty reduction strategies and financial markets. While this has encouraged new theorising about how microcredit works, the practice of microcredit has itself evolved, often in unpredictable ways, outpacing the development of theory.The Theory and Practice of Microcredit aims to remedy this imbalance, arguing that a proper understanding of the evolution of practice is essential both for developing theories that are relevant for the real world and for adopting policies that can better realize the full potential of microcredit. By drawing upon their first-hand knowledge of the nature of this evolution in Bangladesh, the birthplace of microcredit, the authors have pushed the frontiers of current knowledge through a rich blend of theoretical and empirical analysis. The book breaks new grounds on a wide range of topics including: the habit-forming nature of credit repayment; the institutional strength and community-based role of microfinance institutions; the relationships between microcredit and informal credit markets; the pattern of long-term participation in microcredit programmes and the variety of loan use; the scaling up of microenterprises beyond subsistence; the'missing middle'in the credit market; and the prospects of linking micro-entrepreneurship with economic development.The book will be of interest to researchers, development practitioners and university students of Development Economics, Rural Development, or Rural Finance, as well as to public intellectuals.

This book offers a thorough examination of the economics of financial inclusion and management from a contemporary standpoint. It covers a vast array of financial inclusion-related topics, surveying economies around the globe and analyzes the factors that contribute to both financial inclusion and exclusion.The book discusses the role of technology, examining how technological advances have revolutionized financial services and increased access to populations that were previously underserved. It studies the intersection of financial inclusion and sustainability, highlighting the significance of green finance and its role in fostering inclusive and sustainable economic growth. Financial literacy and the theories underlying financial inclusion efforts are examined, as is the impact of financial criminality. Further, the authors consider regional development and the extant gaps in financial inclusion as well as the urban-rural divide, investigating disparities between urban and rural areas and proposing strategies to bridge the gap. They also assess the effect of inflation and recession and discuss how monetary and fiscal policies can impact inclusion initiatives. The book concludes with a management perspective on financial inclusion, with chapters devoted to various aspects of administering inclusive financial systems. It combines theoretical insights with empirical evidence and case studies, from both developing and developed nations, to illustrate the various approaches and challenges and to provide a comprehensive understanding of worldwide advancements and developments. The comparative approach provides readers with insights into diverse strategies and best practices for overcoming challenges and obstacles and for promoting financial inclusion in various economic contexts.Overall, readers will benefit from the book's comprehensive analysis and exhaustive coverage. It is an invaluable resource for advanced students, scholars, researchers and policymakers.

It is now widely recognised that rising inequality of income and wealth on the one hand and a slowdown in the rate of economic growth on the other are two of the most important challenges faced today by the global economy as well as by most of the developing economies. This book starts by explaining how these two issues are interrelated. There is no dearth of books on the role that the economic policies of the government can play in meeting these twin challenges. The role of business managers in the private sector of the economy, however, is a relatively neglected area. This book seeks to close this gap in the literature. The central message of the book is that, contrary to popular belief, it is in the interests of private business itself that business managers take into account the effects that their decisions have on the economy as a whole. It is shown that a failure to do so would hurt their own economic prospects in both the short run and the long. Emphasis is given on the importance of an appropriate orientation of managerial decisions and on the role of investors (i.e. the suppliers of capital) in inducing managers to take socially optimal decisions. The book is addressed as much to business managers and students in management courses as to the general reader. Therefore, no prior knowledge of advanced economic theory is presumed. All arguments are built from first principles.

This book is a collection of empirical and theoretical research papers regarding'Fiscal Policy'written by researchers from several different universities. The studies include a wide range of topics from issues in'Fiscal Policy'. The book is aimed at educators, researchers, and students interested in'Fiscal Policy'.

First published in 1986, The Bulgarian Economy (now with a new preface by the author) traces the rapid growth of the Bulgarian economy throughout the twentieth century. It also notes the obstacles Bulgaria has faced in bringing about industrial development in a small relatively poor country where, in the early twentieth century, agriculture predominated. It explores the difficulties which have arisen because of the unusual domination of a relatively isolated capital city, Sofia, over the rest of the country. It examines the effects of Bulgaria's being on the losing side in three wars. An abrupt change in economic strategy and management came with the Communist accession to power in 1944 and with the simultaneous reorientation from close ties with Germany to close ties with the Soviet Union. The book shows, however, that significant state control had appeared well before this transition and that there is much in common between the pre- and post-war periods. It goes on to emphasise economic growth and structural change in the post-war period and the unusually large role of foreign trade. The reforms which have taken place since 1960 are accorded a separate, final chapter.

The role of banks and banking systems in facilitating and shaping the pattern of economic growth has been much explored in an attempt to understand differing levels of economic success in industrializing and mature economies. This is a collection of contributions to the understanding of this role.

The American savings and loan industry began in the 1830s to help people of modest financial means buy a home. Despite the long history of the industry there has been limited scholarly work done on its early years. This collection allows an insight into the place of the savings and loans industry within the wider context of American society.

