Book Description
This book, the result of an international collaborative project, provides a new quantitative view of the wartime economic experiences of six great powers: the UK, the United States, Germany, Italy, Japan and the USSR. A chapter is devoted to each country, while the introductory chapter presents a comparative overview. It aims to provide a text of statistical reference for those interested in international and comparative economic history, the history of World War II, the history of economic policy, and comparative economic systems.
Customer Reviews:
macroeconomic overview of major combatants.......1998-12-31
This book is a very learned overview of the macro-economic factors affecting the WWII war economies of major combatants. A certain degree of acquaintance with economic monetary theory is advisable. The fact that it includes all the major players is valuable (any article on Italy's war efforts is always welcome!), but the emphasis some of the articles give to econometric treatment is, frankly, irrelevant to understanding most of the war effort, especially when one is talking of survival. The book also tries to analyse how wartime experience helped shape the post war economy, a field in which it it quite successful. It is worth noting, by the way, that generally speaking all the authors seem to agree that wartime investment in capital formation and technical training schemes paid off for the vanquished, whilst in the case of the USSR, the amount of war destruction and the political predominance of the "industrial-military complex" led, ultimately, to economic stagnation.
Advisable for anyone with a serious interest in wartime economics.
Book Description
The Macro Polity provides the first comprehensive model of American politics at the system level. Focusing on the interactions between citizen evaluations and preferences, government activity and policy, and how the combined acts of citizens and governments influence one another over time, it integrates understandings of matters such as economic outcomes, presidential approval, partisanship, elections, and government policy-making into a single model. The book's macro and longitudinal focus makes it possible to directly connect the behaviors of electorate and government.
Customer Reviews:
An important and innovative work.......2007-02-10
This is one of the most interesting and important books on public opinion published in recent years. It is a direct descendant of V. O. Key's wonderful little book, "The Responsible Electorate."
Erikson et al. explore the dynamics related to the "macro polity." Many works on political behavior and public opinion fo0cus on individuals, using survey research results. This book aggregates the survey results to the level of the citizenry at large, and traces changes (and their effects) in the public mind over time. The authors follow the public mind from the Eisenhower through the Clinton years. On the one hand, this is only a limited slice of American history. On the other hand, this is the period (starting with Eisenhower) when we have the most useful survey data.
This is an academic work, and readers need to understand that. To critique this as too academic is to misunderstand the focus and purpose of this work. Nonetheless, even nonacademics can learn a great deal from this work if they persevere.
Studies of individual citizens'' attitudes and behavior are not flattering. Individuals are rather ill-informed, don't have a great deal of accurate knowledge of politics, and express attitudes and opinions that they may not really have. But a study of the "macro polity" yields another picture--of a collective wisdom that is far more astute than the individual level data might suggest. That's a key point of this book (as well as others like Page's and Shapiro's "The Rational Public").
On page xxi, the authors state this explicitly: "It is true that individual Americans have a weak grasp on the essentials of economics and economic policy, and it is also true that Americans, in the aggregate, are highly sensitive to real economic performance." In short, ". . .electorates are not myopic. . . ."
One of the most important aspects of this work is its demonstration that public policy decisions by government actually seem to be affected by changes in aggregate public political views. By examining the relationship between policy decisions by various government entities (Congress, President, Supreme Court, for example), the authors conclude that (page 314)"Public opinion influences public policy."
In an interesting experiment, the authors simulate what would have happened to the public mind, to party control of government, and so on if Jimmy Carter had won re-election in 1980. Chapter 10 is a provocative chapter, exploring "What might have been."
All in all, this is one of the more important and well done volumes focusing on public opinion--and its impact on politics (and the effects of politics on public opinion) in recent years. For academics, a great read. For nonacademics, this may be a tougher read, but it would be well worthwhile to persevere.
Strong Premise Sunk By Tedious Presentation.......2004-02-21
This is a book that deserves to be influential in the field of political science, for both good and bad reasons. The theories presented here deal with macro-level or system-wide trends in American political behavior. If the authors can be believed, there was little previous work done in this area. Instead, political science focused on the behavior of individuals and then tried to aggregate the resulting data into system-wide theories. The evidence indicates that the behavior of the public is not always "the sum of the parts" and there are specific phenomena at play that influence the larger electorate, at the system level. The authors have conducted an impressive amount of research, which probably took years, including macro-level data about voting patterns, partisanship, ideological trends, presidential approval, and public opinion. Their conclusions about the existence of macro-level phenomena are generally believable and supported by the evidence, and their work will probably prove to be groundbreaking in the field.
