Book picks similar to
Getting It Right: Markets and Choices in a Free Society by Robert J. Barro
economics
politics
business
nonfiction
Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet
Jeffrey D. Sachs - 2008
Sachs-one of the world's most respected economists and the author of The New York Times bestseller The End of Poverty- offers an urgent assessment of the environmental degradation, rapid population growth, and extreme poverty that threaten global peace and prosperity. Through crystalline examination of hard facts, Sachs predicts the cascade of crises that awaits this crowded planet-and presents a program of sustainable development and international cooperation that will correct this dangerous course. Few luminaries anywhere on the planet are as schooled in this daunting subject as Sachs, and this is the vital product of his experience and wisdom.
Money for the Rest of Us: 10 Questions to Master Successful Investing
J. David Stein - 2019
You understand the basics of investing and diversifying your portfolio. Now it's time to invest like a pro for greater profits--with investment expert David Stein, host of the popular weekly podcast, "Money for the Rest of Us." He's created a unique ten-question template that makes it easy for individual investors like you to:- Invest more confidently- Feel less overwhelmed- Build a stronger portfolio- Avoid costly mistakes- Plan and save for retirementDespite what many people believe, you don't need to be an expert to be a successful investor. With Stein as your personal money mentor, you'll learn how to make smarter, more informed decisions that can help reduce your risk and increase your gains by following a few simple rules for analyzing any investment. This is how the professionals grow their wealth and how you can, too. This is Money for the Rest of Us.
Principles of Economics
Carl Menger - 1871
Principles not only revolutionized value, price, and marginal utility theories, but it was also used as the primary textbook by several generations of Austrian students and scholars, including Ludwig von Mises and F. A. von Hayek. No economist's library is complete without a copy of this classic work. New printing in 1994!
Exit Ramp: A Short Case Study of the Profitability of Panhandling
David P. Spears II - 2013
During the summer of his senior year at college, while earning a B.A. in Economics and Political Science, David P. Spears spent eighty hours undercover as a panhandler. Systematically recording every transaction at the exit ramp, Spears captured a rarely seen picture of how modern urban charity works.This book is the record of his adventures, part economic research, part investigative journalism. Both the numbers and the stories behind the numbers provide answers to the questions we’ve all been wondering: Who gives more to panhandlers—men or women? What percentage of drivers roll down their windows to donate? And most important of all, how much can a panhandler earn per hour?Get out your bi-weekly pay stub—by the end of this book you’ll know if you make more or less than the guy with the cardboard sign.
Fair Trade for All: How Trade Can Promote Development
Joseph E. Stiglitz - 2005
Stiglitz here joins with fellow economist Andrew Charlton to offer a challenging and controversial argument about how globalization can actually help Third World countries to develop and prosper.In Fair Trade For All, Stiglitz and Charlton address one of the key issues facing world leaders today--how can the poorer countries of the world be helped to help themselves through freer, fairer trade? To answer this question, the authors put forward a radical and realistic new model for managing trading relationships between the richest and the poorest countries. Their approach is designed to open up markets in the interests of all nations and not just the most powerful economies, to ensure that trade promotes development, and to minimize the costs of adjustments. The book illuminates the reforms and principles upon which a successful settlement must be based.Vividly written, highly topical, and packed with insightful analyses, Fair Trade For All offers a radical new solution to the problems of world trade. It is a must read for anyone interested in globalization and development in the Third World.
