Special Economic Zones (SEZs) have become a popular development policy throughout the world over the last half a century. These zones form designated areas where governments offer businesses lower taxes, tariffs, and often lighter regulations. Generally, SEZs aim to attract investments and raise a country’s export and employment rates, but although success stories are often cited, there are numerous failed projects that have instead become burdens for their host countries. This book examines SEZs from a political economy perspective, both to dissect the incentives of governments, zone developers, and exporters, and to uncover both the hidden costs and untapped potential of zone policies. Costs include misallocated resources, the encouragement of rent-seeking, and distraction of policy-makers from more effective reforms. However, the zones also have several unappreciated benefits. They can change the politics of a country, by generating a transition from a system of rent-seeking to one of liberalized open markets. In revealing the hidden promise of SEZs, this book shows how the SEZ model of development can succeed in the future. Applying frameworks from various schools of political economy, this volume places SEZs in the context of their mixed past and promising future. It is essential reading for anyone with an interest in international economics, development economics, and political economy, including practitioners and consultants of SEZ policies.

Large-scale changes are taking place in the way modelling is performed within the US EPA, and a new generation of environmental models is currently under construction. The US EPA is engaging in several modelling efforts in response to Congressional mandates such as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. These mandates require the scientific modelling of the impact of pollutants on human health and the environment. The complexity of scale in environmental models has increased by several orders of magnitude, with a simultaneous demand for increased stability, accuracy and efficiency in the computed model solution. This book showcases numerical algorithms appropriate to the subject areas listed below and explores how new algorithmic methods would benefit the US EPA's environmental models and other environmental studies.

The election of Ronald Reagan as President of the United States in November 1980 opened a new chapter in international relations; U.S. foreign policy shifted from an alliance-based, consensual approach to one based on a more overt use of its immense economic and, above all, military power. This policy entailed some stark choices for the U.S.A.’s allies and neighbours and, above all, for the small countries of Central America and the Caribbean. This revealing book tells the story of the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI), through which the new assertion of U.S. hegemony in the region was expressed. The CBI entitled “friendly” countries of the region (i.e., excluding Cuba, pre-invasion Grenada and Nicaragua) to military and economic aid plus incentives, modelled on the so-called “Puerto Rican miracle,” so as to reorient their trade towards the U.S.A. The authors carefully compare the claims made for the CBI with its underlying political objectives and examine its actual impact on regional development through detailed case studies of the Eastern Caribbean and Trinidad. Also examined are the impact of the CBI on Caribbean regional integration and the responses of Canada and Britain, the two other major countries with long-standing political and economic interests in the Caribbean. What emerges from this investigation is the way the CBI reflects the U.S.A.’s historic quest for regional dominance, rather than a new era in Caribbean development.

Offers a look at the causes and effects of poverty and inequality, as well as the possible solutions. This title features research, human stories, statistics, and compelling arguments. It discusses about the world we live in and how we can make it a better place.

For nearly forty years, The law of the sea has been regarded as an authoritative and standard work on the subject, combining detailed analysis and relevant, practical examples with a clear and engaging style. Completely revised and updated, this new edition will be a vital resource for anyone with an interest in maritime affairs. The book provides a rigorous analysis of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the many other legal instruments that regulate human activities at sea, as well as taking full account of the numerous decisions of international courts and tribunals in recent years. It also traces the historical background to the law and its broader political, economic and environmental context. The new edition includes substantially expanded coverage of contemporary threats faced by the marine environment from human activities, such as the loss of marine biodiversity, the effects of climate change on the oceans and the vast amounts of plastic polluting the sea. This volume is written by three highly qualified authors, drawing on their extensive experience of teaching and researching the law of the sea, as well as their practical experience in advising governments and acting as counsel and arbitrators in international litigation.

Approaching “work” as at heart a practice of exchange, this volume explores sociality in work environments marked by the kind of structural changes that have come to define contemporary “flexible” capitalism. It introduces anthropological exchange theory to a wider readership, and shows how the perspective offers new ways to enquire about the flexible capitalism’s social dimensions. The essays contribute to a trans-disciplinary scholarship on contemporary economic practice and change by documenting how, across diverse settings, “gift-like” socialities proliferate, and even sustain the intensified flexible commoditization that more commonly is touted as tearing social relations apart. By interrogating a keenly debated contemporary work regime through an approach to sociality rooted in a rich and distinct anthropological legacy, the volume also makes a novel contribution to the anthropological literature on work and on exchange.