Book Description
In this powerful and provocative manifesto, Bill McKibben offers the biggest challenge in a generation to the prevailing view of our economy. For the first time in human history, he observes, more is no longer synonymous with better -- indeed, for many of us, they have become almost opposites. McKibben puts forward a new way to think about the things we buy, the food we eat, the energy we use, and the money that pays for it all. Our purchases, he says, need not be at odds with the things we truly value. McKibbens animating idea is that we need to move beyond growth as the paramount economic ideal and pursue prosperity in a more local direction, with cities, suburbs, and regions producing more of their own food, generating more of their own energy, and even creating more of their own culture and entertainment. He shows this concept blossoming around the world with striking results, from the burgeoning economies of India and China to the more mature societies of Europe and New England. For those who worry about environmental threats, he offers a route out of the worst of those problems; for those who wonder if there isnt something more to life than buying, he provides the insight to think about ones life as an individual and as a member of a larger community. McKibben offers a realistic, if challenging, scenario for a hopeful future. As he so eloquently shows, the more we nurture the essential humanity of our economy, the more we will recapture our own.
Customer Reviews:
If You Care for the Earth.......2007-09-29
This book is a must for anyone who wants to make a change to save the earth. The author has insight and experience about how our present course of living will lead to the destruction of the world as we know it. It's real, but there is hope and Mr McKibben shares that hope with the reader.
Useful Inefficiencies.......2007-08-29
McKibben is one of our best modern thinkers on environmentalism and conservation, ever since debuting with his classic "The End of Nature" in 1989. In this new book he has largely tackled mainstream economic theory and how it has inflicted worldwide damage on the environment and on human communities. Standard development economics suffers from an unyielding focus on efficiencies and consumption, but this more often than not leads to widespread damage and unhappiness. Planners and politicians focus obsessively on per capita utility and efficiency, and vehemently disdain anything that may reduce efficiency for some individuals but may very well improve communities and the planet. McKibben's great contribution here is his coverage of new studies of human happiness. Especially in America, we have passed the point of gaining any more happiness from increased consumption of things, and we have become largely unhappy over the ensuing loss of community and nature. A new worldwide understanding of how economics really works has become imperative - more is no longer better.
McKibben has located many useful examples around the world of communities practicing new sustainable development strategies with demonstrated benefits for all involved. Unfortunately, the areas in which such great things are happening have particular political and economic conditions that make such experiments beneficial (including the American location McKibben covers most often - politically distinctive rural Vermont). The underlying flaw in this book is that McKibben must resort to pretty wishful idealism when applying these local success stories to the world economic system. A related problem is that the second half of the book, where the rubber should be meeting the road in realistically applying the local to the global, largely degenerates into repetitive descriptions of benefits in lieu of real prescriptions for change. However, McKibben definitely deserves credit for explaining in an accessible way all the tragic flaws of mainstream economic theory (see the books and articles he cites for the real lowdown), and it's about time us regular folks resisted the power players - for the benefit of ourselves and our larger community. [~doomsdayer520~]
Turbines and Prayer Wheels.......2007-08-06
This is a wonderful book that swings your emotions from despair to joy and back. I marveled over the story of the village of Gorasin in Bangladesh where the people said no to pesticides after living with their devastating effects and the village has become an organic oases. That is the theme of the book, communities with members from near or far working together to make lives better.
McKibben mentions Heifer International, one of my favorite organizations, and their impact on one man in China with the donation of 48 rabbits and lots of technical advice and the wave of change in his community because of his successful rabbit enterprise.
A group called Future Generations trained some villagers in Tibet and the villagers devised and installed a system that carried water "through a series of split-bamboo pipes, and then through a turbine that used the dynamo from a junked car. A hydrology expert could have helped them build a more efficient system, but all the locals knew how to repair this setup."".....(Also, the hydrology expert might not have thought to use the water pouring out of the turbine to spin a prayer wheel.)"
World community - helping local people meld the old and the new.
But, McKibben asserts, it is time for the haves of the world to share more than knowledge, it is time to cut back on what we use. "Most obviously, if the rich world began making less extreme demands on the planet, poor countries would have more physical margin to work with - a little slack. ...If we Americans can use less coal and gas and oil, we'll in effect free some of the atmosphere to absorb the carbon that the poor world must emit to meet basic needs."
There is so much more in this book to ponder and act on, put it high on your reading list.
Quite a scary future.......2007-07-23
Wow, makes me want to move to Vermont and become an organic farmer. I found this book to bring up some very good points about our current unsustainable economic situation. Over the past 300 years we have created an economic "machine" based on efficiency and production that will be very hard to change intentionally. McKibben offers some ideas on what the new New Deal will need to be if we want to continue a sustainable economy, which includes taking everything back to a local scale. Food, work, consumer goods need to develop inside the community where one lives. Less efficiency, more community and "neighborliness". It's a great idea. I just wonder if people will choose this before the collapse of our current system or try to figure something out after it's too late. I pesimistically think the latter.
Growing Smaller.......2007-07-11
The main premise of this book is that the local economy is the deeper economy. Thus the healthier and wealthier community. Bill McKibben hardly ever deals in the abstract, rather he is constantly giving examples and providing illustrations of how this type of economy gets practiced locally. He describes the little experiments of living locally . . . such as one winter how he canned all of his food ahead of time and only ate things within a local radius. His goal is to make a connection between the local community and the economy. He spends a good portion of his time sharing about the relationships he has formed in his quest to shop and consume on a local scale. Consequently, the value of relationships in driving and sustaining a healthy economy are focused on a lot. It's not some over-romanticized look back into the past and the way things used to be. Rather it's an imaginative redreaming of how one can exist both in urban and suburban settings at a local level, valuing relationships and health over fast and easy. The book is extremely insightful and a moderately easy read. And well worth it.
Average customer rating:
- The Godfather of the Libertarian Movement
- The Hobo Philosopher
- More Capitalist Rhetoric
- Like him or not - important to know
- Brilliant
|
Capitalism and Freedom: Fortieth Anniversary Edition
Milton Friedman
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
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Free to Choose: A Personal Statement
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ASIN: 0226264211 |
Book Description
Selected by the Times Literary Supplement as one of the "hundred most influential books since the war"
How can we benefit from the promise of government while avoiding the threat it poses to individual freedom? In this classic book, Milton Friedman provides the definitive statement of his immensely influential economic philosophy—one in which competitive capitalism serves as both a device for achieving economic freedom and a necessary condition for political freedom. The result is an accessible text that has sold well over half a million copies in English, has been translated into eighteen languages, and shows every sign of becoming more and more influential as time goes on.
