Consumer credit borrowing - using credit cards, store cards and personal loans - is an important and routine part of many of our lives. But what happens when these everyday forms of borrowing go 'bad', when people start to default on their loans and when they cannot, or will not, repay? It is this poorly understood, controversial, but central part of both the consumer credit industry and the lived experiences of an increasing number of people that this book explores. Drawing on research from the interior of the debt collections industry, as well as debtors' own accounts and historical research into technologies of lending and collection, it examines precisely how this ever more sophisticated, globally connected market functions. It focuses on the highly intimate techniques used to try and recoup defaulting debts from borrowers, as well as on the collection industry's relationship with lenders. Joe Deville follows a journey of default, from debtors' borrowing practices, to the intrusion of collections technologies into their homes and everyday lives, to the collections organisation, to attempts by debtors to seek outside help. In the process he shows how to understand this particular market, we need to understand the central role played within it by emotion and affect. By opening up for scrutiny an area of the economy which is often hidden from view, this book makes a major contribution both to understanding the relationship between emotion and calculation in markets and the role of consumer credit in our societies and economies. This book will be of interest to students, teachers and researchers in a range of fields, including sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, economics and social psychology.

For those who could read between the lines, the censored news out of China was terrifying. But the president insisted there was nothing to worry about. Fortunately, we are still a nation of skeptics. Fortunately, there are those among us who study pandemics and are willing to look unflinchingly at worst-case scenarios.

Michael Lewis’s taut and brilliant nonfiction thriller pits a band of medical visionaries against the wall of ignorance that was the official response of the Trump administration to the outbreak of COVID-19. The characters you will meet in these pages are as fascinating as they are unexpected.

A thirteen-year-old girl’s science project on transmission of an airborne pathogen develops into a very grown-up model of disease control. A local public-health officer uses her worm’s-eye view to see what the CDC misses, and reveals great truths about American society. A secret team of dissenting doctors, nicknamed the Wolverines, has everything necessary to fight the pandemic: brilliant backgrounds, world-class labs, prior experience with the pandemic scares of bird flu and swine flu…everything, that is, except official permission to implement their work.

Michael Lewis is not shy about calling these people heroes for their refusal to follow directives that they know to be based on misinformation and bad science. Even the internet, as crucial as it is to their exchange of ideas, poses a risk to them. They never know for sure who else might be listening in.

Money has always represented power. For Aristotle, this power was inseparable from the exercise of justice within a community. This is why issuance of money was the prerogative of the lawful authority (government). Such a view of monetary power was widespread, and includes societies as distant as China. Over the past several centuries, however, private interests increasingly tapped into the exercise of the money power. Through gradual shifts, commercial banks have gained a legally protected right to create money through issuance of debts. The aim of this book is to unravel various layers hiding the real workings of modern money and banking systems and injustices ingrained in them. By asking what money really is, who controls it and for what purpose (why), the book provides insight into understanding of modern money and banking systems, as well as the causes of growing financialization of economies throughout the world, money manias and economic instability. The book also increases the awareness of injustices hidden in the workings of modern money and banking systems and the need for moral underpinnings of such systems. Finally, it suggests a money system which could immensely improve human, economic, and ecological conditions.

This book represents the third of three volumes offering a complete reinterpretation and restructuring of Keynesian macroeconomics and a detailed investigation of the disequilibrium adjustment processes characterizing the financial, the goods and the labour markets and their interaction. This book offers a full treatment of the interlinkages between the real and the financial markets, including an analysis of banking, credit, and endogenous money and asset markets. It remains critical of quite frequently used conventional macro models that have dropped the tradition of studying the macroeconomic feedback channels, well-known in the history of macroeconomics. Those feedback mechanisms are known to have the potential for instabilities with respect to real markets, price dynamics and financial markets. In this volume a particular emphasis is given to the financial-real interaction. The research in this book with its focus on Keynesian propagation mechanisms provides a unique alternative to the black-box shock-absorber approaches that dominate modern macroeconomics. The main conclusion of the work is that policy makers need to reconsider Keynesian ideas, but in the modern form in which they are expressed in this volume. Reconstructing Keynesian Macroeconomics will be of interest to students and researchers who want to look at alternatives to the mainstream macrodynamics that emerged from the Monetarist critique of Keynesianism. This book will also engage central bankers and macroeconomic policy makers.

Despite the overwhelming evidence against them, many people still believe they can overcome the economic and racial constraints placed upon them at birth. In the first edition, Heather Beth Johnson explored this belief in the American Dream with over 200 in-depth interviews with black and white families, highlighting the ever-increasing racial wealth gap and the actual inequality in opportunities. This second edition has been updated to make it fully relevant to today's reader, with new data and illustrative examples, including twenty new interviews. Johnson asks not just what parents are thinking about inequality and the American Dream, but to what extent children believe in the American Dream and how they explain, justify, and understand the stratification of American society. This book is an ideal addition to courses on race and inequality.

