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Currency Politics: The Political Economy of Exchange Rate Policy
Par Jeffry A. Frieden. 2014
The politics surrounding exchange rate policies in the global economyThe exchange rate is the most important price in any economy,…
since it affects all other prices. Exchange rates are set, either directly or indirectly, by government policy. Exchange rates are also central to the global economy, for they profoundly influence all international economic activity. Despite the critical role of exchange rate policy, there are few definitive explanations of why governments choose the currency policies they do. Filled with in-depth cases and examples, Currency Politics presents a comprehensive analysis of the politics surrounding exchange rates.Identifying the motivations for currency policy preferences on the part of industries seeking to influence politicians, Jeffry Frieden shows how each industry's characteristics—including its exposure to currency risk and the price effects of exchange rate movements—determine those preferences. Frieden evaluates the accuracy of his theoretical arguments in a variety of historical and geographical settings: he looks at the politics of the gold standard, particularly in the United States, and he examines the political economy of European monetary integration. He also analyzes the politics of Latin American currency policy over the past forty years, and focuses on the daunting currency crises that have frequently debilitated Latin American nations, including Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil.With an ambitious mix of narrative and statistical investigation, Currency Politics clarifies the political and economic determinants of exchange rate policies.Guesstimation 2.0: Solving Today's Problems on the Back of a Napkin
Par Lawrence Weinstein. 2013
Simple and effective techniques for quickly estimating virtually anythingGuesstimation 2.0 reveals the simple and effective techniques needed to estimate virtually…
anything—quickly—and illustrates them using an eclectic array of problems. A stimulating follow-up to Guesstimation, this is the must-have book for anyone preparing for a job interview in technology or finance, where more and more leading businesses test applicants using estimation questions just like these.The ability to guesstimate on your feet is an essential skill to have in today's world, whether you're trying to distinguish between a billion-dollar subsidy and a trillion-dollar stimulus, a megawatt wind turbine and a gigawatt nuclear plant, or parts-per-million and parts-per-billion contaminants. Lawrence Weinstein begins with a concise tutorial on how to solve these kinds of order of magnitude problems, and then invites readers to have a go themselves. The book features dozens of problems along with helpful hints and easy-to-understand solutions. It also includes appendixes containing useful formulas and more.Guesstimation 2.0 shows how to estimate everything from how closely you can orbit a neutron star without being pulled apart by gravity, to the fuel used to transport your food from the farm to the store, to the total length of all toilet paper used in the United States. It also enables readers to answer, once and for all, the most asked environmental question of our day: paper or plastic?Exchange-Rate Dynamics (Princeton Series in International Economics)
Par Martin D. Evans. 2011
A comprehensive and in-depth look at exchange-rate dynamicsVariations in the foreign exchange market influence all aspects of the world economy,…
and understanding these dynamics is one of the great challenges of international economics. This book provides a new, comprehensive, and in-depth examination of the standard theories and latest research in exchange-rate economics. Covering a vast swath of theoretical and empirical work, the book explores established theories of exchange-rate determination using macroeconomic fundamentals, and presents unique microbased approaches that combine the insights of microstructure models with the macroeconomic forces driving currency trading.Macroeconomic models have long assumed that agents—households, firms, financial institutions, and central banks—all have the same information about the structure of the economy and therefore hold the same expectations and uncertainties regarding foreign currency returns. Microbased models, however, look at how heterogeneous information influences the trading decisions of agents and becomes embedded in exchange rates. Replicating key features of actual currency markets, these microbased models generate a rich array of empirical predictions concerning trading patterns and exchange-rate dynamics that are strongly supported by data. The models also show how changing macroeconomic conditions exert an influence on short-term exchange-rate dynamics via their impact on currency trading.Designed for graduate courses in international macroeconomics, international finance, and finance, and as a go-to reference for researchers in international economics, Exchange-Rate Dynamics guides readers through a range of literature on exchange-rate determination, offering fresh insights for further reading and research.Comprehensive and in-depth examination of the latest research in exchange-rate economicsOutlines theoretical and empirical research across the spectrum of modeling approachesPresents new results on the importance of currency trading in exchange-rate determinationProvides new perspectives on long-standing puzzles in exchange-rate economicsEnd-of-chapter questions cement key ideasRethinking Private Authority: Agents and Entrepreneurs in Global Environmental Governance