Customer Reviews:
The Godfather of the Libertarian Movement.......2007-09-17
An absolute classic work in the areas of Laissez Faire economics and libertarianism. While not everyone in the libertarian movement idolizes Dr. Friedman, his work was written in such a clear and accessible way that it introduced classical liberalism to a generation of people in the 1960's, who were big government Keynesians. Friedman fought for individual liberty, and while he wasn't an anarcho-capitalist by any means and sometimes uses government to solve problems, he is still the godfather of the libertarian movement and the libertarian movement would not be where it is today without Dr. Friedman.
The Hobo Philosopher.......2007-09-14
I hate to be so outspoken on a review of a book. But I find this gentleman elemental, childish and silly. On top of all of that I do not believe that he is entirely sincere. This man was a statistician and "accountant" not a theoretician. He actually won the Nobel Prize. This I find very hard to believe. I have not given up on him though. But I have yet to find anything that he has written that I can get past the introduction. The more I read of what he has to say the worse it gets.
More Capitalist Rhetoric.......2007-08-07
Clearly he overlooks the basic concepts of political economy in an effort to advocate for capitalist societies. Moreover, he fails to confront the basic questions of inequality which is characteristic in capitalist societies.
Friedman asserts that communism and socialism are mere tools of totalitarian regimes as if he's even attempted to study marx. This book is extremely lopsided and narrow in its praise for a system that has accounted for much pain in the world.
If your looking for a balanced intellectual perspective, look else where. However, I will recommend this book after gaining a true foundation on the study of political economy; try Adam Smith, Karl Marx, John Locke, James Mill, Keynes, Proudhon, Ricardo, Owen, Engels, etc.
Like him or not - important to know.......2007-07-26
Overview / Review: Milton Friedman, like him or hate him, is an essential economic theorist to tackle if one is interested in that field or in theories of economic justice. Having a progressive bias, I disagree strongly with many Friedman's theories. Having said that, for anyone interested in getting the essentials of his "liberal" (used in the older, more classic sense) economic views would do well to read this book. Friedman is opposed to state intervention in individual freedom, so many see Friedman as a modern counterpart to Adam Smith. Friedman advocates a free-market economy, with minimal taxation and government interference, because he believes the free market approach assures the greatest measure of freedom, justice, and overall affluence. Many modern conservatives have echoed the arguments he makes herein.
Friedman is actually convincing in his review on a few counts - the abuse of licensure, the problems of tax loopholes, and the fact that there are frequent shortcomings of the well-intended social welfare state. Having said that, however, Friedman does seem unduly biased in favor of a society so individualistic it is therefore almost atomistic, with little to no social cohesion. Some of his arguments are more assertions and claims than full-blown arguments, and one wishes he had addressed major issues in more detail (perhaps he does elsewhere). The book's virtue is that it is brief, but its weakness is also that its arguments are often too brief, and too compact. Karl Marx for example, has many faults in his theory that can be found, but Friedman too casually blows off Marx in about one page of analysis (Chapter 10, p. 167-8). Friedman's argument for a very limited government, and against socialism/communism, would have been more convincing if he had devoted a full chapter to Marx for one, and more attention to other matters of social justice, inequality, and oppression.
In a nutshell: this book encapsulates Friedman's "liberal" or laissez-faire approach to a wide range of issues on economics, government, and capitalism. The free individual is given utmost importance, and government that governs best is that which governs (or interferes) least in his Friedman's view. Not convincing from the standpoint of those interested in progressive social justice (Niebuhr's views on selfishness and power are more cogent), but essential to read and analyze if one is interested in economics and ethics.
Brilliant.......2007-07-05
Friedman was America's preeminent economists that explained the connection between Political and Economic freedom without the signature econo-techno-babble that is the vernacular of lesser economists. This book should be REQUIRED reading for all high school, or at the very least, college students. I enjoyed it immensely and will be wary of "too many dollars chasing too few goods"!
Average customer rating:
- Calculations are only as good as your numbers
- Pants on fire?
- Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed.
- Very Interesting
- History as Science Fiction
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History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
Anatoly Fomenko
Manufacturer: Mithec
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ASIN: 2913621058 |
Book Description
Recorded history is a finely-woven magic fabric of intricate lies about events predating the sixteenth century. There is not a single piece of evidence that can be reliably and independently traced back earlier than the eleventh century. This book details events that are substantiated by hard facts and logic, and validated by new astronomical research and statistical analysis of ancient sources.
Customer Reviews:
Calculations are only as good as your numbers.......2007-08-03
Yes, we can all agree that mainstream history is nearly 100% BS due to politics, economics, ego, problems with dating techniques, and various conspiracies. Agreed. But, I've been researching the distinct possibility that human history (in terms of civilizations) are much more ancient than we've been told, so coming across this book was very interesting to me. I wondered how Fomenko could be wrong (if at all) because he is very persuasive in his presentations. Then it dawned on me. If at previous times in prehistory, due to the various catastrophies that are well documented (comets, asteroids, planetary disruptions, plasma discharge, pole reversals, etc) the Earth was in a different position in relation to the sun, different tilt on its axis, different orbit, different rotation (in terms of velocity and DIRECTION), and the continents were in different positions, then would this not cause the ancients to see the sky (constellations) differently? In other words, is Fomenko making erronious assumptions about the physics of the Earth in pre-history, which then corrupt his data with regards to dating the relevant astrology? The last event to seriously disrupt our planet occured roughly 3500 years ago, according to other good researchers, so is it possible Fomenko has been confused by this? The vastly different physics of our planet in the not so distant past may explain this confusion, which is not to say the "mainstream" version of history is correct; on the contrary. I am not an expert in these fields, but wanted to see if this idea could spark discussion.
