Best of
Economics

2003

The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron


Bethany McLean - 2003
    And thirty years later, if you're going to read only one book on Watergate, that's still the one. Today, Enron is the biggest business story of our time, and Fortune senior writers Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind are the new Woodward and Bernstein.Remarkably, it was just two years ago that Enron was thought to epitomize a great New Economy company, with its skyrocketing profits and share price. But that was before Fortune published an article by McLean that asked a seemingly innocent question: How exactly does Enron make money? From that point on, Enron's house of cards began to crumble. Now, McLean and Elkind have investigated much deeper, to offer the definitive book about the Enron scandal and the fascinating people behind it.Meticulously researched and character driven, 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. Smartest Guys in the Room is a story of greed, arrogance, and deceit—a microcosm of all that is wrong with American business today. Above all, it's a fascinating human drama that will prove to be the authoritative account of the Enron scandal.

Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One


Thomas Sowell - 2003
    It examines economic policies not simply in terms of their immediate effects but also in terms of their later repercussions, which are often very different and longer lasting. The interplay of politics with economics is another theme of Applied Economics, whose examples are drawn from experiences around the world, showing how similar incentives and constraints tend to produce similar outcomes among very disparate peoples and cultures.

The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power


Joel Bakan - 2003
    Eminent Canadian law professor and legal theorist Joel Bakan contends that today's corporation is a pathological institution, a dangerous possessor of the great power it wields over people and societies.In this revolutionary assessment of the history, character, and globalization of the modern business corporation, Bakan backs his premise with the following observations:-The corporation’s legally defined mandate is to pursue relentlessly and without exception its own economic self-interest, regardless of the harmful consequences it might cause to others. -The corporation’s unbridled self-interest victimizes individuals, society, and, when it goes awry, even shareholders and can cause corporations to self-destruct, as recent Wall Street scandals reveal. -Governments have freed the corporation, despite its flawed character, from legal constraints through deregulation and granted it ever greater authority over society through privatization.But Bakan believes change is possible and he outlines a far-reaching program of achievable reforms through legal regulation and democratic control.Featuring in-depth interviews with such wide-ranging figures as Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman, business guru Peter Drucker, and cultural critic Noam Chomsky, The Corporation is an extraordinary work that will educate and enlighten students, CEOs, whistle-blowers, power brokers, pawns, pundits, and politicians alike.

Saving Capitalism From The Capitalists: How Open Financial Markets Challenge the Establishment and Spread Prosperity to Rich and Poor Alike


Raghuram G. Rajan - 2003
    Financial markets are the least understood and most highly criticized part of the capitalist system. The greed of participants involved in scandals like Enron adds fuel to the fire that these markets are a tool of the rich. Powerful interest groups oppose markets, especially financial markets, because markets undermine their power. Winners in the market want to entrench their position and prevent others from breaking through by suppressing markets. Losers would also like to suppress the market because they cannot compete. Saving Capitalism From the Capitalists explores how financial markets free human ingenuity, make nations competitive and are the basis for broadening prosperity.

Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich--and Cheat Everybody Else


David Cay Johnston - 2003
    Tax policies and their enforcement have become a disaster, and thanks to discreet lobbying by a segment of the top 1 percent, Washington is reluctant or unable to fix them. The corporate income tax, the estate tax, and the gift tax have been largely ignored by the media. But the cumulative results are remarkable: today someone who earns a yearly salary of $60,000 pays a larger percentage of his income in taxes than the four hundred richest Americans.Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter David Cay Johnston exposes exactly how the middle class is being squeezed to create a widening wealth gap that threatens the stability of the country. By relating the compelling tales of real people across all areas of society, he reveals the truth behind:- Middle class tax cuts and exactly whom they benefit. - How workers are being cheated out of their retirement plans while disgraced CEOs walk away with millions. - How some corporations avoid paying any federal income tax. - How a law meant to prevent cheating by the top 2 percent of Americans no longer affects most of them, but has morphed into a stealth tax on single mothers making just $28,000. - Why the working poor are seven times more likely to be audited by the IRS than everyone else. - How the IRS became so weak that even when it was handed complete banking records detailing massive cheating by 1,600 people, it prosecuted only 4 percent of them.Johnston has been breaking pieces of this story on the front page of The New York Times for seven years. With Perfectly Legal, he puts the whole shocking narrative together in a way that will stir up media attention and make readers angry about the state of our country.

Princes of the Yen: Japan's Central Bankers and the Transformation of the Economy


Richard A. Werner - 2003
    It gives special emphasis to the 1980s and 1990s when Japan's economy experienced vast swings in activity. According to the author, the most recent upheaval in the Japanese economy is the result of the policies of a central bank less concerned with stimulating the economy that with its own turf battles and its ideological agenda to change Japan's economic structure. The book combines new historical research with an in-depth behind-the-scenes account of the bureaucratic competition between Japan's most important institutions: the Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Japan. Drawing on new economic data and first-hand eyewitness accounts, it reveals little known monetary policy tools at the core of Japan's business cycle, identifies the key figures behind Japan's economy, and discusses their agenda. The book also highlights the implications for the rest of the world, and raises important questions about the concentration of power within central banks.

John Maynard Keynes: 1883-1946: Economist, Philosopher, Statesman


Robert Skidelsky - 2003
    Here, Skidelsky has revised and abridged his magnum opus into one definitive book, which examines in its entirety the intellectual and ideological journey that led an extraordinarily gifted young man to concern himself with the practical problems of an age overshadowed by war. John Maynard Keynes offers a sympathetic account of the life of a passionate visionary and an invaluable insight into the economic philosophy that still remains at the centre of political and economic thought.ROBERT SKIDELSKY is Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick. His three volume biography of John Maynard Keynes (1983, 1992, 2000) received numerous prizes, including the Lionel Gelber Prize for International Relations and the Council on Foreign Relations Prize for International Relations. ('This three-volume life of the British economist should be given a Nobel Prize for History if there was such a thing' - Norman Stone.) He was made a life peer in 1991, and a Fellow of the British Academy in 1994.'A masterpiece of biographical and historical analysis' - New York Times

Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy


Ted Nace - 2003
    Designed to seek profit and power, it has pursued both with endless tenacity, steadily bending the framework of law and even challenging the sovereign status of the state.After selling his successful computer book publishing business to a large corporation, Ted Nace felt increasingly driven to find answers to questions about where the corporation came from, how it got so much power, and where it is going. In Gangs of America he details the rise of corporate power in America through a series of fascinating stories, each organized around a different facet of the central question: "How did corporations get more rights than people?" Nace traces the events and people that have shaped the modern corporation to give us a fascinating look into the rise of corporate power.

The Myth of National Defense


Hans-Hermann Hoppe - 2003
    It argues that "national defense" as provided by government is a myth not unlike the myth of socialism itself. It is more viably privatized and replaced by the market provision of security.

The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality


Thomas M. Shapiro - 2003
    But alongside these encouraging signs, Thomas Shapiro argues in The Hidden Cost of Being African American, fundamentallevels of racial inequality persist, particularly in the area of asset accumulation--inheritance, savings accounts, stocks, bonds, home equity, and other investments. Shapiro reveals how the lack of these family assets along with continuing racial discrimination in crucial areas like homeownershipdramatically impact the everyday lives of many black families, reversing gains earned in schools and on jobs, and perpetuating the cycle of poverty in which far too many find themselves trapped. Shapiro uses a combination of in-depth interviews with almost 200 families from Los Angeles, Boston, and St. Louis, and national survey data with 10,000 families to show how racial inequality is transmitted across generations. We see how those families with private wealth are able to move up fromgeneration to generation, relocating to safer communities with better schools and passing along the accompanying advantages to their children. At the same time those without significant wealth remain trapped in communities that don't allow them to move up, no matter how hard they work. Shapirochallenges white middle class families to consider how the privileges that wealth brings not only improve their own chances but also hold back people who don't have them. This wealthfare is a legacy of inequality that, if unchanged, will project social injustice far into the future. Showing that over half of black families fall below the asset poverty line at the beginning of the new century, The Hidden Cost of Being African American will challenge all Americans to reconsider what must be done to end racial inequality.

Hayek's Challenge: An Intellectual Biography of F.A. Hayek


Bruce Caldwell - 2003
    Hayek is regarded as one of the preeminent economic theorists of the twentieth century, as much for his work outside of economics as for his work within it. During a career spanning several decades, he made contributions in fields as diverse as psychology, political philosophy, the history of ideas, and the methodology of the social sciences. Bruce Caldwell—editor of The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek—understands Hayek's thought like few others, and with this book he offers us the first full intellectual biography of this pivotal social theorist.Caldwell begins by providing the necessary background for understanding Hayek's thought, tracing the emergence, in fin-de-siècle Vienna, of the Austrian school of economics—a distinctive analysis forged in the midst of contending schools of thought. In the second part of the book, Caldwell follows the path by which Hayek, beginning from the standard Austrian assumptions, gradually developed his unique perspective on not only economics but a broad range of social phenomena. In the third part, Caldwell offers both an assessment of Hayek's arguments and, in an epilogue, an insightful estimation of how Hayek's insights can help us to clarify and reexamine changes in the field of economics during the twentieth century.As Hayek's ideas matured, he became increasingly critical of developments within mainstream economics: his works grew increasingly contrarian and evolved in striking—and sometimes seemingly contradictory—ways. Caldwell is ideally suited to explain the complex evolution of Hayek's thought, and his analysis here is nothing short of brilliant, impressively situating Hayek in a broader intellectual context, unpacking the often difficult turns in his thinking, and showing how his economic ideas came to inform his ideas on the other social sciences.Hayek's Challenge will be received as one of the most important works published on this thinker in recent decades.

Bull!: A History of the Boom and Bust, 1982-2004


Maggie Mahar - 2003
    Then, the market rose and rapidly gained speed until it peaked above 11,000. Noted journalist and financial reporter Maggie Mahar has written the first book on the remarkable bull market that began in 1982 and ended just in the early 2000s. For almost two decades, a colorful cast of characters such as Abby Joseph Cohen, Mary Meeker, Henry Blodget, and Alan Greenspan came to dominate the market news.This inside look at that 17-year cycle of growth, built upon interviews and unparalleled access to the most important analysts, market observers, and fund managers who eagerly tell the tales of excesses, presents the period with a historical perspective and explains what really happened and why.

