Rise of China
Overholt, who holds a Ph.D. from Yale University, is a managing director of Bankers Trust Company in Hong Kong and the author of several books. Based in Hong Kong since 1985, he has traveled widely in China and has served as political adviser to several of Asia's major political figures. This book is his account of China's remarkable growth, told authoritatively and in unique detail by a close and astute observer
The Decline and Crash of the American Economy
I call these problems the Decline and Crash of American economy because they are pulling down our standard of living, threatening our wealth, and weakening our standing in the world, not just in an overnight 508-point collapse of the stock market, but in a slow, steady, unrelenting decline of the economy as a whole. And there is little evidence that the correct steps are being taken--at any level--to end that decline. This book is not mean to scare, but is meant to wake people up. Our country is at risk, our investments are in jeopardy, and our future is uncertain. I will show where our problems lie and how they will affect us, and offer a plan to resurrect the United States from its decline. --from the Introduction
Rwanda, Inc.: How a Devastated Nation Became an Economic Model for the Developing World
Nearly two decades after Rwanda's horrific genocide, the country has been transformed. High rises are going up in the capital city of Kigali; a newly established stock exchange is attracting investors; and the economy is transitioning from subsistence agriculture to information and communication technology. In pursuit of the alchemy that made Rwanda such an unlikely success story, Patricia Crisafulli and Andrea Redmond interviewed Rwandan government officials, including current president Paul Kagame, as well as business leaders, foreign investors, NGOs, and everyday civilians. In Rwanda, Inc. they look at the key factors that allowed this tiny country to beat the odds--including Rwanda's efforts to encourage private sector development and foster entrepreneurship, and how Kagame's unique leadership approach led to gains in health, education, and food sustainability. They also explore what the future holds for this resilient nation, and the steps it's taking to develop the next generation of public servants. With so many eyes on Africa as nations rebuild in the wake of the Arab Spring, this is a timely and fascinating look at what other emerging democracies can learn from Rwanda's triumph.
After the Music Stopped
The New York Times bestseller "Blinder's book deserves its likely place near the top of reading lists about the crisis. It is the best comprehensive history of the episode... A riveting tale." - Financial TimesOne of our wisest and most clear-eyed economic thinkers offers a masterful narrative of the crisis and its lessons.Many fine books on the financial crisis were first drafts of history--books written to fill the need for immediate understanding. Alan S. Blinder, esteemed Princeton professor, Wall Street Journal columnist, and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, held off, taking the time to understand the crisis and to think his way through to a truly comprehensive and coherent narrative of how the worst economic crisis in postwar American history happened, what the government did to fight it, and what we can do from here--mired as we still are in its wreckage. With bracing clarity, Blinder shows us how the U.S. financial system, which had grown far too complex for its own good--and too unregulated for the public good--experienced a perfect storm beginning in 2007. Things started unraveling when the much-chronicled housing bubble burst, but the ensuing implosion of what Blinder calls the "bond bubble" was larger and more devastating. Some people think of the financial industry as a sideshow with little relevance to the real economy--where the jobs, factories, and shops are. But finance is more like the circulatory system of the economic body: if the blood stops flowing, the body goes into cardiac arrest. When America's financial structure crumbled, the damage proved to be not only deep, but wide. It took the crisis for the world to discover, to its horror, just how truly interconnected--and fragile--the global financial system is. Some observers argue that large global forces were the major culprits of the crisis. Blinder disagrees, arguing that the problem started in the U.S. and was pushed abroad, as complex, opaque, and overrated investment products were exported to a hungry world, which was nearly poisoned by them. The second part of the story explains how American and international government intervention kept us from a total meltdown. Many of the U.S. government's actions, particularly the Fed's, were previously unimaginable. And to an amazing--and certainly misunderstood--extent, they worked. The worst did not happen. Blinder offers clear-eyed answers to the questions still before us, even if some of the choices ahead are as divisive as they are unavoidable. After the Music Stopped is an essential history that we cannot afford to forget, because one thing history teaches is that it will happen again.
Ireland During the Second World War
In the first book detailing the social and economic history of Ireland during the Second World War, Bryce Evans reveals the real story of the Irish emergency. Revealing just how precarious the Irish state's economic position was at the time, the book examines the consequences of Winston Churchill's economic war against neutral Ireland. It explores how the Irish government coped with the crisis and how ordinary Irish people reacted to emergency state control of the domestic marketplace. A hidden history of black markets, smugglers, rogues and rebels emerges, providing a fascinating slice of real life in Ireland during a crucial period in world history. As the first comparison of economic and social conditions in Ireland with those of the other European neutral states - Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Portugal - the book will make essential reading for the informed general reader, students and academics alike.
