The economy remains a rationalising tool for explaining the condition of the artist, both for professional and for experts, even when this implies a form of dissociation between the artist and the economist. Focusing on the relationship between art and the market removes entire sections of the social imagination and aesthetic sides linked to art. This two-volume ethnographic work provides answers to what appears to be a mysterious phenomenon, young people's vocation for art, by focusing on real-life situations and testimonials in a critical perspective.

This second volumes expands on the findings of the first, which explored the lives and careers of young artists, by exploring their early-carreer and the other professionals that exist in the creative industries, associative worlds and art world. Professionals, working in galleries, theatres and as gatekeepers in privileged cultural institutions, are essential to frame the entrepreneurial success promised to young artists if they play by their rules. It will be of great interest to scholars and students of the arts economy, work and employment and entrepreneurial ecosystems.

This book examines the potential for economic development and structural change in Africa through industrial policy. Combining a long-term historical analysis of structural transformation and development policy reviews, it offers a multidisciplinary examination of the catalysts and constraints impacting industrial development. By exploring the evolution and practice of industrial policy, the ongoing structural challenges, including a fragmented political economy, underinvestment, and limited productive capacities, are examined in relation to countries across Africa.

This book presents industrial transformation as the most effective way to leverage Africa's demographic advantages and drive sustainable economic development. It will be relevant to students, researchers, and policymakers interested in development economics, economic policy, the African political economy, and industrial development.

Persistent poverty and systemic inequality remain among South Africa's most pressing challenges, impacting education, healthcare, employment, and overall economic stability. Despite numerous government and NGO-led interventions, millions continue to struggle with limited access to opportunities and resources. In an era of rapid technological advancement and shifting political landscapes, finding innovative and inclusive approaches to poverty alleviation has never been more urgent.

Empowering Communities: A Roadmap to Poverty Alleviation in South Africa provides a comprehensive analysis of the structural barriers that sustain poverty while offering a strategic framework for breaking the cycle. This edited volume explores effective policy interventions, sustainable economic strategies, and grassroots initiatives that have successfully empowered marginalized communities. Through a combination of conceptual frameworks and empirical case studies, this edited collection highlights the importance of governance reforms, community participation, and technology-driven solutions in addressing poverty. By examining real-world examples of successful interventions, this work presents a compelling case for rethinking traditional approaches to economic and social development in South Africa.

Bringing together policymakers, development practitioners, and scholars, this essential resource offers practical insights for those committed to fostering inclusive growth and sustainable poverty alleviation.

The book provides innovative theories, methods, and policy measures for urban public transport operations management. It is based on the authors' recent studies on the operations management of different public transport modes, including bus, metro, bus rapid transit (BRT), and emerging transit modes. New policy measures, business models, optimization techniques, and simulation tools are offered to improve the service quality, efficiency, reliability and equity of urban public transport systems. It is aimed at both public transport researchers, practitioners, and policy makers. The book can be used as a text for both undergraduate and postgraduate students who study in Transportation Systems Engineering, and Operations Management.

This book explores the rise of transformative economies-innovative systems and practices that redefine how we think about value, growth, and equity. Moving beyond traditional profit-driven models, transformative economies prioritize social justice, environmental sustainability, and fair wealth distribution.

At their core, these economies seek to replace endless growth and resource exploitation with well-being, community resilience, and ecological harmony. Rooted in principles of solidarity, inclusivity, and circularity, they challenge the foundations of conventional capitalism and strive to empower marginalized communities.

Through real-world examples like cooperative ownership, regenerative agriculture, and fair trade, this book reveals a growing global movement committed to ethical and sustainable development-for the benefit of both people and the planet. It will appeal to scholars in regional and spatial science, urban and regional economics, and human geography.

Urbanization in the Middle East is entering a new phase of global importance. As climate change pressures intensify and environmental limits become more visible, cities built under conditions of heat, water scarcity, and rapid transformation have become increasingly critical to debates on urban sustainability and resilience. Urbanization Rethought: On Planning and Resilience in Saudi Arabia offers a critical examination of urban development in one of the world's fastest-transforming desert regions. Moving beyond planning models derived from temperate and resource-rich contexts, the book explores how aridity, extreme heat, water scarcity, and megaproject-led development reshape the governance and practice of urbanization. Drawing on conceptual analysis and empirical cases from across Saudi Arabian cities, the book examines key dimensions of contemporary urban transformation, including the urbanization-environment nexus, climate change adaptation, green infrastructure, megaproject planning, and the evolving role of urban governance in building resilience futures. Rather than treating planning as a purely technical exercise, the book positions it as a mediating practice between development ambition and ecological limits. The book presents Saudi Arabia as an analytically generative context, and contributes to broader debates on urban resilience, sustainable development, and planning in climate-stressed regions. The insights developed here transcend the Gulf region to cities worldwide confronting urbanization under conditions of environmental constraint and uncertainty. This book is of interest to scholars, planners, policymakers, and students working on urban planning, climate resilience, urbanization, and sustainable development.

