Chen provides an analysis of the political economy of rural development in China during the reform era. Revolving around the central theme of statecraft, Chen's study gives a concise and comprehensive treatment of the interaction of ideology and politics with central policy and economic growth. He examines China's economic reform in historical perspective, characterizes China's economic and political transformation since the reform, and proposes that the Chinese Communist Party is being transformed into a party of economics while China's ideology is becoming market-oriented communal socialism.

In addressing the issue of the Chinese path of development, Chen discusses the role of local party organizations in China's modernization drive and the microform of market-oriented communal socialism in the newly emerged village conglomerate, highlights the challenges that China faces at the turn of the new century after 20 years of economic reform, and analyzes the context of the introduction of village elections in 1990, and the establishment of Deng Xiaoping's Theory as a new ideological discourse at the 15th National Congress as well as the rationale behind them. In examining the connection between the two goals of statecraft --improving people's welfare and strengthening the state--and between central policies and local initiatives, Chen provides a study that will be of great interest to scholars, students, and other researchers involved with contemporary Chinese politics and development.

The growth of China's foreign trade in recent years has been widely attributed to its economic reforms and open door policies. This book outlines the process of China's trade reforms over the past two decades and assesses the impact of these reforms on the economy. The author provides a quantitative analysis to trace China's evolving commodity pattern of trade and changing comparative advantage structure over the entire reform period. Comparison is made between the trade patterns and comparative advantage to reveal the dynamic effects of the recent economic reform on resource allocation efficiency.

This influential volume, which has been revised and updated for the twenty-first century, includes both new material and more detailed expositions of existing arguments. Although so-called 'real' theories of business cycles and growth are prevalent in contemporary mainstream economics, Controversies in Monetary Economics suggests that those economists who have instinctively focused on monetary factors in explaining macroeconomic behaviour are more genuinely 'realistic'. The author combines an explanation of past and present monetary controversy with practical proposals for the conduct of monetary policy in the contemporary global economy. Several alternative approaches are discussed, ranging from the traditional quantity theory to post Keynesian theories of endogenous money. This insightful book will be of interest to all those concerned with monetary economics and macroeconomics, including academic researchers, graduate and senior undergraduate students - particularly those looking for an alternative to current economic orthodoxy - and historians of economic thought. Practitioners in central banks, international financial institutions, the financial markets and finance ministries will also find this work invaluable.

Arising from a disenchantment with mainstream economics - a dissatisfaction that is widespread today - A Short History of Economics and Ethics sketches the emergence and decline of the ethical tradition of economics and the crisis of modern economics. In doing so, James Alvey focuses on four of the leading ancient Greek thinkers: Socrates, Xenophon, Plato and Aristotle. The author uses insights from Amartya Sen's Capabilities approach as well as other sources to retrieve the ethical tradition of economics. Five aspects of this tradition which seem to lie outside of mainstream economics are identified: an ethical methodology; some notion of a just price; an understanding that ethical motivations are relevant to human action; a rich understanding of human well-being; and some notion of distributive justice related to human well-being. Creating a forum for further debate and research opportunity, this book will appeal to students, scholars and historians of economic thought, as well as to all those interested in the intersection of ethics with economics. Contents: 1. Introduction 2. An Introduction to Ancient Greek Political Economy 3. An Introduction to the Socratics: Socrates and Xenophon 4. Plato Part I: The Early and Middle Dialogues 5. Plato Part II: The Late Dialogues 6. Aristotle Part I: Ethics 7. Aristotle Part II: Politics (High and Low) 8. Aristotle Part III: Economics 9. Conclusion References Index

Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruninghooks into spears: let the weak say I am strong.-Joel 3:10

Beating Plowshares into Swords inaugurates an extraordinarily ambitious effort by Paul Koistinen to compose a comprehensive and wide-ranging study on the economics of American warfare from the colonial period to the present. When completed, this multi-volume project will stand as the definitive work on a complex subject that until now has been superficially treated or completely ignored.

Koistinen focuses not upon battlefields and battles but upon the means used to make and sustain the armies and navies that have fought in such horrific arenas. Drawing upon a vast array of sources in a number of diverse fields, he analyzes how America has mobilized itself for the conduct of war. He argues that to fully understand that process we must closely examine the complex interrelations among economic, political, and military institutions within the context of relentless modernization and technological innovation.

