Bücher der Reihe Contributions to Economics

In transition economies, they were characterized by especially poor performance and high access deficits, as telecommunications were considered to be a non-profit-oriented production process intended to support the socio-economic superstructures.

Financial Markets play an important role in economic development, channeling saving to investments and facilitating growth. In Eastern Europe financial markets were initially much underdeveloped, and lacked the skills and infrastructure they needed to be efficient, having not acquired them in the pre-transition era.

Essays on Microeconomics and Industrial Organisation aim to serve as a source and work of reference and consultation for the field of Microeconomics in general and of Industrial Organisation in particular.

This dissenmion looks at increasing trade ilUegrorionjrom three angles: FirSl, what are welfare implications of trade integrmion and trading blocks? Chapter I starts by questioning Krugman's (1993) trading block modeJ, which suggested that world trade is increasingly conducted between three trading blocks, which produces a minimum in world welfare.

While the experimental approach sheds new light on the microeconomic standard topics of bargaining and cooperation, the election market approach as a new field may provide better forecasts for political elections - and for soccer World Championships.

The present volume contains the proceedings of an international conference on the economic history of the seaports of Antwerp and Rotterdam (1870-2000).

This book is the outcome of a project that started with the organisation of theTopicalWorkshopon¿Agent-BasedComputationalModelling. AnInst- ment for Analysing Complex Adaptive Systems in Demography, Economics and Environment¿ at the Vienna Institute of Demography, December 4-6, 2003. The workshop brought together scholars from several disciplines, all- ing both for serious scienti?c debate and for informal conversation over a cup co?ee or during a visit to the wonderfulmuseums of Vienna. One of the nicest features of Agent-Based Modelling is indeed the opportunity that scholars ?nd a common language and discuss from their disciplinary perspective, in turn learning from other perspectives. Given the success of the meeting, we found it important to pursue the purpose of collecting these interdisciplinary contributions in a volume. In order to ensure the highest scienti?c standards for the book, we decided that all the contributions (with the sole exception of the introductory chapter) should have been accepted conditional on peer reviews. Generoushelpwasprovidedbyreviewers,someofwhomwereneither directly involved in the workshop nor in the book. All this would not have been possible without the funding provided by the Complex Systems N- work of Excellence (Exystence) funded by the European Union, the Vienna Institute of Demography of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Universit` a Bocconi, and ARC Systems Research GmbH, and the help of the wonderful sta? ofthe Vienna Institute of Demography(in particular,Ani Minassianand Belinda Aparicio Diaz). Agent-Based Modelling is important, interesting and also fun¿we hope this book contributes to showing that. Milano Francesco C.

Real world investors differ in their tastes and attitudes and they do not have, in general, perfect information about the future prospects of the economy. The initial chapter gives an introduction to the theory of financial markets in continuous time under imperfect information and establishes the existence of an equilibrium with complete markets.

The outlook on the AIDS crisis is bleak; it seems that Millennium Development Goal 6 cannot be achieved in most developing countries by 2015. This work evaluates AIDS and the international financing mechanisms of aid from a public good perspective.

This book studies the phenomenon of digitalization with the instruments of economics in order to explore the interdependencies between digitalization, economic policy, and macroeconomic variables of open economies.

Today, economic growth depends more than in the past on sound and well-organized firms, which means more innovation, a better educated labor force, higher likelihood of access to financial resources and efficient investments.

In this book the author investigates the impact of demographic change oneconomic growth. The author provides such anew view on economic growth, using a methodology of system dynamics. In doing so, a newsemi-endogenous growth model is developed by introducing a specific anddetailed population sector (demographic growth model).

Beyond that, this book integrates economical and regulatory aspects of concentration risk and seeks to provide a systematic way to get familiar with the topic of concentration risk from the basics of credit risk modeling to present research in the measurement and management of credit risk concentrations.

Although interest in spatial growth regressions has been growing in recent years, formal theoretical approaches that acknowledge the role of space in economic growth have been sparse.

The creation of a single monetary currency and a single monetary policy in the euro area has faced extraordinary challenges, among them the design of suitable monetary policy instruments.

Building on a new structure applied to insights drawn from behavioral finance, this book analyzes the perspectives of individuals with regard to their financial situation in retirement and compares the actions they take with ideal behavior.

To generate long-term growth, countries with tourism-based economies must develop strategies for employing their comparative advantages to achieve competitive advantages.

New developments in assessing and managing risk are discussed in this volume. Among the subjects treated are important issues such as: risk measures and allocation of risks, factor modeling, risk premia in the hedge funds industry and credit risk management.

This volume provides a collection of up-to-date and new applications of productivity and efficiency analysis. These case studies will shed light on the potential contribution of productivity and efficiency analysis to the enhancement of economic performance.

This volume is the second book based on comparative and comprehensive data from the 2003 representative European Union Company survey of Operating hours, Working times and Employment (EUCOWE) in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom.

The second part analyzes the provision of port services using the production, cost, investment and profit functions of various ports. Finally, the fifth part uses Cost Benefit Analysis for an economic evaluation of the feasibility of building new ports or enlarging existing ones.

It investigates the economic impacts of the uses of ICT, the potential opportunities and challenges that ICT is expected to create for public and private Sudanese universities, and explains the role of ICT in facilitating the production, creation and transfer of knowledge in Sudanese universities.

This contribution applies the cointegrated vector autoregressive (CVAR) model to analyze the long-run behavior and short-run dynamics of stock markets across five developed and three emerging economies.

This book explains how government support and institutional set up facilitated the evolution of the Indian pharmaceutical industry and provides an economic analysis of firm strategies due to recent policy changes.

The main research problem addressed in the book is the one regarding the role that export diversification could play for enhancing economic growth in Colombia, both in terms of new products and new geographic markets.

The main objective of this book is to develop a strategy and policy measures to enhance the formalization of the shadow economy in order to improve the competitiveness of the economy and contribute to economic growth;

Telecommunication markets are characterized by a dynamic development of technology and market structures. The specific features of network-based markets, convergence of previously separate spheres and the complex task of market regulation put traditional theoretical approaches as well as current regulatory policies to the test.

Regional development is attracting the attention of policy makers and scientists again, as regions, urban centers and rural areas, experience substantial pressures, particularly in Europe, as a consequence of globalization and geopolitical changes which lead to changes in spatial structures and dynamics.This book is based on the contributions of Greek regional science research presented at the 2006 Congress of the European Regional Science Association at Volos, Greece. The contributions selected to be presented in this book address these changes offering a fresh look into regional development. They provide an overview of regional development concerns from Greek regional scientists but the issues discussed pervade Greek particularities and stimulate thinking about regional science, regional development and regional policy in the early twenty-first century.