The nexus between gender and climate finance is a crucial yet underexplored dimension in advancing sustainable development in Africa. This collection examines the intersection of gender and climate finance in Africa, highlighting the persistent inequalities in resource access. It provides evidence-based insights and innovative policy recommendations to promote gender-responsive climate finance frameworks and enhance inclusivity in sustainable development.

Offering an in-depth analysis of gender-responsive climate finance in Africa, this volume brings together interdisciplinary perspectives from scholars, policymakers, and practitioners to explore policy frameworks, financial inclusion mechanisms, and gender equity strategies in climate finance. The book addresses crucial themes, including policy and institutional mechanisms, barriers to access, innovative financing models, intersectionality, capacity building, and accountability. Providing a comprehensive understanding of gender-specific climate finance challenges in Africa, the chapters highlight successful gender-inclusive financial models and best practices and offer policy recommendations to drive equitable climate finance governance. Encouraging interdisciplinary discourse and collaboration among academia, government, and development organization, the volume forges a new path for ensuring gender-equitable climate finance access and implementation.

Given the urgency of climate action and the global commitment to gender equality, Gender and Climate Finance in Africa is an essential resource for scholars, policymakers, financial institutions, and development practitioners working towards sustainable and inclusive climate finance solutions in Africa.

How the best intentions of African socialism became the useful tools of capitalism.

In the mid-twentieth century, skilled labor was seen as the key to national development. For newly independent African countries, this posed a formidable challenge: to build thriving economies, they needed to rapidly educate workers. As it turns out, that wasn't their only obstacle.

Ambition and Adjustment reveals how responses to this human capital problem from the political left and right converged in unlikely ways to block Africa's postcolonial progress. Focusing on nation-building projects in Zambia and Tanzania, Priya Lal recounts how the first generations of Africa's professional class faced pressures on all sides-from foreign planners prioritizing economic growth and from local socialists decrying higher education and professionalization as wasteful and elitist. When African development stalled, international institutions like the World Bank took up parts of both approaches, justifying structural adjustment programs that defunded African universities and hospitals in the name of social equity. Indeed, Lal shows that neoliberal austerity in the 1990s was packaged in Africa's socialist narratives from the 1960s.

By unearthing this forgotten history, Ambition and Adjustment upends traditional accounts of postcolonial development, exposing how socialism and capitalism both conflicted and overlapped to shape Africa's trajectory since independence.

Much has been written about China, yet little is known about its role as the world's largest energy consumer, often obscured by misinformation. This book offers a rare historical account of China's oil and gas industry from its origins, tracing back to 1000 AD when the country drilled the world's first well using bamboo to transport gas. Serving as both a textbook for students and a reference for researchers, government officials, and industry executives, this exploration delves into the complete history and evolution of China's oil and gas industry, covering upstream, downstream, onshore, and offshore developments. It addresses the industry's growing demand, its impact on global oil and gas fundamentals, and how geopolitics influences China's energy supply security while forecasting industry evolution within the context of the global energy transition.

This monograph establishes a pioneering analytical framework to examine China's low-carbon transition through the synergistic interaction of financial innovation and technological empowerment. By integrating green finance, digital infrastructure and green credit policies with the rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the monograph offers a comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms driving sustainable development.

At the macro-urban level, this book demonstrates how financial innovation catalyzes AI adoption, yielding measurable improvements in energy efficiency and significant reductions in carbon intensity. At the micro-enterprise level, this book reveals how technological empowerment directly reduces energy intensity through digital technologies, with financial innovation further amplifying this impact via targeted credit mechanisms that incentivize exploratory innovation and ESG integration. By resolving the "dual-impact paradox" of technological solutions and quantifying multi-scalar policy efficacy, this book provides emerging economies with an empirically validated blueprint for synchronizing financial systems, digital disruption, and hierarchical governance in the global climate transition.

A thoughtful and provocative meditation on both the potential and limits of constitutionalism.

In the early twenty-first century, constitutionalism confronts numerous pressures and critiques. Some prominent critics are concerned that constitutionalism's modern form, in which high courts play a large role, limits popular self-governance. By committing their nations to detailed social and economic policies-from neoliberal requirements for balanced budgets to constitutionalized social welfare and environmental rights-many modern constitutions might make promises they cannot keep and be unduly rigid in the face of changing social, economic, and environmental conditions. Meanwhile, the rise of proto-authoritarian elected leaders around the world shows that constitutions are vulnerable to, and may even enable, democratic backsliding.