This is an open access book. 2024 2nd International Conference on Digital Economy and Management Science (CDEMS 2024) is scheduled to be held in Wuhan, China from April 26 to 28, 2024.The meeting mainly focused on the research fields of Digital Economy, Management Science. The conference aims to provide a platform for experts and scholars engaged in economy, management and science to share scientific research achievements and cutting-edge technologies, understand academic development trends, broaden research ideas, strengthen academic research and discussion, and promote the industrialization cooperation of academic achievements. Experts, scholars, business people and other relevant personnel from universities, scientific research institutions at home and abroad are sincerely invited to attend the conference!

The decade of 1980s was one of crisis for Africa. Neither African governments nor development agencies made a significant impact on the quality of life of rural people. The enormous range of contexts in Africa — social, economic, political, cultural, and environmental — limits the value of the search for universal solutions to endemic problems. First published in 1992, Development from Within examines an alternative framework, arguing for flexibility and specificity. The authors use case studies to explore the complex social relationships of power — from the household to the state. They argue for the knowledge and skill of African people and illustrate the diverse means by which men and women in rural Africa struggle to survive.This book will be a beneficial read for students and researchers of African studies, development studies, economics, and sociology.

A remedy for the gap between micro and macro data, making measures of inequality and national income consistent with each otherIncreasing inequality, the impact of globalization, and the disparate effects of financial regulation and innovation are extraordinarily important topics that fuel spirited policy debates. And yet the facts underlying these debates are of doubtful accuracy. In reality, as Archawa Paweenawat and Robert Townsend show in Inequality and Globalization, there is a large gap between micro household surveys, which measure key outcomes such as inequality, and aggregated financial accounts, which measure macroeconomic totals and growth. Paweenawat and Townsend propose a remedy: integrated financial accounts, in which the flows in income statements, including saving and investment, are consistent with the changes in financial assets and liabilities in the balance sheet at micro and macro levels. None of the leading US micro household surveys or macro accounts meets this criterion.Drawing on extensive data from fieldwork in Thailand, Paweenawat and Townsend show how consistent integrated financial accounts at the individual household and small enterprise level can be created using household and firm survey data. Aggregated to the village level, these accounts can link anecdotal stories of individual households to their financial accounts, document the real impact on them from growth, and assess what would have happened to them if trade and financial liberalization had not been allowed. Paweenawat and Townsend then describe the next logical step: creating integrated financial accounts for the United States, working from the ground up and the top down. Only with these integrated accounts will policy debates on inequality and globalization have a solid factual basis.

The volumes in this collection are organized thematically and examine the history of key financial institutions before and after the establishment of the Federal Reserve.

Co-operatives provide a different approach to organising business through their ideals of member ownership and democratic practice. Every co-operative member has an equal vote regardless of his or her own personal capital investment. They take a variety of different forms, including consumer co-operatives, agricultural co-operatives, worker co-operatives and financial co-operatives.Patmore, Balnave and Marjanovic provide a perspective on Australian co-operative development within a conceptual framework and international context since the 1820s by exploring the economic, political and social factors that explain their varying fortunes. Drawing upon the Visual Historical Atlas of Australian Co-operatives, a significant database of Australian co-operatives and a variety of historical sources, this book provides a detailed historical analysis of their development, from their inception in Australia to today. Australian co-operatives were heavily dependent on state sympathy for their growth and vulnerable to ideas that challenged collective organisation such as Neo-liberalism. Despite these challenges, the co-operative business model has persisted and since 2009, there has been resurgence of interest and organisation that may provide a platform for future growth.A useful resource for practitioners, students, educators, policy makers and researchers that highlights a significant alternative business model to the Investor-Owned Business and state enterprise.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

Health systems across the world face multiple pressures. Input costs are soaring, systems are struggling to keep up with increasing demand for their services and areas of the world still lack universal health coverage. All of this whilst health inequalities between the best and worst-off within countries persist and, in some countries, are even widening. There is a need to think of new initiatives in response to these global health challenges. One such response is social finance. Social finance is about creating social returns. This innovative and rapidly growing sector promotes new ways of banking and funding social and public services. However, social finance has an under-recognised, and potentially underexploited, role in responding to specific aspects of global health challenges: funding and facilitating access to health(care) services and acting on health. The objectives of this book are to conceptualise and evidence different forms of social finance - microfinance and impact bonds - acting in these ways and to critically engage with current debates and challenges. With such evidence to hand, we can either avoid adoption of new trends in financing public services or, more hopefully, attract greater policy support and resources for new tools for public health and in supporting more precarious, but potentially essential, parts of the finance sector. This book will be essential reading to students, researchers, policymakers and the general public alike who are interested in, or who work in, and across, health systems and social finance.

The role of banks and banking systems in facilitating and shaping the pattern of economic growth has been much explored in an attempt to understand differing levels of economic success in industrializing and mature economies. This is a collection of contributions to the understanding of this role.

Drawing on political economy and economic pluralism, this book explores issues in sustainable economic development from a macro perspective.In contrast to the vast majority of studies on contemporary development problems, which are focused on micro-level theory, method, and policy, this volume brings together both heterodox and mainstream perspectives. The international cast of contributors thus brings a pluralistic approach to core contemporary topics including digital transformation, climate change, degrowth and the effects of the pandemic crisis. Methods range from frameworks used to analyse public policy and institutional change, to modes of analyses including historically grounded narratives and conceptualisations of grand theories. Each chapter surveys the origins, development, key features, applications, and frontiers of a particular viewpoint, framework, or mode of analysis.This book makes a vital contribution to the literature on economic development, sustainable development, capitalism, and sustainability more broadly.

