Kategoria BISAC: Business & Economics >> Economics - Comparative

The Elections in Israel--2003 brings together leading Israeli and North American social scientists and their state-of-the-art, in-depth analysis of the 2003 Israeli national elections. These elections returned Ariel Sharon and the Likud to power amid one of the bloodiest rounds of conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and a severe economic downturn in Israel. Contributors analyze the electoral behavior of the voters as a whole and various subgroups, highlighting social cleavages and identity, as well as issues and other strategic considerations. Three chapters analyze in...

The international diffusion of policy ideas and practices is a subject of growing interest, raising such questions as: Why are there increasingly such waves of policy innovation? What prompts one country to emulate another's changes? Is it the influence of powerful international actors like the World Bank? Is it the motivations and interests of domestic actors? And how freely do imitators adapt foreign models to the needs and characteristics of their own countries, rather than simply replicating them?

Essays by leading academic experts and by policy practitioners with academic...

Access to finance is critical in setting the course for development in emerging market economies. In this innovative study, which provides the first book-length analysis of the Latin American financial sector, Barbara Stallings and Rogerio Studart examine the dramatic changes resulting from financial liberalization in the region. The authors begin by discussing the critical transformations taking place in Latin America since 1990a period marked by acceleration toward a new open, market-oriented development model, and away from a semi-closed model relying heavily on the state. Stallings and...

Coined in 1902, the term -standard of living- grew popular in early twentieth-century America. Though its exact definition remained ambiguous, it most often reflected the middle class and material comfort. The term was not a precise measure of how people lived. Instead, it embodied the ideal of how middle-class Americans wanted to live. With increasing wages and the mass production of consumer goods, the standard of living became an important expression of the shared national culture that emerged in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. But what material and social components...