Best of
Economics

1932

The Modern Corporation and Private Property


Adolf Augustus Berle - 1932
    Graced with a new introduction by Weidenbaum and Jensen, this new edition makes this classic available to a new generation. Written in the early 1930s, The Modern Corporation and Private Property remains the fundamental introduction to the internal organization of the corporation in modern society. Combining the analytical skills of an attorney with those of an economist, Berle and Means raise the central questions, even when their answers have been superseded by changing circumstances.The book's most enduring theme is the separation of ownership from control of the modern corporation and its consequences. Berle and Means display keen awareness of the divergent interests of directors and managers, and of each from owners of the firm. Among their predictions are the characteristic increase in size of the modem corporation and concentration of the economy. The authors view stock exchanges and stock markets as essential by-products of the rise of the modem corporation, and explore how these function. They address the difficult questions of whether corporations operate for the benefit of owners or managers, and explore what motivates managers to make effective use of corporate assets. Finally, they examine the role of the corporation as the prevailing form of organizing the production and distribution of goods and services.In their new introduction, Weidenbaum and Jensen, co-directors of the Center for the Study of American Business at Washington University, critically assess the impact of developments not fully anticipated by Berle and Means, such as the rise of the service sector, and the significant role played by institutional investors in the owner/manager equation. They note the authors' prescient observations, including the complex role of and motivating influences on professional managers, and the significance of inside information on stock markets. As they note, The Modern Corporation and Private Property remains of central value to all those concerned with the evolution of this major social institution of the twentieth century. Scholar and practitioner alike will find it of enduring significance.

Booms and Depressions


Irving Fisher - 1932
    1, 1932.The vast field of "business cycles" is one on which I had scarcecly ever entered before, and I had never attempted to analyze it as a whole.The scope of the present work is restricted, for the most part, to the role of nine main factors, not because they cover the whole subject, but because they include what seem to me to be the outstanding influences in the present, as well as in most, if not all, other major depressions…"

Crises and Cycles


Wilhelm Röpke - 1932
    But this splendid and critically important treatise would certainly be among the nominees.Until this edition, this book has been darn-near impossible to obtain short of stealing from the Library of Congress. As a matter of fact, it has been mysteriously missing off the shelves there for years, so the only copies extant have been photocopies of photocopies 50 times over.So at last: we can present to you Crises and Cycles by one of the greats.During the thick of the Great Depression, the same year as John Maynard Keynes came out with his treatise, Wilhelm Röpke made this contribution to macroeconomics: an excellent exposition of the Austrian Cycle theory in the tradition of Mises and Hayek.He refutes Keynes before Keynes became popular, and also provides an argument against other prevailing theories. Röpke is not perfect: while his analysis is excellent, he recommends a reflation after deflation. Nonetheless, this is an important and much-sought-after treatise by an important member of the Austrian School.

The Theory of the Social Economy


Gustav Cassel - 1932
    It contains in particular a summary of my theory of Purchasing Power Parity. I have also added a fifth book, containing a short exposition of the theory of international trade as this theory presents itself in the light of the Purchasing Power Parity theory.