After the fall of the Berlin Wall a common political and economic consensus emerged, not only in the West but to a considerable extent around the world. Markets and democracy, working hand in hand, would transform the world into a community of modernized, peace-loving nations. In the process, ethnic hatred, extremist fundamentalism, and other “backward” aspects of underdevelopment would be swep...

The New Zealand dairy industry faces political and commercial pressure to improve its environmental performance while maintaining commercial competitiveness in a global marketplace. In response to such pressures, the industry has taken some steps to improve the environmental management practices of dairy farmers. Despite significant effort, however, the dairy sector remains highly influenced by...

A financial friction is a wedge between the return received by providers of financial capital—ultimately, consumers—and the cost of capital paid by businesses and consumers who use capital. I study two frictions. One raises the rental cost of capital to firms and the other raises the rental cost of housing and durable goods to consumers. My focus is on the effects of financial frictions—I take ...

The incidence and severity of respiratory diseases in commercial broiler chicken flocks have increased recently in India because of intensification of the broiler industry. Viral population are predominant in respiratory tract infections and they pose continuous economic burden to poultry industry by causing severe economic losses through decreased productivity [1], [2]. To understand viral met...

Assessing global impacts of unexpected meteorological events in an increasingly connected world economy is important for estimating the costs of climate change. We show that since the beginning of the 21st century, the structural evolution of the global supply network has been such as to foster an increase of climate-related production losses. We compute first- and higher-order losses from heat...

Corruption is endemic and pervasive in contemporary China, yet serious attempts at anticorruption enforcement have been periodic in nature. What explains the timing of anticorruption campaigns? Available data, from 1981 to 1997, suggests a plausible correlation between changes in macroeconomic policy and the intensification of anticorruption enforcement. Four major anticorruption campaigns—in 1...

Contemporary Australian rangeland management is characterised by concurrent processes of a continuing intensification of land management practices and simplification of landscape ecological processes. This dual characteristic is associated with increasing levels of potential conflict between land management practices that promote improved economic performance of rangeland enterprises at the app...

The present condition of the planet seems to be characterized by massive and deep changes spanning the local to the global scales, in its human and ecological components: on the one hand, the world now is moving through a period of extraordinary turbulence reflecting the genesis and intensification of deep economic, social, political, and cultural changes associated to the current techno-econom...

Due to the complex and changing global trade environment intensification of economic conflicts, enterprises have become more cautious about development [...]