Recommending Books for Purchase (Bulletin 161 - August 2021): University of Chicago Press Books

Note:

As per our acquisition policy, we will procure handbooks in E-format only.
If we receive multiple requests on the same title we will procure an E-format of that particular book so that all requestors can access the book at the same time.

Titles list

Digital Supply Chains by Thomas Mrozek; Daniel Seitz; Kai-Uwe Gundermann; Matthias Dicke
ISBN: 9783593512051
Publication Date: 2021-02-13

Description: Concrete and clear instructions for digital transformation in business! Supply chain management is, without question, deeply affected by the disruptive flux of forces of a modern organization, both positively and negatively. Between advanced analytics and AI, agile role models and autonomous warehouses, a senior executive is often in danger of losing their way in the digital jungle. Digital experts can help, sharing valuable insights about digital supply chains, their application in business, and the vital transformation necessary to successfully prepare organizations for these challenges. Digital Supply Chains provides detailed explanations of best practices and the ways in which CSOs can make use of technologies and advancements. It also makes daring forecasts about how processes and leadership must be designed so that the digital transformation does not fail in its infancy, but rather leads to a truly agile organization.
Leaderspritz by Marianne Schmidt Mast; Tristan Palese; Benjamin Tur
ISBN: 9782889153879
Publication Date: 2021-02-15

Description: Successful leaders tend to have one thing in common: They are experts in social interaction. They express themselves clearly and effectively, understand their colleagues, and adapt to all situations. A leader needs to not only be able to inspire, motivate, and convince those around them, but also listen, be attentive, and adapt to their coworkers. It is by combining these skills that the authors of this book have come up with the Leaderspritz: an interpersonal leadership cocktail. Written by experts in the field of leadership education in universities and corporations, Leaderspritz is based exclusively on scientific research. Whether a person is currently in a leadership position or about to become a leader, this accessible, interactive reference, which is rich in empirical results, anecdotes, scientific theories, and practical tools, will allow them to improve their skills and successfully carry out their responsibilities.
Varieties of Family Business by Hartmut Berghoff; Ingo Kohler
ISBN: 9783593512464
Publication Date: 2021-02-13

Description: The idea of a business owned by a family and passed down from generation to generation sits firmly in our cultural imagination. And family businesses are of central importance in both Germany and in the United States. Still, there are significant differences in the two nations, both in terms of corporate and family cultures as well as in terms of the institutional environment, political clout, and the longevity of companies. Varieties of Family Business analyzes the differences and similarities in the development of family businesses in Germany and the United States from the middle of the nineteenth to the beginning of the twenty-first century. This historical long-term study investigates the causes and effects of the different corporate landscapes. It will be valuable for people interested in family-owned business or in the similarities and differences between American and German business expectations.
Tranformational Hrm Practice Hong Kon by Wong TSUI
ISBN: 9789888528486
Publication Date: 2021-05-30

Description: Focusing on the latest management trends, Transformational HRM Practices for Hong Kong provides HR professionals with a comprehensive and accessible guide to human resource management in Hong Kong. Written by a leading team of HR professionals, psychologists, legal experts, and academics, the book provides up-to-date coverage of current practices, laws and procedures, as well as guidance on the professional skills required to operate successfully in the region. Suitable for practitioners and students alike, the book contains authentic cases studies for local context and sets out the latest strategies for talent acquisition, assessment, performance, and reward. It provides essential coverage of organizational change management, recent technological advancements in the field, and outlines the development of Hong Kong's employment laws and their likely implications for professionals. In one volume, this book provides the key information, guidance, and context HR professionals require to be successful in Hong Kong's fast-changing business environment.
Upsold by Max Besbris
ISBN: 9780226721378
Publication Date: 2020-09-05

