Author: Fritz Bartel Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674976789 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 441
Book Description
Communist and capitalist states alike were scarred by the economic shocks of the 1970s. Why did only communist governments fall in their wake? Fritz Bartel argues that Western democracies were insulated by neoliberalism. While austerity was fatal to the legitimacy of communism, democratic politicians could win votes by pushing market discipline.
Author: Michael Viner Publisher: Phoenix Books, Inc. ISBN: 9781597775373 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 314
Book Description
Viner traveled to various Eastern European countries to interview women of all ages and circumstances who are willing to do anything to get to America. The revealing and often unsettling tales of these women, told in their own words, shine a light on a growing population in the U.S.
Author: Angus Burgin Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674067436 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 314
Book Description
Just as economists struggle today to justify the free market after the global economic crisis, an earlier generation revisited their worldview after the Great Depression. In this intellectual history of that project, Burgin traces the evolution of postwar economic thought in order to reconsider the most basic assumptions of a market-centered world.
Author: Paul Kelly Publisher: Melbourne Univ. Publishing ISBN: 0522866816 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 568
Book Description
Drawing on more than sixty on-the-record interviews with all the major players, Triumph and Demise is full of remarkable disclosures. It is the inside account of the hopes, achievements and bitter failures of the Labor Government from 2007 to 2013. Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard came together to defeat John Howard, formed a brilliant partnership and raised the hopes of the nation. Yet they fell into tension and then hostility under the pressures of politics and policy. Veteran journalist Paul Kelly probes the dynamics of the Rudd-Gillard partnership and dissects what tore them apart. He tells the full story of Julia Gillard's tragedy as our first female prime minister—her character, Rudd's destabilisation, the carbon tax saga and how Gillard was finally pulled down on the eve of the 2013 election. Kelly documents the most misunderstood event in these years—the rise of Tony Abbott and the reason for his success. It was Abbott's performance that denied Rudd and Gillard the chance to recover. Labor misjudged Abbott and paid the price. Kelly writes with a keen eye and fearless determination. His central theme is that Australian politics has entered a crisis of the system that, unless corrected, will diminish the lives of all Australians.
Author: Tyler Beck Goodspeed Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674969014 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 221
Book Description
From 1716 to 1845, Scotland’s banks were among the most dynamic and resilient in Europe, effectively absorbing a series of adverse economic shocks that rocked financial markets in London and on the continent. Legislating Instability explains the seeming paradox that the Scottish banking system achieved this success without the government controls usually considered necessary for economic stability. Eighteenth-century Scottish banks operated in a regulatory vacuum: no central bank to act as lender of last resort, no monopoly on issuing currency, no legal requirements for maintaining capital reserves, and no formal limits on bank size. These conditions produced a remarkably robust banking system, one that was intensely competitive and served as a prime engine of Scottish economic growth. Despite indicators that might have seemed red flags—large speculative capital flows, a fixed exchange rate, and substantial external debt—Scotland successfully navigated two severe financial crises during the Seven Years’ War. The exception was a severe financial crisis in 1772, seven years after the imposition of the first regulations on Scottish banking—the result of aggressive lobbying by large banks seeking to weed out competition. While these restrictions did not cause the 1772 crisis, Tyler Beck Goodspeed argues, they critically undermined the flexibility and resilience previously exhibited by Scottish finance, thereby elevating the risk that another adverse economic shock, such as occurred in 1772, might threaten financial stability more broadly. Far from revealing the shortcomings of unregulated banking, as Adam Smith claimed, the 1772 crisis exposed the risks of ill-conceived bank regulation.
Author: Emma Rothschild Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674725611 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 366
Book Description
A benchmark in the history of economics and of political ideas, Rothschild shows us the origins of laissez-faire economic thought and its relation to political conseratism in an unquiet world.
Author: Gavin Wright Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674076443 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 368
Book Description
Southern bus boycotts and lunch counter sit-ins were famous acts of civil disobedience but were also demands for jobs in the very services being denied blacks. Gavin Wright shows that the civil rights struggle was of economic benefit to all parties: the wages of southern blacks increased dramatically but not at the expense of southern whites.
Author: Julia C. Ott Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674050657 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 348
Book Description
The financial crisis that began in 2008 has made Americans keenly aware of the enormous impact Wall Street has on the economic well-being of the nation and its citizenry. How did financial markets and institutions-commonly perceived as marginal and elitist at the beginning of the twentieth century-come to be seen as the bedrock of American capitalism? How did stock investment-once considered disreputable and dangerous-first become a mass practice? Julia Ott tells the story of how, between the rise of giant industrial corporations and the Crash of 1929, the federal government, corporations, and financial institutions campaigned to universalize investment, with the goal of providing individual investors with a stake in the economy and the nation. As these distributors of stocks and bonds established a broad, national market for financial securities, they debated the distribution of economic power, the proper role of government, and the meaning of citizenship under modern capitalism. By 1929, the incidence of stock ownership had risen to engulf one quarter of American households in the looming financial disaster. Accordingly, the federal government assumed responsibility for protecting citizen-investors by regulating the financial securities markets. By recovering the forgotten history of this initial phase of mass investment and the issues surrounding it, Ott enriches and enlightens contemporary debates over economic reform.
Author: John J. Siegfried Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674267338 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 324
Book Description
Better Living Through Economics consists of twelve case studies that demonstrate how economic research has improved economic and social conditions over the past half century by influencing public policy decisions. Economists were obviously instrumental in revising the consumer price index and in devising auctions for allocating spectrum rights to cell phone providers in the 1990s. But perhaps more surprisingly, economists built the foundation for eliminating the military draft in favor of an all-volunteer army in 1973, for passing the Earned Income Tax Credit in 1975, for deregulating airlines in 1978, for adopting the welfare-to-work reforms during the Clinton administration, and for implementing the Pension Reform Act of 2006 that allowed employers to automatically enroll employees in a 401(k). Other important policy changes resulting from economists’ research include a new approach to monetary policy that resulted in moderated economic fluctuations (at least until 2008!), the reduction of trade impediments that allows countries to better exploit their natural advantages, a revision of antitrust policy to focus on those market characteristics that affect competition, an improved method of placing new physicians in hospital residencies that is more likely to keep married couples in the same city, and the adoption of tradable emissions rights which has improved our environment at minimum cost.
Author: Heather Boushey Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 067497817X Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 475
Book Description
A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year “An intellectual excursion of a kind rarely offered by modern economics.” —Foreign Affairs Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century is the most widely discussed work of economics in recent years. But are its analyses of inequality and economic growth on target? Where should researchers go from there in exploring the ideas Piketty pushed to the forefront of global conversation? A cast of leading economists and other social scientists—including Emmanuel Saez, Branko Milanovic, Laura Tyson, and Michael Spence—tackle these questions in dialogue with Piketty. “A fantastic introduction to Piketty’s main argument in Capital, and to some of the main criticisms, including doubt that his key equation...showing that returns on capital grow faster than the economy—will hold true in the long run.” —Nature “Piketty’s work...laid bare just how ill-equipped our existing frameworks are for understanding, predicting, and changing inequality. This extraordinary collection shows that our most nimble social scientists are responding to the challenge.” —Justin Wolfers, University of Michigan
Author: Fritz Bartel
Author: Michael Viner
Author: Angus Burgin
Author: Paul Kelly
Author: Tyler Beck Goodspeed
Author: Emma Rothschild
Author: Gavin Wright
Author: Julia C. Ott
Author: John J. Siegfried
Author: Heather Boushey