This book aims to provide a comprehensive statistical picture of the Russian economic development covering the Imperial, Soviet, and New Russian periods. The authors have reconstructed Russian socio-economic statistics from both published and archival materials. The book gives concise descriptions as well as new insights on the Russian economic development. Compiled such that estimations by the authors are kept to a minimum and extensive explanations and notes on the sources, the definitions, the statistical methodologies, the problems and inconsistencies of the original data, and the pitfalls of interpreting the time series are given makes this a standard reference book of the Russian economic history. It will be of value to economists, scholars of collectivist economics, and scholars of Russia and the Soviet experience.

This book develops a comprehensive systematic economic theory, conceiving how the dynamic of market relations generates an economy dominated by the competitive process of individual profit-seeking enterprises. The author shows how, contrary to classical political economy and contemporary economics, the theory of capital is an a priori normative account properly belonging to ethics. Exposing and overcoming the limits of the economic conceptions of Hegel and Marx, Rethinking Capital determines how the system of capitals shapes economic freedom, jeopardizing the very rights in whose exercise it consists. Winfield thereby provides the understanding required to guide the private and public interventions with which capitalism can be given a human face.

This book analyses the fast spread of free trade agreements (FTAs) across the globe, their content and their economic impact. In the wake of Brexit and the new protectionism of President Trump, Melchior offers a timely assessment of key issues relating to FTAs. Dividing the world into seven major regions, he analyses world trade, the globalisation of FTAs and their role within and between the regions. Using a new world trade model, he then presents new evidence on the impact of trade agreements, the value of trade, the impact of China's growth and the West's industrial decline, and the role of reciprocity in trade policy. Covering rich and poor countries, commodity exporters and all of the world's regions, he offers new and original insights about a number of pertinent issues facing today's world.

Sneaker Wars is the fascinating true story of the enemy brothers behind Adidas and Puma, two of the biggest global brands of athletic footwear. Adi and Rudi Dassler started their shoe business in their mother's laundry room and achieved almost instantaneous success. But by the end of World War II a vicious feud had torn the Dasslers apart, dividing their company and their family and launching them down separate, often contentious paths. Out of the fires of their animosity, two rival sneaker brands were born, brands that would revolutionize the world of professional sports, sparking astonishing behind-the-scenes deals, fabulous ad campaigns, and multimillion-dollar contracts for pro athletes, from Joe Namath to Muhammad Ali to David Beckham.

There was once a time when 'work' was inextricably linked to survival and self-preservation; where the farmer ploughed the land so their family could eat. But the sun has long since set on this idyllic tableau, and what was once an integral part of life has slowly morphed into a painful and meaningless ritual, colonising almost every part of our lives - endless and inescapable. In The Mythology of Work, Peter Fleming examines how neoliberal society uses the ritual of work (and the threat of its denial) to maintain the late capitalist class order. As our society is transformed into a factory that never sleeps, work becomes a universal reference point for everything else, devoid of any moral or political worth. Blending critical theory with recent accounts of job related suicides, office-induced paranoia, fear of relaxation, managerial sadism and cynical corporate social responsibility campaigns, Fleming paints a bleak picture of neoliberal capitalism in which the economic and emotional dysfunctions of a society of wage slaves greatly outweigh its professed benefits.

'A very good guide to the state we're in' Paul Krugman, New York Review of Books 'A well-written, thought-provoking book by one of America's leading economic thinkers and progressive champions.' Huffington Post Do you recall a time when the income of a single schoolteacher or baker or salesman or mechanic was enough to buy a home, have two cars, and raise a family? Robert Reich does - in the 1950s his father sold clothes to factory workers and the family earnt enough to live comfortably. Today, this middle class is rapidly shrinking: American income inequality and wealth disparity is the greatest it's been in eighty years. As Reich, who served in three US administrations, shows, the threat to capitalism is no longer communism or fascism but a steady undermining of the trust modern societies need for growth and stability. With an exclusive chapter for Icon's edition, Saving Capitalism is passionate yet practical, sweeping yet exactingly argued, a revelatory indictment of the economic status quo and an empowering call to action.