In this first volume, Koistinen describes how an undeveloped "preindustrial" economy forced Americans to fight defensive wars of attrition like the Revolution and the War of 1812. By the time of the Mexican War, however, a gradually maturing economy allowed the U.S. to use a much more offensive-minded strategy to achieve its goals. The book concludes with an exhaustive examination of the Civil War, a conflict that both anticipated and differed from the total wars of the industrialized era. Koistinen demonstrates that the North relied upon its enormous economic might to overwhelm the Confederacy through a strategy of annihilation, while the South bungled its own strategy of attrition by failing to mobilize effectively a much less-developed economy.

With this and subsequent volumes, Koistinen's sweeping synthesis provides a panoramic view that enlarges and in significant ways alters our vision of the turbulent relationship between war and society in America.

This volume explores Japan's industrialization from the perspective of "indigenous development", focusing on what may be identified as "traditional" or "indigenous" factors. Japanese industrialization has often been described as the process of transferring or importing technology and organization from Western countries. Recent research has, however, shown that economic development had already begun in pre-modern period (Tokugawa-era) in Japan. This economic development not only prepared Japan for the transfer from the West, but also formed the basis of the particular industrialization process which paralleled transplanted industrialization in modern Japan. The aim of the volume is to demonstrate this aspect of industrialization through the detailed studies of so-called "indigenous" industries. This collection of papers looks at the industries originating in the Tokugawa-era, such as weaving, silk-reeling and pottery, as well as the newly developed small workshops engaged in manufacturing machinery, soap, brash, buttons, etc. Small businesses in the tertiary sector, transportation and commerce, are also observed. Available for the first time in English, these papers shed new light on the role of "indigenous development" and our understanding of the dualistic character of Japan's economic development.

This book theoretically and empirically investigates the emergence of strong money demand in wartime Japan (1937-1945), its disappearance after the end of the war (1945-1949), and the reemergence of strong money demand in contemporary Japan (from 1995 to the present) in terms of the effects on fiscal activities and the price level. An augmented fiscal/monetary theory of the price level is constructed from a close examination of the strong money demand present in these periods. Then, profoundly puzzling phenomena such as mild deflation despite monetary expansion, low long-term interest rates despite fiscal unsustainability, and weak aggregate demand despite near-zero rates of interest, all of which are actually being observed in contemporary Japan, can now be interpreted in line with the above augmented theory. In the present, strong money demand at near-zero rates endows the Japanese government with maximum fiscal flexibility. However, if it disappeared for some reason, prices would surge to the quantity theory of money level, and fiscal sustainability would have to be restored. In the future, alternative currency units issued by private banks might carry out a purge of such strong demand for the yen.

As today's world develops and evolves, so does its economics. New economic approaches have begun to emerge, but traditional methods are still being implemented. As both systems provide different solutions to society's economic issues, thoughtful research and analysis is required regarding the tactics and strategies that both theories utilize. Comparative Approaches to Old and New Institutional Economics is an essential reference source that discusses the sequential history of these two economic theories as well as their application to global fiscal disputes. Featuring research on topics such as international relations, business management, and institutionalism, this book is ideally designed for economists, analysts, managers, researchers, practitioners, academicians, and students seeking coverage on the parallel methods of these economic philosophies.

This book explores Austrian capital theory and Austrian business theory from the perspective of modern economics. Sustainable change within the production structure is examined in relation to time preference, the Boehm-Bawerkian theory of capital and interest, and the Hayek Triangle. In turn, the impact of monetary shocks and boom-bust cycles is detailed, with a particular focus on the Ricardo Effect, dynamics of money supply, and the natural rate of interest. This book aims to present a new framework for Austrian economics that will make these ideas applicable to both mainstream economic models and modern economists. It will be relevant to students and researchers interested in the history of economic thought and the political economy.

