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Books > Business & Economics > Economics > Economic systems
From two of the nation's leading economic thinkers, a concrete action plan to reignite the power of the U.S. economic system In the wake of the Great Recession and America's listless recovery from it, economists, policymakers, and media pundits have argued at length about what has gone wrong with the American capitalist system. Even so, few constructive remedies have emerged. This welcome book cuts through the chatter and offers a detailed, nonideological, and practical blueprint to restore the vigor of the American economy. Better Capitalism extends and significantly expands on the insights of the authors' widely praised previous book, Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, co-written with William Baumol. In Better Capitalism, Robert E. Litan and Carl J. Schramm focus on the huge-but often unrecognized-importance of entrepreneurship to overall economic growth. They explain how changes in seemingly unrelated policy arenas-immigration, education, finance, and federal support of university research-can accelerate America's recovery from recession and spur the nation's rate of growth in output while raising living standards. The authors also outline an innovative energy strategy and discuss the potential benefits of government belt-tightening steps. Sounding an optimistic note when gloomy predictions are the norm, Litan and Schramm show that, with wise and informed policymaking, the American entrepreneurial engine can rally and the true potential of the U.S. economy can be unlocked.
As a result of the industrialization, urbanization, and population increase during the last two centuries, the global landscape has been irreversibly damaged. These anthropological pressures have create endless problems on the global level, and individuals and organizations are beginning to realize their own ever-increasing responsibility to consider the welfare and interests of all stakeholders as a whole. Although the improvements in the legal framework at the national and international level can be viewed as an important step to protect society and the natural environment, a legal course provides a reactive mode of control rather than a proactive approach. Considering its proactive approach and voluntarily basis, the concept of social responsibility can provide a significant tool of generating a sustainable future. During such a paradigm shift, Contemporary Issues in Corporate Social Responsibility presents the significant roles that universities must embrace in order to take charge of the future. In parallel to those movements, many institutions include a course on social responsibility, yet the studies on the education of social responsibility in the literature show that there is no commonly accepted teaching methods and guiding curriculum of CSR. This book was designed based on the outcomes of an Erasmus Intensive Project (IP) which was organized in Yasar University during June 2012 with the contribution of 9 European universities. Based on the interactive feedback of participants during the project, this book sheds light on the ongoing discussion of corporate social responsibility from a European perspective.
As health care concerns grow in the U.S., medical anthropologist Linda M. Whiteford and social psychologist Larry G. Branch present their findings on a health care anomaly, from an unlikely source. Primary Health Care in Cuba examines the highly successful model of primary health care in Cuba following the 1959 Cuban Revolution. This model, developed during a time of dramatic social and political change, created a preventive care system to better provide equity access to health care. Cuba's recognition as a paragon of health care has earned praise from the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the Pan American Health Organization. In this book, Whiteford and Branch explore the successes of Cuba's preventive primary health care system and its contribution to global health.
A provocative analysis of how government presence in the workplace has caused diminishing profits for American businesses and has led to increased levels of unemployment. As more and more workers are being placed on unemployment, the need for bold and immediate action is necessary. Sinas lays out a viable solution to our unemployment crisis, and takes the government to task for its increasingly destructive intervention in the workplace. Since graduating from Michigan State University with a Master's Degree in Labor and Industrial Relations, he has directed human resources departments in both union and non-union environments, with complete HR management responsibilities for domestic and foreign operations. He currently directs the human resources consulting services for The PR Companies, which own and operate businesses involved in human resources outsourcing, recruiting, staffing, and business coaching. Sinas provides hundreds of clients with solutions to their human resources issues and guides them through the myriad of employment laws and regulations. He has conducted extensive training in the areas of employment law; regulatory compliance; performance management; effective supervision; and employee recruitment. He has been the keynote speaker at various trade associations, industry groups, client companies, Chambers of Commerce and human resource seminars.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) has been described as the next big leap in digital capitalism. Digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, 3D printing and robotisation, we are led to believe, will bring more progress, growth and development while also helping us to resolve the deep and multiple crises the world is in. Billions are being invested in these technologies, accompanied by sharp geopolitical rivalries to secure an edge in the control over them. Volume 8 in the Democratic Marxism series invites readers to think more deeply and critically about digital capitalism and its limits. While most governments in the world, including South Africa, have accepted a techno-nationalist narrative and have deliberated onas the risks for the planet and humanity, the volume interrogates the effects and consequences of advances in artificial intelligence and heightened technological innovation and industrialisation on employment, democracy and the climate. Viewing the grand social engineering of 4IR through a Marxist lens, the volume contributors engage critically with the class project of digital monopoly capitalism and its powerful totalitarian tendencies. They question the dangerous technotopian imaginary shaping this digital techno-shift, the implications of algorithmic data extractivism, the securitisation of already weak market democracies, the social consequences of digital learning, lack of regulation , and the power dynamics in the labour process. Anchored in techno-realism, the interdisciplinary perspective captured in this volume puts forward alternatives for democratisation and a just transition in order to protect human and non-human life.