Description: What do you want for yourself in the next five, ten years? Do your plans involve marriage, kids, a new job? These are the questions a real estate agent might ask in an attempt to unearth information they can employ to complete a sale, which as Upsold shows, often results in upselling. In this book, sociologist Max Besbris shows how agents successfully upsell, inducing buyers to spend more than their initially stated price ceilings. His research reveals how face-to-face interactions influence buyers' ideas about which neighborhoods are desirable and which are less-worthy investments and how these preferences ultimately contribute to neighborhood inequality. Stratification defines cities in the contemporary United States. In an era marked by increasing income segregation, one of the main sources of this inequality is housing prices. A crucial part of wealth inequality, housing prices are also directly linked to the uneven distribution of resources across neighborhoods and to racial and ethnic segregation. Upsold shows how the interactions between real estate agents and buyers make or break neighborhood reputations and construct neighborhoods by price. Employing revealing ethnographic and quantitative housing data, Besbris outlines precisely how social influences come together during the sales process. In Upsold, we get a deep dive into the role that the interactions with sales agents play in buyers' decision-making and how neighborhoods are differentiated, valorized, and deemed to be worthy of a certain price.
White Market Drugs by David Herzberg
ISBN: 9780226731889
Publication Date: 2020-11-12

Description: The contemporary opioid crisis is widely seen as new and unprecedented. Not so. It is merely the latest in a long series of drug crises stretching back over a century. In White Market Drugs, David Herzberg explores these crises and the drugs that fueled them, from Bayer's Heroin to Purdue's OxyContin and all the drugs in between: barbiturate "goof balls," amphetamine "thrill pills," the "love drug" Quaalude, and more. As Herzberg argues, the vast majority of American experiences with drugs and addiction have taken place within what he calls "white markets," where legal drugs called medicines are sold to a largely white clientele. These markets are widely acknowledged but no one has explained how they became so central to the medical system in a nation famous for its "drug wars"--until now. Drawing from federal, state, industry, and medical archives alongside a wealth of published sources, Herzberg re-connects America's divided drug history, telling the whole story for the first time. He reveals that the driving question for policymakers has never been how to prohibit the use of addictive drugs, but how to ensure their availability in medical contexts, where profitability often outweighs public safety. Access to white markets was thus a double-edged sword for socially privileged consumers, even as communities of color faced exclusion and punitive drug prohibition. To counter this no-win setup, Herzberg advocates for a consumer protection approach that robustly regulates all drug markets to minimize risks while maintaining safe, reliable access (and treatment) for people with addiction. Accomplishing this requires rethinking a drug/medicine divide born a century ago that, unlike most policies of that racially segregated era, has somehow survived relatively unscathed into the twenty-first century. By showing how the twenty-first-century opioid crisis is only the most recent in a long history of similar crises of addiction to pharmaceuticals, Herzberg forces us to rethink our most basic ideas about drug policy and addiction itself--ideas that have been failing us catastrophically for over a century.
Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 34 by Robert A. Moffitt (Editor)
ISBN: 9780226708119
Publication Date: 2020-07-15

Description: This volume presents five new studies on current topics in taxation and government spending. Mark Shepard, Katherine Baicker, and Jonathan Skinner explore implementation aspects of a Medicare-for-All program, which provides a uniform health insurance benefit to everyone, and contrast it with a program providing a basic benefit that can be supplemented voluntarily. John Beshears, James Choi, Mark Iwry, David John, David Laibson, and Brigitte Madrian examine the design and feasibility of firm-sponsored "rainy day funds," short-term savings accounts for employees that can be used when faced with temporary periods of high expenditure. Robert Barro and Brian Wheaton investigate the impact of taxation on choice of corporate form, on the formation and legal structure of new businesses, and indirectly on productivity in the economy. Jonathan Meer and Benjamin Priday examine the impact of the 2017 federal income tax reform, which reduced marginal tax rates and the incentive for charitable giving, on such giving. Finally, Casey Mulligan analyzes the impact of the Affordable Care Act on whether firms employ fewer than 50 employees, the employment threshold below which they are exempt from the requirement to provide health insurance to their employees.
The Roles of Immigrants and Foreign Students in US Science, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship by Ina Ganguli (Editor); Shulamit Kahn (Editor); Megan MacGarvie (Editor)
ISBN: 9780226695624
Publication Date: 2020-02-19

Description: The number of immigrants in the US science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce and among recipients of advanced STEM degrees at US universities has increased in recent decades. In light of the current public debate about immigration, there is a need for evidence on the economic impacts of immigrants on the STEM workforce and on innovation. Using new data and state-of-the-art empirical methods, this volume examines various aspects of the relationships between immigration, innovation, and entrepreneurship, including the effects of changes in the number of immigrants and their skill composition on the rate of innovation; the relationship between high-skilled immigration and entrepreneurship; and the differences between immigrant and native entrepreneurs. It presents new evidence on the postgraduation migration patterns of STEM doctoral recipients, in particular the likelihood these graduates will return to their home country. This volume also examines the role of the US higher education system and of US visa policy in attracting foreign students for graduate study and retaining them after graduation.
Innovation Policy and the Economy 2019 by Josh Lerner (Editor); Scott Stern (Editor)
ISBN: 9780226707273
Publication Date: 2020-01-24

