This book demonstrates both successes and failures in attempts to get closer to the ideal of good urban governance in cities in North-America, Europe, and Asia. It presents a value menu and deliberately does not come up with “one best way” for improving urban governance. Good urban governance is presented as a balancing act, an interplay between government, business and civil society in whi…
This monograph offers a detailed analysis of the creation, pilot implementation, and possible wide adoption of the real property tax at the local level in China. Starting in 2003, as China’s economy gradually recovered from the Asian financial crisis that started in 1998, the real property market entered a period of rapid expansion, followed immediately by rampant speculation, rising housing …
The purpose of this book is to present the principles of alternative investments in management. The individual chapters provide a detailed analysis of various classes of alternative investments on the financial market. Despite many different definitions of alternative investments, it can be assumed that a classical approach to alternative investments includes hedge funds, fund of funds (FOF), m…
This book mainly focuses on defining profit models, on how many main kinds of profit models there are, how profit models can change a company, and how to tailor a profit model to the needs of a certain company. In this context, profit models are classified as fixed-income, remaining-profit and profit-sharing, admission, toll, parking, fuel and sharing fees, profit sources, customer pricing, auc…
Fixed income volatility and equity volatility evolve heterogeneously over time, co-moving disproportionately during periods of global imbalances and each reacting to events of different nature. While the methodology for options-based "model-free" pricing of equity volatility has been known for some time, little is known about analogous methodologies for pricing various fixed income volatilities…
This book examines the phenomenological anthropology of Edith Stein. It specifically focuses on the question which Stein addressed in her work Finite and Eternal Being: What is the foundational principle that makes the individual unique and unrepeatable within the human species? Traditional analyses of Edith Stein’s writings have tended to frame her views on this issue as being influenced by …
This inclusive work presents a comprehensive update on vaccines for the international traveller. In over 21 chapters, written by leading writers in travel medicine from Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, vaccinology for travel is explained in accessible terms with a focus on practical information. An initial introduction to immunology proceeds into common travel-related diseases and a ris…
This book is about the power of education: the kind of education that simultaneously improves the quality of life both of individuals and the wider society. It explains why education must be viewed as a basic human right, as a value in and of itself, and reviews the evidence on how education builds the human resources that individuals and nations need to be productive, to continue to learn, to …
By the end of the 1970s, contaminated sites had emerged as one of the most complex and urgent environmental issues affecting industrialized countries. The authors show that small and prosperous Switzerland is no exception to the pervasive problem of sites contamination, the legacy of past practices in waste management having left some 38,000 contaminated sites throughout the country. This book …
This book probes the hollow rhetoric of debt, deficits and austerity. It explores the decisions of parties of the left which have attempted to deflect criticisms of economic mismanagement and gain trust by depoliticising the budget process and financial management with various rules, albeit with elements of discretion. The book argues that this is a perverse form of trust as it is premised on t…