Le secteur informel joue un rôle crucial dans les économies africaines, se distinguant par sa contribution significative au PIB et à la création d'emplois. Toutefois, les discussions sur ses origines, son fonctionnement, son dynamisme et sa persistance sont marquées par des opinions variées et souvent contradictoires. Jusqu'à présent, les Sciences de gestion ont été relativement absentes de ces débats.Cet ouvrage, de nature académique, explore et approfondit notre compréhension du secteur informel. Il débute par une observation clé et une question fondamentale : les entreprises du secteur informel existent, mais de quelle manière opèrent-elles? Pour répondre à cette interrogation, les auteurs analysent en détail plusieurs aspects cruciaux : l'origine et les objectifs du secteur informel (chapitre 1), l'entrepreneuriat au sein de ce secteur (chapitre 2), le management et la performance des entreprises informelles (chapitre 3), la gestion des ressources humaines dans ces entreprises (chapitre 4), et enfin, leur rôle et impact dans les territoires et communautés où elles sont implantées (chapitre 5).L'objectif de cet ouvrage est de fournir une contribution significative à l'enseignement et à la recherche dans le domaine des Sciences de gestion, en offrant une perspective nouvelle et approfondie sur un secteur souvent négligé mais essentiel de l'économie africaine.

The American savings and loan industry began in the 1830s to help people of modest financial means buy a home. Despite the long history of the industry there has been limited scholarly work done on its early years. This collection allows an insight into the place of the savings and loans industry within the wider context of American society.

This book is a collection of studies that explores the adoption, applications, and implications of emerging technologies in business. Given that emerging technologies have the potential to significantly disrupt and transform existing business models, the premise is to demonstrate how theories are translated into practice. Readers will gain insights into operating processes and business models, the diffusion of innovation in business and industry, and how humans interact with emerging technologies.

Co-operative and mutual enterprise is one of the oldest and most enduring forms of business, encompassing co-operatives, mutual firms, friendly societies, and credit unions. This book provides an expert overview of contemporary research in this important field.Governments around the world have encouraged the development of co-operative and mutual enterprises (CMEs), yet relatively little attention has been given to them within the mainstream business and economics research literature. In this book, the author summarises the origins, impacts, and structure of the research field. The book does so by focusing on the CME business model and is structured around a conceptual framework for research into CMEs. It also explores the historical evolution of the CME research field and presents a systematic review of the literature. Foundation theories relevant to CMEs are discussed before detailed discussions of the research from a systems, enterprise, and member level perspective.This book critically analyses the state of knowledge in the field of CMEs which delivers a concise and valuable book for scholars and students in the fields of business and management around the world.

The Political Economy of Transnational Power and Production: Mexico's Metamorphosis 1982-2022 How and why Mexico's socioeconomic structure was transformed through plutocratic preferences, US corporate strategies, and ideology—all powering transnational processes of neoliberalization—are issues examined in this comprehensive, carefully documented publication covering four crucial decades of metamorphosis. The causes and consequences of the creation of a new, regional power bloc—the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)—are extensively examined.Readers will benefit from the many important demystifications presented here, chronicling the asymmetric Mexico-US production system. The impacts of the new transnational structure for labor on both sides of the border are matters of centrality. Specialists and general readers alike will find an explicit and accessible account of the powerful forces opening access to and profiting from millions of low-wage workers enabling Mexico to become a strategic source of US imports. Portrayed by mainstream economists and major policy makers as a'win-win'triumph of'free trade'theory, this book documents the opposing reality imposed by NAFTA and the US-Mexico-Canada Free Trade Agreement on both the US and Mexican working classes. US economists foretold a dramatic narrowing of the income gap—the US would benefit; Mexico would benefit even more. But instead, the yawning gap increased for three decades, bringing devastation for workers while debilitating Mexico's national industrial base.

This book is a primer on economics of competition law by a Commissioner based on cases of the Competition Commission of India (CCI). It presents economic theories in lucid ways while providing an in depth economic analysis of the cases dealt by CCI and in the process, it blends the diversity of responses by including the orders upheld by majority and minority. In essence. It is a unique work that addresses the gap between competition law and economics.

In this comparative study of programmes against poverty in developing countries, the authors argue that building sustainable, target group-oriented financial institutions is important and feasible, and that it is likely to have greater development impact than the channelling of external funds to poor target groups (small and micro-scale business, small farmers, and women). The analysis has far-reaching implications for development policy and will interest development specialists, policymakers, and scholars of development finance and international banking.