Capitalism With a Human Face is a carefully edited selection of Samuel Brittan's most important recent essays. It covers topics ranging from utilitarianism and the ethics of self-interest, to the principles of macroeconomic policy and how to price people into work without throwing them into poverty. The book will be controversial, for the individualistic ethic, which it is so fashionable to attack, is not merely defended but celebrated. This collection will be of special interest both to readers of Samuel Brittan's articles who would like a more extended treatment and those new to his work. A notable feature is a specially written introduction explaining how the author came to take up political economy and how he arrived at the positions elaborated in this book.
Economic Theory and Capitalist Society is a collection of Shigeto Tsuru's most important essays written over the period of the past 60 years in the fields of general economic theory, development and environmental economics, and Marxian political economy. Professor Tsuru has been a leading critic of the major tenets of modern economic theory and has been credited in particular for his comparative studies of aggregate concepts, such as those of Quesnay, Keynes and Marx. Essentially an institutionalist, the author reviews the methodological significance of Marx's contribution, taking up in detail the latter's unique concept of the 'fetishism of commodities' and discussing the relevance of Marxian methodology to the analysis of present-day capitalism. The author's critique of the fundamental equation of growth accounting developed by Robert Solow, 'Effects of Technology on Productivity', is one of a number of theoretical papers included in this volume. It also features a series of important essays on environmental economics which the author, as a founder of the Japanese environmental movement, has written over the past half century. This collection of key articles by one of the most distinguished Japanese economists will be welcomed by students and practitioners in the fields of institutional and radical economics, environmental economics and the history of economic thought. The volume also includes an autobiographical essay which explains the development of Professor Tsuru's thought, his education at Harvard in the 1930s and his experience of post-war Japan. The Economic Development of Modern Japan, the second volume of Shigeto Tsuru's selected essays, is also published by Edward Elgar.
In its heyday, Calumet Farm dominated the sport of kings, but during the 1980s, the high-stakes business that had developed around its blueblood roots began to unravel. "Race fans will love the book, of course, but so will anybody interested in recent cultural history, for Wild Ride is as much about 1980s greed as it is about horses".--Los Angeles Times.
The industrialized economies of the world have experienced a considerable diversity of economic experience since the shocks of the 1970s. The authors of this major study assess the institutional determinants of economic performance in a comparative analysis of OECD economies. They focus in particular on the role played by corporatist arrangements in such countries as Austria and the Scandinavian states. Corporatism and Economic Performance argues that economists often have a narrow view of the scope and function of corporatism, focusing on the extent to which collective bargaining is centralized, and ignoring the important role of durable, consensual policy making arrangements. The record of the corporatist economies is assessed and considerable evidence is found to show that they have borne the burden of economic adjustment over the last twenty years in a less inegalitarian way than other OECD economies, with lower rates of unemployment and greater economic stability. In an increasingly integrated world economy, the future prospects for corporatism look uncertain, although there is still a strong economic case for corporatist institutions. This book sheds new light on corporatism as a complex and multidimensional entity, examining the rationale, scope, performance and future prospects of corporatist institutions.
The end of the cold war has created a new and unprecedented type of mixed economy in Eastern Europe. This innovative up-to-date book questions whether the former Eastern block countries will follow the path of West European mixed economies, or if a quite different economic system will emerge. Mixed Economies in Europe presents new work by distinguished authors who offer an evolutionary perspective on the dynamics of mixed economies. In so doing, they provide a unique, policy-orientated assessment of the formation and transformation of mixed economies in both Eastern and Western Europe. In particular, they emphasise the importance of institutional arrangements and regulatory frameworks. The book shows that the liberalization of markets, both within and between European countries has led, in many cases, to a divergence of economic performance across regions and is likely to continue to do so in the future. This raises policy considerations for the EC and its constituent governments which have not, as yet, been adequately addressed.
