Africa’s unique vulnerability to climate change has become entrenched as a central theme in international climate politics and has precipitated a transformation in climate policy on the continent from relative disorganisation to effective and unified cooperation in the span of barely 30 years. In the same period, Africa has also emerged as one of the fastest growing and most promising regions in the world economy. In light of these developments, and spurred by an international discourse of ‘energy transition’, a new wave of European foreign direct investment headlined by renewable energy has crested – with Africa in its sights. This contribution will explore the efficacy of such investments as a vehicle for ‘exporting’ European climate policy, and the extent to which these policy aims are compatible with similarly massive investments into Africa from the People’s Republic of China (PRC). By interrogating the focus of energy investments from Europe and the PRC, both in terms of stated aims and actual outcomes, it will posit that the success of Africa’s energy transition will depend in large part on the PRC’s sincerity about its domestic and international climate ambition.

This chapter provides an account of different sources of finance for urban nature, the actors involved in providing these sources of finance, and various financial mechanisms through which the sources and the actors are mobilised. It focuses on the four principal models of investing in urban nature, which include funding solicited through public funds, private capital, community/not-for profit funding, and hybrid and collaborative approaches. The chapter discusses the current situation, barriers, and opportunities for investing in urban nature, along with relevant examples. It concludes with insights on how to facilitate more investments in urban nature and support its mainstreaming in cities. The chapter engages with two case studies to illustrate its key messages: Parc Marianne Ecodistrict: investment by real estate developers stipulated by municipality in Montpellier, France, and Mexico City Water Fund: hybrid investing in urban nature in Mexico City, Mexico.

The greatest progress so far in decarbonising the global economy has been made by governments that ignored the advice of economists. Investing in new technologies turns out to be a more effective way of changing things than taxing the incumbents. We need to stop being surprised by this and start replicating those successes.

As the UK, and the world, enters another decade of climate-anguished debate, the record of the Conservatives’ policy and actions between 2010 and 2024 is under scrutiny. Dieter Helm analyses the extent to which the natural environment improved, how housebuilding interacted with pressures to protect the environment, the legacy of privatised industries, comparisons to what a Labour government’s actions in office may have been and to what extent a sustainable path to net zero was achieved by the Conservative Party.

Chapter 7 explores contests that occur in stages, as opposed to the one-shot contests analyzed in previous chapters. Examples of one-shot contests include decisive battles in war and final matches in sports. However, some contests are inherently dynamic, such as lengthy wars, electoral competitions, patent races, sports leagues, and advertising campaigns. Dynamic contest theory is still a developing field, and this chapter focuses on analyzing specific examples of dynamic contests, including Endogenous Timing Contests (where contestants choose when to compete), Elimination Contests (where contestants compete and the winner advances to the next stage), Races (where the first contestant to achieve a certain number of victories wins), Contests with Investments (where current efforts impact future outcomes), and Repeated Contests (where contestants compete repeatedly in the same contest).

In this chapter, we ask what economic modeling can tell us about the likelihood that firms will invent an AGI: how much and for how long must they sustain investment in R&D to obtain such an invention? We develop a novel Real Options Model, one that uses a stochastic compound Poisson process, to explicitly take into account that a radical innovation such as an AGI is subject to much more uncertainty than typical business investments – which also helps throw light of the breakthroughs and backlashes that have characterized periodic AI winters. An important conclusion from the modelling in this chapter is that it will most likely be largely government-funded agencies and/or a few large corporations that will invent an AGI, if it is ever invented.

We start by introducing the key ingredients in macroeconomic modelling: investment, production, income and consumption, and explain the corresponding equilibrium conditions. Modelling these quantities in discrete time, we describe the multiplier-accelerator model, a classic model of macroeconomic dynamics, and an example of a second-order recurrence equation. We then embark on describing how to solve linear constant-coefficient second-order recurrence equations in general. The general solution is the sum of the solution of a corresponding homogeneous equation and a particular solution. There is a general method for determining the solution of the homogeneous equation, involving the solution of a corresponding quadratic equation known as the auxiliary equation.