The Routledge Companion to Marketing and Society focuses on marketing for social impact as the use of marketing strategies, tools and techniques to improve the well-being of society. As such it does not exclude the use of marketing to increase profit and shareholder value but rather prioritises the social impact of marketing, both positive and negative (even if largely unintended).This companion is a scholarly reference providing an overview of marketing for social impact in terms of its current and emergent themes, debates and developments, as well as reflections on the future of the field. Using marketing tools and techniques for social impact is commonly accepted as an effective commercial strategy (e.g. corporate social responsibility, cause-related marketing) and increasingly accepted as an approach to planned social transformation that can be used to influence positive social change in behaviours such as recycling, healthy eating, domestic violence and human trafficking.This reference volume serves as an authoritative and comprehensive statement on the state of contemporary scholarship focusing on the diverse subject of the social impact of marketing. It features 25 chapters written by international subject specialists within six themed sections, including consumer issues, marketing tools, commercial marketing and non-profit marketing. It will find a global audience of scholars and researchers within marketing and cognate fields, interested in using marketing tools and techniques to create social impact in areas such as public health, social and behaviour change communication, sociology and cultural studies.

This book presents a concise economic history of India from 1600 to the mobile economy of the twenty-first century. It examines political events, social history, and economic developments across the world through the years to showcase how India has navigated its economic past, present, and future, and shaped events that for years controlled the Indian economy.This volume covers a range of important themes, which include: Medieval fiscal systems, and the European surge in India The impact of the British Industrial Revolution on India; English interventionism and policies; the imperialistic economy and its impact Indian economy and nationalist movement in the nineteenth and early-twentieth century; the Great Depression and its global consequences Gandhiism and ‘mass nationalism'; Independence and Partition; the impact of the World Wars; the inter-war economy; the rise of the dollar, and other key global trends The Cold War and India Constitutional remedies, nation-building and industrial policies; food security, the Green Revolution, and the power politics of 1970s Liberalization, privatization, and globalization in the 1990s; and The economy of war and peace, India–China relations, and current trends in political economy The book offers a lucid and insightful narrative of how the economy unfolded in India. It will interest readers of Indian history, economic history, and South Asian history and other general readers.

This book examines the development of social support systems in the Modern age in the rural areas of the city-states of Northern Italy. This investigation achieves two main purposes: first, it allows researchers to understand the role occupied concretely by welfare and micro-credit activities in the political and socio-economic panorama of rural Northern Italy; secondly, it verifies to what extent the formation of a more or less structured support system influenced the establishment of local identity and the rooting of individuals. The book brings together perspectives from different fields of research ranging from economic and political history to the study of the history of ecclesiastical institutions, as well as integrating recent research on the anthropological value of welfare actions and the use of multiple historical sources. It considers how the retreat of the welfare activity of the State, associated with a depopulation of the rural areas of the peninsula and a steady increase of poverty into social fringes that were previously not affected by economic problems, pushes us to investigate more carefully the dynamics that in the Ancien Régime gave shape to the support activities against indigence and poverty. This book will be of interest to academics and students working in economic history and social history.

This book builds an information platform on China's industrial competitiveness, providing scientific design and application case studies for integrated analysis and decision-making facilities and mechanisms for enterprises, industries, financial institutions and governments, which can make up for the lack of adequate information in China's market operations, especially the problems of duplicate construction and vicious competition aggravated by the lack of systematically processed industrial information. This book not only pursues innovation in technical methods and application theories but also pursues the collection, processing and collation of relevant domestic and international data and development and application so as to provide primary results for an industrial competitiveness database adapted to government management needs. The research is closely related to the actual problems in China and extensively uses statistical data to make various model analyses, which has a relativelysizeable academic value.

Ever since the quest for independence between 1810 and 1819, economic thought in Colombia has been shaped by policy debates and characterized by a pragmatic and eclectic approach. Economic thought in Colombia can only be revealed through the exploration of economists'practices and the role of economic arguments within broader public debate. This history of Colombian economic thought provides a detailed account of major issues that have marked the constant feedback between economic ideas and economic practice in Colombia during the 19th and 20th centuries. This volume is thus a history of the interaction between ideas and policy. Those involved in these debates – politicians, public officials, journalists, and, latterly, professional economists – established direct contact with what can be identified as the centers of production of economic theory (both in Europe and the US) and entered regional and local networks in economics, but were not just importers of ideas or theories. The way in which they read, discussed, transformed and applied economic theories in Colombia makes for a rich environment for the production and implementation of economic policies that drew, diverged and transformed the way economics was understood and used as a source of knowledge for practical concerns. This is why the history of Colombian economic thought does not fit into traditional typologies of economic schools and why it must be understood as part of a political debate and within a political, social and cultural context that demanded specific solutions to urgent social demands. Through the study of what was taught, when and how, at the beginnings of the republican era, and why and how professional economists came to lead public debate and economic policy making in the 20th century, this book explores the foundations of this permanent interaction between theory and practice. This book will be of significant interest to readers of history of economic thought, economic history and the history of Colombian and Latin American economic, political and social life more broadly.