As the most important figures in the history of economics, the work of John Maynard Keynes is nearly without precedent in the history of economics. THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF PEACE, first published in 1919, achieved great notoriety due of its contemptuous critique of the French premier as well as President Woodrow Wilson. Keynes criticized the Allied victors for signing the Treaty of Versailles in 1920, which would have ruinous consequences for Europe. At the time, few world and economic leaders appreciated his criticisms as Keynes saw his worst fears realized in the rise of Adolf Hitler and the resulting devastation of World War II. JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES (1883-1946) was born into an academic family. His father, John Nevile Keynes, was a lecturer at the University of Cambridge where he taught logic and political economy while his son was educated at Eton and Cambridge. Most importantly, Keynes revolutionized economics with his classic book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936). This work is generally regarded as perhaps the most influential social science treatise of the 20th Century, as it quickly and permanently changed the scope of economic thought. Interestingly, Keynes was a central member of the Bloomsbury Group, a collection of upper-class Edwardian aesthetes that served as his life outside of economics, which included Virginia Woolf, Clive Bell, and Lytton Strachey.

This edited collection examines the evolution of regional inequality in Latin America in the long run. The authors support the hypothesis that the current regional disparities are principally the result of a long and complex process in which historical, geographical, economic, institutional, and political factors have all worked together. Lessons from the past can aid current debates on regional inequalities, territorial cohesion, and public policies in developing and also developed countries. In contrast with European countries, Latin American economies largely specialized in commodity exports, showed high levels of urbanization and high transports costs (both domestic and international). This new research provides a new perspective on the economic history of Latin American regions and offers new insights on how such forces interact in peripheral countries. In that sense, natural resources, differences in climatic conditions, industrial backwardness and low population density areas leads us to a new set of questions and tentative answers. This book brings together a group of leading American and European economic historians in order to build a new set of data on historical regional GDPs for nine Latin American countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. This transnational perspective on Latin American economic development process is of interest to researchers, students and policy makers.

This second part of a two-volume series examines in detail the financing of America's major wars from the Spanish-American War to the Vietnam War. It interweaves analyses of political policy, military strategy and operations, and war finance and economic mobilization with examinations of the events of America's major armed conflicts, offering useful case studies for students of military history and spending policy, policymakers, military comptrollers, and officers in training.

Wages have always been a major expense for businesses. This fascinating book studies the impact of spiralling wage demands in a cotton factory in Ghent during the 19th century and the efforts of management to reduce this cost through investment in new technology and stricter employment policies. The workers' responses to wage cutting are also considered.
The importance of this study lies in its unique collection of wage data -- more than 200 pay books and 100 ledgers from the Voortman cotton factory -- which show, in great detail, the hourly, daily and yearly wages for all categories of workers between 1835-1913. Various aspects of wages are addressed including: changing living and working conditions; wages of women and children in relation to the 'family wage economy'; wage comparison between workers at Voortman and workers in other industries and regions; productivity, purchasing power and industrial relations.

Named a Best Book of 2018 by the Financial Times and Fortune, this thrilling (Bill Gates) New York Times bestseller exposes how a modern Gatsby swindled over $5 billion with the aid of Goldman Sachs in the heist of the century (Axios). Now a #1 international bestseller, Billion Dollar Whale is an epic tale of white-collar crime on a global scale (Publishers Weekly), revealing how a young social climber from Malaysia pulled off one of the biggest heists in history. In 2009, a chubby, mild-mannered graduate of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business named Jho Low set in motion a fraud of unprecedented gall and magnitude--one that would come to symbolize the next great threat to the global financial system. Over a decade, Low, with the aid of Goldman Sachs and others, siphoned billions of dollars from an investment fund--right under the nose of global financial industry watchdogs. Low used the money to finance elections, purchase luxury real estate, throw champagne-drenched parties, and even to finance Hollywood films like The Wolf of Wall Street. By early 2019, with his yacht and private jet reportedly seized by authorities and facing criminal charges in Malaysia and in the United States, Low had become an international fugitive, even as the U.S. Department of Justice continued its investigation. Billion Dollar Whale has joined the ranks of Liar's Poker, Den of Thieves, and Bad Blood as a classic harrowing parable of hubris and greed in the financial world.