Mark Tushnet and Bojan Bugaric argue that addressing each of these serious concerns through constitutional design and innovation is potentially valuable, but paradoxically, every remedy also carries with it the possibility that it will intensify the very conditions it seeks to ameliorate. Instead, Tushnet and Bugaric propose a "thin" idea of constitutionalism and suggest that we should scale back our expectations for what constitutionalism can achieve. Political mobilization, led by people attuned to the economic and cultural causes of democratic backsliding, is a better bet.

This book investigates emerging work attitudes among employees in China's service sector, with a particular focus on the phenomena of "Tang Ping" (lying flat) and "Nei Juan" (involution). The research draws upon original empirical data collected in Shanghai in 2023, situating these attitudes within the context of intergenerational workforce dynamics and China's rapidly evolving urban service economy.

A fresh reading of the relationship between moral and political philosophy in Aristotle's thought.

Our democracies promise the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness-at least, within the confines of the law. Yet the law is an ineffective guide to the good life; laws can be arbitrary, even immoral. What other limit, then, should direct us as we pursue our own fulfillment?

In Law and the Good Life, philosopher Robert C. Bartlett examines Aristotle's consideration of this question. Rather than defer to authority, Aristotle invites us to ground ourselves in moral virtue and intellectual fulfillment, an argument he develops in both Politics and Nicomachean Ethics. As political creatures, Aristotle tells us, we are capable of moral action and therefore must embrace that capacity; at the same time, as rational creatures, we must understand what is true, even without regard to action. In taking these insights together, Bartlett offers a new reading of Aristotle's political philosophy, one he hopes might serve as a prudent lodestar in our own turbulent times.

Innovation and entrepreneurship are often discussed together, with many resources in the literature about the intertwining of these two subject areas. What is lacking in the current research landscape is how innovation and entrepreneurship is undertaken in the emerging economies that form the BRICS alliance.

This comprehensive book offers a multifaceted exploration of entrepreneurship and innovation across BRICS nations, comprising various themes. It provides an overview of the challenges faced by SMEs, the dynamics of risk management, technology transfer, and global value chains, particularly in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. Emphasising the importance of knowledge sharing and creative leadership, it addresses sustainable development strategies and the role of digitalisation technologies in fostering economic growth. With a blend of quantitative and qualitative insights, the contributors provide a deep understanding of the intricate interplay between entrepreneurship, innovation, and economic development within the BRICS framework.

Academics will benefit from the scholarly analysis and theoretical frameworks presented, while students will find the content valuable for understanding contemporary issues in entrepreneurship, innovation, and international relations within the BRICS economies. Practitioners, particularly those involved in policy-making, business strategy, and international trade, will also find the insights offered by this book to be of significant relevance.

This book is the first work to systematically study the development of large-size economies. From a completely new perspective, it defines and selects a set of representative large-size economies. It first analyzes the basic characteristics of large-size economies and the mechanisms behind economic growth, and then explores how a country's scale shapes industrialization, urbanization, institutional change, and governance structures, describing a path for a major economy to an economic powerhouse. The book is selected for China's National Achievements Library of Philosophy and Social Sciences and has made notable contributions to the development of China's economic discourse system.

This project offers a fresh, in-depth analysis of the evolving relationship between the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in the ASEAN region. Through comprehensive analysis of investment data from 2016-2023, the book sheds light on the contrasting yet interdependent roles these banks play in ASEAN, with a special focus on five key countries: Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, the Philippines, and Indonesia. By integrating data analysis with geopolitical insights, the book provides a nuanced understanding of the strategic, economic, and political dynamics at play in Southeast Asia.

This open access book focuses on modern interpretations of topics such as the origin and development, functional value, inheritance and protection, and resource transformation of China's excellent traditional culture. It involves special research on five aspects: cultural heritage, folk literature, folk culture, urban culture, and rural culture. This book contains specific research contents such as the historical and cultural significance of the Sanxingdui bronze straight-eyed human face statue, the origin of the story, the inheritance and reconstruction of the Double Ninth Festival, the construction of traditional culture and modern urban cultural value, the protection and utilization of intangible cultural heritage, and the strategy of revitalizing rural culture.

Advances in Pacific Basin Business, Economics and Finance (APBBEF) is a peer-reviewed publication series issued annually by Emerald Publishing. The journal is dedicated to promoting interdisciplinary research in finance, economics, and management, with a focus on the Pacific Rim region. All submissions undergo a peer-review process, with editorial recommendations provided by members of the editorial board. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

1. Policy and management of financial markets and institutions;
2. Options, futures, and derivatives markets;
3. Corporate finance and investment decisions;
4. Insurance and risk management;
5. Accounting, auditing, and taxation;
6. Artificial intelligence and emerging technology in finance;
7. ESG and sustainability issues;
8. Income, employment, and education;
9. Monetary and foreign exchange policy;
10. Broader economic policies relevant to the Pacific Basin.