Pants on fire?.......2007-07-19
Will people ever read before spamming? Yes, Jesuits could not rewrite world history alone, they had help. Anyway, Dr Prof Acad A.Fomenko does not point to jesuits as the driving force of world wide history manipulation in published volumes 1,2,3;, actually he barely mentions the poor devils. Check it with 'Search inside' feature, please. China is rarely mentioned either, in fact, Dr Fomenko is completely eurocentric. Right, his theory contradicts all mainstream schools of history, because in their actual state they are all built on blatantly erroneus chronology. You don't need a mysterious cabal (conspiracy) to falsify history, the falsification is its modus operandi. It is inherent to history(ians) to falsify (distort) events, as it is inherent to humans to boast as it is inherent to power (authority) to legimize itself by referrring to glorious past made to its own order. Dr Prof Fomenko and team have identified scores of instances of such manipulation in Russian, European, etc.. history, and delivered valid statistical proof thereof. His own 'reconstruction' is completely another story. Forget c14 as a valid method of dating. W.Libby has initially discovered a brilliant method of INDEPENDENT dating. Too bad, c14 method has become a joke after a forced marrige with dendrochronology with consensual chronological scale inbuilt. Radiocarbon method can't stand blind tests, but is so very productive as a rubberstamp.
Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed. .......2007-04-09
There is no doubt that history as most know it is a sham, & institution's version of History both University & Church is fradulent & inaccurate. Everything was established with an agenda, The real "Dark Ages" are now when we have access to incredible amounts of information past authorities & more important 'common folk' didn't have but our institutions & educators are slow to evolve because of what has ignorantly & arrogantly been taught for too long. This is on many subjects not just Chronology.
For anyone to question "Why would a Mathematician have anything credible to say of History?" The answer is from Dr. Fomenko's preface in the book: "It would be worthwhile to remind the reader that in the XVI-XVII century Chronology was considered to be a subdivision of Mathematics." These volumes could possibly be some of the most important works to date & should be read by everyone with an interest in History, especially professors & educators who have a duty to the public. I have read both books & must say that 'Chronology 1' has some very eye opening & revolutionary information. Even if these volumes are part true the implications are profound & opens the doors to further investigations & questions which must be done. I speak several different lanquages & must say the logic Dr. Fomenko uses with "inflection" of words & words being read from left to right in one region & right to left in another then written backwards, the removal of vowels & get down to basics of words, or different cities & locations having the same name etc. is correct. Vowel usage has always been optional & varied, actually complicating linquistics & study. The first thing one has to understand is that words never had a fixed spelling in history like we do now, the spelling of words was mutable & regional, as well as names & titles of people were vast, varied & changed, NOTHING WAS FIXED or understood linear. Matters of Life & Death as well as financial profiteering yesterday & today were & are made with ignorant, illogical & conspiratorial views of history & reality, it's time people get closer to the Truth & society collectively grow up.
Very Interesting.......2007-03-07
It is a good proposal and I believe it will mature into something even better in the future. I think it deserves to be read.
History as Science Fiction.......2007-01-10
Anatoly Fomenko has written a very intriguing book, full of pictures, charts, and computer 'proof' of his thesis: backwards of AD900 we don't really know what happened or when. Between AD900 and AD1600 there is more certainty, but there is still a lot of fuzzy ground, and things don't get reliable until we get past the 1600's where the printing press made it very difficult for the perpetrators of this timeline manipulation to change anything that had been committed to print. The Dark Ages did not happen. Books were burned for a reason. One organization has doubled the actual length of its existence by expanding the real chronology. Read why.
I had always wondered why Christ died about AD33 and yet men waited until the 11th century to form the Knights Templar, the Cathars, etc and go after the Holy Land by force. Why the 1000 year gap? Turns out there wasn't more than a 10-12 year gap and he proves it using astronomy. This also implies that the planet is not as old as we have been told, and current Christian and other creationist scientists are already championing that idea without being aware of Fomenko's book. The two groups, creationist scientists and the Russian mathematical analysts corroborate each other. Fascinating.
Of course, all this flies in the face of what we have been told traditionally is the 'proper' chronology of western civilization, and most readers will experience 'cognitive dissonance' in reading this book. It means that our history going backwards from AD1600 becomes progressively more incorrect and unreliable until it cannot be trusted at all... in the space of 700-800 years.
Naturally, the curious, open-minded reader will want to know WHO did this, WHY, and did any of the events we think of as really ancient ever happen?
Dr. Fomenko is a respected scientist/mathematician at Moscow State University who has already answered these questions to the satisfaction of his initially skeptical colleagues. Most of them are now believers, a few still refuse to believe (the usual diehards), and of course the western press has ignored Fomenko's work -- for obvious reasons when you read the book. The ones who perpetrated this chronology ruse have a lot to answer for. They are still with us. That's why this book is a well-kept secret.
I gave the book a 4-star rating because I was unable to check out some of his claims; those I checked were as he said. But if even 1/3 of his claims are true, this punches a big hole in what we think is our history, the meaning of western civilization, our educational process (for repeating the ruse as gospel), and the trustworthiness of the organization that perpetrated this ruse, well-intentioned or not.
This book relates to current research into a Young Earth paradigm, to John Keel's discoveries about our planet, and Fr Malachi Martin's insights (in his now out-of-print books). We are indeed sheep who are manipulated and kept ignorant -- for a reason. While knowing what these men have to say may be the "booby prize" (as in: 'what can you do with this knowledge?'), it will provide interesting reading. Didn't someone say: "...and the Truth will set you free."?? For you to judge if this book contains the truth.
Book Description
Max Weber's Economy and Society is the greatest sociological treatise written in this century. Published posthumously in Germany in the early 1920's, it has become a constitutive part of the modern sociological imagination. Economy and Society was the first strictly empirical comparison of social structures and normative orders in world-historical depth, containing the famous chapters on social action, religion, law, bureaucracy, charisma, the city, and the political community with its dimensions of class, status and power.
Economy and Status is Weber's only major treatise for an educated general public. It was meant to be a broad introduction, but in its own way it is the most demanding textbook yet written by a sociologist. The precision of its definitions, the complexity of its typologies and the wealth of its historical content make the work a continuos challenge at several levels of comprehension: for the advanced undergraduate who gropes for his sense of society, for the graduate student who must develop his own analytical skills, and for the scholar who must match wits with Weber.
When the long-awaited first complete English edition of Economy and Society was published in 1968, Arthur Stinchcombe wrote in the American Journal of Sociology: "My answer to the question of whether people should still start their sociological intellectual biographies with Economy and Society is yes." Reinhard Bendix noted in the American Sociological Review that the "publication of a compete English edition of Weber's most systematic work [represents] the culmination of a cultural transmission to the American setting...It will be a study-guide and compendium for years to come for all those interested in historical sociology and comparative study."
