Law, market theory and semiotics together provide a challenging new perspective on economic analysis of law.

This volume concerns several aspects of China's changing market based economy. These include commercial contract enforcement, corporate structures, competition law and other issues related to China's membership in the WTO. In the past two decades, the rapid integration of China's economy into the global marketplace has created obligations and expectations of non-discrimination and regulatory transparency in domestic markets. The Chinese government has responded by demanding better governance within major companies, market sectors and public administration generally. However, as the articles in this volume show, it has struggled to find a corporate structure capable of absorbing external equity investment and participation but still amenable to direct and indirect state guidance. It has also moved cautiously in creating legal controls over unfair competition. Moreover, the protection of state owned enterprises, which serve as vehicles for domestic economic, social and political policy, has been a recurring issue in China's WTO trade disputes.

This book serves as a comprehensive study of and provides rich insight into non-market economy treatment, including its past, present, and estimated future practices and implications. It explores the introduction of the market and non-market economy dichotomy into international trade law. It traces the origin and development of non-market economy treatment against changing international economic and political background. The book examines this treatment in light of the rationale underlying anti-dumping, reflecting its alleged significance of ensuring fair trade. It in particular investigates the varied non-market economy treatment practices responding concerns of China’s rising as a large state-led economy, analyzing the deviation of NME treatment into an all-in trade tool. The book argues against preconceived bias and unilateral protectionism. It highlights the universal existence of government involvement in the market and proposes objective assessment of its impact on fair trade. Final proposition of the book is depoliticizing trade, reforming comprehensively international trade rules to carefully calibrate different values, including promoting fairness and enhancing global social welfare. It envisages a multi-dimension overhaul of international trade rules to rebalance trade interests, rather than roughly labeling an economy to confer different treatment, the practices of which lead to separation and chaos. The book is of particular relevance and interest to economies-in-transition, and among policy makers, academicians and legal practitioners engaged in trade remedies and trade rules reconstruction.

Financial crises have become an all too common occurrence over the past twenty years, largely as a result of changes in finance brought about by increasing internationalization and integration. As domestic financial systems and economies have become more interlinked, weaknesses can significantly impact not only individual economies but also markets, financial intermediaries, and economies around the world. This volume addresses the twin objectives of financial development in the context of financial stability and the role of law in supporting both. Financial stability (frequently seen as the avoidance of financial crisis) has become an objective of both the international financial architecture and individual economies and central banks. At the same time, financial development is now seen to play an important role in economic growth. In both financial stability and financial development, law and related institutions have a central role.

Russia's Market Economy is a seminal account of Russia's transition to the market, its tortuous development as a fledgling market economy through the 1990s, right through to its spectacular collapse in August 1998. Rather than beginning with the economic collapse, the book traces the historical mismanagement of Russian wealth through to the Soviet command economy, and on to Gorbachev. Stefan Hedlund finally discusses what lessons should be learned from the damage inflicted on the Russian economy, as well as its social, legal and political infrastructure, by the race of reform.

This book adopts Durkheim’s legal perspective to treat law as a symbol of social solidarities to examine Chinese society. The work analyzes changes in the nature of social solidarity from observing changes in laws, thus drawing together western socio-legal theory and distinctive Chinese conditions. It draws on Durkheim’s theoretical framework and methodology to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the role of law using theories of others such as Habermas and by taking into account the discussion of power and the conflicts of interests in analyzing key social features during transition. The analysis of social anomie in terms of the changes of juridical rules as well as the changes in the nature of social solidarity provides an inspiring perspective to look into contemporary social problems. The book will be essential reading for researchers and academics working in the areas of socio-legal studies, legal theory and law and society in China.

This edited volume addresses the theoretical and historical foundations of the German Social Market Economy. Written to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the Social Market Economy, chapter contributions discuss the ideas of its theoretical founders—Walter Eucken, Alfred Müller-Armack, Wilhelm Röpke, and Franz Böhm--as well as related influences such as Ordoliberalism, the historical school of economics, and the Catholic social doctrine. In addition, chapters analyze differences and parallels to alternative policy concepts, in particular Keynesianism. Finally, the volume turns toward contemporary discussions of the Social Market Economy in the present political and economic context, specifically its ability to cope with current challenges. Providing rich context for the establishment of Germany’s contemporary economic system, this volume will be of interest to researchers and students of political, social and economic systems, the history of economic thought, and political history.

This volume, edited by Robert C. Effros, surveys developments at international financial institutions, regional developments affecting central banks, the progress of the European Union countries toward monetary union and a unified banking market, the effect of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the World Trade Organization on banking services, and the implications of the North American Free Trade Agreement for central banks. Other topics discussed include banking regulation and reform in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, countries of the former Soviet Union, and China; banking supervision; the role of deposit insurance; bankruptcy policy; derivatives; securitization; payments systems; securities transfers; and capital standards for market risk. Appendices reproduce relevant legal documentation.

Economic stagnation, financial crisis, and increasing inequality have provoked worldwide debate about the reshaping of the market economy. But few are willing to risk a reorientation of dominant ideas and a reform of entrenched structures. Right-wing populism has stepped into the void created by a failure to imagine structural alternatives. Tamara Lothian offers a deeper view showing the path to the reconstruction of the economy in the service of both growth and inclusion. She probes the institutional innovations that would reignite economic growth by democratizing the market. Progressives have traditionally focused only on the demand side of the economy, abandoning the supply side to conservatives. Law and the Wealth of Nations offers a progressive approach to the supply side of the economy and proposes innovation in our fundamental economic arrangements. Lothian begins by exploring how finance can serve broad-based economic growth rather than serving only itself. She goes on to show how the reform of finance can lead into the democratization of the economy. How, she asks, can we ensure that the most advanced, knowledge-intensive practices of production spread throughout the economy rather than remaining in the hands of the entrepreneurial and technological elite? How can we anchor greater economic equality and empowerment in the way we organize the economy rather than just trying to diminish inequalities after the fact by progressive taxation and entitlements? How can we revise legal thought and economic theory to develop the intellectual equipment that these tasks require? Law and the Wealth of Nations will appeal to all who are searching for ways to think practically about change in our economic and political institutions.