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Books > Business & Economics > Economics
Major scholars examine different aspects of the ICU's record in the 1920s and 1930s, assessing its achievements and its failures in relation to the post-apartheid present. The Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU)―the largest black political organization in southern Africa before the 1940s―was active in six African colonies, as well as in global trade union networks. Labour Struggles in Southern Africa provides fresh perspectives on the ICU, exploring its record in the 1920s and 1930s and assessing its achievements and failures in relation to the present. In its One Big Union approach to protecting workers' rights, its emphasis on economic freedoms, its internationalism, and its robust protection of women and migrant workers, the ICU fundamentally challenged the axioms, tactics, and programs of rival organizations like the African National Congress. Reflecting that, this book demonstrates that the legacies of the ICU continue to be of crucial contemporary relevance.
Americans have contradictory beliefs about how international trade affects the country as whole and specific communities. Yet notwithstanding the heat of political rhetoric, these beliefs are rarely mobilized into political action. Alexandra Guisinger examines this apparent disconnect by examining the bases of Americans' trade preferences in today's post-industrial economy and why do so few politicians attempt to take advantage of these preferences. The changing American economy has made the direct effects of trade less obvious, making the benefits and costs more difficult to determine. In addition, information sources, including the media, have changed in content and influence over time, their influence varies across different groups of individuals, and partly as a result individuals hold countervailing beliefs about the effect of trade on their own and others' economic outcomes. American Opinion on Trade provides a multi-method examination of the sources of attitudes, drawing on survey data and experimental surveys; it also traces how trade issues become intertwined with attitudes toward redistribution as well as gender and race.
South Africa stands at the edge of a precipice. Almost thirty years after its first democratic election, poor policy and rampant corruption have left the country standing on the brink of becoming a failed state. In this thought-provoking book, Bronwyn Williams interviews a diverse group of public intellectuals, business leaders, and political mavericks to discuss tangible ways South Africa can rescue itself from itself. Through a series of illuminating conversations, a group of independent thinkers explore the root causes of South Africa’s problems and offer insightful – and radical – ways of how to solve them. From addressing land reform and economic development to rooting out corruption and overhauling political institutions, the conversations in this book come together as a roadmap towards a better South Africa that leaves no one behind. While the challenges facing the young democracy are immense, these experts provide hope and inspiration towards productive actions we can take together to build a brighter future. For anyone interested in understanding the complex issues facing South Africa today and how they can be addressed, Rescuing Our Republic is essential reading. It is a powerful reminder that the fate of a nation is not predetermined; that individuals, citizens and corporations still have powerful agency and that when that agency is directed towards the right ideas and actions, South Africa can still realise its full potential. LIST OF INTERVIEWEES:
Does a consumer who bought a shirt made in another nation bear any moral responsibility when the women who sewed that shirt die in a factory fire or in the collapse of the building? Many have asserted, without explanation, that because markets cause harms to distant others, consumers bear moral responsibility for those harms. But traditional moral analysis of individual decisions is unable to sustain this argument. Distant Harms, Distant Markets presents a careful analysis of moral complicity in markets, employing resources from sociology, Christian history, feminism, legal theory, and Catholic moral theology today. Because of its individualistic methods, mainstream economics as a discipline is not equipped to understand the causality entailed in the long chains of social relationships that make up the market. Critical realist sociology, however, has addressed the character and functioning of social structures, an analysis that can helpfully be applied to the market. The True Wealth of Nations research project of the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies brought together an international group of sociologists, economists, moral theologians, and others to describe these causal relationships and articulate how Catholic social thought can use these insights to more fully address issues of economic ethics in the twenty-first century. The result was this interdisciplinary volume of essays, which explores the causal and moral responsibilities that consumers bear for the harms that markets cause to distant others.
For much of its history, human population growth increased at a glacial pace. The demographic rate only soared about 200 years ago, climaxing in the period 1950-2000. In that 50-year span, the population grew more than it had in the previous 5000 years. Though these raw numbers are impressive, they conceal the fact that the growth rate of population topped out in the 1960s. The apparent population boom may be approaching a population bust, despite our coexistence with more than seven billion people. In On the Cusp, economist Charles Pearson explores the meaning of this population trend from the arc of demographic growth to decline. He reviews Thomas Malthus's famous 1798 argument that human population would exceed the earth's carrying capacity, and explains why this surfaces periodically when birth rates strongly exceed 2.1 children per household. Analyzing population trends through dual lenses - demography and economics - Pearson examines the potential opportunities and challenges of population decline and aging. In many industrialized countries, the combination of an aging population and considerable food security may call for policies that boost fertility, immigration, and worker participation, reform pension schemes, and ease concern over moderating rates of population and economic growth. Sharp and occasionally funny, Pearson's research has thought-provoking implications for future public policies. Pearson ends his analysis with a mildly hopeful conclusion, noting that both the rich and the poor face a new demographic order. Bold and comprehensive, general readers and students alike will find On the Cusp an informative and engaging read.