On the other hand, this book embodies everything that is wrong with the academic side of political science these days. At least the authors will be accepted by their peers who value method more than insight. Here it becomes more important to impress one's peers by piling on endlessly repetitive evidence and trotting out unnecessarily complex statistical equations, all to prop up points that were already made convincingly in prose form. Each chapter in this book makes strong and believable points, but then degenerates into the worst of academic tedium, indicating that the authors chose (or were forced) to please ivory-tower editors and academic committees, rather than people in the outside world who could truly make use of their findings. Hence, we have a book with strong and often illuminating conclusions, sunk by the worst in academic writing and presentation. Next time these authors (and their publishers) choose to release their findings for consumption by the public, they should realize that this audience expects insight, not long-winded theorizing and statistics. [~doomsdayer520~]
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Debt Problems of Eastern Europe (Cambridge Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies)
Iliana Zloch-Christy
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0521335426 |
Book Description
In this book, Iliana Zloch-Christy analyzes the causes and consequences of the massive East European debt that began in the 1970s. In assessing the region's convertible currency debt problem, the author addresses five main issues: the origins of the debt; the possibility that such a debt was essential to Eastern Europe's economic development; the effects of the countries' own adjustments to the problem; the value of the aid provided by the West; and the outlook for the debt during the rest of the decade. The book analyzes the flaws of the centrally-planned economies that led to the crisis as well as the lack of effective structural adjustment. The author also covers the roles of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and looks at the potential debt consequences of resurging East-West trade.
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Consumers Against Capitalism?
Ellen Furlough
Manufacturer: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0847686493 |
Book Description
In this important collection of essays, historians from six different countries trace the history of the consumer cooperative movement in much of western Europe and North America from its inception to the present. The consumer cooperative, as the contributors show, bears directly on the role of socialist parties, the nascent feminist movement, and conceptions of the worker's role in a changing economy and society in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Book Description
Curiously, economists, whose discipline has much to do with human well-being, have shied away from factoring the study of happiness into their work. Happiness, they might say, is an ''unscientific'' concept. This is the first book to establish empirically the link between happiness and economics--and between happiness and democracy. Two respected economists, Bruno S. Frey and Alois Stutzer, integrate insights and findings from psychology, where attempts to measure quality of life are well-documented, as well as from sociology and political science. They demonstrate how micro- and macro-economic conditions in the form of income, unemployment, and inflation affect happiness. The research is centered on Switzerland, whose varying degrees of direct democracy from one canton to another, all within a single economy, allow for political effects to be isolated from economic effects.
Not surprisingly, the authors confirm that unemployment and inflation nurture unhappiness. Their most striking revelation, however, is that the more developed the democratic institutions and the degree of local autonomy, the more satisfied people are with their lives. While such factors as rising income increase personal happiness only minimally, institutions that facilitate more individual involvement in politics (such as referendums) have a substantial effect. For countries such as the United States, where disillusionment with politics seems to be on the rise, such findings are especially significant. By applying econometrics to a real-world issue of general concern and yielding surprising results, Happiness and Economics promises to spark healthy debate over a wide range of the social sciences.
Customer Reviews:
Insightful!.......2005-08-11
This is a book of excellent insight and originality that will be accessible primarily to scholars. Authors and economists Bruno S. Frey and Alois Stutzer explore the uncharted terrain of happiness. They teach that happiness is fundamental to economics, although economists disagree about what happiness is and how to measure it. The authors emphasize the importance of intangible, subjective factors in happiness, and bring a good deal of psychological research into the discussion of how economic circumstances affect happiness. They offer surprising evidence and conclusions, such as the facts that the old and the young are almost equally happy, and that a rising income ceases to increase happiness after clearing a relatively low hurdle. We recommend this book to the advanced specialists on economics and psychology for whom it was written, with the caveat that its dry academic style will not bring happiness to the intrigued but nonexpert reader.
Anti globalists and classical economists, wake up!.......2003-07-06
Anti globalists, the serious ones, aim for a happier world. Classical economists see no place for happiness in economics. Both will improve the quality of their thinking by reading this book. It provides in just 200 pages an excellent overview of concepts in economics and their consequences on motivation and happiness, supported by statistical evidence. The presentation of the evidence can be improved by using more tables and less graphs, or graphs with the corresponding tables in an appendix. Even though references are given with the graphs it is impossible to find the original data in the Internet. It is also of interest to policy makers in business and government. For governments some well-founded recommendations are made concerning participation of the electorate, referenda, and decentralisation. For business the ideas about the link between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are useful concepts.
Book Description
The Asian crisis has sparked a thoroughgoing reappraisal of current international financial norms, the policy prescriptions of the International Monetary Fund, and the adequacy of the existing financial architecture. To draw proper policy conclusions from the crisis, however, it is necessary to understand its domestic politics. In this study, political scientist Stephan Haggard focuses on the most seriously affected countries-Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, and Thailand-while also drawing lessons from those economies, such as Taiwan, that escaped the most severe distress.
Haggard focuses on the political economy of the crisis, emphasizing the longer-run problems of moral hazard and corruption, the politics of crisis management and the political consequences of severe economic downturn. Looking forward, he focuses on two critical policy issues: changes in social safety nets in the crisis countries and efforts at corporate and financial restructuring.