One of the most striking phenomena in all of economics is the absence of a deep tradition of criticism focused on Keynesian economic theory. There have been critics but they are few and far between, even though Keynesian demand management has been at the centre of some of the worst economic outcomes in history, from the great stagflation of the 1970s to the twenty-year 'lost decade' in Japan that has been ongoing since the 1990s, and now, once again, the dismal recoveries that have followed the Global Financial Crisis. This book brings together some of the most vocal critics of Keynesian economics of the present time. Each author attempts to explain what is wrong with Keynesian theory for those seeking guidance on where to turn for a more accurate explanation of the business cycle and what to do when recessions occur. The contributions are by scholars from a wide number of schools of economics, include but are not restricted to Austrian, monetarist and classical perspectives. Written not just for economists, this accessible book is one of the few anti-Keynesian texts available and explains the inability of public spending and lower interest rates to have restored robust economic growth and full employment after the GFC. The collection offers an antidote to contemporary macroeconomic theory. It is an essential text for anyone wishing to understand why no stimulus has been able to bring recovery to any economy in which it has been tried. Contributors include: P.Boettke, P.L. Bylund, T. Congdon, R.M. Ebeling, R.W. Garrison, S. Horwitz, S. Kates, A. Kling, A.B. Laffer, P. Newman, G. Reisman, D. Simpson, M. Skousen, P. Smith
Digital transformation concepts have created new business principles such as the on-demand economy and a new sharing economy. While the on-demand economy has primarily grown out of industrialized economies, especially North America, Africa has been known to exhibit communal living characterized by sharing. Literature has shown that the introduction of ICTs to everyday life and business has redefined the concept of sharing and also evolved an entirely new spectrum of sharing - both in the individual and business settings. Alongside this new spectrum is a new disruptive business model known as the platform business model. While the subject continues to attract interest globally and locally, there is a need to deepen the understanding of this subject to validate global perspectives on platforms as economic drivers within the African context. Africa's Platforms and the Evolving Sharing Economy is an essential reference source that explores evidence-based platform dynamics and their impact on Africa as a continent leveraging technology for economic development. The book also delves into current data protection and privacy issues and the policies and regulations that could impact the design, deployment, and use of platforms for businesses. Featuring research on topics such as digital design, e-commerce, and enterprise information systems, this book is ideally designed for government officials, economists, business executives, managers, academicians, students, researchers, and global finance professionals.
Gianaris examines the theoretical and practical aspects of different economic systems in countries with varying ideologies. These include the United States, the European Community, and Japan with their capitalist or free market economies; the Swedish welfare state; communist China; and the former Soviet republics and Eastern Europe with their movement toward free markets and democratization. This interplay of economics and politics seen in the world arena presents new problems of production and distribution, as well as new rules and institutions. This work analyzes the dramatic developments now underway in many parts of the world and outlines a trend toward economic and political synthesis or convergence. This work will be of interest to scholars and students of comparative economic systems, political economy, comparative politics, and international economic relations.
This book offers a new interpretation of the Employment Act of 1946. It argues that in addition to Keynesian economics, the idea of a living wage was also part of the background leading up to the Employment Act. The Act mandated that the president prepare an Economic Report on the state of the economy and how to improve it, and the idea of a living wage was an essential issue in those Economic Reports for over two decades. The author argues that macroeconomic policy in the USA consisted of a dual approach of using a living wage to increase consumption with higher wages, and fiscal policy to create jobs and higher levels of consumption, therefore forming a hybrid system of redistributive economics. An important read for scholars of economic history, this book explores Roosevelt's role in the debates over the Employment Act in the 1940s, and underlines how Truman's Fair Deal, Kennedy's New Frontier and Johnson's Great Society all had the ultimate goal of a living wage, despite their variations of its definition and name.
How does the politics of working life shape modern organizations? Is our desire for meaningful, secure work increasingly at odds with corporate behaviour in a globalized economy? Does the rise of performance management culture represent an intensification of work, or create opportunities for the freewheeling individual career? This timely and engaging book, by leading authorities in the field, adopts the standpoint of the 'questioning observer'. It is for those who need an informed account of work that is accessible without being superficial. The book is unique in its multi-dimensional approach, weaving together analysis of individual work experience, political processes in organizations, and the wider context of the social structuring of markets. The book identifies central questions about working experience and answers them in a direct and lively manner. It has a strong analytical foundation based on a political economy framework, giving particular weight to the contradictory character of organizations. These contradictions turn on the competing demands placed on organizations and the different political projects of groups within them. This perspective integrates the chapters, and permits numerous scholarly debates to be addressed - including those on identity projects, gender and work, power and participation, escalation in decision-making, and the meaning of corporate social responsibility. This book is suitable for undergraduate and graduate classes in Organizational Behaviour, Business Strategy and the Sociology of Work and Employment. It will also appeal to the general reader interested in grappling with the complexity of the changing environment of work.
