Economy & Finance

Through state-of-the-art CSR research, theories and models, the theoretical platform for sustainable business and CSR is presented in this book. Each chapter is supplemented with practical case examples explaining the way in which different companies and their managers have integrated sustainable business in their strategy and across different functions.

iURBAN: Intelligent Urban Energy Tool introduces an urban energy tool integrating different ICT energy management systems (both hardware and software) in two European cities, providing useful data to a novel decision support system that makes available the necessary parameters for the generation.

Bringing Forth Prosperity: Capacity Innovation in Africa questions capital theory as a development construct and an appropriate platform upon which sustained capacity innovation in Africa may emerge.

Breakthroughs in Smart City Implementation should give answers on a wide variety of present social, political and technological problems.

The book looks to contribute to the exchange of experiences and perspectives about the state of the research related to CSR, as well as the future direction of this field of research.

Over the past few decades, wireless access networks have evolved extensively to support the tremendous growth of consumer traffic. This superlative growth of data consumption has come about due to several reasons, such as evolution of the consumer devices, the types of telephone and smartphone being used, convergence of services, digitisation of economic transactions, tele-education, telemedicine, m-commerce, virtual reality office, social media, e-governance, e-security, to name but a few.Not only has the society transformed to a digital world, but also the expectations from the services provided have increased many folds. The last mile/meters of delivery of all e-services is now required to be wireless. It has always been known that wireless links are the bottleneck to providing high data rates and high quality of service. Several wireless signalling and performance analysis techniques to overcome the hurdles of wireless channels have been developed over the last decade, and these are fuelling the evolution of 4G towards 5G. Evolution of Air Interface Towards 5G attempts to bring out some of the important developments that are contributing towards such growth.

The book addresses and documents a gap in BM research and the BM community - but also proposes a generic definition and language of a BM and BMI layers. The significance and importance of this work is related to significant and unexplored possibilities that BMI offers today, and can offer tomorrow.

Over recent years, many new technologies have been introduced to drive the digital transformation in the building maintenance industry. The current trend in digital evolution involves data-driven decision making which opens new opportunities for an energy centered maintenance model. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are helping the maintenance team to get to the next level of maintenance intelligence to provide real-time early warning of abnormal equipment performance.This edition follows the same methodology as the First. It provides detailed descriptions of the latest technologies associated with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning which enable data-driven decision-making processes about the equipment's operation and maintenance. Technical topics discussed in the book include: Different Maintenance Types and The Need for Energy Centered MaintenanceThe Centered Maintenance ModelEnergy Centered Maintenance Process Measures of Equipment and Maintenance Efficiency and EffectivenessData-Driven Energy Centered Maintenance Model:Digitally Enabled Energy Centered Maintenance TasksArtificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Energy Centered MaintenanceModel Capabilities and Analytics RulesBuilding Management System SchematicsThe book contains a detailed description of the digital transformation process of most of the maintenance inspection tasks as they move away from being manually triggered. The book is aimed at building operators as well as those building automation companies who are working continuously to digitalize building operation and maintenance procedures. The benefits are reductions in the equipment failure rate, improvements in equipment reliability, increases in equipment efficiency and extended equipment lifespan.

This book provides in-depth insights into use cases implementing artificial intelligence (AI) applications at the edge. It covers new ideas, concepts, research, and innovation to enable the development and deployment of AI, the industrial internet of things (IIoT), edge computing, and digital twin technologies in industrial environments.

This edited book presents some unexplored issues of economic inequality, including case studies of various countries. Inequality is a chronic and divisive factor of society.

The book describes the evolution of economic theory, considering historical, political and scientific perspectives. It discusses economic concepts and the formation of economics as a discipline since the feudal system, passing through the formation of the State, until the present. The main economic concepts are presented, including microeconomics, macroeconomics, econometrics, privatization, taxes, tariffs, the concept of currencies, stock markets, international transactions, and economic policies. The book contains a complete glossary of economic terms to help the reader.