In a lengthy introduction, Guenther Roth traces the intellectual prehistory of Economy and Society, the gradual emergence of its dominant themes and the nature of its internal logic.
Mr. Roth is a Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. Mr. Wittich heads an economic research group at the United Nations.
Customer Reviews:
classic.......2007-01-05
Weber is great, so is this book. You can find the most origins of modern thoughts in his book
A Classic .......2005-05-06
This is an uncommly brilliant work in social theory and sociology. Moreover, economic sociology was founded through "Economy and Society", especially its second chapter ("Sociological Categories of Economic Action") which is the size of a small book (approx. 200 pages).
The general theoretical approach of Weber can be characterized as one of "interpretive economic sociology", that is, as a type of economic sociology in which the concept of "meaning" is at the very center of the explanatory exercise.
Social action (to follow Ch. 1) is defined as a type of behavior to which meaning is attached ("action"), and which is oriented to the behavior of others ("social"). Economic sociology consequently deals with "economic social action".
"Economy and Society" was part of a larger work entitled "Handbook of Social Economics", which included volumess on "Economy and Nature", "Economy and Technology" - and "Economy and Society". In his work Weber explores such topics as "economy and law", "economy and religion", "economy and politics", and much more.
The work "Economy and Society", finally, is a bric-a-brac. Weber himself only sent 4 chs to the printer (=Chs 1-4). The rest of the 2 volumes consists of manuscripts that his wife and economist Melchior Palyi put together, pretty much as they saw fit. Caution is consequently necessary when reading "Economy and Society"; and this work should not be treated as "a book" by Weber.
comment of a comment made four years ago.......2004-03-30
I expect this comment is going to be useful, if at all, only to first year graduate students, so it'll be understandable if it's not rated very highly.... Anyway, just a quick note on Mr. Jack White's comment of April 11, 2000. One thing that Max Weber's Economy and Society is NOT, is a foundational text for structural-functionalism. That honor would probably go to Emile Durkheim's The Division of Labor in Society-- to be followed oh-so many years later by seminal works of Americans Talcott Parsons and Robert K. Merton. I'm not sure what Mr. White was thinking, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't about classical sociological theory.
What??.......2004-03-23
I'm a little confused. I purchased this book because of it's comprehensiveness (1400+ pages of work by Weber), but when the book arrived, it was only about 700 pages long. Am I missing something here? If I paid $20 for a used 1400 page copy and receive a 700 page book, should I only be charged $10? Strange.
ES and Schluchter's developmental history.......2003-10-10
It seems that many people comment this book with the difficulty to read and the bad organization. However, I want to suggest that after read Schluchter's 'The Rise of Western Rationalism', you will know more about why Weber's writings are in this style. Simply speaking, it links to Weber's view of History, and if he want to elaborate the history in a approiate way, not a simple linear evolutionary way, he had to demonstrate the whole picture--or in Schluchter's word, 'basic configuration'--of history. History, in this case the rise of Rationalism, is not compose solely by few influential events, but also related to the others. Those 'significant historical events' are only the consequence of the competition between ideas and historical events, therefore, Weber wanted to explain why the configuration favour the rise of western rationalism, so he must concern all elements constitute the history. That is, Weber showed us the conditions and the process of competition within or among the many spheres, I think that is why Weber had to use this seems fragmented writing style.
Book Description
What determines the size and form of redistributive programs, the extent and type of public goods provision, the burden of taxation across alternative tax bases, the size of government deficits, and the stance of monetary policy during the course of business and electoral cycles? A large and rapidly growing literature in political economics attempts to answer these questions. But so far there is little consensus on the answers and disagreement on the appropriate mode of analysis.
Combining the best of three separate traditions--the theory of macroeconomic policy, public choice, and rational choice in political science--Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini suggest a unified approach to the field. As in modern macroeconomics, individual citizens behave rationally, their preferences over economic outcomes inducing preferences over policy. As in public choice, the delegation of policy decisions to elected representatives may give rise to agency problems between voters and politicians. And, as in rational choice, political institutions shape the procedures for setting policy and electing politicians. The authors outline a common method of analysis, establish several new results, and identify the main outstanding problems.
Customer Reviews:
The best Political Science AND Economics book.......2003-04-08
The authors understand that the study of political institutions drives political science and apply economic principles to do this methodologically. This book evaluates various political institutions in their barest forms and derives intuitive results for their expected performance using elementary economic modelling techniques. The book logically extends its arguments and provides interesting normative evaluations as well. The authors are pioneers in what they do, but, unfortunately, are not likely to be accepted as mainstream political scientists.
Book Description
Allan H. Meltzer's monumental history of the Federal Reserve System tells the story of one of America's most influential but least understood public institutions. This first volume covers the period from the Federal Reserve's founding in 1913 through the Treasury-Federal Reserve Accord of 1951, which marked the beginning of a larger and greatly changed institution.
To understand why the Federal Reserve acted as it did at key points in its history, Meltzer draws on meeting minutes, correspondence, and other internal documents (many made public only during the 1970s) to trace the reasoning behind its policy decisions. He explains, for instance, why the Federal Reserve remained passive throughout most of the economic decline that led to the Great Depression, and how the Board's actions helped to produce the deep recession of 1937 and 1938. He also highlights the impact on the institution of individuals such as Benjamin Strong, governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in the 1920s, who played a key role in the adoption of a more active monetary policy by the Federal Reserve. Meltzer also examines the influence the Federal Reserve has had on international affairs, from attempts to build a new international financial system in the 1920s to the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944 that established the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and the failure of the London Economic Conference of 1933.
Written by one of the world's leading economists, this magisterial biography of the Federal Reserve and the people who helped shape it will interest economists, central bankers, historians, political scientists, policymakers, and anyone seeking a deep understanding of the institution that controls America's purse strings.