Par Jessica F. Green. 2014
Rethinking Private Authority examines the role of non-state actors in global environmental politics, arguing that a fuller understanding of their…
role requires a new way of conceptualizing private authority. Jessica Green identifies two distinct forms of private authority--one in which states delegate authority to private actors, and another in which entrepreneurial actors generate their own rules, persuading others to adopt them. Drawing on a wealth of empirical evidence spanning a century of environmental rule making, Green shows how the delegation of authority to private actors has played a small but consistent role in multilateral environmental agreements over the past fifty years, largely in the area of treaty implementation. This contrasts with entrepreneurial authority, where most private environmental rules have been created in the past two decades. Green traces how this dynamic and fast-growing form of private authority is becoming increasingly common in areas ranging from organic food to green building practices to sustainable tourism. She persuasively argues that the configuration of state preferences and the existing institutional landscape are paramount to explaining why private authority emerges and assumes the form that it does. In-depth cases on climate change provide evidence for her arguments. Groundbreaking in scope, Rethinking Private Authority demonstrates that authority in world politics is diffused across multiple levels and diverse actors, and it offers a more complete picture of how private actors are helping to shape our response to today's most pressing environmental problems.The Five Habits of Highly Effective Honeybees: From Honeybee Democracy (Princeton Shorts #5)
Par Thomas D. Seeley. 2011
Studies of animal behavior have often been invoked to help explain and even guide human behavior. Think of Pavlov and…
his dogs or Goodall and her chimps. But, as these examples indicate, the tendency has been to focus on "higher," more cognitively developed, and thus, it is thought, more intelligent creatures than mindless, robotic insects. Not so! Learn here how honeybees work together to form a collective intelligence and even how they make decisions democratically. The wizzzzdom of crowds indeed! Here are five habits of effective groups that we can learn from these clever honeybees. Princeton Shorts are brief selections excerpted from influential Princeton University Press publications produced exclusively in eBook format. They are selected with the firm belief that while the original work remains an important and enduring product, sometimes we can all benefit from a quick take on a topic worthy of a longer book. In a world where every second counts, how better to stay up-to speed on current events and digest the kernels of wisdom found in the great works of the past? Princeton Shorts enables you to be an instant expert in a world where information is everywhere but quality is at a premium. The Five Habits of Highly Effective Honeybees (and What We Can Learn from Them) does just that.The hidden role of philanthropy in enriching America's prosperity—and the world'sPhilanthropy has long been a distinctive feature of American culture,…
but its crucial role in the economic well-being of the nation—and the world—has remained largely unexplored. Why Philanthropy Matters takes an in-depth look at philanthropy as an underappreciated force in capitalism, measures its critical influence on the free-market system, and demonstrates how American philanthropy could serve as a model for the productive reinvestment of wealth in other countries. Factoring in philanthropic cycles that help balance the economy, Zoltan Acs offers a richer picture of capitalism, and a more accurate backdrop for considering policies that would promote the capitalist system for the good of all.Examining the dynamics of American-style capitalism since the eighteenth century, Acs argues that philanthropy achieves three critical outcomes. It deals with the question of what to do with wealth—keep it, tax it, or give it away. It complements government in creating public goods. And, by focusing on education, science, and medicine, philanthropy has a positive effect on economic growth and productivity. Acs describes how individuals such as Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Carnegie, Bill Gates, and Oprah Winfrey have used their wealth to establish institutions and promote knowledge, and Acs shows how philanthropy has given an edge to capitalism by promoting vital forces—like university research—necessary for technological innovation, economic equality, and economic security. Philanthropy also serves as a guide for countries with less flexible capitalist institutions, and Acs makes the case for a larger, global philanthropic culture.Providing a new perspective on the development of capitalism, Why Philanthropy Matters highlights philanthropy's critical links to the economic progress, health, and future of the United States—and beyond.Econometrics