Discrete Choice Methods with Simulation


Kenneth E. Train - 2003
    Researchers use these statistical methods to examine the choices that consumers, households, firms, and other agents make. Each of the major models is covered: logit, generalized extreme value, or GEV (including nested and cross-nested logits), probit, and mixed logit, plus a variety of specifications that build on these basics. Simulation-assisted estimation procedures are investigated and compared, including maximum stimulated likelihood, method of simulated moments, and method of simulated scores. Procedures for drawing from densities are described, including variance reduction techniques such as anithetics and Halton draws. Recent advances in Bayesian procedures are explored, including the use of the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm and its variant Gibbs sampling. The second edition adds chapters on endogeneity and expectation-maximization (EM) algorithms. No other book incorporates all these fields, which have arisen in the past 25 years. The procedures are applicable in many fields, including energy, transportation, environmental studies, health, labor, and marketing.

Microeconomics: Behavior, Institutions, and Evolution


Samuel Bowles - 2003
    Using recent advances in evolutionary game theory, contract theory, behavioral experiments, and the modeling of dynamic processes, he develops a theory of how economic institutions shape individual behavior, and how institutions evolve due to individual actions, technological change, and chance events. Topics addressed include institutional innovation, social preferences, nonmarket social interactions, social capital, equilibrium unemployment, credit constraints, economic power, generalized increasing returns, disequilibrium outcomes, and path dependency.Each chapter is introduced by empirical puzzles or historical episodes illuminated by the modeling that follows, and the book closes with sets of problems to be solved by readers seeking to improve their mathematical modeling skills. Complementing standard mathematical analysis are agent-based computer simulations of complex evolving systems that are available online so that readers can experiment with the models. Bowles concludes with the time-honored challenge of "getting the rules right," providing an evaluation of markets, states, and communities as contrasting and yet sometimes synergistic structures of governance. Must reading for students and scholars not only in economics but across the behavioral sciences, this engagingly written and compelling exposition of the new microeconomics moves the field beyond the conventional models of prices and markets toward a more accurate and policy-relevant portrayal of human social behavior.

Ecological Economics: Principles And Applications


Herman E. Daly - 2003
    By excluding biophysical and social reality from its analyses and equations, conventional economics seems ill-suited to address problems in a world characterized by increasing human impacts and decreasing natural resources. Ecological Economics is an introductory-level textbook for an emerging paradigm that addresses this fundamental flaw in conventional economics. The book defines a revolutionary transdiscipline that incorporates insights from the biological, physical, and social sciences, and it offers a pedagogically complete examination of this exciting new field. The book provides students with a foundation in traditional neoclassical economic thought, but places that foundation within a new interdisciplinary framework that embraces the linkages among economic growth, environmental degradation, and social inequity. Introducing the three core issues that are the focus of the new transdiscipline -- scale, distribution, and efficiency -- the book is guided by the fundamental question, often assumed but rarely spoken in

FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression


Jim Powell - 2003
    For generations, the collective American consciousness has believed that the former ruined the country and the latter saved it. Endless praise has been heaped upon President Franklin Delano Roosevelt for masterfully reining in the Depression’s destructive effects and propping up the country on his New Deal platform. In fact, FDR has achieved mythical status in American history and is considered to be, along with Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, one of the greatest presidents of all time. But would the Great Depression have been so catastrophic had the New Deal never been implemented?In FDR’s Folly, historian Jim Powell argues that it was in fact the New Deal itself, with its shortsighted programs, that deepened the Great Depression, swelled the federal government, and prevented the country from turning around quickly. You’ll discover in alarming detail how FDR’s federal programs hurt America more than helped it, with effects we still feel today, including:• How Social Security actually increased unemployment• How higher taxes undermined good businesses• How new labor laws threw people out of work• And much moreThis groundbreaking book pulls back the shroud of awe and the cloak of time enveloping FDR to prove convincingly how flawed his economic policies actually were, despite his good intentions and the astounding intellect of his circle of advisers. In today’s turbulent domestic and global environment, eerily similar to that of the 1930s, it’s more important than ever before to uncover and understand the truth of our history, lest we be doomed to repeat it.From the Hardcover edition.

International Finance: An Analytical Approach


Imad A. Moosa - 2003
    This book is usable for single semester or longer courses. It contains global case studies integrated and practical examples of the application of concepts. 'Insight' features provide background, while 'Research Findings' add empirical evidence.

Rationality and Freedom (Revised)


Amartya Sen - 2003
    In two volumes on rationality, freedom, and justice, the distinguished economist and philosopher Amartya Sen brings clarity and insight to these difficult issues. This volume--the first of the two--is principally concerned with rationality and freedom.Sen scrutinizes and departs from the standard criteria of rationality, and shows how it can be seen in terms of subjecting one's values as well as choices to the demands of reason and critical scrutiny. This capacious approach is utilized to illuminate the demands of rationality in individual choice (including decisions under uncertainty) as well as social choice (including cost benefit analysis and environmental assessment).Identifying a reciprocity in the relationship between rationality and freedom, Sen argues that freedom cannot be assessed independently of a person's reasoned preferences and valuations, just as rationality, in turn, requires freedom of thought. Sen uses the discipline of social choice theory (a subject he has helped to develop) to illuminate the demands of reason and the assessment of freedom. The latter is the subject matter of Sen's previously unpublished Arrow Lectures included here.The essays in these volumes contribute to Sen's ongoing transformation of economic theory and social philosophy, and to our understanding of the connections among rationality, freedom, and social justice.

Growth Fetish


Clive Hamilton - 2003
    Hamilton argues that an obsession with economic growth lies at the heart of our current political, social and environmental ills – and offers a thought-provoking alternative.‘Right on target, and badly needed’ Noam Chomsky‘Every now and then a book that is perfect in timing and tone hits my desk. Growth Fetish is that book. It is powerful and potentially transformative.’ Rev. Tim Costello‘This book reveals the undelivered reality of economic growth and the hollow mantras of the Third Way. Growth Fetish provides a much needed road map to a new politics in a post-growth world.’ Senator Natasha Stott DespojaFor decades our political leaders and opinion makers have touted higher incomes as the way to a better future. Economic growth means better lives for us all.But after many years of sustained economic growth and increased personal incomes we must confront an awful fact: we aren’t any happier. This is the great contradiction of modern politics.In this provocative new book, Clive Hamilton argues that, far from being the answer to our problems, growth fetishism and the marketing society lie at the heart of our social ills. They have corrupted our social priorities and political structures, and have created a profound sense of alienation among young and old.Growth Fetish is the first serious attempt at a politics of change for rich countries dominated by the sicknesses of affluence, where the real yearning is not for more money but for authentic identity, and where the future lies in a new relationship with the natural environment.

Farm to Factory: A Reinterpretation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution


Robert C. Allen - 2003
    Here, in a startling reinterpretation, Robert Allen argues that the USSR was one of the most successful developing economies of the twentieth century. He reaches this provocative conclusion by recalculating national consumption and using economic, demographic, and computer simulation models to address the what if questions central to Soviet history. Moreover, by comparing Soviet performance not only with advanced but with less developed countries, he provides a meaningful context for its evaluation.Although the Russian economy began to develop in the late nineteenth century based on wheat exports, modern economic growth proved elusive. But growth was rapid from 1928 to the 1970s--due to successful Five Year Plans. Notwithstanding the horrors of Stalinism, the building of heavy industry accelerated growth during the 1930s and raised living standards, especially for the many peasants who moved to cities. A sudden drop in fertility due to the education of women and their employment outside the home also facilitated growth.While highlighting the previously underemphasized achievements of Soviet planning, Farm to Factory also shows, through methodical analysis set in fluid prose, that Stalin's worst excesses--such as the bloody collectivization of agriculture--did little to spur growth. Economic development stagnated after 1970, as vital resources were diverted to the military and as a Soviet leadership lacking in original thought pursued wasteful investments.

Adventure Capitalist: The Ultimate Road Trip


Jim Rogers - 2003
    . . and grow rich!The bestselling author of Investment Biker is back from the ultimate road trip: a three-year drive around the world that would ultimately set the Guinness record for the longest continuous car journey. In Adventure Capitalist, legendary investor Jim Rogers, dubbed “the Indiana Jones of finance” by Time magazine, proves that the best way to profit from the global situation is to see the world mile by mile. “While I have never patronized a prostitute,” he writes, “I know that one can learn more about a country from speaking to the madam of a brothel or a black marketeer than from meeting a foreign minister.”Behind the wheel of a sunburst-yellow, custom-built convertible Mercedes, Rogers and his fiancée, Paige Parker, began their “Millennium Adventure” on January 1, 1999, from Iceland. They traveled through 116 countries, including many where most have rarely ventured, such as Saudi Arabia, Myanmar, Angola, Sudan, Congo, Colombia, and East Timor. They drove through war zones, deserts, jungles, epidemics, and blizzards. They had many narrow escapes.They camped with nomads and camels in the western Sahara. They ate silkworms, iguanas, snakes, termites, guinea pigs, porcupines, crocodiles, and grasshoppers.Best of all, they saw the real world from the ground up—the only vantage point from which it can be truly understood—economically, politically, and socially.Here are just a few of the author’s conclusions: • The new commodity bull market has started.• The twenty-first century will belong to China.• There is a dramatic shortage of women developing in Asia.• Pakistan is on the verge of disintegrating.• India, like many other large nations, will break into several countries.• The Euro is doomed to fail.• There are fortunes to be made in Angola.• Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are a scam.• Bolivia is a comer after decades of instability, thanks to gigantic amounts of natural gas.Adventure Capitalist is the most opinionated, sprawling, adventurous journey you’re likely to take within the pages of a book—the perfect read for armchair adventurers, global investors, car enthusiasts, and anyone interested in seeing the world and understanding it as it really is.