OFacinating... There is at least as much to be learned here as from reading Peter Drucker John Kenneth Galbraith or Michael Porter.O DBoston Globe Acknowledged as the outstanding business leader of the late twentieth century, Jack Welch made General Electric one of the worldOs most competitive companies. This dynamic CEO defined the standard for organizational change, creating more than $400 billion in shareholder value by transforming a bureaucratic behemoth into a nimble, scrappy winner in the global marketplace. Here, Tichy and Sherman extract the enduring leadership lessons from the revolution Welch wrought at GE. Of these, the most essential is the limitless power of learning. Leadership has its mysteries, but it is a skill that anyone can acquire and enhance. Above all, great leaders select great people and lure them into an endless process of learning and adaptation.
Using theories and methods from the toolbox of Comparative Public Policy and Comparative Political Economy, Thomas Krumm's excellent book is a must-read for anyone interested in the politics of public-private partnerships in a cross-country perspective.' - Karsten Mause, University of Muenster, Germany'Why have some countries in Western Europe heavily relied on public-private partnerships between 1990 and 2009 while others have abstained from using this policy instrument? In his important study, Thomas Krumm provides an encompassing and detailed overview of PPP activities, in no less than 14 West European EU member states, that so far has not been available. Using a mixed-methods research design, the author convincingly shows that political and economic factors explain the diverse PPP trajectories in Western Europe.' - Reimut Zohlnhoefer, University of Heidelberg, Germany This comprehensive book provides a unique comparative policy analysis of public-private partnerships (PPPs) in 14 Western European countries - from Scandinavia to Greece - bringing together important insights from government and politics as well as economics and institutional analysis. Thomas Krumm focuses on political drivers for policy change in favour of PPPs, and the supportive and limiting socioeconomic and institutional conditions. Using comparative data, he charts key policies and actors involved in supporting collaboration between the State and private business organisations across Western Europe. Students and scholars of public policy, regulation and comparative politics, among other disciplines, will find this book to be useful in their research or teaching. It will also be of substantial interest to PPP practitioners, and other specialists in the subject.
This book provides a cogent analysis of the globalization process and the role of the imperial state in twentieth-century capitalist expansion on a world scale. It examines the development of capitalism and the capitalist state across national boundaries and traces the evolution of imperialism and interimperialist rivalries that have come to define the nature of the world political economy. As transnational capital has become a mighty force controlling the economies of advanced and less-developed capitalist countries around the world, capitalism and capitalist relations of production have spread to and dominated societies and social relations in remote parts of the globe. The resulting globalization of capital has given transnationals free reign to impose capitalist practices on a global scale, such that only the biggest and most powerful capitalist monopolies have become the real beneficiaries. Berberoglu argues that while the globalization of capital enriches only a small segment of society- the owners of the transnational corporations - it devastates the great majority of the world's population. The process has immense consequences for working people throughout the world. As workers become aware of this reality and begin to address the issues that affect them, they begin to organize and become involved in class struggle to effect change.
We live in a time of transition, argues Yann Moulier Boutang. But the irony is that this is not a transition to a new type of society called 'socialism', as many on the Left had assumed; rather, it is a transition to a new type of capitalism. Socialism has been left behind by a new revolution in our midst. 'Globalization' effectively corresponds to the emergence, since 1975, of a third kind of capitalism. It does not have much to do with the industrial capitalism which, at the point of its birth (1750-1820), broke with earlier forms of mercantile capitalism. The aim of this book is to describe and explain the characteristics of this third age of capitalism.Boutang coins the term 'cognitive capitalism' to describe this new form of capitalism. While this notion remains a working hypothesis, it already provides some basic orientations and anchor points which are indispensible for political action. The political economy which was born with Adam Smith no longer offers us the possibility of understanding the reality which is being constructed before our eyes - namely the value, wealth and complexity of the world economic system o and it also does not enable us to deal with the challenges that await humanity, whether ecological or social. This book thus seeks to put us onto the path of a provisional politics and morality capable of dealing with this new Great Transformation.