In 1991 "Communism" collapsed. The cold war was over and the West had won. Whole cities, Moscow, St Petersburg, Warsaw, Beijing, Budapest and Bucharest, whole countries indeed, were privatised for nothing or next to nothing. This was probably the greatest expansion of the world market in history. And yet, according to national income measurements of the CIA, OECD, World Bank and IMF, this gigantic expansion of market production, led to a decline in market production in the very countries where it was introduced. How to explain this paradox? This book traces the origin of the West's national income measurements, from their origin in the 1923/4 Balance developed in the USSR, to the USA in the early 1930s via two Soviet exiles, Simon Kuznets and Wassily Leontief, and then back to the USSR again, after a vigorous debate, through a protege of Kuznets, Abram Bergson. The AFC imputed national incomes to a centrally planned economy, based on physical not income measurements. This book provides a detailed assessment of the failure of the AFC method to measure the real growth of actual market production during the transition period. This book provides a detailed account of the application of national income measurements to the centrally planned economies. It assesses all of the major contributors to this debate, including Colin Clark, Naum Jasny, Alexander Gerschenkron, G.Warren Nutter and Abram Bergson. It provides a new much higher, estimate of the expansion of market production during the transition period, based on an estimate of the actual growth of real market production. It discusses the very significant implications of this re-estimate for contemporary theories of globalisation.

To complement current work on the British domestic economy in the post-war period it is necessary to examine external economic policy. Whilst considerable work has been done on Britain's relations with Europe and with America, the complexities of the sterling area have remained obscure. This volume makes a significant contribution to unravelling the strands of British external economic policy in the post-war period.

Considering Britain's physical capital, this book examines the distribution of investment between industries and between industry on the one hand and social and administrative purposes on the other. The Sterling Area is also examined, from the point of view of the UK and the rest of the world. The gold value of the dollar and the relationship of the US to the world economy are also discussed. All of these economic questions are placed in their appropriate historical perspective.

Tax policies are informed by principles developed in the tax theory and policy literature. This Element surveys the policy lessons that emerge from optimal tax analysis since the 1970s. This Element begins with the evolution of tax policy principles from the comprehensive income approach to the expenditure tax approach to normative tax analysis based on social welfare maximization and recounts key results from the optimal income tax analysis inspired by Mirrlees and extended by Diamond to the extensive margin approach. This Element also emphasizes analytical techniques that yield empirically relevant concepts and show the equity-efficiency trade-off at the heart of tax policy. We also extend the analysis to recent literature incorporating involuntary unemployment, and policies like welfare and unemployment insurance.

The imbalance between China s currency, the RMB, and those of other countries is widely regarded as a major problem for the world economy. There was a reform of China s exchange rate mechanism in 2005, following which the RMB appreciated 17% against the US dollar, but many people argue that further reform is still needed. This book reports on a major research project undertaken following the 2005 reform to assess the impact on China s economy. It considers the impact in a number of areas of the economy, including export-oriented companies, the banking industry, international trade, international capital flows, and China s macroeconomic policy. It concludes that the policies pursued so far have been correct, and that further reform, both to the exchange rate, and to the system overall, would be desirable, but that any reform should be gradual and incremental, preserving economic stability, and integrating changes with reform in other parts of the economy."

In this volume an international team of distinguished monetary historians examine the historical experience of exchange rate behaviour under different monetary regimes. The main focus is on metallic standards and fixed exchange rates, such as the gold standard. With its combination of thematic overviews and case studies of the key countries and periods, the book greatly enhances our understanding of past monetary systems.

Rpresentative agent models have become a predominant means of studying the macroeconomy in modern economics without there being much discussion in the literature about their propriety or usefulness. This volume evaluates the use of these models in macroeconomics, examining the justifications for their use and concluding that representative agent models are neither a proper nor a particularly useful means of studying aggregate behaviour.

Harry G. Johnson was best known for his work on monetary theory and international economics, but he was also very active in the theory of distribution, trade strategy and development economics. These 4 books, originally published between 1967 and 1971 explore: The relationship between nationalism and economic development Trade policy to promote development The use of geometrical tools in international trade theory Issues surrounding multi-lateral free trade.