The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One
In this expert insider's account of the savings and loan debacle of the 1980s, William Black lays bare the strategies that corrupt CEOs and CFOs--in collusion with those who have regulatory oversight of their industries--use to defraud companies for their personal gain. Recounting the investigations he conducted as Director of Litigation for the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, Black fully reveals how Charles Keating and hundreds of other S&L owners took advantage of a weak regulatory environment to perpetrate accounting fraud on a massive scale. In the new afterword, he also authoritatively links the S&L crash to the business failures of 2008 and beyond, showing how CEOs then and now are using the same tactics to defeat regulatory restraints and commit the same types of destructive fraud.Black uses the latest advances in criminology and economics to develop a theory of why "control fraud"--looting a company for personal profit--tends to occur in waves that make financial markets deeply inefficient. He also explains how to prevent such waves. Throughout the book, Black drives home the larger point that control fraud is a major, ongoing threat in business that requires active, independent regulators to contain it. His book is a wake-up call for everyone who believes that market forces alone will keep companies and their owners honest.
Principles of Economics
Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics (1890) - Founder of Modern (Neo-classical) Economics. His book Principles of Economics was the dominant textbook in economics for a long time and it is considered to be his seminal work.
End of Economic Man
This book challenges the traditional "law" of supply and demand, shows how hunger for capital gains starves the producing economy, demonstrates that the Bankers' COLA (or interest premium to "protect" them from inflation) costs the economy more than $500 billion a year and is the principal cause of inflation, refutes the barbarous hypothesis of a "natural rate of unemployment," exposes laughable inconsistencies in the contemporaneous notion of labor productivity, and explains the changes in the meanings of property and of money that are ushering in the twenty-first century. All the foregoing (and more) is in the interest of establishing an economics in which men and women are not pawns moved about by Adam Smith's invisible hand (or perhaps by some analog to classical mechanics or zoology) but free human beings who are responsible for their actions and can find therein foundations of mores, morals, and morale.
The Smartest Guys in the Room
In this tenth-anniversary edition, acclaimed investigative journalists Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind deliver the definitive account of the fall of Enron, one of the biggest scandals in corporate America history. Meticulously researched and character driven, The Smartest Guys in the Room takes the reader deep into Enron's past--and behind the closed doors of private meetings. Drawing on a wide range of unique sources, the book follows Enron's rise from obscurity to the top of the business world to its disastrous demise. It reveals as never before major characters such as Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, and Andy Fastow, as well as lesser-known players like Cliff Baxter and Rebecca Mark. It is a story of greed, arrogance, and deceit--a microcosm of all that can go wrong with American business. Above all, it's a fascinating human drama that has proven to be the authoritative account of the Enron scandal. In this tenth anniversary edition, McLean and Elkind revisit the fall of Enron and its aftermath in a new chapter.
A Cultural History of Finance
This book demonstrates how finance is affected by key political and social forces and cultural norms, and shows how they have determined the progression, development, destruction and renewal of financial life in Europe, Russia and the United States.
Economic and Social History of Medieval Europe
First published in 2005. This original study the author writing in 1936 has tried to sketch the character and general movement of the economic and social evolution of Western Europe from the end of the Roman Empire to the middle of the fifteenth century.
The Economics and Politics of Socialism
This volume focuses on the socio-political aspects of economic transformations in the Eastern European Socialist countries.
The Passions and the Interests
In this volume, Albert Hirschman reconstructs the intellectual climate of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to illuminate the intricate ideological transformation that occurred, wherein the pursuit of material interests--so long condemned as the deadly sin of avarice--was assigned the role of containing the unruly and destructive passions of man. Hirschman here offers a new interpretation for the rise of capitalism, one that emphasizes the continuities between old and new, in contrast to the assumption of a sharp break that is a common feature of both Marxian and Weberian thinking. Among the insights presented here is the ironical finding that capitalism was originally supposed to accomplish exactly what was soon denounced as its worst feature: the repression of the passions in favor of the "harmless," if one-dimensional, interests of commercial life. To portray this lengthy ideological change as an endogenous process, Hirschman draws on the writings of a large number of thinkers, including Montesquieu, Sir James Steuart, and Adam Smith. Featuring a new afterword by Jeremy Adelman and a foreword by Amartya Sen, this Princeton Classics edition of The Passions and the Interests sheds light on the intricate ideological transformation from which capitalism emerged triumphant, and reaffirms Hirschman's stature as one of our most influential and provocative thinkers.
Exploring Climate Change Through Science and in Society
Mike Hulme is one of the most distinctive and recognisable voices speaking internationally about climate change in the academy, in public and in the media. This collection of his most popular, prominent and controversial articles, essays, speeches, interviews and reviews dating back to the late 1980s reveal an intellectual and personal journey of observation, investigation and reflection on an increasingly complex phenomenon and trace how Hulme has arrived at his current position. The material in Exploring Climate Change in Science and Society engages with science, politics, policy, media, ethics, sociology, religion and philosophy. The collection shows the many different ways in which it is necessary to approach the idea of climate change to interpret and make sense of the divergent and discordant voices proclaiming it in the public sphere.
