Venezuela : A Petro-State Using Renewable Energies : A Contribution to the Global Debate about New Renewable Energies for Electricity Generation
In spite of the economic role of oil, Venezuela has started developing hydroelectricity since the 1950s. At present, the country is trying to introduce additional renewable energy sources (RES) but still has to overcome a series of hurdles in order to deploy them. Unlike other developing countries, oil countries such as Venezuela do not lack financial means and sometimes show a tendency to solve problems by using money when other approaches could be more helpful. The main goal of this qualitative, comparative policy analysis is to find out whether the availability of oil revenues restraints or favors the adoption of RES. Based on the rentier state theory, Germán Massabié examines the reasons why Petro states try to dispose of their natural wealth to take advantage of non-conventional energy sources. He analyses and interprets primary and secondary data collected in Germany and in Venezuela and draws on interviews with Venezuelan experts, policy makers, and key actors. The study allows a look beyond laws, development programs, and official statements.
Valuing Agroforestry Systems : Methods and Applications
Offers practical means for strengthening the economics and policy dimension of the agroforestry discipline. The applied economic methodologies encompass a wide variety of case studies including enterprise/farm budget models through Faustmann models, Policy Analysis Matrix, production function approach, risk assessment models, dynamic programming, linear programming, meta-modeling, contingent valuation, attribute-based choice experiments, econometric modeling, and institutional economic analysis. It is our belief that these methodologies help agroforestry students and professionals conduct rigorous assessment of economic and policy aspects of agroforestry systems and to produce less biased and more credible information. Furthermore, the economic and policy issues explored in the book – profitability, environmental benefits, risk reduction, household constraints, rural development, and institutional arrangements – are central to further agroforestry adoption in both tropical and temperate regions
The Pandemic of Argumentation
This book addresses communicative aspects of the current COVID-19 pandemic as well as the epidemic of misinformation from the perspective of argumentation theory. Argumentation theory is uniquely placed to understand and account for the challenges of public reason as expressed through argumentative discourse. The book thus focuses on the extent to which the forms, norms and functions of public argumentation have changed in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. This question is investigated along the three main research lines of the COST Action project CA 17132: European network for Argumentation and Public PoLicY analysis (APPLY): descriptive, normative, and prescriptive.
The Institutional Compass : Method, Use and Scope
Presents a new generation multi-criteria, multi-stake holder, decision aide, called an "institutional compass". Based on hard data, the compass tells us what quality-direction we are heading in as an institution, region, system or organisation. The quality is not chosen from the usual scalar qualities of: good, neutral and bad. Instead, it is a quality chosen between: harmony, discipline and excitement. None is good in and of itself. We need some of each.
Quantitative Economic Policy : Essays in Honour of Andrew Hughes Hallett
Quantitative economic policy and econometrics were developed along with macroeconomics in the 1930s. Econometric techniques and models are still being used extensively in the business of forecasting and policy advice. In particular, policy simulations with econometric models have become standard tools for evaluating and designing macroeconomic stabilization policies. For instance, such studies provided important arguments for the popularization of the recent steps towards European integration such as the European Single Market, the European Monetary Union, and the Enlargement of the European Union. In this book, some recent advances in the theory and applications of quantitative economic policy are presented, with particular emphasis on fiscal and monetary policies in a European and global context. Andrew Hughes Hallett, a pioneer and major scientist in quantitative economic policy analysis, is being honoured by this volume, whose contributors are among his friends and former students.
Public systems modeling : Methods for identifying and evaluating alternative plans and policies
This is an book discusses readers to various methods of modeling plans and policies that address public sector issues and problems. Written for public policy and social sciences students at the upper undergraduate and graduate level, as well as public sector decision-makers, it demonstrates and compares the development and use of various deterministic and probabilistic optimization and simulation modeling methods for analyzing planning and management issues. These modeling tools offer a means of identifying and evaluating alternative plans and policies based on their physical, economic, environmental, and social impacts.
