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Biofuels and sustainability : Holistic perspectives for policy-making

This open access book presents a comprehensive analysis of biofuel use strategies from an interdisciplinary perspective using sustainability science. This interdisciplinary perspective (social science-natural science) means that the strategies and policy options proposed will have significant impacts on the economy and society alike. Biofuels are expected to contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, revitalizing economies in agricultural communities and alleviating poverty. However, despite these anticipated benefits, international organizations such as the FAO, OECD and UN have published reports expressing concerns that biofuel promotion may lead to deforestation, water pollution and water shortages. The impacts of biofuel use are extensive, cross-sectoral and complex, and as such, comprehensive analyses are required in order to assess the extent to which biofuels can contribute to sustainable societies.

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Advances in Integrated Soil Fertility Research in sub-Saharan Africa : Challenges and Opportunities

Food insecurity is a central concern and a fundamental challenge for human welfare and economic growth in Africa. Low agricultural production, results in low incomes, poor nutrition, vulnerability to risks and lack of empowerment. Land degradation and soil fertility depletion are considered the major threats to food security and natural resource conservation in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Investments in technology, policy and institutional reforms are needed to increase agricultural productivity to ensure food security and sustained national economies. Past research has generated numerous soil fertility management technologies which if adopted could propel the African continent out of the poverty trap. However, these technologies have had little, if any, impact due to low adoption by the smallholder farmers.

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Competition Authorities in South Eastern Europe : Building Institutions in Emerging Markets

Provides answers to key open questions concerning competition policy in emerging economies, with a focus on South Eastern Europe. The contributions address two major issues. One is the design of competition policy and the national competition authorities that enforce it, including the topics of competition advocacy and state aid control; the other is the use of economic methods in competition law enforcement, especially in the cases of relevant market definition and merger control. Many lessons learned in the countries of South Eastern Europe can be applied to the emerging markets of other regions. As such, the findings presented here will be highly relevant for officials and staff at national competition authorities, advisers to legislators shaping national competition policy, competition law professionals, and university students alike.

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Marketing communications in emerging economies ; Vol. II : Conceptual issues and empirical evidence

Aims to share fascinating perspectives on marketing communications by discussing the shift in the power of public relations, and highlighting how the small and local use communication effectively to improve performance and shares useful lessons on how to communicate hope by responding to customer emotions during uncertainties. The book contains valuable lessons and insights on communicating corporate social responsibility, effective social media communication, enacting brand purpose through communication, and using aesthetics in point-of-purchase advertising to drive purchase intention.

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Market Entry Strategies of Foreign Telecom Companies in India

India’s telephone network is the second largest in the world, next to China. Over the last decade, these emerging economies have been the drivers of growth in the world economy. Therefore foreign companies have been rushing to invest in these countries more or less successfully.Kiruba Jeyaseeli Benjamin Levi highlights why the Indian telecom market is so attractive to foreign investors. She describes the rules and regulations for telecoms in India, and examines the reasons for success and failure of the foreign telecom companies in India.

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Managing Elevated Risk : Global Liquidity, Capital Flows, and Macroprudential Policy—An Asian Perspective

Discusses the risks and opportunities that arise in Emerging Asia given the context of a new environment in global liquidity and capital flows. It elaborates on the need to ensure financial and overall economic stability in the region through improved financial regulation and other policy measures to minimize the emergent risks. "Managing Elevated Risk: Global Liquidity, Capital Flows, and Macroprudential Policy—An Asian Perspective" also explores the range of policy options that may be deployed to address the impact of global liquidity on domestic financial and socio-economic conditions including income inequality. The book is primarily aimed at policy makers, financial market regulators and supervisory agencies to help them improve national regulatory systems and to promote harmonization of national regulations and practices in line with global standards.

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Making European Merger Policy More Predictable

Making European Merger Policy More Predictable analyses European Merger Control with regard to its capacity to generate predictability among the concerned parties. Starting from the premise that predictability is of overwhelming importance for the functioning of market economies, Voigt and Schmidt ask to what degree European Merger Control has been predictable over the last couple of years. The authors show both theoretically and empirically that there have been serious shortcomings with regard to the predictability of competition policy. They identify the insufficient recognition of the consequences of globalization on the competitive processes as well as an often inconsistent application of economic theory as the root causes for the lack of predictability. The inconsistent application of economic theory is particularly relevant with regard to potential competition and the evaluation of collective dominance. The authors generate a substantial number of proposals that could help to improve predictability. On this basis, Voigt and Schmidt critically assess the recent reforms of European Merger Control.

