Skip to main content

North Holland

Handbook of Income Distribution
1st Edition
Volume 1
Anthony B. Atkinson + 1 more
English
Distributional issues may not have always been among the main concerns of the economic profession. Today, in the beginning of the 2000s, the position is different. During the last quarter of a century, economic growth proved to be unsteady and rather slow on average. The situation of those at the bottom ceased to improve regularly as in the preceding fast growth and full-employment period. Europe has seen prolonged unemployment and there has been widening wage dispersion in a number of OECD countries. Rising affluence in rich countries coexists, in a number of such countries, with the persistence of poverty. As a consequence, it is difficult nowadays to think of an issue ranking high in the public economic debate without some strong explicit distributive implications. Monetary policy, fiscal policy, taxes, monetary or trade union, privatisation, price and competition regulation, the future of the Welfare State are all issues which are now often perceived as conflictual because of their strong redistributive content.Economists have responded quickly to the renewed general interest in distribution, and the contents of this Handbook are very different from those which would have been included had it been written ten or twenty years ago. It has now become common to have income distribution variables playing a pivotal role in economic models. The recent interest in the relationship between growth and distribution is a good example of this. The surge of political economy in the contemporary literature is also a route by which distribution is coming to re-occupy the place it deserves. Within economics itself, the development of models of imperfect information and informational asymmetries have not only provided a means of resolving the puzzle as to why identical workers get paid different amounts, but have also caused reconsideration of the efficiency of market outcomes. These models indicate that there may not necessarily be an efficiency/equity trade-off; it may be possible to make progress on both fronts.The introduction and subsequent 14 chapters of this Handbook cover in detail all these new developments, insisting at the same time on how they tie with the previous literature on income distribution. The overall perspective is intentionally broad. As with landscapes, adopting various points of view on a given issue may often be the only way of perceiving its essence or reality. Accordingly, income distribution issues in the various chapters of this volume are considered under their theoretical or their empirical side, under a normative or a positive angle, in connection with redistribution policy, in a micro or macro-economic context, in different institutional settings, at various point of space, in a historical or contemporaneous perspective. Specialized readers will go directly to the chapter dealing with the issue or using the approach they are interested in. For them, this Handbook will be a clear and sure reference. To more patient readers who will go through various chapters of this volume, this Handbook should provide the multi-faceted view that seems necessary for a deep understanding of most issues in the field of distribution.For more information on the Handbooks in Economics series, please see our home page on http://www.elsevier....
Theory of Shells
1st Edition
Volume 3
Philippe G. Ciarlet
English
The objective of Volume III is to lay down the proper mathematical foundations of the two-dimensional theory of shells. To this end, it provides, without any recourse to any a priori assumptions of a geometrical or mechanical nature, a mathematical justification of two-dimensional nonlinear and linear shell theories, by means of asymptotic methods, with the thickness as the "small" parameter.
Handbook of Algebra
1st Edition
Volume 2
M. Hazewinkel
English
Unification of Finite Element Methods
1st Edition
Volume 94
H. Kardestuncer
English
Analysing and Aiding Decision Processes
1st Edition
Volume 14
P. Humphreys + 2 more
English
This book contains an edited selection of papers presented at the Eighth Research Conference on Subjective Probability, Utility and Decision Making, held in Budapest. Together they span a wide range of new developments in studies of decision making, the practice of decision analysis and the development of decision-aiding technology.The volume is arranged in sections: Societal Decision Making; Organizational Decision Making; Aiding the Structuring of Small Scale Decision Problems, and Tracing Decision Processes.The emphasis is on decision processes and structures and their applications, rather than formal modelling in isolation, thus reflecting current developments in research and practice which follow from the understanding of the nature and operation of decision theoretical models gained during the 1970's.The fifth section, A Symposium on the Validity of Studies on Heuristics and Biases, is of a different nature. The papers take stock of the considerable volume of work investigation ``heuristics and biases'' in decision making over the past decade, and their implication for theory and practice.
The Mathematical Theory of Knots and Braids
1st Edition
Volume 82
S. Moran
English
This book is an introduction to the theory of knots via the theory of braids, which attempts to be complete in a number of ways. Some knowledge of Topology is assumed. Necessary Group Theory and further necessary Topology are given in the book. The exposition is intended to enable an interested reader to learn the basics of the subject. Emphasis is placed on covering the theory in an algebraic way. The work includes quite a number of worked examples. The latter part of the book is devoted to previously unpublished material.
Animal Cognition and Behavior
1st Edition
Volume 13
R.L. Mellgren
English
Contributed chapters by psychologists and behavioral biologists provide a broad coverage of animal behavior, and governing brain processes. Topics covered include: foraging behavior and strategies, economics and psychology, memory of events and space, time perception, expectancies, food preferences and diet selection, behavior variability and the concept of mind.The volume is designed to satisfy an intderdisciplinary audience, embracing the behavioristic tradition, biological and physiological approaches, and evolutionary theory as philosophical underpinnings to the chapters. Also achieved in this work is a good balance between empirical results and theory.
Families of Curves and the Origins of Partial Differentiation
1st Edition
Volume 93
S.B. Engelsman
English
This book provides a detailed description of the main episodes in the emergence of partial differentiation during the period 1690-1740. It argues that the development of this concept - to a considerable degree of perfection - took place almost exclusively in problems concerning families of curves. Thus, the book shows the origins of the ideas and techniques which paved the way for the sudden introduction of partial differential equations in 1750. The main methodological characteristic of the book is its emphasis on a full understanding of the motives, problems and goals of the mathematicians of that time.
Introduction to Holomorphy
1st Edition
Volume 106
J.A. Barroso
English
This book presents a set of basic properties of holomorphic mappings between complex normed spaces and between complex locally convex spaces. These properties have already achieved an almost definitive form and should be known to all those interested in the study of infinite dimensional Holomorphy and its applications.The author also makes ``incursions'' into the study of the topological properties of the spaces of holomorphic mappings between spaces of infinite dimension. An attempt is then made to show some of the several topologies that can naturally be considered in these spaces.Infinite dimensional Holomorphy appears as a theory rich in fascinating problems and rich in applications to other branches of Mathematics and Mathematical Physics.
Summability Through Functional Analysis
1st Edition
Volume 85
A. Wilansky
English
Summability is an extremely fruitful area for the application of functional analysis; this volume could be used as a source for such applications. Those parts of summability which only have ``hard'' (classical) proofs are omitted; the theorems given all have ``soft'' (functional analytic) proofs.

Browse by Publisher