Description: The chapters in this twentieth volume of Innovation Policy and the Economy present research on the interactions among public policy, the innovation process, and the economy. One explores changes in the ability of the U.S. to attract talented foreign workers and the role of sponsoring institutions in shaping immigration policy. Another explains how the division of innovative labor between research universities and corporate labs affected productivity growth and the transformation of knowledge into new products and processes. A third reviews different innovation policies and their performance in the pharmaceutical sector. Next is a chapter on the effects of competition policy on innovation, "creative destruction," and economic growth. A fifth chapter studies how experimental policy design can be a cost-effective way to attain program goals. The last chapter examines geographic disparities in innovation, joblessness, and technological dynamism and studies how reallocation of grants and geographically targeted entrepreneurship policy could affect labor supply and welfare.
Milton Friedman and Economic Debate in the United States, 1932-1972 by Edward Nelson
ISBN: 9780226683775
Publication Date: 2020-10-30

Description: Milton Friedman is widely recognized as one of the most influential economists of the twentieth century. Yet no previous study has distilled Friedman's vast body of writings into an authoritative account of his research, his policy views, and his interventions in public debate. With this ambitious new work, Edward Nelson closes the gap: Milton Friedman and Economic Debate in the United States is the defining narrative on the famed economist, the first to grapple comprehensively with Friedman's research output, economic framework, and legacy. This two-volume account provides a foundational introduction to Friedman's role in several major economic debates that took place in the United States between 1932 and 1972. The first volume, which takes the story through 1960, covers the period in which Friedman began and developed his research on monetary policy. It traces Friedman's thinking from his professional beginnings in the 1930s as a combative young microeconomist, to his wartime years on the staff of the US Treasury, and his emergence in the postwar period as a leading proponent of monetary policy. The second volume covers the years between 1960 and 1972-- years that saw the publication of Friedman and Anna Schwartz's Monetary History of the United States. The book also covers Friedman's involvement in a number of debates in the 1960s and 1970s, on topics such as unemployment, inflation, consumer protection, and the environment. As a fellow monetary economist, Nelson writes from a unique vantage point, drawing on both his own expertise in monetary analysis and his deep familiarity with Friedman's writings. Using extensive documentation, the book weaves together Friedman's research contributions and his engagement in public debate, providing an unparalleled analysis of Friedman's views on the economic developments of his day.
Milton Friedman and Economic Debate in the United States, 1932-1972 by Edward Nelson
ISBN: 9780226684895
Publication Date: 2020-10-30

Description: Milton Friedman is widely recognized as one of the most influential economists of the twentieth century. Yet no previous study has distilled Friedman's vast body of writings into an authoritative account of his research, his policy views, and his interventions in public debate. With this ambitious new work, Edward Nelson closes the gap: Milton Friedman and Economic Debate in the United States is the defining narrative on the famed economist, the first to grapple comprehensively with Friedman's research output, economic framework, and legacy. This two-volume account provides a foundational introduction to Friedman's role in several major economic debates that took place in the United States between 1932 and 1972. The first volume, which takes the story through 1960, covers the period in which Friedman began and developed his research on monetary policy. It traces Friedman's thinking from his professional beginnings in the 1930s as a combative young microeconomist, to his wartime years on the staff of the US Treasury, and his emergence in the postwar period as a leading proponent of monetary policy. The second volume covers the years between 1960 and 1972-- years that saw the publication of Friedman and Anna Schwartz's Monetary History of the United States. The book also covers Friedman's involvement in a number of debates in the 1960s and 1970s, on topics such as unemployment, inflation, consumer protection, and the environment. As a fellow monetary economist, Nelson writes from a unique vantage point, drawing on both his own expertise in monetary analysis and his deep familiarity with Friedman's writings. Using extensive documentation, the book weaves together Friedman's research contributions and his engagement in public debate, providing an unparalleled analysis of Friedman's views on the economic developments of his day.
Beyond Debt by Daromir Rudnyckyj
ISBN: 9780226552088
Publication Date: 2018-11-22