First published in 1936, this book gives the reader an insight into the tendencies and spirit of the monetary reform movement as a whole, as accomplished or proposed since the First World War. The author marks the consideration of the overall reform as being more important than specifically looking at the actual proposals and measures involved, and the views he attributes to the various monetary reform schools are therefore composite views of the various factions of those schools. As a comparatively recent convert to the idea of monetary reform, at the time of writing, the author offers a balanced view of the subject as he also has extensive experience of the ideas of the orthodox monetary system. However, he does not believe that monetary reform alone can achieve the desired end without considerable economic planning. Indeed, he suggests that the monetary reform movement he discusses desperately needs to adopt a broader perspective and thus, he suggests a compromise.

Intended as a successor to Monetary Policy and Credit Control (Croom Helm, 1978; Routledge Revivals, 2013), this book, first published in 1982 with a revised edition in 1984, traces the changes in approach to monetary control in the U.K. throughout the 1970s, and the consequences for policy and the British economy. The book considers the widely-publicised proposals for 'reserve base' or 'monetary base' control of the financial system, including a critique of the 1980 Bank of England Green Paper. David Gowland concludes with an analysis of the 1979 Conservative Government's monetary policy. This is a very interesting title, of great relevance to students and academics researching recent British economic history and varying governmental approaches to monetary policy.

As businesses, consumers, and investors make key financial decisions amid Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU), there is the danger that many might freeze investment projects and hiring, leading to contractions of the economy. These are evident in the Indian economy as a whole and specifically in Indian stock markets indices such as the BSE Sensex and Nifty 50, import and export figures, T-bills, FDI, FPI, and GDP. In this important and timely work, Ghosh and Bagchi examine variables and phenomenon from April 2003 to January 2022, encompassing: * The global financial recession period (December 2007 to June 2009) * The pre-recession period (April 2003 to November 2007) * The post-recession along with pre-COVID-19 period (July 2009 to February 2020) * The COVID-19 period (March 2020 to January 2022) * The Russia-Ukraine Conflict Period (September 2021 to July 2022) This is essential reading for scholars and practitioners dealing with Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) in the Indian context, and in macro-economics at large.

The essays in this edited collection, first published in 1986, focus on important debates surrounding the central Marxian problem of the transformation of values into prices. The collection brings together major contributions on the value theory debate from the decade prior to the book's publication, and assesses the debate's significance for wider issues. Value theory emerges as much more than a technical relation between labour time and prices, and the structure of the capitalist economy is scrutinised. This is a relevant and comprehensive work, valuable to students, academics and professionals with an interest in political and Marxist economy.

First published in 1978, The Valuation of Social Cost is concerned both with the idea, and with the practical problems, of placing monetary values on 'intangible', non-marketed goods, such as pollution, noise nuisance, personal injury, or the loss of home, neighbours or recreational benefit. A diverse range of contributors critically assess both the theoretical issues and the practical attempts made by economists and others to 'monetise' items which cannot be bought or sold. Each section contains a comprehensive literature review and a detailed critical appraisal. Despite being written in the late 70s, this book discusses issues which retain significant importance today.

This book, first published in 1978, provides an analysis of British monetary policy and considers what techniques of monetary control were most appropriate to the context of the U.K. during the 1970s and 1980s. David Gowland answers crucial questions surrounding economic management in the period between 1971 and 1976, in particular whether rapid monetary expansion was the cause of the acceleration of U.K. inflation. With an analysis of the government's experimentation with policy at its core, this is a unique study which will be of interest to students of monetary policy and recent British economic history.

Pre-eminent among the requisites for economic integration is monetary integration. It is the premise of the chapters in this book that if the Arab world is to achieve a closer degree of cooperation in economic and political spheres, the issue of monetary integration must be given much more attention. To this end the contributors to this book, who include well-known academics and economic experts from the Arab countries, Europe, the USA and Latin America, have looked at the experience of other areas of the world which have introduced monetary unity. They consider the experiences of Western Europe, Latin America and Western Africa, evaluating them with the objective of focusing on the various major issues which have to be coped with when planning for closer monetary cooperation. While the analysis concerning the scope for future Arab monetary integration revealed varying positions as to the factors which should be stressed and the pre-requisites which should be fulfilled, there emerged general agreement on certain major issues including the following: at the present time the Arab countries should strive to achieve partial rather than full monetary integration and to create the requisite conditions for such a move; economic and monetary integration should be viewed as mutually reinforcing rather than as successive processes; and the political will to achieve integration is a major pre-requisite for any move in that direction. First published in 1981.