Par Fumio Hayashi. 2001
The most authoritative and comprehensive synthesis of modern econometrics availableEconometrics provides first-year graduate students with a thoroughly modern introduction to…
the subject, covering all the standard material necessary for understanding the principal techniques of econometrics, from ordinary least squares through cointegration. The book is distinctive in developing both time-series and cross-section analysis fully, giving readers a unified framework for understanding and integrating results.Econometrics covers all the important topics in a succinct manner. All the estimation techniques that could possibly be taught in a first-year graduate course, except maximum likelihood, are treated as special cases of GMM (generalized methods of moments). Maximum likelihood estimators for a variety of models, such as probit and tobit, are collected in a separate chapter. This arrangement enables students to learn various estimation techniques in an efficient way. Virtually all the chapters include empirical applications drawn from labor economics, industrial organization, domestic and international finance, and macroeconomics. These empirical exercises provide students with hands-on experience applying the techniques covered. The exposition is rigorous yet accessible, requiring a working knowledge of very basic linear algebra and probability theory. All the results are stated as propositions so that students can see the points of the discussion and also the conditions under which those results hold. Most propositions are proved in the text.For students who intend to write a thesis on applied topics, the empirical applications in Econometrics are an excellent way to learn how to conduct empirical research. For theoretically inclined students, the no-compromise treatment of basic techniques is an ideal preparation for more advanced theory courses.Capitalism and the Jews
Par Jerry Z. Muller. 2010
How the fate of the Jews has been shaped by the development of capitalismThe unique historical relationship between capitalism and…
the Jews is crucial to understanding modern European and Jewish history. But the subject has been addressed less often by mainstream historians than by anti-Semites or apologists. In this book Jerry Muller, a leading historian of capitalism, separates myth from reality to explain why the Jewish experience with capitalism has been so important and complex—and so ambivalent.Drawing on economic, social, political, and intellectual history from medieval Europe through contemporary America and Israel, Capitalism and the Jews examines the ways in which thinking about capitalism and thinking about the Jews have gone hand in hand in European thought, and why anticapitalism and anti-Semitism have frequently been linked. The book explains why Jews have tended to be disproportionately successful in capitalist societies, but also why Jews have numbered among the fiercest anticapitalists and Communists. The book shows how the ancient idea that money was unproductive led from the stigmatization of usury and the Jews to the stigmatization of finance and, ultimately, in Marxism, the stigmatization of capitalism itself. Finally, the book traces how the traditional status of the Jews as a diasporic merchant minority both encouraged their economic success and made them particularly vulnerable to the ethnic nationalism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.Providing a fresh look at an important but frequently misunderstood subject, Capitalism and the Jews will interest anyone who wants to understand the Jewish role in the development of capitalism, the role of capitalism in the modern fate of the Jews, or the ways in which the story of capitalism and the Jews has affected the history of Europe and beyond, from the medieval period to our own.Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk among Us
Par John Quiggin. 2012
In the graveyard of economic ideology, dead ideas still stalk the land. The recent financial crisis laid bare many of…
