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Books > Business & Economics > Economics > Economic systems > General
Neoliberals hate the state. Or do they? In the first intellectual history of neoliberal globalism, Quinn Slobodian follows a group of thinkers from the ashes of the Habsburg Empire to the creation of the World Trade Organization to show that neoliberalism emerged less to shrink government and abolish regulations than to redeploy them at a global level. It was a project that changed the world, but was also undermined time and again by the relentless change and social injustice that accompanied it.
Bridging a gap between macro- and micro- viewpoints, the work shows the ways in which an economy is socially and historically determined. Subsistence is shown to be not only a form of agriculture but a determinant economic organisation and particular attention is paid to the problem of understanding patterns of distribution and the constitution of the surplus in the peasant economy. First published in 1978.
Brazil features regularly in global comparisons of large developing economies. Yet since the 1980s, the country has been caught in a low-level equilibrium, marked by lackluster growth and destructive inequality. One cause is the country's enduring commitment to a set of ideas and institutions labelled developmentalism. This book argues that developmentalism has endured, despite hyperactive reform, because institutional complementarities across economic and political spheres sustain and drive key actors and strategies that are individually advantageous, but collectively suboptimal. Although there has been incremental evolution in some institutions, complementarities across institutions sustain a pattern of 'decadent developmentalism' that swamps systemic change. Breaking new ground, Taylor shows how macroeconomic and microeconomic institutions are tightly interwoven with patterns of executive-legislative relations, bureaucratic autonomy, and oversight. His analysis of institutional complementarities across these five dimensions is relevant not only to Brazil but also to the broader study of comparative political economy.
In ten years 80 per cent of the legislation related to economics, maybe also to taxes and social aff airs, will be of Community origin." This declaration has been largely quoted, paraphrased and deformed by different authors, creating a persistent myth according to which 80% of the legislative activity of the national legislatures would soon be reduced to the simple transposition of European norms". This book addresses the topic of the scope and impact of Europeanization on national legislation, as a part of the Europeanization debate which raises normative concerns linked to the "democratic deficit" debate. The state of the art shows that there are many assumptions and claims on how European integration may affect national legislation and, more generally, domestic governance but that there is a lack of solid and comparative data to test them. The aim of the book is to give a solid and comparative insight into Europeanization focusing on effective outcomes in a systematic way. This book analyzes the period 1986-2008 and includes an introduction, a global overview of European legislative activities which set the background for Europeanization of national legislatures, 9 country contributions (8 EU member states + Switzerland) including systematic, comparative and standardized data, tables and figures, and a conclusion with a comparative analysis of the European and domestic reasons for Europeanization. All national contributions conclude that Europeanization of national legislation is much more limited than assumed in the literature and public debate. It is limited to 10 to 30% of laws (depending on the country), far less than the 80% predicted by Jacques Delors and mentioned daily by medias and public opinion leaders to demonstrate EU domination on member states. Beside that general statement, the various chapters propose a deep insight on EU constraint over national legislation, providing much information on the kind of laws and policies that are Europeanized, the evolution of this process through time, the impact of Europeanization on the balance of powers and the relations between majority and opposition at national level, the strategies developed by national institutions in that context, and many other issues, making the book of interest to academics and policy-makers concerned with Europeanization and national legislation.
The recent crisis, created by finance capitalism, has brought us to the economic abyss. The excessive freedom of international markets has rapidly transformed into international panic, with states struggling to rescue and bail out a globalized financial sector. Reform is promised by our leaders, but in governments dominated by financial interests there is little hope of meaningful change. "Decent Capitalism" argues for a response that addresses capitalism's systemic tendency towards crisis, a tendency which is completely absent from the mainstream debate. The authors develop a concept of a moderated capitalism that keeps its core strengths intact while reducing its inherent destructive political force in our societies. This book argues that reforming the capitalist system will have to be far more radical than the current political discourse suggests. Decent Capitalism is a concept and a slogan that will inspire political activists, trade unionists and policy makers to get behind a package of reforms that finally allows the majority to master capitalism.
