Recommending Books for Purchase (Bulletin 17 - May 2018) : MIT Press: Home

Price : $75.00
Prominent economists present detailed analyses of the conditions that made Greece vulnerable to economic crisis and offer policy recommendations for comprehensive and radical change. More than eight years after the global financial crisis began, the economy of Greece shows little sign of recovery, and its position in the eurozone seems tenuous. Between 2008 and 2014, incomes in Greece shrank by more than 25 percent, homes lost more than a third of their value, and the unemployment rate reached 27 percent. Most articles on Greece in the media focus on the effects of austerity, repayment of its debt, and its future in the eurozone. In Beyond Austerity: Reforming the Greek Economy, leading Greek economists from institutions both within and outside Greece, take a broader and deeper view of the Greek crisis, examining the pathologies that made Greece vulnerable to the crisis and the implications for the entire eurozone. Each chapter takes on a specific policy area, examining it in terms of Greece's economic reality and offering possible directions for policy. The topics range from macroeconomic issues to markets and their regulation to finance to the public sector. Individual chapters address the costs and benefits of participation in the eurozone, Greece's international competitiveness, taxation, pensions, the labor market, privatization, product markets, finance, education, healthcare, corruption, the justice system, and public administration. The contributors argue that Greek institutions require a deep overhaul rather than quick fixes to enable long-term growth and prosperity.

Price : $50.00
A pragmatic new business model for sustainability that outlines eight steps that range from exploring a mission to promoting innovation; with case studies. Many recent books make the case for businesses to become more sustainable, but few explain the specifics. In this book, Francisco Szekely and Zahir Dossa offer a pragmatic new business model for sustainability that extends beyond the traditional framework of the triple bottom line, describing eight steps that range from exploring a vision and establishing a strategy to implementing the strategy and promoting innovation. Szekely and Dossa argue that businesses and organizations need to move away from the business case for sustainability toward a sustainable business model. That is, businesses should go beyond the usual short-term focus on minimizing harm while maximizing profits. Instead, businesses on the path to sustainability should, from the start, focus on addressing a societal need and view profitability not as an end but as a means to support the sustainable organization. Szekely and Dossa explore key problems organizations face when pursuing a sustainability agenda. Each chapter presents one of the eight steps, describes a business dilemma for sustainability, provides a theoretically grounded strategic framework, offers case studies that illustrate the dilemma, and summarizes key findings; the case studies draw on the experiences of such companies as Tesla Motors, Patagonia, TOMs, and Panera. The book emphasizes leadership, arguing that leaders who question the status quo, inspire others, and take risks are essential for achieving sustainable business practices.

Price : $50.00
An exploration of how approaches that draw on evolutionary theory and complexity science can advance our understanding of economics. Two widely heralded yet contested approaches to economics have emerged in recent years: one emphasizes evolutionary theory in terms of individuals and institutions; the other views economies as complex adaptive systems. In this book, leading scholars examine these two bodies of theory, exploring their possible impact on economics. Relevant concepts from evolutionary theory drawn on by the contributors include the distinction between proximate and ultimate causation, multilevel selection, cultural change as an evolutionary process, and human psychology as a product of gene-culture coevolution. Applicable ideas from complexity theory include self-organization, fractals, chaos theory, sensitive dependence, basins of attraction, and path dependence. The contributors discuss a synthesis of complexity and evolutionary approaches and the challenges that emerge. Focusing on evolutionary behavioral economics, and the evolution of institutions, they offer practical applications and point to avenues for future research. Contributors Robert Axtell, Jenna Bednar, Eric D. Beinhocker, Adrian V. Bell, Terence C. Burnham, Julia Chelen, David Colander, Iain D. Couzin, Thomas E. Currie, Joshua M. Epstein, Daniel Fricke, Herbert Gintis, Paul W. Glimcher, John Gowdy, Thorsten Hens, Michael E. Hochberg, Alan Kirman, Robert Kurzban, Leonhard Lades, Stephen E. G. Lea, John E. Mayfield, Mariana Mazzucato, Kevin McCabe, John F. Padgett, Scott E. Page, Karthik Panchanathan, Peter J. Richerson, Peter Schuster, Georg Schwesinger, Rajiv Sethi, Enrico Spolaore, Sven Steinmo, Miriam Teschl, Peter Turchin, Jeroen C. J. M. van den Bergh, Sander E. van der Leeuw, Romain Wacziarg, John J. Wallis, David S. Wilson, Ulrich Witt