This book provides a simple, easily followed process for auditing building operations to identify and reduce energy consumption that leads to measurable carbon reduction. The crucial steps of this process involve assessing the facility's current conditions, understanding, and analyzing the operational and cost-based opportunities that increase carbon output. Taking this information to report the findings and then document a multiyear energy and carbon reduction plan. The book discusses the full scope of building components and systems, including how each system affects energy efficiency. It describes the operational energy efficiencies that are gained by implementing no-cost changes or alternative maintenance activities already funded. The book includes the process for identifying capital improvement opportunities, along with evaluating return on investment and life cycle replacement options for equipment. The four-step process described in this book will serve as a valuable tool for every building operator seeking to improve energy performance and reduce carbon output.

With the increased interest in climate impacts, sustainability, and efficiency, more responsibility is being placed on boiler operators to help improve performance and reduce emissions. This third edition of the Boiler Operator's Handbook is intended to help such operators in the quest for improved operability and performance of their boilers and their plants. The theme of this book is to "e;operate wisely"e;. The goal is to instill not only "e;know how"e; but "e;know why"e;. The main details have been provided by the original author, Mr. Ken Heselton. This updated version has been somewhat expanded to include a wider range of examples and some of the more recent environmental requirements.To illustrate these points, topics include multi boiler operations, understanding the plant load, maintenance issues, and controls. Every plant is different. However, it is hoped that with the information provided in this book, the wise operator will be able to address the various unique issues posed by the specific plant and provide timely solutions to meet the present-day requirements.

Starting from the dualism between city and forest and its evolution towards holism, the book seeks to create a framework of dialectical approaches.

This book aims to cover a new emerging need in designing digital phase shifter for modern communication systems. With the advancement of new generation mobile communication systems, directed beams of antenna arrays save a substantial amount of power as well as improve the communication quality. In this regard, beam-forming circuits, such as digital phase shifters (DPS) constitute essential parts of the antenna array systems. Therefore, this book is devoted to the design of digital phase shifters for various communications systems. Nowadays, phase array systems demand compact phase shifters suitable for chip implementation with wide phase-range and broad frequency band. Each chapter of this book is organized as stand-alone in such a way that the reader requires no specific background acquired from the other chapters. For each phase shifter topology introduced in this book, the reader is furnished with explicit design equations to construct the circuit under consideration. Furthermore, design equations are programmed using MATLAB to assess the electrical performance of the phase shifters with ideal and lossy components. MATLAB design programs are given at the and of each chapter as appendices and provided as soft copy on the web page of the book. In chapters 12 and 14, MMIC layouts for the lattice and T-section based DPS are provided for the readers. It is hoped that an interested reader can immediately identifies the "e;optimum phase shifter topology"e; for the need under consideration with its estimated electric performance.

This book tries to present an accurate picture of these issues with cases studies from various countries.Mostly, when we talk about inequality, the focus is on economic inequality; however, much inequality persists, especially discrimination due to gender, age, origin, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, class, and religion.

Managing the climate transition will be one of the biggest challenges ever faced by business and government.While the technical and financial elements of climate transition are vast, the social challenges are even greater. If local populations and workers feel the transitions are not ¿just¿ they will resist, and that social opposition now represents one of the greatest barriers to reaching Net Zero by 2050. While the phrase ¿Just Transition¿ was in the preamble to the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, it is only now that business, finance and governments are starting to discuss what this might mean in practice.Thousands of companies are now starting to develop transition plans alongside those of governments. This book shows how all managers can best integrate social elements into these plans, consult with the people most affected by the transition out of the high carbon economy, and ensure that what looks good on paper works in practice. It takes a systems-thinking approach, focusing on the interconnections and interdependence of environmental, social and governance issues.The challenge is immense, and the changes will need to be profound. Each chapter in the book will look at the main domains in which management and policy challenges will be faced. From massively increasing the extraction of rare earth metals, most of which sit below, or adjacent to, indigenous land, to building the infrastructure needed to generate and distribute green energy, possibly over ¿Not in My Back Yard¿ objections, the task of business and government in ensuring that these changes are fair, and perceived as fair, is immense.This book provides the roadmap for how to get there. Managing the social impacts of the climate transition will be one of the biggest challenges ever faced by business and government.

