Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 185-190).

Vol. 1, Akademisk avhandling-Stockholms högskola. / No more published. Extra t.p., with thesis statement, inserted in v. 1. Summaries in English. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Drexel University, 2004. / Includes abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 74-78).

Thesis (M.A.)--Zhong guo wen hua xue yuan, 1977. / Reproduced from typescript. Includes bibliographical references (p. 224-230).

Thesis--University of Chicago. / At head of title: The University of Chicago. Includes bibliographical references and index. Also available on the Internet. Also issued online.

No description available.

Local currencies have been founded in dozens of communities around the United States. By printing their own money that can only be used at participating local merchants or service providers, or in direct exchange with community members, advocates of local currencies try to reinvigorate local commerce, demonstrate community opposition to "big box" retailers and globalization, and support local employment. Although many local currencies have been founded, most of them have had only limited success, but even where local currencies fail to thrive, they raise important questions about the ways in which we organize institutions. This dissertation has two key concerns that emerge from those questions, the first of which is to explore the ways in which the meaning of money is reconfigured by the organizers and the users of local currencies. Second, this project seeks to explain the conditions under which local currencies operate, with the goal of building an understanding of how organizations successfully challenge the deeply embedded and institutionalized practices that surround the use of money. Local currencies are an innovative form of community economic organization that has previously gone under-studied by scholars. This project, the first to address local currencies with a large set of quantitative macro-level data as well as case-oriented archival and survey data, adds to knowledge of movement development and maintenance, and the social construction and use of money. Local currency reminds us that the systems of dollars and cents are socially constructed and that they therefore are changeable. But changing institutions that are part of our everyday life is difficult; because the use of money is so deeply embedded in routines and institutions, it's difficult to even ask questions about money: Where does money come from? Why do we trust it? And how might alternatives to money work? Local currency reminds us that money is not necessarily as "real" as we tend to think and it invites us to think about the system of institutions in which we live.

The efficiency and practicality of currency areas is a controversial source of debate in the field of economics nowadays. Advocates of the system predict that currency unions lead to higher trade volumes as a result of reduced exchange rate uncertainty and higher integration. Possibly the most prominent example of a currency area nowadays is the EMU, initiated in 1995 with the purpose of nurturing a unified European market as one of the main aims. There is no consensus on whether the EMU has induced a net loss or benefit upon its members, but one common finding among academic studies is that the EMU leads to higher trade among union members. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of the euro adoption on trade between EMU members. The model uses a pooled data set comprising the years from 1990 to 2012. Two separate groups are analysed, one including all OECD and EU countries, and another using data from only European countries from the sample. After allowing for different circumstances, I find that two countries belonging to the EMU trade between 17 and 32 per cent more than country pairs outside the union. Moreover, I find that language similarity has a neutral effect in the European sample, while it seems to have a highly significant effect on the sample including all countries.

No description available.

No description available.