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Marshall Cavendish
Topical, authentic and high quality books under the Marshall Cavendish Editions imprint provide general interest content that informs, entertains and engages readers.
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Promoted Content
April 2023Speculation by Commodity Index Funds
The Impact on Food and Energy Prices
by Scott H. Irwin, Dwight R. Sanders
Commodity futures prices exploded in 2007-08 and concerns about a new type of participant in commodity futures markets began to emerge. Market participants, regulators, and civic organizations began raising concerns that inflows from new "commodity index" investments were driving the increases in commodity prices instead of economic fundamentals. The main argument was that unprecedented buying pressure from these speculative long-only futures traders created massive bubbles that resulted in prices substantially exceeding fundamental value. At the time, it was not uncommon to link concerns about speculation and high prices to world hunger, food crises, and civil unrest. Naturally, this outcry resulted in numerous regulatory proposals to restrict speculation in commodity futures markets through transaction taxes, speculative position limits, and even the bizarre idea of a "virtual reserve" whereby a public agency would take futures positions opposite speculators. At the core, these assertions raised major economic questions about the efficiency of price discovery in commodity futures markets. Moreover, these so-called remedies did not come without a potential cost. Burdensome regulations would increase compliance and risk sharing costs across the global food system-lowering prices for producers and increasing costs to consumers. To guide this debate, a rigorous approach was needed to understand the dynamics between prices and commodity index activity. This book documents a curated selection of papers on the impact of index investment on commodity futures prices. The chronology of the papers roughly follows the timeline of our involvement in the world-wide debate about commodity speculation as it evolved after 2007. The 10 papers follow the evolving speculation debate with new author forwards highlighting the contribution and impact. Policy-makers, researchers, and market participants will find this not only as useful documentation of the debate; but, also a natural starting point when high commodity prices inevitably create the next speculation backlash.
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Humanities & Social SciencesMarch 2021African cities and collaborative futures
Urban platforms and metropolitan logistics
by Michael Keith, Andreza Aruska de Souza Santos, Susan Parnell
This groundbreaking volume brings together scholars from across the globe to discuss the infrastructure, energy, housing, safety and sustainability of African cities, as seen through local narratives of residents. Drawing on a variety of fields and extensive first-hand research, the contributions offer a fresh perspective on some of the most pressing issues confronting urban Africa in the twenty-first century. At a time when the future of the region as a whole will be determined in large part by its cities, the implications of these developments are profound. With case studies from cities in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania, this volume explores how the rapid growth of African cities is reconfiguring the relationship between urban social life and its built forms. While the most visible transformations in cities today can be seen as infrastructural, these manifestations are cultural as well as material, reflecting the different ways in which the city is rationalised, economised and governed. How can we 'see like a city' in twenty-first-century Africa, understanding the urban present to shape its future? This is the central question posed throughout this volume, with a practical focus on how academics, local decision makers and international practitioners can collaborate to meet the challenge of rapid growth, environmental pressures and resource gaps.
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Humanities & Social SciencesMarch 2021African cities and collaborative futures
by Michael Keith, Andreza Aruska de Souza Santos
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The futures of Darcy Ribeiro
by Darcy Ribeiro
This book contains a careful selection of Darcy Ribeiro's writings, forming a panorama of his visions for the future. By going through the different phases of Darcy's thought, it is possible to understand the complexity of Brazilian social formation and glimpse ways to overcome chronic problems, which, in the author's words, would enable us to “flourish tomorrow as a new civilization, mestizo and tropical, proud of itself”. Returning today to the futures undertaken by Darcy between the 1960s and 1990s makes it possible to see what we could have been, helps us understand why we are still far from being so and reveals some of the reasons why we repeatedly turn a deaf ear to emancipatory projects.
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Business, Economics & LawMarch 2024Markets and power in digital capitalism
by Philipp Staab
Today's global capitalism runs through digital networks. Its leaders are internet giants such as Google, Apple, Amazon and Tencent. Their technologies are ubiquitous: we carry high-performance computers around in our pockets, manage our lives in the cloud and display them on social media. They have also literally privatised the market, transforming capitalism in the process. Philipp Staab takes us on a virtual tour of modern digital capitalism. He shows how digital surveillance and evaluation practices have proliferated throughout the economy, exacerbating social inequality in the process. What is specific to digital capitalism, Staab argues, is the emergence of 'proprietary markets'. In the past the focus was on producing things and selling them at a profit. Today the meta-platforms extract their profits by owning the market itself.
