Modern economics focuses on the short-term and largely ignores long-term developments. This may be good and bad, because short-term effects may diverge from long-term effects. This book focuses on long-term developments and especially on attitudes vis-a-vis equity and distributional changes. The book covers three periods. The first covers the years from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the decade of the 1920s. The second covers the 1920s to 1970s period. The third covers the period after the 1970s. The three periods show different harmony between the role of the market and the economic role of the state. What economic role did governments play in each of these periods? Divergent economists’ views are given on what role governments should play, along with the importance of changing income distribution and potential conflicts between efficiency and equity.

In recent decades enterprises that used new digital technology to sell information increased in importance. Some of these enterprises became among the most profitable enterprises in the world. Possession of information replaced to a large extent the possession of tangible commodities and capital to determine the market value of an enterprise. A new elite group of rich individuals was created. To a large extent that elite group acquired much influence, on both the economy and the politics of countries, because they could influence politicians and citizens. They could influence the work of regulators. Therefore, the main goal may have changed, from the need to control the state, as in the past, to that of controlling the market operations.

This chapter focuses on the interplay of health policy and politics at a national level, and:

• explores the process by which health policy is created and the context in which it is developed and influenced;

• considers the interplay between policy and its implementation; and

• offers a narrative of the evolution of national health policy and politics in England over the last 30 years.

Agape is just as foundational as justice for the existence, proper functioning, and sustainability of socioeconomic life. In the same way that justice has a crucial function in the marketplace, agape also has its unique and vital role to play. The marketplace requires the tandem of agape and justice working hand in hand if it is to exist at all, much less thrive. We see this in critical areas that shape the character and quality of socioeconomic life: institutional preconditions; value formation and development of customs, law, and usage; triage and pursuit of economic goals; and frictional and transaction costs.

The Conclusion highlights how an examination of entrepreneurs in contemporary China, including a careful and empirically grounded account of business and social relations in China, challenges many conventional approaches to research and research findings regarding such core concepts as trust, social networks, crisis, gender, family business, and e-commerce, and shows how standard conventions that are widely accepted in the scholarly and research literatures are in need of revision. It is shown how this book provides a clarification and extension of the conceptualization of a number of core theoretical notions by drawing on the details of the many cases that are explored in the six chapters of this monograph. It is shown how the research findings reported in this book will serve the purpose of stimulating and encouraging further research on erstwhile neglected aspects of business relations as well as the development of new theoretical frameworks for understanding social exchange dynamics in business, not only in China but more generally.

Chapter 1. Where can we look for better money: to the market or to the state? It is a myth that better money has always, and can only, come from government or other collective action. Theory and historical evidence indicate that the “state theory of money” is false: Private initiative gave rise to the earliest commodity monies to serve the needs of commerce. Although sovereign states commandeered the coinage in antiquity, not to improve it but to extract revenue, we provide the evidence that private mints worked well when and where they were allowed. Silver and gold coins were valued by weight, not by which ruler’s face was stamped upon them. Private currencies in the form of redeemable banknotes were the most popular form of payment in the nineteenth century, and their introduction preceded government paper currencies. Central banks in monopolizing the issue of currency and obstructing international specie flows did not improve the monetary system but the contrary. While contemporary [italic]fiat[/italic] money (non-commodity money issued by government) rests on the power of the state, gold and Bitcoin do not require the imprimatur of the sovereign to serve as good money.

This part considers how markets and other institutions decoupled society and environment and how to recouple them. Transitions along the way include the Western belief in progress by controlling nature, the reorganization from feudal to market systems, as discussed by Polanyi, and the idea that land can be divided and owned. The challenges and opportunities of collective use, of common-pool resources, were discussed and debated by Gordon, Hardin, and Ostrom. Economics needs to integrate ecology, as Daly emphasized. The implications can be dire, as Sen showed for famines. Catton and Dunlap made a like plea for sociology and the environment, and Bullard showed the environmental justice implications of unfairly sited urban waste and pollution. Lele explored the disconnect between the ideal of sustainable development and its application, arguing for knowing first the complex links between social and natural systems. Norgaard frames development as an evolutionary problem, arguing that knowledge, values, technology, organizations, and the environment coevolve. Diverse experimentation can provide the raw material for selecting more-sustainable paths.

