Everything you ever wanted--and needed--to know about capitalism . . . but were afraid to ask.

What is capitalism, and will it survive? What does globalization really mean--and how does it affect your bank account? If capitalism, left unchecked, has caused disasters like the Great Depression and the financial crisis of 2008-09, why has it been the economic system of choice for centuries? To many people, the complex, jargon-rich world of capitalism can be intimidating, raising more questions than it answers. However, as the excesses and failures of free-market capitalism continue to hold sway over the daily news and our daily lives, understanding our economic system--including where it has succeeded and where it has not--is more important than ever.

Edited by New York Times business journalist Gretchen Morgenson, The Capitalist's Bible is the essential reference on capitalism and how it works--from the people who champion it to the mechanisms and institutions that uphold it to the terms and laws that define it. Whether you seek a more well-rounded understanding of the ideology that underwrites America's--and, increasingly, the world's--economy, or simply wish to be able to speak more knowledgeably on the subject in conversation, this book is an invaluable tool for understanding capitalism.

This book on mobility of health professionals reviews, analyses and summarises published information and data as well as collected interview data from stake holders, including politicians, policy makers, health service managers and migrant health workers. It is based on the research carried out under the umbrella of the EU- funded project "Mobility of Health Professionals" (MoHProf). The partners involved in the MoHProf project gathered evidence from 25 countries around basic questions and knowledge gaps relating to the international migration of health professionals, which involved an analysis of migration flows and evaluation of policies addressing migration. This book provides a comprehensive description and analysis of the mobility streams, the motives and driving forces behind them and the impact on and challenges for health systems and draws conclusions and provides recommendations for future strategic planning, monitoring and the management of mobility of health professionals as well as further research and policy development needs.

The financial crisis of 2008 brought new urgency to the question how best to organise national economies. This volume gives a business history perspective on the Varieties of Capitalism debate and considers the respective merits of the liberal and coordinated market economies. It looks at individual firms and business people as well as institutions and takes a long-term perspective by covering the whole 20th century. The authors examine both continuity and change with a particular focus on the Netherlands, a nation with an open economy, situated between two countries that oppose each other in the way they organize their economies: Germany and Great Britain. The Netherlands also provides an important case study with Dutch business maintaining strong links to the United States, widely considered to be the 'typical' liberal market economy. Contributors address the main topics of the capitalism debate, including labour relations, corporate governance, the firm and its leaders, coordination between firms, innovation, multinationals as agents of change, and economic performance. They show that the Netherlands moved from a mostly liberal market economy before 1914 towards a coordinated market economy from the 1930s onwards, and - up to a certain extent - back again to a more liberal market economy. Under both varieties of capitalism the country experienced economic growth and stagnation, but a more equal division of wealth occurred in the coordinated market economy only. Wars and international economic crises offered moments for revaluation and changes of tack. This book raises questions for every country around the globe: How is change being brought about? Can one see different results from a liberal or a more coordinated market economy? And most critically: which system is more effective in bringing prosperity and enabling enough people to share in the wealth?

While policy makers need to be focused on achieving and sustaining basic macroeconomic stability in the transition of economies from a socialist to a market orientation, financial institutions and reforms play a particularly crucial role in this transformation. The essays in this collection offer overviews of issues in banking sector reform and capital markets as well as specific perspectives on the financial sectors in changing economies of Central and Eastern Europe, China and Israel. The editors and contributors explore the questions of how much focus needs to be given to macroeconomic stabilization vis-a-vis the dynamics of the financial sector, what may be appropriate time frames for dealing with immediate and longer-term financial problems, and how trends toward economic globalization interact with financial development in transition countries. Original versions of the essays were presented at the Second Dubrovnik Conference on Transition Economies organized by the National Bank of Croatia in June 1996.

This text offers an accessible guide to the ways in which our growing knowledge of development in early-modern and modernising Japan can throw light on the paths that industrialisation was eventually to take across the globe. It has long been taken as read that the industrial revolution was the product of some form of 'European superiority' dating back to at least early-modern times. In The Great Divergence, Kenneth Pomeranz challenged this assumption on the basis of his evidence that parts of eighteenth-century China were as well placed as northern Europe to achieve sustained economic growth, thus igniting what has been called 'the single most important debate in recent global history'. Japan, as the only non-Western country to experience significant industrialisation before the Second World War, ought to provide crucial - and intriguing - evidence in the debate, but analysis of the Japanese case in such a context has remained limited. This work suggests ways of re-interpreting Japanese economic history in the light of the debate, so arguing that global historians and scholars of Japan have in fact much to say to each other within the comparative framework that the Great Divergence provides.

