In this clear and engaging basic guide to managing your finances, Sam Beckbessinger covers topics from compound interest and inflation to “Your brain on money”, negotiating a raise, and particularly local South African phenomena like “black tax”.

The book includes exercises and “how-to’s”, doesn’t shy away from the psychology of money, and is empowering, humorous and helpful.

The book you wish you’d had at 25, but is never too late to read.

While some women seem to excel at making their money work for them, others battle from pay day to pay day. With this book, we tap into what these ‘smart women’ know that the rest of us can learn from.

Smart Woman will provide the necessary insights into how our personal view of money impacts on our financial behaviour and decisions; reveal who is competing for our money (retailers, online marketers, etc.); and look at why it is so hard to find money to invest (the first step to getting rich is having money to invest – money makes money). It also covers how major life events, such as marriage and divorce, impact on us and how we can make smart financial decisions at these times.

Smart Woman will show the reader how she can take control of her financial life by spending smarter, tackling debt and setting goals. It explains how money is made and how the financial markets work, as well as the universal principles behind growing wealth, irrespective of where one invests.

A must-read for every woman, at any age, who is serious about building wealth and obtaining financial independence.

Money is a tool that we can all master. You choose to either be a ‘Money Slave’ or a ‘Money Master’. My Money is a practical, easy to read, personal finance book - a guide that will help many South Africans begin to create wealth and not fear the subject of personal financial planning.

A treasure trove of useful advice and tips, this book is essential reading to gain a basic understanding of money mechanics. A guide to help you find your confidence, and see money as it really is - a tool that anyone can use. With a chapter dedicated to almost every financial situation we face in our lives, My Money will become your go-to book that will help you unlock your financial potential and gain control of your financial affairs.

You, too, have the potential to become a ‘Money Master’.

How does globalisation impact on a developing country like South Africa? How do patterns of taxation in industrialised countries and developing countries differ? How does tax efficiency affect service delivery? Public Economics 6e is a southern African text on the subject, written by well-respected and well-known South African experts. Dealing with current issues such as social security and health care, the textbook demonstrates how public economic theory is relevant to the real-world context. Cross-references to and examples from countries making up the southern African region are made throughout the text in view of the increased interaction and economic cooperation between these countries. Public Economics sixth edition equips senior undergraduate and postgraduate students with basic analytic skills to demonstrate the application of these to practical issues.

The fourth edition of Madura and Fox's International Financial Management provides the ideal introduction to the study of interaction between firms of all sizes and global finance. Real life examples, critical debate questions and project workshop activities help improve engagement and the wide range of cases from across the globe ensures this edition has a wide international appeal. This fourth edition also comes with MindTap and a comprehensive companion website, including a Testbank, Instructor's Manual, Running your Own MNC and Discussion in the Boardroom activities.

The budget has been among the most pressing topics facing Brussels throughout the history of the EU. Features and Challenges of the EU Budget proposes a timely analysis of the most pertinent issues surrounding the EU budget with a multidisciplinary approach that includes historical, political, legal and economic interpretations. This thought provoking book considers the history of the EU budget and the European integration process, offering insight into the broader political implications of the budget for both Member State governments and for their citizens. Features and Challenges of the EU Budget also explores the legal and economic repercussions of the EU budget, examines the framework that controls it, and interrogates the budget's effects on European growth and competitiveness alongside its significance to the structural balances of Member States. At a time of uncertainty for the EU, this book provides a critical investigation of how political factors will affect the future of the EU budget. Featuring the unique contributions of academics from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, this insightful work will be of great interest to scholars and students investigating the politics, structure and economics of the EU. This book will also be useful to institutions offering courses or programmes concerning the EU and its budget.

From a giant of health care policy, an engaging and enlightening account of why American health care is so expensive "and why it doesn't have to be Uwe Reinhardt was a towering figure and moral conscience of health care policy in the United States and beyond. Famously bipartisan, he advised presidents and Congress on health reform and originated central features of the Affordable Care Act. In Priced Out, Reinhardt offers an engaging and enlightening account of today's U.S. health care system, explaining why it costs so much more and delivers so much less than the systems of every other advanced country, why this situation is morally indefensible, and how we might improve it. The problem, Reinhardt says, is not one of economics but of social ethics. There is no American political consensus on a fundamental question other countries settled long ago: to what extent should we be our brothers' and sisters' keepers when it comes to health care? Drawing on the best evidence, he guides readers through the chaotic, secretive, and inefficient way America finances health care, and he offers a penetrating ethical analysis of recent reform proposals. At this point, he argues, the United States appears to have three stark choices: the government can make the rich help pay for the health care of the poor, ration care by income, or control costs. Reinhardt proposes an alternative path: that by age 26 all Americans must choose either to join an insurance arrangement with community-rated premiums, or take a chance on being uninsured or relying on a health insurance market that charges premiums based on health status. An incisive look at the American health care system, Priced Out dispels the confusion, ignorance, myths, and misinformation that hinder effective reform.