An intense debate has arisen among scholars concerning the financial sustainability of the grain funds that Greek and Roman cities used to cope with the instabilities of the grain market. In this paper, we apply a Monte Carlo simulation to model their financial dynamics. Due to the uncertainties pertaining to the scope of such funds (targeting urban dwellers only or including rural residents), our model takes into account two scenarios: ‘optimistic’ (urban only) and ‘pessimistic’ (both urban and rural). The analysis reaches several important findings: (1) For both scenarios, we witness a considerable rate of funds collapsing in their first 10 years of operation. After 10 years, however, the probability of failure displays very little change, as if there was a threshold over which the funds had accumulated enough capital to withstand shortages. (2) As expected, the survival rates are significantly higher for the optimistic scenario. (3) The withdrawals seem to have the most dramatic impact on the dynamic of the fund. Overall, while the grain funds do not appear to be sustainable in the urban-rural scenario, they show clear signs of sustainability in the urban-only scenario. The results invite reconsideration of the widespread view that grain funds were an inefficient and precarious response to food crisis.

Studies of trade are predicated on the antithesis between ‘personalised exchange’ (the Network) and ‘arms-length exchange’ (the anonymous Market). As regards ancient trade, the putative incongruity between the two has informed the view of the supremacy of personalised exchange, and the concomitant absence of market exchange. In historical analyses, furthermore, trade networks are appraised solely for their role in the distribution of raw materials and commodities. This chapter challenges these views. Focusing on a formalised kind of network, the association, it first charts the diffusion of traders’ associations to, and their integration in the economic life of, eastern Mediterranean commercial centres. Then, it investigates the mechanisms that enabled associational networks to act as fighters of trade constraints, distance-shortening entities, bridge builders between state/fiscal concerns and private profit, co-determinants of routes and prices, and as producers of knowledge and trust. Formalised networks, it is concluded, helped trade to break out of its lone-peddler mode and to amalgamate with a wider organisational world, whose newly fashioned business behaviour approximated that of the firm. In all this, this chapter is in alignment with the more recent trend among social scientists to consider networks as integral parts of market models of the economy.

Those favoring greater medical device regulation tout the need to protect patients from the harms of insufficiently tested devices. Those favoring less regulation cite the need to promote innovation and move potentially life-saving devices to market faster. The best innovation creates medical devices that are superior to current alternatives, either because they lead to better patient outcomes or because outcomes are just as good, but the care is cheaper. This is not what the current system promotes. The FDA easily approves devices that are “substantially equivalent” to existing ones and does not require data on relative effectiveness, nor does it always require ongoing study of effectiveness. The tort system does little to force providers to assess relative efficacy. Payors have both the data and reason to care about relative effectiveness. They can refuse to reimburse for procedures that employ ineffective medical devices. Legal change might be required because government payors have little latitude to refuse reimbursement for procedures that use approved medical devices. But payors are best positioned to promote the kind of medical device innovation that is most needed. Manufacturers fearing a collapse in the market for ineffective medical devices will devote more resources to innovating for effective ones.

Metallic coinage, markets, and private merchants appeared in China during the Spring and Autumn era (771–453 bce), and they expanded rapidly during the Warring States era (453–221 bce). These periods were marked not only by rapid economic progress, but also by new conceptualizations of money, markets, and merchants. Both in times of political stability such as the Qin, Han, Sui, and Tang dynasties, and in times of political disunion such as the Warring States, the Three Kingdoms, the Jin, and the Northern and Southern Dynasties eras, money, markets, and merchants performed important economic and social roles. Which kinds of goods, then, served a monetary function from the Warring States to the Tang period? How did people use money, and how and where did they buy and sell commodities? What was the relationship between private merchants and governments? In this chapter, these issues will be examined using transmitted documentary records, archaeological materials, numismatic findings, and recently excavated texts.