In their fight against the debt crisis, the European Union and its member states took measures that have profoundly changed the euro. It now differs fundamentally from when it was introduced by the Treaty of Maastricht. Surprisingly, this change has come about with hardly any formal amendment to the Union's 'basic constitutional charter', the Treaties. How, then, to understand it? This book argues that the constitution of the EU has transformed, which occurs when constitutions change without amendment. The transformation is characterized by a broadening of the currency union's stability conception from price stability to also financial stability. Using solidarity as a lens, the book conceptualises the unity of the member states and analyses how this was preserved during the crisis. Subsequently, it explains how that changed the currency union's set-up and why the European Court of Justice could not turn against the change in Pringle and Gauweiler.
In this authoritative and accessible book, one of the world's most renowned historians provides a concise and comprehensive history of capitalism within a global perspective from its medieval origins to the 2008 financial crisis and beyond. From early commercial capitalism in the Arab world, China, and Europe, to nineteenth- and twentieth-century industrialization, to today's globalized financial capitalism, Jurgen Kocka offers an unmatched account of capitalism, one that weighs its great achievements against its great costs, crises, and failures. Based on intensive research, the book puts the rise of capitalist economies in social, political, and cultural context, and shows how their current problems and foreseeable future are connected to a long history. Sweeping in scope, the book describes how capitalist expansion was connected to colonialism; how industrialism brought unprecedented innovation, growth, and prosperity but also increasing inequality; and how managerialism, financialization, and globalization later changed the face of capitalism. The book also addresses the idea of capitalism in the work of thinkers such as Marx, Weber, and Schumpeter, and chronicles how criticism of capitalism is as old as capitalism itself, fed by its persistent contradictions and recurrent emergencies. Authoritative and accessible, Capitalism is an enlightening account of a force that has shaped the modern world like few others.
This unique work combines an authoritative account of Veblen's life with a thoughtful appraisal of his interdisciplinary analysis of the origins, nature, and persistence of industrial capitalism. The book goes beyond the myth of Veblen's alleged marginality, and advances an original interpretation of his life's work, with special reference to his ethnicity and to evolutionism. In the process, the author considers the intellectual sources and impact of Veblen's critical social thought, and its continued relevance to understanding the economic and cultural dimensions of global capitalism.
This Element surveys the field of defense, peace, and war economics with particular emphasis on the contributions made by Austrian economists. I first review treatments of defense, peace, and war by the classical economists. I then discuss the rise of a distinct and systematic defense, peace, and war economics field of study starting in the 1960s. Next, I consider the contributions by Austrian economists to the field. This includes the economic analysis of the nature of the war economy, problems with the public good justification for the state-provision of defense, the seen and unseen costs of war, the idea of the liberal peace, and the realities and limitations of foreign intervention. I conclude with a discussion of some open areas for future research.
This book analyses business cycles synchronization in the Euro Area (EA), one of the 3 criteria that define Optimal Currency Areas (OCAs). Even before its launch, economists questioned whether the EA has what it takes to become an OCA. The onset of the sovereign debt crisis in 2010 confirmed the challenges relating to its construction. But did the EA change over time, and what key drivers may be necessary in the future to strengthen the common currency?
SHORTLISTED FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES AND MCKINSEY BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2019 From one of the most important economic thinkers of our time, a brilliant and far-seeing analysis of the current populist backlash against globalization and how revitalising community can save liberal market democracy. Raghuram Rajan, author of the 2010 FT & Goldman-Sachs Book of the Year Fault Lines, has an unparalleled vantage point onto the social and economic consequences of globalization and their ultimate effect on politics and society. In The Third Pillar he offers up a magnificent big-picture framework for understanding how three key forces - the economy, society, and the state - interact, why things begin to break down, and how we can find our way back to a more secure and stable plane. The 'third pillar' of the title is society. Economists all too often understand their field as the relationship between the market and government, and leave social issues for other people. That's not just myopic, Rajan argues; it's dangerous. All economics is actually socioeconomics - all markets are embedded in a web of human relations, values and norms. As he shows, throughout history, technological innovations have ripped the market out of old webs and led to violent backlashes, and to what we now call populism. Eventually, a new equilibrium is reached, but it can be ugly and messy, especially if done wrong. Right now, we're doing it wrong. As markets scale up, government scales up with it, concentrating economic and political power in flourishing central hubs and leaving the periphery to decompose, figuratively and even literally. Instead, Rajan offers a way to rethink the relationship between the market and civil society and argues for a return to strengthening and empowering local communities as an antidote to growing despair and unrest. The Third Pillar is a masterpiece of explication, a book that will be a classic of its kind for its offering of a wise, authoritative and humane explanation of the forces that have wrought such a sea change in our lives. His ultimate argument that decision-making has to be watered at the grass roots or our democracy will continue to wither is sure to be both provocative and agenda-setting across the world.