In the era of complex healthcare challenges, the question arises: Can health cooperatives be the catalysts for transformation in the healthcare system? This research monograph delves into this thought-provoking query, exploring the potential of health cooperatives as influential entities in the future of healthcare. Despite advancements, healthcare systems still need help with sustainability, equality, costly therapies and various other segments.This monograph aims to dissect the notion of'Healthy lives and well-being for everyone,'protracted by policymakers and proponents of the existing healthcare setup. Researchers, cooperative professionals, healthcare practitioners, decision-makers, patients, policy developers, librarians and booksellers will find this book relevant and interesting to read. The captivating narrative is supported by analysing 20 countries across five continents, explaining their historical and modern notion of the context and health cooperatives'development. It also sheds light on the significance of modern cooperatives in the current healthcare landscape. In addition, the monograph offers insights into multiple case studies of health-oriented cooperatives showing their diversity and flexibility in operations.This research monograph paves the way for envisioning a future where health cooperatives have the potential to play an important role in addressing various challenges affecting positive societal changes.

This book deploys quantitative methods to focus on the operation of the Chinese economy as a whole since the reforms in 1978, by combining a range of mathematical, algorithmic and computational methods to analyze rich empirical data, seeking to demonstrate the long-term economic trends and dynamics of economic growth and fluctuations in China.To answer the core question of how the Chinese economy became what it is, the author draws on dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) modeling and calibration, while also exploring microfoundations to reveal optimization behavior within a context of economic change at the macrolevel. The book examines internal shocks in the Chinese economic system, including institutional changes, credit policy and monetary policy, which are all closely associated with issues of enhancing the coordination and sustainability of development and the effectiveness and efficiency of policy reforms. It also elaborates on China's close interactions with the global economy, shedding light on the dynamic effects of energy prices, the Chinese Yuan exchange rate and foreign direct investment.This book is an essential reference for researchers and students interested in the Chinese economy, methods of microeconomic dynamics and macroeconomic theory and policy.

This book looks at the institutional and governance issues faced by India during the first and second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and its adverse impact on the vulnerable sectors and groups.The book is split into four parts, with preceding chapters informing later ones. Part One outlines the approach of the study, in particular their examination of policy responses and the effect of the pandemic. Part Two delves into the governance challenges in containing the pandemic while giving the theoretical rationale for institutional responses. Part Three looks at how the pandemic affected economically vulnerable households, workers, and small industries. The effect of pandemic on the informal sector is also detailed. Lastly, Part Four examines the impacts and responses of Indian public infrastructure and services to the pandemic, in particular the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on health care and schooling. It also explores the challenges caused by infrastructure inadequacies in Indian cities. The book closes by looking at how businesses in the private sector have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, with a focus on Corporate Social Responsibility.The book will be a useful reference to researchers, policymakers, and practitioners who are interested in institutions and development, especially in the context of India.

Agrarian Crisis in India: Status, Dimensions and Mitigation Strategies looks at India's agrarian crisis from the perspectives of limits induced by land scarcity and water stress, the changing dynamics with respect to costs of various inputs, and the externalities induced by changing environmental and market conditions. To understand whether the crisis is a relatively recent phenomenon or has existed before, the book analyses the situation from a historical perspective. The book studies the primary factors driving annual agricultural growth rates and discusses whether there are more factors that determine short-term growth rates and to what extent they can influence the long-term growth. As livestock has a major role in making the farming system resilient, the book covers livestock rearing and dairy farming in detail. It examines the risk implications of the changing characteristics of farming systems, analyses existing strategies for supporting irrigation development and promoting productivity, and suggests some key policy measures for improving growth in different agro-ecologies.

This book selects leading, innovative and influential Chinese maritime judgments and presents full translation of them, with brief summary, to the readers so that they can have insights of how the Chinese maritime judges interpret, apply and develop Chinese maritime law in practice. China trades with other states in trillions of USD every year, and about 95% of the cargoes are carried by ocean-going ships calling at hundreds of Chinese ports each single day. Due to the enormous and steadily growing trade volume and shipping activities, foreign ships, companies and persons are often caught by the Chinese maritime law and court. The parties involved and their lawyers are more than ever enthusiastic to study Chinese maritime cases in order to deal with their own cases properly or, if possible, predict the potential problems and avoid the disputes outright. The book is appealing to and benefits worldwide law students, academics, practitioners and industrial people in the shipping, trade, insurance and financial fields. The book remedies to certain extent the situation that there is lack of authoritative sources available to foreign personnel to look into how Chinese justice system functions.

First published in 1987, Agricultural Extension Worldwide presents an international perspective on agricultural extension and highlights extension as an integral function of agricultural development. Agricultural extension is one of the largest nonformal problem-solving educational systems in the world. It is generally concerned with transferring knowledge and research to farmers but may include services to other target audiences such as farm families and rural youth, as well as serve for developing rural community resources. In sixteen chapters, various major systems of extension are discussed along with factors that make for their success or failure, including the linkages required and the policy and financial supports necessary to make them effective. This book is a must read for scholars and researchers of agricultural economics, agricultural policy and agriculture in general.