Download Description
The Asian crisis has sparked a thoroughgoing reappraisal of current international financial norms, the policy prescriptions of the International Monetary Fund, and the adequacy of the existing financial architecture. To draw proper policy conclusions from the crisis, however, it is necessary to understand its domestic politics. In this study, political scientist Stephan Haggard focuses on the most seriously affected countries-Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, and Thailand-while also drawing lessons from those economies, such as Taiwan, that escaped the most severe distress. Haggard focuses on the political economy of the crisis, emphasizing the longer-run problems of moral hazard and corruption, the politics of crisis management and the political consequences of severe economic downturn. Looking forward, he focuses on two critical policy issues: changes in social safety nets in the crisis countries and efforts at corporate and financial restructuring.
Customer Reviews:
Journalistic title from famous scholar.......2001-04-11
Haggard has a good name in East Asia field. but this title disappointed me. it's not that scholarstic but journalistic. what are enumerated on his book is not new or insightful at all to asian specialist. if you have read articles on Asia from FT or Wall Street Journal, The Economist, You should know what I mean. at best this book is no more than enlarged The Economist.
Great Resource.......2001-02-13
This is an excellent resource for both political economics and Asian studies students. Following currency devaluation through the creation of the crisis and its development across the intertwined economies of Southeast Asia. Making rational decisions about Asian markets requires in-depth knowledge of the first fall to avoid the repercussive aftershocks which will continue to follow.
Book Description
Written by leading economists including Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, this collection combines rigorous economic analysis with insider perspectives on key policy debates surrounding the future of the International Monetary Fund. As the role of the IMF and the "Washington Consensus" have come under intense scrutiny, this collection offers a valuable wide-ranging overview of the debate, making it an essential reference for anyone interested in the role of international financial institutions in our globalized economy.
Book Description
Daniel Verdier's analysis of how politics influences financial systems focuses mainly on the history of banking since 1850. Verdier shows that contrasting national political institutions have led to discrete regulatory policies, and thus, different financial structures. He asserts that national political systems can counter the convergence that the market dynamic would otherwise impose. Illustratively, countries with decentralized institutions tend to have higher levels of financial regulation and less mobile capital.
Download Description
Moving Money analyses the influence of politics on financial systems. Daniel Verdier examines how information asymmetry and economies of scale over time have created a redistributional conflict between large and small banks, financial centres and their peripheries, and he discusses how governments have attempted to arbitrate this conflict. He argues that centralized states have tended to create concentrated, internationalized, market-based and specialized financial systems, whereas decentralized states have favoured dispersed, national, bank-based and, with a few exceptions, universal systems. Verdier then sets out to uncover the sources, political and economic, of cross-country variation in financial market organization, examining 15 to 20 OECD countries from 1850 onwards.
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International Comparisons of Household Saving (National Bureau of Economic Research Project Report)
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0226676218 |
Book Description
Governments and corporations may chip in, but around the world houshold saving is the biggest factor in national saving. To better understand why saving rates differ across countries, this volume provides the most up-to-date analyses of patterns of household saving behavior in Canada, Italy, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Each of the six chapters examines micro data sets of household saving within a particular country and summarizes statistics on patterns of saving by age, income, and other demographic factors. The authors provide age-earning profiles and analyses of the accumulation of wealth over the lifetime in a clear way that allows quick comparisons between earning, consumption, and saving in the six countries.
Designed as a companion to Public Policies and Household Saving (1994), which addresses saving policies in the G-7 nations, this volume offers detailed descriptions of saving behavior in all G-7 nations except France.
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- A world of economic knowledge
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A Global View on the World Economy (Routledge Studies in the Modern World Economy)
Siebert
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0415402824 |
Book Description
Horst Sievert, a leading international economist, breaks new ground in taking a truly global view of the world economy, viewing it as an entity, as if from outer space.
Individual chapters provide a comprehensive, state-of-the-art overview of core issues and themes, including world GDP, world aggregate demand, economic growth, commodity markets, the role of trade, global product and factor markets, world monetary and financial markets and exchange rates.
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The World Economy provides an analysis of global economic structures and processes. Horst Siebert, a leading international economist, breaks new ground by taking the widest view of the world economy and examining it as a global entity.
Customer Reviews:
A world of economic knowledge.......2003-03-18
If you think international trade and finance can only be viewed in the light of MacDonalds, Starbucks and the Gap, then you might not like this book - stick to your Krugmans and your Salvatores.
However, if you think there is a world outside the United States and that different countries' concerns need to be taken into account, then this book is for you.
Statistically impressive and brilliantly written, this book is the current benchmark for anyone wanting to know about the world economy as a whole.
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- The Grapes of Wrath (Centennial Edition)
- The Handbook of Fixed Income Securities
- The Irresistible Offer: How to Sell Your Product or Service in 3 Seconds or Less
- The Landmarks of New York: An Illustrated Record of the City's Historic Buildings
- The Loyalty Effect: The Hidden Force Behind Growth, Profits, and Lasting Value
- The New Division of Labor: How Computers Are Creating the Next Job Market
- The Politics of Social Risk: Business and Welfare State Development (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics)
- The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church
Books Index
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