As late as the 1940s and 1950s, he argues, poor Southern rednecks were regarded by Northern employers and law enforcement officials as lazy, lawless, and sexually immoral. This pattern was repeated by blacks with whom they shared a subculture in the South. Over the last half century poor whites and most blacks have moved up in class and affluence, but the ghetto remains filled with black rednecks. Their attempt to escape, Sowell shows, is hampered by their white liberal friends who turn dysfunctional black redneck culture into a sacrosanct symbol of racial identity. In addition to Black Rednecks and White Liberals, the book takes on subjects ranging from Are Jews Generic? to The Real History of Slavery.

    Writing for a wide audience, David Harvey, author of The New Imperialism and The Condition of Postmodernity, here tells the political-economic story of where neoliberalization came from and how it proliferated on the world stage. Through critical engagement with this history, he constructs a framework, not only for analyzing the political and economic dangers that now surround us, but also for assessing the prospects for the more socially just alternatives being advocated by many oppositional movements.

    In the face of the outlandish American tax burden, talk-radio firebrand Neal Boortz and Congressman John Linder are leading the charge to phase out our current, unfair system and enact the FairTax Plan, replacing the federal income tax and withholding system with a simple 23 percent retail sales tax on new goods and services. This dramatic revision of the current system, which would eliminate the reviled IRS, has already caught fire in the American heartland, with more than six hundred thousand taxpayers signing on in support of the plan.As Boortz and Linder reveal in this first book on the FairTax, this radical but eminently sensible plan would end the annual national nightmare of filing income tax returns, while at the same time enlarging the federal tax base by collecting sales tax from every retail consumer in the country. The FairTax, they argue, would transform the fearsome bureaucracy of the IRS into a more transparent, accountable, and equitable tax collection system. Among other benefits, it will:Make America's tax code truly voluntary, without reducing revenueReplace today's indecipherable tax code with one simple sales taxProtect lower-income Americans by covering the tax on basic necessitiesEliminate billions of dollars in embedded taxes we don't even know we're payingBring offshore corporate dollars back into the U.S. economyEndorsed by scores of leading economists and supported by a huge and growing grassroots movement, the FairTax Plan could revolutionize the way America pays for itself. In this straight-talking book, Neal Boortz and John Linder show you how it would work—and how you can help make it happen.

    Reinert suggests that this set of policies in various combinations has driven successful development from Renaissance Italy to the modern Far East. Yet despite its demonstrable sucess, orthodox developemt economists have largely ignored this approach and insisted instead on the importance of free trade. Reinart shows how the history of economics has long been torn between the continental Renaissance tradition on one hand and the free market theories of English and later American economies on the other. Our economies were founded on protectionism and state activism—look at China today—and could only later afford the luxury of free trade. When our leaders come to lecture poor countries on the right road to riches they do so in almost perfect ignorance of the real history of national affluence.

    Challenges readers to think about why some countries are rich, while others are poor and explores alternative thinking about important economic, practical, and philosophical matters.

    Thoroughly extended, revised and updated, it will become the indispensable text for students and teachers of macroeconomics in the new millennium. Full description

    This book is written for the rational mind, whether the reader is a professional intellectual or an intelligent layman. It makes the case for individual rights and freedom in terms intelligible to all rational men.

    Whereas once the subject addressed mainly the financing of corporations--equity, debt, and valuation--today it also embraces crucial issues of governance, liquidity, risk management, relationships between banks and corporations, and the macroeconomic impact of corporations. However, this progress has left in its wake a jumbled array of concepts and models that students are often hard put to make sense of.Here, one of the world's leading economists offers a lucid, unified, and comprehensive introduction to modern corporate finance theory. Jean Tirole builds his landmark book around a single model, using an incentive or contract theory approach. Filling a major gap in the field, The Theory of Corporate Finance is an indispensable resource for graduate and advanced undergraduate students as well as researchers of corporate finance, industrial organization, political economy, development, and macroeconomics.Tirole conveys the organizing principles that structure the analysis of today's key management and public policy issues, such as the reform of corporate governance and auditing; the role of private equity, financial markets, and takeovers; the efficient determination of leverage, dividends, liquidity, and risk management; and the design of managerial incentive packages. He weaves empirical studies into the book's theoretical analysis. And he places the corporation in its broader environment, both microeconomic and macroeconomic, and examines the two-way interaction between the corporate environment and institutions.Setting a new milestone in the field, The Theory of Corporate Finance will be the authoritative text for years to come.

    Without the motorbike the economy would come to a halt. Bikes of Burden shows in 148 stunning, full color photographs how the motorbikes, the drivers and their loads ride around the cities and countryside in acts that defy your wildest imagination.

    From his acerbic analysis of America’s “private wealth and public squalor” to his denunciation of the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, Galbraith consistently challenged “conventional wisdom” (a phrase he coined). He did so as a witty commentator on America’s political follies and as a versatile author of bestselling books—such as The Affluent Society and The New Industrial State—that warn of the dangers of deregulated markets, corporate greed, and inattention to the costs of our military power. Here, in the first full-length biography of Galbraith and his times, Richard Parker provides not only a nuanced portrait of this extraordinary man, but also an important reinterpretation of twentieth-century public policy and economic practices.“Whatever you may think of his ideas, John Kenneth Galbraith has led an extraordinary life. . . . Doing justice to this life story requires an outsize biography, one that not only tells Mr. Galbraith’s tale but sets it on the broader canvas of America’s political and economic evolution. And Richard Parker’s book does just that.”—Economist“Parker’s book is more than a chronicle of Galbraith’s life; it’s a history of American politics and policy from FDR through George W. Bush. . . . It will make readers more economically and politically aware.”—USA Today “The most readable and instructive biography of the century.”—William F. Buckley, National Review      “The story of this man’s life and work is wonderfully rendered in this magnum opus, and offers an antidote to the public ennui, economic cruelty, and government malfeasance that poison life in America today.”—James Carroll, Boston Globe

    It explores the institutional aspects of the WTO together with the substantive law. New to this edition are examinations of the WTO rules on the protection of intellectual property and the rules on technical barriers to trade and sanitary and phytosanitary measures. Assignments are integrated throughout to allow students to assess their understanding, while chapter summaries reinforce learning. In addition further-reading sections have been added to each chapter and exercises have been included to draw on primary sources and real-life trade scenarios, enabling students to hone their practical and analytical skills. The title is an essential tool for any student of the WTO, either at undergraduate or postgraduate level.

    The liberal media and propagandists masquerading as educators have filled the world--and deformed public policy--with politically correct errors about capitalism and economics in general. In The Politically Incorrect Guide(tm) to Capitalism, myth-busting professor Robert P. Murphy, a scholar and frequent speaker at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, cuts through all their nonsense, shattering liberal myths and fashionable socialist cliches to set the record straight. Murphy starts with a basic explanation of what capitalism really is, and then dives fearlessly into hot topics like:* Outsourcing (why it's good for Americans) and zoning restrictions (why they're not) * Why central planning has never worked and never will * How prices operate in a free market (and why socialist schemes like rent control always backfire) * How labor unions actually hurt workers more than they help them * Why increasing the minimum wage is always a bad idea * Why the free market is the best guard against racism * How capitalism will save the environment--and why Communist countries were the most polluted on earth * Raising taxes: why it is never "responsible" * Why no genuine advocate for the downtrodden could endorse the dehumanizing Welfare State * The single biggest myth underlying the public's support for government regulation of business * Antitrust suits: usually filed by firms that lose in free competition * How tariffs and other restrictions "protect" privileged workers but make other Americans poorer * The IMF and World Bank: why they don't help poor countries * Plus: Are you a capitalist pig? Take the quiz and find out! Breezy, witty, but always clear, precise, and elegantly reasoned, The Politically Incorrect Guide(tm) to Capitalism is a solid and entertaining guide to free market economics. With his twelve-step plan for understanding the free market, Murphy shows why conservatives should resist attempts to socialize America and fight spiritedly for the free market.

    Under the guise of "economic development," big companies have gotten extraordinary tax breaks, from property tax abatements to land write-downs. Promises of job creation in exchange for these tax breaks have proven hollow, with companies continuing to downsize and outsource at record levels. Government officials are no help - they're well compensated major players in this troubling drama. This timely book explores these abuses in depth, but also offers hope with a series of commonsense reforms that would give taxpayers powerful new tools to reverse this situation - and redirect monies in ways that will really pay off. By popularizing these grassroots reforms - which are already taking hold - this book is taking a movement that is percolating in the states and putting it on the national stage.