Fintech, the integration of technology into the delivery of financial services, has revolutionized the world of Finance. This book introduces a new framework to study the concepts that underly Fintech while examining the driving forces and underlying logic behind Fintech-based innovation and predicting the future development of Fintech.The first three parts of the book cover the development and basics of Fintech and its relationship with inclusive finance, while later parts constitute a deep dive into several core issues surrounding Fintech. First, the book introduces an economic explanation of blockchain and its application in various scenarios based on the token paradigm. Second, it studies digital currency and discusses its impacts on payment systems, financial inclusion, monetary policy, and financial stability. Third, the authors explore how to build a compliant and effective market for data while protecting data privacy, impinging on the future development of AI application, the digital economy, and Fintech. Fourth, the book examines public policies related to Fintech, including regulatory technology, the regulation of financial activities of Big Tech companies, and how to promote financial inclusion.The title will appeal to scholars, students, and financial practitioners and regulators in a broad range of areas including economics, finance, technology, and public policy, especially Fintech, blockchain, and digital currency.

Lombardy, with about 10 million inhabitants, is today the most populated and prosperous region of Italy, and Milan is a renowned capital of art, fashion and design. During the 19th century until WWI, the region gradually became the leader in Italy's economic development and distinguished itself in the European economic landscape for its long-standing industrial strength and diversified economy, which included one of the Europe's most productive agricultural systems. It was the economic locomotive of contemporary Italy, contributing to the economic Risorgimento that complemented the country's political resurgence. The present volume gathers the contributions of some major experts on the subject, providing an in-depth analysis of Lombardy's pattern of development, consisting of an exceptionally symbiotic and balanced interplay of sectors (agriculture, industry, trade, and banking) in a gradual yet steady growth process, also supported by progress in the education system. During the century, there was a shift away from an economy based on agriculture and commerce to a progressively more industrial economy and this process accelerated from the 1880s. The secret of this dynamic balance was Lombardy's active relationship with the rest of Europe and with the international markets. Aimed at scholars, researchers and students in the fields of early modern and modern history, economic and social history, the book provides a clear explanation of Lombardy's economic development during the long 19th Century.

With the rapid development and drastic change of the world economy,'Digital Finance','Internet Finance','Science and Technology Finance'have become new hotspots, which also represent the future trend of economy development in the era of big data. Enterprises are facing more uncertainty, opportunities coexist with challenges. There are more possibilities for economic development and enterprise management to accelerate the integration of cutting-edge research results, to deepen hot topics discussion and to promote opinion exchanges among academic and business circles. The Sixth International Conference on Economic and Business Management (FEBM2021) was successfully held online on October 16-17, 2021, and aimed to provide a platform for researchers, engineers, academics as well as industry professionals from all over the world to present their latest research findings and development activities in economic and business management. These proceedings include 51 accepted articles selected from 94 submissions.

Incompleteness and imperfections of the factor markets can inhibit farmers, particularly small farmers, from optimal utilization of resources, which limits the performance of the whole agriculture sector. In small farm agriculture, several important markets handling allocation of vital inputs and services have been emerging. Emerging markets such as the rental markets of farm machinery and equipment have received little attention in literature. Agricultural Factor Markets and India's Small Farmers argues that the market efficacy for such critical services requires close examination. The decline of public sector provided extension service in the post Green Revolution period and the entry of private providers makes this especially important. Further, thinness of markets for farm credit, insurance and marketing services deserves incisive analysis, as small farms are often constrained by insufficiency of access to such services. The book analyses different factor markets to explore their interconnectedness and presents a comprehensive study on the factor market system.

This book presents a study of China's new urbanization, which is one of the country's major economic issues and embodies the characteristics of its economic development. Professor Yining Li proposed the framework and wrote the first article. Under Li's guidance, other articles were written by researchers at the Guanghua School of Management, Peking University. In the central government development plan, urbanization is the main force stimulating domestic demand. And after more than 10 years of high-speed urbanization process, the change from simple urbanization to'the new urbanization'is an inevitable development direction. This book covers many crucial urbanization topics that directly affect China's reform.

This book contributes to the development of literature on cooperative law while paying tribute to Hagen Henrÿ's significant impact on this field at a global scale. Hagen Henrÿ is one of the most influential scholars in the field of cooperative law. His primary contribution has been in the area of public international cooperative law. His other areas of scientific interest include development law and comparative law. This honorary volume is focused on two main axes -- the essence of cooperatives as well as their activities and their governance. The contributions throw light on how these two axes are addressed by cooperative legislation across countries, regions and continents. In the varied perspectives that the contributions put together, both a theoretical and practical approach, the authors address central, current and crucial issues for the development of cooperative law. The book is a great resource for researcher scholars, as well as policy makers and industry players interested in the topic.

Running a small business provides opportunity for greater success, increased growth, and potentially the chance to move to the global business arena, yet also much more risk. Small businesses not only have less employment, but also less annual revenue than a regular-sized business. With the growth of large corporations and chain businesses, it has become harder to maintain the survival of a small business. The COVID-19 pandemic has also brought more pressure onto the already unsteady survival of small businesses, due to forced closures, decreased agility, fewer technological innovations, and smaller customer bases. The Research Anthology on Small Business Strategies for Success and Survival offers current strategies for small businesses that can be utilized in order to maintain equal footing during challenging times. With the proper strategies available to small business owners, small businesses could not only survive, but also excel despite the environment that surrounds them. Covering topics including decision management, new supportive technologies, sustainable development, and micro-financing, this text is ideal for small business owners, entrepreneurs, startup companies, family-owned and operated businesses, restaurateurs, local retailers, managers, executives, academicians, researchers, and students.