Economics of Good and Evil
Tomas Sedlacek has shaken the study of economics as few ever have. Named one of the "Young Guns" and one of the "five hot minds in economics" by the Yale Economic Review, he serves on the National Economic Council in Prague, where his provocative writing has achieved bestseller status. How has he done it? By arguing a simple, almost heretical proposition: economics is ultimately about good and evil. In The Economics of Good and Evil, Sedlacek radically rethinks his field, challenging our assumptions about the world. Economics is touted as a science, a value-free mathematical inquiry, he writes, but it's actually a cultural phenomenon, a product of our civilization. It began within philosophy--Adam Smith himself not only wrote The Wealth of Nations, but also The Theory of Moral Sentiments--and economics, as Sedlacek shows, is woven out of history, myth, religion, and ethics. "Even the most sophisticated mathematical model," Sedlacek writes, "is, de facto, a story, a parable, our effort to (rationally) grasp the world around us." Economics not only describes the world, but establishes normative standards, identifying ideal conditions. Science, he claims, is a system of beliefs to which we are committed. To grasp the beliefs underlying economics, he breaks out of the field's confines with a tour de force exploration of economic thinking, broadly defined, over the millennia. He ranges from the epic of Gilgamesh and the Old Testament to the emergence of Christianity, from Descartes and Adam Smith to the consumerism in Fight Club. Throughout, he asks searching meta-economic questions: What is the meaning and the point of economics? Can we do ethically all that we can do technically? Does it pay to be good? Placing the wisdom of philosophers and poets over strict mathematical models of human behavior, Sedlacek's groundbreaking work promises to change the way we calculate economic value.
The Great Escape
A Nobel Prize-winning economist tells the remarkable story of how the world has grown healthier, wealthier, but also more unequal over the past two and half centuries The world is a better place than it used to be. People are healthier, wealthier, and live longer. Yet the escapes from destitution by so many has left gaping inequalities between people and nations. In The Great Escape, Nobel Prize-winning economist Angus Deaton--one of the foremost experts on economic development and on poverty--tells the remarkable story of how, beginning 250 years ago, some parts of the world experienced sustained progress, opening up gaps and setting the stage for today's disproportionately unequal world. Deaton takes an in-depth look at the historical and ongoing patterns behind the health and wealth of nations, and addresses what needs to be done to help those left behind. Deaton describes vast innovations and wrenching setbacks: the successes of antibiotics, pest control, vaccinations, and clean water on the one hand, and disastrous famines and the HIV/AIDS epidemic on the other. He examines the United States, a nation that has prospered but is today experiencing slower growth and increasing inequality. He also considers how economic growth in India and China has improved the lives of more than a billion people. Deaton argues that international aid has been ineffective and even harmful. He suggests alternative efforts--including reforming incentives to drug companies and lifting trade restrictions--that will allow the developing world to bring about its own Great Escape. Demonstrating how changes in health and living standards have transformed our lives, The Great Escape is a powerful guide to addressing the well-being of all nations.
Why Nations Fail
NEW YORK TIMES AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER - From two winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, "who have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for a country's prosperity" "A wildly ambitious work that hopscotches through history and around the world to answer the very big question of why some countries get rich and others don't."--The New York Times FINALIST: Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award - ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Financial Times, The Economist, BusinessWeek, Bloomberg, The Christian Science Monitor, The Plain Dealer Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, or geography that determines prosperity or poverty? As Why Nations Fail shows, none of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Drawing on fifteen years of original research, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is our man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or the lack of it). Korea, to take just one example, is a remarkably homogenous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created those two different institutional trajectories. Acemoglu and Robinson marshal extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, the Soviet Union, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, among them: - Will China's economy continue to grow at such a high speed and ultimately overwhelm the West? - Are America's best days behind it? Are we creating a vicious cycle that enriches and empowers a small minority? "This book will change the way people think about the wealth and poverty of nations . . . as ambitious as Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel."--BusinessWeek
Free Market Revolution
Already a National Bestseller, in Free Market Revolution, the keepers of Ayn Rand's legacy argue that the answer to our current economic woes lies not in "trickle-down government" but in Rand's inspiring philosophy of capitalism and self-interest--a philosophy that more and more people are turning to for answers. Here, Brook and Watkins explain how her ideas can solve a host of political and economic ills, including the debt crisis, looming inflation, anti-business regulation, and the swelling entitlement state. And most important, they show how Rand's principles allow defenders of the free market to seize the moral high ground in the fight to limit government. This is a fresh and urgent look at the ideas of one of the most controversial figures in modern history--ideas that may prove the only hope for the future.
Against the Consensus
In June 2008, Justin Yifu Lin was appointed Chief Economist of the World Bank, right before the eruption of the worst global financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression. Drawing on experience from his privileged position, Lin offers unique reflections on the cause of the crisis, why it was so serious and widespread, and its likely evolution. Arguing that conventional theories provide inadequate solutions, he proposes new initiatives for achieving global stability and avoiding the recurrence of similar crises in the future. He suggests that the crisis and the global imbalances both originated with the excess liquidity created by US financial deregulation and loose monetary policy, and recommends the creation of a global Marshall Plan and a new supranational global reserve currency. This thought-provoking book will appeal to academics, graduate students, policy makers, and anyone interested in the global economy.