    In 1993, the first volume provided the standard reference to this new approach in finance--an approach that, as editor Richard Thaler put it, entertains the possibility that some of the agents in the economy behave less than fully rationally some of the time. Much has changed since then. Not least, the bursting of the Internet bubble and the subsequent market decline further demonstrated that financial markets often fail to behave as they would if trading were truly dominated by the fully rational investors who populate financial theories. Behavioral finance has made an indelible mark on areas from asset pricing to individual investor behavior to corporate finance, and continues to see exciting empirical and theoretical advances. Advances in Behavioral Finance, Volume II constitutes the essential new resource in the field. It presents twenty recent papers by leading specialists that illustrate the abiding power of behavioral finance--of how specific departures from fully rational decision making by individual market agents can provide explanations of otherwise puzzling market phenomena. As with the first volume, it reaches beyond the world of finance to suggest, powerfully, the importance of pursuing behavioral approaches to other areas of economic life.The contributors are Brad M. Barber, Nicholas Barberis, Shlomo Benartzi, John Y. Campbell, Emil M. Dabora, Daniel Kent, Fran�ois Degeorge, Kenneth A. Froot, J. B. Heaton, David Hirshleifer, Harrison Hong, Ming Huang, Narasimhan Jegadeesh, Josef Lakonishok, Owen A. Lamont, Roni Michaely, Terrance Odean, Jayendu Patel, Tano Santos, Andrei Shleifer, Robert J. Shiller, Jeremy C. Stein, Avanidhar Subrahmanyam, Richard H. Thaler, Sheridan Titman, Robert W. Vishny, Kent L. Womack, and Richard Zeckhauser.

    In some ways, it is the perfect introduction to Mises's thought, something that immediately grabs one's attention and gives a fast and accessible presentation of the range of his ideas. The content is Mises in a brand-new way, in a way that you have never encountered him before. Each page exudes energy and wisdom. After we sent it to Bettina-Bien Greaves, she wrote us to say: "A thrilling project, a thorough job, and a marvelous result. The Quotable Mises performs a great service." The biggest struggle in putting the book together was not in finding enough quotes but in limiting the number. The editor tried to provide a representative list of topics and subjects that Mises is most famous for such as socialism, bureaucracy, interventionism, money, government, and war. But he also included many subject areas for which Mises is not often quoted, including arts, fate, health, instinct, martyrdom, religion, and youth. Most economists don't write enough memorable material in an entire lifetime to fill 20 pages. But Mises was different. He was brilliant, brave, and tenacious. He could also write. He wanted to reach all people, not just specialists. This serves as an introduction and guide to his thought, or even a kind of concordance, all in his own words. Mostly it is a means for putting Mises's ideas in even greater circulation.

    Wade have on violent crime? Freakonomics will literally redefine the way we view the modern world.These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He is a much heralded scholar who studies the stuff and riddles of everyday life -- from cheating and crime to sports and child rearing -- and whose conclusions regularly turn the conventional wisdom on its head. He usually begins with a mountain of data and a simple, unasked question. Some of these questions concern life-and-death issues; others have an admittedly freakish quality. Thus the new field of study contained in this book: freakonomics.Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, Levitt and co-author Stephen J. Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives -- how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. In Freakonomics, they set out to explore the hidden side of ... well, everything. The inner workings of a crack gang. The truth about real-estate agents. The myths of campaign finance. The telltale marks of a cheating schoolteacher. The secrets of the Ku Klux Klan.What unites all these stories is a belief that the modern world, despite a surfeit of obfuscation, complication, and downright deceit, is not impenetrable, is not unknowable, and -- if the right questions are asked -- is even more intriguing than we think. All it takes is a new way of looking. Steven Levitt, through devilishly clever and clear-eyed thinking, shows how to see through all the clutter.Freakonomics establishes this unconventional premise: If morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work. It is true that readers of this book will be armed with enough riddles and stories to last a thousand cocktail parties. But Freakonomics can provide more than that. It will literally redefine the way we view the modern world.(front flap)

    But economists also analyze issues that, to others, do not typically fall within the realm of economic reasoning, such as organ transplants, cigarette addiction, smoking in public, and product safety. Trade-Offs is an introduction to the economic approach to analyzing these controversial public policy issues.Harold Winter provides readers with the analytical tools needed to identify and understand the trade-offs associated with these topics. By considering both the costs and benefits of potential policy solutions, Winter stresses that real-world policy decision making is best served by an explicit recognition of as many trade-offs as possible.Intellectually stimulating yet accessible and entertaining, Trade-Offs will be appreciated by students of economics, public policy, health administration, political science, and law, as well as by anyone who follows current social policy debates.

    He presents a coherent set of economic institutions and procedures that can deliver economic justice and democracy through a "participatory economy." But this is a long-run goal; he also explores how to promote the economics of equitable cooperation in the here and now by emphasizing ways to broaden the base of existing economic reform movements while deepening their commitment to more far reaching change.

    Ian Baucom revisits, in unprecedented detail, the Zong atrocity, the ensuing court cases, reactions to the event and trials, and the business and social dealings of the Liverpool merchants who owned the ship. Drawing on the work of an astonishing array of literary and social theorists, including Walter Benjamin, Giovanni Arrighi, Jacques Derrida, and many others, he argues that the tragedy is central not only to the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the political and cultural archives of the black Atlantic but also to the history of modern capital and ethics. To apprehend the Zong tragedy, Baucom suggests, is not to come to terms with an isolated atrocity but to encounter a logic of violence key to the unfolding history of Atlantic modernity. Baucom contends that the massacre and the trials that followed it bring to light an Atlantic cycle of capital accumulation based on speculative finance, an economic cycle that has not yet run its course. The extraordinarily abstract nature of today’s finance capital is the late-eighteenth-century system intensified. Yet, as Baucom highlights, since the late 1700s, this rapacious speculative culture has had detractors. He traces the emergence and development of a counter-discourse he calls melancholy realism through abolitionist and human-rights texts, British romantic poetry, Scottish moral philosophy, and the work of late-twentieth-century literary theorists. In revealing how the Zong tragedy resonates within contemporary financial systems and human-rights discourses, Baucom puts forth a deeply compelling, utterly original theory of history: one that insists that an eighteenth-century atrocity is not past but present within the future we now inhabit.

    A leader in applying game theory to the understanding of institutional analysis, Elinor Ostrom provides in this book a coherent method for undertaking the analysis of diverse economic, political, and social institutions.Understanding Institutional Diversity explains the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, which enables a scholar to choose the most relevant level of interaction for a particular question. This framework examines the arena within which interactions occur, the rules employed by participants to order relationships, the attributes of a biophysical world that structures and is structured by interactions, and the attributes of a community in which a particular arena is placed.The book explains and illustrates how to use the IAD in the context of both field and experimental studies. Concentrating primarily on the rules aspect of the IAD framework, it provides empirical evidence about the diversity of rules, the calculation process used by participants in changing rules, and the design principles that characterize robust, self-organized resource governance institutions.

    The truth, however, is that local communities have a long history of ambivalence toward new arrivals and minorities. Persistent patterns of segregation by race and income still exist in housing and schools, along with a growing emphasis on rapid metropolitan development (sprawl) that encourages upwardly mobile families to abandon older communities and their problems. This dual pattern is becoming increasingly important as America grows more diverse than ever and economic inequality increases. Two recent trends compel new attention to these issues. First, the geography of race and class represents a crucial litmus test for the new "regionalism"—the political movement to address the linked fortunes of cities and suburbs. Second, housing has all but disappeared as a major social policy issue over the past two decades. This timely book shows how unequal housing choices and sprawling development create an unequal geography of opportunity. It emerges from a project sponsored by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University in collaboration with the Joint Center for Housing Studies and the Brookings Institution. The contributors—policy analysts, political observers, social scientists, and urban planners—document key patterns, their consequences, and how we can respond, taking a hard look at both successes and failures of the past. Place still matters, perhaps more than ever. High levels of segregation shape education and job opportunity, crime and insecurity, and long-term economic prospects. These problems cannot be addressed effectively if society assumes that segregation will take care of itself. Contributors include William Apgar (Harvard University), Judith Bell (PolicyLink), Angela Glover Blackwell (PolicyLink), Allegra Calder (Harvard), Karen Chapple (Cal-Berkeley), Camille Charles (Penn), Mary Cunningham (Urban Institute), Casey Dawkins (Virginia Tech), Stephanie DeLuca (Johns Hopkins), John Goering (CUNY), Edward Goetz (U. of Minnesota), Bruce Katz (Brookings), Barbara Lukermann (U. of Minnesota), Gerrit Knaap (U. of Maryland), Arthur Nelson (Virginia Tech), Rolf Pendall (Cornell), Susan J. Popkin (Urban Institute), James Rosenbaum (Northwestern), Stephen L. Ross (U. of Connecticut), Mara Sidney (Rutgers), Phillip Tegeler (Poverty and Race Research Action Council), Tammy Tuck (Northwestern), Margery Austin Turner (Urban Institute), William Julius Wilson (Harvard).