Description: Recent economic crises have made the centrality of debt, and the instability it creates, increasingly apparent. This realization has led to cries for change--yet there is little popular awareness of possible alternatives. Beyond Debt describes efforts to create a transnational economy free of debt. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Malaysia, Daromir Rudnyckyj illustrates how the state, led by the central bank, seeks to make the country's capital Kuala Lumpur "the New York of the Muslim world"--the central node of global financial activity conducted in accordance with Islam. Rudnyckyj shows how Islamic financial experts have undertaken ambitious experiments to create more stable economies and stronger social solidarities by facilitating risk- and profit-sharing, enhanced entrepreneurial skills, and more collaborative economic action. Building on scholarship that reveals the impact of financial devices on human activity, he illustrates how Islamic finance is deployed to fashion subjects who are at once more pious Muslims and more ambitious entrepreneurs. In so doing, Rudnyckyj shows how experts seek to create a new "geoeconomics"--a global Islamic alternative to the conventional financial network centered on New York, London, and Tokyo. A groundbreaking analysis of a timely subject, Beyond Debt tells the captivating story of efforts to re-center international finance in an emergent Islamic global city and, ultimately, to challenge the very foundations of conventional finance.
Challenge Management by Wladimir Klitschko; Stefanie Bilen; Maren Barton (Translator)
ISBN: 9783593509051
Publication Date: 2019-08-15

Description: As both an Olympic gold medalist and two-time world heavyweight champion, boxer Wladimir Klitschko stands apart from most athletes. But he also stands apart another way: in the attention he paid to his professional career outside the ring. Klitschko founded his own promotions and management groups during his fighting days, as well as an advanced certification program at a Swiss university to teach the basics of professional self-management. Challenge Management brings Klitschko's insights to readers, revealing his methods and personal philosophies for tackling challenges in the arenas of business and finance. Challenge Management also provides readers with practical examples and personal anecdotes from a variety of sports managers, entrepreneurs, and friends of the author, including Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Great Economic Thinkers by Jonathan Conlin (Editor)
ISBN: 9781789142105
Publication Date: 2020-05-01

Description: Great Economic Thinkers presents an accessible introduction to the lives and works of thirteen of the most influential economists of modern times: Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, Alfred Marshall, Joseph Schumpeter, John Maynard Keynes, and Nobel Prize winners Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, John Forbes Nash, Jr., Daniel Kahneman, Amartya Sen, and Joseph Stiglitz. Free from confusing jargon and equations, the book describes key concepts put forward by these thinkers and shows how they have come to shape how we see ourselves and our society. Readers will consider the role played by the division of labor, wages and rents, cognitive biases, saving, entrepreneurship, game theory, liberalism, laissez-faire, and welfare economics. All of the economists featured have had a profound influence on our attitudes towards market intervention and regulation, taxation, trade, and monetary policy. Each of the chapters--all written by an acknowledged expert--combines a biographical outline of a single thinker with critical analysis of their contribution to economic thought. If you've ever wanted to find out more about the theorists who gave us the invisible hand, Marxism, Keynesianism, creative destruction, behavioral economics, and many other foundational concepts of economics, this collection of essays is the perfect place to start.
The Economics of Artificial Intelligence by Ajay Agrawal (Editor); Joshua Gans (Editor); Avi Goldfarb (Editor)
ISBN: 9780226613338
Publication Date: 2019-05-22