Catching the Wind
However impressive the economic success of Penang has been over the past four decades, structural conditions in the region call for a fundamental reconfiguration of this Malaysian state's competitive advantage. In the 1970s, the ageing entrep繫t transformed itself into a manufacturing hub for the electronics industry and a well-known tourist site. This outward-looking model of economic growth has underpinned Penang's economic development up until the present. The question that now arises is whether Penang's present mode of development will continue to be effective, or whether it will have to transform itself.
The Economics of Ethnic Conflict
Investigates development practice, civil organization formation and the increase of ethnically motivated conflicts over the past two decades in Western Africa. Through richly detailed anthropological case studies of the rural economics and administrative policies in Burkina Faso, and reassessment of current models of conflict, resource management and modern administration, this book explores the current political, economic and social transformation of Western Africa. Ethnic tensions, the case studies suggest, are a strategic part of social and economic local relations - a pattern that is repeated whenethnic stereotyping finds its way into the higher echelons of national administration and of international development cooperation. Conflicts are shown to be ethnicized by local and administrative elites, creating screens impenetrable to those involved in the states' formal administration, and behind which informal local economies thrive. In these 'concealed economies' individuals exploit the ethnic divide by hiding friendly and profitable inter-ethnic relations behind a rhetoric of ethnic tensions and staged conflict. Cultivating ties across ethnic divides is not limited, however, to rural relations but becomes common practice at almost all levels of national and civil administration. Andreas Dafinger is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at the Central European University, Budapest. He has worked on Burkina Faso for almost twenty years.
What Economists Do: a Journey Through the History of Economic Thought
Economists are sometimes praised and often chastised for what happens to the nation and the world economies. But what exactly do economists do to earn either praise or scorn? Author Attiat F. Ott with Sheila Vegari explores the answer to that question in What Economists Do: A Journey through the History of Economic Thought. Ott and Vegari outline the discipline of economics through the views and ideas of nine political economists of the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and the twentieth centuries. The chronologies of ideas involve a journey through the history of economic thought from Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations to Nobel Laureate James Buchanan's The Calculus of Consent. This study reviews some of the arguments offered about economics as a science, presents the concepts of political economy, and discusses the principles of the macro economy as put forth by John Maynard Keynes in The General Theory. It also covers the idea of the public economy advanced by the classical economists and augmented by the work of Paul Samuelson, Richard Musgrave, Gordon Tullock and James Buchanan. It examines the role of the economist as a teacher, a political economist, and as an adviser to policy makers. What Economists Do: A Journey through the History of Economic Thought provides an intriguing picture of how economics has come of age through a chronology of ideas and principles that shape the world's economies.
What Economists Do: a Journey Through the History of Economic Thought
Economists are sometimes praised and often chastised for what happens to the nation and the world economies. But what exactly do economists do to earn either praise or scorn? Author Attiat F. Ott with Sheila Vegari explores the answer to that question in What Economists Do: A Journey through the History of Economic Thought. Ott and Vegari outline the discipline of economics through the views and ideas of nine political economists of the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and the twentieth centuries. The chronologies of ideas involve a journey through the history of economic thought from Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations to Nobel Laureate James Buchanan's The Calculus of Consent. This study reviews some of the arguments offered about economics as a science, presents the concepts of political economy, and discusses the principles of the macro economy as put forth by John Maynard Keynes in The General Theory. It also covers the idea of the public economy advanced by the classical economists and augmented by the work of Paul Samuelson, Richard Musgrave, Gordon Tullock and James Buchanan. It examines the role of the economist as a teacher, a political economist, and as an adviser to policy makers. What Economists Do: A Journey through the History of Economic Thought provides an intriguing picture of how economics has come of age through a chronology of ideas and principles that shape the world's economies.
Qualities of Food
In this book, available for the first time in paperback, the complexity and the significance of the foods we eat are analysed from a variety of perspectives, by sociologists, economists, geographers and anthropologists. Chapters address a number of intriguing questions: how do people make judgements about taste? How do such judgements come to be shared by groups of people? What social and organisational processes result in foods being certified as of decent or proper quality? How has dissatisfaction with the food system been expressed? what alternatives are thought to be possible? The multi-disciplinary analysis of this book explores many different answers to such questions. The first part of the book focuses on theoretical and conceptual issues, the second part considers processes of formal and informal regulation, while the third part examines social and political responses to industrialised food production and mass consumption. Qualities of food will be of interest to researchers and students in all the social science disciplines that are concerned with food, whether marketing, sociology, cultural studies, anthropology, human nutrition or economics.