    After a brief introduction describing the dramatic response of the Social Security Administration to the 9/11 terrorist attack, the book recounts Social Security� s lively history. Although President Bush has tried to convince Americans that Social Security is designed for the last century and unworkable for an aging population, readers will see that the President's assault is just another battle in a longstanding ideological war. Prescott Bush, the current President� s grandfather, remarked of FDR, The only man I truly hated lies buried in Hyde Park. The book traces the continuous thread leading from Prescott Bush and his contemporaries to George W. Bush and others who want to undo Social Security. The book concludes with policy recommendations which eliminate Social Security's deficit in a manner consistent with the program's philosophy and structure.

    The author, an Asian regulator, examines how old mindsets, market fundamentalism, loose monetary policy, carry trade, lax supervision, greed, cronyism, and financial engineering caused both the Asian crisis of the late 1990s and the current global crisis of 2008-2009. This book shows how the Japanese zero interest rate policy to fight deflation helped create the carry trade that generated bubbles in Asia whose effects brought Asian economies down. The study's main purpose is to demonstrate that global finance is so interlinked and interactive that our current tools and institutional structure to deal with critical episodes are completely outdated. The book explains how current financial policies and regulation failed to deal with a global bubble and makes recommendations on what must change.

    Unfortunately, a confusing array of anecdotal and conflicting indicators often renders it impossible for managers and investors to see where the economy is heading in time to take corrective action. Now, a 35-year Wall Street veteran unveils a new forecasting method to help managers and investors understand and predict the economic cycles that control their businesses and financial fates. In Ahead of the Curve, Joseph H. Ellis argues that the problem with current forecasting models lies not in the data, but rather in the lack of a clear framework for putting the data in context and reading it correctly. The book explains critical economic indicators in nontechnical language, identifies and documents the recurring cause-and-effect relationships that consistently predict turning points in the economy, and provides the tools managers and investors need to position themselves ahead of cyclical upturns and downturns. Economic events are not as random and unpredictable as they seem. This book helps readers recognize and react to signs of change that their rivals don't see—and win a sizeable competitive advantage. Joseph H. Ellis was a partner at Goldman Sachs and was ranked for 18 consecutive years by Institutional Investor magazine as Wall Street's No.1 retail industry analyst.

    The book is oriented to the practitioner. A basic understanding of the linear regression model with matrix algebra is assumed. The text can be used for a microeconometrics course, typically a second-year economics PhD course; for data-oriented applied microeconometrics field courses; and as a reference work for graduate students and applied researchers who wish to fill in gaps in their toolkit. Distinguishing features of the book include emphasis on nonlinear models and robust inference, simulation-based estimation, and problems of complex survey data. The book makes frequent use of numerical examples based on generated data to illustrate the key models and methods. More substantially, it systematically integrates into the text empirical illustrations based on seven large and exceptionally rich data sets.

    Latino immigrant life and legal activism is woven together in an unexpected study that challenges widely held beliefs about the powerlessness of immigrant workers, what a union should be, and what constitutes effective legal representation.

    From the ill-equipped wage earners on the factory floor deluded by slick pitches evoking images of 401(k) financial independence to the institutional investors, the fate was often the same-except for the parasites who were knowingly complicit. When the Great Bubble inevitably imploded, few were spared the financial fallout. Speculative Contagion is an insider's riveting real-time and real-money account of the inflating Bubble, accented with the genuine suspense to be found only in real-life drama. The epidemic of tech-driven lunacy gradually affected more and more feverish investors all too prone to be infected by the insidious absurdity of the times. In the midst of it all, Frank Martin found sanctuary in the treasure trove of history. As he reflected on the unremitting succession of other departures from reality in the past, along with the madness of crowds, he was able to grasp shreds of sanity, at least partially muting the Sirens' call of speculative contagion. Spared the emotional devastation and accompanying paralysis that shocking losses inevitably and cruelly visit upon the unprepared, Martin commanded the capital and the conviction to be able to step up to the plate and lay wood to the fat pitches that at last came floating his firm's way. While the path to investment success is arduous at best and assured for no one, the eye-strained yet battle-hardened reader-from student to amateur or seasoned investor to rattled professional-is forearmed by this book to face the future with a short list of foundational antidotes. Rationality is their common thread. We can thus combat the ill effects of whatever may yet come at us from the perilously unorthodox and persistently unrepentant current episode, as well as those that lie in wait beyond the horizon. With both colorful anecdotes and timely antidotes coming as thick and fast as baseballs to a hitter in batting practice, the reader is in for a delightful and eye-opening romp through an extraordinary era in U.S. financial history.

    But what about inequality between all citizens of the world? Worlds Apart addresses just how to measure global inequality among individuals, and shows that inequality is shaped by complex forces often working in different directions. Branko Milanovic, a top World Bank economist, analyzes income distribution worldwide using, for the first time, household survey data from more than 100 countries. He evenhandedly explains the main approaches to the problem, offers a more accurate way of measuring inequality among individuals, and discusses the relevant policies of first-world countries and nongovernmental organizations.Inequality has increased between nations over the last half century (richer countries have generally grown faster than poorer countries). And yet the two most populous nations, China and India, have also grown fast. But over the past two decades inequality within countries has increased. As complex as reconciling these three data trends may be, it is clear: the inequality between the world's individuals is staggering. At the turn of the twenty-first century, the richest 5 percent of people receive one-third of total global income, as much as the poorest 80 percent. While a few poor countries are catching up with the rich world, the differences between the richest and poorest individuals around the globe are huge and likely growing.

    At its heart is the greatest of American paradoxes: How have tiny minorities of the rich and privileged consistently exercised so much power in a nation built on the notion of rule by the people?In a series of thought-provoking essays, leading scholars of American history examine every epoch in which ruling economic elites have shaped our national experience. They explore how elites came into existence, how they established their dominance over public affairs, and how their rule came to an end. The contributors analyze the elite coalition that led the Revolution and then examine the antebellum planters of the South and the merchant patricians of the North. Later chapters vividly portray the Gilded Age robber barons, the great finance capitalists in the age of J. P. Morgan, and the foreign-policy Establishment of the post-World War II years. The book concludes with a dissection of the corporate-led counter-revolution against the New Deal characteristic of the Reagan and Bush era.Rarely in the last half-century has one book afforded such a comprehensive look at the ways elite wealth and power have influenced the American experiment with democracy. At a time when the distribution of wealth and power has never been more unequal, Ruling America is of urgent contemporary relevance.

    Far from being a response to 9/11 terrorism or Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, Petrodollar Warfare argues that the invasion was precipitated by two converging phenomena: the imminent peak in global oil production and the ascendance of the euro currency.Energy analysts agree that world oil supplies are about to peak, after which there will be a steady decline in supplies of oil. Iraq, possessing the world’s second-largest oil reserves, was therefore already a target of US geostrategic interests. Together with the fact that Iraq had switched to paying for oil in euros—rather than US dollars—the Bush administration’s unreported aim was to prevent further OPEC momentum in favor of the euro as an alternative oil transaction currency standard.Meticulously researched, Petrodollar Warfare examines US dollar hegemony and the unsustainable macroeconomics of ‘petrodollar recycling,’ pointing out that the issues underlying the Iraq war also apply to geostrategic tensions between the United States and other countries, including the member states of the European Union, Iran, Venezuela and Russia. The author warns that without changing course, the American experiment will end the way all empires end—with military overextension and subsequent economic decline. He recommends the multilateral pursuit of both energy and monetary reforms within a UN framework to create a more balanced global energy and monetary system—thereby reducing the possibility of future oil and oil currency-related warfare.A sober call for an end to aggressive US unilateralism, Petrodollar Warfare is a unique contribution to the debate about the future global political economy.William R. Clark is manager of performance improvement at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His research on oil depletion, oil currency issues and US geostrategy received a 2003 Project Censored Award and was published in Censored 2004. He lives in Columbia, Maryland.

    A Nobel laureate in economics, he was an accomplished political scientist, winner of a lifetime achievement award from the American Psychological Association, and founder of the Department of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. In all his work in all these fields, he pursued a single goal: to create a science that could map the bounds of human reason and so enlarge its role in human affairs.Hunter Crowther-Heyck uses the career of this unique individual to examine the evolution of the social sciences after World War II, particularly Simon's creation of a new field, systems science, which joined together two distinct, powerful approaches to human behavior, the sciences of choice and control. Simon sought to develop methods by which human behavior, specifically human problem-solving, could be modeled and simulated. Regarding mind and machine as synonymous, Simon applied his models of human behavior to many other areas, from public administration and business management to artificial intelligence and the design of complex social and technical systems.In this informed and discerning study, Crowther-Heyck explores Simon's contributions to science and their influences on modern life and thought. For historians of science, social science, and technology, and for scholars of twentieth-century American intellectual and cultural history, this account of Herbert Simon's life and work provides a rich and valuable perspective.

    In this important new text, Matthew Watson reviews the main current theoretical approaches to IPE and highlights the problems that arise from treating states and markets as separate and contesting units of analysis. He goes on to show how the more historically informed tradition of classical political economy can provide a firmer basis for analysis of such key substantive issues in IPE as globalization, international trade and development.

