Transaction Cost Economics

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Petri Minkkinen and Heikki Patomäki

If the plans concerning EMU will be realised, by 2002 national currencies will be replaced by the Euro and national central banks will be partially replaced by the European Central Bank. The Politics of Economic and Monetary Union starts with the argument that EMU is more a political than an economic project. The politics of EMU includes many dimensions. The book tries to explain the hegemony of the neoliberal and German vision of Europe in the context of recent developments in the global political economy. It assesses the consequences of this hegemony and the possibility for alternatives from a variety of perspectives. In many chapters, it is also argued that the legitimation problems of the Union may turn into an acute crisis also because of EMU. We should expect an actualised crisis to lead to a transformation of the Union.

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Lisa Bud-Frierman

The present period has been called the Information Age. Until now, however, historians have by and large passed over the use and generation of business information. This wide-ranging book provides a new historical perspective by drawing upon concepts and models from economics, business and economic history, management studies, and the sociology and history of science. It will make an important contribution to our understanding of the role of information in business strategies and industrial policy, and marks a step towards a more sophisticated evaluation of information management styles past and present. The authors, distinguished scholars from several European countries, the USA and Japan, explore the 'information society' through focusing on ideas about the meaning and the economic function of business information. Theories of scientific management, the effect of organizational structures and the spread of ideas are studied historically and in contemporary situations throughout the world. At a time when efficient information use is expected to give particular competitive advantage to firms, this book will be of special interest to all those responsible for the use of information in large organizations as well as to scholars, including historians, economists, sociologists and management scientists.

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Arthur Tatnall, Javier Osorio, Adrie Visscher

International Federation for Information Processing The IFIP series publishes state-of-the-art results in the sciences and technologies of information and communication. The scope of the series includes: foundations of computer science; software theory and practice; education; computer applications in technology; communication systems; systems modeling and optimization; information systems; computers and society; computer systems technology; security and protection in information processing systems; artificial intelligence; and human-computer interaction. Proceedings and post-proceedings of referred international conferences in computer science and interdisciplinary fields are featured. These results often precede journal publication and represent the most current research. The principal aim of the IFIP series is to encourage education and the dissemination and exchange of information about all aspects of computing. For more information about the 300 other books in the IFIP series, please visit www.springeronline.com. For more information about IFIP, please visit www.ifip.or.at.

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Arnold W. Sametz

This book explores recent changes in the financial industry in terms of products, regulation and strategic planning. The focus is on the insurance industry and the emerging insurance products and strategies. Issues discussed are the consumer demand for insurance products, the effect of bank deregulation on insurance companies, the investment management policies of insurance companies and the implications for strategic planning in the insurance industry.