This chapter provides an introduction to mathematical modelling in economics through the study of supply and demand sets, equilibrium and the effect of the imposition of an excise tax.

Chapter 4 reviews the underlying concepts of human capital theory, including a short introduction to the concepts of demand and supply and the relation between marginal productivity and wages. The first section of the chapter reviews the key assumptions of human capital theory – especially the importance of individual choice, the role of individuals’ initial endowments in making choices regarding investments in education and training, and the causal relation between individual skill acquisition and individual labor productivity. The second and third section of the chapter review some fundamental concepts of supply and demand and the relationship between productivity and wages – these sections are meant for students who have had little or no economics. The final section of the chapter discusses the fundamentals of the model of demand for and supply of human capital – first, in the early model of Becker and Chiswick (1966), followed by the more recent life-cycle investment model as described in Neal (2017). These conceptual foundations allow us to move on to more specific human capital analyses in the next two chapters.

The first element of understanding how to improve the health and well-being of a population relies on a thorough assessment of the needs of the specified population, be it a local population defined by geography, a specific age group or those with certain characteristics. This chapter begins by considering how ‘health need’ can be conceptualized; the distinction between need, demand and supply; and the difference between health needs and the need for health-care. Secondly, the wider determinants of health are introduced and their relation to health needs discussed. Finally, the steps involved in a systematic assessment of the health needs of a defined population are explained, including tools and resources used to achieve this. Practical challenges are considered.

Chapter 3 develops the fundamentals of demand analysis through the lens of demand for medical care. The chapter discusses how to read and use demand curves and why demand for health is not commonly used (there is no direct market for health). Then various demand elasticities are covered: price elasticity of demand, income elasticity of demand, and cross-price elasticity of demand. Each elasticity is developed along with examples specific to the market for medical care and health decision-making. The chapter also develops important tools for using demand curves: how to think through demand shifters, Engel curves, how to calculate consumer surplus, and how to aggregate from individual to market demand. The end of chapter supplement walks through how to calculate elasticities.

To explain countries’ varying participation in the Belt and Road Initiative, this chapter begins with a discussion of recipient country characteristics that impact the demand for Chinese spending, including the political regime, clientelism, and the public-private orientation of the corporate sector. It then discusses the supply-side factors that influence Chinese foreign spending, including the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), state-owned entities (e.g., SOEs), and private firms. Finally, it evaluates the compatibility of these demand and supply characteristics. The key prediction is that electoral autocracies will display the strongest compatibility with Chinese foreign construction spending. This is amplified when the leaders of these regimes have a weak or insecure hold on power. Electoral autocracies are also predicted to be the most avid adopters of Chinese standards stemming from their eagerness for Chinese infrastructure spending.

Communities are integral parts of health systems and their engagement in defining health needs, priorities, solutions and in the delivery of services is essential to improving health and well-being. All communities, regardless of how they are defined, include individuals or sub-groups who, for a host of reasons are disadvantaged and experience a disproportionate burden of ill health. Identifying and engaging them is both essential and challenging, and should be prioritized. Communities interface with the health system with varying degrees of engagement ranging from passively receiving information at one end of the spectrum to actively engaging in decision making through mutually accountable relationships at the other. This chapter explores the concepts of community and community engagement and consider their role in health systems. It examines the concept of health, the changing health needs of communities and the influence of community in defining health issues and informing solutions, including the delivery of services. Finally, the chapter discusses the modalities of community engagement for health systems, particularly within low- and middle-income countries (L&MICs).

The market in ancient Greece should be understood as a specific institutional construct, that of the city-state, which allowed its citizens to exercise private property rights guaranteed by law. By extension, free foreigners were also acknowledged these rights, which however extended to the private ownership of human beings (slavery). The city-state also created the conditions for an unusually high division of labour. Each city was a market space of its own, with its own rules and logic, which could include the control over sales margins and even sometimes the establishment of maximum prices for some perishable fresh goods. The network of hundreds of Greek city-states also created the conditions for the development of an original form of international market.

This chapter examines public responses to new urban shopping spaces and interrogates the idea of voracious consumer demand which underpinned major retail developments. I show that the projections of ‘demand’ which were put together in support of redevelopment were not borne out by the poor trading experience of many new shopping facilities after opening. The politically embarrassing failures of high-profile ‘white elephants’ prompted both government and the development industry to take much more seriously the complexities and limits of ‘demand’ in the affluent society. The chapter also probes some broader questions about the nature of Britain’s post-war affluent society. By the later 1960s, it was already clear that projections of inexorably expanding prosperity were misjudged, and the installation of expensive new shopping facilities at the heart of British urban life began to look somewhat misplaced. I highlight the rising currents of protest against the commercially driven course of urban transformation which became increasingly pronounced at this time. Citizens, activists and academics began to critique the encroachment of the retail economy over ever more of the city’s shared spaces. The chapter also considers the political implications of the widespread installation of enclosed, privately owned shopping spaces across the urban centres of post-war Britain.