the assumptions behind market liberalism--the theory that market-based solutions are always best, regardless of the problem. For decades, their advocates dominated mainstream economics, and their influence created a system where an unthinking faith in markets led many to view speculative investments as fundamentally safe. The crisis seemed to have killed off these ideas, but they still live on in the minds of many--members of the public, commentators, politicians, economists, and even those charged with cleaning up the mess. In Zombie Economics, John Quiggin explains how these dead ideas still walk among us--and why we must find a way to kill them once and for all if we are to avoid an even bigger financial crisis in the future. Zombie Economics takes the reader through the origins, consequences, and implosion of a system of ideas whose time has come and gone. These beliefs--that deregulation had conquered the financial cycle, that markets were always the best judge of value, that policies designed to benefit the rich made everyone better off--brought us to the brink of disaster once before, and their persistent hold on many threatens to do so again. Because these ideas will never die unless there is an alternative, Zombie Economics also looks ahead at what could replace market liberalism, arguing that a simple return to traditional Keynesian economics and the politics of the welfare state will not be enough--either to kill dead ideas, or prevent future crises. In a new chapter, Quiggin brings the book up to date with a discussion of the re-emergence of pre-Keynesian ideas about austerity and balanced budgets as a response to recession.A color-illustrated introduction to the basic principles of visual language that every content creator and consumer needs to knowThe right…
images capture attention, pique curiosity, and inspire viewers to stick around long enough to read any accompanying text. Nearly everyone today needs to use or understand images in communications of all kinds, from the most formal professional publication to the most casual social media post, and knowing the basics of visual language is essential for content creators and consumers alike. However, most people aren’t taught visual grammar unless they go into art- or design-related fields. The Elements of Visual Grammar explains image use in any media in practical terms for writers, scholars, and other professionals. Award-winning art director and design professor Angela Riechers offers a flexible set of principles and best practices for selecting images that work—and using them in the most persuasive way. The result is an indispensable guide for anyone who wants to learn how to work more successfully with images and words.Features more than 200 color illustrations—drawn from a wide range of styles, media, and eras—that demonstrate the principles of visual grammar and how images can support and enhance written contentDefines and illustrates the basic elements of images, describes how images function within text regardless of media, and explains how to choose images and integrate them with textIntroduces the practical, cultural, conceptual, and scientific factors that influence image useAnalyzes images by function and describes ways to employ symbolism, synecdoche, allegory, metaphor, analogy, and iconographyHigh-Frequency Financial Econometrics
Par Yacine Aït-Sahalia, Jean Jacod. 2014
A comprehensive introduction to the statistical and econometric methods for analyzing high-frequency financial dataHigh-frequency trading is an algorithm-based computerized trading…
practice that allows firms to trade stocks in milliseconds. Over the last fifteen years, the use of statistical and econometric methods for analyzing high-frequency financial data has grown exponentially. This growth has been driven by the increasing availability of such data, the technological advancements that make high-frequency trading strategies possible, and the need of practitioners to analyze these data. This comprehensive book introduces readers to these emerging methods and tools of analysis.Yacine Aït-Sahalia and Jean Jacod cover the mathematical foundations of stochastic processes, describe the primary characteristics of high-frequency financial data, and present the asymptotic concepts that their analysis relies on. Aït-Sahalia and Jacod also deal with estimation of the volatility portion of the model, including methods that are robust to market microstructure noise, and address estimation and testing questions involving the jump part of the model. As they demonstrate, the practical importance and relevance of jumps in financial data are universally recognized, but only recently have econometric methods become available to rigorously analyze jump processes.Aït-Sahalia and Jacod approach high-frequency econometrics with a distinct focus on the financial side of matters while maintaining technical rigor, which makes this book invaluable to researchers and practitioners alike.The Unlocked Leader: Dare to Free Your Own Voice, Lead with Empathy, and Shine Your Light in the World
Par Hortense Le Gentil. 2024
The most effective leaders are “human leaders:” leading with empathy, vulnerability, and authenticity. But many still adhere to the outdated…