Naming the System: Inequality and Work in the Global Economy


Michael D. Yates - 2003
    At the same time, the bosses were able to take the political initiative and even the moral high ground, while workers were often divided against each other. This new book by leading labor analyst Michael D. Yates seeks to explain how this happened, and what can be done about it. Essential to both tasks is "naming the system"--the system that ensures that those who do the work do not benefit from the wealth they produce. Yates draws on recent data to show that the growing inequality--globally, and within the United States--is a necessary consequence of capitalism, and not an unfortunate side-effect that can be remedied by technical measures. To defend working people against ongoing attacks--on their working conditions, their living standards, and their future and that of their children--and to challenge inequality, it is necessary to understand capitalism as a system and for labor to challenge the political dominance of capitalist interests. Naming the System examines contemporary trends in employment and unemployment, in hours of work, and in the nature of jobs. It shows how working life is being reconfigured today, and how the effects of this are masked by mainstream economic theories. It uses numerous concrete examples to relate larger theoretical issues to everyday experience of the present-day economy. And it sets out the strategic options for organized labor in the current political context, in which the U.S.-led war on terrorism threatens to eclipse the anti-globalization movement.

The Eurodollar Futures and Options Handbook (McGraw-Hill Library of Investment and Finance)


Galen Burghardt - 2003
    "The Eurodollar Futures and Options Handbook "provides traders and investors with the complete range of current research on Eurodollar futures and options, now the most widely traded money market contracts in the world. The only current book on this widely-followed topic, it features chapters written by Eurodollar experts from JP Morgan, Mellon Capital, Merrill Lynch, and other global trading giants, and will quickly become a required reference for all Eurodollar F&O traders and investors.

Locked in Place: State-Building and Late Industrialization in India


Vivek Chibber - 2003
    During the 1950s and 1960s, India launched an extremely ambitious and highly regarded program of state-led development. But it soon became clear that the Indian state lacked the institutional capacity to carry out rapid industrialization. Drawing on newly available archival sources, Vivek Chibber mounts a forceful challenge to conventional arguments by showing that the insufficient state capacity stemmed mainly from Indian industrialists' massive campaign, in the years after Independence, against a strong developmental state.Chibber contrasts India's experience with the success of a similar program of state-building in South Korea, where political elites managed to harness domestic capitalists to their agenda. He then develops a theory of the structural conditions that can account for the different reactions of Indian and Korean capitalists as rational responses to the distinct development models adopted in each country.Provocative and marked by clarity of prose, this book is also the first historical study of India's post-colonial industrial strategy. Emphasizing the central role of capital in the state-building process, and restoring class analysis to the core of the political economy of development, Locked in Place is an innovative work of theoretical power that will interest development specialists, political scientists, and historians of the subcontinent.

The Problem With Interest


Tarek El-Diwany - 2003
    This new edition has been extended with material arising from the recent financial crisis and includes a wealth of academic and popular references for readers who wish to delve deeper into the topic.In this third edition of The Problem With Interest, evidence arising from the recent financial crisis has been included to support the main themes of the 1997 and 2003 editions. The author's experience in both secular and Islamic finance help him to provide a practical and relevant commentary on the state of the modern financial system and the Islamic alternative. A description is given in detailed but accessible terms of the extent to which interest-based finance is now affecting humanity and a passionate case is made for reform of the fractional reserve banking system. In a critique of modern Islamic banking and finance, some searching questions are asked of the practices that are currently in vogue, and a new model is proposed based upon traditional understandings of Islam. This edition adopts a standard transliteration scheme for Arabic terminology and includes a wealth of academic and popular references for readers who wish to delve deeper into the topic.

Cracking the Code: The Fascinating Truth About Taxation In America (Paperback)


Peter Eric Hendrickson - 2003
    

Qualitative Data: An Introduction to Coding and Analysis


Carl F. Auerbach - 2003
    It takes readers through the qualitative research process, beginning with an examination of the basic philosophy of qualitative research, and ending with planning and carrying out a qualitative research study. It provides an explicit, step-by-step procedure that will take the researcher from the raw text of interview data through data analysis and theory construction to the creation of a publishable work.The volume provides actual examples based on the authors' own work, including two published pieces in the appendix, so that readers can follow examples for each step of the process, from the project's inception to its finished product. The volume also includes an appendix explaining how to implement these data analysis procedures using NVIVO, a qualitative data analysis program.

Investment Leadership: Building a Winning Culture for Long-Term Success


James W. Ware - 2003
    With the help of diagnostic tools, practical advice from industry leaders, and real-life case studies, this book sets out to explain what is wrong with the status quo and reveal the secrets of long-term success in the investment industry. James W. Ware, CFA, currently works as a consultant to money managers. He is the coauthor of The Leadership Genius of George W. Bush (0-471-42006-9). Beth Michaels has worked with many organizations, including Chevrolet Motors and the McDonald's Corporation. Dale Primer has worked with business executives from more than 700 individual businesses in over eighty-five separate industries.

Larceny in the Heart: The Economics of Satan and the Inflationary State


Rousas John Rushdoony - 2003
    The envious man finds superiority in others intolerable, and he wishes to level and equalize all things. Many sociologists and social scientists turn this hatred and resentment into “virtue” under the guise of “social science” by calling it a demand for fraternity and equality. In this concise volume, Rushdoony uncovers the larceny in the heart of man and its results: class warfare and a conflict society in which the rise of hostility and envy are seen as steps towards social progress, when in fact they lead to disaster. The political solutions posited lead to an inflationary economy and an overbearing state. This book is a must-read to gain a biblical understanding of the underlying tenets of this codified coveting and the only certain long-term cure.

Speaking of Liberty


Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. - 2003
    That is what Lew Rockwell specializes in: history and theory and analysis in defense of the free society, written in clear prose to reach a broad audience. Rockwell's new book is as pro-liberty as it is brutally critical of government. It is relentlessly forthright yet hopeful about the prospects for liberty. It is rigorous enough to withstand the enemy's closest scrutiny, and chock full of the energy and enthusiasm that will keep you reading. Speaking of Liberty is a collection of speeches delivered by Rockwell over a period of ten years. The book begins with economics, and explains why Austrian economics matters, how the Federal Reserve brings on the business cycle, why we need private property and free enterprise, the unrecognized glories of the capitalist economy, and why the gold standard is still the best monetary system. Other sections deal with war, Mises and his work, other important thinkers in the libertarian tradition, and the culture and morality of liberty. The book is united by a set of fixed principles: the corruption of politics, the universality and immutability of the ideas of freedom, the centrality of sound money and free enterprise, the moral imperative of peace and trade, the importance of hope and tenacity in the struggle for liberty, and the need for everyone to join the intellectual fight. We all have searched for the book we could give to friends and neighbors, business associates and family members, to explain why we believe in the cause of liberty. Speaking of Liberty is that book.

Terror Incorporated: Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks


Loretta Napoleoni - 2003
    Chasing terror money, she takes the reader from CIA headquarters to the smuggling routes of the Far East, from the back rooms of Wall Street to hawala exchanges in the Middle East. Napoleoni describes the "New Economy of Terror," "a fast-growing international economic system with a turnover of about $1.5 trillion [that] is challenging Western hegemony." It is made up of illegal businesses such as arms and narcotics trading, and oil and diamond smuggling, as well as charitable donations and legal profits. Napoleoni reveals the interdependency between economies run by armed groups and western economies, and provides a pioneering examination of the system and methods by which international terrorism is financed.

In Search of Prosperity: Analytic Narratives on Economic Growth


Dani Rodrik - 2003
    Here for the first time is a series of country studies guided by that research. The thirteen essays, by leading economists, shed light on some of the most important growth puzzles of our time. How did China grow so rapidly despite the absence of full-fledged private property rights? What happened in India after the early 1980s to more than double its growth rate? How did Botswana and Mauritius avoid the problems that other countries in sub--Saharan Africa succumbed to? How did Indonesia manage to grow over three decades despite weak institutions and distorted microeconomic policies and why did it suffer such a collapse after 1997?What emerges from this collective effort is a deeper understanding of the centrality of institutions. Economies that have performed well over the long term owe their success not to geography or trade, but to institutions that have generated market-oriented incentives, protected property rights, and enabled stability. However, these narratives warn against a cookie-cutter approach to institution building.The contributors are Daron Acemoglu, Maite Careaga, Gregory Clark, J. Bradford DeLong, Georges de Menil, William Easterly, Ricardo Hausmann, Simon Johnson, Daniel Kaufmann, Massimo Mastruzzi, Ian W. McLean, Lant Pritchett, Yingyi Qian, James A. Robinson, Devesh Roy, Arvind Subramanian, Alan M. Taylor, Jonathan Temple, Barry R. Weingast, Susan Wolcott, and Diego Zavaleta.

Econometric Theory and Methods


James G. MacKinnon - 2003
    The geometrical approach to least squares is emphasized, as is the method of moments, which is used to motivate a wide variety of estimators and tests. Simulation methods, including the bootstrap, are introduced early and used extensively.The book deals with a large number of modern topics. In addition to bootstrap and Monte Carlo tests, these include sandwich covariance matrix estimators, artificial regressions, estimating functions and the generalized method of moments, indirect inference, and kernel estimation. Every chapter incorporates numerous exercises, some theoretical, some empirical, and many involving simulation.Econometric Theory and Methods is designed for beginning graduate courses. The book is suitable for both one- and two-term courses at the Masters or Ph.D. level. It can also be used in a final-year undergraduate course for students with sufficient backgrounds in mathematics and statistics.FEATURES-Unified Approach: New concepts are linked to old ones whenever possible, and the notation is consistent both within and across chapters wherever possible.-Geometry of Ordinary Least Squares: Introduced in Chapter 2, this method provides students with valuable intuition and allows them to avoid a substantial amount of tedious algebra later in the text.-Modern Concepts Introduced Early: These include the bootstrap (Chapter 4), sandwich covariance matrices (Chapter 5), and artificial regressions (Chapter 6).-Inclusive Treatment of Mathematics: Mathematical and statistical concepts are introduced as they are needed, rather than isolated in appendices or introductory chapters not linked to the main body of the text.-Advanced Topics: Among these are models for duration and count data, estimating equations, the method of simulated moments, methods for unbalanced panel data, a variety of unit root and cointegration tests, conditional moment tests, nonnested hypothesis tests, kernel density regression, and kernel regression.-Chapter Exercises: Every chapter offers numerous exercises, all of which have been answered by the authors in the Instructor's Manual. Particularly challenging exercises are starred and their solutions are available at the authors' website, providing a way for instructors and interested students to cover advanced material.

The Micro-Politics of Capital: Marx and the Prehistory of the Present


Jason Read - 2003
    Jason Read suggests that what characterizes contemporary capitalism is the intimate intersection of the production of commodities with the production of desire, beliefs, and knowledge.

