Economy & Finance

The years since World War II have seen rapid shifts in the relative positions of different countries and regions. Leading political economist Mancur Olson offers a new and compelling theory to explain these shifts in fortune and then tests his theory against evidence from many periods of history and many parts of the world.[T]his elegant, readable book. . . sets out to explain why economies succumb to the British disease, the kind of stagnation and demoralization that is now sweeping Europe and North America. . . . A convincing book that could make a big difference in the way we think about modern economic problems.Peter Passell, The New York Times Book ReviewSchumpeter and Keynes would have hailed the insights Olson gives into the sicknesses of the modern mixed economy.Paul A. Samuelson, Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyOne of the really important books in social science of the past half-century.Scott Gordon, The Canadian Journal of EconomicsThe thesis of this brilliant book is that the longer a society enjoys political stability, the more likely it is to develop powerful special-interest lobbies that in turn make it less efficient economically.Charles Peters, The Washington MonthlyRemarkable. The fundamental ideas are simple, yet they provide insight into a wide array of social and historical issues. . . . The Rise and Decline of Nations promises to be a subject of productive interdisciplinary argument for years to come.Robert O. Keohane, Journal of Economic LiteratureI urgently recommend it to all economists and to a great many non-economists.Gordon Tullock, Public ChoiceOlsons theory is illuminating and there is no doubt that The Rise and Decline of Nations will exert much influence on ideas and politics for many decades to come.Pierre Lemieux, ReasonCo-winner of the 1983 American Political Science Associations Gladys M. Kammerer Award for the best book on U.S. national policy

"With tremendous generosity and vision, The Greeks and the Rational reaches out to game theory and serves as a model of scholarship that allows us to recognize each other, across disciplines and centuries. Once in a while we need a book like this to remind us how our urge to understand and theorize society is a deep and fundamental one shared across time."--Michael Chwe, Professor of Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles "Subtle and compelling in its argumentation, astonishing in its range, and ambitious in its aims, The Greeks and the Rational will be essential reading for Greek intellectual historians, students of ancient philosophy, and modern political theorists alike."--Emily Mackil, Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley "A rigorous, passionate book. Ober uses game theory to produce powerful new readings of major authors such as Plato and Herodotus. The payoff is inspiring for classicists, social scientists, and citizens who want to make just societies out of self-interested decision-makers."--John Ma, Professor of Classics, Columbia University "With grace, depth, and sophistication, Ober offers profound and sophisticated insight into the enduring philosophical question of the relationship between instrumental rationality and eudaimonia, or the flourishing of all."--Margaret Levi, Sara Miller McCune Director of the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University

Understanding Buses offers a clear, non-technical, jargon-free explanation of how the bus industry works, from experienced industry expert Chris Cheek.

Build the financial future you deserve with tax-effective investingThe government wants your help, and it's willing to pay handsomely.You just need to know what to do.In The Win-Win Wealth Strategy: 7 Investments the Government Will Pay You to Make, celebrated entrepreneur, investor, and bestselling author Tom Wheelwright, CPA transforms the way you think about building wealth and challenges the paradigm that tax incentives are immoral loopholes. Backed by deep research in 15 countries, he identifies seven investing strategies that are A-OK with governments worldwide and will fatten your wallet while making the world a better place.You'll learn:* How to tax-effectively invest in business, technology, energy, real estate, insurance, agriculture, and retirement accounts* How to use tax incentives to help pay for your next car, house, or tuition bill* Why "the rich" are not "a drain on society" and, more importantly, how to become one of themAn indispensable and startlingly insightful exploration of straightforward investing strategies, The Win-Win Wealth Strategy improves your confidence in tax-effective investing, so you make better decisions with your money and supercharge your family's generational wealth while creating jobs, developing technology and improving access to food, energy and housing.

Management experts Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev sift through decades of data to show why workplace diversity training fails and what works. Arguing that it¿s time to focus on changing systems rather than individuals, the authors make data-driven recommendations for diversifying management and creating workplaces where everyone can thrive.

