Do political decentralisation and inter state competition favour innovation and growth? There has long been a lively debate surrounding this question, going back to David Hume and Immanuel Kant. This book is a new attempt to test its veracity. The existing literature tends to assume that the...

Contents: 1. Introduction -- 2. Debate and comment about the needham puzzle over the past half-century -- 3. The behavior of the peasants and their households: the logical starting point for the study of the puzzle in Chinese economic history -- 4. The petty peasant economy and the formation of...

This unique book uses a transaction cost perspective to illustrate how hierarchies influenced the structure of markets and behaviour of individual businesses and cartels in pre-revolutionary, Soviet and present-day Russia

Economic and Monetary Union in Europe brings together contributions from leading specialists which explain and evaluate the most important implications of economic and monetary union. The book examines theoretical aspects of monetary integration, illustrates the historical lessons to be learned...

The postal and delivery sector has been the subject of considerable interest in recent years. This Handbook brings together a number of contributions directed at understanding developments in the field of postal reform. The authors review the experience and plans of individual countries to...

Richard Ebeling's insightful and highly readable book explains and applies the ideas of the Austrian economists to a wide range of contemporary public policy issues. He combines intellectual political-economic history with the modern Austrian theory of the market process to challenge the...

State and Local Retirement Plans in the United States explains how economic and political events have shaped the development of pension plans in the last century, and it argues that changes in the structure and generosity of these plans will continue to shape policy and funding in the future. It...

The handbook on the history of European banks combines a comprehensive overview with extensive and detailed empirical analysis on the development of European banking and the subsequent impact of banks on national economies

This book explores the characteristics of inflations, comparing historical cases from Roman times up to the modern day. High and moderate inflations caused by the inflationary bias of political systems and economic relationships – and the importance of different monetary regimes in containing...

Eurozone Dystopia traces the origin of the Eurozone and shows how the historical Franco-German rivalry combined with the growing dominance of neo-liberal economic thinking to create a monetary system that was deeply flawed and destined to fail. William Mitchell argues that the political class in...