myth that leaders must be “superhero leaders: infallible, unflappable, and fearless." Tragically, their innate ability to inspire remains locked within, blunting their impact. In The Unlocked Leader veteran executive leadership coach Hortense le Gentil combines real life stories, rigorous research, and practical tools to explain how superhero leaders can become effective human leaders. You’ll discover: · How to identify the mental obstacles that stand between you and leadership authenticity, and sap your energy and impact - your mindtraps. · How to confront your fears and escape those traps by operating a mindshift. · Practical strategies to better connect with yourself and others - a mindbuild. The journey from superhero leader to human leader not only transforms the lives of leaders themselves - both at work and beyond. It also makes a profound and lasting difference in the lives of people around them and the organizations they lead. This is how human leaders make an impact and shine their light in the world: by changing the way they connect with themselves and other people, they start a chain reaction that reverberates throughout their organizations and beyond them, because we are all part of interconnected networks of human relationships. An indispensable leadership manual for people who wish to lead not just with their heads, but with their heart and soul as well, The Unlocked Leader belongs on the bookshelves of leaders and aspiring leaders at all levels looking for a fresh new perspective on effective, powerful leadership in service of something bigger than themselves.Inventing Equal Opportunity
Par Frank Dobbin. 2009
Equal opportunity in the workplace is thought to be the direct legacy of the civil rights and feminist movements and…
the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. Yet, as Frank Dobbin demonstrates, corporate personnel experts--not Congress or the courts--were the ones who determined what equal opportunity meant in practice, designing changes in how employers hire, promote, and fire workers, and ultimately defining what discrimination is, and is not, in the American imagination. Dobbin shows how Congress and the courts merely endorsed programs devised by corporate personnel. He traces how the first measures were adopted by military contractors worried that the Kennedy administration would cancel their contracts if they didn't take "affirmative action" to end discrimination. These measures built on existing personnel programs, many designed to prevent bias against unionists. Dobbin follows the changes in the law as personnel experts invented one wave after another of equal opportunity programs. He examines how corporate personnel formalized hiring and promotion practices in the 1970s to eradicate bias by managers; how in the 1980s they answered Ronald Reagan's threat to end affirmative action by recasting their efforts as diversity-management programs; and how the growing presence of women in the newly named human resources profession has contributed to a focus on sexual harassment and work/life issues. Inventing Equal Opportunity reveals how the personnel profession devised--and ultimately transformed--our understanding of discrimination.A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960 (National Bureau of Economic Research Publications #14)
Par Milton Friedman, Anna Jacobson Schwartz. 1963
Writing in the June 1965 issue of theEconomic Journal, Harry G. Johnson begins with a sentence seemingly calibrated to the…
scale of the book he set himself to review: "The long-awaited monetary history of the United States by Friedman and Schwartz is in every sense of the term a monumental scholarly achievement--monumental in its sheer bulk, monumental in the definitiveness of its treatment of innumerable issues, large and small . . . monumental, above all, in the theoretical and statistical effort and ingenuity that have been brought to bear on the solution of complex and subtle economic issues." Friedman and Schwartz marshaled massive historical data and sharp analytics to support the claim that monetary policy--steady control of the money supply--matters profoundly in the management of the nation's economy, especially in navigating serious economic fluctuations. In their influential chapter 7, The Great Contraction--which Princeton published in 1965 as a separate paperback--they address the central economic event of the century, the Depression. According to Hugh Rockoff, writing in January 1965: "If Great Depressions could be prevented through timely actions by the monetary authority (or by a monetary rule), as Friedman and Schwartz had contended, then the case for market economies was measurably stronger." Milton Friedman won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1976 for work related to A Monetary History as well as to his other Princeton University Press book, A Theory of the Consumption Function (1957).Market Threads: How Cotton Farmers and Traders Create a Global Commodity
Par Koray Çalişkan. 2011
What is a global market? How does it work? At a time when new crises in world markets cannot be…