Financial Valuation, + Website: Applications and Models


James R. Hitchner - 2003
    Delivering valuation theory, the consensus view on application, and the tools to make it happen, James Hitchners all-star cast of contributors offer numerous examples, checklists, and models to assist in navigating a valuation project. The book contains hundreds of short, easily understandable "Valuation Tips," and covers best practices from the view of these twenty-five experts.

Turn Neither to the Right Nor to the Left


D. Eric Schansberg - 2003
    The analysis is thorough and his conclusions may be suprising. You will never look at politics and public policy the same way again!

Financial Literacy: Finding Your Way in the Financial Markets


Connel Fullenkamp - 2003
    

Advances in Behavioral Economics


Colin F. Camerer - 2003
    Most economists were deeply skeptical--even antagonistic--toward the idea of importing insights from psychology into their field. Today, behavioral economics has become virtually mainstream. It is well represented in prominent journals and top economics departments, and behavioral economists, including several contributors to this volume, have garnered some of the most prestigious awards in the profession.This book assembles the most important papers on behavioral economics published since around 1990. Among the 25 articles are many that update and extend earlier foundational contributions, as well as cutting-edge papers that break new theoretical and empirical ground. Advances in Behavioral Economics will serve as the definitive one-volume resource for those who want to familiarize themselves with the new field or keep up-to-date with the latest developments. It will not only be a core text for students, but will be consulted widely by professional economists, as well as psychologists and social scientists with an interest in how behavioral insights are being applied in economics.The articles, which follow Colin Camerer and George Loewenstein's introduction, are by the editors, George A. Akerlof, Linda Babcock, Shlomo Benartzi, Vincent P. Crawford, Peter Diamond, Ernst Fehr, Robert H. Frank, Shane Frederick, Simon G�chter, David Genesove, Itzhak Gilboa, Uri Gneezy, Robert M. Hutchens, Daniel Kahneman, Jack L. Knetsch, David Laibson, Christopher Mayer, Terrance Odean, Ted O'Donoghue, Aldo Rustichini, David Schmeidler, Klaus M. Schmidt, Eldar Shafir, Hersh M. Shefrin, Chris Starmer, Richard H. Thaler, Amos Tversky, and Janet L. Yellen.

She Was Aye Workin': Memories of Tenement Women in Edinburgh and Glasgow


Helen Clark - 2003
    It is an eloquent tribute to stamina, management skills, and moral strength in the face of poor housing and relentless poverty. This book contains material not previously published on taboo subjects such as sexual awareness and domestic violence, and it explains the social context that regulated women's behavior.

Dividing Classes: How the Middle Class Negotiates and Rationalizes School Advantage


Ellen A. Brantlinger - 2003
    Building on her findings, she examines the relationship between class structure and educational success. This book asserts the need to look beyond poor peoples' values and aspirations--and rather to consider the values of dominant groups--to explain class stratification and educational outcomes.

Game Theory: A Non-Technical Introduction to the Analysis of Strategy


Roger A. McCain - 2003
    Focuses on providing a true interdisciplinary perspective that draws upon applications from many different areas of study such as management, strategic planning, competitive intelligence, military operations, economics, political science and finance.

Balance Sheet Recession: Japan's Struggle with Uncharted Economics and Its Global Implications


Richard C. Koo - 2003
    Economists and business commentators have assumed that the majority of companies in any economy are forward looking and trying to maximise profit, and have never considered that a vast majority of these may be placing their highest priorities on minimising debt to repair the balance sheet.

Unmaking Goliath: Community Control in the Face of Global Capital


James DeFilippis - 2003
    Arguing against those who say that our communities are powerless in the face of footloose corporations, DeFilippis considers what localities can do in the face of heightened capital mobility in order to retain an autonomy that furthers egalitarian social justice, and explores how we go about accomplishing this in practical, political terms.

Wage Dispersion: Why Are Similar Workers Paid Differently


Dale T. Mortensen - 2003
    In Wage Dispersion, Dale Mortensen examines the reasons for pay differentials in the other 70 percent. He finds that these differentials, or wage dispersion, are largely the result of job search friction (which arises when workers do not know the wages offered by all employers) and cross-firm differences in wage policy and productivity.Mortensen examines previous theoretical explanations for wage dispersion, testing them against data from a Danish matched employer-employee database. He begins by offering a simple one-period model of the problem, then expands this basic model intertemporally to include the role of on-the-job worker search behavior. Following this, he discusses theoretical modifications that offer an explanation for the nature of observed wage dispersion, particularly the shape of cross-firm wage distribution. He then examines the hypothesis that wage policies are determined by profit-maximizing behavior and finds that the Danish data do not support it; he argues that bilateral wage bargaining is the more likely determinant. Finally, he reviews recent work that extends the basic theoretical framework to explain wage dispersion within firms.

The Work of the University


Richard C. Levin - 2003
    Levin’s tenth anniversary as president of Yale University, reflects both the range of his intellectual passions and the depth of his insight into the work of the university. By turns analytical, reflective, and exhortatory, Levin explores what it means to be a world-class university, how the university intersects with local and global communities, and why a liberal education matters. He offers personal recollections of schools, teachers, and traditions of particular importance in his own life. And, returning to his roots as a professor of economics, he discusses the competitiveness of American industry and the relations between the market economy and American democracy. Throughout these writings Levin illuminates and inspires. Always his affection for the university shines through. Whether greeting incoming freshmen, meditating on September 11, remembering an intellectual hero, saluting graduating seniors, addressing the League of Women Voters, or celebrating Yale’s Tercentennial, Levin, by example, shows what a liberal education can achieve.

A Free Nation Deep in Debt: The Financial Roots of Democracy


James Macdonald - 2003
    In A Free Nation Deep in Debt, James Macdonald provides a novel answer for how and why this political transformation occurred. The pressures of war finance led ancient states to store up treasure; and treasure accumulation invariably favored autocratic states. But when the art of public borrowing was developed by the city-states of medieval Italy as a democratic alternative to the treasure chest, the balance of power tipped. From that point on, the pressures of war favored states with the greatest public creditworthiness; and the most creditworthy states were invariably those in which the people who provided the money also controlled the government. Democracy had found a secret weapon and the era of the citizen creditor was born. Macdonald unfolds this tale in a sweeping history that starts in biblical times, passes via medieval Italy to the wars and revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and ends with the great bond drives that financed the two world wars.

Hollywood Economics: How Extreme Uncertainty Shapes the Film Industry


Arthur De Vany - 2003
    The book uses powerful analytical models to uncover the wild uncertainty that shapes the industry. The centerpiece of the analysis is the unpredictable and often chaotic dynamic behaviour of motion picture audiences.This unique and important book will be of interest to students and researchers involved in the economics of movies, industrial economics and business studies. The book will also be a real eye-opener for film writers, movie executives, finance and risk management professionals as well as more general movie fans.

Socionomics: The Science of History and Social Prediction


Robert R. Prechter Jr. - 2003
    In 1999, we were celebrating our heroes, the stock market had reached unprecedented heights - and many people believed that peace in the Middle East was at hand. Three years later, the economy is weak, corporate executives are being thrown in jail, bloodletting between Israelis and Palestinians is daily ritual, India is testing missiles, North Korea is threatening the U.S. with nuclear destruction, the U.S. is at war with Iraq, European allies are deserting the U.S., a senator is calling for the resignation of the chairman of the Federal Reserve, and Americans are stocking supplies for terrorist attacks. What changed? And why? Is it possible that all of these events flow from the same cause? Best-selling author Robert Prechter's new two-book set, Socionomics: The Science of History and Social Prediction, proposes a startlingly fresh answer. In Socionomics: The Science of History and Social Prediction, Robert Prechter spells a historical correlation between patterned shifts in social mood and their most sensitive register, the stock market. He also presents engaging studies correlating social mood trends to music, sports, corporate culture, peace, war and macroeconomic trends. The new science of socionomics takes hundreds of popular notions about mass psychology, culture and the stock market and stands them on their heads. Socionomics: The Science of History and Social Prediction includes a 2nd edition of the book that started it all, The Wave Principle of Human Social Behavior and The New Science of Socionomics as well as his new title, Pioneering Studies in Socionomics, an accessible collection of the essays that founded a new basis for social science. Together, these books can transform your understanding of how our society works. It will change the way you read the newspaper. It will even show you how to predict news trends months in advance. Learn for yourself the science of social prediction. About the Author: Robert R. Prechter, Jr. (1949-) began publishing his insights with respect to social causality in 1979. His two decades of work culminate in Socionomics - The Science of History and Social Prediction, which presents a number of startling interconnected conclusions. Prechter contends that the stock market is a sensitive register of social mood, which has countless other modes of cultural expression. The stock market is patterned according to a model of financial price behavior called the Wave Principle, which confirms that social mood is endogenous and independent of outside influence. Since social actions follow changes in the stock market, the social mood changes behind it must determine the character of social action. That social events are the result, not the cause, of social mood change is a radical idea. Prechter defines this idea as "a principle, which means that there are no exceptions to it, ever." Prechter then observes connections between the Wave Principle and biological forms and mentational processes via fractals, spirals and Fibonacci mathematics, linking what appears to be happening in society to its biological and mental origins.Prechter graduated from Yale in 1971 and worked as a Technical Market Specialist at Merrill Lynch in New York in the 1970s. In 1978, he co-authored, with A.J. Frost, Elliott Wave Principle - Key To Market Behavior, in 1979 he founded Elliott Wave International (elliottwave.com) and in 2002 founded The Socionomics Institute (socionomics.org). During the 1980s, Prechter won numerous awards for market timing as well as the United States Trading Championship, culminating in Financial News Network (now CNBC) granting him the title, "Guru of the Decade." He has served on the board of The Foundation for the Study of Cycles and the Market Technicians Association, including a term as president on 1990-1991. Prechter has written 12 books. He is a member of Mensa, Intertel, The Shakespeare Oxford Society and The Shakespeare Fellowship.