Price : $25.00
The rise and fall of a tax shelter industry that enabled some of America's richest citizens to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. For ten boom-powered years at the turn of the twenty-first century, some of America's most prominent law and accounting firms created and marketed products that enabled the very rich--including newly minted dot-com millionaires--to avoid paying their fair share of taxes by claiming benefits not recognized by law. These abusive domestic tax shelters bore such exotic names as BOSS, BLIPS, and COBRA and were developed by such prestigious firms as KPMG and Ernst & Young. They brought in hundreds of millions of dollars in fees from clients and bilked the U.S. Treasury of billions in revenues before the IRS and Justice Department stepped in with civil penalties and criminal prosecutions. In Confidence Games, Tanina Rostain and Milton Regan describe the rise and fall of the tax shelter industry during this period, offering a riveting account of the most serious episode of professional misconduct in the history of the American bar. Rostain and Regan describe a beleaguered IRS preoccupied by attacks from antitax and antigovernment politicians; heightened competition for professional services; the relaxation of tax practitioner norms against aggressive advice; and the creation of complex financial instruments that made abusive shelters harder to detect. By 2004, the tax shelter boom was over, leaving failed firms, disgraced professionals, and prison sentences in its wake. Rostain and Regan's cautionary tale remains highly relevant today, as lawyers and accountants continue to face intense competitive pressure and regulators still struggle to keep pace with accelerating financial risk and innovation.

Price : $18.95
An expert in management takes on the conventional wisdom about disruption, looking at companies that proved resilient and offering managers tools for survival. "Disruption" is a business buzzword that has gotten out of control. Today everything and everyone seem to be characterized as disruptive--or, if they aren't disruptive yet, it's only a matter of time before they become so. In this book, Joshua Gans cuts through the chatter to focus on disruption in its initial use as a business term, identifying new ways to understand it and suggesting new tools to manage it. Almost twenty years ago Clayton Christensen popularized the term in his book The Innovator's Dilemma, writing of disruption as a set of risks that established firms face. Since then, few have closely examined his account. Gans does so in this book. He looks at companies that have proven resilient and those that have fallen, and explains why some companies have successfully managed disruption--Fujifilm and Canon, for example--and why some like Blockbuster and Encyclopedia Britannica have not. Departing from the conventional wisdom, Gans identifies two kinds of disruption: demand-side, when successful firms focus on their main customers and underestimate market entrants with innovations that target niche demands; and supply-side, when firms focused on developing existing competencies become incapable of developing new ones. Gans describes the full range of actions business leaders can take to deal with each type of disruption, from "self-disrupting" independent internal units to tightly integrated product development. But therein lies the disruption dilemma: A firm cannot practice both independence and integration at once. Gans shows business leaders how to choose their strategy so their firms can deal with disruption while continuing to innovate.