"It was 'an unprecedented orgy of extravagance, a mania for speculation, overextended business in nearly all lines and in every section of the country.' An Alan Greenspan rumination about the irrational exuberance of the late 1990s? Try the 1920 annual report of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve. . . . To understand why the Fed acted as it did—at these critical moments and many others—would require years of study, poring over letters, the minutes of meetings and internal Fed documents. Such a task would naturally deter most scholars of economic history but not, thank goodness, Allan Meltzer."—Wall Street Journal
"A seminal work that anyone interested in the inner workings of the U. S. central bank should read. A work that scholars will mine for years to come."—John M. Berry, Washington Post
"An exceptionally clear story about why, as the ideas that actually informed policy evolved, things sometimes went well and sometimes went badly. . . . One can only hope that we do not have to wait too long for the second installment."—David Laidler, Journal of Economic Literature
"A thorough narrative history of a high order. Meltzer's analysis is persuasive and acute. His work will stand for a generation as the benchmark history of the world's most powerful economic institution. It is an impressive, even awe-inspiring achievement."—Sir Howard Davies, Times Higher Education Supplement
Customer Reviews:
Not for the layman.......2003-12-12
This much heralded account of the Federal Reserve is justly lauded in academic circles because Meltzer brings forth many Fed documents which have long been buried away and unavailable to scholars. He is able to pursue step-by-step Fed actions and relate what happened in all those many meetings behind closed doors. Through the mass of information he has uncovered and his own in-depth knowledge of monetary policy and the Fed, he is able to bring new facts to light and correct previous interpretations that are more often than not those of Friedman and Schwartz's A Monetary History of the United States.
The weaknesses of Meltzer's book stem from his massive archive of information and the strength of his predecessors. The sheer volume of information he is trying to convey prompts the narrative to drift and the reader sometimes loses the point. And, as a good academic historian, he is engaged in a dialogue with other historians of the Fed and monetary policy that can push the layman to the sidelines. Meltzer's history assumes the reader has a rather advanced knowledge of economics and finance such as an understanding of the real bills doctrine and the operation of an international gold standard. Also, the charts and tables are often not very helpful in understanding the text or at least could have been presented in a better manner.
Overall, Meltzer does not produce any stunning revelations but a great many correctives to previous accounts and much added detail. The novice to the history of US monetary policy would do better to read Richard Timberlake's book (though taken with a grain of salt because of its conservative leanings) or the classic work by Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz.
Amazon.com
Julian L. Simon is the world's greatest contrarian. The Ultimate Resource 2--an update, not a sequel, despite the title--skewers the sacred cows of environmentalism, population control, and Paul Ehrlich. In the contest between resource scarcity and human ingenuity, Simon bets the farm on the ability of intelligent people to overcome their problems. Thankfully, he is not a theorist. This book lays out convincing empirical evidence for Simon's prediction of a prosperous future. The key to progress is not state-run conservation programs, he says, but economic and political freedom. Only then can talented minds properly apply themselves to our earthly dilemmas.
Book Description
Arguing that the ultimate resource is the human imagination coupled to the human spirit, Julian Simon led a vigorous challenge to conventional beliefs about scarcity of energy and natural resources, pollution of the environment, the effects of immigration, and the "perils of overpopulation." The comprehensive data, careful quantitative research, and economic logic contained in the first edition of The Ultimate Resource questioned widely held professional judgments about the threat of overpopulation, and Simon's celebrated bet with Paul Ehrlich about resource prices in the 1980s enhanced the public attention--both pro and con--that greeted this controversial book.
Now Princeton University Press presents a revised and expanded edition of The Ultimate Resource. The new volume is thoroughly updated and provides a concise theory for the observed trends: Population growth and increased income put pressure on supplies of resources. This increases prices, which provides opportunity and incentive for innovation. Eventually the innovative responses are so successful that prices end up below what they were before the shortages occurred. The book also tackles timely issues such as the supposed rate of species extinction, the "vanishing farmland crisis," and the wastefulness of coercive recycling.
In Simon's view, the key factor in natural and world economic growth is our capacity for the creation of new ideas and contributions to knowledge. The more people alive who can be trained to help solve the problems that confront us, the faster we can remove obstacles, and the greater the economic inheritance we shall bequeath to our descendants. In conjunction with the size of the educated population, the key constraint on human progress is the nature of the economic-political system: talented people need economic freedom and security to bring their talents to fruition.
Customer Reviews:
Simon research is revealing and a joy too study!.......2006-08-02
The engineering process for forecasting scarcity is as follows: 1. Estimate the presently known physical quantity of the 2. Extrapolate the future rate of use from the current use rate; and 3. Subtract the successive estimates of use in from inventory.
The economic process for forecasting is as follows: 1. ask whether there is any convincing reason to think that the period for which you are forecasting will be different from the past, going back as far as the data will allow; 2. if there is no good reason to reject the past trend as representative of the future as well, ask whether there is a reasonable explanation for the observed trend; 3. if there is no reason to believe that the future will be different than from the past, and if you have a solid explanation for the trend-or even if you lack a solid theory, but the data are overwhelming-project the trend into the future.
There is a wide disparity between engineering and economic forecasting. "Prediction is always a leap of faith; there is no scientific guarantee from past to future. The correctness of an assumption that what happened in the past will similarly happen in the future rests on your wise judgment and knowledge of your subject matter." "A prediction based on past data is sound if it is sensible to assume that the past and the future belong to the same statistical universe, that is, if you can expect conditions that held in the past to remain the same in the future. Ask yourself, "have conditions changed in recent years in such manner that the data on natural resources generated over the many past decades are no longer relevant."
The costs of natural resources have been steadily declining. Another way of thinking about costs is the proportion of ones total income to get them. This measure reveals a steady decline. "This trend makes it clear that the cost of minerals-even if it becomes considerably higher, which we have no reason to expect-is almost irrelevant to our standard of living, and hence an increased scarcity of mineral is not a great danger to our peacetime standard of living.
World reserves do not go down they even go up. The anti-intuitive conclusion is that even as we use coal and oil and iron and other natural resources, they are becoming less scarce.
As soon as information about an impending scarcity becomes known and accepted, people begin buying the commodity; they bid up the present market price until it reflects the expected future scarcity. In 1973, Japanese overreacted to OPEC supply manipulation. "The Japanese, and above all Japanese officialdom, were seized by hysteria in 1974 when raw materials shortages were cropping up everywhere. They bought and bought and bought (copper, iron, pulp, sulfur, and coking coal). Now they are frantically trying to get out of commitments to take delivery, and have slashed raw materials imports nearly in half. Even so, industrial inventories are bulging with high-priced raw materials." Japan paid heavy for the blunder. Mineral resources will not rise in real price but only adjust for inflation.