The Theory of Money and Credit
"It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments." - from The Theory of Money and Credit Originally published in 1912, Ludwig von Mises's The Theory of Money and Credit remains today one of economic theory's most influential and controversial treatises. Von Mises's examination into monetary theory changed forever the world of economic thought when he successfully integrated "macroeconomics" into "microeconomics" --previously deemed an impossible task --as well as offering explanations into the origin, value and future of money. One hundred years later, von Mises and the Austrian school of economic theory are still fiercely debated by world economists in their search for the solution to America's current financial crisis. His theorems continue to inspire politicians and market experts who aim to raise up the common man and reduce the financial power of governments. In a preface added in 1952, von Mises urges the people of the world to see economic truth: "The great inflations of our age are not acts of God. They are man-made or, to say it bluntly, government-made. They are the off-shoots of doctrines that ascribe to governments the magic power of creating wealth out of nothing and of making people happy by raising the 'national income.'" "The best book on money ever written." --Murray Rothbard, economist and historian "The greatest economist of the twentieth century." --Sandeep Jaitly, economist
The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money
In 1936 Keynes published the most provocative book written by any economist of his generation. Arguments about the book continued until his death in 1946 and still continue today. This new edition, published 70 years after the original, features a new introduction by Paul Krugman which discusses the significance and continued relevance of "The General Theory,"
Infiltrated
What Every American Needs to Know About the War on Free Enterprise--and Freedom ItselfAmerica: be warned.A new wave of financial reformers has infiltrated our public institutions at both the state and national levels. A growing army of self-proclaimed activists, philanthropists, and politicians has infiltrated not only the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but the FDIC, the Treasury, and other regulatory agencies.This explosive new book from New York Times bestselling author Jay W. Richards reveals the shocking truth about: The latest financial regulations--what every consumer and businessperson needs to knowThe Dodd-Frank Reform Act--how it targets the wrong people and problemsElizabeth Warren and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau--what they're really up toConsumer credit and debt--why we need to stop blaming the banksThe war against free enterprise--what you can do to fight backThis startling account walks you through America's government and financial industry from the inside out--exposing the surprising history, the colorful characters, and the earthshaking events that got us where we are today. You'll meet the political ideologues and extremists whose good intentions paved the road to financial hell. You'll witness the "blame game" in action, as politicians and the media use the 2008 meltdown as an excuse to further their own agendas. You'll learn about the terrible consequences that sweeping government reforms have on small businesses and other industries that had nothing to do with the financial crisis.Finally, you'll find a special resource section of positive actions and ideas to help you stand up and speak out for your rights. America is at a crossroads. It is time for us to choose between stricter government control that limits our freedom or a more open free market that is the key to prosperity. This book could make all the difference.FREE ENTERPRISE IS UNDER ATTACK. THIS BOOK IS AMERICA'S WAKE-UP CALL."Big government statists have created a destructive myth that deregulation and greed caused the financial crisis. Richards demonstrates that altruistic government policies supported by crony socialists were the primary cause of the crisis. It is important to debunk the statist myth, because it has been the justification for extremely harmful public policies."John Allison, President and CEO, Cato Institute, and New York Times bestselling author of The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure"Infiltrated strips the pretense of compassion from 'community action' and rips away the patina of idealism from housing 'fairness' hustles. . . . While naming the names and crimes of housing 'charity' scammers, Richards expounds an inspiring liberation philosophy of true economic compassion and win-win economic growth for all."George Gilder, author of Knowledge and Power"Fearless and brilliant. Dr. Richards boldly addresses important consumer lending issues in a detailed and exhaustive manner. You may not like his conclusions, but to detractors I say prove him wrong. The absolute best book of its kind."Harold A. Black, PhD, Smith Professor of Finance (Emeritus), University of Tennessee"If you want to know why the popular wisdom about the causes and effects of the financial crisis is mostly wrong, and how such myths will help facilitate similar crises in the future, Jay Richards's Infiltrated is an eye-opener."Samuel Gregg, author of Becoming Europe
Reasonably Simple Economics
The goal of Reasonably Simple Economics is, not surprisingly, simple: to help us think like economists. When we do, so much of the world that seemed mysterious or baffling becomes more clear and understandable--improving our lives and providing new tools to succeed in business and career. In a chatty style, economist Evan Osborne explains the economic foundations behind the things we read about or see in the news everyday: Why prices for goods and services are what they are How government spending, regulation, and taxation can both hinder and help the economy Why and how some people get fabulously rich How entrepreneurs reorganize society beneficially Why markets sometimes fail and when or if governments should intervene when they do How economics and statistics can explain such things as discrimination in hiring and providing services (and why discriminators are shooting themselves in the foot), why we're smarter than we've ever been, and how technology makes the idea of Earth's "carrying capacity" meaningless Along the way, you will learn the basic concepts of economics that well-educated citizens in democratic countries should know, like scarcity, opportunity cost, supply and demand, all the different ways economies are "managed," and more. In the manner of The Armchair Economist, The Undercover Economist, or Naked Economics, Osborne uses current examples to illustrate the principles that underlie tragedies like the Greek economy or the global market meltdown of 2008, and triumphs like the continuing dominance of Silicon Valley in the tech world or why New York City markets are stuffed with goods despite the difficulty in getting them there. As Osborne points out, the future, in economic terms, has always been better than the past, and he shows you how to use that knowledge toimprove your life both intellectually and materially.