Banks take very large risks by consistently herding in the same perilous directions while believing they are safe and unique. This book presents a risk management framework to understand conformity and deviance within investment banks and other large organizations. It suggests that some groups understand the dynamics of this conformity to their advantage. This requires a deeper understanding of the risk in risk management. Fraudsters can game the system to their advantage legally and illegally; therefore risk managers must understand the interplay of multiple logics in order to govern and manage risk. Featuring short illustrative cases of massive risk mismanagement, this book walks the reader through four risk management perspectives (economic, institutional, evolutionary and contrarian) that explain why and how economic rationality is overridden by social forces. By understanding conformity and deviance, groups within organizations will be better equipped to manage risk and go against the tides of conformity to their advantage.

This volume examines trends in inequality in the People's Republic of China. It contains findings on inequality nationwide, as well as within the rural and urban sectors, with an emphasis on public policy considerations. Several chapters focus on inequality of income; others analyse poverty, inequality in wealth, and the distribution of wages. Attention is given to groups such as migrants, women, and the elderly, as well as the relationship between income and health care funding and the impact of the rural tax reform. All contributors to this volume make use of a large, nationwide survey of Chinese households, the product of long-term co-operation between Chinese and international researchers that is unique in its scope and duration. Using these data, the contributors examine changes in inequality from 1988 to 2002.

The introduction of the single currency in the European economic space constitutes without doubt the most visible step towards monetary and economic integration in the EU. Those who boosted the birth of the Common Market in 1957 dreamt that this would one day come about as a logical consequence of the integration process. However, things have gone much more slowly than possibly imagined, although if taken in an adequate historic perspective, it is undeniable that the agreements that have led to European Monetary Union signify a really formidable jump in the process of political and economic integration in Europe. This is something many doubted would ever happen, but which is already a reality, although still in need of a period of consolidation. The most general economic consequences of the EMU have already been analysed in considerable depth. Proof of this is the literature already available. In general, there is coincidence in affirming that the balance of the results expected is clearly positive. Firstly, as a result of the anticipated gains in efficiency, a consequence of reduction of transaction costs associated to the previous existence of different currencies and of the elimination of exchange rate uncertainties.

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.

Dynamic Modeling of Monetary and Fiscal Cooperation Among Nations analyzes coordination of monetary and fiscal stabilization policies between countries and currency areas using a dynamic game approach. The first four chapters introduce the reader to the dynamics of fiscal and monetary policy cooperation. Issues covered include: fiscal coordination, fiscal stringency requirements, structural and bargaining power asymmetries and the design of monetary and fiscal policymaking in a monetary union. In the four last chapters multiple-player settings with aspects of fiscal and/or monetary coordination are analyzed using the endogenous coalition formation approach. The analysis is focused on shock and model asymmetries and issues of multi-country coordination in the presence of (possibly many) monetary unions.

The modern industrial states desperately need more competition in order to generate growth and employment. Although the European Union pushed its member states to open several sectors to competition, there is much left to be done. At the same time powerful interest groups try to avoid or to reduce competition on European labour markets, in the health systems, in the transport and energy sector, in public services, and in many other areas. This book shows that there is much to be gained from intensifying competition and that especially consumers would benefit. One task is to lay a sound basis for the application of competition. The other task is to implement and guarantee competition. The authors cover both issues.

Processes of knowledge production and dissemination are increasingly set in an international context. In research and higher education the links between local actors and the international environments are both proliferating and intensifying. Individual level self-organised international collaboration is increasingly supplemented by national and supranational organised activities, and by market oriented activity with a global scope. Starting from these observations, this book analyses patterns of internationalisation comprising the national and supranational level, the level of higher education institutions and private companies, as well as the level of individual researchers and graduates. As a laboratory for studying internationalisation the book uses the case of Norway, a small knowledge system set in an open society, political system and economy. The case offers exceptionally good data on the developments in its research and higher education system that record changes over time and across the different parts and levels of a national knowledge system

Outstanding social scientists (economists, sociologists, political scientists, and policy researchers) discuss in this book the issue of the social aspects of European integration. For each field, they sketch out the main problems, provide a survey on the relevant literature, and point to areas wherein more research is needed. The science and research policy of the European Union is examined critically both in terms of relevant social issues and in terms of its organizational efficacy.