Maonomics: Why Chinese Communists Make Better Capitalists Than We Do
Loretta Napoleoni - 2010
In Maonomics: Why Chinese Communists Make Better Capitalists than We Do, Napoleoni argues just the opposite: what we are witnessing instead is the beginning of the collapse of capitalism and the victory of "communism with a profit motive." Maonomics charts the prodigious ascent of the Chinese economic miracle and the parallel course of the West’s ongoing insistence on misconstruing China and its economy even as we acknowledge its growing influence and importance. Maonomics is a warning call whereby Western governments can avoid economic collapse by learning how to understand more clearly what the lessons of the Chinese economy really are. Based on first-hand reporting from China during frequent visits in the last several years, Maonomics lends credence to the Chinese view and translates it for Western readers. For example, the Chinese too are attached to their vision of democracy, but it is different from ours. It isn’t focused as much on voting as it is economic opportunity and the fair distribution of wealth and prosperity. Napoleoni also separates failed Leninist political ideology from true Marxist theory, showing that Marx’s writings do not reject profit so long as it is used to benefit the people. Marx’s dictatorship of the proletariat is being realized in China, she argues, where giant steps forward are being made in the name of progress and the wellbeing and prosperity of the Chinese people. Looking at the Chinese economy up close, any economist would be hard pressed to say that they are not on the right track. Here Loretta Napoleoni offers a front row seat on the greatest show on earth: the peaceful economic revolution that is shifting the balance of power in the world from West to East.
A Nation of Moochers: America's Addiction to Getting Something for Nothing
Charles J. Sykes - 2012
Increasingly dependent on the efforts of others over our own, Americans are free to freeload. From the corporate bailouts on Wall Street to the alarming increases in personal default and dependency, from questionable tax exemptions to enormous pension, healthcare, and other entitlement costs, the new moocher culture cuts across lines of class, race, and private and public sectors. And the millions that plan and behave sensibly, only to bail out the profligate? They're angry.Charles Sykes' argument is not against compassion or legitimate charity, but targets the new moocher culture, in which self-reliance and personal responsibility have given way to mass grasping after handouts. A Nation of Moochers is a persuasively argued and entertaining rallying cry for Americans who are tired of playing by the rules and paying for those who don't.
Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World's Economy
Adam Tooze - 2021
The world is unlikely to be treated to a better account of the economics of the pandemic' The Times'A seriously impressive book, both endlessly quotable and rigorously analytical' Oliver Bullough, The GuardianFrom the author of Crashed comes a gripping short history of how Covid-19 ravaged the global economy, and where it leaves us nowWhen the news first began to trickle out of China about a new virus in December 2019, risk-averse financial markets were alert to its potential for disruption. Yet they could never have predicted the total economic collapse that would follow in COVID-19's wake, as stock markets fell faster and harder than at any time since 1929, currencies across the world plunged, investors panicked, and even gold was sold. In a matter of weeks, the world's economy was brought to an abrupt halt by governments trying to contain a spiralling public health catastrophe. Flights were grounded; supply chains broken; industries from tourism to oil to hospitality collapsed overnight, leaving hundreds of millions of people unemployed. Central banks responded with unprecedented interventions, just to keep their economies on life-support. For the first time since the second world war, the entire global economic system contracted. This book tells the story of that shutdown. We do not yet know how this story ends, or what new world we will find on the other side. In this fast-paced, compelling and at times shocking analysis, Adam Tooze surveys the wreckage, and looks at where we might be headed next.
Grand Pursuit: A History of Economic Genius
Sylvia Nasar - 2011
It’s the epic story of the making of modern economics, and of how economics rescued mankind from squalor and deprivation by placing its material fate in its own hands rather than in Fate. Nasar’s account begins with Charles Dickens and Henry Mayhew observing and publishing the condition of the poor majority in mid-nineteenth-century London, the richest and most glittering place in the world. This was a new pursuit. She describes the often heroic efforts of Marx, Engels, Alfred Marshall, Beatrice and Sydney Webb, and the American Irving Fisher to put those insights into action—with revolutionary consequences for the world. From the great John Maynard Keynes to Schumpeter, Hayek, Keynes’s disciple Joan Robinson, the influential American economists Paul Samuelson and Milton Freedman, and India’s Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen, she shows how the insights of these activist thinkers transformed the world—from one city, London, to the developed nations in Europe and America, and now to the entire planet. In Nasar’s dramatic narrative of these discoverers we witness men and women responding to personal crises, world wars, revolutions, economic upheavals, and each other’s ideas to turn back Malthus and transform the dismal science into a triumph over mankind’s hitherto age-old destiny of misery and early death. This idea, unimaginable less than 200 years ago, is a story of trial and error, but ultimately transcendent, as it is rendered here in a stunning and moving narrative.