satisfactorily resolved through old ideas, Market Threads presents a detailed analysis of the international cotton trade and argues for a novel and groundbreaking understanding of global markets. The book examines the arrangements, institutions, and power relations on which cotton trading and production depend, and provides an alternative approach to the analysis of pricing mechanisms. Drawing upon research from such diverse places as the New York Board of Trade and the Turkish and Egyptian countrysides, the book explores how market agents from peasants to global merchants negotiate, accept, reject, resist, reproduce, understand, and misunderstand a global market. The book demonstrates that policymakers and researchers must focus on the specific practices of market maintenance in order to know how they operate. Markets do not simply emerge as a relationship among self-interested buyers and sellers, governed by appropriate economic institutions. Nor are they just social networks embedded in wider economic social structures. Rather, global markets are maintained through daily interventions, the production of prosthetic prices, and the waging of struggles among those who produce and exchange commodities. The book illustrates the crucial consequences that these ideas have on economic reform projects and market studies. Spanning a variety of disciplines, Market Threads offers an original look at the world commodity trade and revises prevailing explanations for how markets work.The Federal Reserve and the Financial Crisis
Par Ben S. Bernanke. 2013
Ben Bernanke's history of the Federal Reserve and its response to the 2008 financial crisisIn 2012, Ben Bernanke, chairman of…
the U.S. Federal Reserve, gave a series of lectures about the Federal Reserve and the 2008 financial crisis, as part of a course at George Washington University on the role of the Federal Reserve in the economy. In this unusual event, Bernanke revealed important background and insights into the central bank's crucial actions during the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Taken directly from these historic talks, The Federal Reserve and the Financial Crisis offers insight into the guiding principles behind the Fed's activities and the lessons to be learned from its handling of recent economic challenges.Bernanke traces the origins of the Federal Reserve, from its inception in 1914 through the Second World War, and he looks at the Fed post-1945, when it began operating independently from other governmental departments such as the Treasury. During this time the Fed grappled with episodes of high inflation, finally tamed by then-chairman Paul Volcker. Bernanke also explores the period under his predecessor, Alan Greenspan, known as the Great Moderation. Bernanke then delves into the Fed's reaction to the recent financial crisis, focusing on the central bank's role as the lender of last resort and discussing efforts that injected liquidity into the banking system. Bernanke points out that monetary policies alone cannot revive the economy, and he describes ongoing structural and regulatory problems that need to be addressed.Providing first-hand knowledge of how problems in the financial system were handled, The Federal Reserve and the Financial Crisis will long be studied by those interested in this critical moment in history.An Introduction to Mathematical Analysis for Economic Theory and Econometrics
Par Dean Corbae, Maxwell Stinchcombe, Juraj Zeman. 2009
Providing an introduction to mathematical analysis as it applies to economic theory and econometrics, this book bridges the gap that…
has separated the teaching of basic mathematics for economics and the increasingly advanced mathematics demanded in economics research today. Dean Corbae, Maxwell B. Stinchcombe, and Juraj Zeman equip students with the knowledge of real and functional analysis and measure theory they need to read and do research in economic and econometric theory. Unlike other mathematics textbooks for economics, An Introduction to Mathematical Analysis for Economic Theory and Econometrics takes a unified approach to understanding basic and advanced spaces through the application of the Metric Completion Theorem. This is the concept by which, for example, the real numbers complete the rational numbers and measure spaces complete fields of measurable sets. Another of the book's unique features is its concentration on the mathematical foundations of econometrics. To illustrate difficult concepts, the authors use simple examples drawn from economic theory and econometrics. Accessible and rigorous, the book is self-contained, providing proofs of theorems and assuming only an undergraduate background in calculus and linear algebra. Begins with mathematical analysis and economic examples accessible to advanced undergraduates in order to build intuition for more complex analysis used by graduate students and researchers Takes a unified approach to understanding basic and advanced spaces of numbers through application of the Metric Completion Theorem Focuses on examples from econometrics to explain topics in measure theoryStructural Macroeconometrics: Second Edition
Par David N. DeJong, Chetan Dave. 2012
The revised edition of the essential resource on macroeconometricsStructural Macroeconometrics provides a thorough overview and in-depth exploration of methodologies, models,…