Bjllrn Tore Godal Norwegian Ambassador to Germany Chairman of the Editorial Advisory Board Several of the contributions to the present volume of The NEBI Yearbook have been inspired by the fact that roughly speaking, ten years have passed since the first steps were taken to initiate cross-border co-operation in the Barents and Baltic Sea areas. One of the most important co-operative organisations in the European Northeast, i. e. The Council of the Baltic Sea States, was launched in 1992. The Barents Euro Arctic Council was established in 1993. An avalanche of co-operative and cross-border initiatives has since hit this part of Europe with all kinds of actors participating - states, regional and municipal authorities, univer sities, national organisations, businesses and private interests. Even international organisations and actors from outside the immediate NEBI area have taken a special interest in this dynamic part of the world. Among the most important is the European Union, whose Finnish-inspired Northern Dimension initiative has become a permanent fixture. As many of the chapters in NEBI 2003 testifY, integration in the NEB I area - across old political and ideological borders and cultural and socio-economic divides that are among the most pronounced anywhere in the world - has on the whole been a great success."

The European Union (EU) was launched as a response to the economic dominance of the United States and - to a lesser degree - the Soviet Union. The nations of Western Europe were too small to compete against large scale and diversi?ed economies on their own. Six countries, eventually expanding to 27 (and counting), took a series of steps toward progressively deeper integration: the removal of int- nal tariffs, the construction of a common external tariff, the elimination of many (but not all) non-tariff barriers leading to a single market, and the adoption of a c- mon currency by 15 of the member states. The EU today equals and even exceeds the U. S. on many key indicators of performance. In the process, two similar but nonetheless divergent models of social and economic life stand in contrast with each other. The U. S. is more committed to capitalism and does little to dilute its harsh edges while the nations of Europe support wider social safety nets and more active regulation of commercial activity to mute the crueller aspects of the free-market. Until recently, the economic dynamism of the U. S. called into question whether the so-called European social model was sustainable in an era of globalization. The EU was slipping in competitiveness and was being challenged by new global pow- houses like China and India. Although the U. S. economy has slowed, there is little indication that European countries are capable of leveraging the situation to their advantage.

This book analyzes economic interdependence in the Euro Area. It offers expert estimates of the sign and size of economic spillovers. Moreover, the authors explore the impact of economic policy coordination on economic performance in the Euro Area. Among the many topics explored are the link between fiscal and monetary policies in the Euro Area and the coordination of fiscal policies and of structural reforms.

This volume is the second book based on comparative and comprehensive data from the 2003 representative European Union Company survey of Operating hours, Working times and Employment (EUCOWE) in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom. The EUCOWE project is the first representative and standardised European company survey which covers all categories of firm sizes and all sectors of the economy. This volume complements and builds on the first book published in 2007, in which the methodology and the descriptive national findings as well as some first comparative analytical results were presented. In this second book the EUCOWE research team presents in-depth cross-country analyses of the relationship between operating hours, working times and employment in the European Union. Six empirical chapters of this volume provide detailed comparative analyses of the determinants and consequences of the duration and flexibility of opening hours and operating times.

World politics has been surprised recently by two sudden developments. The first took place around the beginning of 2007, when the question of global warming rose abruptly to the top of the agenda, after having been a factor in the background. The second occurred in the autumn of 2008, when the rules for a global economy started inspiring great anxiety, after having been regarded as a source of stability. These two shifts took place independently, but their consequences will require common management. The regulatory structure underlying the world's economic, legal, and political systems needs to be revised. This presents the EU with the greatest challenge it has ever faced. The point is that this global challenge comes on top of the pr- lems already posed by markets, welfare states, security, energy, and movements of population. The additional challenge is furthermore of such a kind that a deeper discussion of the very structure of the Union is difficult to avoid.