This book provides a historical background of the American business cycle, challenges the validity of conventional Keynesian ideology, and presents a bold, alternative theory of how production leads to wealth in our modern economy. The United States is mired in the aftermath of booming economic prosperity, resembling the trouble recently experienced by the Japanese economy due partially to similar Keynesian bailouts and subsidies. Now more than two years into the current financial crisis, Americans are starting to wonder if we can ever escape the consequences of past mistakes. If our "recovery" plan continues along the previous paths that generated economic bubbles and unemployment, then we are destined for failure. Destined for Failure: American Prosperity in the Age of Bailouts provides a conceptual framework previously available only to those with formal university training. It explains the effects of government regulation, political interference in the housing and job markets, misallocation of resources in health and education, moral hazard, environmental constraints, and excessive taxation. The authors provide insight into their view of Keynesian economics as an outdated, detrimental ideology, and take the Bush and Obama administrations to task for budget deficits and cronyistic subsidies and bailouts. The senior author is a distinguished economist who supplemented his in-depth knowledge with contributions from two of his brightest undergraduate students Seven graphical representations and three data tables highlight key information Index provides the reader with easy access to specific topics throughout the text More than 20 case studies apply the general theory of the book to real-world examples, each concluding with specific policy proposals

View the Table of Contents.
Read the Introduction.

aI am not aware of a book that covers the same ground as this one--let alone one that does so using such thorough research and with such technical competence.a
Anthony M. Gould, Universite Laval

"Jacobs offers a history of the federal government's efforts to curb labor racketeering. The heart of his text focuses on the results achieved by employing Civil RICO suits to weed out organized crime from unions long mired in corruption. The Justice Department has mounted twenty such efforts since 1982, and Jacobs's book is the first to provide a comprehensive assessment of this controversial tactic. He tackles this ambitious project with a combination of detailed research, clear writing, and judicious consideration, all of which have been a hallmark of his previous texts on corruption and organized crime. The result is a must read book for anyone interested in the problem of union corruption and what to do about it."
--"Industrial and Labor Relations Review"

"Jacobs, legal scholar and expert on the Mafia, sets out to show how the Mob has distorted American labor history, explaining the relationship between organized crime and organized labor, as well as recent federal efforts to clean up unions"
--"Booklist"

"James Jacobs, a New York University law professor and author of Mobsters, Unions and Feds, says Mafiosi were hired by union organizers in the early twentieth century to combat company toughs. Now, he says, they specialize in 'selling the rights of workers.'"
--"USA Today"

"Jacobs further burnishes his reputation for advancing the study of organized crime in America with his latest work of scholarship, billed by the publisher as 'the only book to investigate how the mob has distorted American labor history.' This worthy successor to "Gotham Unbound" and "Busting the Mob" is an exhaustive, albeit sometimes repetitive, survey of the grip La Cosa Nostra has exerted on the country's most powerful unions. While many will be familiar with the broad outlines of the corruption that riddled the Teamsters, which is recounted by the author, his summary of some lesser-known examples of pervasive labor corruption help illustrate his thesis that the entire American union movement has suffered from the intimidation and fear the mob used to gain and maintain control of unions. Especially valuable is Jacobs's examination of the relatively recent use of the RICO law to bring dirty unions under the control of a federally appointed independent trustee, and the book's posing of hard questions about the mixed success those monitorships have had."
--"Publishers Weekly"

"Jacobs has covered a wide range of legal issues, including such hot-button topics as hate crime laws and gun control, but he always returns to the world of mobsters and the men and women who investigate, prosecute, and sentence them."
--"NYU Today"

"James Jacobs brilliantly documents and analyzes a remarkable and untold chapter in the history of American law enforcement. This groundbreaking book should be a starting point for officials around the world who confront powerful organized crime groups."
--Jeremy Travis, President, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York and former Director, National Institute of Justice

"A pathbreaking work. For 50 years, organized crime has been the elephant inorganized labor's living room, unacknowledged and unexplained. Jacobs has critically analyzed every facet of this apparently intractable problem--from its roots to the federal government's various efforts to challenge organized crime's influence. From this point forward, no one can think critically about this problem without relying on Jacobs' work."
--Robert Luskin, General Executive Board Attorney, Laborers' International Union of North America

