Best of
Economics

1983

How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America: Problems in Race, Political Economy, and Society


Manning Marable - 1983
    Unfortunately, Marable's blistering insights into racial injustice and economic inequality remain depressingly relevant. But the good news is that Marable's prescient analysis-and his eloquent and self-critical preface to this new edition-will prove critical in helping us to think through and conquer the oppressive forces that remain."-Michael Eric Dyson, author of I May Not Get Therewith You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr."For those of us who came of political age in the 1980s, Manning Marable's How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America was one of our bibles. Published during the cold winter of Reaganism, he introduced a new generation of Black activists/thinkers to class and gender struggles within Black communities, the political economy of incarceration, the limitations of Black capitalism, and the nearly forgotten vision of what a socialist future might look like. Two decades later, Marable's urgent and hopeful voice is as relevant as ever."-Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Yo' Mama's DisFunktional!:

Why Stocks Go Up and Down


William H. Pike - 1983
    The book explains the basics of financial statements and analysis, cash flow generation, stock price valuation, and more. It goes well beyond most introductory books. It is perfect for readers with little or no background in investing and is certain to add value for experienced investors as well.Who should read this book? New investors who want a solid background in stock and bond fundamentals. Anyone planning to take an introductory accounting or investment course. Readers of popular investment books who encounter terms or concepts they do not understand.

The Mystery of Banking


Murray N. Rothbard - 1983
    Rothbard's extraordinary book unravels the mystery of banking: what is legitimate enterprise and what is a government-backed shell game that can't last. His explanation is clear enough for anyone to follow and yet precise and rigorous enough to be the best, textbook for college classes on the topic. This is because its expositional clarity--in its hitosry and theory--is essentially unrivaled. Most notably, he uses the T account method of explaining the relationship between deposits and loans, showing the inherent instability of fractional reserve banking and how it sets the stage for centralization, inflation, and the boost-bust cycle.But there is more here. It is an explanation of money's origins and its meaning in the free market. The abstract theory is here but always with real application in history and in modern banking practice. Never does a paragraph go by without an example drawn from his massive knowledge of the subject.

The Economics and Politics of Race


Thomas Sowell - 1983
    7 cassettes.

John Maynard Keynes, Vol. 1: Hopes Betrayed, 1883-1920


Robert Skidelsky - 1983
    He gives an analysis of the economist's sustained assault on conventional wisdom, and shows how Keynes' story is not just that of a revolution in economic theory, but also part of the story of the evolution of modern government.

Power Generation, Operation, and Control


Allen J. Wood - 1983
    Wood and Bruce F. Wollenberg presented their comprehensive introduction to the engineering and economic factors involved in operating and controlling power generation systems in electric utilities, the electric power industry has undergone unprecedented change. Deregulation, open access to transmission systems, and the birth of independent power producers have altered the structure of the industry, while technological advances have created a host of new opportunities and challenges. In Power Generation, Operation, and Control, Second Edition, Wood and Wollenberg bring professionals and students alike up to date on the nuts and bolts of the field. Continuing in the tradition of the first edition, they offer a practical, hands-on guide to theoretical developments and to the application of advanced operations research methods to realistic electric power engineering problems. This one-of-a-kind text also addresses the interaction between human and economic factors to prepare readers to make real-world decisions that go beyond the limits of mere technical calculations. The Second Edition features vital new material, including: * A computer disk developed by the authors to help readers solve complicated problems * Examination of Optimal Power Flow (OPF) * Treatment of unit commitment expanded to incorporate the Lagrange relaxation technique * Introduction to the use of bounding techniques and other contingency selection methods * Applications suited to the new, deregulated systems as well as to the traditional, vertically organized utilities company Wood and Wollenberg draw upon nearly 30 years of classroom testing to provide valuable data on operations research, state estimation methods, fuel scheduling techniques, and more. Designed for clarity and ease of use, this invaluable reference prepares industry professionals and students to meet the future challenges of power generation, operation, and control.

Nation, State, and Economy: Contributions to the Politics and History of Our Time