Cities bring together masses of people, allow them to communicate and hide, and to transform private grievances into political causes, often erupting in urban protests that can destroy regimes. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has shaped urbanization via migration restrictions and redistributive policy since 1949 in ways that help account for the regime's endurance, China's surprising comparative lack of slums, and its curious moves away from urban bias over the past decade. Cities and Stability details the threats that cities pose for authoritarian regimes, regime responses to those threats, and how those responses can backfire by exacerbating the growth of slums and cities. Cross-national analyses of nondemocratic regime survival link larger cities to shorter regimes. To compensate for the threat urban threat, many regimes, including the CCP, favor cities in their policy-making. Cities and Stability shows this urban bias to be a Faustian Bargain, stabilizing large cities today but encouraging their growth and concentration over time. While attempting to industrialize, the Chinese regime created a household registration (hukou) system to restrict internal movement, separating urban and rural areas. China's hukou system served as a loophole, allowing urbanites to be favored but keeping farmers in the countryside. As these barriers eroded with economic reforms, the regime began to replace repression-based restrictions with economic incentives to avoid slums by improving economic opportunities in the interior and the countryside. Yet during the global Great Recession of 2008-09, the political value of the hukou system emerged as migrant workers, by the tens of millions, left coastal cities and dispersed across China's interior villages, counties, and cities. The government's stimulus policies, a combination of urban loans for immediate relief and long-term infrastructure aimed at the interior, reduced discontent to manageable levels and locales.
Ben Ross Schneider's volume, New Order and Progress takes a thorough look at the political economy of Brazil. The distinctive perspective of the 11 chapters is historical, comparative, and theoretical. Collectively, the chapters offer sobering insight into why Brazil has not been the rising economic star of the BRIC that many predicted it would be, but also documents the gains that Brazil has made toward greater equality and stability. The book is grouped into four parts covering Brazil's development strategy, governance, social change, and political representation. The authors -18 leading experts from Brazil and the United States - analyze core issues in Brazil's evolving political economy, including falling inequality, the new middle class, equalizing federalism, the politicization of the federal bureaucracy, resurgent state capitalism, labor market discrimination, survival of political dynasties, the expansion of suffrage, oil and the resource curse, exchange rates and capital controls, protest movements, and the frayed social contract.
From 1978 through the turn of the century, China was transformed from a state-owned economy into a predominantly private economy. This fundamental change took place under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which is ideologically mandated and politically predisposed to suppress private ownership. In Dancing with the Devil, Yi-min Lin explains how and why such an ironic and puzzling reality came about. The central thesis is that private ownership became a necessary evil for the CCP because the public sector was increasingly unable to address two essential concerns for regime survival: employment and revenue. Focusing on political actors as a major group of change agents, the book examines how their self-interested behavior led to the decline of public ownership. Demographics and the state's fiscal system provide the analytical coordinates for revealing the changing incentives and constraints faced by political actors and for investigating their responses and strategies. These factors help explain CCP leaders' initial decision to allow limited private economic activities at the outset of reform. They also shed light on the subsequent growth of opportunism in the behavior of lower level officials, which undermined the vitality of public enterprises. Furthermore, they hold a key to understanding the timing of the massive privatization in the late 1990s, as well as its tempo and spread thereafter. Dancing with the Devil illustrates how the driving forces developed and played out in these intertwined episodes of the story. In so doing, it offers new insights into the mechanisms of China's economic transformation and enriches theories of institutional change.
Central banks play an important role in the course of national economies and the global economy. Their leaders are regularly feted or vilified, their policy pronouncements highly anticipated and routinely scrutinized. This is all the more so since the global financial crisis. The past fifteen years in monetary policy is essentially the story of two mistakes and one triumph, argues Pierre L. Siklos, a professor of economics at Wilfrid Laurier University. One mistake was that central bankers underestimated the connection between finance and the real economy. The other was a failure to realize how inter-connected the world's financial system had become. The triumph, in turn, was the recognition that price stability is a desirable objective. As a result of the financial crisis, central banks stepped into the breach to provide services other institutions were unwilling or unable to carry out. In doing so, the responsibilities for governing monetary policy and financial system stability became more elastic without due consideration for the appropriateness of the division of responsibilities. Central banks no longer influence just prices they also change financial system quantities. This leads to rising policy uncertainty. And low economic growth, an insufficiently unsubstantiated expansion of central bank responsibilities, and worries over future financial instability are sources of concern that contribute to a loss of confidence in the monetary authorities around the globe. Because no coherent new framework for central bank policy has since emerged, central banking is not broken, but it is in need of repair. Central Banks into the Breach provides an overarching analysis of the current and vulnerable state of central banks and offers potential solutions to stabilize the uncertain future of central banking.
