'Superb' - Tim Harford, author of How to Make the World Add Up Money is essential to the economy and how we live our lives, yet is inherently worthless. We can use it to build a home or send us to space, and it can lead to the rise and fall of empires. Few innovations have had such a huge impact on the development of humanity, but money is a shared fiction; a story we believe in so long as others act as if it is true. Money is rarely out of the headlines - from the invention of cryptocurrencies to the problem of high inflation, extraordinary interventions by central banks and the power the West has over the worldwide banking system. In Money in One Lesson, Gavin Jackson answers the most important questions on what money is and how it shapes our world, drawing on vivid examples from throughout history to demystify and show how societies and its citizens, both past and present, are always entwined with matters of money. 'A highly illuminating, well-researched and beautifully written book on one of humanity's most important innovations' - Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator, Financial Times

One of the most prominent, visible throughout a wide variety of contemporary sources, and geographically widespread phenomena in the eighteenth century was the rise of societies aimed at improving the economic basis of European nations. The Rise of Economic Societies in the Eighteenth Century is the first book to explore the emergence of economic societies in the British Isles and their development into a European, American and global reform movement in the eighteenth century. Its fourteen contributions demonstrate the intellectual horizons and international networks of this widespread and influential phenomenon, highlighting also the variety of local political roles and practical activities among the most prominent societies, ranging from Scotland to Switzerland and Russia to the United States of America.

Kozo Uno influenced a whole generation of marxian political economists in post World War II Japan. Thomas Sekine worked closely with Uno in Japan and later came to York University in Toronto, where he introduced Uno's ideas to Canadian scholars. Sekine has significantly enlarged and refined Uno's work, and in the process has influenced scholars in both Japan and Canada. This anthology is a collection of essays in marxian political economy by scholars who have been influenced by Sekine's particular appropriation of Uno's ideas.

Japan's escape from colonialism and its subsequent industrialisation has taken it to the point where its economy is second only to that of the US. This comprehensive volume examines how this rapid change of fortunes occurred, and the impact it has had on East Asia and the world at large. Taking a wide range and focus, Inkster looks at the history of Japan's industrial development in a social and cultural context.

In recent years, there have been a number of new developments in what came to be known as the "Capital Theory Debates". The debates took place mainly during the 1960s as a result of Piero Sraffa's critique of the neoclassical theory according to which the prices of factors of production directly depend on their relative scarcities. Sraffa showed that when income distribution changes, there are many complexities developed within the economic system impacting on prices in ways which are not possible to predict. These debates were revisited in the 1980s and again more recently, along with a parallel literature that has developed among neoclassical economists and has also looked at the impact of shocks on an economy. This book summarizes the debates and issues around the theory of capital and brings to the fore the more recent developments. It also pinpoints the similarities and differences between the various approaches and critically evaluates them in light of available empirical evidence. The focus of the book is on the price trajectories induced by changes in income distribution and the resulting shape of the wage rates of profit curves and frontier. These issues are central to areas such as microeconomics, international trade, growth, technological change and macro stability analysis. Each chapter starts with the theoretical issues involved, followed by their formalization and subsequently with their operationalization. More specifically, the variables of the classical theory of value and distribution are rigorously defined and quantified using actual input-output data from a number of major economies, but mainly from the USA, over long stretches of time. The empirical results are not only consistent with the anticipations of the theory but also further inform and therefore strengthen its predictive content raising new significant questions.

Poverty in Contemporary Economic Thought aims to describe and critically examine how economic thought deals with poverty, including its causes, consequences, reduction and abolition. This edited volume traces the ideas of key writers and schools of modern economic thought across a significant period, ranging from Friedrich Hayek and Keynes to latter-day economists like Amartya Sen and Angus Deaton. The chapters relate poverty to income distribution, asserting the point that poverty is not always conceived of in absolute terms but that relative and social deprivation matters also. Furthermore, the contributors deal with both individual poverty and the poverty of nations in the context of the international economy. In providing such a thorough exploration, this book shows that the approach to poverty differs from economist to economist depending on their particular interests and the main issues related to poverty in each epoch, as well as the influence of the intellectual climate that prevailed at the time when the contribution was made. This key text is valuable reading for advanced students and researchers of the history of economic thought, economic development and the economics of poverty.