Ludwig von Mises - 1983
    Prior to the nineteenth century, the boundaries of a state were determined by conquest, coercion, rulers, and princes; the people had nothing to say in the matter. A nation, composed of persons speaking the same language and to a large extent sharing the same culture, was an essentially neutral concept, in no way incompatible with a liberal economy, individual freedom, democracy, and the right of self-determination. Yet this peaceful nationalism gave way to militarism, international conflict, and war. Why?Nations, like individuals, learn from experience. The largely liberal movement for a “greater Germany,” composed of Germany, German-Austria, and scattered enclaves of German nationals in neighboring countries, was frustrated by the state in the form of the Kingdom of Prussia, which became the German Empire, and the Hapsburg Empire of Austria-Hungary. Essential to Mises’s concept of a classical liberal economy is the absence of interference by the state. Under the chancellorship of Bismarck, the essentially reactionary German state became increasingly intrusive in every aspect of the nation—economic, social, and of course political. As the German state sought to become stronger by forcefully acquiring additional territory, German nationalism became increasingly militaristic and imperialistic, leading to international conflict and war. In World War I, Germany and its allies were overpowered by the Allied Powers in population, economic production, and military might. Because Germany needed imports to survive, much less to wage war, and was cut off from foreign suppliers, its defeat was inevitable.Mises believed that Germany should not seek revenge for the “fetters . . . forced upon German development by the peace of Versailles.” Rather, his theme throughout this book is that Germany should adopt liberal ideas and a free market economy by expanding the international division of labor, which would help all parties. “For us and for humanity,” Mises wrote, “there is only one salvation: return to rationalistic liberalism.” Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) was the leading spokesman of the Austrian School of Economics throughout most of the twentieth century. He earned his doctorate in law and economics from the University of Vienna in 1906. In 1926, Mises founded the Austrian Institute for Business Cycle Research. From 1909 to 1934, he was an economist for the Vienna Chamber of Commerce. Before the Anschluss, in 1934 Mises left for Geneva, where he was a professor at the Graduate Institute of International Studies until 1940, when he emigrated to New York City. From 1948 to 1969, he was a visiting professor at New York University.Bettina Bien Greaves is a former resident scholar, trustee, and longtime staff member of the Foundation for Economic Education. She has written and lectured extensively on topics of free market economics. Her articles have appeared in such journals as Human Events, Reason, and The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty. A student of Mises, Greaves has become an expert on his work in particular and that of the Austrian School of economics in general. She has translated several Mises monographs, compiled an annotated bibliography of his work, and edited collections of papers by Mises and other members of the Austrian School.

The Anatomy of Power


John Kenneth Galbraith - 1983
    

Reason in Human Affairs


Herbert A. Simon - 1983
    What can reason (or more broadly, thinking) do for us and what can't it do? This is the question examined by the author, who received the 1978 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences "for his pioneering work on decision-making processes in economic organizations."

Abortion And Liberty


Ron Paul - 1983
    

Rural Development: Putting the Last First


Robert Chambers - 1983
    Dr Chambers contends that researchers, scientists, administrators and fieldworkers rarely appreciate the richness and validity of rural people's knowledge or the hidden nature of rural poverty. This is a challenging book for all concerned with rural development, as practitioners, academics, students or researchers.

Inside the Black Box: Technology and Economics


Nathan Rosenberg - 1983
    The purpose of Professor Rosenberg's work is to break open and examine the contents of the black box. In so doing, a number of important economic problems be powerfully illuminated. The author clearly shows how specific features of individual technologies have shaped a number of variables of great concern to economists: the rate of productivity improvement, the nature of learning processes underlying technological change itself, the speed of technology transfer, and the effectiveness of government policies that are intended to influence technologies in particular ways. The separate chapters of this book reflect a primary concern with some of the distinctive aspects of industrial technologies in the twentieth century, such as the increasing reliance upon science, but also the considerable subtlety and complexity of the dialectic between science and technology. Other concerns include the rapid growth in the development of costs associated with new technologies as well as the difficulty of predicting the eventual performance characteristics of newly emerging technologies.

Economics


Gerardo P. Sicat - 1983
    Sicat

The First Industrial Nation: The Economic History of Britain 1700 - 1914


Peter Mathias - 1983
    A chapter-by-chapter analysis explores topics such as economic growth, agriculture, trade finance, labour and transport. First published in 1969, The First Industrial Nation is widely recognised as a classic text for students of the industrial revolution.

Boys From The Blackstuff


Alan Bleasdale - 1983
    This book contains the complete scripts of all five plays from the original TV drama series, clearly organised for reading or studying in class, with an introduction and suggestions for related work.

The Laws of Chaos


Emmanuel Farjoun - 1983
    It relies on probabilistic and statistical methods, of the kind used in the modern foundations of several other sciences.

Quiet Violence: View from a Bangladesh Village


Betsy Hartmann - 1983
    In this book, two Bengali-speaking Americans take the reader to a Bangladesh village where they lived for nine months. There, the reader meets some of the world's poorest people - peasants, sharecroppers and landless labourers - and some of the not-so-poor people who profit from their misery. The villagers' poverty is not fortuitous, a result of divine dispensation or individual failings of character. Rather, it is the outcome of a long history of exploitation, culminating in a social order which today benefits a few at the expense of many.