    But in his book, "One up on Wall Street, Peter Lynch, the consummate professional, proclaimed, "Any normal person using the customary three percent of (his or her) brain can pick stocks just as well, if not better, than the average Wall Street expert." Ellis Traub, the author of Take Stock, tells you exactly how a "normal person"--"anyone, regardless of education or financial experience--"can do it...and do it easily. A college dropout and a retired airline pilot, he lost nearly everything in the stock market when he first started. As a result, he was scared away from it during his most productive years. After stumbling upon the National Association of Investors Corporation (NAIC), a non-profit, investment-educational institution, and learning then teaching its methodology, he turned his financial life around and has devoted his life to helping others avoid the misery he went through. Take Stock is as important for what it says you "don't have to know as for teaching you what you "should. Building on the simple concept taught by NAIC, Mr. Traub strips away the intimidating jargon the pros use to make themselves seem more knowledgeable. Cutting the required financial vocabulary to only ten simple terms, Traub shows you, in a breezy and good-natured style, how to apply those terms to learn the only two things you need to know about an investment: if the company is good enough to buy, and, if so, the right price to pay for its stock.

    Part 1, “Rent Seeking: An Overview,” brings together two papers that focus on problems of defining rent-seeking behavior and outline the nature of the ongoing research program in a historical perspective. Part 2, “More on Efficient Rent Seeking,” contains four contributions in which Tullock elaborates on his 1980 article on efficient rent seeking. Part 3, “The Environments of Rent Seeking,” consists of eight papers that collectively display the breadth of the rent-seeking concept. Part 4, “The Cost of Rent Seeking,” comprises seven papers that address several important issues about the cost of rent seeking to society as a whole. Part 5 is Tullock’s short monograph Exchanges and Contracts, in which he develops a systematic theory of exchange in political markets. In Part 6, “Future Directions for Rent-Seeking Research,” Tullock focuses on the importance of information in the political marketplace.This work has been carefully constructed to build on the inaugural volume in this collection and to ease students through the field in a clear and concise manner.Charles K. Rowley is Duncan Black Professor of Economics at George Mason University and a Senior Fellow of the James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy at George Mason University. He is also General Director of the Locke Institute.The entire series includes:Volume 1: Virginia Political Economy Volume 2: The Calculus of Consent Volume 3: The Organization of Inquiry (November 2004) Volume 4: The Economics of Politics (February 2005) Volume 5: The Rent-Seeking Society (March 2005) Volume 6: Bureaucracy (June 2005)Volume 7: The Economics and Politics of Wealth Redistribution (July 2005)Volume 8: The Social Dilemma: Of Autocracy, Revolution, Coup d'Etat, and War (December 2005)Volume 9: Law and Economics (December 2005)Volume 10: Economics without Frontiers (January 2006)

    The subject, a perennial centerpiece of the SFI program of studies has gained a wide range of followers for its methods of employing empirical evidence in the development of analytical economic theories. Accordingly, the chapters in this volume addresses a wide variety of issues in the fields of economics and complexity, accessing eclectic techniques from many disciplines, provided that they shed light on the economic problem. Dedicated to Kenneth Arrow on his 80th birthday, this volume honors his many contributions to the Institute. SFI-style economics is regarded as having had an important impact in introducing a new approach to economic analysis.

    The new book is intended for advanced undergraduate and graduate students of economics whose requirements go beyond the material usually taught in undergraduate mathematics courses for economists. It presents most of the mathematical tools that are required for advanced courses in economic theory - both micro and macro.

    It is an insider's guide which spans the three aspects of successful trading: charting and entry techniques, money and trade management, and trading psychology.

    This book unifies key aspects of these challenges in the formulation of a new macroeconomic paradigm. Its validity is tested using data on Japan, one of the biggest empirical challenges to the "old" paradigm. In the process, a contribution is made towards a better understanding of the many "puzzles" or "anomalies" of the Japanese economy of the past decades. However, the new approach is applicable far beyond Japan.

    Leading writer Boris Kagarlitsky offers an ambitious account of 1000 years of Russian history.

    From its dramatic expansion in the early nineteenth century to its decline on the eve of the Sino-Japanese War in the late 1930s, salt production in Zigong was one of the largest and one of the only indigenous large-scale industries in China. Madeleine Zelin recounts the history of the salt industry to reveal a fascinating chapter in China's history and provide new insight into the forces and institutions that shaped Chinese economic and social development independent of Western or Japanese influence. Her book challenges long-held beliefs that social structure, state extraction, the absence of modern banking, and cultural bias against business precluded industrial development in China.Zelin details the novel ways in which Zigong merchants mobilized capital through financial-industrial networks. She describes how entrepreneurs spurred growth by developing new technologies, capturing markets, and building integrated business organizations. Without the state establishing and enforcing rules, Zigong businessmen were free to regulate themselves, utilize contracts, and shape their industry. However, this freedom came at a price, and ultimately the merchants suffered from the underdevelopment of a transportation infrastructure, the political instability of early-twentieth-century China, and the absence of a legislative forum to develop and codify business practices.Zelin's analysis of the political and economic contexts that allowed for the rise and fall of the salt industry also considers why its success did not contribute to "industrial takeoff" during that period in China. Based on extensive research, Zelin's work offers a comprehensive study of the growth of a major Chinese industry and resituates the history of Chinese business within the larger story of worldwide industrial development.

    In this innovative and ambitious global history, distinguished economic historian Amiya Kumar Bagchi critically analyzes the processes leading to the rise of the West since the sixteenth century to its current position as the most prosperous and powerful group of nations in the world. Integrating the history of armed conflict with the history of competition for trade, investment, and markets, Bagchi explores the human consequences for people both within and outside the region. He characterizes the emergence and operation of capitalism as a system driven by wars over resources and markets rather than one that genuinely operates on the principle of free markets. In tracing this history, he also charts what happened to the people who came under its sway during the last five centuries. Bagchi thus broadens our understanding of the nature and history of capitalism and challenges the fetishism of commodities that limits the perspective of most economic historians. The book also challenges the Eurocentrism that still underlies the conceptual framework of many mainstream historians, joining earlier narratives that chronicle the history of human beings as living persons rather than as puppets serving the abstract cause of "economic growth." His unflinching examination of the human costs of development-not only in the colonial periphery but in the core nations-includes not only economic processes and issues of inequality within and among nations but also the intertwining of economics and war-making on a world scale. The book also contributes to our knowledge of how and in what sequence human health has been shaped by public health care, sanitation, modern medicine, income levels and nutrition. Written with extraordinary range and depth, Perilous Passage will change the ways in which we think about many of the largest issues in world history and development.

    In fact, countries around the world have freed their taxpayers to do just that—and we can too with a simple flat tax that will slash tax rates, spur economic growth, and put the IRS out of business.In Flat Tax Revolution you’ll learn:· How a simple 17 percent flat tax will save you time, money, and worry· Why the Flat Tax will eliminate the IRS, its bureaucrats, its paperwork, its nightmares, and its hassles· Why the Flat Tax will create jobs, and bring back ones we’ve lost overseas· How other countries are already reaping the benefits of a flat tax system· How the flat tax will stop special interests getting tax breaks at your expense· How the flat tax will eliminate shady accounting in business (something that our current tax system encourages)· Why the Forbes Flat Tax is also a tax cut· What you can do to make the Flat Tax a realityAs Steve Forbes shows, the Flat Tax shouldn’t be a partisan issue—it should be a taxpayer issue. And you can make it happen.What are you waiting for? Buy this book and join the crusade!

    The book explores the relationships between economic theory and the theoretical foundations of related disciplines that are relevant to the day-to-day work of economics--the cognitive and behavioral sciences. It asks whether the increasingly sophisticated techniques of microeconomic analysis have revealed any deep empirical regularities--whether technical improvement represents improvement in any other sense. Casting Daniel Dennett and Kenneth Binmore as its intellectual heroes, the book proposes a comprehensive model of economic theory that, Ross argues, does not supplant, but recovers the core neoclassical insights, and counters the caricaturish conception of neoclassicism so derided by advocates of behavioral or evolutionary economics.Because he approaches his topic from the viewpoint of the philosophy of science, Ross devotes one chapter to the philosophical theory and terminology on which his argument depends and another to related philosophical issues. Two chapters provide the theoretical background in economics, one covering developments in neoclassical microeconomics and the other treating behavioral and experimental economics and evolutionary game theory. The three chapters at the heart of the argument then apply theses from the philosophy of cognitive science to foundational problems for economic theory. In these chapters, economists will find a genuinely new way of thinking about the implications of cognitive science for economics, and cognitive scientists will find in economic behavior, a new testing site for the explanations of cognitive science.

    Akerlof's work has changed the way we see economics. This collection of Akerlof's most important papers provide both an introduction to Akerlof's work and a grounding in modern economics. Divided into two broad areas, micro- and macroeconomics, they cover the economics of information; the theory of unemployment; macroeconomic equilibria; the demand for money; psychology and economics; and the nature of discrimination and other social issues. Akerlof's substantial introduction to this volume tells the story of these papers, connecting them and showing how his later work has built upon his early contributions, in many cases improving their arguments, their subtlety, and their usefulness today.