Social enterprises represent a new kind of venture, dedicated to pursuing profits for owners and benefits for society. Social Enterprise Law provides tools that will allow them to raise the capital they need to flourish. Social Enterprise Law weaves innovation in contract and corporate governance into powerful protections against insiders sacrificing goals such as environmental sustainability in the pursuit of short-term profits. Creating a stable balance between financial returns and public benefits will allow social entrepreneurs to team up with impact investors that share their vision of a double bottom line. Brakman Reiser and Dean show how novel legal technologies can allow social enterprises to access capital markets, including unconventional sources such as crowdfunding. With its straightforward insights into complex areas of the law, the book shows how a social mission can even be shielded from the turbulence of an acquisition or bankruptcy. It also shows why, as the metrics available to measure the impact of social missions on individuals and communities become more sophisticated, such legal innovations will continue to become more robust. By providing a comprehensive survey of the U.S. laws and a bold vision for how legal institutions across the globe could be reformed, this book offers new insights and approaches to help social enterprises raise the capital they need to flourish. It offers a rich guide for students, entrepreneurs, investors, and practitioners.
In terms accessible to non-economists, Marcos Jose Mendes describes the ways democracy and inequality produce low growth in the short and medium terms. In the longer term, he argues that Brazil has two paths in front of it. One is to create the conditions necessary to boost economic performance and drive the country toward a high level of development. The other is to fail in untying the political knot that blocks growth, leaving it a middle-income country. The source of his contrasting futures for Brazil is inequality, which he demonstrates is a relevant variable in any discussion of economic growth. Inequality illuminates causes of seemingly-unconnected problems. This book, which includes freely-accessible documents and datasets, is the first in-depth analysis of an issue that promises to become increasingly prominent.
Our modern-day word for sympathy is derived from the classical Greek word for fellow-feeling. Both in the vernacular as well as in the various specialist literatures within philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, economics, and history, "sympathy" and "empathy" are routinely conflated. In practice, they are also used to refer to a large variety of complex, all-too-familiar social phenomena: for example, simultaneous yawning or the giggles. Moreover, sympathy is invoked to address problems associated with social dislocation and political conflict. It is, then, turned into a vehicle toward generating harmony among otherwise isolated individuals and a way for them to fit into a larger whole, be it society and the universe. This volume offers a historical overview of some of the most significant attempts to come to grips with sympathy in Western thought from Plato to experimental economics. The contributors are leading scholars in philosophy, classics, history, economics, comparative literature, and political science. Sympathy is originally developed in Stoic thought. It was also taken up by Plotinus and Galen. There are original contributed chapters on each of these historical moments. Use for the concept was re-discovered in the Renaissance. And the volume has original chapters not just on medical and philosophical Renaissance interest in sympathy, but also on the role of antipathy in Shakespeare and the significance of sympathy in music theory. Inspired by the influence of Spinoza, sympathy plays a central role in the great moral psychologies of, say, Anne Conway, Leibniz, Hume, Adam Smith, and Sophie De Grouchy during the eighteenth century. The volume should offers an introduction to key background concept that is often overlooked in many of the most important philosophies of the early modern period. About a century ago the idea of Einfuhlung (or empathy) was developed in theoretical philosophy, then applied in practical philosophy and the newly emerging scientific disciplines of psychology. Moreover, recent economists have rediscovered sympathy in part experimentally and, in part by careful re-reading of the classics of the field.
The game of tennis raises many questions that are of interest to a statistician. Is it true that beginning to serve in a set gives an advantage? Are new balls an advantage? Is the seventh game in a set particularly important? Are top players more stable than other players? Do real champions win the big points? These and many other questions are formulated as "hypotheses" and tested statistically. Analyzing Wimbledon also discusses how the outcome of a match can be predicted (even while the match is in progress), which points are important and which are not, how to choose an optimal service strategy, and whether "winning mood" actually exists in tennis. Aimed at readers with some knowledge of mathematics and statistics, the book uses tennis (Wimbledon in particular) as a vehicle to illustrate the power and beauty of statistical reasoning.