This book examines the crisis at the famous insurance market, Lloyd's of London, during the late twentieth century, which nearly destroyed the 300-year-old institution. While rapid structural change resulting from system collapse is less common in insurance than in the history of other financial services, one exception was the Lloyd¿s crisis. Hitherto, explanations of the crisis have focused on the effects of catastrophic losses and poor governance. By drawing on contemporary accounts of the crisis, the author constructs the first comprehensive scholarly analysis of the public and political response. The book applies theoretical concepts from behavioural economics and economic psychology to argue that multiple delusions of competence were at work both within and outside the Lloyd¿s market. Arrogance, elitism and defence of vested interests comprised endogenous elements of the crisis. Entrenched ideas about the virtues of self-regulation and faith in insider experts also played a role. The result was a misdiagnosis by both insiders and politicians of what ailed Lloyd¿s and a series of reforms that failed to address the underlying causes of its disease. This book offers a salutary lesson from recent history about the importance of the transparency, accountability and effective monitoring of financial institutions. It is of interest to academics and students of economic and financial history, business, insurance, political economy and history.

The first comprehensive study of Pliny the Elder's economic thought-and its implications for understanding the Roman Empire's constrained innovation and economic growthThe elder Pliny's Natural History (77 CE), an astonishing compilation of 20,000 "e;things worth knowing,"e; was avowedly intended to be a repository of ancient Mediterranean knowledge for the use of craftsmen and farmers, but this 37-book, 400,000-word work was too expensive, unwieldy, and impractically organized to be of utilitarian value. Yet, as Richard Saller shows, the Natural History offers more insights into Roman ideas about economic growth than any other ancient source. Pliny's Roman Economy is the first comprehensive study of Pliny's economic thought and its implications for understanding the economy of the Roman Empire.As Saller reveals, Pliny sometimes anticipates modern economic theory, while at other times his ideas suggest why Rome produced very few major inventions that resulted in sustained economic growth. On one hand, Pliny believed that new knowledge came by accident or divine intervention, not by human initiative; research and development was a foreign concept. When he lists 136 great inventions, they are mostly prehistoric and don't include a single one from Rome-offering a commentary on Roman innovation and displaying a reverence for the past that contrasts with the attitudes of the eighteenth-century encyclopedists credited with contributing to the Industrial Revolution. On the other hand, Pliny shrewdly recognized that Rome's lack of competition from other states suppressed incentives for innovation. Pliny's understanding should be noted because, as Saller shows, recent efforts to use scientific evidence about the ancient climate to measure the Roman economy are flawed.By exploring Pliny's ideas about discovery, innovation, and growth, Pliny's Roman Economy makes an important new contribution to the ongoing debate about economic growth in ancient Rome.

An internationally famous climate scientist with a strong media presence, Mann has been on the front lines of the climate debate for decades, and readers will want to hear from him on the solutions for the worsening crisis.For readers of The Uninhabitable Earth, The Future We Choose, and This Changes Everything, this is a book of solutions, not scaremongering, that will be indispensable for anybody who wants to save our planet.

Help your students navigate the realities of the global economy - the theories, the data, the policies and their impact. Emphasizing the use of data and empirics to link cutting-edge economic theory to current world events, this book was developed in the classroom by two of the most prominent researchers in the field who saw a need for a text with fresh theories and perspectives. Seamlessly blending theory and data with real-world policies, events, and evidence, Feenstra and Taylor's International Economics provides engaging, balanced coverage and applications of key concepts. The book covers the latest events and newest research. International Economics is supported by Achieve, our integrated, online learning system which allows you to engage every student with powerful multimedia resources, an integrated e-Book, robust homework, and a wealth of interactives, creating an extraordinary new learning resource for students. Key features include:Access to an eBook for easy reading and searchingLearningCurve adaptive quizzing offers practice questions to check understanding and provides feedback to ensure students have grasped the conceptsDiscovering Data and Work It Out problems provide the opportunity to locate, analyze, and interpret real-world data, related to topics in the bookCurated multi-step questions and graphing problems are paired with rich feedback to guide students through the process of problem solving and developing their analytical thinking