Leading Issues in Economic Development


James Rauch - 1983
    These articles are edited to provide greater accessibility to an undergraduate audience and organized thematically using overview essays along with explanatory notes and comments. This distinctive approach allows for a variety of perspectives while keeping the most important overall themes in sight.This extensive collection of articles and essays is prefaced with an introductory section that covers the measurement of development, recent economic performance of less developed countries, and the discipline of development economics. It also provides historical perspective on how the world divided into rich and poor countries and treatments of international trade, human resources, investment and finance, urbanization and the informal sector, agriculture, income distribution, political economy, as well as development and the environment.

Silent Violence: Food, Famine, & Peasantry in Northern Nigeria


Michael J. Watts - 1983
    

Too Many Women?: The Sex Ratio Question


Marcia Guttentag - 1983
    No similar book is available to

Political Economy of Socialism


Branko Horvat - 1983
    It explores social relations and politics, presenting a critique of contemporary socioeconomic systems and discussions on the Marxist Doctrine of Transition. The book is intended to meet Robert Heilbroner's request.

Incentives for Environmental Protection


Thomas C. Schelling - 1983
    It also compares he advantages and disadvantages of this approach to those that characterize the policy of compliance to regulatory standards. And it identifies the criteria on which either pricing mechanisms or regulatory standards should be based.Three case studies comprise the heart of the book. One investigates carcinogenic chemical emissions, another audits the tradeoffs in controlling aircraft noise near major airports, and the third treats the protection of air quality from pollution by primarily stationary sources.The case studies are introduced by a chapter that gives numerous examples of possible pricing approaches and identifies common lessons that the three diverse studies reinforce.: The studies are followed by a chapter which is based on interviews with Congressional staff, environmentalists, and industrial lobbyists and other interest groups in Washington, revealing their assessments of pricing mechanisms in environmental protection.Thomas C. Schelling and his co-authors - David Harrison, Jr., Albert L. Nichols, Robert Repetto, and Steven J. Kelman - are all affiliated with the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. The book is fifth in the series, Regulation of Economic Activity.

The Power in the Land


Fred Harrison - 1983
    Policy-makers are in a dilemma, for every prescription has its negative: monetarism - unemployment Keynesianism - inflation and the planned economy - authoritarianism. This dilemma, the author argues, stems from a distortion in our understanding of how the industrial economy works, a distortion he traces back to Adam Smith.Adam Smith provided the captains of industry with a theoretical framework and moral justification for the new mode of production which sprang from the Industrial Revolution. He believed he was setting out the rules for a free market system but, inconsistently, he granted landowners an exemption enabling them to exert a monopoly influence on the market which remains to this day.The Marxist critique blames the capitalist for the ills of the system, yet Marx himself acknowledged that the power of the owners of capital rested on the power inherent in land. Both Marx and Smith recognized the special role of landowners who, in the words of J.S.Mill, "grow richer in their sleep without working, risking or economizing", but neither pursued the macro-economic implications and, if anything, covered them up.The author looks at the implications: the conflict between labour and capital is a false one that obstructs a rational strategy for rescuing the Western economy the origins of the collapse of the 1980s are to be found in land speculation this exploitation of the unique power, intrinsic to land, gives rise to inner city decay, urban sprawl, misallocation of resources, mass unemployment and the meteoric rise of property values.The major industrial nations enter the1990s in the midst of land booms offering riches for a few but unemployment for many: banks in Texas have been bankrupted by massive speculation in real estate and even embassies have had to abandon their offices because they could not afford the rents in Tokyo. In Britain, the spoils from housing - the direct result of the way the land market operates - have enriched owner-occupiers but crippled the flow of workers into regions where entrepreneurs wanted to invest and lead the economy back to full employment.Thus, it is the author's thesis that land speculation is the major cause of depressions. He shows how the land market functions to distort the relations between labour and capital and how land speculation periodically chokes off economic expansion, causing stagnation.The remedy proposed by the author is a fiscal one which would remove the disruptive factor of land speculation and transfer the burden of taxes from labour and capital to economic rent, a publicly created revenue. This would create employment and higher growth rates, while avoiding the inflation-risk policy of deficit financing increased consumption and investment would be generated by the private sector, not goverment.

Scotland: The Real Divide - Poverty and Deprivation in Scotland


Gordon Brown - 1983
    

Pioneer Settlement in the Asiatic Tropics: Studies in Land Utilization and Agricultural Colonization in Southeastern Asia


Karl J. Pelzer - 1983
    

The Organization of Industry


George J. Stigler - 1983
    The essays are unified by George J. Stigler's careful analysis and by his clear and witty style.In part one, Stigler examines the nature of competition and monopoly. In part two he discusses the forces that determine the size structure of industry, including barriers to entry, economics of scale, and mergers. Part three contains articles on a wide range of topics, such as profitability, delivered price systems, block booking, the economics of information, and the kinky oligopoly demand curve and rigid price. Part four offers a discussion of antitrust policy and includes Stigler's recommendations for future policy as well as an examination of the effects of past policies. "Stigler's writings might well be subtitled 'The Joys of Doing Economics.' He, more than any other contemporary American economist, dispels the gloom surrounding economic theory. It is impossible to confront the subject treated with such humor and verve and come away still believing that economics is the dismal science."—Shirley B. Johnson, American Scholar