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Science & MathematicsApril 2024Demand-led Plant Breeding
From Principles to Practice in Emerging Markets
by Vivienne M Anthony, Cathy Barker
This companion to "The Business of Plant Breeding: Market-led Approaches to Plant Variety Design in Africa contains experiences from postgraduate educators training the next generation of African plant breeders and professional breeders that are implementing best practices in Demand-Led Breeding (DLB) in their current crop improvement programmes. It is written by highly experienced plant breeders representing several universities, national plant breeding programmes, regional and international agricultural research institutes in Africa, together with expert breeders from Australia and developers from private seed companies. It includes specifically points of learning from real implementation situations from crop breeding programmes in NARS and IARCs in Africa, Australia and internationally. It shares experiences on improving tropical crops, strengthening understanding on how to overcome challenges in designing new crops to increase smallholder farmer adoption and advocating best practices. It also presents five case studies on tropical crops, and discusses the need for an enabling policy environment and the changes needed for Africa to achieve its ambition for food security and Africa's vision 2063.
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December 2023Sustainable Agricultural Marketing and Agribusiness Development
An African Perspective
by Brighton Nyagadza, Tanyaradzwa Rukasha
The future of Africa and the whole globe is dependent on sustainable agribusiness management. This book offers insights to a wide range of agricultural marketing and agribusiness management practices with a focus on sustainability. It is designed to provide academics and graduate students in business studies with a comprehensive treatment of the nature of agricultural marketing and agribusiness management, as well as sustainability transitions and related practices in certain regions of the world (particularly in Africa). The text also serves as an invaluable resource for agricultural marketing practitioners requiring more than anecdotal evidence on the structure and operation of agricultural marketing and agribusiness management, as well as sustainability in different organisations and geographical areas. It allows the reader to compare and contrast agricultural marketing and agribusiness management, as well as sustainability practices across different research methodologies and settings. The book provides a unique mix of theory, reviews, primary research findings and case studies.
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Agriculture & related industriesJune 2015Transition to Agricultural Market Economies
The Future of Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine
by Edited by Andrew Schmitz, William H Meyers.
It is believed that the major countries of the former Soviet Union—specifically Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine (KRU region)—are the part of the world with the most potential to increase food supplies and strengthen world food security. This book examines the future of the KRU countries in global agricultural markets and will examine a number of agricultural sectors, including meat, dairy, fruits, and vegetables. However particular attention is paid to the region’s potential expansion of the grain sector and why the KRU region emerged during the 2000s as a major grain exporter, and its potential to further expand grain production and exports. It also examine the issues of environmental constraints and trade-offs for agriculture, sustainability, and the possible effects of climate change
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Development economicsApril 2013Agricultural Markets in a Transitioning Economy
An Albanian Case Study
by Edited by Catherine Chan-Halbrendt, Jean Fantle-Lepczyk
This book presents major challenges and opportunities facing agriculture sectors in the wake of the transition from a planned to market economy. Using Albania as a case study, it examines the shift from communism to free markets and the lasting effects of such change on agricultural production and education. Using primary research sources to give readers an accurate portrayal of the path that lies ahead for many developing countries, the book also looks at the future of agriculture in transitioning economies.
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Humanities & Social SciencesNovember 2024Beyond nationalism
Acting and thinking for the common good in the European Union
by João Labareda
This book discusses the meaning of the common good in a European Union thorned by nationalist tendencies and presents concrete policies to improve its achievement. It analyses the normative relevance of EU values as a shared moral standpoint that allows highly diverse member states to label a given collective choice as 'good' or 'bad'. It discusses the role of EU institutions as both guardians and enablers of EU values in a globalised world and introduces a few proposals for institutional reform at the EU level that could strengthen this role. It also presents six strategies to improve civic friendship in the EU, in the absence of which any institutional efforts to promote the common good may be undermined by the citizens' lack of willingness to share its burdens.
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Politics & governmentNovember 2006The European Union and the regulation of media markets
None
by Alison Harcourt
National broadcasting and press regulation is undergoing a process of convergence in Europe. This book, newly available in paperback, explains how this process has been shaped by the actions of the European Union (EU) institutions. Alison Harcourt observes that whilst communications is one of the EU's most successful policy areas, European decision-making is eroding the national capacity to regulate for the public interest. European-level efforts to protect public interest goals have been constrained by the European Treaties. The author argues that increased European coordination in public interest regulation could be more conducive to growth and competitiveness than the dismantling of existing national laws. This, however, would require changes to the political composition of the European Union. This book assesses the potential EU media regulation provides for market growth and the protection of media pluralism, the citizen and ultimately democracy itself. These opportunities are presented in the coming decade with the developing European Constitution, EU enlargement, and the implementation and revision of European regulation.
