This second edition of an innovative undergraduate text offers an approach to understanding different economic systems that reflects both recent transformations in the world economy and recent changes in the field of Comparative Economic Systems. The traditional way of teaching comparative economics, with its reliance on relatively simple dichotomies (private vs. state, planning vs. market) does not take into consideration the many variants and mixtures of economic systems that exist in the real world. The Rossers' introduction in the first edition of the concept of the "new traditional...

Research on economic growth has exploded in the past decade. Hundreds of empirical studies on economic growth across countries have highlighted the correlation between growth and a variety of variables. Determinants of Economic Growth, based on Robert Barro's Lionel Robbins Memorial Lectures, delivered at the London School of Economics in February 1996, summarizes this important literature.

The book contains three essays. The first is a survey of the research on the determinants of long-run growth through the estimation of panels of cross-country data. The second essay details the...

The channels and mechanisms of knowledge flows define the links that make up production and innovation systems. As such, they relate directly or indirectly to all policies that affect such systems. Knowledge flows are also directly related to intellectual property protection policies and competition policies that create the infrastructure supporting various forms of formal interaction among economic agents in production and innovation systems.

Knowledge Flows in European Industry presents the results of an extensive research programme funded by the European...

The new institutional economics has been one of the most influential schools of thought to emerge in the past quarter century. Taking its roots in the transaction cost theory of the firm as an economic organization rather than purely a production function, it has been developed further by scholars such as Oliver Williamson, Douglas North and their followers, leading to the rich and growing field of the new institutional economics.

This branch of economics stresses the importance of institutions in the functioning of free markets, which include elaborately defined and effectively...

The Dollar Crisis is divided into five parts:

Part One describes how the US trade deficits, which now exceed US$1 million a minute, have destabilized the global economy by creating a worldwide credit bubble.

Part Two explains why...