The first successful human organ transplant in the United States was performed on December 23, 1954. On that date, a kidney was transplanted from a living donor who was an identical twin of the recipient. Since then, organ transplantation technology has improved enormously, with the principal source of that improvement being the discovery of new immunosuppressive drugs and the increased kn…
This report is written for the Client's Principal Technical Adviser on a construction project, since this professional is responsible for both directing the project and investigating its effects on the neighbourhood. The Principal Technical Adviser is urged to understand the value of an adequate and timely investigation of the site and the underlying ground, in order to judge whether or no…
Public procurement is a powerful exercise. It carries the aptitude of acquisition; it epitomizes economic freedom; it depicts the nexus of trade relations amongst economic operators; it represents the necessary process to deliver public services; it demonstrates strategic policy options. Public procurement as a discipline expands from a simple topic of the common market, to a multifaceted …
Léon Walras may rightfully be considered as one of the founding fathers of mathematical economics. Much of mathematical economics developed since Walras’s time has gradually become common knowledge in economics. This means that Walras directly and indirectly has had a marked influence upon our science as it stands now. It is therefore important to know how Walras came to his results, what…
The regulation of public procurement in the European Union has been the cinderella of the European integration. Often neglected as a discipline of European law and policy, although directly relevant to the fundamental principles of the common market, public procurement has not received equal priority to other regulatory regimes by the Member States of the European Union. As one of the maj…
Major clients of the construction industry have been found to organise construction work into fewer, but larger, contracts with more transfer of risk and responsibilities in response to a change from a sellers' market to a buyers' market, and facing a greater choice of procurement methods than ever before. Main contractors and consultants alike are moving towards multidisciplinary teams of…
During no other time in the history of the construction industry, has the subject of procurement dominated the debate on possible reforms. Regardless of country, from the United Kingdom, to Malaysia, Australia and America, the industry has been bombarded by material on how to improve the construction process. Procurement has often been the dominant issue, with the plethora of “new” proc…
Sustainability is a broad concept examining how societies live, interact and operate. It means trying to find ways for humankind to live, work and play that do not interfere with nature’s inherent ability to sustain life. It considers our economic, social and environmental needs and involves taking responsibility for the local, regional and global impacts of our way of life. It also requi…
During the last decade the literature on Léon Walras has expanded enormously and, if the signs are right, there is more to come. Undoubtedly, the increased attention for the work of Walras has a lot to do with the increased accessibility of the work through the publication of the collected works by the Centre Walras at the University of Lyon and the archival work at the Centre Walras & Pareto…
‘We spend how much?’ is a cry I have often heard from a senior executive the first time he or she finds out the true extent of his or her company’s third-party expenditure. Years ago, I asked the group finance director of a leading UK financial services company how much his organization spent with suppliers. He said that he didn’t know but that it wasn’t much because, ‘we don…
In this volume we discuss theory, evidence, and policy perspectives concerning the use of public technology procurement as an instrument of innovation policy. Public technology procurement (as defined in Chapter 1, part I), occurs when a public agency places an order for a product or system that does not yet exist, requiring technological innovation for the order to be met. The most extens…
The metaphor of dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants expresses the meaning of discovering truth by building on previous discoveries. Although it is originally attributed to Bernard of Chartres in the twelfth century, Isaac Newton popularized the concept in 1676. The concept is as relevant for us today as it was for Newton in the seventeenth century. Since the early 1980s, pioneering…
This book is about an anomaly in political scientists’ understanding of congressional policy making. Distributive politics theory, which has been called the dominant theoretical approach to congressional politics (Krehbiel 1991), purports to account for the geographic distribution of the benefits of any policy that is paid for from general tax revenues and can be subdivided easily and al…
Authors usually struggle with finding the right way of presenting the subject matter of their book, because it is not an easy job to guide the readers through a large number of closely interrelated issues in a really effective and enjoyable manner. This is particularly true in case of addressing procurement since many of the work processes to be described are of iterative nature. It means …
Over the last couple of years, e-procurement has received tremendous attention from researchers and practitioners alike. However, research on e-procurement is still scarce and scattered. This chapter looks into prior research on inter-organizational information systems (IOIS), electronic data interchange (EDI), channel management, and procurement to develop a research framework and identif…
To most hospitality students, the term “purchasing” means paying for an item or service. This conveys a far too restrictive meaning because it fails to suggest the complete scope of the buying function. Perhaps the terms “selection” and “procurement” are better. “Selection” can be defined as choosing from among various alternatives on various levels. For example, a buyer ca…
There is not a single job in the hospitality industry that does not involve purchasing in one way or another. A flight attendant must keep careful inventories of bottled water and soft drinks to know how much to request for restocking. The manager of a hotel must be able to find the best price for laundry detergent in a reasonable quantity for her size operation. An accountant for a hotel c…
This paper discusses the types of property investment vehicles available, high-lights the different valuation techniques used for direct and indirect property investments, and looks at the implications for property investment vehicles and valuation techniques. It discusses the opportunities and threats facing chartered surveyors given the changing nature of the property market. Keywords: …
This monograph examines the domain of classical political economy using the method- ologies developed in recent years both by the new discipline of econo-physics and by computing science. This approach is used to re-examine the classical subdivisions of political economy: production, exchange, distribution and finance. The book begins by examining the most basic feature of economic life – pr…
Would you rather live in a world without blood transfusions or a world without maritime insurance? Blood transfusions are dramatic and memorable (which is why we see them on prime-time hospital shows), while the facilitation of commerce through risk sharing is routine and easily taken for granted. But I'd be willing to bet that by almost any measure, three centuries of organized insurance marke…
In the last two decades there has been a flourishing of research carried out jointly by economists, psychologists, and neuroscientists. This meltdown of barriers between competences has led toward original approaches to investigate the mental and cognitive mechanisms involved in the way the economic agent collects, processes, and uses information to make choices. This research field involves …
This book has been written in order to contribute to the debate about best practice in construction procurement. At the outset it should be made plain that the authors do not subscribe to the view that there is any such thing as best practice. The main argument in this book is that there can never be a best practice, only better practice, in construction procurement. The reason for arrivi…
Public procurement and competition law are both important fields of EU law and policy, intimately intertwined in the creation of the internal market. Hitherto their close connection has been noted, but not closely examined. Th is work is the most comprehensive attempt to date to explain the many ways in which these fields, oft en considered independent of one another, interact and overlap i…
'Building procurement' has become a fashionable subject. It seems that hardly a week goes by without my receiving a note that a student is writing a dissertation on an apparently new angle to the subject or that a course, conference, seminar or whatever is offering to explain the challenge of con struction procurement now and in the future. Consultancies and contractors who should know bet…
An essential question to ask before embarking on any exercise or enterprise beyond that of the transitory or trivial is 'Why?' An exercise, that is a set of movements, tasks and so on designed to train, improve or test abilities may perhaps be transitory or trivial especially to those not involved. But an enterprise, that is a project or undertaking especially one requiring boldness or eff…
The material in the main text ranges from a revision of high-school mathematics to applications of calculus (single-variate, multivariate and integral) to economics and finance. For example: linear and quadratic functions are introduced in the context of demand and supply analysis; geometric sequences, exponential and logarithmic functions are introduced in the context of finance; single-variat…