APBBEF is indexed in ABI/INFORM, EconLit, EBSCO, ProQuest, ResearchGate, and Google Scholar.

Similar to banking systems worldwide and driven by geopolitical pressures, the banking systems in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region face many significant challenges, especially in the wake of the 2007-09 credit crunch, the decline in oil prices in 2014, and the post-2011 unsettled political landscape in the wider Middle East North Africa (MENA) region. These challenges include deregulation concerning the establishment, operation, and supervision of credit institutions; the accelerating improvements in computer and telecommunication technologies and Fintech structure; and growing competition from global and domestic banks. Moreover, the future expansion within the GCC banking sector due to the national governments' demonstrated commitment to implementing economic diversification strategies which favour the development of non-government sectors will present further opportunities to the domestic financial institutions as well as place greater pressure on them to boost efficiency and stability, as well as improve their competitive stance

Against this background, the banking systems in the GCC region have witnessed a fundamental transformation over the last two decades, which the book discusses using a panel data analysis framework. In addition to the formidable record of growth of Islamic banking, the banking sectors have been involved in several dramatic changes driven by technological disruption (and fintech), economic growth, and various other geopolitical factors. Even though the countries of the GCC are among the largest economy and most open economies in the MENA region, and although the region has experienced economic policy stability through the continuous use of the pegged-to-the-USD exchange rate regime, the structure of the banking systems tend to show some imbalances. The book will address the questions raised regarding the role of banks in the economy, how managers generate value for the owners, and how recent developments have affected the structural trends in the sector, and will be of particular interest to academics, researchers, and students of banking and Islamic finance.

This book offers a comprehensive and critical examination of Libya's modern history, political evolution, and societal dynamics. Dr. Sawani analyses the Sanusi monarchy, Gaddafi rule, and the period following the uprising that ended Gaddafi's rule and led to a tumultuous post-2011 transition. The book seeks to explain the interplay of all these elements and the interaction between the internal and the external. Pivotal developments and moments along Libya's contemporary path are examined including the state-building challenges under King Idris I, the foundations and idiosyncratic nature of the Gaddafi regime, the unrealized reform attempts of the 2000s, the causes and consequences of the 2011 uprising, the controversial NATO-led intervention, and the subsequent descent into crisis and political fragmentation.

This book examines the populist economic policies implemented by the Polish government and the impact they have had on business stakeholders. With a particular focus on the period 2015 to 2023, it explores the mechanics of populist politics to provide insight into the relationship between governments and business, and to show how these policies undermine economic development and impact broader society. The legacy of populist regimes is also evaluated, with a particular focus given to the legal and institutional obstacles created by these governments that restrict the ability of subsequent governments to create positive change.

This book offers unique insight into the downfall of the recent Polish government and provides a warning for other countries enacting populist economic policies. It will be relevant to students, researchers, and policymakers interested in the political economy and economic policy.

We live in a collective moment that, for many, goes beyond uncertainty and holds unease and worry about the future. And while most, if not all, of these "Anxious Age" issues affect other states and even nations, Michael L. Walden, one of the foremost experts in North Carolina economics, makes clear the specific ways they'll affect North Carolinians, making this a must-read for policymakers, politicians, and everyday folks alike. Walden covers everything from the increasing numbers of workers doing their jobs at home, to climate change, to questions of whether big urban centers like Raleigh and Charlotte will begin to lose population rather than continuing to grow. Walden even considers AI and how its use will affect the North Carolina economy, one that is increasingly focused on technology and research.

In covering a broad array of concerns and uncertainties, Walden promises to offer a clear roadmap of where we've been and where, in this tumultuous era, we may be headed.

In the immediate post-war period and throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the OEEC-OECD constituted an intergovernmental forum for determining policy for the reconstruction and integration of European economies, and addressing significant issues of underdevelopment in individual member states. Using previously unstudied documents from the OECD's Paris archives, this book illuminates the role of the OECD in this period and how its interventions addressed and contributed to the issue of European development and integration in the regional dimension.

Focusing on six Mediterranean countries, the book reconstructs a forgotten chapter of European development policy through archival research, revealing how these regions served as early testing grounds for development economics, regional planning, and educational reform. By highlighting initiatives like the Vanoni Plan, the Mediterranean Regional Project, and the work of the European Productivity Agency, the study reframes the OECD not just as a forum for wealthy nations, but as a critical space where the 'southern question' of underdevelopment was theorized and acted upon. With implications for our broader understanding of the history of international organizations, this book is a fascinating resource for scholars of economic history and historical political economy, as well as development studies and the economics of education.