This is a brilliant examination of the complex processes of the post-1990 transformation in the Czech automotive industry and its selective integration into the West European system. The post-1990 restructuring of the industry is analyzed in the context of its pre-1990 development and in the context of the East European automobile industry as a whole. Specifically, the book examines the development and post-1990 restructuring of the Czech car, components, and truck industries.

European Union member states are requested by the EU Council to adapt their legislation to promote Victim-Offender Mediation by March 2006 (Framework Decision of March 15, 2001, arts. 10, 17). Are European countries ready to meet this requirement? Can those European countries currently falling short of VOM programmes be assisted in initiating them?

This book documents the state of the art on Victim-Offender Mediation with youth offenders in 15 European nations (Austria, Belgium, England and Wales, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden). It provides an up-do date review of current theory and practice and presents a critical discussion of problems and benefits which may help guide future policy decisions and applications. The book informs both those who are interested in evaluating the current state of affairs of Victim-Offender Mediation with youth offenders in Europe, and those who would like to promote Victim-Offender Mediation in their own countries.

The common format used in each chapter facilitates comparison across countries. Per country, five areas of investigation are explored and discussed: norms and legislation allowing for the implementation of victim-offender mediation programmes; values and theoretical frameworks of victim-offender mediation; organizational structure of victim-offender mediation services; professional characteristics of mediators; benefits, potential problems, and criticisms of current practice.

The book has broad interdisciplinary appeal and is of interest to policymakers, lawyers, psychologists, social workers, mediators, and academics.

This book argues that a New Deal for research in Europe is needed. This New Deal would involve the mobilisation of policy actors across all levels--regional, national and European--and their commitment to develop a more effective research system based on actions where they have the greatest impact.

The book presents, from a viewpoint inside the European Commission, the nuts and bolts of how EU research policy is actually designed. It also provides a comprehensive analysis, on the basis of factual evidence, not only of the positive impacts of European research, but of the various criticisms that have been made of the Framework Programme.

In the course of the tremendous political and economic upheaval starting in 1989/1990 many industrial cities and regions in Central and Eastern Europe have been confronted with profound problems. This book presents eleven detailed national reports which describe the situation in such cities and regions as well as the strategies which have been employed to cope with structural change. The country reports are complemented by short case studies of selected cities and regions. An introduction gives background to such topics as structural change and the ramifications of EU enlargement. Finally some conclusions are drawn and recommendations offered for future policy.

Structural change, economic growth and adequate exchange rate adjustment are key challenges in the context of EU eastern enlargement as are consistent macroeconomic policies. The authors focus on sectoral adjustment across industries in catching-up countries and explain changes in the composition of output - this includes new aspects of the Chenery model. They describe and analyze the spatial pattern of specialization and adjustment in many countries. Theoretical and empirical analysis of foreign direct investment, innovation and structural change shed new light on economic dynamics in Old Europe and New Europe. As regards exchange rate dynamics both traditional aspects (such as the Balassa-Samuelson effect) and new approaches to understanding exchange rate developments are presented. Links between exchange rate changes and innovation are particularly emphasized.

As part of its review of competition law that started in the late 1990s, the European Commission proposes to revise its interpretation and application of the Treaty 's prohibition of abuses of dominant positions. Also, it has instigated a debate about the promotion of private enforcement of EC competition law. On the former subject, the Commission published a Discussion Paper in 2005; on the latter, a Green Paper in 2005, followed by a White Paper in 2008.

The chapters in this volume critically appraise the Commission 's proposals, including the most recent ones. The authors also highlight the repercussions of the proposed more economic approach to abuses of dominant positions on private litigants opportunities to bring damages actions in national courts for such abuses.

The Eastern Enlargement of the EU will not be complete until the new member states join the EMU. Economic and political economy arguments point to fast EMU accession of new member states. Failure to do so will create a two speed Europe, a fundamental change in the economic and political architecture of the EU, adding to the strains already evident between core and peripheral countries. Current high level of trade and business cycle integration of new member states with the Eurozone, decreases the probability of asymmetric shocks. Lower transaction costs, elimination of exchange rate risk and the danger of currency crises, further trade and investment creation, lower interest rates and large fiscal gains, should outweigh the loss of the exchange rate as adjustment tool. The Eastern Enlargement of the Eurozone provides comprehensive economic analysis of theoretical, empirical and political issues that will determine whether EMU enlargement is a success, which has implications for all common currency systems.