The Five Stages of Collapse
A user's guide to economic, political, social and cultural collapse. In the face of political impotence, resource depletion, and catastrophic climate change, many of us have become reconciled to an uncertain future. However, popular perception of how this future might actually unfold varies wildly from "a severe and prolonged recession," to James Howard Kunstler's "long emergency," to the complete breakdown of civilization. In The Five Stages of Collapse , Dmitry Orlov posits a taxonomy of collapse, offering a surprisingly optimistic perspective on surviving the sweeping changes of the day with health and sanity intact. Arguing that it is during periods of disruption and extreme uncertainty that broad cultural change becomes possible, Orlov steers the reader through the challenges of financial, commercial, and political collapse. He suggests that if the first three stages are met with the appropriate responses, further breakdown may be arrested before the extremes of social and cultural collapse are reached. Drawing on a detailed examination of post-collapse societies, including the Somali people of Africa, the Pashtuns of Afghanistan, the Roma of Central and Eastern Europe, and even the Russian mafia, The Five Stages of Collapse describes successful adaptations in areas such as finance, self-governance, and social and cultural organization. These fascinating case studies provide a unique perspective on the characteristics that determine highly resilient communities. Shot through with Orlov's trademark dark humor, this is an invaluable toolkit for creating workable post-collapse solutions. Dmitry Orlov was born in Leningrad, Russia, and immigrated to the United States. He is the author of Reinventing Collapse and maintains the phenomenally popular blog Club Orlov.
Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations
In order to understand the impact of Smith's text across the academic disciplines, this volume brings together leading scholars from fields of economics, politics, history, sociology and literature. Each essay offers a different reading of Wealth of Nations and its legacy.
The Price of Inequality
The top 1 percent of Americans control some 40 percent of the nation's wealth. But as Joseph E. Stiglitz explains in this best-selling critique of the economic status quo, this level of inequality is not inevitable. Rather, in recent years well-heeled interests have compounded their wealth by stifling true, dynamic capitalism and making America no longer the land of opportunity that it once was. They have made America the most unequal advanced industrial country while crippling growth, distorting key policy debates, and fomenting a divided society. Stiglitz not only shows how and why America's inequality is bad for our economy but also exposes the effects of inequality on our democracy and on our system of justice while examining how monetary policy, budgetary policy, and globalization have contributed to its growth. With characteristic insight, he diagnoses our weakened state while offering a vision for a more just and prosperous future.
Out of the Rabble
The world economy is in a crisis. From the United States to Europe to Africa, growing uncertainty exists over the future. In the midst of this, however, some nations are thriving. In Out of the Rabble, author David Chiweza dissects the real causes of the financial crisis and presents likely scenarios for the future. Based on Zimbabwe's past forty-five years of experience, Chiweza, a resident of Zimbabwe, relates his nation's economic fortunes to markets and establishes that all emerging economies have leveraged monopolistic domestic markets to overtake advanced economies. He sheds light on the causes of Zimbabwe's infamous economic crisis and details an industrialisation blueprint with universal strategies that have catapulted underdog nations to succeed against the odds. A comprehensive and insightful exposition of the Zimbabwean and global economic crisis, Out of the Rabble proclaims that the free markets doctrine has benefited stronger economies. It not only reveals the factors influencing the current crisis but presents a sobering exposition of economic dynamics that mark the emergence of a new economic order.
Out of the Rabble
The world economy is in a crisis. From the United States to Europe to Africa, growing uncertainty exists over the future. In the midst of this, however, some nations are thriving. In Out of the Rabble, author David Chiweza dissects the real causes of the financial crisis and presents likely scenarios for the future. Based on Zimbabwe's past forty-five years of experience, Chiweza, a resident of Zimbabwe, relates his nation's economic fortunes to markets and establishes that all emerging economies have leveraged monopolistic domestic markets to overtake advanced economies. He sheds light on the causes of Zimbabwe's infamous economic crisis and details an industrialisation blueprint with universal strategies that have catapulted underdog nations to succeed against the odds. A comprehensive and insightful exposition of the Zimbabwean and global economic crisis, Out of the Rabble proclaims that the free markets doctrine has benefited stronger economies. It not only reveals the factors influencing the current crisis but presents a sobering exposition of economic dynamics that mark the emergence of a new economic order.