The international community has donated nearly one trillion dollars during the last four decades to reconstruct post-conflict countries and prevent the outbreak of more civil war. Yet reconstruction has eluded many of these countries, and 1.9 million people have been killed in reignited conflict. Where did the money go? This book documents how some leaders do bring about remarkable reconstruction of their countries using foreign aid, but many other post-conflict leaders fail to do so. Offering a global argument that is the first of its kind, Desha Girod explains that post-conflict leaders are more likely to invest aid in reconstruction when they are desperate for income and thus depend on aid that comes with reconstruction strings attached. Leaders are desperate for income when they lack access to rents from natural resources or to aid from donors with strategic interests in the country. Using data on civil wars that ended between 1970 and 2009 and evidence both from countries that succeeded and from countries that failed at post-conflict reconstruction, Girod carefully examines the argument from different perspectives and finds support for it. The findings are important for theory and policy because they explain why only some leaders have the political will to meet donor goals in the wake of civil war. The findings also shed light on state-building processes and on the political economy of post-conflict countries. Paradoxically, donors are most likely to achieve reconstruction goals in countries where they have the least at stake.
How does the insecurity of work affect us? We know what job insecurity does to workers at work, the depressive effect it has on morale, productivity, and pay. We know less about the impact of job insecurity beyond the workplace, upon people's intimate relationships, their community life, their vision of the good self and a good life. This volume of essays explores the broader impacts of job precariousness on different groups in different contexts. From unemployed tech workers in Texas to single mothers in Russia, Japanese heirs to the iconic salaryman to relocating couples in the U.S. Midwest, these richly textured accounts depict the pain, defiance, and joy of charting a new, unscripted life when the scripts have been shredded. Across varied backgrounds and experiences, the new organization of work has its largest impact in three areas: in our emotional cultures, in the interplay of social inequalities like race, class and gender, and in the ascendance of a contemporary radical individualism. In Beyond the Cubicle, job insecurity matters, and it matters for more than how much work can be squeezed out of workers: it shapes their intimate lives, their relationships with others, and their shifting sense of self. Much more than mere numbers and figures, these essays offer a unique and holistic vision of the true impact of job insecurity.
This book provides researchers, students, and practitioners with a methodology to evaluate the impacts of a wide diversity of development projects and policies on local economies. Projects and policies often create spillovers within project areas. LEWIE uses simulation methods to quantify these spillovers. It has become a complement to randomized control trials (RCTs), as governments and donors become interested in documenting impacts beyond the treated, comparing the likely impacts of alternative interventions, and designing complementary interventions to influence program and policy impacts. It is also a tool for impact evaluation where RCTs are not feasible. Chapters 1-4 motivate and present the basics of impact simulation, including how to design a LEWIE model, how to estimate the model, and how to obtain the necessary data. The remaining chapters provide a diversity of interesting real-world applications and extensions of the basic models. The applications include evaluations of the impacts of cash transfers for the poor, ecotourism, global food-price shocks, irrigation projects, migration, and corruption. Each chapter provide readers with the tools they need to conduct their own local economy-wide impact evaluations. All models and data used in this book are available on-line.
America and China are the two most powerful players in global affairs, and no relationship is more consequential. How they choose to cooperate and compete affects billions of lives. But U.S.-China relations are complex and often delicate, featuring a multitude of critical issues that America and China must navigate together. Missteps could spell catastrophe. In Debating China, Nina Hachigian pairs American and Chinese experts in collegial "letter exchanges" that illuminate this multi-dimensional and complex relationship. These fascinating conversations-written by highly respected scholars and former government officials from the U.S. and China-provide an invaluable dual perspective on such crucial issues as trade and investment, human rights, climate change, military dynamics, regional security in Asia, and the media, including the Internet. The engaging dialogue between American and Chinese experts gives readers an inside view of how both sides see the key challenges. Readers bear witness to the writers' hopes and frustrations as they explore the politics, values, history, and strategic frameworks that inform their positions. This unique volume is perfect for anyone who wants a deeper understanding of U.S.-China relations today.
The Economics of Immigration summarizes the best social science studying the actual impact of immigration, which is found to be at odds with popular fears. Greater flows of immigration have the potential to substantially increase world income and reduce extreme poverty. Existing evidence indicates that immigration slightly enhances the wealth of natives born in destination countries while doing little to harm the job prospects or reduce the wages of most of the native-born population. Similarly, although a matter of debate, most credible scholarly estimates of the net fiscal impact of current migration find only small positive or negative impacts. Importantly, current generations of immigrants do not appear to be assimilating more slowly than prior waves. Although the range of debate on the consequences of immigration is much narrower in scholarly circles than in the general public, that does not mean that all social scientists agree on what a desirable immigration policy embodies. The second half of this book contains three chapters, each by a social scientist who is knowledgeable of the scholarship summarized in the first half of the book, which argue for very different policy immigration policies. One proposes to significantly cut current levels of immigration. Another suggests an auction market for immigration permits. The third proposes open borders. The final chapter surveys the policy opinions of other immigration experts and explores the factors that lead reasonable social scientists to disagree on matters of immigration policy.