The prophecies of "Limits to Growth" are false. Interestingly, China attempted to control growth resulting in millions starving. The Chinese chose to start having babies. The Chinese government responded with force and implemented a policy of one child per family. A political scientist discussing the relationship of resources to national security refers to the "incontrovertible fact that many crucial resources are nonrenewable". "The assumption of finiteness indubitably misleads many scientific forecasters because their conclusions follow inexorably from that assumption. Limits to Growth gives this false doctrine, "The world model is based on the fundamental assumption that there is an upper limit to the total amount of food that can be produced annually by the world's agricultural system". John Maynard Keynes doctrine of diminishing returns implied an assertion impending scarcity in Europe. "Law of diminishing returns" fails because there is no law that compels cost to rise. Technology advancements mitigate the effects of diminishing returns when applied to costs.
Price is the key. Low prices cause innovation. Innovation reduces inefficiency. Increased efficiency improves discovery of new resources or a substitute process or commodity: Kerosene for oil, electricity for steam, and possibility hydrogen for hydro. Future generations will be better off for the discovery. Heighten scarcity causes prices to rise. The higher prices present opportunity and prompt investors and entrepreneurs to search for solutions. In a free society solutions are eventually found.
Infinite resource. "Even if energy is the relevant constraint for fabricating new kinds of raw materials, on would need to take into account, at the very least, all the mass/energy in the solar system. This amount is so huge relative to our use of energy, even by many multiples of the present population and many multiples of the present rate of individual use, that the end of the solar system in seven billion years or whenever would hardly be affected by our energy use now."
Man has a strong propensity towards creation rather than destruction. We can expect a positive preponderance of creativity over our exploitative activities. We are not at a turning point of destruction. Instead there is a reliable long-term pattern of non-scarcity exists.
The "Population Bomb" is erroneous, "the battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines-hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death". Food production is so complete that if government subsidies did not artificially hold up the prices then food prices would drop to lower levels. More food is grown on less land and with less labor. Erosion losses are mitigated, as farmers move towards flat land agriculture. Flat land is farmed using large equipment, automated irrigation systems, and better fertilizers. Economy of scale increases supply. Food production in the US could be immediately enlarged if the government stopped paying farmers to keep idle land. The price of wheat has fallen adjusted for inflation even as the world demand for wheat increased. "Food supply increased because of agricultural knowledge resulting from research and development that was induced by the increased demand, together with the improved ability of farmers to get their produce to market on better transportation." All-important historical trends point towards cheaper food. Famines were caused by government policies: 1958 Chinese famine (30 million died) and 1930s Ukranians (7 million died), and Africa and Somolia distribution breakdowns and warlord profiteering. In 1991, China had reversed its scarcity problems and was shipping grain and meat to the Soviets. India can vastly improve its food production and seek to match Japan and Taiwan food production levels. Better storage would reduce waste to pests by 15-20 percent. In short run costs increase, but in the long run population pressures reduce costs.
Hydroponics is sufficiently practical that one supermarket has built a 10,000 sq ft vegetable garden. Phytofarm in Dekalb, Illinois produces mainly lettuce and other garden vegetables in a factory measuring 200 by 250 feet, at a rate of a ton of food per day, enough to completely feed 500 to 1000 people. Energy from artifical light is the key raw material in state-of-the-art hydroponics. Even at present electricity costs, PhytoFarm is profitable, and its food prices are affordable at ordinary American incomes. The entire present population of the world could be supplied with a square area about 140 miles on a side. Phytofarm techniques could feed a hundred times the world present population, say 500 billion people, on 1 percent of present farmland.
Fish farms have begun to produce at or near competitive prices. The main obstacle to a rapid increase in aquaculture costs and hence is that wild fish are too cheap to invite competition. Aquaculture capacity can be expanded almost indefinitely.
We believe too much bad news. We need to have more faith in free markets and innovation. Land is almost irrelevant to food production.
The sharp rise in the 1970s provides an illustrative case history of government intervention in the energy market. Conventional experts predicted a continued rise to say $3 a barrel by 1990s. The 1979 OPEC prices rise were the result of cartel agreements and not extraction cost increases. If one wants to know about he world's capacity to produce oil, the appropriate indicator is the cost of production and transportation and for oil the cost remains a small portion of the production costs. During the energy crisis the cost of oil did not raise at all and it remain 1 percent of the selling price of crude. The energy prices to the consumer had been falling continually. In the face of world-wide surplus of oil, Saudi Arabia and several other OPEC nations cut their oil production by 10 percent. "Still another waste due to false energy scares was the $15 billion thrown away on the development of synthetic fuels." "Government price-regulation system had the effect of supporting the OPEC cartel's price-fixing power and subsidizing member countries operations". The government measures harmed the consumer causing short-run shortages and long-run diminishing supply.
When OPEC boosted the price of oil in 1973, the price of uranium began to jump from $8 to $53 a ton within three years. This meant that Westinghouse might accrue losses of perhaps $2 billion. At the same time Gulf Oil together with the Canadian government and other producers of uranium got together to keep the price of uranium high.
Stick to the arguments.......2006-03-26
One reviewer below, apparently without any pause to shift gears manages to write:
"The poor quality of the critics' arguments, along with their ad hominem attacks, reveals why environmentalist doomsaying is a sad, pathetic, quasi-religion that bitterly opposes examining the facts."
Assuming he or she knows what 'ad hominem' means, this shows just how hard it is to stay objective when the stakes are so high.
Sebb
What would Simon say now?.......2005-11-06
Julian Simon won a famous ten-year-long bet with Paul Erlich regarding the prices of certain resources in the 1980's, which Simon predicted would decline in real terms. If Simon hadn't died a few years ago and he had made a similar set of bets with someone starting in 1995 for resources like Atlantic cod, copper, nickel, natural gas in North America and petroleum, by 2005 he would have lost, and spectacularly so. Apparently Simon's model for "unlimited" resources has begun to break down. The increasingly strained world oil supply shows that throwing more ingenuity and money at a resource problem can't always solve it. For example, despite having access to petroleum and natural gas from the North Sea, with the double-digit decline in North Sea output the British government has plans for _rationing_ fossil fuels this winter (2005-06) in the event of prolonged frigid weather.
And why do people keep referring to the Simon/Ehrlich bet any way? It doesn't follow from that contest that things haven't gone awry now.