The New Geography of Jobs
In The New Geography of Jobs, award-winning Berkeley economist Enrico Moretti looks at the major shifts taking place in the US economy and reveals the surprising winners and losers ​-- ​specifically, which kinds of jobs will drive economic growth and where they'll be located ​-- ​while exploring how communities can transform themselves into dynamic innovation hubs. "A timely and smart discussion of how different cities and regions have made a changing economy work for them ​-- ​and how policymakers can learn from that to lift the circumstances of working Americans everywhere." ​-- ​Barack Obama We're used to thinking of the United States in opposing terms: red versus blue, haves versus have-nots. But today there are three Americas. At one extreme are the brain hubs ​-- ​cities like San Francisco, Boston, and Durham ​-- ​with workers who are among the most productive, creative, and best paid on the planet. At the other extreme are former manufacturing capitals, which are rapidly losing jobs and residents. The rest of America could go either way. For the past thirty years, the three Americas have been growing apart at an accelerating rate. This divergence is one the most important developments in the history of the United States and is reshaping the very fabric of our society, affecting all aspects of our lives, from health and education to family stability and political engagement. But the winners and losers aren't necessarily who you'd expect. Enrico Moretti's groundbreaking research shows that you don't have to be a scientist or an engineer to thrive in one of the brain hubs. Carpenters, taxi drivers, teachers, nurses, and other local service jobs are created at a ratio of five-to-one in the brain hubs, raising salaries and standard of living for all. Dealing with this split ​-- ​supporting growth in the hubs while arresting the decline elsewhere ​-- ​is the challenge of the century, and The New Geography of Jobs lights the way.
Paper Promises
Winner of the Spear's Best Business Book Award Longlisted for the 2012 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award For the past forty years western economies have splurged on debt. Now, as the reality dawns that many debts cannot be repaid, we find ourselves again in crisis. But the oncoming defaults have a time-worn place in our economic history. As with the crises in the 1930s and 1970s, governments will fall, currencies will lose their value, and new systems will emerge. Just as Britain set the terms of the international system in the nineteenth century, and America in the twentieth century, a new system will be set by today's creditors in China and the Middle East. In the process, rich will be pitted against poor, young against old, public sector workers against taxpayers and one country against another. In Paper Promises, Economist columnist Philip Coggan helps us to understand the origins of this mess and how it will affect the new global economy by explaining how our attitudes towards debt have changed throughout history, and how they may be about to change again.
The Impact of China on Global Commodity Prices
Drawing on a large number of diverse sources, The Impact of China on Global Commodity Prices comprehensively and systematically evidences the trends in the prices of different sets of commodities, analyses the drivers of China's demand for commodities the factors constraining global supply and in the role which the financialisation of commodities is playing in constraining commodity production. It also documents and the growing role of China as a foreign investor in the commodities sectors. All of these trends are woven together to explore the fabric of strategic choices confronting public and private sector decision-makers.
China's Post-Reform Economy
This book discusses the very latest issues relating to China's remarkable economic growth. It provides comprehensive coverage of them, including economic, political-economic, environmental and philosophical questions.
Undue Influence
A critical look at over 80 years of conflict, collusion, and corruption between financiers and politicians Undue Influence paints a vivid portrait of the dealings between "the few", in this case members of Congress, the banking community, and the Fed, and sheds light on how radical new deregulatory measures could be introduced by unelected officials and then foisted upon Congress in the name of progress. In the process, the background of the new financial elite is examined-because they are markedly different than their predecessors of the 1920s and 1930s. Undue Influence also brings readers up to speed on other important issues, including how the financial elite has been able to perpetuate itself, how the markets lend themselves to these special interest groups, and how it is possible that after 80 years of financial regulation and regulatory bodies the same problems of financial malfeasance and fraud still plague the markets. Charles R. Geisst (Oradell, NJ) is the author of 15 books, including Wheels of Fortune (0-471-47973-X), Deals of the Century (0-471-26397-4) and the bestsellers Wall Street: A History and 100 Years of Wall Street. Geisst has taught both political science and finance, worked in banking and finance on Wall Street and in London, as well as consulted. His articles have been published in the International Herald Tribune, Neue Zurcher Zeitung, Newsday, Wall Street Journal, and Euromoney.
Enough Is Enough
It's time for a new kind of economy We're overusing the earth's finite resources, and yet excessive consumption is failing to improve our lives. In Enough Is Enough, Rob Dietz and Dan O'Neill lay out a visionary but realistic alternative to the perpetual pursuit of economic growth - an economy where the goal is enough, not more. They explore specific strategies to conserve natural resources, stabilize population, reduce inequality, fix the financial system, create jobs, and more - all with the aim of maximizing long-term well-being instead of short-term profits. Filled with fresh ideas and surprising optimism, Enough Is Enough is the primer for achieving genuine prosperity and a hopeful future for all. If you are based in the USA and would like to purchase this book, please visit www.bkconnection.com or, if you are based in Canada, please visit www.raincoast.com.