How to overcome barriers to the long-term investments that are essential for solving the world (TM)s biggest problems There has never been a greater need for long-term investments to tackle the world (TM)s most difficult problems, such as climate change and decaying infrastructure. And it is increasingly unlikely that the public sector will be willing or able to fill this gap. If these critical needs are to be met, the major pools of long-term, patient capital "including pensions, sovereign wealth funds, university endowments, and wealthy individuals and families "will have to play a large role. In this accessible and authoritative account of long-term capital investment, two leading experts on the subject, Harvard Business School professors Victoria Ivashina and Josh Lerner, highlight the significant hurdles facing long-term investors and propose concrete ways to overcome these difficulties. Presenting the best evidence in an engaging way by using memorable stories and examples, Patient Capital describes how large investors increasingly want and need long-run investments that have the potential to deliver greater returns than those in the public markets. Yet success in such investments has been the exception. Performance has suffered from both the limitations of investors and the internal structure of their fund managers, often resulting in the wrong incentives and a lack of long-term planning. Yet the challenges facing long-term investors can be surmounted and the rewards are potentially large, both for investors and society as a whole. Patient Capital shows how to make long-term investment work better for everyone.

Sustainable and inclusive growth in emerging Asian economies requires high levels of public investment in areas such as infrastructure, education, health, and social services. The increasing complexity and regional diversity of these investment needs, together with the trend of democratization, has led to fiscal decentralization being implemented in many Asian economies. This book takes stock of some major issues regarding fiscal decentralization, including expenditure and revenue assignments, transfer programs, and the sustainability of local government finances, and develops important findings and policy recommendations. The book's expert contributors assess the current state of the allocation of expenditures and revenues between central and local governments in emerging Asian economies, and discuss their major strengths and weaknesses. They also present relevant case studies of experiences and reform measures related to strengthening and monitoring local government finance, including the implications of expanded fiscal capacity for infrastructure investment and other public spending. Covering the major Asian economies of the People's Republic of China, India, Indonesia, and Japan, among others, the book focuses on the economic incentives of transfer schemes, how intergovernmental fiscal equalization works, and how subnational government borrowing regulations could influence debt dynamics and the fiscal deficits of local governments. This book's insightful analysis will be essential reading for policy makers in Asian economies and academics and researchers in the areas of economic development, public finance, and fiscal policy as well as development aid officials, multilateral banks, and NGOs.

How can governments control spending pressure from influential groups, often representing powerful regional interests? This book is concerned with institutional solutions that allow modern nation states to balance historically grown cultural, political and economic diversity. Laura von Daniels combines different literatures in economics and political science, and draws on interviews with former government leaders, and country experts from international organizations. She applies this research to topics such as fiscal institutions and budget balances, presenting a critical review of different institutional approaches to resolving fiscal imbalances and public indebtedness. Students and scholars of various disciplines, including politics, public and social policy, economics and business will find the discussions and detailed description of institutional reforms in emerging market nations to be of use to their research. It will also be of interest to practitioners working on fiscal decentralization and budget control.

What should be the role of government in society? How should it design its programmes? How should tax systems be designed to promote both efficiency and fairness? Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and new co-author Jay Rosengard bring an unparalleled level of expertise to address these key issues of public-sector economics. No other text is as modern, as accessible, or incorporates as much first-hand policy-advising experience by its authors as Stiglitz/Rosengard.

Adair Turner became chairman of Britain's Financial Services Authority just as the global financial crisis struck in 2008, and he played a leading role in redesigning global financial regulation. In this eye-opening book, he sets the record straight about what really caused the crisis. It didn't happen because banks are too big to fail--our addiction to private debt is to blame. Between Debt and the Devil challenges the belief that we need credit growth to fuel economic growth, and that rising debt is okay as long as inflation remains low. In fact, most credit is not needed for economic growth--but it drives real estate booms and busts and leads to financial crisis and depression. Turner explains why public policy needs to manage the growth and allocation of credit creation, and why debt needs to be taxed as a form of economic pollution. Banks need far more capital, real estate lending must be restricted, and we need to tackle inequality and mitigate the relentless rise of real estate prices. Turner also debunks the big myth about fiat money--the erroneous notion that printing money will lead to harmful inflation. To escape the mess created by past policy errors, we sometimes need to monetize government debt and finance fiscal deficits with central-bank money. Between Debt and the Devil shows why we need to reject the assumptions that private credit is essential to growth and fiat money is inevitably dangerous. Each has its advantages, and each creates risks that public policy must consciously balance.

