Research into minimum income standards and reference budgets around the world is compared in this illuminating collection from leading academics in the field.From countries with long established research traditions to places where it is relatively new, contributors set out the different aims and objectives of investigations into the minimum needs and requirements of populations, and the historical contexts, theoretical frameworks and methodological issues that lie behind each appro...

Like Japan, the Netherlands has an aging population. As a consequence, the affordability of old-age pensions is under pressure. The labour market is also changing, with people more often changing jobs or choosing to become self-employed. Both trends raise the question of whether the pension system in its current form still meets the needs of working people today and in the future. The Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment asked the Netherlands Institute for Social Research scp to...

The Theory of Taxation and Public Economics presents a unified conceptual framework for analyzing taxation--the first to be systematically developed in several decades. An original treatment of the subject rather than a textbook synthesis, the book contains new analysis that generates novel results, including some that overturn long-standing conventional wisdom. This fresh approach should change thinking, research, and teaching for decades to come.Building on the work of J...

When low-income city dwellers lack access to mainstream banking services, many end up turning to ‘fringe banks,’ such as cheque-cashers and pawnshops, for some or all of their financial transactions. This predicament of ‘financial exclusion’ – faced by those underserved by conventional financial institutions – is comprehensively examined in Jerry Buckland's powerful study, Hard Choices.The first account of the nature and causes of financial exclusion in Canada, Hard Ch...

The use of formulae has become widespread in recent years across most developed countries. In the UK, a conservative estimate is that annually £150 billion of public service expenditure is distributed using formulae, in services such as health care, local government, social security and higher education. This book offers a comprehensive introduction to the theory and practice underlying the use of such formulae as a basis for funding public services.The philosophy, design and econo...

Written under the shadow of the global financial crisis, this book charts the current shape of global finance and tries to explain why the crisis arose – and what can be done about it. Economics alone cannot fully explain how global finance operates, and why it is so crisis prone. Global Finance offers a wider approach in three key ways, by:setting markets and financial market failure in a historical contextbringing politics and culture back into the analys...

Although the Chinese economy is growing at a very high rate, there are massive social dislocations arising as a result of economic restructuring. Though the scale of the problem is huge, very few studies have examined the changes in income inequality in the late 1990s due to a lack of data on household incomes.Based on extensive original research, this book redresses this imbalance, examining the issue of unemployment and the problems it has brought for the people of China. Investi...

Prevailing economic theory attributes the 2008 crash and the Great Recession that followed to low interest rates, relaxed borrowing standards, and the housing price bubble. After careful analyses of statistical evidence, however, Matthew Drennan discovered that income inequality was the decisive factor behind the crisis. Pressured to keep up consumption in the face of flat or declining incomes, Americans leveraged their home equity to take on excessive debt. The collapse of the housing m...

This book is concerned with the role of financial intermediation in economic development and growth in the context of Malaysia. Using an analytical framework, the author investigates the Malaysian economy from 1960 onwards to examine how far financial development has progressed in the course of economic development, and whether it has been instrumental in promoting economic growth.A significant improvement in the Malaysian financial system, coupled with rapid economic growth and a ...

Institutional shareholder participation has long been considered as vital to good corporate governance yet its potential does not seem to have been realized. The recent banking crisis exposed the passivity of some institutional shareholders, many of whom appear to have chosen to sell their stakes in the banks rather than intervene or challenge the board when they realized the strategies followed by the banks were excessively risky. Institutional shareholders’ role to scrutinize and monitor...

This new text provides a rigorous analysis of real estate markets. Three main sections cover:microeconomics of property marketsthe macroeconomics of commercial propertythe financial economics of propertyGlobal empirical examples illustrate the theories and issues. This often complex area is made accessible: each chapter contains a boxed summary and questions for self-testing or discussion.

Following the severe financial crises of the 1990s, identifying and assessing financial sector vulnerabilities has become a key priority of the international community. The costly disruptions in global markets underscored the need to establish a set of monitorable variables for evaluating strengths and weaknesses in financial institutions and to alert authorities of impending problems. These variables, indicators, of financial system health and stability known collectively as macroprudenti...