"Jacobs presents a near encyclopedic account of the Mafia's infiltration, control and exploitation of four major national unions and a number of large local unions. It is a sordid frightening story of violence, corruption and oppression, the betrayal of union members and extortion of employers, defiance of the law and disregard for human decency. This disturbing story should be required reading for all who seek strong and more democratic unions, all who would protect the rights of workers, and all who are concerned for the health of our political and social processes."
--Clyde Summers, Jefferson B. Fordham Professor of Law, Emeritus, University of Pennsylvania Law School

"A fabulous and fascinating book. Jacobs demonstrates the continuing impact of organized crime on the American union movement, and details the legal mechanisms developed in recent years to combat mob influence. History has come home to haunt us, and Jacobs makes the case for using law to fight against the mob for union democracy."
--Stanley N. Katz, Professor of Public Affairs, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University

"Jacobs demonstrates that while it has been remarkably difficult to defeat labor racketeering, much has been achieved. This will be welcomenews to all who root for the revitalization of the labor movement."
--Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Irving M. Ives Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and Economics, Cornell University

Nowhere in the world has organized crime infiltrated the labor movement as effectively as in the United States. Yet the government, the AFL-CIO, and the civil liberties community all but ignored the situation for most of the twentieth century. Since 1975, however, the FBI, Department of Justice, and the federal judiciary have relentlessly battled against labor racketeering, even in some of the nation's most powerful unions.

Mobsters, Unions, and Feds is the first book to document organized crime's exploitation of organized labor and the massive federal clean-up effort. A renown criminologist who for twenty years has been assessing the government's attack on the Mafia, James B. Jacobs explains how Cosa Nostra families first gained a foothold in the labor movement, then consolidated their power through patronage, fraud, and violence and finally used this power to become part of the political and economic power structure of 20th century urban America.

Since FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's death in 1972, federal law enforcement has aggressively investigated and prosecuted labor racketeers, as well as utilized the civil remedies provided for by the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) statute to impose long-term court-supervised remedial trusteeships on mobbed-up unions. There have been some impressive victories, including substantial progress toward liberating the four most racketeer-ridden national unions from the grip of organized crime, but victory cannot yet be claimed.

The only book to investigate how the mob has exploited the American labor movement, Mobsters, Unions, and Feds is the most comprehensive study to date of how labor racketeering evolved and how the government has finally resolved to eradicate it.

This book illustrates the role of international economic advisors in the development of Israel's economic policies. Based on extensive archival and historical research, it presents case studies on the policy impacts of the world-renowned advisors Michal Kalecki, Abba Lerner, Richard Kahn, Milton Friedman, Herbert Stein and Stanley Fischer. The authors evaluate the contributions of these advisors to policy developments in various fields, including international trade and capital flows, exchange rates, fiscal and monetary policy, industrial policy and labor relations. Readers will discover a wealth of previously unpublished information on these advisors' activities, perspectives on policy and interactions with policymakers and the public. Using the Israeli experience as a guide, the authors subsequently derive general hypotheses regarding the conditions that are conducive to the success of economic advisors.

This title describes the development of Germany's war economy in the light of the unpublished documentary material which was captured in 1945 including records from the Reich Ministry of Armaments and Munitions, notes made by Albert Speer of his conferences with Hitler, many papers of the economic and munitions section of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht and of its chief, General Thomas, as well as some papers of private armament firms such as Messerschmitt. It presents a detailed study of a contest for power at the highest levels of the National Socialist hierarchy, making this invaluable reading for studies in military and German history, politics and studies in totalitarianism.

This book examines the application of risk-sharing finance as a national economic policy in history and how it stimulated economic recovery during a short period in Germany between 1933 and 1935. Economic history indicates that risk-sharing instruments have promoted socio-economic development in many parts of the world while risk-shifting methods have imposed huge socio-economic costs on many nations, leading to debt slavery on individual members. This book highlights lessons to be learned from history and argues that risk-sharing is a powerful tool for generating rapid economic recovery and resumption of growth.