"Socialists Don't Sleep is one of those timely books that just points out the roots of what's gone wrong in America, how we can get our country back on track to what founders envisioned and the Judeo-Christian community that holds the key to America's long-term successes." - Gov. Mike Huckabee, New York Times Bestselling author & Host of Huckabee Socialists Don't Sleep: Christians Must Rise or America Will Fall is about all the sneaky ways the secular left has pressed Socialism into American politics and life - AND WHY CHRISTIANS ARE THE ONLY ONES WHO CAN STOP IT! Socialists Don't Sleep tells how America has gone from a country of rights coming from God - NOT government - to a country that embraces Socialism - where the US government is now expected to pretty much provide from cradle to the grave. Cheryl K. Chumley, an award-winning journalist and contributing editor to The Washington Times, explains how to return the country to its glory days of God-given, and why Christians, more than any other group, are best equipped to lead the way. "Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - when it comes to socialism in America, these two aren't the problem. Per se. They're simply symptoms of the real problems that usher in Socialism: a dysfunctional entitlement-minded society, a propaganda-pushing school system, a decayed culture, a sieve-like border. As Cheryl Chumley points out in Socialists Don't Sleep, we can't root out socialism unless we first address the real problems." - Michael Savage, New York Times Bestselling author & host of The Savage Nation
Essays that explore new ways of living with technological change Every year since 1964, the Socialist Register has offered a fascinating survey of movements and ideas from the independent new left. This year's edition asks readers to explore just how we need to live with new technologies. Essays in this 57th Socialist Register reveal the contradictions and dislocations of technological change in the twenty-first century. And they explore alternative ways of living: from artificial intelligence (AI) to the arts, from transportation to fashion, from environmental science to economic planning. Greg Albo - Post-capitalism: Alternatives or detours? Nicole Aschoff and Pankaj Mahta - AI-deology: Science, capitalism and the dream of a 'people's AI' Hugo Radice - There is nothing artificial about AI: Labour, class, utopia, socialism Larry Lohman - Interpretation machines: Contradictions of digital mechanization in twenty-first century capitalism Robin Hahnel - Democratic socialist planning: Against, with and beyond the new technologies Tanner Mirrlees - Platform socialists in the age of digital capitalism Derek Hrynyshyn - Imagining information socialism Bryan Palmer - Capitalism and the clock: Time's meaning in the struggle for socialism Sean Sweeney and John Treat - Shifting gears: Labour strategies for low-carbon public transit mobility Adam Greenfield - Smart cities, technological traps, democratic possibilities Christoph Hermann - The consequences of commodification: Contours of a post-capitalist society Joan Sangster - The surveillance of service labour: Conditions and possibilities of resistance Jeronimo Montero Bressan - Beyond neoliberal fashion: Imagining clothing production as a human need Massimiliano Mollona - Art/Commons: Art collectives and the post-capitalist imagination Ingar Solty - The world of tomorrow: Scenarios for our future between demise and hope
It is common wisdom that central banks in the postwar (1945-1970s) period were passive bureaucracies constrained by fixed-exchange rates and inflationist fiscal policies. This view is mostly retrospective and informed by US and UK experiences. This book tells a different story. Eric Monnet shows that the Banque de France was at the heart of the postwar financial system and economic planning, and that it contributed to economic growth by both stabilizing inflation and fostering direct lending to priority economic activities. Credit was institutionalized as a social and economic objective. Monetary policy and credit controls were conflated. He then broadens his analysis to other European countries and sheds light on the evolution of central banks and credit policy before the Monetary Union. This new understanding has important ramifications for today, since many emerging markets have central bank policies that are similar to Western Europe's in the decades of high growth.