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Humanities & Social SciencesSeptember 2017A community with a shared future for mankind
Chinese Program in Global Governance
by Wang Fan, Ling Shengli
Chinese President Xi Jinping has mentioned the "Chinese Plan" for global governance on several occasions, and pointed that "the world is so big and we have so many problems that the international community looks forward to hearing Chinese voices and seeing China's plans, and China cannot be absent in there". The book tries to find answers to this series of questions.
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Business, Economics & LawAugust 2010Markets, rules and institutions of exchange
None
by Stan Metcalfe, Mark Harvey, Mark Harvey
This book is about how to understand the huge variety of markets and market organisation in contemporary economies through a dialogue between a group of UK and French scholars. It presents a critique and development of institutional views of markets, and 'puts markets in their place' in a wider political and social context. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis in markets, the book makes a topical and significant contribution on the importance of the rules and regulations that constitute markets, and their broader political and legal frameworks. Moreover, the disruption of markets brings to the fore their interconnection with the broader economy, with production, distribution and consumption in a way often ignored at the height of market bubbles. Both theoretical and empirical, a wide range of markets are considered, capital markets for new technology and venture capital, for food, domestic services and scientific knowledge. The authors address how markets emerge and disappear, or indeed why they fail to appear, as well has how they become stable and institutionalised. ;
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Children's & YAYou for Future
by Franziska Wessel/ Günther Wessel
‘We will not stop demonstrating,’ writes Franziska Wessel in a guest column in the Berliner Zeitung. Franziska is pursuing a goal. Decisive measures must finally be taken to protect the climate. While that is not happening she spends every Friday on the streets, gives interviews and puts pressure on politicians. But climate change isn’t the only thing threatening our future. There is so much suffering, injustice and destruction in the world. Something must be done about it. And as a climate activist, Franziska knows exactly how to be active. Together with her father, the journalist and author, Günther Wessel, she explains: How do I start a petition? How do I organise a campaign? How does lobbying work? So that everyone knows how they can make things happen.
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Humanities & Social SciencesOctober 2023
Towards a just Europe
A theory of distributive justice for the European Union
by João Labareda
This highly original book constitutes one of the first attempts to examine the problem of distributive justice in the European Union in a systematic manner. João Labareda argues that the set of shared political institutions at EU level, including the European Parliament and the Court of Justice of the EU, generate democratic duties of redistribution among EU citizens. Furthermore, the economic structure of the EU, comprising a common market, a common currency and a free-movement area, triggers duties of reciprocity among member states. The responsibilities to fulfil these duties, Labareda argues, should be shared by the local, national and supranational levels of government. Not only should the EU act as a safety net to the national welfare systems, applying the principle of subsidiarity, but common market and Eurozone regulations should balance their efficiency targets with fair cooperation terms. The concrete policy proposals presented in this book include a threshold of basic goods for all EU citizens, an EU labour code, a minimum EU corporate tax rate and an EU fund for competitiveness. Labarada argues that his proposals match the political culture of the member states, are economically feasible, can be translated into functioning institutions and policies and are consistent with the limited degree of social solidarity in Europe. This book is a major contribution to the understanding of what a just Europe would look like and what it might take to get us there. This book is relevant to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 10, Reduced inequalities
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August 2021Europe for Future
95 Thesen, die Europa retten – was jetzt geschehen muss (Das europäische Manifest im Wahljahr 2021)
by Herr, Vincent-Immanuel & Speer, Martin
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Development economicsJune 2011Vegetable Production and Marketing in Africa
Socio-economic Research
by Edited by Dagmar Mithöfer, Hermann Waibel.
Vegetables are a significant component of agricultural farming systems in Africa and have recently moved into the focus of research organizations, development partners and policy makers. Beyond income generating opportunities for producers, vegetable production for domestic and export markets is an important driver for growth due to employment opportunities in production, processing and trade. Providing the latest socioeconomic research methodologies alongside empirical examples, this volume explores the potential for vegetable production to alleviate poverty, the impact of food production standards on various stakeholders, an assessment of markets and marketing potential for different crops and advanced economic approaches to production.
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July 2014The Black Steed
by Zhang Chengzhi
This is a collection of works by writer Zhang Chengzhi. The Black Steed, Rivers of the North, and Golden Pastures included in this collection have already been translated into different languages. The Black Steed, through the life experience of a man leaving and returning to the countryside and through a beautiful but sad love story, reflects the choices of the Mongolian nationality in the conflict between old and new concepts and the struggle and outcry of the new generation of the grassland.