Eco-Economy
Lester R. Brown - 2001
His paper led to a revolution in thinking—to a new worldview. Eco-Economy discusses the need today for a similar shift in our worldview. The issue now is whether the environment is part of the economy or the economy is part of the environment. Lester R. Brown argues the latter, pointing out that treating the environment as part of the economy has produced an economy that is destroying its natural support systems. Brown notes that if China were to have a car in every garage, American style, it would need 80 million barrels of oil a day—more than the world currently produces. If paper consumption per person in China were to reach the U.S. level, China would need more paper than the world produces. There go the world's forests. If the fossil fuel-based, automobile-centered, throwaway economic model will not work for China, it will not work for the other 3 billion people in the developing world—and it will not work for the rest of the world. But Brown is optimistic as he describes how to restructure the global economy to make it compatible with the Earth's ecosystem so that economic progress can continue. In the new economy, wind farms replace coal mines, hydrogen-powered fuel cells replace internal combustion engines, and cities are designed for people, not cars. Glimpses of the new economy can be seen in the wind farms of Denmark, the solar rooftops of Japan, and the bicycle network of the Netherlands. Eco-Economy is a road map of how to get from here to there.
Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It
Richard V. Reeves - 2017
But the most important, consequential, and widening gap in American society is between the upper middle class and everyone else.Reeves defines the upper middle class as those whose incomes are in the top 20 percent of American society. Income is not the only way to measure a society, but in a market economy it is crucial because access to money generally determines who gets the best quality education, housing, health care, and other necessary goods and services.As Reeves shows, the growing separation between the upper middle class and everyone else can be seen in family structure, neighborhoods, attitudes, and lifestyle. Those at the top of the income ladder are becoming more effective at passing on their status to their children, reducing overall social mobility. The result is not just an economic divide but a fracturing of American society along class lines. Upper-middle-class children become upper-middle-class adults.These trends matter because the separation and perpetuation of the upper middle class corrode prospects for more progressive approaches to policy. Various forms of “opportunity hoarding” among the upper middle class make it harder for others to rise up to the top rung. Examples include zoning laws and schooling, occupational licensing, college application procedures, and the allocation of internships. Upper-middle-class opportunity hoarding, Reeves argues, results in a less competitive economy as well as a less open society.Inequality is inevitable and can even be good, within limits. But Reeves argues that society can take effective action to reduce opportunity hoarding and thus promote broader opportunity. This fascinating book shows how American society has become the very class-defined society that earlier Americans rebelled against—and what can be done to restore a more equitable society.
Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism
Bhu Srinivasan - 2017
Americana takes us on a four-hundred-year journey of this spirit of innovation and ambition through a series of Next Big Things -- the inventions, techniques, and industries that drove American history forward: from the telegraph, the railroad, guns, radio, and banking to flight, suburbia, and sneakers, culminating with the Internet and mobile technology at the turn of the twenty-first century. The result is a thrilling alternative history of modern America that reframes events, trends, and people we thought we knew through the prism of the value that, for better or for worse, this nation holds dearest: capitalism.In a winning, accessible style, Bhu Srinivasan boldly takes on four centuries of American enterprise, revealing the unexpected connections that link them. We learn how Andrew Carnegie's early job as a telegraph messenger boy paved the way for his leadership of the steel empire that would make him one of the nation's richest men; how the gunmaker Remington reinvented itself in the postwar years to sell typewriters; how the inner workings of the Mafia mirrored the trend of consolidation and regulation in more traditional business; and how a 1950s infrastructure bill triggered a series of events that produced one of America's most enduring brands: KFC. Reliving the heady early days of Silicon Valley, we are reminded that the start-up is an idea as old as America itself.Entertaining, eye-opening, and sweeping in its reach, Americana is an exhilarating new work of narrative history.