Most studies of famine and the African food crisis stress how the socio-economic context influences the occurrence of food shortages. By contrast, this book argues that food insecurity itself influences the social and economic organization of the society. Through this approach, the author provides a new interpretation of the causes and consequences of Tanzania's present economic crisis. The book examines the effects of changing food availability on the functioning of the state, the market and clientage networks, over the past seven decades. The conclusion is that clientage is no less important than the state and market as an organizational force in Tanzanian society, and, under heightened food insecurity, the state and market lose ground to clientage.

J. Fagg Foster (1907-1985) was one of the most significant creators of institutionalist economic theory in the twentieth century. He wrote and taught in the American intellectual tradition of Thorstein Weblen, John R. Commons, John Dewey and Clarence E. Ayres. This tradition shares purpose and philosophy with the European contributors, Gunnar Myrdal and K. William Kapp. Because little of Foster's scholarly work was formally published, professional knowledge of his extraordinary contribution is quite limited beyond the circle of his students and colleagues. Value Theory and Economic Progress attempts to correct that deficiency by providing an extended characterization of this missing and crucial component of the development of American heterodox economic thought. Its purpose is to demonstrate the timely relevance and significance of this model of inquiry in political economy. In addition, this volume explains that contemporary problem solving means changing what is' into what ought to be' through institutional adjustments; such a demonstration is at the heart of Foster's contribution to institutional thought.

This book challenges conventional wisdom by revealing an extensive and heterogeneous community of foreign businesses in Australia before 1914. Multinational enterprise arrived predominantly from Britain, but other sender nations included the USA, France, Germany, New Zealand, and Japan. Their firms spread out across Australia from mining and pastoral communities, to portside industries and CBD precincts, and they operated broadly across mining, trading, shipping, insurance, finance, and manufacturing. They were a remarkably diverse population of firms by size, organisational form, and longevity. This is a rare study of the impact of multinationals on a host nation, particularly before World War One, and that focuses on a successful resource-based economy. Deploying a database of more than 600 firms, supported by contemporary archives and publications, the work reveals how multinational influence was contested by domestic enterprise, other foreign firms, and the strategic investments of governments in network industries. Nonetheless, foreign agency - particularly investment, knowledge and entrepreneurship - mattered in the economic development of Australia in the nineteenth as well as the twentieth centuries. This book will be of interest to students and researchers in Australian and international economic and business history, the history of economic growth and scholars of international business.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book depicts the Early Modern book markets in Europe and colonial Latin America. The nature of book production and distribution in this period resulted in the development of a truly international market. The integration of the book market was facilitated by networks of printers and booksellers, who were responsible for the connection of distant places, as well as local producers and merchants. At the same time, due to the particular nature of books, political and religious institutions intervened in book markets. Printers and booksellers lived in a politically fragmented world where religious boundaries often shifted. This book explores both the development of commercial networks as well as how the changing institutional settings shaped relationships in the book market.

This collection of essays presents insight and methodology that are highly relevant for readers today as they consider the future of the world they live in. Experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic, people have realized how fragile the current economy is and the necessity for reconstructing the socio-economic system. That system, which was considered the default for so long, was succeeded by the analytical framework of economics and regional science. The contents of this book are diversified, as are the achievements of Prof. Yasuhiro Sakai, to whom this volume is dedicated, and cover a wide area from mathematical and experimental economics to conventional and emerging fields of regional science. Some are timeless topics that have had new life breathed into them. Part I deals with, among other areas, risk management with uncertain events; the effectiveness and impacts of regulation and friction related to trading; the stability of strategic behavior and market equilibrium; and sustainable regional development and urban planning from the long-term perspective. Part II also presents a diversity of subjects, including input-output analysis and computable general equilibrium (CGE) modelling for internal as well as external structure and network linkage, such as a value chain; openness and creativity as related to competition among cities and regions; dispersion versus concentration; and inequality versus equality.