    Following the early phase of slow growth, he charts the transformation of the economy as a result of the discovery of diamonds and gold in the 1870s, and the rapid rise of industry in the wartime years. Finally, emphasizing the ways by which the black population was deprived of land, and induced to supply labor for white farms, mines and factories, Feinstein documents the introduction of apartheid after 1948, and its consequences for economic performance,

    The bottom line, he argues, is that most citizens have been paying so little attention to what happens in their state Capitol that decisions made there are hurting them. They're losing out to special interests like pharmaceutical companies, lawyers and labor unions that know how to game the system. The result: a state that most big companies shun when looking to expand and where small companies have trouble gaining a foothold; where taxes are the highest in the country; and where young people are fleeting in record numbers. New York, once known as the Empire State for its ability to create wealth, has created jobs at a slower rate than any other state for 40 years, thanks in part to a Legislature that last year was labeled the nation's most dysfunctional by a respected think tank. Gallagher not only brings the reader inside state government with some behind-the-scenes glimpses of how the system operates, he also tells the story through the eyes of those affected - from displaced workers in the Southern Tier to harried families in the St. Lawrence Valley, to laid-off Kodak workers in Rochester. From Medicaid recipients in Spanish Harlem to school children in the Bronx to taxpayers in Westchester County. Is New York unique? Probably not. This tale is also meant as awarning to citizens in the rest of the country who are tempted to let down their guard. To borrow from Frank Sinatra, if it happened here, it can happen anywhere.

    It is a book about water. Global disparities in health and access to water are two major threats to world stability. As international contracts and corporate agreements divert water from small communities to provide for larger cities, from households to supply agribusiness, conflicts sharpen among local communities, national governments, and international agencies such as the World Bank and the International Development Bank over the basic resources to support human life. In this book, leading anthropologists illuminate the global political inequities and resource management techniques that cause children to die and adults to sicken. Drawing on expertise in medical and ecological anthropology, the contributors challenge and deepen our understanding of the management, sale, and conceptualization of water as it affects human health. Designed for use by policymakers as well as researchers and students, the essays present complex realities in clear, accessible terms.

    The Handbook of Economic Growth, edited by Philippe Aghion and Steven Durlauf, with an introduction by Robert Solow, features in-depth, authoritative survey articles by the leading economists working on growth theory. Volume 1A, the first in this two volume set, covers theories of economic growth, the empirics of economic growth, and growth policies and mechanisms. Volume 1B, the second in this two volume set, covers technology, trade and geography, and growth and socio-economic development.

    This primer provides an introduction to the main techniques of choice analysis and also includes details on data collection and preparation, model estimation and interpretation and the design of choice experiments. A companion website offers practice data sets and software to apply modeling and data skills presented in the book.

    The emphasis is on understanding how to select the right method of analysis for a given situation.

    

    The results of their research and reflection on economy have generally stayed within the discipline and have not been available in an accessible form to a broader readership. This major reference book is intended to correct this.This unique Handbook contains substantial and invaluable summary discussions of work on economic processes and issues, and on the relationship between economic and non-economic areas of life. Furthermore it describes conceptual orientations that are important among economic anthropologists, and presents summaries of key issues in the anthropological study of economic life in different regions of the world. Its scope and accessibility make it useful both to those who are interested in a particular topic and to those who want to see the breadth and fruitfulness of an anthropological study of economics.Economists from a wide range of fields and perspectives - from heterodox to classical, and from industrial economics to economic psychology and sociology - will find much to engage them within this exciting Handbook, as will anthropologists drawn to the significant statements by senior figures in the field. Those involved in development projects will find this an invaluable reference work with which to gain greater understanding of and insight into the reasons for people's economic activities and decisions. The concise treatments of topics will provide invaluable teaching aids and reference for further reading by scholars at all levels of study.

    Most agree that global restructuring increasingly forces a large number of women in developing countries to emigrate to richer countries. But is poverty the only motivating factor?In Women in Motion, Nana Oishi examines the cross-national patterns of international female migration in Asia. Drawing on fieldwork in ten countries—both migrant-sending and migrant-receiving—the author investigates the differential impact of globalization, state policies, individual autonomy, and various social factors. This is the first study of its kind to provide an integrative approach to and a comparative perspective on female migration flows from multiple countries.

    How this change in status came about, and what it reveals about the nature of finance, is the story told in Virtue, Fortune, and Faith. A unique cultural history of modern financial markets from the early eighteenth century to the present day, the book offers a genealogical reading of the historical insecurities, debates, and controversies that had to be purged from nascent credit practices in order to produce the image of today's coherent and - largely - rational global financial sphere. Marieke de Goede discusses moral, religious, and political transformations that have slowly naturalized the domain of finance. Using a deft integration of feminist and poststructuralist approaches, her book demonstrates that finance - not just its rules of personal engagement, but also its statistics, formulas, instruments, and institutions - is a profoundly cultural and politically contingent practice. When closely examined, the history of finance is one of colonial conquest, sexual imagination, constructions of time, and discourses of legitimate (or illegitimate) profit making. Regardless, this history has had a far-reaching impact on the development of the modern international financial institutions that act as the stewards of the world's economic resources. De Goede explores the political contestations over ideas of time and money; the gendered discourse of credit and credibility; differences among gambling, finance, and speculation; debates over the proper definition of the free market; the meaning of financial crisis; and the morality of speculation. In an era when financial practices are pronounced too specialized for broad-based public, democratic debate, Virtue, Fortune, and Faith questions assumptions about international finance's unchallenged position and effectively exposes its ambiguous scientific authority.

    This work forcefully establishes the relationship between globalisation as an economic war and militarism and fundamentalisms as political and cultural wars in the project of global hegemony.

    While examining the national war on soil erosion in the 1930s, a controversial real estate development scheme, Amish land settlement, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dam project, and Native American efforts to assert longstanding land claims, Lynne Heasley traces the historical development of modern American property debates within ever-more-diverse rural landscapes and cultures. Heasley argues that the way public discourse has framed environmental debates hides the full shape our system of property has taken in rural communities and landscapes. She shows how democratic and fluid visions of property—based on community relationships—have coexisted alongside individualistic visions of property rights. In this environmental biography of a landscape and its people lie powerful lessons for rural communities seeking to understand and reconcile competing values about land and their place in it.Published in association with the Center for American Places, Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Staunton, Virginia. www.americanplaces.org“So much for cookie-cutter stereotypes of the rural Midwest! . . . Highly recommended.”—Choice

    He assesses the response of the Roman authorities to weaknesses in the grain market and looks at the implications of the failure of local harvests. By examining the subject from a contemporary perspective, this book will appeal not only to historians of ancient economies, but to all concerned with the economy of grain markets, a subject which still resonates today.

    This volume discusses the state of the art and the main strands and contributions to the economics of happiness, as a sub-discipline related to political economy. However, the main thrust of the volume is in focuses on the relationship between happiness studies and economics. Moreover, this volume makes a specific contribution in highlighting the comparative role and influence in the subjectivist approach vis-�-vis the objectivist approach to human happiness in the current literature in the field.The ambition of this book is to present the reader with a conceptual framework for a critical understanding of happiness studies and its relationship with economics. While the economic perspective is central, the focus here is on economics and happiness rather than the economics of happiness.

    Yet, until recently, the two phenomena have been investigated separately in the economics literature. This book provides the first consistent attempt to analyze the effects of macroeconomic volatility on productivity growth, and also the reverse causality from growth to business cycles. The authors show that by looking at the economy through the lens of private entrepreneurs, who invest under credit constraints, one can go some way towards explaining persistent macroeconomic volatility and the effects of volatility on growth. Beginning with an analysis of the effects of volatility on growth, the authors argue that the lower the level of financial development in a country the more detrimental the effect of volatility on growth. This prediction is confirmed by cross-country panel regressions. The data also suggests that a fixed exchange rate regime or more countercyclical budgetary policies are growth-enhancing in countries with a lower level of financial development. The former reduce aggregate volatility whereas the latter reduce the negative effects of volatility on long-term productivity-enhancing investment by firms. The book concludes with an investigation into how the interplay between credit constraints and pecuniary externalities is sufficient to generate persistent business cycles and to explain the occurrence of currency crises.

    This collection brings together economists who are at the forefront of this new field of enquiry to provide the most comprehensive and authoritative survey available.