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Macroeconomic analysis for economic growth

Discusses the essential principles that guide macroeconomic policy formulation and implementation to stimulate strong economic growth for sustainable development, especially for emerging economies. it includes twelve chapters over three sections: "macroeconomics of economic growth", "labour market and employment", and "the financial system and macroeconomic performance". key conclusions illustrate that the efficacy of regulatory frameworks to create enabling conditions for nurturing and bolstering robust value-adding production structures anchored on appropriate macroeconomic management are the fundamental building blocks of strong economic growth.

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Low-Cost Country Sourcing : Trends and Implications

Globalization has induced immense cost pressure in most industries. In combination with the economic downturn after the turn of the century, companies are increasingly looking for new ways of reducing costs and increasing shareholder value. From this perspective, low-cost country sourcing has proved to be an effective means to realize cost-saving targets. Although many external key success factors have been identified, relatively little is known about intra-firm factors that can influence the outcome of low-cost country sourcing initiatives.

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Competitiveness in the Tourism Sector : A Comprehensive Approach from Economic and Management Points

International tourism is expected to be a major vehicle of economic development in industrializing countries in the 21st century, especially for Asia. To generate long-term growth, countries with tourism-based economies must develop strategies for employing their comparative advantages to achieve competitive advantages. However, competitiveness in the tourist industry is multi-dimensional and complex. This study evaluates the competitiveness of the Taiwanese tourism sector by a multi-dimensional framework. The theoretical model proposes that the competitiveness of tourist destinations should be composed of Ricardian comparative advantages (like the conditions of natural endowments and the degree of technological change); Porterian competitive advantages; tourism management, i.e., providing high quality education and job training, public goods, support services and reduced transaction costs to enhance comparative and competitive advantages; and environmental conditions.

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Competition Policies in Emerging Economies : Lessons and Challenges from Central America and Mexico

Do small developing economies, or SDEs, need a specific competition policy to create competitive markets? Against the backdrop of globalization, protectionist policies that promote state ownership and heavy regulation of key industries are proving increasingly ineffective for driving growth. Countries around the world are instituting reforms to promote competition and business creation, yet the economic and political concentration of power, feeble judicial systems, and the scarcity of human and financial resources pose special challenges to SDEs. Competition Policies in Emerging Economies features an in-depth analysis of two strategic industries — telecommunications and banking — in several Central American nations which sheds light on the dynamics of the transition to deregulation and trade liberalization. Examining the lessons learned from these experiences and presenting discussion of political, legal, economic, financial, cultural, and organizational issues, the book provides unique perspectives on competition policy and economic development.

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Business Education and Emerging Market Economies : Perspectives and Best Practices

Business Education in Emerging Market Economies discusses the impact of business education on emerging markets and explores curricular innovation, pedagogical approaches, and strategic alliances in the context of industrializing economies. Emerging markets consist of eighty percent of the world's population and some 75% of its trade growth in the foreseeable future according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. The potential economic growth of emerging markets has prompted a need to understand the dynamics of these markets, their business institutions, and their educational systems. The pressures of globalization and the recent economic reforms that swept across emerging, developing, and transitioning, economies have had a positive impact on the demand for business education and business knowledge from the developed and industrialized countries. As a result, many methods were developed to transfer know-how from the developed markets including learning through imitation, using western style pedagogical approaches, attending universities in industrialized countries, learning through experience and practice, and using information technology. The conclusion we reach is that business and management education in emerging markets is fast changing the way in which these markets operate and are perceived – business educators are catalysts for greater economic integration.

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Building supply chain excellence in emerging economies

How can we manage supply chains well in emerging economies, coordinate information flows with multiple partners, tackle challenges such as unexpected disruptions, diversify the risks and increase flexibilities, ​are the topics and issues of the book.