Financing the Raj
A detailed analysis of how government in India was financed during the period of direct British rule. This book explores the financial relationship between the Indian government, as represented by the India Office, and the City of London during the period of direct British rule. The universally accepted view is that the Office acted in the interests of the City and to the detriment of India. Financing the Raj disputes this conclusion. It argues that India was a constituent part of the City, contributing to and benefitting from its operation throughthe formation of close symbiotic and trust relationships, the exchange of gifts, the recycling of funds, and, perhaps most significantly, the support of the gold standard. The book examines the Office's activities from a British and practical perspective. In the first part, the issue and sale/purchase on the London market of Indian government debt is explored. Next, the author discusses the purchase of silver and the 'scandal' of 1912, when the awardof a major contract to the family firm of the Under Secretary of State for India led to accusations of cronyism and fraud. The finance of Indian trade, the management of exchange rates and the transfer from India to London of themoney needed to meet the Indian government's UK commitments are then investigated. The book concludes with an analysis of the Office's investment role and its management of the three cash reserves held in the capital. Financing the Raj overturns many myths, demonstrating that those involved in Indian finance did work in the best interests of India and were well aware of the close interrelationship between Indian finance, the City of London andthe wider British economy. It will be of interest both to historians of empire and historians of finance. DAVID SUNDERLAND is Reader in Business History at the University of Greenwich and the author of four monographs and numerous articles on the economic history of London, British Imperialism and nineteenth-century social capital. He is also Series and Collection editor of Pickering & Chatto's Britain and Africa series of source monographs.
Enough Is Enough
This powerful book sets out arguments and an agenda of policy proposals for achieving a sustainable and prosperous, but non-growing economy, also known as a steady-state economy. The authors describe a plan for solving the major social and environmental problems which face us today on a finite planet with a rapidly growing population.
Economic Growth and Environmental Regulation
This volume assembles a group of eminent scholars to look at the problem of growth and environment from the perspective of environmental regulation. The questions addressed are: How does economic growth interact with regulation, and what are the best approaches to regulation in use today? The context for the volume is the current situation in China, where twenty years of rapid growth have created a situation in which there are both demands for environmental regulation and needs for choosing a future development path.
Leaving Liberty?
Politics can impact the marketplace in a big way. In Leaving Liberty?, author Martin Mazorra presents a collection of essays that explores the important relationship between politics and economics. Delivered in a daily devotional format of thirty-one essays, Leaving Liberty? provides insight into the long-term effects of a growing government and answers a host of related questions: - Will extending unemployment benefits inspire longer terms of unemployment? - Is raising the minimum wage ultimately good for young and unskilled workers? - How can governments spend beyond their means and rack up debt, while a company or a household doing the same would have gone bankrupt long ago? - Is bailing out failed institutions truly in our best interest? - Why do seemingly bright people in high positions continue to make egregious mistakes? Clear and concise, this collection touts the benefits of a free-market economy while offering a fundamental understanding of the global economy and the integral economic role that politics plays throughout the world.
Critical Economic Methodology
Taking issue with both economic methodologists and practicing economists, the author argues both that there has been too much 'methodology for methodology's sake' and that mainstream economics might benefit by using it.
Service Industries and Asia Pacific Cities
This book brings together a multi-disciplinary team of experts to explore and illustrate the theoretical, conceptual and practical issues arising from the transformation of Asia-Pacific cities by service industries.
Institutional and Technological Change in Japan's Economy
Institutional and technological change is a highly topical subject. At the theoretical level, there is much debate in the field of institutional economics about the role of technological change in endogenous growth theory. At a practical policy level, arguments rage about how Japan and the Japanese economy should plan for the future. In this book, leading economists and economic historians of Japan examine a range of key issues concerning institutional and technological change in Japan, rigorously using discipline-based tools of analysis, and drawing important conclusions as to how the process of change in these areas actually works. In applying these ideas to Japan, the writers in this volume are focusing on an issue which is currently being much debated in the country itself, and are helping our understanding of the world's second-largest economy.
Rationality and Irrationality in Economics
This book is the result of a research project begun by the author in 1958 with the aim of answering two questions: First, what is the rationality of the economic systems that appear and disappear throughout history--in other words, what is their hidden logic and the underlying necessity for them to exist, or to have existed? Second, what are the conditions for a rational understanding of these systems--in other words, for a fully developed comparative economic science? The field of investigation opened up by these two questions is vast, touching on the foundations of social reality and on how to understand them. The author, being a Marxist, sought the answers, as he writes, 'not in philosophy or by philosophical means, but in and through examining the knowledge accumulated by the sciences.' The stages of his journey from philosophy to economics and then to anthropology are indicated by the divisions of his book. Godelier rejects, at the outset, any attempt to tackle the question of rationality or irrationality of economic science and of economic realities from the angle of an a priori idea, a speculative definition of what is rational. Such an approach can yield only, he feels, an ideological result. Rather, he treats the appearance and disappearance of social and economic systems in history as being governed by a necessity 'wholly internal to the concrete structures of social life.
