Showing titles in Economic History

If the financial crisis has taught us anything, it is that Americans save too little, spend too much, and borrow excessively. What can we learn from East Asian and European countries that have fostered enduring cultures of thrift over the past two centuries? Beyond Our Means tells for the first time how other nations aggressively encouraged their citizens to save by means of special savings institutions and savings campaigns.

This groundbreaking study of agriculture's role in the war defies long-held notions that Northern industrialization and urbanization led to clashes between North and South. Huston argues that the ideological chasm between plantation owners in the South and family farmers in the North led to the political eruption of 1854-1856 and the birth of a sectionalized party system.

In the minds of historians and the American public alike, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was one of our greatest presidents, not least because he supposedly saved America from the Great Depression. But as historian Jim Powell reveals in this groundbreaking book, Roosevelt's New Deal policies actually prolonged and exacerbated the economic disaster.

In the early 18th century, 80 years prior to revolution, France went wild for stocks and bonds. Mechanics dropped their tools and tradesmen closed their shops. There was but one profession, one employment, one occupation for persons of all ranks, from peasant to prince. And that profession was speculating in stocks. This is the story of John Law, the adventurous Scotsman played chance against an entire nation.

Collaborative Disruption is an insider’s account of the relationship between two of the most successful companies on the planet—Walmart and Procter & Gamble—and the transformative impact their collaborative strategy has had on their business for more than thirty years, particularly in the retail industry. Their innovative partnership produced what has come to be known as the “one-company model,” an approach that has fundamentally changed how suppliers and their retail customers interact with each other.

We live in a world of seemingly limitless consumer choice. Yet, as every shopper knows without thinking about it, many everyday goods—from beds to batteries to printer paper—are available in a finite number of "standard sizes." What makes these sizes "standard" is an agreement among competing firms to make or sell products with the same limited dimensions. But how did firms—often hotly competing firms—reach such collective agreements?

The Narendra Modi government's sudden demonetization of '500 and '1,000 notes in November 2016 failed to put a dent in the black economy but caused untold hardship to hundreds of millions of Indians. It has crippled the country's economy for a long time to come. In this book, Arun Kumar, the country's leading authority on the black economy, tells us why Modi's gambit failed.

The financial crisis was no doubt a recession, and some would say a depression; everyone wants to sugarcoat it. Academics want to nitpick and perform magic tricks with the numbers and say it was only a recession. The reality is, no one has seen this before. It was clear, the game had changed. The old definition of what a recession was is no longer sufficient to express what happened. But yet, nothing has really changed. Proof of this can be seen in how the financial world has handled the crisis.

America is a smuggler nation. Our long history of illicit imports has ranged from West Indies molasses and Dutch gunpowder in the 18th century, to British industrial technologies and African slaves in the 19th century, to French condoms and Canadian booze in the early 20th century, to Mexican workers and Colombian cocaine in the modern era. Contraband capitalism, it turns out, has been an integral part of American capitalism.

Conceived in the early 1800s and completed in 1825, the Erie Canal was the boldest and biggest American engineering project of its century, with enduring political, social, and economic effects. It was the Erie Canal that first opened up the West to American enterprise and imagination, bringing vast riches and a far-reaching vision to a rapidly expanding nation.In this compelling narrative, author Gerard Koeppel tells the complete, sweeping story of the creation of the canal.

This book is about the partnership of God and Mammon in the New World - about how Americans have made money and lost money, and about how they have thought about that obsessive and peculiarly American subject. Money is the basic American thing, the life's blood of the country. God and Mammon shows how the dynamics of money in its many dimensions (material, spiritual, cultural, psychological) worked to make America what it is. It traces the grand American binaries of success and failure to their theological origins in Calvinism's anxieties about salvation and damnation. 

The credit crunch affected every investor and every consumer, every industry and every government program, yet few people truly understand how it happened. Subprime mortgages were center stage, but behind the scenes a conspiracy of greed among bankers, investors, rating agencies and regulators imperiled everyone's financial future. We need to know what went wrong and how to change the practices that led to this calamity.   

Detrás de cada cambio en el mercado, avance tecnológico y movimiento social hay fuerzas invisibles que moldean nuestro mundo con un poder abrumador. Estas fuerzas —efectos de red, leyes de potencia, emergencia— crean imperios, transforman sociedades y determinan quiénes ganan y quiénes pierden, pero siguen siendo invisibles para la mayoría. Al entender estos patrones más profundos, atravesamos una puerta sin retorno hacia una visión radicalmente expandida de cómo funciona realmente la realidad.

Libéral classique, farouche défenseur de la liberté sous toutes ses formes, Frédéric Bastiat démontre dans les Sophismes économiques les bienfaits de la liberté et les méfaits de la contrainte dans les échanges économiques. Il va reprendre les arguments les plus communs de ses contradicteurs et en démontrer la tartuferie, n'hésitant pas parfois à les pousser jusqu'à l'absurde.

Become economically significant, and you’re dealing with Machiavellian grifters who left sovereignty, equal rights, capitalism and individualism long ago. But anyway, let’s examine how to become anti-fragile.

L’economia tocca quotidianamente la vita di tutti noi. È lo strumento usato dai governi per prendere decisioni i cui effetti riguardano intere nazioni; studia il modo e l’efficienza con cui le società utilizzano le proprie risorse; cerca di capire perché certe persone hanno ciò che serve per un’esistenza soddisfacente e altre no; regola questioni fondamentali come la scelta di costruire un ospedale, una scuola o una fabbrica.

All around the world, the words "Wall Street" conjure up a powerful image. For some, it is the center of America's capitalist system and the engine of its economic growth. For others, it is the home of rapacious bankers and reckless traders whose greed would lead to a global financial crisis. For an Indian-born blackjack player, Wall Street represented something else entirely—a chance for him to play in the largest casino in the world.

“A vivid portrait of an exceptional woman and a lively history of the economic and financial crises that helped make the treasury secretary and former Fed chair who she is today.” —Sylvia Nasar, #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Beautiful Mind “Captivating. . . . Part biography...

In Light of Yesterday takes the listener on a journey to better understand the events that have shaped the global economy. In Light of Yesterday is a must listen for anyone wishing to gain a deeper understanding of today’s global economic landscape, and provides insight into the question, “What can be done today, in light of yesterday, to prepare for tomorrow”?

There are many theories as to why the United States and then much of the world entered into a long period of price deflation, high unemployment, and an overall significant economic downturn, which we now call the Great Depression. People always wonder why this horrendous event occurred and there is no simple answer to this question. It was a perfect storm of events that came together and brought about an inevitable plummet in the lives of millions.