The transition from socialism to capitalism in former socialist economies has transformed the economic structure. This book provides an overview of research on the issues raised by the shift from collective to private ownership.

Gerard Roland's new text, Development Economics, is the first undergraduate text to recognize the role of institutions in understanding development and growth. Through a series of chapters devoted to specific sets of institutions, Roland examines the effects of institutions on growth, property rights, market development, and the delivery of public goods and services and focuses. With the most comprehensive and up to date treatment of institutions on development, Roland explores the important questions of why some countries develop faster than others and why some fail while others are successful.

With the European Parliament comprising politicians from many different countries, cultures, languages, national parties and institutional backgrounds, one might expect politics in the Parliament to be highly-fragmented and unpredictable. By studying more than 12,000 recorded votes between 1979 and 2004 this 2007 book establishes that the opposite is in fact true: transnational parties in the European Parliament are highly cohesive and the classic 'left-right' dimension dominates voting behaviour. Furthermore, the cohesion of parties in the European Parliament has increased as the powers of the Parliament have increased. The authors suggest that the main reason for these developments is that like-minded MEPs have incentives to form stable transnational party organizations and to use these organizations to compete over European Union policies. They suggest that this is a positive development for the future of democratic accountability in the European Union.