The former dean of the Yale School of Management and Undersecretary of Commerce in the Clinton administration chronicles the 1971 August meeting at Camp David, where President Nixon unilaterally ended the last vestiges of the gold standard - breaking the link between gold and the dollar - transforming the entire global monetary system. Over the course of three days - from August 13 to 15, 1971 - at a secret meeting at Camp David, President Richard Nixon and his brain trust changed the course of history. Before that weekend, all national currencies were valued to the U.S. dollar, which was convertible to gold at a fixed rate. That system, established by the Bretton Woods Agreement at the end of World War II, was the foundation of the international monetary system that helped fuel the greatest expansion of middle-class prosperity the world has ever seen. In making his decision, Nixon shocked world leaders, bankers, investors, traders and everyone involved in global finance. Jeffrey E. Garten argues that many of the roots of America's dramatic retrenchment in world affairs began with that momentous event that was an admission that America could no longer afford to uphold the global monetary system. It opened the way for massive market instability and speculation that has plagued the world economy ever since, but at the same time it made possible the gigantic expansion of trade and investment across borders which created our modern era of once unimaginable progress. Based on extensive historical research and interviews with several participants at Camp David, and informed by Garten's own insights from positions in four presidential administrations and on Wall Street, Three Days at Camp David chronicles this critical turning point, analyzes its impact on the American economy and world markets, and explores its ramifications now and for the future.

This book explains why emerging economies have come to dominate global environmental politics and examines the implications for international cooperation. Johannes Urpelainen argues that although they continue to prioritize economic growth, innovative bargaining and institutional design offer a way forward.

This book provides an understanding of Russia's geopolitical strategic interests as well as a larger picture of its political realities.

And by tracing the development of key economic tenets, he demonstrates how their champions' tendency to believe in phenomena for which they have little hard evidence leaves accepted economic wisdom frequently being more about faith than facts. His book both exposes and challenges lazy thinking.

The classic guide that taught a generation of institutional investors how to construct and manage high-yield quant portfolios-now updated for the new generationQuantitative Equity Portfolio Management is a comprehensive guide to the entire process of constructing and managing a high-yield quantitative equity portfolio. This detailed handbook begins with the basic principles of quantitative active management and then clearly outlines how to build an equity portfolio using those powerful concepts. This edition of the go-to guide for quant investing has been updated with critical new data, information, and insights, including:All table and graph data updated to 2020The secret ingredients to building smart beta ETFs and mutual fundsA new list of behavioral biases that lead to investment anomaliesEntirely new factor definitions and test of their outperformance with real stock return dataNew labs using real data written in R, MATLAB, and STATA with new techniques to optimize professional portfoliosNew methods to deal with outlier dataThe author's new research on transaction cost problemsDetailed uses of ESG data to create socially responsible portfoliosDownloadable monthly factor returns from the authorsQuantitative Equity Portfolio Management delivers a complete, easy-to-apply methodology for creating an equity portfolio that maximizes returns and minimizes risks. It covers every step of the process, including basic models, stock screening and ranking, fundamental and economic factor modelling, forecasting factor premiums and exposures, building market neutral portfolios, tax management, performance measurement and attribution, and backtesting. An essential reference for professional money managers and students taking advanced investment courses, Quantitative Equity Portfolio Management offers a full array of methods for effectively developing high-performance equity portfolios that deliver lucrative returns for clients.

Equip yourself with the knowledge and tools to build, drive and measure employee engagement with this essential guide from the HR Fundamentals series.

This book is about an economic system that creates and circulates value. ABC&D explores an economy that is regenerative, accessible, abundant, open source, participative, distributive and devolved - by design. This book is a story of systemic re-orientation, away from an extractive linear economy towards a transformative circular economy. It's about rebuilding 'capitals' through the shift from extraction to circulation in both the monetary and materials cycles at the same time.The book's core concepts are illustrated using the food and farming sector. Through the lens of soil, food and farming systems, it looks in-depth at ways that people can design, build and participate in a regenerative economy. The Circular Economy illustrates really profound shifts and points to a new and emerging economics narrative which is beyond left and right - a devolved, post-capitalist economy based on wealth from the 'commons' and a reinvigorated democracy where the link between work and wages is broken.

Democracy is a matter of degree, and this book offers mainstream empirical evidence that shows how rich democracies would be better off with a few degrees less of it.

Further, the textbook presents a systematic economic analysis of securitization, asking and answering why it exists, how it works, why it has failed, how complex structures operate, why they are so complex, and many other related questions.