Poverty Reduction Policies and Practices in Developing Asia
Looks at the major policy challenges facing developing Asia and how the region sustains rapid economic growth to reduce multidimensional poverty through socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable measures. Asia is facing many challenges arising from population growth, rapid urbanization, provision of services, climate change and the need to redress declining growth after the global financial crisis. This book examines poverty and related issues and aims to advance the development of new tools and measurement of multidimensional poverty and poverty reduction policy analysis. The book covers a wide range of issues, including determinants and causes of poverty and its changes; consequences and impacts of poverty on human capital formation, growth and consumption; assessment of poverty strategies and policies; the role of government, NGOs and other institutions in poverty reduction; rural-urban migration and poverty; vulnerability to poverty; breakdown of poverty into chronic and transitory components; and a comparative study on poverty issues in Asia and other regions.
Policymaking for a Good Society : The Social Fabric Matrix Approach to Policy Analysis and Program Evaluation
Written for students of policy science and analysts with policy making responsibilities who want to understand how to solve social and ecological problems with an integrated systems approach. It describes a method that gives analysts the ability to combine knowledge of social, technological, and ecological systems in order to model real-world complexities that will lead to desirable outcomes.The author had designed a unique methodology – the social fabric matrix (SFM) – that encourages relevant questions; defines and models a whole that transcends system components and describes their relationship; includes cultural values, social beliefs, and institutional rules; identifies system feedback loops
International handbook of educational policy
This Handbook presents contemporary and emergent trends in educational policy research, in over ?fty chapters written by nearly ninety leading researchers from a number of countries. It is organized into ?ve broad sections which capture many of the current dominant educational policy foci and at the same time situate current understandings historically, in terms of both how they are conceptualized and in terms of past policy practice. The chapters themselves are empirically grounded, providing illustrations of the conceptual implications c- tained within them as well as allowing for comparisons across them. The se- re?exivity within chapters with respect to jurisdictional particularities and c- trasts allows readers to consider not only a range of approaches to policy analysis but also the ways in which policies and policy ideas play out in di?erent times and places. The sections move from a focus on prevailing policy tendencies through increasingly critical and ‘‘outsider’’ perspectives on policy.
Integration in Asia and Europe : Historical Dynamics, Political Issues, and Economic Perspectives
This book critically analyses the economic and institutional changes in both Europe and Asia. There is considerable potential for instability, but one also finds regional growth opportunities. Comparative policy analysis and evaluation of various cooperation strategies are presented. Emphasis is on banking, financial market dynamics, ICT, and macroeconomic policies as well as trade, energy, and environmental issues.
Integrated River Basin Management through Decentralization
Drawing upon a worldwide survey of river basin organizations and in-depth studies of eight river basins in a variety of locations around the globe, this book examines how institutional arrangements for managing water resources at the river-basin level have been designed and implemented, what the impetus for these arrangements has been, and what institutional features appear to be associated with greater or lesser success in river basin management.
Institutional Dynamics in Environmental Governance
This book presents fresh analyses of a number of well-known cases, but does so from one comprehensive view, the so-called policy arrangement approach. Cases discussed range over organic farming, integrated water management, nature policy, cultural heritage policy, integrated region-oriented policy, corporate environmental management and target group policy, always in search of the commonality of experience and conclusions to be drawn in understanding the past and in formulating future perspectives.
Innovative comparative methods for policy analysis : Beyond the quantitative-qualitative divide
Innovative Comparative Methods for Policy Analysis aims to provide a decisive push to the further development and application of innovative and specific comparative methods for the improvement of policy analysis. To take on this challenge, this volume brings together methodologists and specialists from a broad range of social scientific disciplines and policy fields.