Description: Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) highlight the potential of this technology to affect productivity, growth, inequality, market power, innovation, and employment. This volume seeks to set the agenda for economic research on the impact of AI. It covers four broad themes: AI as a general purpose technology; the relationships between AI, growth, jobs, and inequality; regulatory responses to changes brought on by AI; and the effects of AI on the way economic research is conducted. It explores the economic influence of machine learning, the branch of computational statistics that has driven much of the recent excitement around AI, as well as the economic impact of robotics and automation and the potential economic consequences of a still-hypothetical artificial general intelligence. The volume provides frameworks for understanding the economic impact of AI and identifies a number of open research questions. Contributors: Daron Acemoglu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Philippe Aghion, Collège de France Ajay Agrawal, University of Toronto Susan Athey, Stanford University James Bessen, Boston University School of Law Erik Brynjolfsson, MIT Sloan School of Management Colin F. Camerer, California Institute of Technology Judith Chevalier, Yale School of Management Iain M. Cockburn, Boston University Tyler Cowen, George Mason University Jason Furman, Harvard Kennedy School Patrick Francois, University of British Columbia Alberto Galasso, University of Toronto Joshua Gans, University of Toronto Avi Goldfarb, University of Toronto Austan Goolsbee, University of Chicago Booth School of Business Rebecca Henderson, Harvard Business School Ginger Zhe Jin, University of Maryland Benjamin F. Jones, Northwestern University Charles I. Jones, Stanford University Daniel Kahneman, Princeton University Anton Korinek, Johns Hopkins University Mara Lederman, University of Toronto Hong Luo, Harvard Business School John McHale, National University of Ireland Paul R. Milgrom, Stanford University Matthew Mitchell, University of Toronto Alexander Oettl, Georgia Institute of Technology Andrea Prat, Columbia Business School Manav Raj, New York University Pascual Restrepo, Boston University Daniel Rock, MIT Sloan School of Management Jeffrey D. Sachs, Columbia University Robert Seamans, New York University Scott Stern, MIT Sloan School of Management Betsey Stevenson, University of Michigan Joseph E. Stiglitz. Columbia University Chad Syverson, University of Chicago Booth School of Business Matt Taddy, University of Chicago Booth School of Business Steven Tadelis, University of California, Berkeley Manuel Trajtenberg, Tel Aviv University Daniel Trefler, University of Toronto Catherine Tucker, MIT Sloan School of Management Hal Varian, University of California, Berkeley
Money, Power, and the People by Christopher W. Shaw
ISBN: 9780226636337
Publication Date: 2019-09-05

Description: Banks and bankers are hardly the most beloved institutions and people in this country. With its corruptive influence on politics and stranglehold on the American economy, Wall Street is held in high regard by few outside the financial sector. But the pitchforks raised against this behemoth are largely rhetorical: we rarely see riots in the streets or public demands for an equitable and democratic banking system that result in serious national changes. Yet the situation was vastly different a century ago, as Christopher W. Shaw shows. This book upends the conventional thinking that financial policy in the early twentieth century was set primarily by the needs and demands of bankers. Shaw shows that banking and politics were directly shaped by the literal and symbolic investments of the grassroots. This engagement remade financial institutions and the national economy, through populist pressure and the establishment of federal regulatory programs and agencies like the Farm Credit System and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Shaw reveals the surprising groundswell behind seemingly arcane legislation, as well as the power of the people to demand serious political repercussions for the banks that caused the Great Depression. One result of this sustained interest and pressure was legislation and regulation that brought on a long period of relative financial stability, with a reduced frequency of economic booms and busts. Ironically, this stability led to the decline of the very banking politics that brought it about. Giving voice to a broad swath of American figures, including workers, farmers, politicians, and bankers alike, Money, Power, and the People recasts our understanding of what might be possible in balancing the needs of the people with those of their financial institutions.
Business Culture Design by Simon Sagmeister; Joe Paul Kroll (Translator); Rita J. King (Introduction by)
ISBN: 9783593508405
Publication Date: 2018-08-15

Description: The idea of corporate culture is a much-discussed concept in today's business world, but often it only comes into focus as a response to problems in the workplace. Business Culture Design changes the conversation, taking a proactive approach to fostering and maintaining corporate culture. Simon Sagmeister introduces readers to the patterns and behaviors that form the foundation of positive culture through his innovative Culture Map, a colorful visual tool for managers and employees alike. Sagmeister's Culture Map will prove invaluable for high-level business activities such as mergers and acquisitions, but also for daily interactions between colleagues, which is the place where corporate culture is truly forged.
Fighting Financial Crises by Gary B. Gorton; Ellis W. Tallman
ISBN: 9780226786209
Publication Date: 2018-05-11