Financial Markets and Institutions (Prentice Hall Series in Finance) (Addison-Wesley Series in Finance)
Frederic S. Mishkin - 1994
A unifying framework uses a few core principles to organize readers' thinking then examines the models as real-world scenarios from a practitioner's perspective. By analyzing these applications, readers develop the critical-thinking and problem-solving skills necessary to respond to challenging situations in their future careers. Introduction: Why Study Financial Markets and Institutions?; Overview of the Financial System. Fundamentals of Financial Markets: What Do Interest Rates Mean and What Is Their Role in Valuation?; Why Do Interest Rates Change?; How Do Risk and Term Structure Affect Interest Rates?; Are Financial Markets Efficient? Central Banking and the Conduct of Monetary Policy: Structure of Central Banks and the Federal Reserve System; Conduct of Monetary Policy: Tools, Goals, Strategy, and Tactics. Financial Markets: The Money Markets; The Bond Market; The Stock Market; The Mortgage Markets; The Foreign Exchange Market; The International Financial System. Fundamentals of Financial Institutions: Why Do Financial Institutions Exist?; What Should Be Done About Conflicts of Interest? A Central Issue in Business Ethics. The Financial Institutions Industry: Banking and the Management of Financial Institutions; Commercial Banking Industry: Structure and Competition; Savings Associations and Credit Unions; Banking Regulation; The Mutual Fund Industry; Insurance Companies and Pension Funds; Investment Banks, Security Brokers and Dealers, and Venture Capital Firms. The Management of Financial Institutions: Risk Management in Financial Institutions; Hedging with Financial Derivatives. On the Web: Finance Companies. For all readers interested in financial markets and institutions.
Globalizing Capital: A History of the International Monetary System
Barry Eichengreen - 1996
In this, he succeeds magnificently. Globalizing Capital will become a classic."--Douglas Irwin, University of ChicagoThe importance of the international monetary system is clearly evident in daily news stories about fluctuating currencies and in dramatic events such as the recent reversals in the Mexican economy. It has become increasingly apparent that one cannot understand the international economy without knowing how its monetary system operates. Now Barry Eichengreen presents a brief, lucid book that tells the story of the international financial system over the past 150 years. Globalizing Capital is intended not only for economists but also for a general audience of historians, political scientists, professionals in government and business, and anyone with a broad interest in international economic and political relations. Eichengreen's work demonstrates that insights into the international monetary system and effective principles for governing it can result only if it is seen a historical phenomenon extending from the gold standard period to interwar instability, then to Bretton Woods, and finally to the post-1973 period of fluctuating currencies.Eichengreen analyzes the shift from pegged to floating exchange rates in the 1970s and ascribes that change to the growing capital mobility that has made pegged rates difficult to maintain. However, he shows that capital mobility was also high prior to World War I, yet this did not prevent the maintenance of fixed exchange rates. What was critical for the successful maintenance of fixed exchange rates during that period was the fact that governmentswere relatively insulated from democratic politics and thus from pressure to trade off exchange rate stability for other goals, such as the reduction of unemployment. Today pegging exchange rates would require very radical reforms of a sort that governments are understandably reluctant to embrace. The implication seems undeniable: floating rates are here to stay.
Investment Banking for Dummies
Matthew Krantz - 2014
Topics include: Strategies for risk management, such as market, credit, operating, reputation, legal, and funding riskKey investment banking operations including: venture capital and buyouts, Merger & Acquisitions services, equity underwriting, debt, underwriting securitization, financial engineering, investment management, and securities servicesThe latest information on competition and government regulationsRelationships between leveraged buyout (LBO) funds, hedge funds, and corporate and institutional clients