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Banks and fintech on platform economies : Contextual and conscious banking

In Banks and Fintech on Platform Economies: Contextual and Conscious Banking, accomplished fintech professional and author Paolo Sironi delivers an insightful examination of how platform theory, born outside of financial services, will make its way inside banking and financial markets to radically transform the way firms do business.

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Asian economy and finance : A post-crisis perspective

Topicality of Asian economy has refused to fade for almost four decades; if anything it has been levitating. The Asian economy has changed markedly since the economic and financial crisis of 1997-1998 and is continuing to evolve. As a scholarly subject matter, Asian economy has not stopped attracting academicians, policy mandarins, decision makers in the arena of business and students of Asian economy. The Asian crisis was a cataclysmic event for the region and brought to the surface several systemic limitations, like those in the financial sector, corporate governance, regulatory oversight, legal framework, and exchange rate management. Managers of Asian economy need to get to the bottom of these acutely problematical systemic issues. Additionally, Asian economies need to change with the demands of time and devise their post-crisis development strategy. Asia’s growth model, that served it so well for four decades, is overdue for renewal so that it can re-strengthen its bonds with the ever-evolving regional and global economic reality. The old growth model is likely to be less relevant and effective in the post-crisis future of the Asian economies. It is sure to run into the wall of diminishing returns.

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Adaptive Information Systems and Modelling in Economics and Management Science

Learning and adaption are key features of "real economies". Studying interesting real phenomena like innovation, industry evolution or the role of expectation formulation in financial markets thus necessitates novel methods of data analysis and modelling. This title covers statistical models of heterogeneity, artificial consumer markets, models of adaptive expectation formulation in financial markets and agent-based models of industry evolution, product diversification and energy markets. The joint findings are presented in a manner that is interesting both for readers with a background in economics/management and mathematics and statistics and also for non-expert readers because it allows them to grasp the ideas of modern management science. This book thus provides a unique integrated toolbox for building realistic agent-based models of learning and adaption in a variety of settings based on sound data analysis.

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Accounting and Financial System Reform in Eastern Europe and Asia

Accounting and Financial System Reform in Eastern Europe and Asia is the second in a series to examine accounting and financial system reform in transition economies. The first book used Russia as a case study. The present volume in the series examines some additional aspects of the reform in Russia and also looks at the accounting and financial system reform efforts that are being made in Ukraine, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Armenia and five Central Asian republics.

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Accounting and Financial System Reform in a Transition Economy: A Case Study of Russia

Much has been written about the economic and political problems of countries that are in the process of changing from centrally planned systems to market systems. Most studies have focused on the economic, legal, political and sociological problems these economies have had to face during the transition period. However, not much has been written about the dramatic changes that have to be made to the accounting and financial system of a transition economy. This book was written to help fill that gap. Using Russia as a case study the authors examined all the major aspects of accounting reform, starting with problems of implementation. They also examined the current state of auditing in Russia. They also devote chapters to corporate governance issues, the Russian tax system and the problems Russian enterprises face when they try to attract foreign direct investment.

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A Theory of Marketing : Outline of a Social Systems Perspective

Marketing has become one of the most influential forces in contemporary market economies. Yet despite ubiquitous empirical presence, uncountable textbook definitions, and sixty years of scholarly work, a coherent sociological understanding of this powerful concept is still amiss. Drawing on Luhmannian social systems theory, historical analysis, and four qualitative studies, the author theorizes on the marketing function as a self-contained system of communications. It is argued that marketing systems prosper within a host organization if and as long as they successfully influence observers' preferences towards particular brands. On these conceptual foundations a comprehensive brand- and communication-centered theory is developed that fulfills Alderson', Cox' and Bartels' foundational requirements for a general theory of marketing in an unprecedented way.

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Affordable housing for smart villages

Initiates a fresh discussion of affordability in rural housing set in the context of the rapidly shifting balance between rural and urban populations. It conceptualises affordability in rural housing along a spectrum that is interlaced with cultural and social values integral to rural livelihoods at both personal and community level. Developed around four intersecting themes: explaining houses and housing in rural settings; exploring affordability in the context of aspirations and vulnerability; rural development agendas involving housing and communities; and construction for resilience in rural communities, the book provides an overview of some of the little understood and sometimes counter-intuitive best practices on rural affordability and affordable housing that have emerged in developing economies over the last thirty years.

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