Description: If you've got money in the bank, chances are you've never seriously worried about not being able to withdraw it. But there was a time in the United States, an era that ended just over a hundred years ago, when bank customers had to pay close attention to the solvency of the banking system, knowing they might have to rush to retrieve their savings before the bank collapsed. During the National Banking Era (1863-1913), before the establishment of the Federal Reserve, widespread banking panics were indeed rather common. Yet these pre-Fed banking panics, as Gary B. Gorton and Ellis W. Tallman show, bear striking similarities to our recent financial crisis. Fighting Financial Crises thus turns to the past to better understand our uncertain present, investigating how panics during the National Banking Era played out and how they were eventually quelled and prevented. The authors then consider the Fed's and the SEC's reactions to the recent crisis, building an informative new perspective on how the modern economy works.
U. S. Engineering in a Global Economy by Richard B. Freeman; Hal Salzman
ISBN: 9780226468334
Publication Date: 2018-04-20

Description: Since the late 1950s, the engineering job market in the United States has been fraught with fears of a shortage of engineering skill and talent. U.S. Engineering in a Global Economy brings clarity to issues of supply and demand in this important market. Following a general overview of engineering-labor market trends, the volume examines the educational pathways of undergraduate engineers and their entry into the labor market, the impact of engineers working in firms on productivity and innovation, and different dimensions of the changing engineering labor market, from licensing to changes in demand and guest worker programs. The volume provides insights on engineering education, practice, and careers that can inform educational institutions, funding agencies, and policy makers about the challenges facing the United States in developing its engineering workforce in the global economy.
Building Nature's Market by Laura J. Miller
ISBN: 9780226501376
Publication Date: 2017-11-20

Description: For the first 150 years of their existence, "natural foods" were consumed primarily by body builders, hippies, religious sects, and believers in nature cure. And those consumers were dismissed by the medical establishment and food producers as kooks, faddists, and dangerous quacks. In the 1980s, broader support for natural foods took hold and the past fifteen years have seen an explosion--everything from healthy-eating superstores to mainstream institutions like hospitals, schools, and workplace cafeterias advertising their fresh-from-the-garden ingredients. Building Nature's Market shows how the meaning of natural foods was transformed as they changed from a culturally marginal, religiously inspired set of ideas and practices valorizing asceticism to a bohemian lifestyle to a mainstream consumer choice. Laura J. Miller argues that the key to understanding this transformation is to recognize the leadership of the natural foods industry. Rather than a simple tale of cooptation by market forces, Miller contends the participation of business interests encouraged the natural foods movement to be guided by a radical skepticism of established cultural authority. She challenges assumptions that private enterprise is always aligned with social elites, instead arguing that profit-minded entities can make common cause with and even lead citizens in advocating for broad-based social and cultural change.
The Fama Portfolio by Eugene F. Fama; John H. Cochrane (Editor); Tobias J. Moskowitz (Editor)
ISBN: 9780226426846
Publication Date: 2017-09-07

Description: Few scholars have been as influential in finance and economics as University of Chicago professor Eugene F. Fama. Over the course of a brilliant and productive career, Fama has published more than one hundred papers, filled with diverse, highly innovative contributions. Published soon after the fiftieth anniversary of Fama's appointment to the University of Chicago and his receipt of the Nobel Prize in Economics, The Fama Portfolio offers an authoritative compilation of Fama's central papers. Many are classics, including his now-famous essay on efficient capital markets. Others, though less famous, are even better statements of the central ideas. Fama's research considers key questions in finance, both as an academic field and an industry: How is information reflected in asset prices? What is the nature of risk that scares people away from larger returns? Does lots of buying and selling by active managers produce value for their clients? The Fama Portfolio provides for the first time a comprehensive collection of his work and includes introductions and commentary by the book's editors, John H. Cochrane and Tobias Moskowitz, as well as by Fama's colleagues, themselves top scholars and successful practitioners in finance. These essays emphasize how the ideas presented in Fama's papers have influenced later thinking in financial economics, often for decades.
Clashing over Commerce by Douglas A. Irwin
ISBN: 9780226678443
Publication Date: 2019-11-22

