This book provides a comprehensive analysis of national fiscal policies in the European Union and in the European Monetary Union. Adopting a critical perspective, the book offers a deep insight into the consequences of the current strategy of national fiscal policies on economic activity

This book examines the aging of the US population as a primary domestic public policy issue. An increase in the proportion of the elderly in the total population will potentially result in a significant growth in the number of beneficiaries in major federal entitlement programs, leading to...

Within the New Consensus Macroeconomics, monetary policy is upgraded while fiscal policy is downgraded. This new monetary policy has been the main instrument of policy under the guise of inflation targeting, an approach pursued by a number of central banks worldwide. This book raises problems...

Microfinance in developing countries is a collection of studies by leading researchers in the field of microfinance. It discusses key issues that the rapidly growing microfinance industry currently faces, and offers interesting views and analysis of topical matters concerning the microfinance realm.

After a massive international campaign calling attention to the development impact of foreign debt, the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative is now underway. But will the HIPC Initiative meet its high expectations? Will debt relief substantially raise growth? How do we make sure...

This book provides a unique synthesis of concepts and tools to examine natural resource, socio-economic, legal, policy and institutional issues that are important for managing urban growth into the future. The book will particularly help the reader to understand the current issues and challenges...

This book provides fresh insights into concepts, methods and new research findings on the causes of excessive food price volatility. It also discusses the implications for food security and policy responses to mitigate excessive volatility. The approaches applied by the contributors range from...

This open access book modifies and revitalizes the concept of the ‘developmental state’ to understand the politics of emerging economy through nuanced analysis on the roles of human agency in the context of structural transformation. In other words, there is a revived interest in the...

This volume deals with land degradation, which is occurring in almost all terrestrial biomes and agro-ecologies, in both low and high income countries and is stretching to about 30% of the total global land area. About three billion people reside in these degraded lands. However, the impact of...

During the past twenty or so years, foreign direct investment (FDI) flows have increased at rates approaching the astounding, especially so during the 1990s. While much of the increase was due to unprecedented cross-border mergers and acquisitions among high-income countries, the amount of FDI...