Comparative Public Policy provides the first truly systematic and comprehensive account of the transformation of the post-war state in the advanced countries of the Western world. The author generates new research findings which show how the economic, social and political changes of the post-war era have reshaped modern public policy across the OECD region. Francis G. Castles examines the growth of big government and the emergence of the modern welfare state and identifies ways in which the role of the state has impacted on labour markets and such personal issues as home ownership, fertility and divorce. He explains why the trajectory of policy transformation has varied from country to country, with immediate post-war policy laggards sometimes becoming leaders, and erstwhile policy pioneers on occasions stagnating. This innovative book presents a wealth of background data and a huge range of new findings, covering 12 policy areas in 21 advanced industrialized countries over a period of more than three decades. Comparative Public Policy is essential reading for students and scholars who wish to understand the dynamics of contemporary social and political development.

This study examines the process of capital accumulation at the level of the business firm, linking it to the macro-level of the world-economy as explicated by Hopkins and Wallerstein. Focusing upon the timber industry in the nineteenth century, and using primary archival material, the work analyzes how capital operates in the resource sector in the world-economy. The purpose is to refine further our understanding of capitalism as a mode of social organization and production, and in the process, refine contemporary theories of social change. In terms of coverage, the book addresses the timber industry over the course of the nineteenth century and provides an historical reconstruction of that industry. Its primary focus, however, is on the main features of timber and lumber production as a process of capital accumulation. The study will be of interest to scholars of social change and economic transformation, economic history, and political sociology.

Charles MacKay's groundbreaking examination of a staggering variety of popular delusions, crazes and mass follies is presented here in full with no abridgements. The text concentrates on a wide variety of phenomena which had occurred over the centuries prior to this book's publication in 1841. Mackay begins by examining economic bubbles, such as the infamous Tulipomania, wherein Dutch tulips rocketed in value amid claims they could be substituted for actual currency. As we progress further, the scope of the book broadens into several more exotic fields of mass self-deception. Mackay turns his attention to the witch hunts of the 17th and 18th centuries, the practice of alchemy, the phenomena of haunted houses, the vast and varied practices of fortune telling and the search for the philosopher's stone, to name but a handful of subjects. Today, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds is distinguished as an expansive, well-researched and somewhat eccentric work of social history.

England's capture of Canada in 1760 was the culmination of the French and Indian War and of a century and a half of conflict between Britain and France for control of the North American continent. During that long period, there were several English military efforts to evict the French, but all failed. Therefore, at the war's start, few among the English entertained serious thoughts of totally evicting France from all of Canada. Nor did the French consider such a result a serious possibility. Drawing heavily on primary sources, Brecher tells the dramatic story of why the war's outcome differed so sharply from original expectations. He does so from the vantage point of France, while demonstrating in greater depth than has been available to date the linkages between France's American policy and involvement in the Seven Years' War.

Brecher provides an unprecedently full-scale analysis of the political, military, social, and economic conditions of mid-18th-century France and its North American colony, New France. That analysis also examines the direct connection between those internal conditions and the results for France of the war that ended in 1763. In doing so, Brecher assesses France's military strategy and major battles in Europe and America, as well as the diplomatic goals Versailles set for itself in the conduct of the war. Further, he describes why France concurred in leaving not only Canada, but also the vast Louisiana territory, to be divided between England and France's belated wartime ally, Bourbon Spain. Finally, Brecher explains the longer-term implications of the war for North American development and for the future of France. This is an important study for students and scholars of French and colonial American history and for the broad reading public, as well as those interested in the more recent Quebec problem.

The current political trend toward a drastically reduced government role in the economy and civil society begs a thorough discussion of the recent history of the free market movement in the United States. By providing a history of the political revitalization of classical liberalism since the 1960s, Bringing the Market Back In makes a significant step in understanding this discussion. When the market liberals came to power with the election of Ronald Reagan, they failed to translate their economic theories into dramatic political change. Although market liberals had developed remarkable intellectual strengths by 1980, the political movement to roll back the state was still in its infancy. The Gingrich Revolution of 1994 suggests that a better test of market liberalism's political feasibility may come in the last half of the 1990's.

Moving beyond the political polemics so common in the arena of contemporary economic policy, Kelley grounds his study in the little-known archival materials from the Libertarian Party and personal collections from the Hoover Institution Archives.