    . .. . . From the pen of AMERICAN FREE PRESS correspondent Michael Collins Piper—the only journalist Jim Traficant agreed to speak to from prison after being convicted on trumped-up corruption charges. Traficant wouldn’t even speak to The New York Times!In Target: TRAFICANT, veteran author Piper—whom Jim Traficant has said was the only journalist to tell his story truthfully and correctly from the beginning—has assembled this eye-opening and disturbing overview of the campaign by high-level forces to set up and take down the no-nonsense populist congressman.If you have ever had any doubts about Traficant’s integrity—doubts instilled by a long-standing media cacophony attacking Traficant—you’ll soon realize that the Traficant case represents one of the most outrageous and thoroughly illegal hit-and-run operations ever orchestrated in our “democracy.” It is perhaps all too representative of the high-level corruption for which the “Justice” Department has been found responsible time and time again.Piper dissects the intrigues of the DoJ and the FBI (as well as the maneuvers by the federal judge who oversaw the Traficant trial) and demonstrates, beyond any doubt, that Traficant was absolutely innocent of all of the charges on which he was convicted . . .----------------IntroductionThe “Crimes” of Jim Traficant Although there are probably dozens of members of Congress who could be indicted and convicted for major criminal offenses involving high-stakes bribery and influence peddling that is often quite open and never prosecuted, the Justice Department spent many years coming up with a handful of dubious charges against Rep. Jim Traficant.Ask anyone who knows how it works in official Washington and they'll privately admit that the real reason Traficant was indicted on criminal charges was simply the fact that "the powers that be" didn't like Traficant: he was just too honest and too outspoken.Right up front, let's lay it out. Here are some of Traficant's real "crimes" in the eyes of the elite who railroaded Jim Traficant into federal prison in 2002.• Criticizing the IRS and calling for expanded protections for the rights of taxpayers under fire from IRS;• Taking a hard-line stand against NAFTA, the World Trade Organization, and so-called "free" trade and urging protectionist measures to preserve American jobs and defend domestic industry from predatory global speculators;• Tackling not only corruption inside the FBI and the Justice Department, but also personally assailing the integrity of former Attorney General Janet Reno; • Attacking Wall Street wheeling and dealing and raising questions about the enrichment of high-level financial interests through the lending practices of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund;• Accusing then-Vice President Al Gore of “trying to steal the election” in the midst of the long-and-drawn-out post-election debacle in 2000; • Calling for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from trouble-spots around the globe and questioning constant U.S. meddling in the affairs of other nations;• Charging American policy-makers with treason for having given top-secret U.S. defense and nuclear technology to the butchers in Peking; • Coming to the defense of Ukraine-born Cleveland autoworker John Demjanjuk who was falsely charged by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations of being a “Nazi war criminal,”—only to be cleared, ironically, by an Israeli court. (Ultimately, with Traficant sidelined in his own federal trial, they went after Demjanjuk again on "new" charges and restarted the process of seeking to deport the beleaguered old man.) • Demanding that U.S. troops be sent to guard the Mexican border and prevent continuing hordes of illegal aliens—and potential terrorists—from entering into the United States; and—last but very far from least: • Challenging one-sided U.S. aid and support for Israel, saying that the biased policy was to the detriment of America’s security and Middle East interests. Traficant was the only member of Congress—the day after the Sept. 11 tragedy—to point out that U.S. support for Israel and open borders were root problems leading to the tragedy. While Traficant enunciated these truths, other members of Congress squirmed uneasily, sitting in silence, as Traficant spoke out—even in the face of his impending trial—never one to be cowed.

    This book examines the ways in which contemporary artists represent economic processes--no longer merely express their ideas about the market or subsidy systems through the media, but analyze and offer parodies of economic mechanisms in their work.

    It is a theory not just supported by historical fact, but which has led to impressively accurate predictions. # Readers will learn: What tax changes will save Social Security and Medicare. # How to predict the U.S. economy. # The key economic buy/sell signal for investors. # How future tax policy and federal deficits will affect America. Learn and understand the answers to these questions and many more. If you're an economist, you'll discover important new ideas, that can form the basis for your own research and publishing. If you're an investor, you will be able to predict the changes in our economy. Also, learn the answer to the single most important question in all of economics: "Because a growing economy requires a growing supply of money, where will the money come from to grow our economy?"

    Design for Six Sigma Statistics is a rigorous mathematical roadmap to help companies reach this goal. As the sixth book in the Six Sigma operations series, this comprehensive book goes beyond an introduction to the statistical tools and methods found in most books but contains expert case studies, equations and step by step MINTAB instruction for performing: DFSS Design of Experiments, Measuring Process Capability, Statistical Tolerancing in DFSS and DFSS Techniques within the Supply Chain for Improved Results. The aim is to help you better diagnosis and root out potential problems before your product or service is even launched.

    Also suitable for MA level.This book is specifically written to meet the needs of students who requires a rigorous grounding in financial economics theory, combined with institutional and policy discussion relevant to the 'real world' of economics of contemporary Europe. This new edition has greater emphasis on international issues affecting financial markets whilst retaining its strong unifying theoretical perspective.and a unique comparative survey of financial systems in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and the USA. Thoroughly updated to incorporate recent developments in this discipline, this edition promises to be the best yet.

    It serves as an easily accessible introduction to the subject area for the novice, giving the gist of what it is about and how it has developed, but above all it gives hands-on instructions on how to incorporate intellectual capital thinking in everyday business and how to use the tools provided for the management and measurement of intangible resources. Throughout the main part of the book, three different cases in separate boxes run in parallel with the body text. These are introduced in chapter 2 and illustrate how the tools are to be used, depending on what type of company wishes to implement these ideas. The three case companies are characterised as a manufacturing company, an R&D organisation and a network company. Smaller case stories about well-known global companies are also interspersed throughout the book.

    The first chapters explore the foundation of the BIS, its role in the financial crisis of 1931, the London economic conference of 1933, and in following years when central bank cooperation was mostly reduced to technical matters. Considerable attention is devoted to the much criticized activity of the BIS during World War II. The book then deals with the intensive central bank cooperation from the recreation of Europe's multilateral payments in the 1950s and for the support of the Bretton Woods system in the 1960s. The last chapter is devoted to the involvement of central banks in the first timid steps towards European monetary unification and to the eurodollar market.

    In this book, Colin Crouch assesses this literature, and proposes a major re-orientation of the field. Crouch critiques and finds a way of modeling how creative actors trying to achieve change - institutional entrepreneurs - tackle these constraints. Central to the account is the concept of governance, as it is by recombining governance mechanism that these entrepreneurs must achieve their goals. In seeking how to analyze the spaces n which they operate, Crouch criticizes and deconstructs some dominant approaches in socio0political analysis: to typologies, to elective affinity and complementarity, to path dependence. He develops a theory of governance modes, which includes potentially decomposing them into their core components. Finally, he proposes a reorientation of the neo-institutionalist research program to take more account of detailed diversity and potentiality for change. The book is primarily theoretical, but it makes liberal use of examples, particularly from studies of local economic development and politics.

    It includes, in full, his famous book The Logic of Law, the first book to analyze the law from the perspective of economics. It also includes an influential and controversial monograph, The Case against the Common Law, the best chapters from his book, Trials on Trial, as well as a sequence of influential articles in the field of law and economics.Gordon Tullock is Professor Emeritus of Law at George Mason University, where he was Distinguished Research Fellow in the Center for Study of Public Choice and University Professor of Law and Economics. He also taught at the University of South Carolina, the University of Virginia, Rice University, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and the University of Arizona. In 1966 he founded the journal that became Public Choice and remained its editor until 1990.Charles K. Rowley was Duncan Black Professor of Economics at George Mason University and a Senior Fellow of the James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy at George Mason University. He was also General Director of the Locke Institute.

    Here, Edith Dudley Sylla offers the first complete English translation of this monumental work.Part I reprints and reworks Huygens's On Reckoning in Games of Chance. Part II offers a thorough treatment of the mathematics of combinations and permutations, including the numbers since known as "Bernoulli numbers." In Part III, Bernoulli solves more complicated problems of games of chance using that mathematics. In the final part, Bernoulli's crowning achievement in mathematical probability is manifest: he applies the mathematics of games of chance to the problems of epistemic probability in civil, moral, and economic matters, proving what we now know as the weak law of large numbers.Sylla provides an extensive introduction and detailed translator's notes. She includes as supplemental texts Bernoulli's "Letter to a Friend on Sets in Court Tennis" and "Thesis 32" of Theses Logicae de conversione et oppositione enunciationum.

    At the same time, firms' choices have a greater impact on economic policymaking in a global economy, as the range of alternatives open to them expands. Nicola Acocella analyzes both sides of this relationship and places special emphasis on current issues. Broad in scope, this book is aimed at students who have completed an introductory course in both micro- and macro-economics.

    Hedging Instruments & Risk Management brings clarity to the topic, giving money managers the straightforward knowledge they need to employ hedging tools and techniques in four key markets--equity, currency, fixed income, and mortgage. Using real-world data and examples, this high-level book shows practitioners how to develop a common set of mathematical and statistical tools for hedging in various markets and then outlines several hedging strategies with the historical performance of each.