As we struggle with the legacy of the crisis and with the prospect of accelerating environmental degradation, it is time to ask not what we can do for capitalism but what capitalism can do for us, as citizens of a democratic society. In Civic Capitalism, Colin Hay and Anthony Payne build on their influential analysis of the crisis of the Anglo-liberal growth model to set out a coherent account of the steps required to build an alternative that is more sustainable socially, economically and environmentally. They argue that it is time to move on from the Anglo-liberal model of capitalism whose failings were so cruelly exposed by the crisis. They outline a new model that will work better in advanced capitalist societies, showing how this might be acheived in Britain today. They call this civic capitalism the governance of the market, by the state, in the name of the people, to deliver collective public goods, equity and social justice. This reverses the long ascendant logic of Anglo-liberalism in which citizens have been made to answer to the perceived logics of the capitalism they have been made to serve. The crisis shows us that we can no longer be driven by the perceived imperatives of the old model and by those who have claimed for far too long and, as it turns out, falsely to be able to discern for us the imperatives of the market. It is now time to ask what capitalism can do for us and not what we can do for capitalism.

This book is open access under a CC BY-NC-ND license. This book addresses the issue of how a country, which was incorporated into the world economy as a periphery, could make a transition to the emerging state, capable of undertaking the task of economic development and industrialization. It offers historical and contemporary case studies of transition, as well as the international background under which such a transition was successfully made (or delayed), by combining the approaches of economic history and development economics. Its aim is to identify relevant historical contexts, that is, the 'initial conditions' and internal and external forces which governed the transition. It also aims to understand what current low-income developing countries require for their transition. Three economic driving forces for the transition are identified. They are: (1) labor-intensive industrialization, which offers ample employment opportunities for labor force; (2) international trade, which facilitates efficient international division of labor; and (3) agricultural development, which improves food security by increasing supply of staple foods. The book presents a bold account of each driver for the transition.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has seen major advances in recent years. While machines were always central to the Marxist analysis of capitalism, AI is a new kind of machine that Marx could not have anticipated. Contemporary machine-learning AI allows machines to increasingly approach human capacities for perception and reasoning in narrow domains. This book explores the relationship between Marxist theory and AI through the lenses of different theoretical concepts, including surplus-value, labour, the general conditions of production, class composition and surplus population. It argues against left accelerationism and post-Operaismo thinkers, asserting that a deeper analysis of AI produces a more complex and disturbing picture of capitalism's future than has previously been identified. Inhuman Power argues that on its current trajectory, AI represents an ultimate weapon for capital. It will render humanity obsolete or turn it into a species of transhumans working for a wage until the heat death of the universe; a fate that is only avoidable by communist revolution.

The theory and applications of random dynamical systems (RDS) are at the cutting edge of research in mathematics and economics, particularly in modeling the long-run evolution of economic systems subject to exogenous random shocks. Despite this interest, there are no books available that solely focus on RDS in finance and economics. Exploring this emerging area, Random Dynamical Systems in Finance shows how to model RDS in financial applications. Through numerous examples, the book explains how the theory of RDS can describe the asymptotic and qualitative behavior of systems of random and stochastic differential/difference equations in terms of stability, invariant manifolds, and attractors. The authors present many models of RDS and develop techniques for implementing RDS as approximations to financial models and option pricing formulas. For example, they approximate geometric Markov renewal processes in ergodic, merged, double-averaged, diffusion, normal deviation, and Poisson cases and apply the obtained results to option pricing formulas. With references at the end of each chapter, this book provides a variety of RDS for approximating financial models, presents numerous option pricing formulas for these models, and studies the stability and optimal control of RDS. The book is useful for researchers, academics, and graduate students in RDS and mathematical finance as well as practitioners working in the financial industry.