On its first publication 10 years ago, Natural Capitalism rocked the world of business with its innovative new approach - an approach that fused ecological integrity with business acumen using the radical concept of natural capitalism. This 10th-anniversary edition features a new Introduction by Amory B. Lovins and Paul Hawken which updates the story to include the successes of the last decade. It clearly sets out the path that we must now take to ensure the future prosperity of our civilisation and our planet.
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.
Throughout much of the twentieth century, economists paid little heed to the role of financial intermediaries in procuring a beneficial allocation of capital. By the end of the century, however, some financial historians had begun to turn the tide, and the phrase 'finance-growth nexus' became part of the lexicon of modern economics. Recent experience has added another dimension in that countries with broader, deeper and more active financial systems might be prone to financial crises, particularly if regulatory structures are inadequate. In this book, Peter L. Rousseau and Paul Wachtel have gathered together some of today's most distinguished financial historians to examine this finance-growth nexus from both historical and modern perspectives. Some essays examine the nexus in a particular historical or cross-country context. Others, in the light of recent experience, explore the expanded nexus of finance, growth, crises, and regulation.
Capitalism's biggest problem is the executive in pinstripes who
extols the virtues of competitive markets with every breath while
attempting to extinguish them with every action.
This volume features four chapters addressing the current issues facing intellectual property, innovation and development policy in Brazil. Each chapter is authored by legal scholars affiliated to the Fundacao Getulio Vargas law schools in Sao Paolo and Rio de Janeiro. Each chapter examines a policy area that significantly impacts access to knowledge in Brazil. These include: exceptions and limitations to copyright, free software and open business models, patent reform and access to medicines, and open innovation in the biotechnology sector. Lea Shaver is an Associate Research Scholar and Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School. This volume features four chapters addressing the current issues facing intellectual property, innovation and development policy in Brazil. Each chapter is authored by legal scholars affiliated to the Fundacao Getulio Vargas law schools in Sao Paolo and Rio de Janeiro. Each chapter examines a policy area that significantly impacts access to knowledge in Brazil. These include: exceptions and limitations to copyright, free software and open business models, patent reform and access to medicines, and open innovation in the biotechnology sector. "Brazil is one of the world's most productive crucibles for new ideas and practices in innovation and collaboration. This meticulously researched book provides a sweeping tour of the issues arising form that leadership."--Jonathan Zittrain, Harvard Law School "Brazil is one of the world's most productive crucibles for new
ideas and practices in innovation and collaboration. This
meticulously researched book provides a sweeping tour of the issues
arising form that leadership."--Jonathan Zittrain, Harvard Law
School
This book concerns EU Cohesion Policy and the economic convergence of underdeveloped regions in Italy and Spain from the first programming period to the present: it investigates the political and institutional factors that determine the success or failure of implementing EU Cohesion Policy at national and sub-national level, as well as their impact on economic growth. On the wave of the American tradition of development studies, this book suggests that public policy analysis can be fruitful for understanding economic growth and cohesion, if it were to reconstruct domestic public interventions for development and the institutional characteristics of the subjects responsible for pursuing development goals. To do so, this book derives its theoretical foundations from the traditional debate on the role of state actors in promoting economic development and on the institutional characteristics that the public authorities involved in the process of economic development should display. More precisely, by adopting an Hirschmanian approach to development, it elaborates an original framework to compare different Cohesion Policy implementations and to understand its economic results in different countries, using Italy and Spain as pilot studies.