and techniques used to analyze forces shaping national economies. In this thoroughly revised second edition, David DeJong and Chetan Dave emphasize time series econometrics and unite theoretical and empirical research, while taking into account important new advances in the field.The authors detail strategies for solving dynamic structural models and present the full range of methods for characterizing and evaluating empirical implications, including calibration exercises, method-of-moment procedures, and likelihood-based procedures, both classical and Bayesian. The authors look at recent strides that have been made to enhance numerical efficiency, consider the expanded applicability of dynamic factor models, and examine the use of alternative assumptions involving learning and rational inattention on the part of decision makers. The treatment of methodologies for obtaining nonlinear model representations has been expanded, and linear and nonlinear model representations are integrated throughout the text. The book offers a rich array of implementation algorithms, sample empirical applications, and supporting computer code.Structural Macroeconometrics is the ideal textbook for graduate students seeking an introduction to macroeconomics and econometrics, and for advanced students pursuing applied research in macroeconomics. The book's historical perspective, along with its broad presentation of alternative methodologies, makes it an indispensable resource for academics and professionals.The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good
Par Robert H. Frank. 2013
What Charles Darwin can teach us about building a fairer societyWho was the greater economist—Adam Smith or Charles Darwin? The…
question seems absurd. Darwin, after all, was a naturalist, not an economist. But Robert Frank, New York Times economics columnist and best-selling author of The Economic Naturalist, predicts that within the next century Darwin will unseat Smith as the intellectual founder of economics. The reason, Frank argues, is that Darwin's understanding of competition describes economic reality far more accurately than Smith's. And the consequences of this fact are profound. Indeed, the failure to recognize that we live in Darwin's world rather than Smith's is putting us all at risk by preventing us from seeing that competition alone will not solve our problems.Smith's theory of the invisible hand, which says that competition channels self-interest for the common good, is probably the most widely cited argument today in favor of unbridled competition—and against regulation, taxation, and even government itself. But what if Smith's idea was almost an exception to the general rule of competition? That's what Frank argues, resting his case on Darwin's insight that individual and group interests often diverge sharply. Far from creating a perfect world, economic competition often leads to "arms races," encouraging behaviors that not only cause enormous harm to the group but also provide no lasting advantages for individuals, since any gains tend to be relative and mutually offsetting.The good news is that we have the ability to tame the Darwin economy. The best solution is not to prohibit harmful behaviors but to tax them. By doing so, we could make the economic pie larger, eliminate government debt, and provide better public services, all without requiring painful sacrifices from anyone. That's a bold claim, Frank concedes, but it follows directly from logic and evidence that most people already accept.In a new afterword, Frank further explores how the themes of inequality and competition are driving today's public debate on how much government we need.Between Slavery and Capitalism: The Legacy of Emancipation in the American South
Par Martin Ruef. 2014
An in-depth examination of the economic and social transition from slavery to capitalism during ReconstructionAt the center of the upheavals…
brought by emancipation in the American South was the economic and social transition from slavery to modern capitalism. In Between Slavery and Capitalism, Martin Ruef examines how this institutional change affected individuals, organizations, and communities in the late nineteenth century, as blacks and whites alike learned to navigate the shoals between two different economic worlds. Analyzing trajectories among average Southerners, this is perhaps the most extensive sociological treatment of the transition from slavery since W.E.B. Du Bois's Black Reconstruction in America.In the aftermath of the Civil War, uncertainty was a pervasive feature of life in the South, affecting the economic behavior and social status of former slaves, Freedmen's Bureau agents, planters, merchants, and politicians, among others. Emancipation brought fundamental questions: How should emancipated slaves be reimbursed in wage contracts? What occupations and class positions would be open to blacks and whites? What forms of agricultural tenure could persist? And what paths to economic growth would be viable? To understand the escalating uncertainty of the postbellum era, Ruef draws on a wide range of qualitative and quantitative data, including several thousand interviews with former slaves, letters, labor contracts, memoirs, survey responses, census records, and credit reports.Through a resolutely comparative approach, Between Slavery and Capitalism identifies profound changes between the economic institutions of the Old and New South and sheds new light on how the legacy of emancipation continues to affect political discourse and race and class relations today.