As for the reviewer who blames government regulations and environmentalists for our current resource constraints, consider the following:
1. The world consumes a billion barrels of oil every 12 days or so at the current rate, up by 20 percent from a decade ago. If environmentalists and government regulators have tried to interfere with the growth of this flow of petroleum, they have clearly failed.
2. Much of our oil comes from parts of the world with few or no environmental restrictions. Even within the U.S., people along the Gulf Coast live with a level of petroleum-derived pollution and environmental damage that the rest of the country wouldn't tolerate.
3. Evolutionary psychologists will tell you that when people experience economic anxiety, they often blame other tribes for the resource problems they helped to cause themselves. If you feel anxious about having to pay twice as much for natural gas or gasoline as you did a couple years ago, look in the mirror for the reason instead of blaming caricatures from the Right's demonology.
Simon would still win today.......2005-10-16
If you examine the history of all "resources" you discover that they do become cheaper and more abundant over time. Why? In the better book, The Unltimate Resource, Simon goes into much more in depth research and analysis. The human mind is the "Ultimate Resource."
Lets take one example, copper. Copper was heavily used in the telecommunictions industry as well as in electronics. But the heavier user was in telecommunications. All of the scare about copper running out was nonsense in many ways. But the way that no ideologically driven socialist/environmentalist ever considers is through invention and innovation. The invention of fiber optical cable eliminated millions of tons worth of copper phone lines. Optical cable is made out of sand, the most abundant resource on the planet. We will never run out. Then consider that nano-technology is already working on making a nano fiber that will conduct electricity. Nano fibers are made out of carbon, THE most abundant resource in the universe! As soon as that work is finished, millions of tons of copper overhead electrical and underground cable will be recycled. Coppers price will go down again, and its abundance will increase. Humans continue to do this, create something that has never existed before and increase the abundance of all resources.
Lets also recognize that it was the discovery of petroleum oil and its production that saved the whales, as it made the whaling fleets obsolete. Wihtin a few years the whaling towns of boston and maine went mostly bust. Whaling was expensive and dangerous. Petroleum oil, not whale oil then became the lubricant of the industrial revolution. Lets think about photography and silver. All film was silver intensive. With the advent of digital photography, now including digital x-rays! All of the silver and all of the chemicals once needed are not needed any longer. This now frees up that resource! Every advance in technology eventually replaces the lower, least productive and least efficient technology. It is an ongoing evolutionary process!
The difference between Dr. Simon and the green left is one of basic philosohpy. He and those like him believe in humanity and humanities incredible capabilities and the detractors do not. Is the glass half empty or half full is not a cogent arguement as long as one side [the green communists] stops up the mouth of the glass and allows no new water into the glass.
If you can stop all invovation and sustain humanity then yes, all resources will eventually run out! That is the main point.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
M. A. Plus "Advanced Atheist"
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<"Apparently Simon's model for "unlimited" resources has begun to break down. The increasingly strained world oil supply shows that throwing more ingenuity and money at a resource problem can't always solve it." >>
what bunk!
What Simon's critics never include in their "devanced" calculus is the factor of government interference in the markets through burdensome regulation. Environmental regulations, prohibitions on drilling, mining etc has caused an artificial shortage in these resources. These Enviro-morons have missed Simon et al's arguement. That given a free market and indivudals left alone to persue their "self" interesst all resources would drop in price and increase in abundance. Simon would win again if "environmentlaly safe" mining, drilling and exploration was allowed in and around the continental united states and throughout the world.
It is the artifical shortages cuased by enviro-socialism that makes it apear to the intellectually shallow, as if resources are increasing in scarcity and are going up in price.
Are you kidding me?.......2005-09-23
More frightening than Simon's non-sensical conclusions are the number of other reviewers who actually buy what Simon says. Here's one example of Simon's gross mischaracterization of scientifically accepted limits to our planet.
Simon suggests that we have infinite material and energy resources because the earth is an open system. Wrong! The earth scientifically accepted to be a closed system materially (save the odd meteor). This means that matter on earth is finite (a word Simon hates), and that it cycles through our ecological and geological systems.
The earth is an open system in terms of energy, because it receives a steady stream of energy from the sun. However, this in not infinite either, in a practical sense. Sure, we can consider it infinite in the sense that the flow will last billions of years, but the level of the flow is finite. If someone promised you $1000 a month for a million years, you wouldn't be a millionaire. You'd still have to budget that $1000 each month. That's what the earth does with the flow of energy from the sun. Therefore, to achieve sustainability, we must be able to exist with a finite level of material and energy resources.
Simon responds to this scientific reality by quoting Stephen Hawking about the infinite universe. No argument here. The universe may well be infinite, but the fact that we can't quite comprehend the outer limits of our universe has little bearing on our earthly supplies of energy and drinking water, for example. Simon tries to circumvent scientific reality with academic-sounding slight of hand, and he made a lot of money preaching his "good news" to those who don't want to hear anything else. Don't fall for it.
Still, this is worth reading just to be aware of the slop that Simon (and Bjorn Lomborg, Simon's predecessor)are trying to pass off as science.
Book Description
Each week the oil and gas fields of sub-Saharan Africa produce well over a billion dollars' worth of oil, an amount that far exceeds development aid to the entire African continent. Yet the rising tide of oil money is not promoting stability and development, but is instead causing violence, poverty, and stagnation. It is also generating vast corruption that reaches deep into American and European economies. In Poisoned Wells, Nicholas Shaxson exposes the root causes of this paradox of poverty from plenty, and explores the mechanisms by which oil causes grave instabilities and corruption around the globe. Shaxson is the only journalist who has had access to the key players in African oil, and is willing to make the connections between the problems of the developing world and the involvement of leading global corporations and governments.
Customer Reviews:
Poisoned Wells.......2007-06-11
Of the current crop of "what is wrong with Africa" books including "The Shackled Continent", "The White Man's Burden" and "The Trouble with Africa", Nicholas Shaxson's analysis and prescriptions for change are the most radical and on-the-money. Shaxson's book should be widely read and discussed. Unfortunately, too much invested in the status quo by all concerned to see much likelihood of change within the next few decades.
Book Description
This book represents a considerable revision and expansion of Public Choice II (1989). As in the previous editions, all of the major topics of public choice are covered. These include: why the state exists, voting rules, federalism, the theory of clubs, two-party and multiparty electoral systems, rent seeking, bureaucracy, interest groups, dictatorship, the size of government, voter participation, and political business cycles. Normative issues in public choice are also examined. The book is suitable for upper level courses in economics dealing with politics, and political science courses emphasizing rational actor models.