After Capitalism: Prout's Vision for a New World


Dada Maheshvarananda - 2003
    Foreword by Noam Chomsky, with contributions by Frei Betto, Marcos Arruda, Johan Galtung, Leonardo Boff, Sohail Inayatullah, Ravi Batra, Mark Friedman. The book asserts that capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction, based as it is on greed, intense competition and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. In contrast, Prout provides a model of economic development grounded in universal values. It seeks to balance regional self-reliant economic development with ecological protection, and encourages creativity and innovation. In his preface to the book, Noam Chomsky stated, "Alternative visions are crucial at this moment in history. Prout's cooperative model of economic democracy, based on cardinal human values and sharing the resources of the planet for the welfare of everyone, deserves our serious consideration." Historian Howard Zinn, author of the best-selling A People's History of the United States, wrote: "After Capitalism is refreshingly original. It is spiritual and utopian while remaining grounded in reality. Its analysis is intelligent and its vision inspiring."

Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can Do about It


Star Parker - 2003
    This double-minded approach seems to keep the poor enslaved to poverty while the rich get richer. Let's face it, despite its $400 billion price tag, welfare isn't working.The solution, asserts Star Parker, is a faith-based, "not" state-sponsored, plan. In "Uncle Sam's Plantation," she offers five simple yet profound steps that will allow the nation's poor to go from entitlement and slavery to empowerment and freedom. Parker shares her own amazing journey up from the lower rungs of the economic system and addresses the importance of extending the free market system to this neglected group of people. Emphasizing personal initiative, faith, and responsibility, she walks readers toward releasing the hold poverty has over their lives.

The Liberty Dollar Solution to the Federal Reserve


Bernard von NotHaus - 2003
    It brings together eighteen contributors including Chairman Alan Greenspan, Congressman Ron Paul, Dr. Richard Timberlake, John Turner, and others who add to the case for what's wrong with our federal money.

Public Finance and Public Policy


Arye L. Hillman - 2003
    The second edition retains the first edition's themes of investigation of responsibilities and limitations of government. The present edition has been rewritten and restructured. Public choice and political economy concepts and political and bureaucratic principal-agent problems are introduced at the beginning for application to later topics. Fairness, envy, hyperbolic discounting, and other concepts of behavioral economics are integrated throughout. The consequences of asymmetric information and the tradeoff between efficiency and ex-post equality are recurring themes. Key themes investigated are markets and governments, institutions and governance, public goods, public finance for public goods, market corrections (externalities and paternalist public policies), voting, social justice, entitlements and equality of opportunity, choice of taxation, and the need for government. The purpose of the book is to provide an accessible introduction to the use of public finance and public policy to improve on market outcomes.

The Art of M&A Structuring: Techniques for Mitigating Financial, Tax and Legal Risk


Alexandra Reed Lajoux - 2003
    The Art of M&A Structuring explores ways to approach a deal as an investment and satisfy the often conflicting financial and operational goals of all parties, from buyers and sellers to investors and lenders. Written in the trademark Q&A style that made The Art of M&A a landmark business bestseller, this book is filled with real-world examples and cases. Decision makers in any organization will quickly find the M&A information and insights they need, including:Up-to-date GAAP and tax considerationsAdvantages and disadvantages of spin-offs and spin-outsSpecial considerations for off-balance-sheet transactions

Timberrr...: A History of Logging in New England


Mary Morton Cowan - 2003
    - The author was awarded an Anna Cross Giblin Grant from the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators to complete this important book.- Includes rare etchings and photos from author's private collection

The Family in America: Searching for Social Harmony in the Industrial Age


Allan C. Carlson - 2003
    Allan Carlson shows that the United States, rather than being born modern as a progressive consumerist society, was in fact founded as an agrarian society composed of independent households rooted in land, lineage, and hierarchy.Carlson argues that family survival continues to be of paramount importance today. He critically examines five distinct strategies to restore a foundation for family life in industrial society, drawing on the insights of Frederic LePlay, Carle Zimmerman, and G. K. Chesterton. Carlson shows that family survival depends on the creation of meaningful, pre-modern household economies. This new edition includes an introduction by Allan Carlson, detailing the continued press of the industrial process onto the American family structure since initial publication of the book in 1993.

Local Tax Policy: A Federalist Perspective


David Brunori - 2003
    Arguing that "The existence of local government that Americans are familiar with will be in jeopardy without a significant change in the way local government is financed," he examines the theory, operation, and politics of the local tax system, and demonstrates why it is necessary to revitalize the property tax to support local governments. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The Orphans of Byzantium: Child Welfare in the Christian Empire


Timothy S. Miller - 2003
    Largely absent from the debate, however, is any discussion of past practices. In this book, historian Timothy Miller argues that it is necessary to look at the history of orphanages, of their successes and failures, and of their complex roles as social institutions for unwanted and homeless children.In The Orphans of Byzantium, Miller provides a perceptive and original study of the evolution of orphanages in the Byzantine Empire. Contrary to popular belief and even expert opinion, medieval child-welfare systems were sophisticated, especially in the Byzantine world. Combining ancient Roman legal institutions with Christian concepts of charity, the Byzantine Empire evolved a child-welfare system that tried either to select foster parents for homeless children or to place them in group homes that could provide food, shelter, and education. Miller discusses how successive Byzantine emperors tried to improve Roman regulations to provide greater security for orphans, and notes that they achieved their greatest success when they widened the pool of potential guardians by allowing women relatives to accept the duties of guardianship. After a thorough discussion of each element of the Byzantine child care system, the book closes by showing how Byzantine orphanages provided models for later Western group homes, especially in Italy. From these renaissance orphan asylums evolved the system of modern European and American religious orphanages until the foster care movement emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century. Miller's study of these systems can provide useful models for reforming the troubled child-welfare system today.Timothy S. Miller is Professor of History at Salisbury University in Maryland. He has written or edited numerous books and articles on the Byzantine Empire, including The Birth of the Hospital in the Byzantine Empire and Peace and War in Byzantium.Praise for the book:"A very important contribution to Byzantine social and family history. . . . Like his other works, The Orphans of Byzantium commends Professor Miller as an indefatigable researcher and leading social historian of the Byzantine era. [This] is an original book, extensively researched, well documented, and readable, of value to students and teachers of Byzantine civilization, and the history of philanthropy and welfare. . . . Dr. Miller deserves congratulations and our gratitude for making another major contribution to Byzantine studies."--Demetrios J. Constantelos, Catholic Historical Review"Timothy Miller has become an expert on the Byzantine Empire's system of social welfare, and here he provides an exhaustive study at a millennium of Byzantine care of orphans. . . . Miller's work is, by any gauge, thorough, and while there is not a plethora of evidence on this topic, readers can be sure that Miller has carefully analysed what there is."--Daniel Boice, Catholic Library Wolrd"What should a morally responsible society do with orphans? Ignore and thus condone possible slavery, certain neglect, probable death? Encourage adoption? Institutionalize and therefore confine and marginalize? In this handsomely produced text, established Byzantine historian Miller (Salisbury Univ.) explicitly addresses a perennial issue of social policy by investigating and assessing the strategies that the classical and Byzantine worlds employed for abandoned or neglected children. Miller competently reviews the Hellenistic and Roman legalities and realities that Byzantine church, state, and private society sought to improve, then informatively describes the importance of the orphanage as institution (religiously or privately controlled); the sometimes effective encouragement (notably, by giving female kin greate

The Economist's Tale: A Consultant Encounters Hunger and the World Bank


Peter Griffiths - 2003
    Peter Griffiths was at the interface between government and the Bank.In this ruthlessly honest, day by day account of a mission he undertook in Sierra Leone, he uses his diary to tell the story of how the World Bank, obsessed with the free market, imposed a secret agreement on the government, banning all government food imports or subsidies. The collapsing economy meant that the private sector would not import. Famine loomed. No ministry, no state marketing organization, no aid organization could reverse the agreement. It had to be a top-level government decision, whether Sierra Leone could afford to annoy minor World Bank officials.This is a rare and important portrait of the aid world which insiders will recognize, but of which the general public seldom get a glimpse.

Monetary Regimes and Inflation: History, Economic and Political Relationships


Peter Bernholz - 2003
    High and moderate inflations caused by the inflationary bias of political systems and economic relationships - and the importance of different monetary regimes in containing them - are analysed. Peter Bernholz demonstrates that certain macroeconomic traits have been stable characteristics of inflations over the centuries, and illustrates their causes: the development of real stock of money, real exchange rate, real budget deficit and of currency substitution. He goes on to explain that metallic monetary regimes allow substantial inflations by debasement - 4th century Roman Empire experiencing the highest of them - but are dwarfed by the experience of hyperinflations. These occurred only under discretionary paper money regimes. To demonstrate this and their characteristics, all twenty-nine hyperinflations are studied. In contrast to the existing literature, the book also examines political conditions that allow a return to stable monetary regimes, given the inflationary tendencies of political systems. Finally, economic measures and institutional reforms to end high and moderate inflations are discussed.

Faith and Liberty: The Economic Thought of the Late Scholastics


Alejandro A. Chafuen - 2003
    In this revised edition of Faith and Liberty, Alejandro A. Chafuen illustrates this misconception by examining the sixteenth and seventeenth century writings of a group of Catholic theologians and philosophers. The Late- Scholastics, as they are called, were the first to engage in a systematic moral analysis of the ethical issues associated with trade and commerce. In doing so, they arrived at solutions that are in many senses indistinguishable from the ideas of many modern free market commentators. In this revised ediiton, Chafuen blosters his case by including recent and pertinent material which gives rise to new questions and concerns. Reading this book will force to consider what they understand to be an authentiaclly Christian approach to economic questions.