Agricultural politics and policy retains a central place in the politics of advanced industrial societies. Governments in most countries continue to subsidize agricultural production and regulate markets for farm commodities. The growth of concern about the environmental impact of agriculture has added a new dimension to the sector's politics. Tensions between the US and the EU over the protection of agriculture remain a major feature. New Zealand offers an interesting example of an experiment with deregulated and liberalized agriculture, while Japanese agriculture continues to be highly protected. All these topics are covered in this two volume set, which brings together the best writing on the subject from leading agricultural economists, political scientists and rural sociologists from across the world.

This book provides an assessment of the role of the International Monetary Fund in poor countries. In recent years, a large portion of the work of the IMF has focused on the economies of low-income countries by aiming to create conditions conducive to poverty reduction and stable economic growth. More than two fifths of the IMF's 185 members are low-income countries and many others have substantial pockets of poverty in their populations. Since economic development and the reduction of poverty are the most important economic challenges that these countries face, how can the IMF best help them? How can the imperative of macroeconomic and financial stability be reconciled with the requirements for sustained economic growth? This volume brings together the research of leading economists, political scientists, and historians to suggest ways for the IMF to address these issues effectively

The Political Economy of Independent Ukraine analyses the reasons for the abysmal economic performance of Ukraine during the 1990s. The main thesis is that economic development was blocked by a set of parasitic mechanisms at all levels of the economy that prevented the development of value-added economic activities. These parasitic mechanisms already developed under Soviet rule ('beating the system' by redistributing goods and services while disregarding formal rules) became a widespread practice.

Self-sufficiency of the house is practiced in many parts of the world but ignored in economic theory, just as socialist collectivization is assumed to have brought household self-sufficiency to an end. The ideals of self-sufficiency, however, continue to shape economic activity in a wide range of postsocialist settings. This volume's six comparative studies of postsocialist villages in Eastern Europe and Asia illuminate the enduring importance of the house economy, which is based not on the market but on the order of the house. These formations show that economies depend not only on the macro institutions of markets and states but also on the micro institutions of families, communities, and house economies, often in an uneasy relationship.

The key figure of the capitalist utopia is the individual who is ultimately free. The capitalist's ideal society is designed to protect this freedom. However, within Planet Utopia: Utopia, Dystopia, Globalisation, Featherstone argues that capitalist utopian vision, which is most clearly expressed in theories of global finance, is no longer sustainable today. This book concerns the status of utopian thinking in contemporary global society and the possibility of imagining alternative ways of living outside of capitalism. Using a range of sociological and philosophical theories to write the first intellectual history of the capitalist utopia in English, Featherstone provokes the reader into thinking about ways of moving beyond this model of organising social life through sociological modes of thought. Indeed, this enlightening volume seeks to show how utopian thinking about the way people should live has been progressively captured by capitalism with the result that it is difficult to imagine alternatives to capitalist society today. Presenting sociology and sociological thinking as a utopian alternative to the capitalist utopia, Planet Utopia will appeal to postgraduate and postdoctoral students interested in subjects including Sociology, Social Theory, Cultural Studies, Cultural Theory and Continental Philosophy.

This book unites diverse heterodox traditions in the study of endogenous money - which until now have been confined to their own academic quarters - and explores their similarities and differences from both sides of the Atlantic. Bringing together perspectives from post-Keynesians, Circuitists and the Dijon School, the book continues the tradition of Keynes's and Kalecki's analysis of a monetary production economy, emphasising the similarities between the various approaches, and expanding the analytical breadth of the theory of endogenous money. The authors open new avenues for monetary research in order to fuel a renewed interest in the nature and role of money in capitalist economies, which is, the authors argue, one of the most controversial, and therefore fascinating, areas of economics. Providing new theoretical and empirical grounds for the construction of a general, policy oriented theory of money, this thought-provoking collection will appeal to academics, researchers and students interested in monetary economics. It will also be welcomed by monetary policymakers and central bank officials.

This book provides a very broad and representative selection of the scholarly literature found in learned journals on the subject of government-business relations in the age of industry, the period since 1870. It covers all the arenas of business-government interaction.

