Intellectual property (IP) has gained an unprecedented importance in the new world of globalization and the knowledge economy. However, experience, as well as cyclical attitudes toward IP, show that there is no universal model of IP protection.

Economists have long relied on cross-country regression analysis to identify the determinants of continued growth, but with only limited success. This book demonstrates the value of a different approach by drawing on the knowledge and understanding of local circumstances of researchers from the case-study countries.

Probably no region’s economists have had greater public visibility or greater impact on regional and national public policy than Latin America’s and no region has been more directly affected by the spread of US economics. Economists in the Americas joins a small but important comparative literature on economics as a profession and is the first comparative treatment of professional economists in the United States and Latin America.

Plants, People and Nature is a book about benefit sharing between private enterprise and the community. It provides practical examples from around the globe of how private companies involved in the production, processing and marketing of natural products interact with national and regional governments, local industry and, above all, village communities.

Oceans Governance in the Twenty-first Century analyses the development of national, regional and international initiatives and arrangements directed towards governance of the world's seas and oceans.  The authors examine those factors that shape oceans governance, as well as the supports and constraints affecting policy development and implementation.

The Handbook of Research on Global Corporate Citizenship identifies and fosters key interdisciplinary research on corporate citizenship and provides a framework for further academic debate on corporate responsibility in a global society.

This timely book offers a fresh view on how oceans and coasts are, and should be, managed. The urgency of this issue is increasingly being recognized, as critical limits to the economic exploitation of our oceans and coasts are reached. The authors argue that ecological economics is in a unique position to address this problem given its particular focus on interconnected ecological and economic systems.

With the global expansion of urbanization there is a need to ensure that cities develop in a way that allows all residents to benefit from urban life. This volume contains a collection of classic and more recent papers that provide insight into the problems encountered in urbanization and the ways in which planning has evolved to meet the resultant challenges.

In large parts of the world, the reduction in the viability of agriculture and rural areas is an escalating problem. Sustainable Land Management offers a contemporary overview of the strategies employed to cope with the marginalisation of agriculture, through analyses of case studies and regional trends in marginalisation.

Environmental conflicts over sustainability, Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), biodiversity, biotechnology and risk, chemicals and public health, are not necessarily legalistic problems but land use problems. Edward Christie shows how solutions for these conflicts can be found via consensual agreement using an approach that integrates law, science and alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and reframes the role of law and science.

This book addresses the problem of how to make a large-scale socio-technical transition to renewable energy, so as to realize an environmentally sustainable economy in the long run. Transition thinking has in a short time managed to occupy a central position in the policy debate on sustainable development. The transition approach offers an innovative view on the role and content of public policy, compared with traditional views from economic, administrative and political sciences.

Professor Sigman has selected the most authoritative previously published papers for this pathbreaking collection. This timely book examines private decision-making and government policy for the management of hazardous waste, the clean-up of contaminated land and the redevelopment of brownfield sites.