Download Description
This book represents a considerable revision and expansion of Public Choice II (1989). As in the previous editions, all of the major topics of public choice are covered. These include: why the state exists, voting rules, federalism, the theory of clubs, two-party and multiparty electoral systems, rent seeking, bureaucracy, interest groups, dictatorship, the size of government, voter participation, and political business cycles. Normative issues in public choice are also examined. The book is suitable for upper level courses in economics dealing with politics, and political science courses emphasizing rational actor models.
Customer Reviews:
Good Review Text on Rat-Choice Politics and Public Choice.......2003-05-22
This is a great book! As a political-science graduate student I've been exposed to a great deal of game-theory and rat-choice in my seminar classes, but, unfortunately, it has come in the form of numerous papers, piles of books, and several classes that did not build off of one another. I was left with the feeling that it was a very, very important subject, but it was presented in a manner that left me, as a student, with an incomplete picture of the topic and the breadth of work that has gone on in this field.
Mueller's achievements in this volume have been three:
1. Coherent presentation of the theory of public choice / rational politics.
2. Discussion of the most important empirical work that has gone on in this field in a unified fashion that leads one naturally into further inquiry in this area.
3. Logically organizes and presents the material in a way that reinforces concepts, logic, and thinking in the book.
These three things make this book a great review or introductory text to the field of public choice / rational politics that should be on the "must have" list of every serious student of politics and economics. Moreover, not being terribly skilled at mathematics myself, the material is presented both through intuitive written discussions, fairly simplistic "example" equations that are pretty easy to follow if you've had a "principles" microecon course with calculus, and, which I greatly appreciate, a fair amount of graphs. Moreover, the bibliography that the book draws on is very, very extensive...meaning that it has the additional utility of being a handy jumping off point if you're doing research in this area.
My only complaint, and this is a minor one, is that I would like a bit more math in the book either at the end of each chapter or in an appendix that works out, step-by-step, some of the additional concepts he runs over that aren't dealt with mathematically in the main text of the chapters themselves.
This, at least in my opinion, is an excellent book for the graduate student interested in learning about public choice / rational politics.
Book Description
In this book Ralph Gomory and William Baumol adapt classical trade models to the modern world economy. Trade today is dominated by manufactured goods, rapidly moving technology, and huge firms that benefit from economies of scale. This is very different from the largely agricultural world in which the classical theories originated. Gomory and Baumol show that the new and significant conflicts resulting from international trade are inherent in modern economies.
Today improvement in one country's productive capabilities is often attainable only at the expense of another country's general welfare. The authors describe why and when this is so and why, in a modern free-trade environment, a country might have a vital stake in the competitive strength of its industries.
Customer Reviews:
Interesting Discussion but poor Presentation.......2004-02-23
The first thing that struck me was the large number of typo's.
Starting with page 4: "when we does development abroad help"
and on through the rest of the book. Also, the graphics appear
crude.
In part 1, I could not find any reference to the fact that
"free" trade does not exist in the real world. Countries use
tariffs, taxes, subsidies, etc. to further their own interests.
Understanding International Trade.......2001-04-09
A must read book for anyone with an interest in International Trade. Gomory and Baumol take an insightful look into trade in this era of multinational companies, expanded trade and developing countries. They develop a technique to determine whether a trade decision is mutually beneficial (or detrimental) to the parties. While no "magic" formula to precisely determine the benefits of an individual trade decision, at least there is a cogent framework to start from.
As a lay reader it was apparent that to assure our continued growth and successes that we must continually innovate to create the next big retainable industry as well as continue productivity gains to compete with low wage developing countries in easy to enter industries where we have a major interest.
An exceptionally thorough analysis of today's world of trade.
Trade For Dummies.......2001-04-03
Don't be put off by the title. This book should be called "Trade for Dummies." The authors kindly start where most of us left off in Econ 101 - with comparative advantage. We all remember that nature endowed England with a comparative advantage in wool, and Portugal in wine, so that this trade was an obviously good thing.
But what about today's vastly more complex economy where considerations go far beyond the mere geography of natural resource distribution? What about the role of industrialization? Or technology? Or information? Who has what advantage? And how to measure it? The authors have solved this seemingly daunting task, and present their conclusions in a few simple graphs that could fit easily onto Mr. Laffer's napkin.
How do I know that they solved the problem of reducing all the complexities of international trade to a few simple graphs? Well, I really don't know because I am not enough of an economist or mathematician to follow the technical stuff, but the authors very kindly put all that in the second half of this slim volume as kind of an appendix for the professionals. That the two authors are a leading economist and a leading mathematician is obvious from the brief biographies. And that the work passes professional muster is obvious from the blurbs. So while I can't personally check the authors' assumptions and methodology, I can accept and fully understand their conclusions as set forth in the first half of the book - the only part I read.
Not surprisingly, the graphs show that most international trade is indeed mutually beneficial. But not all. The graphs also reveal what the authors call a zone of conflict. It is to this area that attention needs to be paid. What attention do the authors suggest? Well, they are a little coy. I suspect that at this stage they are just trying to get acceptance for their framework of analysis. Anyone questioning any aspect of unrestricted free trade today is subject to being labeled a protectionist, which is only one step above racist, so the authors understandably tread very carefully.
A splendid and provocative little book dealing with a very big subject.
Gripping Eye Opener.......2001-04-03
These 73 pages kept this layman engrossed and enlightened. You learn why World Peace through World Trade ain't necessarily so, but can be a win-win situation for nations who understand the theory of the Global Trade game.
In cogent and concise language,the two gifted authors upset the notion that a dollar of National Trading Income is indifferent to what is being traded. National Trading Income from a "retainable" industry like computer chips produce strategic strengths for a nation compared to the same amount of National Trading Income from potato chips.
This new vector on Global Trade alerts business leaders to rearrange intellectually their risk-reward equation to secure a more favorable outcome.
Great stuff!.......2001-02-09
Gomory and Baumol are two heavy-weights from the world of Economics, Industry and Mathematics who have made use of a lifetime's worth of observations to create a new theory of international trade. Their work is truely original, theoretically rigorous, and highly applicable to real-world problems: A powerful combination. As a graduate student in economics, I have found few books so compelling.
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Books Index
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