George Warde Norman was a Director of the Bank of England from 1821 to 1872, a key figure behind the Bank Charter Act of 1844, and one of the founders of the Political Economy Club. In 1821 G.W. Norman began an essay on taxation as part of the utilitarian programme. His vision was for increased human happiness through a wholesale reform of the revenue system founded upon direct taxation in the form of a comprehensive property tax. He continued to work on the essay over many years, never losing his faith in the utilitarian ideal or his belief in the property tax solution as the key to fiscal happiness. This book represents G.W. Norman's final thoughts, themselves a manifestation of a significant element in the development of 19th century policy and institutions. This edition of a hitherto unknown work demonstrates the importance of utilitarianism to liberal thinking on taxation. As such, this unique book will appeal to specialists in the history of economic thought and to historians, especially those with an interest in the history of public finance, an area in which G.W. Norman's contribution has been almost entirely overlooked. Providing a new and previously unexploited source, it should also prove to be a fascinating read for postgraduates working in these fields.

All Fall Down traces the ways in which changes in financial structure and regulation eroded monetary control and led to historically high levels of debt relative to GDP in both developed and emerging economies. Rising stocks of debt drove the global financial system into crisis in 2008 when households, businesses, financial institutions and the public sector in some countries strained to generate sufficient income for debt service. The stagnation and fall in asset prices that followed began the process of unwinding that led to a run on the financial sector by the financial sector. This engaging examination describes critical developments that changed the structure of US financial markets as well as developments and innovations in US credit markets that created the context for crisis. It discusses the advent of dollar hegemony, the critical role of international reserves in generating credit, the emergence of the debt bubble in the 1980s and the mounting risks of debt in the new millennium. The author also proposes a systemic approach to monetary control, offering two new reform proposals. The analysis concludes that reforms are needed in order to support sustainable economic activity in the US and global economies. This volume will appeal to students and scholars of economics interested in international finance and banking, financial regulation and monetary policy implementation. It will also be of interest to business economists, lawyers, policymakers and journalists concerned with the effects of financial instability and involved in ongoing debates on financial and monetary reform.

The Social Work Psychoanalyst's Casebook begins with an interview with Dr. Sanville, who reflects on her evolution as a social work analyst, theoretician, writer, teacher, and leader. These reminiscences are followed by accounts of nine analytic treatments, each of which offers an unusual window into what actually transpired between analyst and analysand during the treatment hours. These case studies concern particularly troubled, often traumatized patients-the very "hard to reach" or "difficult to treat" clients with whom social workers have long been familiar. They include a reanalysis by the same analyst of a patient whose first therapy ended in a stalemate; an account of transference and countertransference phenomena during termination; a report on the analysis of a young woman who experienced both chronic and stress-related trauma; and an account of the special issues involved in the treatment of an aging woman. Most of the case studies reflect the influence of Dr. Sanville, whose work has long evinced the therapeutic imagination and disciplined creativity to which all the contributors aspire. Tthe contributors to this volume offer the salutary reminder that analytic work is built on a relationship of respect and empathy and that treatment success follows from the therapist's willingness to accommodate the unique needs of individual patients. In honoring Jean Sanville, The Social Work Psychoanalyst's Casebook speaks to the robustness of a multidisciplinary approach to psychopathology that transcends the bounds of any single profession-an approach in which contemporary psychoanalysis is enlarged by the insights and emphases of social work just as social work is enriched by the clinical wisdom of psychoanalysis.

In recent years certain leading figures in the world of economics have called the usefulness of general equilibrium theory into question. This superb new book brings together leading economic theorists with important contributions to the ongoing debate. General equilibrium theorists including Michio Morishima, Michael Magill and Martine Quinzii debate strengths, weaknesses and possible futures with leading thinkers such as Herb Gintis, Pierangelo Garegnani and Duncan Foley, who seek to explain the rejection of general equilibrium. Uniquely, none of the contributors portray general equilibrium theory as the perfect guide to market economies actual behaviour, but rather illustrate that there is insufficient acquaintance with existing alternatives and that general equilibrium theory is often used as an ideal 'benchmark'.

This landmark book provides an up-to-date assessment and evaluation of industrial reform in 14 countries. Topics covered in detail include the changing role of the industrial enterprise, the state and private sectors, privatization, pricing, foreign trade and direct foreign investment. Emphasis is placed on events since 1989, the year of 'revolution' in Eastern Europe.Few of the countries are now traditionally 'socialist'. Cuba and North Korea can be so described, economically and politically. China and Vietnam grapple with market-orientated economic reforms while in the firm grip of the Communist Party. Other countries are now at various distances along the road to democracy and the market. These 'emerging democracies' or 'emerging market economies' face new and formidable challenges in making the transition from predominantly state-owned, planned economies to market economies based on private property. East Germany has been reunited with the Federal Republic, but the former industrial sector has been badly hit. The Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, on the other hand, are disintegrating. Their emerging, independent states face daunting tasks; one critical question is whether they can form voluntary and sustainable economic unions. This book provides authoritative up-to-date studies of industrial reform in socialist countries and will be essential reading for anyone with an interest in the transition to market economies in post-Communist societies.