This book uses the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC), as an analytical entry point to understand and illuminate post-War Europe and the drive to create an identity that can legitimise the European project in its broadest sense. The ESC presents an idealised vision of Europe, and this has long existed in a strained relationship with reality. While the trajectory of post-war European integration is a high-profile topic, we believe that the ESC offers a unique and innovative way to think about the role of culture in the history of post-War European integration and tensions between the ideal and reality of European unity. Through the series of case studies that make up the chapters in this book, analysis brings these interlinked tensions to light, exploring the roles of culture and identity, alongside and a productive conversation with the political and economic projects of post-war European integration.

The transformation which is unfolding in emerging European countries is a unique historic event. In several countries, the transition has been quite positive; most analysts anticipate continued real growth in the coming years. Doing Business in Emerging Europe is a user-friendly guide to doing business in Belarus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, and Ukraine. Brief overviews of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Cyprus, Macedonia, and Serbia/Yugoslavia are also included.

This book offers a genealogical account of the rise of consumer capitalism, tracing its origins in America between 1880 and 1930 and explaining how it emerged to become the dominant form of social organization of our time. Asking how it was that we came to be consumers who live in societies that revolve around an ever-spinning circle of production and consumption, not only of goods, but also of events, experiences, emotions and relations, The Rise of Consumer Capitalism in America presents an extensive analysis of primary sources to demonstrate the conditions and forces from which consumer capitalism emerged and became victorious. Employing a Weberian approach that brings liminality to the fore as a master concept to make sense of historical change, the author links an in-depth empirical investigation to supple sociological theorizing to show how the encirclement of all aspects of life by the logic of consumer capitalism was a time-bound historical creation rather than a necessary one. A fascinating study of the appearance and triumph of the "ideology" of our age, this book will appeal to scholars of social and anthropological theory, historical sociology, cultural history and American studies.

Holy Scripture and economists have distinct ways of exploring market networks. The Body of Christ in a Market Economy explains how desire connects scripture, economics, theological anthropology, and soteriology. By explaining the mechanics of desire and Jesus' saving grace, it becomes possible for churches and congregations to better align their networks for the common good within market economies. Rivalry is an expense. Follow Jesus or prepare to spend.

The Freedom of Peaceful Action is the first installment of the trilogy The Nature of Liberty, which makes an ethical philosophic case for individual liberty and the free market against calls for greater government regulation and control. The trilogy makes a purely secular and nonreligious ethical case for the individual's rights to life, liberty, private property, and the pursuit of happiness as championed by the U.S. Founding Fathers. Inspired by such philosophic defenders of free enterprise as John Locke, Herbert Spencer, and Ayn Rand, The Nature of Liberty shows that such individual rights are not imaginary or simply assertions, but are institutions of great practical value, making prosperity and happiness possible to the degree that society recognizes them. The trilogy demonstrates the beneficence of the individual-rights approach by citing important findings in the emerging science of evolutionary psychology. Although the conclusions of evolutionary psychology have been long considered to be at odds with the philosophies of individual liberty and free markets, The Nature of Liberty presents a reconciliation that reveals their ultimate compatibility, as various important findings of evolutionary psychology, being logically applied, confirm much of what philosophic defenders of liberty have been saying for centuries. Moreover, proceeding from the viewpoint of Rand, this work argues that the structure of society most conducive to practical human well-being is commensurately the most moral and humane approach as well. The trilogy's first installment, The Freedom of Peaceful Action, focuses on the secular, philosophic foundation for a society based on individual rights. Starting from a defense of the efficacy of observational reason against criticisms from Immanuel Kant and Karl Popper, it demonstrates how a philosophic position of individual liberty and free markets is the logical result of the consistent application of human reason to observing human nature. This installment demonstrates that any political system that wishes for its citizens to thrive must take human nature into account, and that an accounting of human nature reveals that a system of maximum liberty and property protection is the one must conducive to peace and human well-being.