This chapter examines the marketing of consumer goods. Shops proliferated in the eighteenth century, as did the ranks of peddlers, smugglers, and street sellers. While most shops sold basic goods over rough-hewn counters or through open street-windows, many luxury and semiluxury shops adopted new strategies to lure well-off customers into their establishments. “Shopping,” a word coined in this period, became a leisure activity for women and men of the upper and middling classes. Retailers extended credit to customers to boost sales. New methods of advertising fueled demand. Marketing occurred mainly at the site of the shop, but printed trade cards and handbills, some of which were illustrated with exotic images, increasingly stimulated interest in goods. Advertisements also appeared in newspapers and fashion journals. Mediated by merchants and retailers, new channels of dialogue opened between producers and consumers, supporting a reciprocal relationship between supply and demand. Not only were more points of contact between retailers and customers established but more information flowed between them. The information exchanged in this dialogue created feedback loops between producers and consumers that often (though not always) stimulated supply and demand. Thus, demand was neither a direct emanation of primordial human needs nor an automatic response to commercial manipulation. It was a social and cultural force that developed through communication systems mediated by information brokers of all types.

Chapter 4 presents the basic formulation of the structural reliability problem. It starts with the so-called R-S problem with R denoting a capacity (resistance, supply, strength, etc.) value and S denoting a measure of the corresponding demand (load, stress, etc.), both modeled as random variables. Solutions in integral form are presented for the failure probability by conditioning on R or S, or using formulations in terms of the safety margin or safety factor that lead to the introduction of the concept of reliability index. Exact solutions are presented for specific distributions of R or S. This allows examination of the so-called tail-sensitivity problem, i.e., the sensitivity of the failure probability to the selected probability distributions. It is shown that small failure probabilities are sensitive to the shape of the selected distributions in the tail. The formulation of the structural reliability problem is then generalized and presented in terms of a limit-state function of basic random variables. Using this formulation, the probability of failure is expressed as a multifold integral over the outcome space of the basic random variables. Descriptions of several example applications of the generalized structural reliability formulation conclude the chapter.

Chapter 2 describes the enabling environment in which orphanage trafficking occurs. It examines how the utility of the orphan child for aid and development is manipulated for the purpose of the orphanage-trafficking business model in order to profit from donor funding and orphanage tourism. It demonstrates how governments and non-governmental organisations utilise the orphan child as a focal point to increase aid and tourism, leading to a financial dependence on the orphan child. This utility is manipulated and exploited by both governments and non-government organisations to encourage what has been termed an ‘orphan addiction’. This chapter describes the political and social imperatives behind the creation, encouragement and maintenance of the orphan addiction, which in turn drives orphanage tourism and the production of paper orphans. The increasing demand for orphanage tourism creates a demand for the maintenance of an orphan population to visit and volunteer with, which is achieved through orphanage trafficking. Finally, this chapter explains the financial incentives of orphanage trafficking for developing nation governments.

Chapter 3 establishes orphanage tourism as a demand driver for orphanage trafficking. Orphanage tourism has increased in popularity in the last decade which, in combination with an enabling environment, has led to a proliferation of orphanages being established in developing states and the emergence of orphanage trafficking. The chapter examines the interrelationship between supply and demand in orphanage trafficking and argues that in order to understand how orphanage trafficking functions, a reconceptualisation of demand is required. Demand in trafficking is generally regarded as the embodiment of consumer desire, which may be illegal or at other times morally challenging. However, demand for orphanage tourism functions differently as it is not initially predicated on consumer desire, but instead on a perceived supply of orphans who require assistance. It is this perceived supply which orphanage tourism responds to. To address the demand of orphanage tourism, the perception of the supply of vulnerable orphans must be countered. Orphanage tourism needs to be addressed bilaterally as both a threat to child protection and as a demand driver for child trafficking into orphanages.

Addictive disorders effect millions of people and have an economic impact that continues to grow each year. Although research is making headway in dealing with addictive substances and behavioral disorders, finding underlying mechanisms that span across disorders is less common. Behavioral economics is one continually developing and refining tool researchers have been using as a means to understand addictions. The first, and most researched area of behavioral economics is delay discounting (DD), which is the subjective devaluation of a reward as a function of the time to receiving it. Researchers use DD to evaluate choice and how that underlies addictive disorders and decision making; yet, they still debate whether discounting rates are stable or change over time. Probability discounting (PD) is another piece of the behavioral economics puzzle. Commonly used in gambling disorder research, PD evaluates behavioral decision making involving the chance of receiving the reinforcer, as opposed to the time delay to receiving it. The final major piece of behavioral economics is demand. This area looks at the amount of effort or resources an organism is willing to expend to access a reinforcer. In this chapter each of these areas will be further explored and understood through the lens of behavioral economics as a whole.