Knowledge, Evolution And Society


Friedrich A. Hayek - 1983
    

Morals and Markets: The Development of Life Insurance in the United States


Viviana A. Rotman Zelizer - 1983
    The process of monetarizing life remains a perplexing phenomenon. With lively detail Zelizer chronicles the fascinating development in the second half of the nineteenth century of the life insurance industry in the United States--one of the most unusual tales in the history of American business. This book portrays the controversial origins of the life insurance industry, which was once widely condemned and denounced by newspapers and religious leaders as sacrilegious and immoral.

Paul Samuelson and Modern Economic Theory


E. Cary Brown - 1983
    

Volkskapitalisme: Class, Capital and Ideology in the Development of Afrikaner Nationalism, 1934-1948


Dan O'Meara - 1983
    Volkskapitalisme (the nationalist term for Afrikaner capital) analyses the development of Afrikaner nationalism from the early thirties to the election victory of the Nationalist Party in 1948. The book sets out to refute the commonly held belief that the nationalist policies of apartheid are simply the product of 'irrational' racial ideology. Dan O'Meara examines here for the first time the relationship between the emergence of 'Afrikaner' capital in the so-called Economic Movement of the 1940s and the political and ideological forms of development of Afrikaner nationalism. During these years, far from being a monolithic movement of an ethnically mobilised group, Afrikaner nationalism emerged as an alliance of conflicting class forces. Dan O'Meara's examination of the development of Afrikaner capital and the interplay of ideology, class and economic interests in Afrikaner nationalism is essential reading for all concerned with past political struggles in southern Africa.

America: A Minority Viewpoint (Hoover Institution Press Publication)


Walter E. Williams - 1983
    

Theories of Inflation


Helmut Frisch - 1983
    A survey of the new theories of inflation that have developed over the past two decades in response to the inflationary pressures experienced by Western countries examines the shifting debate from explaining inflation as a causal process to explaining its increase as a result of constantly changing expectations.

Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment


Istvan Hont - 1983
    Its unique range indicates the scope of the Scottish intellectual achievement of the eighteenth century and explores the process by which the boundaries between economic thought, jurisprudence, moral philosophy and theoretical history came to be established.Dealing not only with major figures like Hume and Smith, there are also studies of lesser known thinkers like Andrew Fletcher, Gershom Carmichael, Lord Kames and John Millar as well as of Locke in the light of eighteenth century social theory, the intellectual culture of the University of Edinburgh in the middle of the eighteenth century and of the performance of the Scottish economy on the eve of the publication of the Wealth of Nations. While the scholarly emphasis is on the rigorous historical reconstruction of both theory and context, Wealth and Virtue directly addresses itself to modern political theorists and economists and throws light on a number of major focal points of controversy in legal and political philosophy.

Late Marx and the Russian Road: Marx and the Peripheries of Capitalism


Teodor Shanin - 1983
    Includes translations of Marx's notes from the 1880s, among the most important finds of the last century.

The Economics of Inequality


Anthony B. Atkinson - 1983
    

A History of Commerce (The World economy)


Clive Day - 1983
    Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER LVII CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE, 1914-1920 754. Territorial losses of Germany. -- By the terms of peace Germany ceded territory in the west to France and Belgium, in the north to Denmark, in the east to Poland. The most serious losses were comprised in the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, and in part of the province of Silesia. Upper Silesia contained mineral deposits, particularly coal, which the Germans asserted to be indispensable to the industrial development of their country, and the contest over the rights involved delayed a decision for more than two years after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. The final award, rendered by a commission of the League of Nations, divided between Germany and Poland the territory in dispute but arranged that for a period of fifteen years the whole area be kept under the control of a commission which should recognize the mixture of interests and should maintain free economic intercourse. The total losses of Germany, measured in area, population, agricultural and industrial resources, ranged from 10 to 15 per cent. Losses in particular resources of great industrial importance were still more serious. The country was obliged to abandon mines supplying about one-quarter of the annual output of coal, three-quarters of the iron output, even a higher proportion of the output of zinc. 755. Internal losses of the country. -- These losses fixed by the terms of peace were added to the loss which Germany had already suffered in the course of the war. The population in 1914 was 68,000,000. Deaths in the army amounted to 1,800,000, and the number of wounded was over 4,000,000. In the civilian population, also, the mortality in the latter part of the war had been very high and the vitality of...

A History of Economic Reasoning


Karl Přibram - 1983
    

The World's Money: International Banking, From Bretton Woods To The Brink Of Insolvency


Michael Moffitt - 1983