Microeconomics in Context


Neva R. Goodwin - 2003
    offering a fresh portrait of the economic realities of the 21st century. [It] aims to help you gain a deeper understanding of economic analysis and contemporary controversies of interest and importance. It examines economic activity in its environmental and socia

A Disquisition on Government and a Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States (Papers of John C. Calhoun)


John C. Calhoun - 2003
    Calhoun, Volume XXVIII is the final volume in a distinguished documentary edition, the first volume of which was published more than fifty years ago. While identical to others in the series in terms of typeface, binding, and letterpress printing, this volume does not contain any of John C. Calhoun's personal papers, rather it features Calhoun's only formal, scholarly writings on political science and political philosophy. "A Disquisition on Government" is an examination of the first principles of political science, much in the model of Aristotle's Politics or Baron Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws. It examines basic principles of politics, including concepts of sovereignty and personal liberty and the relationships between states and nations. "A Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States" is a focused study of American political thought and constitutional history since the ratification of the Constitution. It pays particular attention to antifederalist views of the Constitution, the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of the 1790s, and the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution. Comparable to the Federalist, Calhoun's "Discourse" articulates a southern-based, states' rights interpretation of the Constitution and examines the course of American political history from the viewpoint of the southern statesman. Calhoun began writing the essays around 1845. His "Disquisition" was near final form at the time of his death, but the "Discourse" was still an unpolished draft. A year after Calhoun's death in 1850, Richard Kenner Cralle, a former secretary in the Department of State and a friend of Calhoun's, was entrusted by the Calhoun heirs to edit the essays for publication. Since the Cralle edition, it has been assumed that the two essays were separate works. However, as the Calhoun Papers staff prepared the concluding volume of letters, speeches, and remarks, they discovered evidence that Calhoun had intended the two essays to be a single, unified work of political theory and a critical examination of America's remarkable experiment in republican government. Whether published separately or together, these essays are among the classical texts of American political thought.

Elements of Financial Risk Management


Peter F. Christoffersen - 2003
    With new data that cover the recent financial crisis, it combines Excel-based empirical exercises at the end of each chapter with online exercises so readers can use their own data. Its unified GARCH modeling approach, empirically sophisticated and relevant yet easy to implement, sets this book apart from others. Five new chapters and updated end-of-chapter questions and exercises, as well as Excel-solutions manual, support its step-by-step approach to choosing tools and solving problems.

Advanced Placement Economics: Microeconomics: Student Activities


John S. Morton - 2003
    The Teacher Resource Manual introduces the key concepts, and the Student Activities booklets -- Microeconomics and Macroeconomics - reinforce the principles with activity-based lessons.

The Elgar Companion To Post Keynesian Economics


John Edward King - 2003
    The Companion deals with areas of continuing debate inside post Keynesianism and sheds light on the current relationship between post Keynesians, mainstream economics and alternative heterodox schools of thought.The Elgar Companion to Post Keynesian Economics will be widely read by academic economists, economic policymakers, research students and advanced undergraduate students of economics as well as academics in related social sciences.

Rethinking Development Economics


Ha-Joon Chang - 2003
    As dramatically demonstrated in the collapse of the WTO's Seattle talks, there is increasing dissatisfaction, in both developing and developed countries, with the emerging neoliberal global economic order. The resignations of Joseph Stiglitz and Ravi Kanbur from the World Bank emphasize that this disillusionment with the orthodoxy now exists at the very heart of the establishment. Yet the increasing demand for an alternative to this orthodoxy is not being met. Over the last few decades, the older generation of development economists have been edged out of most major universities, particularly in the USA. The situation in most developing countries is even worse: although there is more demand for alternatives to orthodox development economics, these countries have even less capability to generate such alternatives. 'Rethinking Development Economics' is intended to fill this gap, addressing key issues in development economics, ranging from macroeconomics, finance and governance to trade, industry, agriculture and poverty. Bringing together some of the foremost names in the field, this comprehensive and timely collection constitutes a critical staging post in the future of development economics.

A History of the Federal Reserve, Volume 1: 1913-1951


Allan H. Meltzer - 2003
    Meltzer's monumental history of the Federal Reserve System tells the story of one of America's most influential but least understood public institutions. This first volume covers the period from the Federal Reserve's founding in 1913 through the Treasury-Federal Reserve Accord of 1951, which marked the beginning of a larger and greatly changed institution.To understand why the Federal Reserve acted as it did at key points in its history, Meltzer draws on meeting minutes, correspondence, and other internal documents (many made public only during the 1970s) to trace the reasoning behind its policy decisions. He explains, for instance, why the Federal Reserve remained passive throughout most of the economic decline that led to the Great Depression, and how the Board's actions helped to produce the deep recession of 1937 and 1938. He also highlights the impact on the institution of individuals such as Benjamin Strong, governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in the 1920s, who played a key role in the adoption of a more active monetary policy by the Federal Reserve. Meltzer also examines the influence the Federal Reserve has had on international affairs, from attempts to build a new international financial system in the 1920s to the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944 that established the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and the failure of the London Economic Conference of 1933.Written by one of the world's leading economists, this magisterial biography of the Federal Reserve and the people who helped shape it will interest economists, central bankers, historians, political scientists, policymakers, and anyone seeking a deep understanding of the institution that controls America's purse strings. "It was 'an unprecedented orgy of extravagance, a mania for speculation, overextended business in nearly all lines and in every section of the country.' An Alan Greenspan rumination about the irrational exuberance of the late 1990s? Try the 1920 annual report of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve. . . . To understand why the Fed acted as it did—at these critical moments and many others—would require years of study, poring over letters, the minutes of meetings and internal Fed documents. Such a task would naturally deter most scholars of economic history but not, thank goodness, Allan Meltzer."—Wall Street Journal "A seminal work that anyone interested in the inner workings of the U. S. central bank should read. A work that scholars will mine for years to come."—John M. Berry, Washington Post"An exceptionally clear story about why, as the ideas that actually informed policy evolved, things sometimes went well and sometimes went badly. . . . One can only hope that we do not have to wait too long for the second installment."—David Laidler, Journal of Economic Literature "A thorough narrative history of a high order. Meltzer's analysis is persuasive and acute. His work will stand for a generation as the benchmark history of the world's most powerful economic institution. It is an impressive, even awe-inspiring achievement."—Sir Howard Davies, Times Higher Education Supplement

Contours of Descent: US Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity


Robert Pollin - 2003
    Pollin dissects this model as it has been implemented in the US during the Clinton and Bush administrations under Greenspan’s Chairmanship of the Federal Reserve, and in developing countries under the auspices of the IMF.Clinton’s Third Way policies were hailed as combining a pro-business stance with social responsibility. This approach seemed to be vindicated by the extraordinary fall in both inflation and unemployment. In fact, the apparent successes of the Clinton years were based on anti-labor policies, the stagnation of real wages, deregulation of financial markets, and an historically unprecedented stock market boom. Even before 9/11 there were indications that the Clinton bubble would collapse into recession. Bush’s response was to give big tax breaks to the rich, introduce more anti-labor measures, and cut social spending at both the federal and state levels.Both Clinton and Bush have applied free-market policies only selectively within the US itself, when such policies have most benefited the interests of business. At the same time, through the IMF, the US has compelled developing countries to slash public spending, deregulate financial markets and dismantle trade barriers virtually across the board. Argentina’s embrace of this policy package culminated in financial ruin. Throughout Asia and Africa, sweatshops and poverty are the testaments to a bankrupt economic model.Pollin concludes by exploring concrete proposals that would promote full employment, economic growth and increased equality in the US and throughout the less developed countries, drawing ong the spreading movements for living wages, the Tobin Tax on financial speculation, and more generally workable alternatives to neoliberal globalization.

A Land on Fire: The Environmental Consequences of the Southeast Asian Boom


James David Fahn - 2003
    As an award-winning investigative journalist based in Bankok, James Fahn spent a decade grappling with the challenges facing the region's mega-cities, tropical forests, coastlines, and societies dashing toward modernity. In A Land on Fire, he shares his findings - the profound implications for global issues such as climate change, the loss of biodiversity, and the greening of world trade. He explores Southeast Asia's environmental battles through the eyes of the people fighting them, and recounts his many adventures while covering them. Whether chasing down log smugglers along the Thai-Burmese border, exposing the dumping of toxic mercury into the Gulf of Thailand by multinational oil corporations, or covering the controversy surrounding the filming of the movie The Beach, Fahn provides unique insight into the relationship between sustainable development and democracy, the crippling impact of corruption, and the environmental challenges facing us all.

Microsoft® Office Excel® 2003 Step by Step


Curtis D. Frye - 2003
    Master the tools for organizing, processing and presenting data; make data come alive with Microsoft PivotTable® and PivotChart® dynamic views; use data analysis tools for better decision making; tap external data sources; add hyperlinks; create macros; and help keep data secure as you share—and collaborate on—Excel documents over the Web. The book also helps you prepare for the Microsoft Office Specialist exam and makes a great on-the-job desk reference. The companion CD includes practice files you can use as you learn, as well as the Microsoft Office System Reference pack, which contains templates and clip art, an eBook of Step by Step, and four other eBooks: the Microsoft Office System Quick Reference; the Insider’s Guide to Microsoft Office OneNote 2003; the Microsoft Computer Dictionary, Fifth Edition; and Introducing the Tablet PC. Designed for beginning and intermediate level users, STEP BY STEP puts you in charge of developing the skills you need, exactly when you need them!A Note Regarding the CD or DVDThe print version of this book ships with a CD or DVD. For those customers purchasing one of the digital formats in which this book is available, we are pleased to offer the CD/DVD content as a free download via O'Reilly Media's Digital Distribution services. To download this content, please visit O'Reilly's web site, search for the title of this book to find its catalog page, and click on the link below the cover image (Examples, Companion Content, or Practice Files). Note that while we provide as much of the media content as we are able via free download, we are sometimes limited by licensing restrictions. Please direct any questions or concerns to booktech@oreilly.com.

Microeconomics for Managers


David M. Kreps - 2003
    Developed over the course of ten years at the Stanford Business School, Microeconomics for Managers leads the field with a strong game theoretic approach and full-chapter coverage of many modern topics, including Porter's five forces, signaling, transaction costs, and incentives.

Losing the New China: A Story of American Commerce, Desire, and Betrayal


Ethan Gutmann - 2003
    corporations helped replace the Goddess of Democracy that once stood in Tiananmen Square with the Gods of Mammon and Mars that dominate China today.

Overcoming 7 Deadly Sins of Trading


Ruth Roosevelt - 2003
    Readers of her earlier books know the deep insights that she provides for traders to develop a winning attitude and mindset

A History of Post Keynesian Economics Since 1936


John Edward King - 2003
    

The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History Set


Joel Mokyr - 2003
    Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the field, the Encyclopedia is divided not only by chronological and geographic boundaries, but also by related subfields such as agricultural history, demographic history, business history, and the histories of technology, migration, and transportation. Thearticles, all written and signed by international contributors, include scholars from Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Covering economic history in all areas of the world and segments of ecnomies from prehistoric times to the present, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History is the ideal resource for students, economists, and general readers, offering a unique glimpse into this integral part of world history.