Description: Should the United States be open to commerce with other countries, or should it protect domestic industries from foreign competition? This question has been the source of bitter political conflict throughout American history. Such conflict was inevitable, James Madison argued in The Federalist Papers, because trade policy involves clashing economic interests. The struggle between the winners and losers from trade has always been fierce because dollars and jobs are at stake: depending on what policy is chosen, some industries, farmers, and workers will prosper, while others will suffer. Douglas A. Irwin's Clashing over Commerce is the most authoritative and comprehensive history of US trade policy to date, offering a clear picture of the various economic and political forces that have shaped it. From the start, trade policy divided the nation--first when Thomas Jefferson declared an embargo on all foreign trade and then when South Carolina threatened to secede from the Union over excessive taxes on imports. The Civil War saw a shift toward protectionism, which then came under constant political attack. Then, controversy over the Smoot-Hawley tariff during the Great Depression led to a policy shift toward freer trade, involving trade agreements that eventually produced the World Trade Organization. Irwin makes sense of this turbulent history by showing how different economic interests tend to be grouped geographically, meaning that every proposed policy change found ready champions and opponents in Congress. As the Trump administration considers making major changes to US trade policy, Irwin's sweeping historical perspective helps illuminate the current debate. Deeply researched and rich with insight and detail, Clashing over Commerce provides valuable and enduring insights into US trade policy past and present.
Innovation Equity by Elie Ofek; Eitan Muller; Barak Libai
ISBN: 9780226618296
Publication Date: 2016-09-30
From drones to wearable technology to Hyperloop pods that can potentially travel more than seven hundred miles per hour, we're fascinated with new products and technologies that seem to come straight out of science fiction. But, innovations are not only fascinating, they're polarizing, as, all too quickly, skepticism regarding their commercial viability starts to creep in. And while fortunes depend on people's ability to properly assess their prospects for success, no one can really agree on how to do it, especially for truly radical new products and services. In Innovation Equity, Elie Ofek, Eitan Muller, and Barak Libai analyze how a vast array of past innovations performed in the marketplace--from their launch to the moment they became everyday products to the phase where consumers moved on to the "next big thing." They identify key patterns in how consumers adopt innovations and integrate these with marketing scholarship on how companies manage their customer base by attracting new customers, keeping current customers satisfied, and preventing customers from switching to competitors' products and services. In doing so, the authors produce concrete models that powerfully predict how the marketplace will respond to innovations, providing a much more authoritative way to estimate their potential monetary value, as well as a framework for making it possible to achieve that value.
International Differences in the Business Practices and Productivity of Firms by Richard B. Freeman (Editor); Kathryn L. Shaw (Editor)
ISBN: 9780226261942
Publication Date: 2009-10-15
In recent years, globalization and the expansion of information technologies have reshaped managerial practices, forcing multinational firms to adjust business practices to different environments and domestic companies to adjust to their foreign competitors. In International Differences in the Business Practices and Productivity of Firms, a distinguished group of contributors examines the phenomenon of widespread differences in managerial practices across firms, establishments within firms, and countries. This volume brings together eight studies that combine qualitative and quantitative insider analysis of business practices such as the use of teams, incentive pay, lean manufacturing, and quality control, revealing the elements that determine which practices are adopted and why. International Differences in the Business Practices and Productivity of Firms offers a much-needed model for measuring the productivity and performance of international firms in a fast-paced global economy.
Economic Turbulence by Clair Brown; John Haltiwanger; Julia Lane
ISBN: 9780226076324
Publication Date: 2006-10-02

Description: Every day, in every sector of our economy, a business shuts down while another starts up, jobs are created while others are cut, and workers are hired while others are laid off. This constant flux, or turbulence, is a defining characteristic of our free market system, yet it mostly inspires angst about unemployment, loss of earnings, and the overall competitiveness of corporations. But is this endless cycle of fluctuation really so bad for America? Might something positive be going on in the economy as a result of it? In this penetrating work, three esteemed economists seek to answer these questions by exploring the real impact of volatility on American workers and businesses alike. According to the authors, while any number of events--shifts in consumer demand, changes in technology, mergers and acquisitions, or increased competition--can contribute to economic turbulence, our economy as a whole is, by and large, stronger for it, because these processes of creation and destruction make it more flexible and adaptable. The authors also acknowledge and document the adverse consequences of this turbulence on different groups of workers and firms and discuss the resulting policy challenges. Basing their argument on an up-close look into the dealings and practices of five key industries--financial services, retail food services, trucking, semiconductors, and software--the authors demonstrate the positive effects of turbulence on career paths, employee earnings, and firm performance. The first substantial attempt to disentangle and make clear the complexities of this phenomenon in the United States, Economic Turbulence will be viewed as a major achievement and the centerpiece of any discussion on the subject for years to come.