Recommending eBooks for Purchase (Bulletin 43 - August 2019): University of Pennsylvania

Price : € 125.95

Can the Pakistan's agricultural sector and rural economy once again play a significant role in growth and development? Agriculture and the Rural Economy in Pakistan: Issues, Outlooks, and Policy Priorities identifies several measures that can promote agricultural productivity growth as well as wider economic and social development.

Price : € 52.95

Bananas are the fifth most widely traded farm product. While the results of monopolization in the banana business, such as environmental contamination and the exploitation of labor, are frequently criticized, Globalized Fruit, Local Entrepreneurs demonstrates that the industry is not globally uniform, nor uniformly rotten. Douglas Southgate and Lois Roberts challenge the perception that multinational corporations face no significant competitors in the banana business and argue that Ecuador and Colombia are important sources of competition. Focusing on Ecuador, the world's leading exporter of bananas since the early 1950s, Globalized Fruit, Local Entrepreneurs highlights the factors that led to the development of independent fruit industries, including environmental conditions, governmental policies, and, most significantly, entrepreneurship on the part of local growers and exporters. Although multinational firms headquartered in the United States have been active in the country, Ecuador has never been a banana republic, dominated economically and politically by a foreign corporation. Instead, Southgate and Roberts show that a competitive market for tropical fruit exists in and around Guayaquil, a port city dedicated to international commerce for centuries. Moreover, that market has consistently rewarded productive entrepreneurship. Drawing on interviews and archival research, Southgate and Roberts investigate leading exporters' and growers' origins, which are more humble than privileged, as well as their paths to success in the banana business. Globalized Fruit, Local Entrepreneurs shows that international marketing by Guayaquil-based merchants has been aggressive and innovative. As a result, Ecuador's tropical fruit sector has expanded more than it would have done had multinational corporate dominance never been challenged.

Price : € 117.95

Rice has become one of Nigeria's leading food staples. And rice consumption has outpaced production, making Nigeria the world's leading importer of rice. As a result, reducing import dependence is now a major goal of Nigerian policymakers. In The Nigerian Rice Economy the authors assess three options for reducing this dependency--tariffs and other trade policies; increasing domestic rice production; and improving post-harvest rice processing and marketing--and identify improved production and postharvest activities as the most promising. These options, however, will require substantially increased public investments in a variety of areas, including research and development, basic infrastructure (for example, irrigation, feeder roads, and electricity), and rice milling technologies. The analysis, methods used, and recommendations provided in The Nigerian Rice Economy will be equally valuable to a broad range of readers including researchers, development specialists, students, and others concerned with applications of food policy analysis and economic development more broadly in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa south of the Sahara. Contributors: Akeem Ajibola, Xinshen Diao, Paul A. Dorosh, Oluyemisi Kuku-Shittu, Mehrab Malek, Bakare Samuel Oladele.

Price : € 56.95

In the fall of 2008, the world watched in horror as the U.S. housing finance system shattered, triggering a global financial panic and ultimately the Great Recession. Now, nearly a decade later, the long and slow housing recovery has reached a critical moment. Though the housing finance system has stabilized, it remains in the hands of the federal government, leaving taxpayers exposed to the credit risk while private funding remains mostly on the sidelines. Principles of Housing Finance Reform identifies the changes necessary to modernize the housing finance system, identifying guiding principles that should underlie a rebuilt system. Contributors to the volume set out a wealth of innovative solutions that are possible within this framework, presenting proposals for long-term structural reforms that would infuse new life into the U.S. housing finance system while enhancing long-term stability. Nearly a decade after the inception of the Great Recession, reform proposals have arisen across the political spectrum. This is a moment of opportunity for rebuilding a key sector of the U.S. economy. The research in this volume represents the best thinking of policy researchers and economic experts on the challenges that lie ahead and provides a roadmap for reforms to create a system characterized by liquidity, stability, access, and sustainability. Contributors: W. Scott Frame, Meghan Grant, John Griffith, Diana Hancock, Stephanie Heller, Akash Kanojia, Patricia C. Mosser, Kevin A. Park, Wayne Passmore, Roberto G. Quercia, David Scharfstein, Phillip Swagel, Joseph Tracy, Susan M. Wachter, Dale A. Whitman, Mark A. Willis, Joshua Wright.

Price : € 30.95

At the time of its collapse in 2001, Enron was one of the largest companies in the world, boasting revenue of over $100 billion. During the 1990s economic boom, the Houston, Texas-based energy company had diversified into commodities and derivatives trading and many other ventures--some more legal than others. In the lead-up to Enron's demise, it was revealed that the company's financial success was sustained by a creatively planned and well-orchestrated accounting fraud. The story of Enron and its disastrous aftermath has since become a symbol of corporate excess and negligence, framed as an exceptional event in the annals of American business. With Risk and Ruin, Gavin Benke places Enron's fall within the larger history and culture of late twentieth-century American capitalism. In many ways, Benke argues, Enron was emblematic of the transitions that characterized the era. Like Enron, the American economy had shifted from old industry to the so-called knowledge economy, from goods to finance, and from national to global modes of production. Benke dives deep into the Enron archives, analyzing company newsletters, board meeting minutes, and courtroom transcriptions to chart several interconnected themes across Enron's history: the changing fortunes of Houston; the shifting attitudes toward business strategy, deregulation, and the function of the market among policy makers and business leaders; and the cultural context that accompanied and encouraged these broader political and economic changes. Considered against this backdrop, Enron takes on new significance as a potent reminder of the unaddressed issues still facing national and global economies. Published in cooperation with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University.