Innovation, Economic Development, and Intellectual Property in India and China : Comparing Six Economic Sectors
This book analyses intellectual property and innovation governance in the development of six key industries in India and China. These industries are reflective of the innovation and economic development of the two economies, or of vital importance to them: the IT Industry, the film industry, the pharmaceutical industry, plant varieties and food security, the automobile industry, and the sharing economy. The analysis extends beyond the domain of IP law, and includes economics and policy analysis. The overarching concerns of the book are how the examined industries have developed in the two countries, what role state innovation policy and/or IP policy has played in such development, what the nature of the state innovation policy/IP policy is, whether such policy has been causal, facilitating, crippling, co-relational, or simply irrelevant, and whether there is a possibility of synergy between the two economies. The book also inquires as to why and how one specific industry has developed in one country and not in the other, and what India and China can learn from each other.
Ifo Survey Data in Business Cycle and Monetary Policy Analysis
The business surveys of the Ifo Institute (short for Information and Forschung) are internationally renowned. Every month close to 7,000 enterprises are questioned on their short-term planning and their appraisals of the actual and future business situation. The confidence indicator frequently referred to as the Ifo Business Climate Index is derived from the responses to this Ifo Business Survey. While the Index attracts a lot of attention by practitioners (especially financial market analysts), the use and empirical exploitation of this and other components of Ifo business surveys is – amongst academics – still relatively scarce. The present volume, based on a conference entitled "The Academic Use of Ifo Survey Data", gives examples of timely research questions which can be addressed by qualitative survey data like the monthly Ifo Business Survey. It shows that this type of real-time data can be very informative when it comes to forecasting real economic activity or exploring monetary policy transmission.
General Equilibrium and Welfare Economics : An Introduction
A good basic understanding of general equilibrium theory is a fundamental and indispensable background for advanced work in virtually any sub-field of economics; and a thorough understanding of the methods of welfare economics, particularly in a general equilibrium context, is indispensable for investigators undertaking applied policy analysis. This book addresses these needs and requirements by emphasizing the basic underpinnings of general equilibrium and welfare economics. In particular, the theory of choice, which is fundamental to both areas, is developed in a very comprehensive and rigorous fashion. Moreover, extensive use is made of examples, both of the simple type intended to bolster the student’s understanding of the basic concepts, and those illustrating the application of the material to field areas in economics.
Forest Policy Analysis
This book gives an introduction in the methodology of social sciences. It is a guideline for all those who are interested in the use and protection of the forest. It shows how to identifying political options for solving issues of the forest. The book builds a bridge between the problems concerning forests to the political process.
Forest Policies and Social Change in England
The book stresses how values and perceptions shape policies, and conversely how policies can modify perceptions, and also how policies can fail if they do not take perceptions into account. She concludes that many of the issues facing English forestry in the 21st century – from leisure, health and amenity provision, through education and rural as well as urban regeneration, to biodiversity conservation – go well beyond both national borders and the scope of forestry. This novel synthesis provides a valuable resource for advanced students and researchers from all areas of natural resource studies, including those interested in social history, socio-economics, cultural geography and environmental psychology, as well as those studying landscape ecology, environmental history, policy analysis and natural resource management.
Essays on Transport Economics
This book covers the basic analytical methods used in transportation economics and policy analysis. Encompassing fields of economics such as Industrial Organisation, Welfare Economics, General Equilibrium Theory and Input-Output-Analysis.
Environmental Policy Analyses : Learning from the Past for the Future - 25 Years of Research
The criteria used to select the fifteen contributions in this book were their impact on the scientific debate at the time of their publication, their validity for p- sent conceptualizations of policy analysis in the field of the environment, and their contribution to the development of policy analysis as a whole . Moreover, the selected contributions mainly focus on empirical appli- tions in the field of environmental policies or the interface between en- ronmental and non-environmental policies. Some have led to concrete p- icy recommendations of which most have been partly implemented since, This research also sometimes addressed regional political administrative arrangements leading to administrative reforms and new strategic directions of implementing agencies.



















