In this significant new book, Bruna Ingrao and Claudio Sardoni emphasize the crucial importance of considering credit/debt relations and financial markets for a comprehensive understanding of the world in which we live. The book offers both a thorough historical and theoretical reconstruction of how 20th century macroeconomics got (or did not get) to grips with the interactions between banks and financial markets, and the 'real' economy. The book is split into two distinct and thematic parts to expose the different attitudes to banks and finance before and after the Great Depression of the 1930s. Part I explores the period from the turn of the 20th century to the late 1930s, when many important economists devoted great attention to banks and credit relations in their explanations of the working of market economies. Part II discusses the post-war period up until the modern day, when banks and financial markets ceased to be a major concern of mainstream macroeconomics. The 2007-8 crisis gave rise to a renewed interest in credit relations, but many problems inherited from the past still remain open. The authors stress, in particular, the implications of the uneasy, if not impossible, coexistence of the endeavour to set macroeconomics within the framework of general equilibrium theory with the attempt to develop the analysis of the monetary and financial features of actual economies. Macroeconomists will greatly benefit from this timely book as it examines the historical evolution of the discipline, pointing out the major factors that have largely prevented the development of satisfactory analyses of the interrelations of credit, finance and the macroeconomy. Those involved in current economic policy debates will also benefit from the lessons offered in this book.

Health Insurance Systems: An International Comparison offers united and synthesized information currently available only in scattered locations - if at all - to students, researchers, and policymakers. The book provides helpful contexts, so people worldwide can understand various healthcare systems. By using it as a guide to the mechanics of different healthcare systems, readers can examine existing systems as frameworks for developing their own. Case examples of countries adopting insurance characteristics from other countries enhance the critical insights offered in the book. If more information about health insurance alternatives can lead to better decisions, this guide can provide an essential service.

The First Book from n+1--an Essential Chronicle of Our Financial Crisis

HFM: Where are you going to buy protection on the U.S. government's credit? I mean, if the U.S. defaults, what bank is going to be able to make good on that contract? Who are you going to buy that contract from, the Martians?

n+1: When does this begin to feel like less of a cyclical thing, like the weather, and more of a permanent, end-of-the-world kind of thing?

HFM: When you see me selling apples out on the street, that's when you should go stock up on guns and ammunition.

Rethinking Corporate Governance's extensive and insightful empirical investigation offers a radically new approach to corporate governance. This ground-breaking volume describes and analyzes the key nature-based and actor-based forces that ultimately determine corporate governance processes and long-term corporate paths. Generally, such forces work in complex and intricate interplays that to a large extent vary among corporations. A theory of shareholder governance is developed and integrated into the established - and more comprehensive - theory of corporate governance to create a revised theory of the corporation (firm). The new possibilities that this creates for explaining how processes develop and ultimately influence corporate paths are presented in-depth. Featuring conclusions based on an empirical material that is both rich and exclusive, the book also contains extensive non-anonymized materials from authentic corporate governance processes. A general conclusion is that actions taken by individuals have a special status among those forces, as they not only generate impact in themselves, but also involve interpretations of the possible effects of all the other forces.Among those actions, the ones taken by the shareholders stand out as particularly decisive both for the governance processes as such and for how corporations develop over time. Offering a degree of openness, detail and realism that is hard to find in any other case-based study this innovative and enlightening volume is essential for both academics and practitioners involved in corporate governance, corporate strategy and the theory of the firm.

Introduce students to fundamental economic concepts and help them understand financial literacy with this book about capital resources and the economy. Students will learn about different types of resources, how they are part of the economy, and how to conserve resources. Colorful images, supporting text, a glossary, table of contents, and index all work together to engage readers and help them better understand the content. This informative, colorful book uses primary sources to captivate readers as they learn social studies topics.