Named peril index insurance has great potential to address unmet risk management needs for agricultural insurance in developing economies, potentially contributing to increased agricultural sustainability and improved food security. However, the development and appraisal of index insurance business lines is not without challenges. Insurers must rigorously evaluate the quality of the products they offer and take care to ensure that distributors and policyholders understand the benefits and limits of the purchased coverage. Without these important steps to ensure responsible insurance practices, insurers can damage the implementation and potential of index insurance in the market. Risk Modeling for Appraising Named Peril Index Insurance Products: A Guide for Practitioners helps stakeholders in the named peril index insurance industry appraise new and existing products. Part 1 of the guide provides a summary of the insights and decisions required for the insurer to make an informed decision to launch and expand an index insurance business line. Insurance managers are the primary audience for part 1. Part 2 provides a step-by-step guide to calculating the decision metrics used by the insurance manager in part 1. These metrics are calculated using probabilistic modeling that provides insights into risks related to the index insurance product. Actuarial analysts are the primary audience for part 2. In an increasingly competitive insurance market, creative product development and imaginative business strategies are becoming the norm. This guide will help emerging market insurers who seek to stay on the cutting edge to successfully and sustainably penetrate new market segments.

As the Regional Plan Association embarks on a Fourth Regional Plan, there can be no better time for a paperback edition of David Johnson’s critically acclaimed assessment of the 1929 Regional Plan of New York and Its Environs. As he says in his preface to this edition, the questions faced by the regional planners of today are little changed from those their predecessors faced in the 1920s. Derided by some, accused by others of being the root cause of New York City’s relative economic and physical decline, the 1929 Plan was in reality an important source of ideas for many projects built during the New Deal era of the 1930s. In his detailed examination of the Plan, Johnson traces its origins to Progressive era and Daniel Burnham’s 1909 Plan of Chicago. He describes the making of the Plan under the direction of Scotsman Thomas Adams, its reception in the New York Region, and its partial realization. The story he tells has important lessons for planners, decision-makers and citizens facing an increasingly urban future where the physical plan approach may again have a critical role to play.

The main purpose of this book is to apply the basic tools of economic analysis to the economy of the Peoples' Republic of China. It is written for students of economics who would like to understand China, for students of China who would like to understand economics, and for professional economists and lay readers who would like to understand the Chinese economy.The study of the Chinese economy is interesting to economists for several reasons. First, China has a different cultural background and a different set of social and political institutions from the Western countries, in which most of the tools of economic analysis have been developed. It is therefore interesting to see how these tools can be applied to China and how they ought to be further developed or modified in the Chinese context. Second, many drastic changes in economic policy and economic institutions have taken place since the founding of the People's Republic of China. Such important experiments in economics provide rare opportunities to study their results. Third, since the later 1970s much more information on the Chinese economy has become available. It is time for us to digest, to scrutinize, and possibly to help improve the economic data on China.

This book on urban design extends and develops the widely accepted 'compact city' solution. It provides a design proposal for a new kind of sustainable urban landscape: Urban Agriculture. By growing food within an urban rather than exclusively rural environment, urban agriculture would reduce the need for industrialized production, packaging and transportation of foodstuffs to the city dwelling consumers. The revolutionary and innovative concepts put forth in this book have potential to shape the future of our cities quality of life within them. Urban design is shown in practice through international case studies and the arguments presented are supported by quantified economic, environmental and social justifications.

The global film industry has witnessed significant transformations in the past few years. Regions outside the USA have begun to prosper while non-traditional production companies such as Netflix have assumed a larger market share and online movies adapted from literature have continued to gain in popularity. How have these trends shaped the global film industry? This book answers this question by analyzing an increasingly globalized business through a global lens. Development of the Global Film Industry examines the recent history and current state of the business in all parts of the world. While many existing studies focus on the internal workings of the industry, such as production, distribution and screening, this study takes a "big picture" view, encompassing the transnational integration of the cultural and entertainment industry as a whole, and pays more attention to the coordinated development of the film industry in the light of influence from literature, television, animation, games and other sectors. This volume is a critical reference for students, scholars and the public to help them understand the major trends facing the global film industry in today’s world.