The era of economic liberalization, spanning 1978 to 2008, is often
regarded as a period in which government was simply dismantled. In
fact, government was reconstructed to meet the needs of a
globalized economy. Central banking, fiscal control, tax
collection, regulation, port and airport management, infrastructure
development-in all of these areas, radical reforms were made to the
architecture of government.
The collapse of the financial markets in 2008 and the resulting
'Great Recession' merely accelerated an already worrisome trend:
the shift away from an employer-based social welfare system in the
United States. Since the end of World War II, a substantial
percentage of the costs of social provision--most notably,
unemployment insurance and health insurance--has been borne by
employers rather than the state. The US has long been unique among
advanced economies in this regard, but in recent years, its social
contract has become so frayed that is fast becoming unrecognizable.
Despite Obama's election, the burdens of social provision are
falling increasingly upon individual families, and the situation is
worsening because of the unemployment crisis. How can we repair the
American social welfare system so that workers and families receive
adequate protection and, if necessary, provision from the ravages
of the market?
This book reviews the three most popular methods (and their extensions) in applied economics and other social sciences: matching, regression discontinuity, and difference in differences. The book introduces the underlying econometric/statistical ideas, shows what is identified and how the identified parameters are estimated, and then illustrates how they are applied with real empirical examples. The book emphasizes how to implement the three methods with data: many data and programs are provided in the online appendix. All readers--theoretical econometricians/statisticians, applied economists/social-scientists and researchers/students--will find something useful in the book from different perspectives.
Removal of Directors and Delinquency Orders under the South African Companies Act is a comprehensive discussion and analysis of the removal of company directors. The South African Companies Act 71 of 2008 has introduced innovative remedies for the removal of a company director. Removal of Directors and Delinquency Orders under the South African Companies Act draws attention to the various pitfalls to be avoided when removing a director from office. A highlight of this book is that it discusses the various nuances in removing directors that are often overlooked, such as removing directors who are also employees or shareholders who hold loaded voting rights. Another highlight is the book’s exploration of the complex issue of removing directors of state-owned companies. Furthermore, the new delinquency remedy, which has attracted much litigation and publicity in South Africa in recent years, is comprehensively discussed. A refreshing aspect of Removal of Directors and Delinquency Orders is that it also considers the removal process from the perspective of a director who has been unfairly removed by a hostile board, and considers ways to guard against the abuse of the removal power. The strength of Removal of Directors and Delinquency Orders is that it unpacks a complex topic with clarity and coherence, making it easy to understand. Developments in the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States of America are taken into account. Recommendations are made to enhance the law on the removal of directors and to clarify some ambiguities in the statutory provisions. Some vital amendments to the Companies Act are proposed. Removal of Directors and Delinquency Orders under the South African Companies Act is a scholarly work for the subject specialist.
This second edition of Understanding Money Laundering and Illicit Financial Flows explains these two concepts and outlines strategic responses to deal with them. The book explores the forms of money laundering and illicit financial transfers; mechanisms used to launder money; measures to curb, investigate and monitor these crimes; and asset forfeiture. Understanding Money Laundering and Illicit Financial Flows also considers new strategic approaches to combating these crimes. It touches briefly on the funding of terrorism, which is seen as closely connected to laundering and illicit transfers. The book includes clear illustrations, useful statistics, explanations of frequently used terms, a comprehensive bibliography and recommendations for further reading. Understanding Money Laundering and Illicit Financial Flows provides the reader with an easy entry into these complex subjects. The book will be useful not only for role players in the public sector – such as policy makers, politicians, law enforcement officials and regulators – but also for businesses and managers in the private sector. Written in an accessible way, the book is aimed at both professionals and a broader audience.
Master the fundamental concepts and today's applications of operations (OM) and supply chain management (SCM) with OPERATIONS AND SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT, 3rd Edition by award-winning authors Collier and Evans. This edition provides balanced coverage of both manufacturing and service businesses with updates, recent developments and new concepts that highlight the latest changes in OM and SCM. This edition clearly explains concepts while using contemporary practical examples ideal for business students, updated boxed features and new and updated case studies. Discussions highlight new concepts and new Excel techniques and digital tools, while solved problems illustrate key formulas and computations. |
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