Over the last quarter-century, the relations between Australia and Latin America, while not intense, clearly have thickened and deepened. And the pace of this thickening and deepening is quickening. The most obvious manifestation is in the economic realm, in trade and investment. But our research indicates that in more obscure areas, such as cultural exchange, education, and environmental issues, much is happening and there is every reason to expect that the contact will expand. That said, any informed observer of Australia’s relations with Latin America would be struck by how little each knows about the other, how recent and relatively superficial the contacts are, and consequently how tenuous they could remain unless both the Australians and the Latin Americans invest further substantial effort. This effort cannot be limited to the material – trade and investment – but must include education at all levels to overcome the barriers of language and culture, of limited transport, of competing economies, of stereotypes.

The sustained capital inflow, which had been an important feature of the Australian economy in the 1950s and 1960s, rose to new heights in 1971 and 1972, when the traditional flows of equity investment and long-term loans were supplemented and temporarily eclipsed by large-scale borrowing by both foreign and locally-owned companies operating in Australia. This dramatic change in the nature of the capital inflow cast serious doubts on the wisdom of the macro-economic policies then being pursued by the Australian Government and revived earlier discussions about its ability to implement appropriate policies in the face of volatile capital flows between Australia and the rest of the world.

This chapter describes the key changes in terms of money, credit and banking in the 1000 to 1500 period within the various kingdoms. It highlights how after a period of late monetization, each Christian kingdom transitioned to centralized models that were well-articulated with their European counterparts while keeping important distinctive traits. Nevertheless, the demand for means of payment on behalf of kings, merchants and other agents stimulated the development of credit. The need for credit spanned the entire Peninsula and the urban/rural divide. Thus, all countries saw the emergence of lively credit markets for (mostly private) borrowers, buttressed by functioning courts and regulations. These markets involved both specialists and non-specialists, but it was only in the Crown of Aragon where financial agents transitioned to institutionalized banks.

This chapter examines current philanthropic trends in emerging economies, exploring the extent to which philanthropists in these settings are investing in resilience and how they are doing so. Three dimensions are considered: what philanthropists invest in, how they invest, and with whom they invest. The state of emerging economy philanthropy, both pre-COVID and in the wake of the pandemic, is discussed, and frameworks and considerations for understanding resilience in philanthropy are set forth. Resilience is understood as having sufficient stability within a system to protect communities – particularly the most vulnerable – and services from deep shocks. The COVID-19 pandemic has sent deep shockwaves through global and local economies, health-care and education systems, and into personal homes and lives. While the shock was universal, the impact and its long-term implications have been felt and will linger much longer for the most vulnerable countries, communities, and individuals. In emerging economies around the world, the pandemic has set back hard-fought progress in economic development and social equity. This system encompasses not only government, but also civil society, including philanthropy. The chapter presents case studies of philanthropic organisations in Brazil, India, and Saudi Arabia whose investments reflect dimensions of resilience, and makes the case for investing in resilience in emerging economies, discussing both challenges and opportunities for doing so.

The communitarian theory of WTO law outlined in previous chapters works reasonably well as a description of key features of WTO law. Its “fit” with the existing law raises the possibility of the theory serving wider applications. That possibility is likely to be canvassed most insistently in relation to international investment law, the body of law pertaining to the protection and treatment of foreign investment by host states. A communitarian theory would forecast international investment law to be preoccupied with corrective justice and to be heavily contractual, retrospective and inductive. The chapter demonstrates how all of these features are confirmed in the shape of contemporary international investment law, and how in light of considerable dissatisfaction with the current investment regime, an impulse is detected toward something more egalitarian, and therefore more obligatory, constitutive, prospective and presumptive.

The South Sea Bubble of 1720 was Britain’s first modern financial crisis. This chapter uses digital tools to study the development, during the early eighteenth century, of a conceptual framework describing bubbles in the financial market. It traces the emergence of the phrase ‘South Sea Bubble’ in the months and years after the crisis, alongside the more complicated patterns of evolution in what that phrase describes, ultimately arguing that there is little resemblance between the ‘South Sea Bubble’ of the 1720s and that of the present-day historical imagination. The chapter’s final claim is that the conceptual framework underpinning how we understand present-day financial crises has its origins in the latency of the words used, at the time, to describe the emerging and interlinked crises of 1720.