Reorienting Economics


Tony Lawson - 2003
    Despite regular economic crises and ongoing critique of the discipline, the drift from political economy into applied mathematics appears to continue unabated. In this book, Tony Lawson advocates a relignment of economics with social reality.In analyzing mainstream economists' misplaced universality, the author places ontology at the heart of a reoriented future in which economics is integrated within the wider human and social sciences.

Comix Economix


Bentley Boyd - 2003
    Chester the Crab explains economics using a trip to a video rental store, a safari with The Tax Hunter and the tracing of how a dollar changes forms as it goes through a suburban mall. This funny, colorful graphic novel will excite reluctant readers, prepare students for standardized tests and help homeschooling parents!

The Land Question: What It Involves, and How Alone It Can Be Settled


Henry George - 2003
    In order better to indicate the general character of this subject, and to conform to the title under which it had been republished in other countries, the title was subsequently change to The Land Question.Henry George (1839-1897) was a U.S. economist and advocate of the single tax.

Uncertain Times: Kenneth Arrow and the Changing Economics of Health Care


Peter J. Hammer - 2003
    Arrow’s groundbreaking piece, reprinted in full here, argued that while medicine was subject to the same models of competition and profit maximization as other industries, concepts of trust and morals also played key roles in understanding medicine as an economic institution and in balancing the asymmetrical relationship between medical providers and their patients. His conclusions about the medical profession’s failures to “insure against uncertainties” helped initiate the reevaluation of insurance as a public and private good.Coming from diverse backgrounds—economics, law, political science, and the health care industry itself—the contributors use Arrow’s article to address a range of present-day health-policy questions. They examine everything from health insurance and technological innovation to the roles of charity, nonprofit institutions, and self-regulation in addressing medical needs. The collection concludes with a new essay by Arrow, in which he reflects on the health care markets of the new millennium. At a time when medical costs continue to rise, the ranks of the uninsured grow, and uncertainty reigns even among those with health insurance, this volume looks back at a seminal work of scholarship to provide critical guidance for the years ahead.ContributorsLinda H. AikenKenneth J. ArrowGloria J. BazzoliM. Gregg BlocheLawrence CasalinoMichael ChernewRichard A. CooperVictor R. FuchsAnnetine C. GelijnsSherry A. GliedDeborah Haas-WilsonMark A. HallPeter J. HammerClark C. HavighurstPeter D. JacobsonRichard KronickMichael L. MillensonJack NeedlemanRichard R. NelsonMark V. PaulyMark A. PetersonUwe E. ReinhardtJames C. RobinsonWilliam M. SageJ. B. SilversFrank A. SloanJoshua Graff Zivin

Marx's Theory of Price and its Modern Rivals


Howard Nicholas - 2003
    Key modern theories of price are also analyzed; Neoclassical, Post Keynesian and Sraffian theories are contrasted with Marxian thought.

Behavioral Game Theory: Experiments in Strategic Interaction


Colin F. Camerer - 2003
    This book marks the first substantial and authoritative effort to close this gap. Colin Camerer, one of the field's leading figures, uses psychological principles and hundreds of experiments to develop mathematical theories of reciprocity, limited strategizing, and learning, which help predict what real people and companies do in strategic situations. Unifying a wealth of information from ongoing studies in strategic behavior, he takes the experimental science of behavioral economics a major step forward. He does so in lucid, friendly prose.Behavioral game theory has three ingredients that come clearly into focus in this book: mathematical theories of how moral obligation and vengeance affect the way people bargain and trust each other; a theory of how limits in the brain constrain the number of steps of I think he thinks . . . reasoning people naturally do; and a theory of how people learn from experience to make better strategic decisions. Strategic interactions that can be explained by behavioral game theory include bargaining, games of bluffing as in sports and poker, strikes, how conventions help coordinate a joint activity, price competition and patent races, and building up reputations for trustworthiness or ruthlessness in business or life.While there are many books on standard game theory that address the way ideally rational actors operate, Behavioral Game Theory stands alone in blending experimental evidence and psychology in a mathematical theory of normal strategic behavior. It is must reading for anyone who seeks a more complete understanding of strategic thinking, from professional economists to scholars and students of economics, management studies, psychology, political science, anthropology, and biology.

The Postmodern Prince: Critical Theory, Left Strategy, and the Making of a New Political Subject


John Sanbonmatsu - 2003
    At the same time it provides an original and illuminating intellectual history of the Left from the 1960s to the present. It examines the politics of the New Left in the 1960s, showing how its expressivism led to political division and also prepared the ground for postmodernism. It shows also how the political economy of academic life in an increasingly commodified society strengthened the basis of postmodernism. The Postmodern Prince provides a historically grounded critique of postmodernism, and a history of how the socialist Left has helped to create its ideas. In the course of this two-sided critique, it develops a brilliant account of a Marxism that sets itself the task of building a collective political subject--a successor to Machiavelli's Prince and Gramsci's Modern Prince--capable of challenging capitalism in its moment of global crisis. Sanbonmatsu demonstrates the limitations of the work of Foucault, and more recently, Hardt and Negri's much-acclaimed Empire. In the process he validates for Marxism the classical idea of politics as hegemonic in scope, revolutionary in aspiration, and dependent on the capacity of leadership to rise to unforeseen challenges. He draws on an extraordinary range of historical, political, and philosophical analyses to set out the preconditions for a renewal of strategic and theoretical vision for the Left.

After the New Economy: The Binge . . . And the Hangover That Won’t Go Away


Doug Henwood - 2003
    Though much of the rhetoric sounds ridiculous today, few analysts have explored how the New Economy moment emerged from deep within America’s economic and ideological machinery—instead, they’ve preferred to treat it as an episode of mass delusion.Now, with customary irreverence and acuity, journalist Doug Henwood dissects the New Economy, arguing that the delirious optimism was actually a manic set of variations on ancient themes, all promoted from the highest of places. Claims of New Eras have plenty of historical precedents; in this latest act, our modern mythmakers held that technology would overturn hierarchies, democratizing information and finance and leading inexorably to a virtual social revolution. But, as Henwood vividly demonstrates, the gap between rich and poor has never been so wide, wealth never so concentrated. After the New Economy offers an accessible and entertaining account of the less-than-lustrous reality beneath the gloss of the 1990s boom.

Interest and Prices: Foundations of a Theory of Monetary Policy


Michael Woodford - 2003
    Yet since the 1980s, most central banks have abandoned money-growth targets as practical guidelines for monetary policy as well. How then can pure "fiat" currencies be managed so as to create confidence in the stability of national units of account?Interest and Prices seeks to provide theoretical foundations for a rule-based approach to monetary policy suitable for a world of instant communications and ever more efficient financial markets. In such a world, effective monetary policy requires that central banks construct a conscious and articulate account of what they are doing. Michael Woodford reexamines the foundations of monetary economics, and shows how interest-rate policy can be used to achieve an inflation target in the absence of either commodity backing or control of a monetary aggregate. The book further shows how the tools of modern macroeconomic theory can be used to design an optimal inflation-targeting regime--one that balances stabilization goals with the pursuit of price stability in a way that is grounded in an explicit welfare analysis, and that takes account of the "New Classical" critique of traditional policy evaluation exercises. It thus argues that rule-based policymaking need not mean adherence to a rigid framework unrelated to stabilization objectives for the sake of credibility, while at the same time showing the advantages of rule-based over purely discretionary policymaking.

The Economics of Taxation


Bernard Salanie - 2003
    The book offers a thorough discussion of the consequences of taxes on economic decisions and equilibrium outcomes, as well as useful insights into how policy makers should design taxes. It covers issues of central policy importance, such as taxation of income from capital, environmental taxation, tax credits for low-income families, and the consumption tax.

The Evolution of New Markets


P.A. Geroski - 2003
    His purpose is to show how good a grasp of economics can improve managers' business and investment decisions.

Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy: The Cold War Origins of Rational Choice Liberalism


S.M. Amadae - 2003
    M. Amadae tells the remarkable story of how rational choice theory rose from obscurity to become the intellectual bulwark of capitalist democracy. Amadae roots Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy in the turbulent post-World War II era, showing how rational choice theory grew out of the RAND Corporation's efforts to develop a "science" of military and policy decisionmaking. But while the first generation of rational choice theorists—William Riker, Kenneth Arrow, and James Buchanan—were committed to constructing a "scientific" approach to social science research, they were also deeply committed to defending American democracy from its Marxist critics. Amadae reveals not only how the ideological battles of the Cold War shaped their ideas but also how those ideas may today be undermining the very notion of individual liberty they were created to defend.

The Prudence of Mr. Gordon Brown


William Keegan - 2003
    Gordon Brown has been at the very heart of new Labour's economic policy since the late 1980s and has been highly instrumental in convincing both the British public and the City that a Labour government can run the economy responsibly. He has generally been a popular and well-respected Chancellor - during his early years in office, he was highly praised for his prudence and yet now, well into the second term of office many of the issues on which the Blair government was elected, such as health and education, have not yet been satisfactorily addressed, and Gordon Brown is now being criticised for what many see as his imprudence in handling the nationa s finances.Examining how successful Laboura s economic policy has really been, when allowing for the good fortune of a world-wide economic boom, Keegan provides insights into the policies of new Labour, Gordon Brown's rise to power, the impact of his policies and how future policies might influence the economy.Written by a well-known and highly respected journalist who has been close to the heart of politics in Britain for many years, and who is thus able to offer an insidera s view of how policy developed in both opposition and the Government Examines the professional relationships and private friction between Brown, other members of the Cabinet and the Bank of England Includes much previously unpublished material William Keegan is Associate Editor (since 1983) and Economics Editor (since 1977) of The Observer newspaper. A graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, he has previously held posts with the Financial Times, Daily Mail and Bank of England Economic Intelligence Department. He has sat on a range of advisory committees, including the BBC Advisory Committee on Business and Industrial Affairs, the Employment Institute Council and the Department of Economics Advisory Board, University of Cambridge. He is visiting Professor of Journalism at Sheffield University and is the author of a variety of successful books.

The World Economy: Historical Statistics (Development Centre Studies)


Angus Maddison - 2003
    He demonstrates that such statistical data can enlighten the analysis of economic phenomena such as growth, market formation, and income distribution. This approach is particularly interesting for developing countries that often lack the expertise or data to produce good national accounts and are thus deprived of a vital policymaking tool. For OECD countries, it is a reminder that policies need to be grounded in the reality of verifiable economic data if they are to succeed.