This book highlights the historic inflection point we are in, both in terms of philanthropy in general, and specifically in financing the solutions to our largest and most urgent social and environmental problems. It covers the two movements that have recently had a dramatic influence on capitalism. First, wealthy millennials have been pressuring their bankers to invest their family portfolios in companies with high social and environmental impact (ESG ratings), triggering a wave where the wealth management industry, and now all public companies, are significantly adapting to the increasing demand for good. Second, The Giving Pledge triggered another wave, changing what success and the accumulation of wealth means. It has even begun to redefine the goal of capitalism as more than 230 billionaires have pledged to give half or more of their wealth away. This book also focuses on the bottleneck problem that The Giving Pledge has created, as it is very hard to give hundreds of billions away with measurable impact to nonprofits lacking detailed long-term plans to scale. Nonprofits have never had the luxury of having all the resources to invest in the planning, management training and systems needed to rapidly expand. Thus taking in very large gifts is very difficult, and almost impossible to justify. Large philanthropy can always be used for traditional capital campaigns and to fund endowments, yet The Giving Pledge signers are often looking for large visible impact beyond these traditional avenues. The result is a bottleneck which has grown as more billionaires pledge their funds away while their wealth continues to skyrocket and giving rates stay very small.Finally, this book covers the emergence of large giving vehicles, modelled after the private equity industry. They have sophisticated third-party managers focused on deploying funds and supporting management teams. It also covers the scaling of nonprofits in a significant way (¿Big Bets¿) as well as investing large philanthropy through for-profits as Philanthropic Private Equity. This book is of interest specifically to nonprofit and foundation leaders, as well as wealth managers, estate attorneys and other philanthropic advisors. It is also of interest to investors and corporate CEOs as they begin to access these large pools for philanthropic capital to increase their impact. This book is focused on providing those with the ability to make large philanthropic investments a path to scale their impact and increase their fulfillment and that of their family. It provides a step-by-step guide of how these approaches, especially Philanthropic Private Equity, can actually solve the social and environmental challenges that have been seemingly hopeless. The second edition also presents a plan to use these concepts to create a path to solve the housing crisis in America.

Prominent economists have recognized or toyed with the idea of waiting as a factor of production, but the subject has remained largely undeveloped until now. In this book, Leland B. Yeager and Steve H. Hanke build upon the contributions from a gallery of distinguished economists, diving into the economic theory behind waiting and explaining its relevance for modern-day monetary policy, among other things. With this new perspective, Yeager and Hanke challenge economists to reconsider capital theory as previously understood. Capital, Interest, and Waiting is an indispensable resource for economists grappling with or questioning the theoretical and applied relationships between time, money, and the economy. It challenges readers to reconsider their approach to capital theory. The arguments presented throughout the book rest on the vast literature of capital theory that has been accompanied by numerous controversies, puzzles, and debates for well over a century. With energy, Yeager and Hanke resolve these many puzzles and paradoxes one after the other, breaking new ground by demonstrating that waiting is a factor of production and interest is its price.  Leland B. Yeager (1924-2018) was Ludwig von Mises Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Economics at Auburn University and Paul Goodloe McIntire Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Virginia.Steve H. Hanke is Professor of Applied Economics and Founder and Co-Director of the Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Hanke was a member of the faculties at the Colorado School of Mines and the University of California, Berkeley.

This book explores Edith Penrose's work and legacy, not just on economics - she was the founding Head of Department of Economics at SOAS University of London - but also on the related fields of management and political economy where her contribution has had significant impact.

The chapters in this book showcase how accounting information relates to a wide spectrum of important issues like carbon emissions, international trade and the supply chain. It also considers the development of the audit market in China and highlights important future directions for accounting researchers interested in China-related studies.

This book takes a fresh look at an age-old controversy in ethics and political economy that stretches right back to Aristotle: the morality and the economics of debt financing, or the charging of interest on loans. It endeavours to show the immense relevance of those ancient debates in the contemporary economy .

This book examines how states justify the creation of physical, policy and legislative barriers of entry for migrants by drawing on a concept of sovereignty.

Applying economic methods to the institutional, procedural, and substantive aspects of European law, this book offers a unique systematic economic analysis of EU law.

This book compares and contrasts 10 distinct investment philosophies and how each leads to different approaches to investment selection, portfolio construction, and risk management in practice. Each chapter aims to outline the principles and practical decisions of each different way of investing with the goal of helping readers better understand the logical implications of their own way of investment thinking, as well as a framework for evaluating how higher level investment decisions are made by their pension funds and other institutions.