The untold story of how FDR did the unthinkable to save the American economy The American economy is strong in large part because nobody believes that America would ever default on its debt. Yet in 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt did just that, when in a bid to pull the country out of depression, he depreciated the U.S. dollar in relation to gold, effectively annulling all debt contracts. American Default is the story of this forgotten chapter in America's history. Sebastian Edwards provides a compelling account of the economic and legal drama that embroiled a nation already reeling from global financial collapse. It began on April 5, 1933, when FDR ordered Americans to sell all their gold holdings to the government. This was followed by the abandonment of the gold standard, the unilateral and retroactive rewriting of contracts, and the devaluation of the dollar. Anyone who held public and private debt suddenly saw its value reduced by nearly half, and debtors--including the U.S. government--suddenly owed their creditors far less. Revaluing the dollar imposed a hefty loss on investors and savers, many of them middle-class American families. The banks fought back, and a bitter battle for gold ensued. In early 1935, the case went to the Supreme Court. Edwards describes FDR's rancorous clashes with conservative Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, a confrontation that threatened to finish the New Deal for good--and that led to FDR's attempt to pack the court in 1937. At a time when several major economies never approached the brink of default or devaluing or recalling currencies, American Default is a timely account of a little-known yet drastic experiment with these policies, the inevitable backlash, and the ultimate result.

This new edition restructures and updates the political economy view of the responsibilities and limitations of government. Public-choice and behavioural concepts are prominent. Gender issues are included. Technical concepts are explained from first principles. Economic theory is rigorously applied. Excessive technicality is avoided. The book integrates traditional public finance topics - taxation, public goods, externalities, and income redistribution - with political self-interest, bureaucracy, voting, rent seeking, corruption, and the common-pool problem of public spending. Social justice is viewed as income equality, equality of opportunity, or the right to benefit from one's own effort. Public policies studied include the environment, education, health insurance, welfare payments and entitlements under moral hazard, unemployment insurance, paternalistic impositions, and defence and public safety. This book is ideal for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses that combine economic theory with a real-world perspective on the politics of public finance and public policy. A broad scope makes the book suitable for students in all countries.

How creditors came to wield unprecedented power over heavily indebted countries "and the dangers this poses to democracy The European debt crisis has rekindled long-standing debates about the power of finance and the fraught relationship between capitalism and democracy in a globalized world. Why Not Default? unravels a striking puzzle at the heart of these debates "why, despite frequent crises and the immense costs of repayment, do so many heavily indebted countries continue to service their international debts? In this compelling and incisive book, Jerome Roos provides a sweeping investigation of the political economy of sovereign debt and international crisis management. He takes readers from the rise of public borrowing in the Italian city-states to the gunboat diplomacy of the imperialist era and the wave of sovereign defaults during the Great Depression. He vividly describes the debt crises of developing countries in the 1980s and 1990s and sheds new light on the recent turmoil inside the Eurozone "including the dramatic capitulation of Greece (TM)s short-lived anti-austerity government to its European creditors in 2015. Drawing on in-depth case studies of contemporary debt crises in Mexico, Argentina, and Greece, Why Not Default? paints a disconcerting picture of the ascendancy of global finance. This important book shows how the profound transformation of the capitalist world economy over the past four decades has endowed private and official creditors with unprecedented structural power over heavily indebted borrowers, enabling them to impose painful austerity measures and enforce uninterrupted debt service during times of crisis "with devastating social consequences and far-reaching implications for democracy.

Master Your Finances will transform your financial life by demystifying the complexities around wealth creation opening the individual up to possibilities and suggesting practical ways of beginning a successful financial journey.

The book aims to achieve awareness to the mechanics of finances, provide awareness to human behaviour and how this impacts on financial net worth. It also provide options for the individual to feel empowered to take charge of their own finances and design and implement a strategy to obtain the desired results!

Content include:

• It’s not just about money, it’s about life
• Taking ownership of your finances
• Your net worth
• What you own
• What you owe - Understanding debt
• Dealing with over-indebtedness
• What you earn
• What you spend
• Pulling it all together
• Having a map and a mirror

This book reveals the basic insights on managing your finances and wealth. These insights, if applied appropriately can lead to financial freedom.

