Books in the The MIT Press series

Lerner has spent four years searching out what he calls "eco-pioneers"--people who are working to reduce the pace of environmental degradation. Here he provides case studies of eco-pioneers who are exploring sustainable ways to log forests, grow food, save plant species, clean up cities, conserve water, protect rivers and wildlife, treat hazardous waste, and reduce both waste and consumption. 45 illustrations.

Authoritative and comprehensive, yet comprehensible. A remarkable blend of rigorous elegance and economic wisdom.

Universalism vs. Communitarianism focuses on the question, raised by recent work in normative philosophy, of whether ethical norms are best derived and justified on the basis of universal or communitarian standards.

Robert Schrank is a Project Specialist at the Ford Foundation, and he holds a master's and doctorate in the sociology of work. He serves as consultant to the New York City Mayor's Productivity Council, the National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. Department of Labor, other governmental bodies, and universities. So another academic specialist has written another book about the values and goals--or the lack of them, or their decline, or whatever--of working stiffs, about which he knows from nothing, right?Wrong. This particular academic specialist didn't get to college until he was over forty, and earned (the right word for a working man) his doctorate when he was in his fifties. For more than forty years--ten thousand working days--from the age of fourteen on, he has held down an astonishing variety of jobs that cover both a wide occupational range and just about every level, from the top to the bottom, in the organizational scheme of things. He has been a plumber, a city commissioner, a plant manager and engineer, an auto mechanic, an antipoverty program bureaucrat, a machinist, a union official, a coal miner, a foundation professional, a farmhand. Not in that order, but the point is that the experiences, commingling in the memory, all have an equal value in human terms. Always onward-and-upward, the American-Dream-come-true, is exactly not the point.Robert Schrank writes about each of these jobs in a personal, chronological, specific, narrative way, but always from a perspective that has been enlarged by the scope of his professional training and and commitments. His memories give his experiences uniqueness. His sociological insights lend them a kind of universality.But this author is his own best advocate: I was moved to write this book as a result of listening to and reading about what behavioral scientists, academics, and other literati had perceived at places of work. I felt that in the pursuit of psychology or sociology they had missed the humanity, the poetry, and the community of people that is created by the workers at their workplaces. I hope in this book to catch some of that sense of community, camaraderie, conflict, and humor.... I will be tempted from time to time to write in my present profession as a sociologist. But I will do my best to resist that in favor of trying to catch the language and the feel of the workplaces I am writing about. I will try to differentiate between the job and the actual work on tasks. The job I define as the container, the institution, or the structure in which a person performs something for which he or she gets paid. If we think about the job as a container, what interests me in this book is what goes on inside that container. This includes the work tasks, physical surroundings, the benefits, the amenities, and most important, the social milieu of the community.The author also brings critical acuteness and common sense to his examination of such issues as the quality of work (and of workmanship), work as a means of self-definition and personal fulfillment, and the point at which diminishing rewards--material and psychological--make the alternative of not working (or working at a minimal level of commitment) the preferred way of life.

An analysis of the MX missile system and its flaws.

This is the story of how France's famed cultural icon, one of the most controversial and supremely public building of the century, was designed and built.

A comprehensive and rigorous text that shows how a basic open economy model can be extended to answer important macroeconomic questions that arise in emerging markets.This rigorous and comprehensive textbook develops a basic small open economy model and shows how it can be extended to answer many important macroeconomic questions that arise in emerging markets and developing economies, particularly those regarding monetary, fiscal, and exchange rate issues. Eschewing the complex calibrated models on which the field of international finance increasingly relies, the book teaches the reader how to think in terms of simple models and grasp the fundamentals of open economy macroeconomics. After analyzing the standard intertemporal small open economy model, the book introduces frictions such as imperfect capital markets, intertemporal distortions, and nontradable goods, into the basic model in order to shed light on the economy's response to different shocks. The book then introduces money into the model to analyze the real effects of monetary and exchange rate policy. It then applies these theoretical tools to a variety of important macroeconomic issues relevant to developing countries (and, in a world of continuing financial crisis, to industrial countries as well), including the use of a nominal interest rate as a main policy instrument, the relative merits of flexible and predetermined exchange rate regimes, and the targeting of "real anchors.” Finally, the book analyzes in detail specific topics such as inflation stabilization, "dollarization,” balance of payments crises, and, inspired by recent events, financial crises. Each chapter includes boxes with relevant empirical evidence and ends with exercises. The book is suitable for use in graduate courses in development economics, international finance, and macroeconomics.