With today's current problems, including forced migrations, inadequate education and healthcare systems, environmental threats, economic crises, poverty, etc., it has become evident that systemic social change is needed. Unfortunately, creating, maintaining, and fostering sustainable social value is not easy. In this respect, social entrepreneurs can act as change agents with their social missions. Yet, the role of social entrepreneurship in creating sustainable social value is still in an embryonic state. Creating Social Value Through Social Entrepreneurship contains expert research that links social entrepreneurship and social value in order to further understand the role of social entrepreneurship in creating social value and to highlight the importance of social entrepreneurs in emerging economies. While covering topics that include crowdfunding, social enterprise, social entrepreneurship ecosystems, and the triggers and challenges of social entrepreneurship, this book seeks to extend the social entrepreneurship contribution to social impact. The book is of value to entrepreneurs, managers, academicians, researchers, and students in various fields that include economics, management, and entrepreneurship.

The widely held view of the Asian Financial Crisis is that it had no substantial impact on China. In fact, the country was far more vulnerable than most people realized, due to the high possibility of financial contagion entering the system from Hong Kong through Guangdong province. This book analyzes the severe policy challenge that it presented for China's leaders. The crisis in Guangdong's financial institutions provided a forewarning of the difficulties that lay ahead as China's integration with the global financial system deepened. The experience of Guangdong in the Asian Financial Crisis provided a profound lesson for China's policy-makers as they planned the country's strategy for financial reform in the following years. China was able to avoid disaster by astute and difficult policy choices, in the face of fierce pressure from outside the country, as well as from different domestic interests at many different levels. The successful resolution of the crisis provided a breathing space for the leadership. It gave it time to undertake necessary reforms in the country's financial system in the decade that followed the crisis.

This book selects leading, innovative and influential Chinese maritime judgments and presents full translation of them, with brief summary, to the readers so that they can have insights of how the Chinese maritime judges interpret, apply and develop Chinese maritime law in practice. China trades with other states in trillions of USD every year, and about 95% of the cargoes are carried by ocean-going ships calling at hundreds of Chinese ports each single day. Due to the enormous and steadily growing trade volume and shipping activities, foreign ships, companies and persons are often caught by the Chinese maritime law and court. The parties involved and their lawyers are more than ever enthusiastic to study Chinese maritime cases in order to deal with their own cases properly or, if possible, predict the potential problems and avoid the disputes outright. The book is appealing to and benefits worldwide law students, academics, practitioners and industrial people in the shipping, trade, insurance and financial fields. The book remedies to certain extent the situation that there is lack of authoritative sources available to foreign personnel to look into how Chinese justice system functions.

The Right Place explains why firms succeed in one country and fail in another, irrespective of their inner drivers, and suggests potential initiatives that governments can take to help the private sector create jobs and, consequently, make their countries more prosperous. The competitiveness race is not unlike a cycling race. If you want to ride fast, you need three things: a good bike, to be in good shape, and a smooth and fast road. In a collaborative model, you might say the business is the bicycle, the business leader is the cyclist, and the road is the government and the external environment. The responsibility of a government is to design and build the best possible road. It turns out that when the road is good, good cyclists suddenly appear and want to race on it. In this book, competition and macroeconomics expert, Arturo Bris, provides the analysis of country competitive performance based on 30 years advising countries on this topic. The typical mistakes that countries make are revealed and the pillars necessary in building a competitive economy: economic performance as a necessary condition for prosperity; government efficiency, so the public sector can create the conditions for a productive economy; business efficiency, so companies can create jobs; and infrastructure, both tangible and intangible, so businesses and individuals can operate efficiently. With contemporary case studies throughout, the book provides an illuminating read for politicians, business leaders and students of macroeconomics.

This handbook is a comprehensive and up to date work of reference that offers a survey of the state of financial geography. With Brexit, a global recession triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as new financial technology threatening and promising to revolutionize finance, the map of the financial world is in a state of transformation, with major implications for development. With these developments in the background, this handbook builds on this unprecedented momentum and responds to these epochal challenges, offering a comprehensive guide to financial geography. Financial geography is concerned with the study of money and finance in space and time, and their impacts on economy, society and nature. The book consists of 29 chapters organized in six sections: theoretical perspectives on financial geography, financial assets and markets, investors, intermediation, regulation and governance, and finance, development and the environment. Each chapter provides a balanced overview of current knowledge, identifying issues and discussing relevant debates. Written in an analytical and engaging style by authors based on six continents from a wide range of disciplines, the work also offers reflections on where the research agenda is likely to advance in the future. The book's key audience will primarily be students and researchers in geography, urban studies, global studies and planning, more or less familiar with financial geography, who seek access to a state-of-the art survey of this area. It will also be useful for students and researchers in other disciplines, such as finance and economics, history, sociology, anthropology, politics, business studies, environmental studies and other social sciences, who seek convenient access to financial geography as a new and relatively unfamiliar area. Finally, it will be a valuable resource for practitioners in the public and private sector, including business consultants and policy-makers, who look for alternative approaches to understanding money and finance.

