Roads In A Market Economy

This work, based on the propositon that roads exhibit typical command economy characteristics (congestion, chronic lack of funds), then shows roads in a market economy framework, employing concepts of ownership, market pricing and profitability to achieve

This work is dedicated to my fellow Americans, some 40,000 of them per year who have died needlessly in traffic fatalities. It is my sincere hope and expectation that under a system of private roads and highways in the future, that this number may be radically reduced.

Since the reform and opening up period, the world has witnessed a transformation within China. This transformation has led millions out of poverty within China and has in recent years seen China as an important and vital engine of economic growth for the rest of the world. While China has made great strides in embarking on the road to a market economy, this book emphasizes that transformation within China to market-driven development is far from over. In this book, Zhang puts forward the idea that the reform in China has now reached a crossroads. The next steps have a bearing not only on the sustainability of past reform but even on whether China will become a veritable world power in the future. With the reform at this pivotal juncture, this book explores further reform within China and examines how the reform debate will develop. The Road Leading to the Market is a highly readable collection of essays which will appeal to researchers and students of China’s economy and a globalized economy.

Since the reform and opening up period, the world has witnessed a transformation within China. This transformation has led millions out of poverty within China and has in recent years seen China as an important and vital engine of economic growth for the rest of the world. While China has made great strides in embarking on the road to a market economy, this book emphasizes that transformation within China to market-driven development is far from over. In this book, Zhang puts forward the idea that the reform in China has now reached a crossroads. The next steps have a bearing not only on the sustainability of past reform but even on whether China will become a veritable world power in the future. With the reform at this pivotal juncture, this book explores further reform within China and examines how the reform debate will develop. The Road Leading to the Market is a highly readable collection of essays which will appeal to researchers and students of China’s economy and a globalized economy.

What modern economics can tell us about ancient Rome The quality of life for ordinary Roman citizens at the height of the Roman Empire probably was better than that of any other large group of people living before the Industrial Revolution. The Roman Market Economy uses the tools of modern economics to show how trade, markets, and the Pax Romana were critical to ancient Rome's prosperity. Peter Temin, one of the world's foremost economic historians, argues that markets dominated the Roman economy. He traces how the Pax Romana encouraged trade around the Mediterranean, and how Roman law promoted commerce and banking. Temin shows that a reasonably vibrant market for wheat extended throughout the empire, and suggests that the Antonine Plague may have been responsible for turning the stable prices of the early empire into the persistent inflation of the late. He vividly describes how various markets operated in Roman times, from commodities and slaves to the buying and selling of land. Applying modern methods for evaluating economic growth to data culled from historical sources, Temin argues that Roman Italy in the second century was as prosperous as the Dutch Republic in its golden age of the seventeenth century. The Roman Market Economy reveals how economics can help us understand how the Roman Empire could have ruled seventy million people and endured for centuries.

Since the economic liberalization of the 1980s, the Chinese economy has boomed and is poised to become the world's largest market economy, a position traditional China held a millennium ago. William Guanglin Liu's bold and fascinating book is the first to rely on quantitative methods to investigate the early market economy that existed in China, making use of rare market and population data produced by the Song dynasty in the eleventh century. A counterexample comes from the century around 1400 when the early Ming court deliberately turned agrarian society into a command economy system. This radical change not only shrank markets, but also caused a sharp decline in the living standards of common people. Liu's landmark study of the rise and fall of a market economy highlights important issues for contemporary China at both the empirical and theoretical levels.

Much attention has been focused in recent years on the transformation of the economies of Eastern and Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. However, a growing demand for policy advice, technical assistance and expertise is also coming from Asian reforming countries such as China, Mongolia, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. In addition, business communities abroad are increasingly interested in exploring investment and marketing opportunities in these reforming countries. Such developments are too important to overlook or ignore.The transformation of socialist economies towards market-based systems entails an unusually wide range of problems. Studies of related topics are complicated by the speed of the changes and the lack of clear historical precedents. Although the structural features of Asian reforming economies are in important ways different from those of the Eastern European economies, all socialist economies share similar fundamental conditions on the eve of economic reform which raise a similar set of reform issues.This volume brings together a rich collection of expertise and information in an attempt to shed some light on the transitional process in Asia. The contributions are by no means exhaustive. However, they provide the reader and analyst with an excellent starting point to the problems and prospects which are specific to Asian transforming economies.

The Market Economy: A Reader outlines the characteristics and philosophical underpinnings of the market economy and its usefulness in the allocation of resources. This anthology offers a comprehensive set of authentic, primary source selections that demonstrate how the tenets of classical economic liberalism provide the foundation for an efficient economic system—while also maximizing individual freedom. The readings also provide a structure for analyzing economic and philosophical issues. The book includes selections from several authors who are not economists but whose work is important in terms of their contribution to economic thought, such as Henry David Throeau and Ayn Rand. It also features classic readings such as Adam Smith's invisible hand from his Wealth of Nations, David Ricardo's original explanation of comparative advantage from Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, and John Stuart Mill's eloquent expression of the limits of government in On Liberty. Latter day proponents of private enterprise include Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Milton Friedman. These authors and others address how the market economy responds to such topical issues as the environment, income distribution, and free trade.