The Palgrave Handbook Of Comparative Economics

This book aims to define comparative economics and to illustrate the breadth and depth of its contribution. It starts with an historiography of the field, arguing for a continued legacy of comparative economic systems, which compared socialism and capitalism, a field which some argued should have been replaced by institutional economics after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The process of transition to market capitalism is reviewed, and itself exemplifies a new combination of comparative analysis with a focus on institutional development. Going beyond, chapters broadening the application of comparative analysis and applying it to new issues and approaches, including the role and definition of institutions, subjective wellbeing, inequality, populism, demography, and novel methodologies. Overall, comparative economics has evolved in the past 30 years, and remains a powerful approach for analyzing important issues.

"A book full of insights on economic systems and how to transit from one to another. A good Reference Manual for academics and policy-oriented researchers, with many useful tools to understand our changing world." Claudia Senik, Full Professor at Sorbonne University and Paris School of Economics. "An invaluable guide to the post-communist economic transition and to the research it inspired, by a range of the leading experts from academia and policy circles." Daniel Treisman, Professor of Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles. "This volume is another proof, if you needed one, that the comparative perspective enormously enriches the social sciences. The volume thankfully brings together scholars with very different approaches allowing the reader to make up his or her own mind about their usefulness in explaining observations and helping us improve the world." Professor Erik Berglof, Director, Institute of Global Affairs, LSE School of Public Policy. This book aims to define comparative economics and to illustrate the breadth and depth of its contribution. It starts with an historiography of the field, arguing for a continued legacy of comparative economic systems, which compared socialism and capitalism, a field which some argued should have been replaced by institutional economics after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The process of transition to market capitalism is reviewed, and itself exemplifies a new combination of comparative analysis with a focus on institutional development. Going beyond, chapters broadening the application of comparative analysis and applying it to new issues and approaches, including the role and definition of institutions, subjective wellbeing, inequality, populism, demography, and novel methodologies. Overall, comparative economics has evolved in the past 30 years, and remains a powerful approach for analyzing important issues.

This book is a major contribution to the study of political economy. With chapters ranging from the origins of political economy to its most exciting research fields, this handbook provides a reassessment of political economy as it stands today, whilst boldly gesturing to where it might head in the future. This handbook transcends the received dichotomy between political economy as an application of rational choice theory or as the study of the causes of societies’ material welfare, outlining a broader field of study that encompasses those traditions. This book will be essential reading for academics, researchers, students, and anyone looking for a comprehensive reassessment of political economy.

This Palgrave Handbook offers the first international comparative study into the efficiency of the industrial organization of the global wine industry. Looking at several important vineyards of the main wine countries, the contributors analyze differences in implementation and articulation of three key stages: grape production, wine making and distribution (marketing, selling and logistics). By examining regulations, organization theory, industry organizational efficiency and vertical integration, up to date strategies in the sector are presented and appraised. Which models are most efficient? What are the most relevant factors for optimal performance? How do reputation and governance impact the industry? Should different models co-exist within the wine countries for global success? This comprehensive volume is essential reading for students, researchers and professionals in the wine industry.

In the first volume of its kind, a collection of top policy scholars combine empirical and methodological analysis in the field of comparative policy studies to provide compelling insights into the formulation, implementation and evaluation of policies across regional and national boundaries.

Challenging the assumptions of ‘mainstream’ International Political Economy (IPE), this Handbook demonstrates the considerable value of critical theory to the discipline through a series of cutting-edge studies. The field of IPE has always had an inbuilt vocation within Historical Materialism, with an explicit ambition to make sense, from a critical standpoint, of the capitalist mode of production as a world system of sometimes paradoxically and sometimes smoothly overlapping states and markets. Having spearheaded the growth of a vigorous critical scholarship in the 1960s and 1970s, however, Marxism and neo-Gramscian approaches became increasingly marginalized over the course of the 1980s. The authors respond to the exposure of limits to mainstream contemporary scholarship in the wake of the onset of the Global Financial Crisis, and provide a comprehensive overview of the field of Critical International Political Economy. Problematizing socioeconomic and political structures, and considering these as potentially transitory and subject to change, the contributors aim not simply to understand a world of conflict, but furthermore to uncover the ways in which purportedly objective analyses reflect the interests of those in positions of privilege and power.

This book explores the key conceptual features of the development of the Sociology of Work (SoW) in Europe since 1945, using eleven country case studies. An original contribution to our understanding of the trajectory of the SoW, the chapters map the current state of the theoretical background of the sub-discipline's development to broader socio-political and economic changes, traced across a heterogeneous set of national contexts. Different definitions of the SoW in each country often reflect variations in the focus of analysis, and these chapters link the subject definition and focus to other social science disciplines, the state, as well as social class interests and ideologies. The book contends that the ways in which the sub-discipline makes sense of changes in work is itself a response to the type of society in which the sub-discipline is practiced, whether in the post-war social democratic West, the Soviet East, or today's societies, dominated by variant forms of neo-liberalism. It will be of use to scholars and students interested in the transnational history of the discipline of sociology, with a specific focus on the nexus between the sociology of labour, ideology, economics and politics.

The Routledge Handbook of Comparative Economic Systems examines the institutional bases of economies, and the different ways in which economic activity can function, be organized and governed. It examines the complexity of this academic and research field, assessing the place of comparative economic studies within economics, paying due attention to future perspectives, and presenting critically important questions, analytical methods and relative approaches. This complements the recent revival of the systemic view of economic governance, which was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic and likely even more the renewed East-West clash epitomized by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the West’s reaction to it. The Handbook is divided into five parts. Each part deals with an issue of relevance for the discipline. The first and second parts look at the subject, content and approach of the discipline and its comparative method. The third part looks at the idiosyncratic nature of different economic systems and their constituent elements. The fourth part considers the outcomes that different economic systems generate and how these outcomes change following the evolution and transformation of economic systems. The last part takes stock and looks ahead at the challenges, from a theoretical and applied perspective, and the exogenous and endogenous factors promoting the advancement of the discipline, including the interaction between and competition among varied approaches and opposing paradigms. The Handbook brings together leading international contributors to reflect on the relevant debates and case or country studies, provides a balanced overview of the results achieved and current knowledge, as well as evolving issues and new fields of research. The book provides researchers, students and analysts with a complete, critical and forward-looking presentation and analysis of the content, development, challenges and perspectives of comparative economic studies. Chapters 4 and 22 of this book are available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. Chapter 4 has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license and Chapter 22 has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

The Palgrave Handbook of the Public Servant examines what it means to be a public servant in today’s world(s) where globalisation and neoliberalism have proliferated the number of actors who contribute to the public purpose sector and created new spaces that public servants now operate in. It considers how different scholarly approaches can contribute to a better understanding of the identities, motivations, values, roles, skills, positions and futures for the public servant, and how scholarly knowledge can be informed by and translated into value for practice. The book combines academic contributions with those from practitioners so that key lessons may be synthesised and translated into the context of the public servant.

Drawing on research from the administrative sciences and using organizational, institutional and decision-making theories, this volume examines the emerging bureaucratic framework of the EU and highlights that analyzing the patterns and dynamics of the EU's administrative capacities is essential to understand how it shapes European public policy.