Price : $32.00
The economic and political aspects of energy subsidies, viewed both theoretically and empirically, with a focus on fossil fuel subsidies in developing nations. Government subsidies to energy are widespread and represent a heavy burden on public budgets in many countries. Both producers and consumers may be subsidized; the most common subsidies are for motor fuel consumption and electricity production and consumption. The subsidies to consumers often prove particularly harmful because they result in increased energy consumption, increased carbon emissions, and distortionary effects on consumer behavior. This book fills a void in the literature by providing a first, broad and diverse, analysis of several aspects of the economic and political economy aspects of government energy subsidies. The contributors take both theoretical and empirical approaches, with most of the focus on subsidies to fuel and electricity in non-OECD countries. The chapters cover such topics as energy pricing, reelection incentives for politicians that may encourage excessive subsidies; political corruption and "bribing equilibria," the the "resource curse" in developing countries when the gains from natural resource windfalls are largely wasted, the "entitlement" of energy subsidies in autocracies, and distributional issues when subsidies targeted to the poor are removed in high-income countries. One chapter discusses nonharmful subsidies: the potential economic effects of subsidizing the manufacturing and deployment of renewable energy. Contributors Carolyn Fischer, Mads Greaker, Mohammad Habibpour, Michelle Harding, Christina Kolerus, Christos Kotsogiannis, Jim Krane, Alber Touna Mama, Raffaele Miniaci, Marco Pani, Ian Parry, Carlo Perroni, Leonzio Rizzo, Knut Einar Rosendahl, Carlo Scarpa, Neda Seiban, Suphi Sen, Jon Strand, Paola Valbonesi, Herman Vollebergh

Price : $45.00
Analysis of Latin America's economy focusing on development, covering the colonial roots of inequality, boom and bust cycles, labor markets, and fiscal and monetary policy. Latin America is richly endowed with natural resources, fertile land, and vibrant cultures. Yet the region remains much poorer than its neighbors to the north. Most Latin American countries have not achieved standards of living and stable institutions comparable to those found in developed countries, have experienced repeated boom-bust cycles, and remain heavily reliant on primary commodities. This book studies the historical roots of Latin America's contemporary economic and social development, focusing on poverty and income inequality dating back to colonial times. It addresses today's legacies of the market-friendly reforms that took hold in the 1980s and 1990s by examining successful stabilizations and homemade monetary and fiscal institutional reforms. It offers a detailed analysis of trade and financial liberalization, twenty-first century-growth, and the decline in poverty and income inequality. Finally, the book offers an overall analysis of inclusive growth policies for development--including gender issues and the informal sector--and the challenges that lie ahead for the region, with special attention to pressing demands by the vibrant and vocal middle class, youth unemployment, and indigenous populations.

Price : $36.00
Insights from the application of economic theories and research methods to the management of linguistic diversity in an era of globalization. In an era of globalization, issues of language diversity have economic and political implications. Transnational labor mobility, trade, social inclusion of migrants, democracy in multilingual countries, and companies' international competitiveness all have a linguistic dimension; yet economists in general do not include language as a variable in their research. This volume demonstrates that the application of rigorous economic theories and research methods to issues of language policy yields valuable insights. The contributors offer both theoretical and empirical analyses of such topics as the impact of language diversity on economic outcomes, the distributive effects of policy regarding official languages, the individual welfare consequences of bilingualism, and the link between language and national identity. Their research is based on data from countries including Canada, India, Kazakhstan, and Indonesia and from the regions of Central America, Europe, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Theoretical models are explained intuitively for the nonspecialist. The relationships among linguistic variables, inequality, and the economy are approached from different perspectives, including economics, sociolinguistics, and political science. For this reason, the book offers a substantive contribution to interdisciplinary work on languages in society and language policy, proposing a common framework for a shared research area. Contributors Alisher Aldashev, Katalin Buzási, Ramon Caminal, Alexander M. Danzer, Maxime Leblanc Desgagné, Peter H. Egger, Ainhoa Aparicio Fenoll, Michele Gazzola, Victor Ginsburgh, Gilles Grenier, François Grin, Zoe Kuehn, Andrea Lassmann, Stephen May, Serge Nadeau, Suzanne Romaine, Selma K. Sonntag, Stefan Sperlich, José-Ramón Uriarte, François Vaillancourt, Shlomo Weber, Bengt-Arne Wickström, Lauren Zentz

