Economists have traditionally taken two very different approaches to studying market structure. One looks to "industry characteristics" to explain why different industries develop in different ways; the other looks to the pattern of firm growth within a "typical" industry to describe the...

This comprehensive overview of the modern Chinese economy by a noted expert on China's economic development offers a quality and breadth of coverage not found in any other English-language text. In The Chinese Economy, Barry Naughton provides both an engaging, broadly focused introduction to...

Writing in the New York Times, dateline Cambridge, Mass., March 23, 1977, A.H. Raskin reported as follows: "Never had so many secretaries of labor, Democratic and Republican, been gathered under one roof. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology had invited all the holders of that office since...

The economic importance of innovative activity brings with it an active debate on the effect of public policy on the innovation process. This annual series, sponsored by the National Bureau of Economic Research, brings the work of leading academic researchers to the broader policy community,...

The rapid growth of the Internet and the World Wide Web is transforming the way information is accessed and used. New models for distributing, sharing, linking, and marketing information are appearing. This volume examines emerging economic and business models for global publishing and...

The economics of knowledge is a rapidly emerging subdiscipline of economics that has never before been given the comprehensive and cohesive treatment found in this book. Dominique Foray analyzes the deep conceptual and structural transformation of our economic activities that has led to a...

The process of selling assests and enterprises to the private sector raises questions about natural monopolies, the efficiency and equity of state-owned versus privately owned enterprises, and industrial policy. This comprehensive analysis of the British privatization program explores these...

Recent commentators on Russia's economic reforms have almost uniformly declared them a disappointing and avoidable failure. In this book, two American scholars take a new and more balanced look at the country's attempts to build capitalism on the ruins of Soviet central planning. They show how...

In Competition in Telecommunications, Jean-Jacques Laffont and Jean Tirole analyze regulatory reform and the emergence of competition in network industries using the state-of-the-art theoretical tools of industrial organization, political economy, and the economics of incentives. The book opens...

The surge of inequality in income and wealth in the United States over the past twenty-five years has reversed the steady progress toward greater equality that had been underway throughout most of the twentieth century. This economic development has defied historical patterns and surprised many...