Money. Moolah. Cash. Dinero.

It’s a funny thing, money. Some people have it. Some people have lots of it. Some people don’t and most people want it. I never really thought about money until I didn’t have it. All of a sudden, it became really really important. It became so important that I delved into every aspect of it. Not just into the concept money itself but what I believed about it, how I used and abused it and my value in relation to it. It took me a couple of years of soul work, financial healing and introspection to overcome my pattern of financial crisis. Of course I can’t tell what might happen in the future but what I’ve discovered has changed my life and I’d like to use what I’ve discovered to change yours.

Financial management, a skill all of us have to learn to master, isn’t just about budgeting. It isn’t just about knowing how much you earn and how much you spend. It isn’t, just about knowing how interest rates work. It’s about a relationship; a life-long deep and committed relationship between yourself and money. It’s about understanding what drives your behaviour in money. It’s about understanding that your value extends far beyond how many Rands or Dollars enter your personal account each month.

How did Britain transform itself from a nation of workhouses to one that became a model for the modern welfare state? The Winding Road to the Welfare State investigates the evolution of living standards and welfare policies in Britain from the 1830s to 1950 and provides insights into how British working-class households coped with economic insecurity. George Boyer examines the retrenchment in Victorian poor relief, the Liberal Welfare Reforms, and the beginnings of the postwar welfare state, and he describes how workers altered spending and saving methods based on changing government policies. From the cutting back of the Poor Law after 1834 to Parliament's abrupt about-face in 1906 with the adoption of the Liberal Welfare Reforms, Boyer offers new explanations for oscillations in Britain's social policies and how these shaped worker well-being. The Poor Law's increasing stinginess led skilled manual workers to adopt self-help strategies, but this was not a feasible option for low-skilled workers, many of whom continued to rely on the Poor Law into old age. In contrast, the Liberal Welfare Reforms were a major watershed, marking the end of seven decades of declining support for the needy. Concluding with the Beveridge Report and Labour's social policies in the late 1940s, Boyer shows how the Liberal Welfare Reforms laid the foundations for a national social safety net. A sweeping look at economic pressures after the Industrial Revolution, The Winding Road to the Welfare State illustrates how British welfare policy waxed and waned over the course of a century.

Based on the synthesis of a large empirical and theoretical literature on centre-region relations in China and Russia, Federalism in China and Russia is one of the first attempts to integrate this literature from different disciplines into a coherent common framework. Libman and Rochlitz argue that the divergence in growth performance between Russia and China can be - at least partially - explained by a number of features of the Chinese system of centre-regional relations. The authors offer a comparative analysis of the development of centre-region relations in Russia and in China and explore several dimensions of these relations: fiscal ties and incentives; bureaucratic practices; flows of information; and local government practices, while addressing the determinants of divergence between both countries. They also examine how the Chinese system has recently started to change, by adopting several features of the Russian model, which might be one of the reasons for China's declining growth performance in recent years. Federalism in China and Russia should be read by scholars in public economics, political economy and comparative politics, as well as by students and policy analysts. For scholars, the book serves as a point of reference in studying the comparative evolution of the two countries. It will enrich the discussion on fiscal federalism, centre-region relations and sub-national political regimes, and could potentially become an important part of syllabi in political economy, public economics and comparative politics courses. For policy analysts, the book offers a comprehensive survey of the evolution of centre-periphery relations of the two countries and the differences between them, which is important to better understand the overall development of Russia and China.

At a time when Congressional investigations have taken on added importance and urgency in American politics, this book offers readers a rare, insider's portrait of the world of US Congressional oversight. It examines specific oversight investigations into multiple financial and offshore tax scandals over fifteen years, from 1999 to 2014, when Senator Levin served in a leadership role on the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), the Senate's premier investigative body. Despite mounting levels of partisanship, dysfunction, and cynicism swirling through Congress during those years, this book describes how Congressional oversight investigations can be a powerful tool for uncovering facts, building bipartisan consensus, and fostering change, offering detailed case histories as proof. Grounded in fact, and written as only an insider could tell it, this book will be of interest to financial and tax practitioners, policymakers, academics, students, and the general public.