    From the initial success of "yield management" in the commercial airline industry down to more recent successes of markdown management and dynamic pricing, the application of mathematical analysis to optimize pricing has become increasingly important across many different industries. But, since pricing and revenue optimization has involved the use of sophisticated mathematical techniques, the topic has remained largely inaccessible to students and the typical manager.With methods proven in the MBA courses taught by the author at Columbia and Stanford Business Schools, this book presents the basic concepts of pricing and revenue optimization in a form accessible to MBA students, MS students, and advanced undergraduates. In addition, managers will find the practical approach to the issue of pricing and revenue optimization invaluable.Solutions to the end-of-chapter exercises are available to instructors who are using this book in their courses. For access to the solutions manual, please contact marketing@www.sup.org.

    Credit Risk Scorecards provides insight into professional practices in different stages of credit scorecard development, such as model building, validation, and implementation. The book should be compulsory reading for modern credit risk managers." --Michael C. S. Wong Associate Professor of Finance, City University of Hong Kong Hong Kong Regional Director, Global Association of Risk Professionals"Siddiqi offers a practical, step-by-step guide for developing and implementing successful credit scorecards. He relays the key steps in an ordered and simple-to-follow fashion. A 'must read' for anyone managing the development of a scorecard." --Jonathan G. Baum Chief Risk Officer, GE Consumer Finance, Europe"A comprehensive guide, not only for scorecard specialists but for all consumer credit professionals. The book provides the A-to-Z of scorecard development, implementation, and monitoring processes. This is an important read for all consumer-lending practitioners." --Satinder Ahluwalia Vice President and Head-Retail Credit, Mashreqbank, UAE"This practical text provides a strong foundation in the technical issues involved in building credit scoring models. This book will become required reading for all those working in this area." --J. Michael Hardin, PhD Professor of StatisticsDepartment of Information Systems, Statistics, and Management ScienceDirector, Institute of Business Intelligence"Mr. Siddiqi has captured the true essence of the credit risk practitioner's primary tool, the predictive scorecard. He has combined both art and science in demonstrating the critical advantages that scorecards achieve when employed in marketing, acquisition, account management, and recoveries. This text should be part of every risk manager's library." --Stephen D. Morris Director, Credit Risk, ING Bank of Canada

    

    Chapter authors in the remaining parts of the book discuss the behavioral ecology of cooperation in humans and nonhuman primates, modeling and testing strong reciprocity in economic scenarios, and reciprocity and social policy. The evidence for strong reciprocity in the book includes experiments using the famous Ultimatum Game (in which two players must agree on how to split a certain amount of money or they both get nothing).

    In this short, powerful book, Milind Lele shows you how.Conventional wisdom attributes winning to having the best products at the lowest prices, a great brand, superior management, and the lowest overhead. All are obviously of great importance, but in actuality anyone can achieve them. Dr. Lele shows that winning comes from focusing on these monopoly rules:• What patch of open market space does this business own—or could it own?• Is the space really open or is it wishful thinking?• Are there enough customers whose needs are not being met and are they willing to spend money to have those needs met?• How long will this space remain open and why?• What do you have to do to capture it and wall it off?• When will the party end and what do we do next?For example, for many coffee lovers there is no one but Starbucks. The moment people found out what coffee could, and should, taste like it was as if a giant lightbulb went off inside their heads—and Starbucks had a monopoly. The best monopoly opportunities are situational, often soft and intangible. They’re segments, not the mass market, and often in the customer’s mind. For the customer there is no one but you, since what you provide can’t be easily copied, duplicated, or ripped off.Monopoly Rules couldn’t come at a better time, as an almost perfect storm seems to be hitting every business. Customers are changing and the homogenous mass market has gone the way of the nickel soda. Now the game is winning market segments. In this world, Monopoly Rules provides a new way to think and take action and stay ahead of the game. Also available as an eBookFrom the Hardcover edition.

    Classical liberalism is presented here as a coherent political and economic position, as distinguished from both modern liberalism and conservatism.

    He has also advised numerous Chancellors of the Exchequer on economic policy. Against the Flow collects the most important of these writings from the last three decades. Brittan has established a reputation for elegance of expression, trenchant analysis and tremendous range of reference. All three qualities are powerfully apparent in this collection, as he ranges over the arms trade and US military (which he opposes); the expansion of free markets and a basic income for all (which he supports), as wall as the war on terror, The book also includes his pungent portraits of some heroes and villans, including Keynes, Milton Friedman & Taken together the pieces in Against the Flow amount to a robust defence of classic liberalism.

    In Competition and Growth, Philippe Aghion and Rachel Griffith offer the first serious attempt to provide a unified and coherent account of the effect competition policy and deregulated entry has on economic growth.The book takes the form of a dialogue between an applied theorist calling on Schumpeterian growth models and a microeconometrician employing new techniques to gauge competition and entry. In each chapter, theoretical models are systematically confronted with empirical data, which either invalidates the models or suggests changes in the modeling strategy. Aghion and Griffith note a fundamental divorce between theorists and empiricists who previously worked on these questions. On one hand, existing models in industrial organization or new growth economics all predict a negative effect of competition on innovation and growth: namely, that competition is bad for growth because it reduces the monopoly rents that reward successful innovators. On the other hand, common wisdom and recent empirical studies point to a positive effect of competition on productivity growth. To reconcile theory and evidence, the authors distinguish between pre- and post-innovation rents, and propose that innovation may be a way to escape competition, an idea that they confront with microeconomic data. The book's detailed analysis should aid scholars and policy makers in understanding how the benefits of tougher competition can be achieved while at the same time mitigating the negative effects competition and imitation may have on some sectors or industries.

    Noble traces the evolution and eclipse of the biblical mythology of the Promised Land, the foundational story of Western Culture. Part impassioned manifesto, part masterful survey of opposed philosophical and economic schools, "Beyond the Promised Land" brings into focus the twisted template of the Western imagination and its faith-based market economy. From the first recorded versions of "the promise" saga in ancient Babylon, to the Zapatistas' rejection of promises never kept, Noble explores the connections between Judeo-Christian belief and corporate globalization. Inspiration for activists and students alike. David Noble is the author of "Progress Without People" (BTL, 1995) and "Digital Diploma Mills" (BTL, 2002). He teaches history at York University, Toronto.

    In "Capitalism s Achilles Heel," Baker takes readers on a fascinating journey through the global free-market system and reveals how dirty money, poverty, and inequality are inextricably intertwined. Readers will discover how small illicit transactions lead to massive illegalities and how staggering global income disparities are worsened by the illegalities that permeate international capitalism. Drawing on his experiences, Baker shows how Western banks and businesses use secret transactions and ignore laws while handling some $1 trillion in illicit proceeds each year. He also illustrates how businesspeople, criminals, and kleptocrats perfect the same techniques to shift funds and how these tactics negatively affect individuals, institutions, and countries."

    Ecological Economics: Principles and Applications is an introductory-level textbook that offers a pedagogically complete examination of this dynamic new field.As a workbook accompanying the text, this volume breaks new ground in applying the principles of ecological economics in a problem- or service-based learning setting. Both the textbook and this workbook are situated within a new interdisciplinary framework that embraces the linkages among economic growth, environmental degradation, and social inequity in an effort to guide policy in a way that respects fundamental human values. The workbook takes the approach a step further in placing ecological economic analysis within a systems perspective, in order to help students identify leverage points by which they can help to affect change. The workbook helps students to develop a practical, operational understanding of the principles and concepts explored in the text through real-world activities, and describes numerous case studies in which students have successfully completed projects.Ecological Economics: A Workbook for Problem-Based Learning represents an important new resource for undergraduate and graduate environmental studies courses focusing on economics, environmental policy, and environmental problem-solving.

    The subject of military modernization is tackled in country reports on the US, China, Japan, the Koreas, and Russia and regional studies of post-Soviet Central Asia, the South Asian subcontinent, and Southeast Asia. Also included are special studies on Australian strategic policy, the prospects for nuclear proliferation in Asia, implications of China's economic growth for its defense budget, and military modernization in Taiwan. The executive summary is available as a separate publication. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

    Ladislau Dowbor rejects both old-fashioned statist economics and utopian 'post-economics' ideas of social organization. Instead, he pulls together a rich mixture of detailed and practical conclusions about economic and social policy, drawing on his own work as an economic adviser in countries as diverse as Poland, Portugal, Guinea Bissau, post-Soviet Mongolia, Sandinista Nicaragua, democratic South Africa and President Lula's Brazil. His approaches and principles are relevant to all developing countries as they seek new policies to replace neoliberal prescriptions that have delivered neither growth, social justice, nor environmental sustainability.

    The argument presented is not a fuzzy doomsday prophecy but rather a strong fact-based prediction that will leave the reader awestruck. Equally brilliant, however, is the "solution" that is offered. The solution offered is not wedded to "high tech" fantasies that will invite further mindless consumption of scarce resources. The author carefully outlines a new culture based on self-sufficient eco-villages, a concept that is gathering momentum and will allow a sustainable transition from the collapse of the consumer empire. This book delivers an important message for anyone ready to come to grips with the impending industrial collapse.

