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This chapter aims to discuss the challenges facing these countries building productive capacity for development. This chapter makes use of data published by international organizations as indicators for measuring the state of development in the Arab region. Several indicators are presented to compare Arab countries with other world regions. The use of data identifies some of the gaps that countries in the Arab region need to close to strengthen capacity building for development and fostering economic growth. The findings from the data presented reveal that the productive structure in most Arab countries remains weak to generate production linkages and provide incentives for investment in nonenergy sectors. The failure of the export-led growth model to diversify output and promote development in energy producing countries has increased the dependence of these countries on global trade. Fluctuations in commodity prices and uncertainty about global demand for energy have influenced the ability of the state to construct strategies for rapid transformation. Except for the energy sector, the productivity of nonoil sectors remains low reflecting inadequate incentives and ineffective entrepreneurial capabilities. The study examines the challenges for building productive capacity in the Arab world. It illustrates the failure of the led-export model and its inability to prompted economic diversification, especially in the Gulf countries. The study contributes to the literature on capacity building in the Arab world so that to encourage researchers and students of development conducting studies concerning the main development challenges facing these countries.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

Although research attention has been given to the modelling process for simultaneous demand‐output management in manufacturing systems, little interest has been demonstrated in service organisations despite the fact that such organisations face unique conditions that further complicate the demand‐output management issue. In response to this lack of emphasis, we review the relevant research from both marketing and operations management and present a cost‐effectiveness model for balancing demand and service output.

One Axiom common to all economies is that they must save and invest enough to replace their productive capacity as it is depleted, or the standard of living of their citizens will fall. Farmers express this view in the adage, “Don't eat the seed corn.”

The chapter seeks to reflect on the dynamics of the reconstruction of family farming and peasant agriculture in agrarian reform settlements (“assentamentos”) in Brazil, exploring the limits and potential of government food purchases from family farming, particularly the Food Acquisition Program (Programa de Aquisição de Alimentos – PAA), in the creation of alternative paths of rural development. The work analyzes the different strategies through which farmers and their organizations mobilize public policy instruments and market connections, expanding their room for maneuver and agency capacity. Research was conducted in the Baixo Sul Territory of the state of Bahia, focusing the heterogeneous web of social organizations involved in the implementation of the Food Acquisition Program in this setting.

This chapter challenges the denial of “underconsumption” – the role of consumption demand in capitalist reproduction and its paucity in crises – in contemporary Marxism. At stake are better understandings not only of crisis theory but also, inter alia, of imperialism, “reformism,” and Marx's intellectual legacy. The chapter shows how the centrality of consumption demand is underlined in the three volumes of Capital and the Grundrisse, and goes on to discuss the origins, weaknesses, and persistence of this denial. The chapter also shows that Marx did not regard underconsumption as a moralistic argument about unfulfilled need. The denial originates not in Marx but in productionism, the idea that capitalism is a system of “production for production's sake.”

Originating in the overkill of Tugan Baranowski's refutation of the Russian populists’ view that capitalist development was impossible in Russia due to lack of a home market, productionism is based on his attempt to force Marxism into the marginalist and the general equilibrium framework. Despite its antipathy with Marxism, most contemporary Marxist economics are based on it. Inevitably its adherence to Say's Law – the denial of the possibility of gluts in the market – infects the tendency to assume that capitalism's contradictions do not lie in circulation. Productionism's denial of the importance of consumption demand also rests on nonsequiturs, nondialectical thinking, and an underestimation of the contradictions in capitalism Marx identified, other than the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. The chapter ends by showing the centrality of demand in the recent historical evolution of capitalism as reconstructed by Robert Brenner, followed by a discussion of whether underconsumption is “reformist.”

The Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLAC) was created in the post-war, when Latin-American countries were facing disequilibrium in international trade, capital shortage and rising inflation. The ECLAC intended to aid in the definition of a development strategy that could deal with these issues. Between the first ECLAC publications, three of them are considered to be “the trilogy that founds the structuralist theory” (Bielschowsky, 2011, p. 8): the Latin-American Manifesto, the Economic Survey of Latin America-1949, and Theoretical and Practical Problems of Economic Growth. These documents set the center-periphery relation as a conditioning feature for the behavior of national economies, and describe the trajectory of terms of trade deterioration and its consequences to peripheral nations. The objective here is to argue that this trilogy contains an analysis of inflation in underdevelopment, and anticipates the main elements of what would later be called the structuralist theory of inflation. The introduction depicts the context that originated the ECLAC and the debates on how to foster post-war Latin-American development. The second section analyzes the Singer Report and the Latin-American Manifesto with regard to the causes of inflation in peripheral nations. The third section discusses the Economic Survey of Latin America – 1949, with a focus on the consequences of technology incorporation in underdeveloped structures. Section four explores “Theoretical and Practical Problems of Economic Growth” and the issue of inelastic production. Section five surveys the incorporation of Prebisch’s approach into the Brazilian debate. The conclusion sets Prebisch’s contribution in perspective with other structuralist authors.

Understanding the differences in the Islamic and Christian view of interest requires coming to terms not with the acts constitutive of the practice but the meaning of the practice in two different views of what an economy produces and delivers. The difference in the norms that govern interest transactions differ because the metaphysical foundations about what the practice means differ. The Islamic norms are broader via public accountability for the good produced by an economy as a social good than the normative regulation of interest transactions in Christian cultures that focuses on the goods delivered by an economy to more or less independent individuals participating in an economy. However, some reconciliation of the Christian and Islamic view is possible when we recognize that the ethical accountability of interest rests on a view of economic justice as increasing the degree of economic participation in an economy as an economic and social good. When this view is taken, we see that the range of potentially illicit practices in Christian economies is larger than is actually the case in the actual regulation of interest transactions.

The concepts of the “equal-equivalents” permit the definition of one-dimensional and multidimensional inequalities, of individual “welfare” (the same function for all individuals) and, as a result, of classical inequality properties and of the optimal allocation in “macrojustice” (optimum income taxation and transfers, amounting in particular to equal liberty of choice in different domains).