From the New York Times bestselling author of This Time Is Different, "a fascinating and important book" (Ben Bernanke) about phasing out most paper money to fight crime and tax evasion--and to battle financial crises by tapping the power of negative interest rates The world is drowning in cash--and it's making us poorer and less safe. In The Curse of Cash, Kenneth Rogoff, one of the world's leading economists, makes a persuasive and fascinating case for an idea that until recently would have seemed outlandish: getting rid of most paper money. Even as people in advanced economies are using less paper money, there is more cash in circulation--a record $1.4 trillion in U.S. dollars alone, or $4,200 for every American, mostly in $100 bills. And the United States is hardly exceptional. So what is all that cash being used for? The answer is simple: a large part is feeding tax evasion, corruption, terrorism, the drug trade, human trafficking, and the rest of a massive global underground economy. As Rogoff shows, paper money can also cripple monetary policy. In the aftermath of the recent financial crisis, central banks have been unable to stimulate growth and inflation by cutting interest rates significantly below zero for fear that it would drive investors to abandon treasury bills and stockpile cash. This constraint has paralyzed monetary policy in virtually every advanced economy, and is likely to be a recurring problem in the future. The Curse of Cash offers a plan for phasing out most paper money--while leaving small-denomination bills and coins in circulation indefinitely--and addresses the issues the transition will pose, ranging from fears about privacy and price stability to the need to provide subsidized debit cards for the poor. While phasing out the bulk of paper money will hardly solve the world's problems, it would be a significant step toward addressing a surprising number of very big ones. Provocative, engaging, and backed by compelling original arguments and evidence, The Curse of Cash is certain to spark widespread debate.

University research has played an essential role in economic growth by generating public good outputs that have not readily lent themselves to private market development. As funding for universities and governmental research units has declined, these institutions have turned to the private sector to augment their research and development budgets. This book presents a framework for structuring public-private research partnerships that protect both these institutions' academic freedom and the private firm's corporate interests. The authors present a four-stage framework that recognizes the critical role of `control rights' and reveals how these rights can be effectively identified, valued, and allocated between research partners. The book provides a number of template designs for a variety of research partnerships, including tactics and strategies for implementing successful public-private research partnerships. It further provides case studies with examples of both successful and unsuccessful research partnerships. The book demonstrates that universities are empowered when they pursue private partners actively and when contracts preserve academic freedom, address confidentiality, specify intellectual property rights, define access to proprietary data, clarify the conflict resolution process, and address potential publication delays. This book is an essential and illuminating resource for academic researchers in economics and public policy departments, technology transfer offices, as well as others involved in university and public administration.

Large infrastructure projects often face significant cost overruns and stakeholder fragmentation. Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) allow governments to procure long-term infrastructure services from private providers, rather than developing, financing and managing infrastructure assets themselves. Aligning public and private interests and institutional logics to create robust, decades-long service contracts subject to shifting economic and political contexts is a significant cross-sectoral governance challenge. This work summarizes over a decade of research conducted by scholars at Stanford's Global Projects Center and multiple US and International collaborators to enhance the governance of both infrastructure projects and institutional investors, whose long term, cash flow obligations align especially well with the kinds of long term inflation-adjusted returns that PPP infrastructure projects can generate. In these pages, multiple theoretical perspectives are integrated and combined with empirical evidence to examine how experiences from more mature PPP jurisdictions can help improve PPP governance approaches worldwide. The information contained here will appeal to engineering, economics, political science, public policy and finance scholars interested in the delivery of high-quality, sustainable infrastructure services to the citizens in countries with established and emerging market economies. Officials in national, state/provincial and local government agencies seeking alternative financing and service provision strategies for their civil and social infrastructure, and legislators and their staff members interested in promoting PPP legislation will find this book invaluable. It will also be of high interest to long-term investment professionals from pension funds, sovereign funds, family offices and university endowments seeking to deploy money into the infrastructure asset class, and practitioners seeking insights into methods for enhancing stakeholder incentive alignment, reducing transaction costs and improving project outcomes in PPPs.

Economists typically treat government as something outside the business realm, a sort of `Lord of the Manor'. Richard Wagner argues that this is the wrong approach and can ultimately be destructive to capitalism and to society. Modern governments are a peculiar form of business enterprise. They face the same problems as regular businesses, such as ascertaining demand and organizing production, and act within the system in a way that can lead to a parasitical relationship with the market. Largely rooted in political economy, this book develops new theoretical ideas and formulations to explain why democracy is a difficult form of government to maintain. The author explores how and why limited governments can morph into a system of destructive politics, and looks at ways to escape this process. This dynamic book will be useful for public choice scholars, economists, political scientists, and lawyers who are interested in political economy in its various guises.

An introduction for students to financial management, especially central and provincial government departments. The book is also suited to both academics and practitioners.