Introduction: Transition from communism - qualified success or utter catastrophe? -- The plan for a J-curve transition -- Plan meets reality -- Modifying the framework -- Counter-narratives of catastrophe -- Where have all the people gone? -- The mortality crisis -- Collapse in fertility -- Outmigration crisis -- Disappointment with transition -- Public opinion of winners and losers -- Evaluations shift over time -- Towards a new social contract? -- Portraits of desperation -- Resistance is futile -- Return to the past -- The patriotism of despair -- Conclusion: Towards an inclusive prosperity.

Dealing with Losers addresses the transition costs associated with most policy reforms and strategies for mitigating those costs in order to facilitate the necessary political compromises to ensure that socially desirable reforms move forward. This book examines widely disparate public policy contexts - from trade liberalization to agricultural supply management, immigration, and climate change policy - to illustrate the importance, in political economy terms, of well-considered transition cost mitigation strategies.

This study provides a candid, systematic, and critical review of recent evidence on this complex subject. Based on a review of the literature and some new empirical evidence, it finds that (1) in spite of an apparently strong theoretical presumption, it is difficult to detect a strong and robust causal relationship between financial integration and economic growth; (2) contrary to theoretical predictions, financial integration appears to be associated with increases in consumption volatility (both in absolute terms and relative to income volatility) in many developing countries; and (3) there appear to be threshold effects in both of these relationships, which may be related to absorptive capacity. Some recent evidence suggests that sound macroeconomic frameworks and, in particular, good governance are both quantitatively and qualitatively important in affecting developing countries’ experiences with financial globalization.

A tale of technological revolutions, human evolution and the potential for a utopian or dystopian future. The impact of the next wave on business, the economy, society and the future of humanity. A unique book of three intwined parts that bring together history, economics, business theory, social commentary, disruptive technology and futurism

Mark Twain observed, “I'm in favour of progress; it's change I don't like.” Coal dominates Indian energy because it’s available domestically and cheap (especially without a carbon tax). If the global focus is on the energy transition, how does India ensure a just transition? Managing winners and losers will be the single largest challenge for India’s energy policy. Coal is entrenched in a complex ecosystem. In some states, it’s amongst the largest contributors to state budgets. The Indian Railways, India’s largest civilian employer, is afloat because it overcharges coal to offset under-recovery from passengers. Coal India Limited, the public sector miner that produces 85% of domestic coal, is the world’s largest coal miner. But despite enormous reserves, India imports about a quarter of consumption. On the flip side, coal faces inevitable pressure from renewable energy, which is the cheapest option for new builds. However, there is significant coal-based power capacity already in place, some of which is underutilized, or even stranded. Low per-capita energy consumption means India must still grow its energy supply. Before India can phase out coal, it must first achieve a plateau of coal. How this happens cost-effectively and with least resistance isn’t just a technical or economic question, it depends on the political economy of coal and its alternatives. Some stakeholders want to kill coal. A wiser option may be to first clean it up, instead of wishing it away. Across 18 chapters, drawing from leading experts in the field, we examine all aspects of coal’s future in India. We find no easy answers, but attempt to combine the big picture with details, bringing them together to offer a range of policy options.

The world is currently undergoing an historic energy transition, driven by increasingly stringent decarbonisation policies and rapid advances in low-carbon technologies. The large-scale shift to low-carbon energy is disrupting the global energy system, impacting whole economies, and changing the political dynamics within and between countries. This open access book, written by leading energy scholars, examines the economic and geopolitical implications of the global energy transition, from both regional and thematic perspectives. The first part of the book addresses the geopolitical implications in the world’s main energy-producing and energy-consuming regions, while the second presents in-depth case studies on selected issues, ranging from the geopolitics of renewable energy, to the mineral foundations of the global energy transformation, to governance issues in connection with the changing global energy order. Given its scope, the book will appeal to researchers in energy, climate change and international relations, as well as to professionals working in the energy industry.

Most accounts of the Spanish transition to democracy have been celebratory exercises at the service of a stabilizing rather than a critical project of far-reaching reform. As one of the essays in this volume puts it, the “pact of oblivion,” which characterized the Spanish transition to democracy, curtailed any serious attempt to address the legacies of authoritarianism that the new democracy inherited from the Franco era. As a result, those legacies pervaded public discourse even in newly created organs of opinion. As another contributor argues, the Transition was based on the erasure of memory and the invention of a new political tradition. On the other hand, memory and its etiolation have been an object of reflection for a number of film directors and fiction writers, who have probed the return of the repressed under spectral conditions. Above all, this book strives to present memory as a performative exercise of democratic agents and an open field for encounters with different, possibly divergent, and necessarily fragmented recollections. The pact of the Transition could not entirely disguise the naturalization of a society made of winners and losers, nor could it ensure the consolidation of amnesia by political agents and by the tools that create hegemony by shaping opinion. Spanish society is haunted by the specters of a past it has tried to surmount by denying it. It seems unlikely that it can rid itself of its ghosts without in the process undermining the democracy it sought to legitimate through the erasure of memories and the drowning of witnesses' voices in the cacaphony of triumphant modernization.