This book explores imperial power and the transnational encounters of shipowners and merchants in the South China Sea from 1840 to 1930. With British Hong Kong and French Indochina on its northern and western shores, the 'Asian Mediterranean' was for almost a century a crucible of power and an axis of economic struggle for coastal shipping companies from various nations. Merchant steamers shipped cargoes and passengers between ports of the region. Hong Kong, the global port city, and the colonial ports of Saigon and Haiphong developed into major hubs for the flow of goods and people, while Guangzhouwan survived as an almost forgotten outpost of Indochina. While previous research in this field has largely remained within the confines of colonial history, this book uses the examples of French and German companies operating in the South China Sea to demonstrate the extent to which transnational actors and business networks interacted with imperial power and the process of globalisation.

This book develops the analysis of Time Series from its formal beginnings in the 1890s through to the publication of Box and Jenkins' watershed publication in 1970, showing how these methods laid the foundations for the modern techniques of Time Series analysis that are in use today.

This book focuses on the western Balkans in the period 1800-1912, in particular on the peoples and social groups that subsequent national histories would later identify as Albanians, providing a revisionist exploration of national identity prior to the establishment of the nation-state. Isa Blumi posits that such an identity was politically mobilized, and, that prior to the 1912 Balkan war it was culturally opaque and ideologically fluid. In relation to the competition among various state and power structures, be it in the shape of great power intervention, attempts at building new states, or the Ottoman political center, Blumi shows that Ottoman reforms were successful in encouraging most state subjects to commingle local interest with the fate of the empire itself, meaning that parochial concern for the survival of the immediate community, as it transformed over time, was directly linked to the survival of the Ottoman state.

This book covers a broad spectrum of topics, from experimental philosophy and cognitive theory of science, to social epistemology and research and innovation policy. Following up on the previously published Volume 1, "Mind, Rationality, and Society," it provides further applications of methodological cognitivism in areas such as scientific discovery, technology transfer and innovation policy. It also analyzes the impact of cognitive science on philosophical problems like causality and truth. The book is divided into four parts: Part I "Experimental Philosophy and Causality" tackles the problem of causality, which is often seen as straddling metaphysics, ontology and epistemology. Part II "Cognitive Rationality of Science" deals with the cognitive foundation of scientific rationality, starting from a strong critique of the neopositivist rationality of science on the one hand and of the relativist and social reduction of the methodology of science on the other. Part III "Research Policy and Social Epistemology" deals with topics of social epistemology, science policy and culture of innovation. Lastly, Part IV "Knowledge Transfer and Innovation" addresses the dynamics of knowledge generation, transfer and use in technological innovation.

Contents:
Introduction A.J.H. Latham and Heita Kawakatsu
Part I
1. Globalization, factor prices and living standards in Asia before 1940 Jeffrey G. Williamson
Part II
2. Four revolutions in the textile trade of Asia 1814-1994: the impact of Bombay, Osaka, the Little Tigers and China D.A. Farnie
3. Europe, China and Japan: transfer of silk reeling technology in 1860-95 Debin Ma
4. The colonial origins of Korea's market economy Myung Soo Cha
5. South Korea's late industrialization in comparative historical perspective Jaymin Lee
6. Export dynamics in Taiwan and mainland China 1950-2000: a Schumpeterian approach Hans H. Bass
7. Industrialization and institutional change in Hong Kong 1842-1960 David W. Clayton
8. Education and development: the experience of the Four Little Tigers Derek H. Aldcroft
Part III
9. Another monetary economy: the case of traditional China Akinobu Kuroda
10. Money and growth without development: the case of Ming China Dennis O'Flynn and Arturo Giráldez
11. California and Navada minerals in the Pacific Rim 1850-1900 David J. St. Clair
Part IV
12. The transmission of corporate cultures: international Officers in the HSBC group Frank H.H. King
13. Chaos and instability: the Asia Pacific rice trade in the 1990s A.J.H. Latham

Financialisation has become a widely discussed and debated term leading to a plurality of perspectives, but no fixed definition or single reading. This book presents a critical exploration and review of the current literature on financialisation, focusing on the financialisation of NFCs and its possible implications for the macroeconomic and financial stability of advanced countries. Starting from this critical analysis, it proposes some new readings of the process of financialisation, linking it directly, on the one hand, to the evolution of interest-bearing capital and the credit system, and, on the other hand, to the historical tendencies of monopoly capital towards financial arrangements to manage corporate control. Finally, a conceptual scheme for interpretation and a mathematical model of corporate portfolio choice is developed to explain how the tendency in developed countries to place growing shares of social surplus in speculative financial channels can contribute to their long-term real stagnation. The book also underlines the excessive attention usually being paid to some micro-epiphenomena that show a fallacy of composition at the macroeconomic level and can lead to some misunderstandings of the general trends in capitalist evolution. Moreover, some doubts are raised about the extent to which financialisation actually represents a change to the present regime of accumulation. The book targets all the scholars who are interested in better understanding whether financialisation constitutes a profound change in the functioning of capitalist economic systems and what effects it can produce in social welfare in the advanced countries.