    Centrally concerned with global justice, the contributors both scrutinze and recast the subject. As well, the volume serves as a bridge connecting scholars of globalization, the policy world, and the gloabla justice movement. The essays examine a wide range of topics too oftern left at the margin of globalization studies and in the process raise a host of crucial questions. Unique in its extensive and comprehensive approach, Critical Globalization Studies develops new and important theoretical perspectives on globalization while engaging global social activism. It is an indispenseable guide for both academics and practitioners

    He argues that the law began to change with respect to economic liberties in the late 1930s. At that time, the Supreme Court abdicated much of its authority to protect property rights, and instead condoned the expansion of state power over private property.Siegan brings the argument originally advanced in the first edition completely up to date. He explores the moral position behind capitalism and discusses why former communist countries flirting with decentralization and a free market (for instance, China, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos) have become more progressive and prosperous as a result. He contrasts the benefits of a free, deregulated economy with the dangers of over-regulation and moves towards socialized welfare-most specifically as happened during Franklin Roosevelt's presidency. Supporting his thesis with historical court cases, Siegan discusses the past and present status of economic liberties under the Constitution, clarifies constitutional interpretation and due process, and suggests ways of safeguarding economic liberties.About the original edition, Doug Bandow of Reason noted, "Siegan has written a vitally important book that is sure to ignite an impassioned legal and philosophical debate. The reason-the necessity-for protecting economic liberty is no less than that guaranteeing political and civil liberty." Joseph Sobran of the National Review wrote, "Siegan...makes a powerful general case for economic liberty, on both historical and more strictly empirical grounds.... Siegan has done a brilliant piece of work, not only where it was badly needed, but where the need had hardly been recognized until he addressed it." And Edwin Meese remarked that, "This timely and important book shows how far we have drifted from protecting basic liberties that the Framers of the Constitution sought to secure. I recommend it highly." This new, completely revised edition of Economic Liberties and the Constitution will be essential reading for students of economics, history, public policy, law, and political science.

    The new Japanese renaissance as described in this book provides a proven blueprint for American companies still reeling from the economic downturn in the U.S. Mark Fuller is the Chairman and CEO of the Monitor Group, a highly prestigious international consultancy that will use this as their firm's flagship book. It features case studies and examples from both Japanese and American companies that illustrate how managers across the globe have used methods born from Japanese philosophy to transform their own organizations.

    

    It contains basic knowledge in mathematics, financial mathematics and statistics in a compact and clearly arranged form. This volume is meant to be a reference work to be used by students of undergraduate courses together with a textbook, and by researchers in need of exact statements of mathematical results. People dealing with practical or applied problems will also find this collection to be an efficient and easy-to-use work of reference.

    It examines the role that private and public enterprise have played in the construction and operation of the railways, electricity, gas and water supply, tramways, coal, oil and natural gas industries, telegraph, telephone, computer networks and other modern telecommunications. The book begins with the arrival of the railways in the 1830s, charts the development of arms' length regulation, municipalisation and nationalisation, and ends on the eve of privatisation in the 1980s. Robert Millward argues that the role of ideology, especially in the form of debates about socialism and capitalism, has been exaggerated. Instead the driving forces in changes in economic organisation were economic and technological factors and the book traces their influence in shaping the pattern of regulation and ownership of these key sectors of modern economies.

    Many networks, including computer networks, suffer from some type of this selfish routing. In Selfish Routing and the Price of Anarchy, Tim Roughgarden studies the loss of social welfare caused by selfish, uncoordinated behavior in networks. He quantifies the price of anarchy--the worst-possible loss of social welfare from selfish routing--and also discusses several methods for improving the price of anarchy with centralized control.Roughgarden begins with a relatively nontechnical introduction to selfish routing, describing two important examples that motivate the problems that follow. The first, Pigou's Example, demonstrates that selfish behavior need not generate a socially optimal outcome. The second, the counterintiuitve Braess's Paradox, shows that network improvements can degrade network performance. He then develops techniques for quantifying the price of anarchy (with Pigou's Example playing a central role). Next, he analyzes Braess's Paradox and the computational complexity of detecting it algorithmically, and he describes Stackelberg routing, which improves the price of anarchy using a modest degree of central control. Finally, he defines several open problems that may inspire further research. Roughgarden's work will be of interest not only to researchers and graduate students in theoretical computer science and optimization but also to other computer scientists, as well as to economists, electrical engineers, and mathematicians.

    Originating with the pioneering work of de Finetti from the 1930's, the theory has evolved into a unique body of deep, beautiful, and often surprising results, comprising the basic representations and invariance properties in one and several dimensions, and exhibiting some unexpected links between the various symmetries as well as to many other areas of modern probability. Most chapters require only some basic, graduate level probability theory, and should be accessible to any serious researchers and graduate students in probability and statistics. Parts of the book may also be of interest to pure and applied mathematicians in other areas. The exposition is formally self-contained, with detailed references provided for any deeper facts from real analysis or probability used in the book.

    Episodes in countries as far-flung as Indonesia and Argentina have shown that exchange rate adjustments that would normally help to restore balance can be destabilizing, even catastrophic, for countries whose debts are denominated in foreign currencies. Many economists instinctually assume that developing countries allow their foreign debts to be denominated in dollars, yen, or euros because they simply don't know better.Presenting evidence that even emerging markets with strong policies and institutions experience this problem, Other People's Money recognizes that the situation must be attributed to more than ignorance. Instead, the contributors suggest that the problem is linked to the operation of international financial markets, which prevent countries from borrowing in their own currencies. A comprehensive analysis of the sources of this problem and its consequences, Other People's Money takes the study one step further, proposing a solution that would involve having the World Bank and regional development banks themselves borrow and lend in emerging market currencies.

    How do young people get by in hard times and hard places? Have they become a "lost generation" disconnected from society's mainstream? Do popular ideas about social exclusion or a welfare-dependent underclass really connect with the lived experiences of the so-called "disaffected," "disengaged" and "difficult-to-reach"? Based on close-up research with young men and women from localities suffering social exclusion in extreme form, Disconnected Youth? will appeal to all those who are interested in understanding and tackling the problems of growing up in Britain's poor neighborhoods.

    economy recover from its last period of economic malaise, and similar collaboration is needed today, according to a key participant in the 1980s–1990s competitiveness movement. In Building the Next American Century, Kent H. Hughes describes that movement, beginning with the conditions that stimulated it: stagflation in the early 1970s, declines in manufactured exports, and challenges from German and Japanese manufacturers. The United States responded with monetary and fiscal reform, technological innovation, and formation of a culture of lifelong learning. Although a great deal of leadership came from government, a new sense of partnership with the private sector and its leaders was crucial. Hughes attributes much of the national prosperity of the late 1990s to contributions from the private sectors. Hughes argues that a twenty-first-century competitiveness strategy with a system-wide approach to innovation, learning, and global engagement can meet today's challenges, even in the demanding environment shaped by national security concerns after 9/11.

    Contributors from many areas such as social science, management (including organizational practitioners), and psychologists have come together to develop a better understanding of how EI can influence work performance, and whether research supports it. A unique feature of this book is that it integrates the work of social scientists and organizational practitioners. Their mutual interests in EI provide a unique opportunity for basic and applied research and practices to learn from one another in order to continually refine and advance knowledge on EI. The primary audience for this book is researchers, teachers, and students of psychology, management, and organizational behavior. Due to its clear practical applications to the workplace, it will also be of interest to organizational consultants and human resource practitioners.

    It outlines the historical emergence of globalization and liberalization, and from analyses of over 50 case studies of best- and worst-case experiences of privatization, it provides guidance for policy and action that will restore and maintain the right balance between the powers and responsibilities of the state, the private sector and the increasingly important role of civil society. The result is a book of major importance that challenges one of the orthodoxies of our day and provides a benchmark for future debate.

    For example, how are familiar legal debates like the one over affirmative action transformed when seen from a perspective incorporating a sophisticated understanding of the relationship between race and class, and a vision enriched by both efficiency and justice concerns? Will market competition do away with racial discrimination? How does the empirical evidence of persistent discrimination fit with neoclassical economic claims that over time markets are race neutral?This book provides the resources for developing a multifaceted approach to racial justice. Race and class have long been inextricably intertwined in American society. From this perspective, neither political struggles nor economic strategies alone can dissolve the knot of racial inequality. Belief systems, everyday practices, and social norms undergird the operation of all institutions, public and private; and in the United States, race has historically played an important role in shaping these beliefs, practices, and norms. Thus, serious students of inequality should understand the strengths and weaknesses of both market and government regulation. Moreover, students should understand that both market and government institutions are rooted in culture.This book is the answer for faculty teaching courses about discrimination and looking for materials that take seriously the problem of racial subordination and provide in-depth, rigorous analyses of economic frameworks contributing to inequality.