Books in the Cornell Studies in Political Economy series

At the close of the twentieth century, Denmark, Finland, and Ireland emerged as unlikely centers for high-tech competition. In When Small States Make Big Leaps, Darius Ornston reveals how these historically low-tech countries managed to assume leading positions in new industries such as biotechnology, software, and telecommunications equipment. In each case, countries used institutions that are commonly perceived to delay restructuring to accelerate the redistribution of resources to emerging enterprises and industries.Ornston draws on interviews with hundreds of politicians, policymakers, and industry representatives to identify two different patterns of institutional innovation and economic restructuring. Irish policymakers worked with industry and labor representatives to contain costs and expand market competition. Denmark and Finland adopted a different strategy, converting an established tradition of private-public and industry-labor cooperation to invest in high-quality inputs such as human capital and research. Both strategies facilitated movement into new high-tech industries but with distinctive political and economic consequences. In explaining how previously slow-moving states entered dynamic new industries, Ornston identifies a broader range of strategies by which countries can respond to disruptive challenges such as economic internationalization, rapid technological innovation, and the shift to services.

This book argues that East Asia's regional dynamics are no longer the result of a simple extension of any one national model.

Cioffi argues that highly politicized reform of corporate governance law has reshaped power relations within the public corporation in favor of financial interests, contributed to the profound crises of capitalism, and eroded its political foundations.

During the economic reforms of the last twenty years, China adopted a wide array of policies designed to raise its technological capability and foster industrial growth. Ideologically, the government would not promote private-ownership firms and...

In Globalizing in Hard Times, Leonardo Martinez-Diaz examines the sudden and substantial increase in cross-border ownership of commercial banks in countries where bank ownership had long been restricted by local rules. Many parties-the World Bank and...

Nonviolent state behavior in Japan, this book argues, results from the distinctive breadth with which the Japanese define security policy, making it inseparable from the quest for social stability through economic growth. While much of the literature...

Whose Ideas Matter? is the first book to explore the diffusion of ideas and norms in the international system from the perspective of local actors, with Asian regional institutions as its main focus.

In this book, German sociologists and American and Japanese political scientists draw extensively on the work of economists and historians from their home countries, as well as from the United Kingdom and France.

Do people's beliefs help to explain foreign policy decisions, or is political activity better understood as the self-interested behavior of key actors?

Small states have learned in recent decades that capital accumulates where taxes are low; as a result, tax havens have increasingly competed for the attention of international investors with tax and regulatory concessions. Economically powerful...

Sinclair offers a highly accessible account of bond rating agencies: their origins and the rating processes they use to judge creditworthiness. Illustrated with a wide range of cases, this book offers a fresh assessment of the role of an often-overlooked institution in the dynamics of modern global capitalism.

International relations are generally understood as a realm of anarchy in which countries lack any superior authority and interact within a Hobbesian state of nature. In Hierarchy in International Relations, David A. Lake challenges this traditional...

Why have the states of Europe agreed to create an Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and a single European currency? What will decide the fate of this bold project? This book explains why monetary integration has deepened in Europe from the Bretton...

In this volume, fourteen distinguished specialists in international political economy thoroughly explore the concept of international regimes-the implicit and explicit principles, norms, rules, and procedures that guide international behavior. In the...

The United States has never felt at home abroad. The reason for this unease, even after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, is not frequent threats to American security. It is America's identity. The United States, its citizens believe, is...

A distinguished group of experts, including historians, polling data analysts, political scientists, anthropologists, and sociologists, to explore global anti-Americanism in depth, using both qualitative and quantitative methods.

An overarching ambiguity characterizes East Asia today. The region has at least a century-long history of internal divisiveness, war, and conflict, and it remains the site of several nettlesome territorial disputes. However, a mixture of complex and...

The financial crisis that swept across East Asia during 1997-1998 was devastating not only in its economic impact but also in its social and political effects. The explosive growth and sociopolitical modernization that had powered the region for much...

Will the pressures of financial and product market globalization force European firms to switch from a stakeholder-based model of corporate governance to a shareholder-based, Anglo-Saxon system? While many scholars of globalization have long assumed...

The financial crisis that swept across East Asia during 1997-1998 was devastating not only in its economic impact but also in its social and political effects. The explosive growth and sociopolitical modernization that had powered the region for much...

In Strategic Coupling, Henry Wai-chung Yeung examines economic development and state-firm relations in East Asia, focusing in particular on South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore.

In the summer of 1997, a tidal wave of economic problems swept across Asia. Currencies plummeted, banks failed, GNP stagnated, unemployment soared, and exports stalled. In short, the vaunted "Asian Economic Miracle" became the "Asian Economic...

The Liberal Democratic Party, which dominated postwar Japan, lost power in the early 1990s. During that same period, Japan's once stellar economy suffered stagnation and collapse. Now a well-known commentator on contemporary Japan traces the political...

Events of the 1970s and 1980s have provoked intense controversy about the desirability of existing political and economic institutions. On the basis of an analysis of social welfare in varying types of market systems and in certain democratic political systems, Democracy and Markets illuminates alternative directions for institutional reform.

In this book, German sociologists and American and Japanese political scientists draw extensively on the work of economists and historians from their home countries, as well as from the United Kingdom and France.

Developmental state, n.: the government, motivated by desire for economic advancement, intervenes in industrial affairs. The notion of the developmental state has come under attack in recent years. Critics charge that Japan's success in putting this...

China began opening to the outside world in 1978. This process was designed to remain under the state's control. But the relative value of goods and services inside and outside China drove cities, enterprises, local governments, and individuals with...

The quasi-federal European Union stands out as the major exception in the thinly institutionalized world of international politics. Something has led Europeans-and only Europeans-beyond the nation-state to a fundamentally new political architecture...