Product Description: The efficient operation of financial intermediaries--banks, insurance and pension fund firms, government agencies and so on--is instrumental for the efficient functioning of the financial system and the fueling of the economies of the twenty-first century...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: 3 While all of these explanations seem to have merit, there is one dominant reason why the percentage of GDP and employment dedicated to services has continued to increase: low productivity. According to Baumol's cost disease hypothesis (Baumol, Blackman, and Wolff 1991), the growth in services is actually an illusion...read more

Product Description: The problem of predicting interregional commodity movements and the regional prices of these commodities has intrigued economists, geographers and operations researchers for years. In 1838, A. A. Cournot (1838) discussed the equilibrium of trade between New York and Paris and noted how the equilibrium prices depended upon the transport costs...read more