Cocoa & Chocolate, charts the economic consequences of the addition of chocolate to Western diets, and the consequent boom in cocoa sales, over 150 years. While the cocoa boom might have been expected to transform the economic conditions of the cocoa producers from rural poverty into prosperity, it somehow failed to achieve this.
This pioneering study examines all aspects of the history of cocoa and chocolate and the effect of these commodities globally. William Gervase Clarence-Smith looks at the effects of increased production of cocoa on the environment and on land distribution, at the coercion of labour to work the plantations, at the manufacture of chocolate, at taxation and at consumption.

eBook available with sample pages: 020346186X

Nazi Germany utilized every available resource to fight the Second World War, and one significant weapon in Hitler's economic arsenal was gold - gold looted from the central banks of those European countries which were occupied by the Nazi regime between 1939 and 1942. Calculated at pre-1939 prices, the Germans gained access to about $625 million (US) in monetary gold, only about half of which was recovered by American Forces in April 1945 from a mine in central Germany. The 'Gold War' did not end then, however; it just assumed a different shape. Instead of fuelling Hitler's war effort, the recovered gold soon became a pawn in the Cold War struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union and has remained a controversial issue in international politics for years, one not completely resolved to this day.Although this is an important aspect of the Second World War and its aftermath, it has been largely neglected in historical research because of the lack of adequate source materials. The author succeeded in gaining access to hitherto unavailable but crucial records from archives in West Germany, Britain and the United States and is thus in a position to piece together, for the first time, the story of the Nazi gold loot and the long, complicated restitution of part of this gold by the Western Allies. Hitler's Gold represents an essential contribution to the economic history of the Second World War.

'Fisher's book will appeal to scholars interested in historical macroeconomics and the industrial revolution. It suggests promising directions for future research, and it contains vast amounts of useful information. In time, specialists may find it to be an indispensable reference.'- Gary Richardson, Journal of Economic History;In this study of the European economy from 1700 to 1910, the macroeconomic data from five countries is examined both descriptively and analytically (using structural and time-series methods). The UK receives three chapters, in view of the extensive literature in that case, while France, Germany, Italy and Sweden are each covered in a separate chapter.

This book brings together the articles on which Fisher's reputation was founded. It deals with central features of the English economy, in particular the importance of London, both as a social and economic hub, and the nature of internal and external trade. The essays can rightly be described as classics.

Series Information:
Asia's Transformations

During the first decades of the twentieth century, modern states fighting World War I and II for the first time experimented with feeding-and starving-entire populations. Within the new globalizing economy, food became intimately intertwined with waging war. In Europe, starvation claimed more lives than any other weapon of war. As Alice Weinreb shows in Modern Hungers, nowhere was this more apparent than in Germany, initiator and loser of both wars. The end of armed conflict in 1945 did not mean that such military strategies declined in significance. Fears of hunger and fantasies of abundance were instead reframed within a new political system that saw the world as divided between capitalism and communism. Divided Germany rapidly became the key European stage for the Cold War. During the postwar decades, Europeans lived longer, possessed more goods, and were healthier than ever before. Nothing signaled this shift more clearly than the disappearance of famine from the continent. So powerful was the experience of post-1945 abundance that it is hard today to imagine a time when the specter of hunger haunted Europe, demographers feared that malnutrition would mean the end of whole nations, and the primary targets for American food aid was Belgium and Germany rather than Africa. Yet under both capitalist and communist systems, economic growth and political priorities proved inseparable from the modern food system. Drawing on sources ranging from military records to cookbooks to economic and nutritional studies from East and West German archives, Modern Hungers reveals similarities and striking ruptures in popular experience and state policy relating to the industrial food economy. It thus offers historical context for many key contemporary concerns ranging from humanitarian food aid to the gender-wage gap to the obesity epidemic.