The COVID-19 pandemic changed world dynamics, working scenarios, as well as professional and emotional dimensions. The virus has emerged as a significant threat for the continuity of business. Keeping the gravity of the problem in mind, companies must understand the need for change and must now update their strategy to account for pandemics. The next pandemic may be more severe than the current one, meaning that organizations need to devise mechanisms and business models to fight with these situations and maintain business continuity. They should not only look forward to saving plants, machinery and infrastructure, but also concentrate on employee welfare, customer engagement and satisfaction during this crisis time. The book will not only present the evidence of various effective solutions to run a business in the time of a pandemic, but also put forward the new models and practices of business being followed by people at the time of crisis. It aims to create a bridge between existing business models and proposed business solutions, focusing on existing theories and most importantly case studies from recent happenings. This rich collection of chapters will provide insights regarding the business challenges, opportunities and practices during pandemic situations like COVID-19, making it particularly valuable to researchers, academics and students in the fields of strategic management, leadership and disaster management.

Master's Thesis from the year 2021 in the subject Business economics - Miscellaneous, grade: 1.7,, course: Digital Business, language: English, abstract: The purpose of this study was defined as to explore the contribution of digitalization (the role of digital technology) in community rural development and banking with a critical look at review of Ant Financial and Alibaba`s case study which provides an overview of the FinTech-based on digital technology. In the era of technical advancement, where everything revolves around the ``e`` world, digitalization has spread its wings over all the spheres of life.The immense use of digital devices and our growing dependency on them clearly states that digitalization is the need of the hour and has great potential to revolutionize the social-economic growth parameters thus, forming a symbiotice relationship with all inclusive growth and sustainable development. It has become that important instrument which has simplified the functioning and processes in various areas like administration, regulation, planning and operations of the socio-economic domain by ultimately enriching the quality of life.This very feature of the digital age results in sustainable development as when the societies are digitally empowered, they are more Conscious, Connected, Compliant, Collaborative and Content towards their own growth and in return they work in tandem as responsible resources for nation`s future prospects.

Debates about public expenditure in the agricultural sector have reopened in many developing and emerging economies because of high budget deficits and changes in public opinion. As a result, agricultural policy in many of these countries is beginning to take a more market-oriented approach to agrarian problems, most notably through the introduction of contract farming. This book explores the policy issues around contract farming and its transformative potential and addresses the lack of empirical research on this topic by focusing on South Asia: principally India, Bangladesh and Nepal.The book first addresses the effects of contract farming (vertical coordination) on productivity, food security indicators (yield, consumption expenditures, prices), employment and input usage. Then it draws lessons from the South Asian case studies on the impact of institutional changes, like contract farming, on income and food security of smallholder households. The core of the book includes case study chapters on several commodities that are produced under contract farming, including vegetables and fisheries in Bangladesh, low-value crops in Nepal and coffee in India. Other chapters also explore contracts, storage, input usage and technical efficiency in these cases. This book serves as an essential guide to academics, researchers, students, legislative liaisons and think tank groups interested in agrarian issues, agricultural economics and agricultural policy in emerging economies and particularly in South Asia.

Rising from a position of relative poverty in 1980, China is now the world's second-largest economy and a leader in many fields of innovation. Understanding China's new status as a technologically advanced world power and the means by which it has reached that position will be critical to policy-makers and business leaders in the years ahead. The Oxford Handbook of China Innovation provides a contemporary and authoritative view of the role of innovation in China's extraordinary emergence. The Handbook brings together over sixty experts from universities and research institutions worldwide to describe and analyze this phenomenon with criticism, policy discussion, and views about further development. The volume focuses on the microeconomic factors in China's growth and the way in which the steady drive for innovation has been a critical force. Chapters cover a wide scope of topics including China's development policies, the place of innovation in national priorities, the components of the national innovation system, and the resources required for their effective deployment. The issue of foreign influence is also addressed, including the evolution of policy towards inward foreign direct investment and knowledge transfer and China's goals for outward foreign direct investment. As China emerges as a contender for global leadership, the Handbook provides a data-driven, accessible, and comprehensive foundation to understand and predict the challenges ahead.

This book presents, or rather “re-presents”, the intricacies of a developing economy in the light of recent theoretical developments in economics while also providing a fresh perspective on the perceived inadequacies of the discipline in addressing the discontents of the contemporary global economic order.The book argues that there is scope for economics to be a more humane discipline and more relevant to contemporary economic problems by embracing new ideas, including those from other disciplines. It attempts to show how economic concepts and theories can be contextualised to help better understand real-life economic phenomena; how to rethink the ways in which the market economy can address the moral issues of human wellbeing and social justice; and, overall, how the study of economics and public discourses on economic issues can be made more engaging as well as more relevant to the problems of developing countries. Based on public lectures given by the author in Dhaka, and using illustrations from Bangladesh, India and other countries, the book offers an authoritative understanding of diverse economic realities by taking a fresh look at the familiar.Comprehensive and accessible, the book will be of interest to students and researchers of economics, development economics and policy, sociology and business studies as well as to journalists, public intellectuals and policymakers in developing countries.