This book is a collection of original essays grouped into four parts under the headings "Greece and European integration," "Issues in the Methodology of Economics," "Institutions and the Free Market Economy," and "Insights for Today from Ancient Greece." The essays appeal to both researchers in the corresponding fields of knowledge and also to policy makers who are looking for ideas and approaches to confront present day challenges. In particular, given the present state of turmoil in the European Union, the international economy, and democracies in general, most of the essays offer new insights for economic and social policies.

The land, labor, credit, and trading institutions of Marmara village, in Hausaland, northern Nigeria, are detailed in this study through fieldwork conducted in two national economic cycles - the petroleum-boom prosperity (in 1977-1979), and the macro-economic decline (in 1985, 1996 and 1998). The book unveils a new paradigm of economic change in the West African savannah, demonstrating how rural accumulation in a polygynous society actually limits the extent of inequality while at the same time promoting technical change. A uniquely African non-capitalist trajectory of accumulation subordinates the acquisition of capital to the expansion of polygynous families, clientage networks, and circles of trading friends. The whole trajectory is driven by an indigenous ethics of personal responsibility. This model disputes the validity of both Marxian theories of capitalist transformation in Africa and the New Institutional Economics.

Drawing on comparative politics and social network analysis, this book examines how the domestic institutional and organizational settings, as well as the network governance patterns, determine variation in administrative responses to EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in two European Union (EU) member states, Denmark and Greece. These two small member states represent the North and South dimensions of the EU. The north-south dimension in relation to administrative structures, respond differently to EU common policies and to Common Agricultural Policy, specifically which has not been studied in the Europeanization literature. Even though, the study of administrative responses to EU common policies is important as it has been especially noticeable during the current financial crisis. Europeanisation studies concentrate on either large Western European states (France, Germany and UK) or small Western Northern states. These studies produced detailed knowledge on specific countries and policy areas but they ignored the agricultural policy area and the importance of small Southern member states. By comparing a small Southern with a small Northern state since the accession to the EU, this book aims to fill this gap in the literature. Moreover, by linking the findings of the two cases to the member states that joined the EU in the 2004 fifth enlargement, and in other policy areas, it allows a better understanding of similar responses, either adaptation or inertia."This book represents an important contribution to the theoretical and empirical literature on Europeanisation and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). It systematically tackles an under studied question: does Europeanisation of policies lead to administrative change and convergence among the member states? The domestic administration of the EU CAP has remained domestically designed and monitored, resulting in divergence among the member states and gaps and imbalances in the performance of EU CAP decisions. The CAP is of more general interest because it combines regulatory and market intervention policy instruments. The analysis proceeds through in depth comparative historical case studies of Denmark and Greece which uses a sophisticated combination of quantitative and qualitative methodologies. The authoritative and informative analysis is structured by a focus on three key domestic factors. There is differentiated administration of common policies and while administration succeeds and adapts in one state, it does not necessarily do so in others, leading to differences in implementation performance. This book should provide a stimulus for further research." Wyn Grant, University of Warwick The last 40 years have been crucial for the European agriculture. The Common Agricultural Policy fulfilled its primary objective, which led Europeans to shift its objectives and cope with the shortcomings created by the success of the Policy itself manage surpluses and narrow the gap between farmers, due to price mechanism as well as, adapt the policy following the successive enlargements and follow the developments in the global economy, in which we live nowadays. Dr. Chatzopoulou gives us a very accurate image on how differently actors of the agricultural economy, farmers, cooperatives and the administrations both in Greece and Denmark, behave. But also, how different is the structure of the sector in these two countries: in Denmark, almost everything is based upon a consensus, where there does not exist a law on cooperatives, and where the administration and the sector work together to adapt or to influence the decisions to take at European level. On the other hand, in Greece, farmers struggle to make their voice heard in the absence of professional organizations, the cooperatives are bound to work in the framework of a specific and strict law and the administration was not shown very cooperative with the sector. These two realities are very well illustrated by the author and many lessons are to be learnt through this study. But, above all, the author gives us a fair idea of how complex is the process of Europeanisation in a Europe Union composed of sovereign member-States with different history, culture, social organization and different legal systems. Vaggelis Divaris, Former European Commission principal administrator (DG Agriculture and Rural Development)