Industrial policy has long been regarded as a strategy to encourage sector-, industry-, or economy-wide development by the state. It has been central to competitiveness, catching up, and structural change in both advanced and developing countries. It has also been one of the most contested perspectives, reflecting ideologically inflected debates and shifts in prevailing ideas. There has lately been a renewed interest in industrial policy in academic circles and international policy dialogues, prompted by the weak outcomes of policies pursued by many developing countries under the direction of the Washington Consensus (and its descendants), the slow economic recovery of many advanced economies after the 2008 global financial crisis, and mounting anxieties about the national consequences of globalization. The Oxford Handbook of Industrial Policy presents a comprehensive review of and a novel approach to the conceptual and theoretical foundations of industrial policy. The Handbook also presents analytical perspectives on how industrial policy connects to broader issues of development strategy, macro-economic policies, infrastructure development, human capital, and political economy. By combining historical and theoretical perspectives, and integrating conceptual issues with empirical evidence drawn from advanced, emerging, and developing countries, The Handbook offers valuable lessons and policy insights to policymakers, practitioners and researchers on developing productive transformation, technological capabilities, and international competitiveness. It addresses pressing issues including climate change, the gendered dimensions of industrial policy, global governance, and technical change. Written by leading international thinkers on the subject, the volume pulls together different perspectives and schools of thought from neo-classical to structuralist development economists to discuss and highlight the adaptation of industrial policy in an ever-changing socio-economic and political landscape.
History has proved that communism failed at many levels during the first global competition between the capitalist and socialist camps during the Cold War. As a result, the socialist camp was dissolved. China is one of the few communist countries to survive in the twenty-first century. The Chinese economy was on the verge of collapse in the 1970s but began to take off in the early 1980s, guided by the China model. China became the world's second largest economy in 2010 and has quickly expanded its enormous global market and political influence. The second global competition between the capitalist countries and China has started. The second global competition is in fact between the China model and the Washington Consensus. Will Western hegemonies end as the result of the second global competition? Will China be able to rewrite the international rules? Will the Chinese communist political system collapse during the competition? What should the West do to the China model? This book will explore the implications of the China model in the context of the second global competition and argues that the downturn of the China model and China's global expansion are the two sides of the same coin. The China model is losing its power but not broken. China would be able to become even stronger, if it could reshape the philosophical foundation of the China model. The future of Western hegemony will depend on how the West understands the China model and deals with it. This book addresses these aspects and more.
This book reveals the workings of the bourgeois passion for submission in a variety of contemporary contexts. By (re)introducing the concept 'bourgeois' as an analytical term and describing this contemporary subject as a psychic economy rather than just as a social class, Panu shows the intractability of contemporary forms of enjoyment and neoliberalism's periodic outbursts of aggressiveness to be connected by a recurrent circuit of trauma and anxiety originating in the bourgeois subject's difficult relationship with symbolic authority.So far, most anticapitalist and decolonial struggles in the West have been hesitant when engaging with the issue of bourgeois enjoyment as the main source of capitalism's resilience. This exciting new work draws on an extensive range of theorists such as Butler, Copjec, Zizek and Zupancic to emphasise the importance of psychological mechanisms irreducible to rationality or knowledge such as desire, enjoyment, and the obscure nature of selfhood in the reiteration of the current capitalist reality.
Based on the first comprehensive study of life in the USSR since the Harvard Project some 33 years ago, Politics, Work, and Daily Life in the USSR is designed to illustrate how the Soviet social system really works and how the Soviet people cope with it. Taken as a whole, the book describes the sources of support and alienation in the Soviet urban population during the late 1970s, discussing such issues as Soviet political beliefs, ethnic relations, economic inequality, quality of life, and perceptions of social status. The essays contained analyze the variations in attitudes and behavior reflected in the findings of the Soviet Interview Project, a 5-year, 7.5 million investigation of contemporary daily life in the USSR. Among these findings, generational differences and differential education attainment are found to be the most significant underlying determinants of the opinions on, and approaches to, the different issues; the young, the educated and the well-paid, that is, the "best and the brightest" of Soviet society, prove to be the most critical and least satisfied with life in the Soviet Union. This comprehensive investigation involved interviewing thousands of recent emigrants from the USSR to the United States as a means of learning about their former day-to-day living. These individuals provided for a large volume of first-hand reports. Some aspects of this survey dealt with areas the Soviets themselves had never investigated, so the data were not, and still are not, available even in unpublished Soviet sources. |
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