The objective of this book is to construct an individually emancipatory economic and political philosophy. This means a concrete-based, man-centered, non-hypostatizing, anti-dialectical approach to the apprehension of the material, i.e. nature in general. This constitutes an emancipation from culture-based understandings of reality, and in particular from the metaphysically biased type of culture represented by capitalism. The proposed philosophical emancipation means individual liberation from the logically flawed, massifying character of the dominant mode of thought of capitalist times. From these bases, the social sciences can also be reformulated. Micocci argues that capitalism can be conceptualized as a limited and limiting socialized mode of thought, an intellectuality whose dialectical features are effectively identified by using the proxy of political economy, both marxist and mainstream. Political economy in fact, being a most representative instance of dialectical thinking, mirrors the dialectical nature of capitalist economic and political relationships. According to Micocci, non-dialectical occurrences in capitalism are simply excluded from normal social, economic, and intellectual activities, which are performed in a metaphysical, intellectually isolated environment. In capitalism, therefore, the materials, the concrete, i.e. nature itself, is not considered as a whole but only as occasional instances. Micocci describes capitalism, in sum, as an intellectually constructed culture (a metaphysics) which preserves itself, and props itself up, by means of its iterative (market-like) functioning.
In recent decades, the mainstream microeconomic and macroeconomic analysis was proven to be insufficient for exploring the dynamic and complex interactions among humans, institutions, and nature in our real economy. On the one side, microeconomics is filled with black-box models that fail to study the actual contractual relations between firms and markets, while on the other side macroeconomics were proven useless because they mistook the beauty of theoretical models for truth. Thus, questions have arisen about using new theoretical and empirical structures that would better describe our economic systems. Bridging Microeconomics and Macroeconomics and the Effects on Economic Development and Growth is an essential reference source that analyzes the hypotheses that govern the relationships of aggregate structures (macroeconomic analysis) that may be compatible with the assumptions that govern the behavior of individuals, households, and firms (micro analysis), and vice versa, in trying to achieve sustainable economic development and growth. Moreover, modern evolutionary growth thinking is used in trying to bridge the inconsistencies between microeconomics and macroeconomics and confront their failures in order to better describe the economic reality. While highlighting a broad range of topics including globalization, economic systems, and the role of institutions, this book is aimed toward economic analysts, financial advisors, policymakers, researchers, academicians, and students.
This edited collection provides a comprehensive geographic and chronological overview of the decentralisation processes in the successor states of former Yugoslavia and Albania during their transition and EU integration years, from 1990 until 2016. These countries present a unique laboratory for the analysis of economic, social and political change, having traversed armed conflicts, dramatic economic and political changes, and EU pre-accession processes involving deep institutional reform. They have also endured the Eurozone crisis, which has led to high levels of unemployment, wide fiscal gaps and dangerously high levels of indebtedness. Observing the quarter century-long transition from socialism to capitalism through the prism of decentralisation sheds new light on studying the political economy of the region and the current status of the individual countries in terms of economic development and their EU integration progress. The contributors enrich the wider literature on fiscal decentralisation in transition countries by exploring several broad questions on democratisation, the political economy of post-communist transition, the role of external actors in policy transfer and the issue of financial stability in the post-crisis period.
Discussion of trade barriers has come round - inevitably it seems - to national regimes of regulatory protection. Indeed, state regulation has the potential to undermine the very legitimacy of the global trading system. A compelling reconciliation between these two paramount values is essential. This text has a twofold purpose: to consider what has so far been accomplished in this mission in the field of international economic law, and to prescribe some solutions to continuing problems. This latter endeavour amounts to a coherent and integrated plan that will enhance the acceptability of free markets to governments, traders, and other stakeholders alike. The challenges analysed in depth here include: the development in the global trade regime of non-trade policy objectives, which still tend to be treated as mere exceptions to general obligations; the built-in emphasis on products rather than measures; the novel risks associated with the development of modern technology; the case-by-case approach of WTO jurisprudence, which generally fails to investigate whether the substance of any given domestic regulation is necessary to the policy goals of the state in question; and the "technical and economic feasibility" of complying with international trade obligations. The author conducts his analysis in a broad context encompassing the WTO system, the European Union, and the North American Free Trade Agreement. He finds that the clash, despite the particular institutional characteristics of these various organizations, is a major concern of them all. The jus gentium of international trade, he offers, is an imperative combining the good faith principle with the communitarian duty to cooperate. Exactly how to go about ordering this imperative is what this book is about. |
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