The private sector is playing an increasingly important role in the funding of scientific research. As public sector research declines in the countries of the north and the south, research and development carried out by the private sector becomes more important for innovations that have economic potential. In some cases networks between local firms and multinationals can support learning which leads to economic growth. What are the policies which support such partnerships and what are the institutional arrangements that foster research? Seven case studies from Argentina, China, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Tanzania, Peru, the Philippines and Vietnam examine how policies have been developed and implemented to encourage innovation.

A series of concurrent pressures in the early 2000s--climate change, financial system crashes, economic development in rural regions, and shifts in geopolitics--intensified interest in alternative energy production. At the same time, rising oil prices rendered alternative fuels a more economically viable option. Among these energy sources, liquid biofuels (bioethanol and biodiesel) and natural gas derived from hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") took center stage as promising commodities and technologies. But controversy quickly erupted in surprisingly similar ways around both renewable fuels. Global enthusiasm for these fuels--and the widespread projections for their production around the world--collided with local politics in debates over "food versus fuel" and concerns over "land grabs." What seemed, from a global perspective, like empty lands ripe for development were, to rural communities, vibrant and already contested spaces. As proposals for biofuels and fracking landed in specific communities and ecosystems, they reignited and reshaped old disputes over land, water, and decision-making authority. Fueling Resistance offers an account of how and why controversies over these different fuels unfolded in surprisingly similar ways in the global North and South. To explain these convergent dynamics of contention and resistance, Kate J. Neville argues that the emergence of grievances and the patterns of resistance to new fuel technologies depends less on the type of energy developed (renewable versus fossil fuel) than on intersecting elements of the political economy of energy: finance, ownership, and trade relations. As local commodities enter global supply chains and are integrated into existing corporate structures, opportunities arise to broker connections between otherwise disparate communities. Neville looks at biofuels in Kenya and fracking in the Canadian Yukon and shows how organizers connect specific energy projects to broader issues of globalization, climate, food, water, and justice. Taken together, the intersecting elements of the political economy of energy shape the contentious politics of biofuels and fracking at both local and global scales, and help explain how and why particular mechanisms of contention emerge at different times and places.

Around the 1830s, parts of Mexico began industrializing using water and wood. By the 1880s, this model faced a growing energy and ecological bottleneck. By the 1950s, fossil fuels powered most of Mexico's economy and society. Looking to the north and across the Atlantic, late nineteenth-century officials and elites concluded that fossil fuels would solve Mexico's energy problem and Mexican industry began introducing coal. But limited domestic deposits and high costs meant that coal never became king in Mexico. Oil instead became the favored fuel for manufacture, transport, and electricity generation. This shift, however, created a paradox of perennial scarcity amidst energy abundance: every new influx of fossil energy led to increased demand. Germán Vergara shows how the decision to power the country's economy with fossil fuels locked Mexico in a cycle of endless, fossil-fueled growth - with serious environmental and social consequences.

"Asia's phenomenal growth over the past few decades has been driven by the rise of Factory Asia. However, the global financial crisis and uncertain growth prospects in the United States and the eurozone have dampened demand for Asian exports. At the same time, rising wages threaten to erode the cost advantage that the region once had, managing supply chains has become more complex, and new technologies are transforming manufacturing. How can regional economies move beyond Factory Asia? What strategies can Asian economies pursue to meet these challenges? This monograph will examine a range of policy, institutional, legal, and regulatory issues relating to reforms that will drive Asia's economic and social transformation in its quest for a new Factory Asia model."--Description.

Since 2011, democratic transitions in the Middle East and North Africa have mostly failed to consolidate and have been hindered by the difficult economic heritage of previous authoritarian governments. Yet newly established democratic governments must deliver on the expectations of their people, especially the poorer strata, otherwise disillusionment may open the door to restoration of authoritarian rule. Can democracy succeed? Various ideas for economic policies that may help consolidate the early democratisation process are proposed in this volume, while major obstacles on the way to democratic success are also highlighted. Contributors include: Alissa Amico, Laura El-Katiri, Philippe Fargues, Bassam Fattouh, Steffen Hertog, Giacomo Luciani, Samir Makdisi, Adeel Malik, Bassem Snaije, Robert Springborg, and Eckart Woertz.

How has our relation to energy changed over time? What differences do particular energy sources make to human values, politics, and imagination? How have transitions from one energy source to another—from wood to coal, or from oil to solar to whatever comes next—transformed culture and society? What are the implications of uneven access to energy in the past, present, and future? Which concepts and theories clarify our relation to energy, and which just get in the way? Fueling Culture offers a compendium of keywords written by scholars and practitioners from around the world and across the humanities and social sciences. These keywords offer new ways of thinking about energy as both the source and the limit of how we inhabit culture, with the aim of opening up new ways of understanding the seemingly irresolvable contradictions of dependence upon unsustainable energy forms. Fueling Culture brings together writing that is risk-taking and interdisciplinary, drawing on insights from literary and cultural studies, environmental history and ecocriticism, political economy and political ecology, postcolonial and globalization studies, and materialisms old and new. Keywords in this volume include: Aboriginal, Accumulation, Addiction, Affect, America, Animal, Anthropocene, Architecture, Arctic, Automobile, Boom, Canada, Catastrophe, Change, Charcoal, China, Coal, Community, Corporation, Crisis, Dams, Demand, Detritus, Disaster, Ecology, Electricity, Embodiment, Ethics, Evolution, Exhaust, Fallout, Fiction, Fracking, Future, Gender, Green, Grids, Guilt, Identity, Image, Infrastructure, Innervation, Kerosene, Lebenskraft, Limits, Media, Metabolism, Middle East, Nature, Necessity, Networks, Nigeria, Nuclear, Petroviolence, Photography, Pipelines, Plastics, Renewable, Resilience, Risk, Roads, Rubber, Rural, Russia, Servers, Shame, Solar, Spill, Spiritual, Statistics, Surveillance, Sustainability, Tallow, Texas, Textiles, Utopia, Venezuela, Whaling, Wood, Work For a full list of keywords in and contributors to this volume, please go to: http://ow.ly/4mZZxV

A volume on the political economy of clean energy transition in developed and developing regions, with a focus on the issues that different countries face as they transition from fossil fuels to lower carbon technologies.

A generous endowment of natural resources should favour rapid economic and social development. The experience of countries like Angola and Iraq, however, suggests that resource wealth often proves a curse rather than a blessing. Billions of dollars from resource exploitation benefit repressive regimes and rebel groups, at a massive cost for local populations. This Adelphi Paper analyses the economic and political vulnerability of resource-dependent countries; assesses how resources influence the likelihood and course of conflicts; and discusses current initiatives to improve resource governance in the interest of peace. It concludes that long-term stability in resource-exporting regions will depend on their developmental outcomes, and calls for a broad reform agenda prioritising the basic needs and security of local populations.

This book sheds new light on the evolutionary role of financial system and the interacting mechanisms between financial development and economic growth in the context of Malaysia.

This book by influential policymaker Chi Fulin lays out in issue-oriented and detailed chapters, at a time when China is at a crossroads, exactly how the government plans to deal with the social, political and economic issues the world's second-largest economy faces. From managing the decline of industry, to urbanization, to managing consumption, to social security and education, Chi offers a roadmap for the years ahead. This book will be particularly fascinating to Western scholars of China who speculate on the inner workings of the Chinese policymaking elite, with the ambition of China's central planners here laid out for the world to see.