Economics, Bureaucracy, and Race: How Keynesians Misguided the War on Poverty


Judith Russell - 2003
    government has introduced many public policies attempting to address poverty, yet it has failed to produce coherent programs to combat it.

Time and Decision: Economic and Psychological Perspectives of Intertemporal Choice: Economic and Psychological Perspectives of Intertemporal Choice


Alan F. Cohen - 2003
    A vacation two years from now is worth less to most people than a vacation next week. Psychologists, on the other hand, have focused on the cognitive and emotional underpinnings of intertemporal choice. Time and Decision draws from both disciplinary approaches to provide a comprehensive picture of the various layers of choice involved.Shane Frederick, George Loewenstein, and Ted O'Donoghue introduce the volume with an overview of the research on time discounting and focus on how people actually discount the future compared to the standard economic model. Alex Kacelnik discusses the crucial role that the ability to delay gratification must have played in evolution. Walter Mischel and colleagues review classic research showing that four year olds who are able to delay gratification subsequently grow up to perform better in college than their counterparts who chose instant gratification. The book also delves into the neurobiology of patience, examining the brain structures involved in the ability to withstand an impulse.Turning to the issue of self-control, Klaus Wertenbroch examines the relationship between consumption and available resources, showing, for example, how a high credit limit can lead people to overspend. Ted O'Donoghue and Matthew Rabin show how people's awareness of their self-control problems affects their decision-making. The final section of the book examines intertemporal choice with regard to health, drug addiction, dieting, marketing, savings, and public policy.All of us make important decisions every day-many of which profoundly affect the quality of our lives. Time and Decision provides a fascinating look at the complex factors involved in how and why we make our choices, so many of them short-sighted, and helps us understand more precisely this crucial human frailty.

A Critical Rewriting of Global Political Economy: Integrating Reproductive, Productive and Virtual Economies


V. Spi Peterson - 2003
    Spike Peterson clearly shows how two key features of the global economy increasingly determine everyday lives worldwide. The first is explosive growth in financial markets that shape business decision-making and public policy-making, and the second is dramatic growth in informal and flexible work arrangements that shape income-generation and family wellbeing. These developments, though widely recognized, are rarely analyzed as inextricable and interacting dimensions of globalization. Using a new theoretical model, Peterson demonstrates the interdependence of reproductive, productive and virtual economies and analyzes inequalities of race, gender, class and nation as structural features of neoliberal globalization.Presenting a methodologically plural, cross-disciplinary and well-documented account of globalization, the author integrates marginalized and disparate features of globalization to provide an accessible narrative from a postcolonial feminist vantage point.

Property Rights: A Practical Guide to Freedom and Prosperity


Terry L. Anderson - 2003
    This Hoover Classic edition of Property Rightsdetails step-by-step what property rights are, what they do, how they evolve, how they can be protected, and how they promote freedom and prosperity.

Modern Welfare States: Scandinavian Politics and Policy in the Global Age


Jack Ruppert - 2003
    Updated and expanded from its successful predecessor, this edition emphasizes how global and European developments have affected democratic policymaking in areas such as:· Social welfare policy· Employment policy· Labor relations· Economic policy· Social changeA comprehensive yet accessible survey of political history, governmental institutions, policymaking, political parties, interest groups, political culture, and foreign relations is also included. The comparative and interdisciplinary focus makes this a stimulating source of ideas for anyone interested in democracy and social justice in the global era.

Financial Crisis, Contagion, and Containment: From Asia to Argentina


Padma Desai - 2003
    Retracing the story of Asia's "Crisis Five"--Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand--Padma Desai argues that the region's imprudently fast-paced opening to the free flow of capital was pushed by determined advocates, official and private, in the global economy's U.S.-led developed center. Turmoil ensued in these peripheral economies, the Russian ruble faltered, and Brazil was eventually hit. The inequitable center-periphery relationship also extended to the policy measures that the crisis-swept economies implemented under International Monetary Fund bailouts, which intensified the downturns induced by the panic-driven outflows of short-term capital. Financial Crisis, Contagion, and Containment examines crisis origin and resolution in a comparative perspective by combing empirical evidence from the most robust economies to the least. Why is the U.S. relatively successful at weathering economic ups and downs? Why is Japan stuck in policy paralysis? Why is the European Central Bank unable to achieve both inflation control and stable growth? How can emerging markets avoid turbulence amid free-flowing speculative capital from private lenders of the developed center? Engaging and nontechnical yet deeply insightful, this book appears at a time when the continuing turmoil in Argentina has revived policy debates for avoiding and addressing financial crises in emerging market economies.

Nature's Magic: Synergy in Evolution and the Fate of Humankind


Peter A. Corning - 2003
    The 'Synergism Hypothesis' asserts that synergy is more than a class of interesting and ubiquitous effects. It has also been a major causal agency in evolution; it represents a unifying explanation for biological complexity and represents a different perspective on the evolutionary process. In contrast to gene-centered theories, or postulates of self-organization and emergent 'laws' of complexity, the Synergism Hypothesis represents, in essence, an 'economic' (or bio-economic) theory of complexity. Peter A. Corning, Ph.D., is the Director of the Institute for the Study of Complex Systems in Palo Alto, California. He has published numerous research papers and articles and three previous books, one of which was a theoretical monograph on the role of synergy in evolution, The Synergism Hypothesis: A Theory of Progressive Evolution (McGraw-Hill, 1983).

Supply Side Sustainability


Timothy F.H. Allen - 2003
    The conflict between these views tinges political debate at all levels and hinders our ability to plan for the future. "Supply-Side Sustainability" offers a fresh approach to this dilemma by integrating ecological and social science approaches in an interdisciplinary treatment of sustainability. Written by two ecologists and an anthropologist, this book discusses organisms, landscapes, populations, communities, biomes, the biosphere, ecosystems and energy flows, as well as patterns of sustainability and collapse in human societies, from hunter-gatherer groups to empires to today's industrial world. These diverse topics are integrated within a new framework that translates the authors' advances in hierarchy and complexity theory into a form useful to professionals in science, government, and business.The result is a much-needed blueprint for a cost-effective management regime, one that makes problem-solving efforts themselves sustainable over time. The authors demonstrate that long-term, cost-effective resource management can be achieved by managing the contexts of productive systems, rather than by managing the commodities that natural systems produce.

The Diversity of Modern Capitalism


Bruno Amable - 2003
    Different economic models are not simply characterized by different institutional forms, but also by particular pattern of interaction between complementary institutions which are the core characteristics of these models. Institutions are not just simply devices which would be chosen by 'social engineers' in order to perform a function as efficiently as possible; they are the outcome of a political economy process. Therefore, institutional change should be envisaged not as a move towards a hypothetical 'one best way', but as a result of socio-political compromises. Based on a theory of institutions and comparative capitalism, the book proposes an analysis of the diversity of modern economies and identifies five different models; the market-based Anglo-Saxon model; Asian capitalism; the Continental European model; the social democratic economies; and the Mediterranean model. Each of these types of capitalism is characterized by specific institutional complementarities. The question of the stability of the Continental European model of capitalism has been open since the beginning of the 1990's: inferior macroeconomic performance compared to Anglo-Saxon economies, alleged unsustainability of its welfare systems, too rigid markets, etc. The book examines the institutional transformations that have taken place within Continental European economies and analyses the political project behind the attempts at transforming the Continental model. It argues that Continental European economies will most likely stay very different from the market-based economies, and that political strategies promoting institutional change aiming at convergence with `nglo-Saxon model are bound to meet considerable opposition.

A Primer On Nonmarket Valuation (The Economics Of Non Marketing Goods And Resources, 3)


Patricia A. Champ - 2003
    Individuals working for government agencies, attorneys involved with natural resource damage assessments, graduate students, and others will appreciate the non-technical and practical tone of this book. The first section of the book provides the context and theoretical foundation of nonmarket valuation, along with practical data issues. The middle two sections of the Primer describe the major stated and revealed nonmarket valuation techniques. For each technique, the steps involved in implementation are laid out and described. Both practitioners of nonmarket valuation and those who are new to the field will come away from these methods chapters with a thorough understanding of how to design, implement, and analyze a nonmarket valuation study. The concluding section takes stock of the usefulness of nonmarket valuation, highlighting chapters on benefit transfer, the role of nonmarket valuation in real decisions about natural resources, and where nonmarket valuation is headed in the future. As a companion to A Primer on Nonmarket Valuation, a website has been developed, http: //www.fs.fed.us/nonmarketprimerdata/. This website includes downloadable datasets for each of the techniques described in the Primer, as well as links to published journal articles and reports based on the data. The website also provides an opportunity for students to estimate models using the data.

Wiley Blackwell Companion to Political Theology


William T. Cavanaugh - 2003
    With contributions from expert scholars in the field, it reflects a broad range of methodologies, ecclesial traditions, and geographic and social locations, and provides a sense of the diversity of political theologies. It also addresses the primary resources of the Christian tradition, which theologians draw on when constructing political theologies, and surveys some of the most important figures and movements in political theology. This revised and expanded edition provides the most comprehensive and accessible introduction to this lively and growing area of Christian theology.Organized into five sections, Wiley Blackwell Companion to Political Theology, Second Edition addresses the many changes that have occurred over the last 15 years within the field of political theology. It features new essays that address social developments and movements, such as Anglican Social Thought, John Milbank, Anabaptist Political Theologies, African Political Theologies, Postcolonialism, Political Economy, Technology and Virtuality, and Grass-roots Movements. The book also includes a new essay on the reception of Liberation Theology.Offers essays on topics such as the Trinity, atonement, and eschatology Features contributions from leading voices in the field of political theology Includes all-new entries covering fresh developments and movements like the urgency of climate change, virtuality and the digital age, the economic crisis of 2008, the discourse of religion and violence, and new modalities of war Addresses some important social movements from a theological point of view including postmodernism, grass-roots movements, and more Provides both Islamic and Jewish responses to political theology Written for academics and students of political theology, Wiley Blackwell Companion to Political Theology, 2nd Edition is an enlightening read that offers a wide range of authoritative essays from some of the most notable scholars in the field.