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The aim of this chapter is to advance an understanding of the value of informal entrepreneurial activities in relation to context using an institutional perspective arguing that heterogeneity in institutional embeddedness affects the value individuals attach to entrepreneurial actions.

We draw empirically on 100 interviews with individuals engaged in informal cross-border activities in eight EU border regions across four countries that have experienced changes of regulatory, economic and social nature.

The analysis offers important insights on how three institutional logics – market, state and community – guide entrepreneurial action at the micro-level and affect value creation. Our evidence supports the use of these activities to fulfil important economic functions and to nurture family and social relations in closely-knit communities. Differences in the embeddedness of individuals in each of these logics contributed to their perception of the value of their informal entrepreneurial actions along economic and social dimensions at the individual, community and society level and also at the short and long run.

Our main contributions lie in extending discussions of economic and social value of informal entrepreneurial activities and in providing a dynamic view of the value of informal entrepreneurial activities that account for changes or shifts in institutional logics, the responses they generate and the value created as a result.

Considering the dynamic correlation between advances in information and communication technology (ICT) and contemporary politics, this chapter provides an economist insight into the role of ICT in the global economy. It is argued that the analysis of the relationship between ICT and politics would be incomplete if the direct and indirect influence ICT exerts on international economy was not considered. This chapter examines the features of the international trade in ICT seen as a complex reflection of the current stage of liberalization achieved at the forum of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and subsequent spillovers to other domains of economic and political collaboration worldwide. It is argued that ICT and its development not only result in the “shrinking of the distance” in the world economy but also stimulate economic liberalization, further reshuffling production from more- to less-advanced economies and, finally, help to overcome trade imbalances on the global scale. In brief, a case is made that ICT creates the conditions conducive to the enhancement of international political and economic collaboration.

Purpose – This paper utilizes the perspective of abundance, rather than scarcity, to understand economies of cities. It also proposes that the earliest urban centers were attractive places of settlement because they represented a greater variety of jobs and objects compared to the rural countryside.

Design/methodology/approach – The evolutionary trajectory of our species indicates that humans sought out abundance in their natural environments as early as a million years ago. People also deliberately replicated conditions of abundance through the manufacture and discard of large quantities of repetitive objects, and through the “waste” of usable goods. The development of urban centers 6,000 years ago provided new opportunities for both production and consumption and an abundance of diverse goods and services. These processes are analogous to contemporary economists’ views of abundance as a desirable principle and Chris Anderson's view of the Long Tail as the explanatory mechanism for the production and consumption of goods when greater distribution becomes possible.

Social implications – Today, cities are growing very rapidly despite objectively deleterious conditions such as crowding, pollution, competition, and disease transmission. By recognizing the “pull” factors of consumption and opportunity, researchers can expend their energies to mitigate the negative effects of cities’ inevitable growth.

Originality/value – Prior archaeological and contemporary analyses of cities have focused on the role of the upper echelons of the political and economic hierarchy; in contrast, this “bottom-up” approach addresses the attractions of cities from the perspective of ordinary inhabitants.

This paper seeks to reconcile two very different views existing in the literature concerning how exchange and demand affect the magnitude of commodity values. Traditionally, value is considered to be created in production and subsequently realized in exchange. An alternative monetary approach posits that exchange itself contributes to the determination of commodity values. Proponents of each view claim that significant parts of Marx’s theory of value are compromised if their interpretation of the role of exchange is not adopted. Drawing on the work of Rosdolsky and Roberts, I argue that it is necessary to distinguish between the effects of exchange and demand. Exchange acts to reduce concrete, private labor to abstract social labor, while demand affects the magnitude of labor considered “socially necessary” in the sense of being expended in accordance with existing social need. I identify a new category of exchange value – the market-price of production – and use it to explain how changes in demand act to redistribute value across industries by affecting the magnitude of abstract labor considered to be socially necessary. In this way the major claim of the two approaches to exchange are reconciled. The magnitude of value is fully determined in production. At the same time monetary exchange effects, or brings about, a social division of labor by reducing concrete, private labor to abstract social labor and by distributing value according to social need as expressed by effective demand.

An important aspect of good governance is a well-managed government procurement system. This has a direct impact on the extent and quality of a country's infrastructure and the effectiveness of its public services. Two key principles underpin a well-managed procurement system: value for money from the goods, services, and public works, which are procured, and fair access to procurement opportunities. Arguably, competition and transparency in the procurement process are necessary conditions for both. Yet despite this, most of the states of Southeast Asia have been reluctant to create an openly competitive and transparent government procurement system. This has been in part reflected in the fact that none them have become signatories to the WTO's Government Procurement Agreement of 1994 with the notable exception of Singapore. This Agreement seeks to promote international access to the government procurement market in goods, services, and public works by mandating open competition and transparent procedures.

Considering sustainability and resilience together is crucial in food supply chain (FSC) management, as it ensures a balanced approach that meets environmental, economic and social needs while maintaining the system's capacity to withstand disruptions. Towards this, a multi-objective optimisation model is proposed in this study to create an integrated sustainable and resilient FSC. The proposed model employs four objective functions – each representing a dimension of sustainability and one for resilience and utilises an augmented ϵ-constraint method for solving. The findings highlight the interplay between sustainability aspects and resilience, illustrating that overemphasis on any single dimension can adversely affect others. Further, the proposed model is applied to the case of Indian mango pulp supply chain and several inferences are derived. The proposed model would assist decision-makers in making a well-balanced choice based on sustainability and resilience considerations.

Many jurisdictions fine illegal cartels using penalty guidelines that presume an arbitrary 10% overcharge. This article surveys more than 700 published economic studies and judicial decisions that contain 2,041 quantitative estimates of overcharges of hard-core cartels. The primary findings are: (1) the median average long-run overcharge for all types of cartels over all time periods is 23.0%; (2) the mean average is at least 49%; (3) overcharges reached their zenith in 1891–1945 and have trended downward ever since; (4) 6% of the cartel episodes are zero; (5) median overcharges of international-membership cartels are 38% higher than those of domestic cartels; (6) convicted cartels are on average 19% more effective at raising prices as unpunished cartels; (7) bid-rigging conduct displays 25% lower markups than price-fixing cartels; (8) contemporary cartels targeted by class actions have higher overcharges; and (9) when cartels operate at peak effectiveness, price changes are 60–80% higher than the whole episode. Historical penalty guidelines aimed at optimally deterring cartels are likely to be too low.

One of the defining characteristics of industrial capitalism is the rapid expansion of social production. This expansion requires increased use of matter and energy. Society cannot create either matter or energy, so industrial expansion in one place means that matter and energy must be extracted and transported from other places. Because social production expands through both new technologies and new products, industrial growth requires not only greater amounts, but also an increasing variety of material and energetic forms. Because these different forms of matter and energy are found in limited quantities in different parts of the world, expansion, technological innovations, and product differentiation in productive economies entail the frequent relocation of extractive economies, either because they have depleted the natural resources on which they depend or because new technologies have shifted the market. Regions which depend on exporting extracted natural resources are therefore likely to suffer from severe fluctuations in income. Capital sunk in extractive infrastructure may devalue radically. These problems limit their capacity for sustained development. Nonetheless, resource extraction figures prominently in the economic plans of many lessdeveloped nations. A growing literature addresses the economic or the political pitfalls that beset extractive economies. This essay explores their ecological roots.