Price : $105.00
Financial aspects of launching and operating a high-tech company, including risk analysis, business models, U.S. securities law, financial accounting, tax issues, and stock options, explained accessibly. This book offers an accessible guide to the financial aspects of launching and operating a high-tech business in such areas as engineering, computing, and science. It explains a range of subjects--from risk analysis to stock incentive programs for founders and key employees--for students and aspiring entrepreneurs who have no prior training in finance or accounting. The book begins with the rigorous analysis any prospective entrepreneur should undertake before launching a business, covering risks associated with a new venture, the reasons startup companies fail, and the stages of financing. It goes on to discuss business models and their components, business plans, and exit planning; forms of business organization, and factors to consider in choosing one; equity allocation to founders and employees; applicable U.S. securities law; and sources of equity capital. The book describes principles of financial accounting, the four basic financial statements, and financial ratios useful in assessing management performance. It also explains financial planning and the use of budgets; profit planning; stock options and other option-type awards; methodologies for valuing a private company; economic assessment of a potential investment project; and the real options approach to risk and managerial flexibility. Appendixes offer case studies of Uber and of the valuation of Tentex.

Price : $45.00
Discussions of the use and limits of randomized control trials, considering the power of theory, external validity, gaps in knowledge, and what issues matter. The practice of development economics has undergone something of a revolution as many economists have adopted new methods to answer perennial questions about the effectiveness of anti-poverty programs. In this book, prominent development economists discuss the use and impact of one of the most significant of these new methods, randomized control trials (RCTs) and field experiments. In extended interviews conducted over a period of several years, they explain their work and their thinking and consider the broader issues of how we learn about the world and how we can change it for the better. These conversations offer specialists and nonspecialists alike a unique opportunity to hear economists speak in their own words, free of the confines of a particular study or econometric esoterica. The economists describe how they apply research findings in the way they think about the world, revealing their ideas about the power of theory, external validity, gaps in knowledge, and what issues matter. Also included are interviews with RCT observers, critics, sponsors, consumers, and others. Each interview provides a brief biography of the interviewee. Thorough annotations offer background and explanations for key ideas and studies referred to in the conversations. Contributors Abhijit Banerjee, Nancy Birdsall, Chris Blattman, Alex Counts, Tyler Cowen, Angus Deaton, Frank DeGiovanni, Esther Duflo, Pascaline Dupas, Xavi Gine, Rachel Glennerster, Judy Gueron, Elie Hassenfeld, Dean Karlan, Michael Kremer, David McKenzie, Jonathan Morduch, Lant Pritchett, Jonathan Robinson, Antoinette Schoar, Dean Yang

Price : $29.95
A leading innovation scholar explains the growing phenomenon and impact of free innovation, in which innovations developed by consumers and given away "for free." In this book, Eric von Hippel, author of the influential Democratizing Innovation, integrates new theory and research findings into the framework of a "free innovation paradigm." Free innovation, as he defines it, involves innovations developed by consumers who are self-rewarded for their efforts, and who give their designs away "for free." It is an inherently simple grassroots innovation process, unencumbered by compensated transactions and intellectual property rights. Free innovation is already widespread in national economies and is steadily increasing in both scale and scope. Today, tens of millions of consumers are collectively spending tens of billions of dollars annually on innovation development. However, because free innovations are developed during consumers' unpaid, discretionary time and are given away rather than sold, their collective impact and value have until very recently been hidden from view. This has caused researchers, governments, and firms to focus too much on the Schumpeterian idea of innovation as a producer-dominated activity. Free innovation has both advantages and drawbacks. Because free innovators are self-rewarded by such factors as personal utility, learning, and fun, they often pioneer new areas before producers see commercial potential. At the same time, because they give away their innovations, free innovators generally have very little incentive to invest in diffusing what they create, which reduces the social value of their efforts. The best solution, von Hippel and his colleagues argue, is a division of labor between free innovators and producers, enabling each to do what they do best. The result will be both increased producer profits and increased social welfare--a gain for all.

Price : $35.00
Why the traditional "pledge and review" climate agreements have failed, and how carbon pricing, based on trust and reciprocity, could succeed. After twenty-five years of failure, climate negotiations continue to use a "pledge and review" approach: countries pledge (almost anything), subject to (unenforced) review. This approach ignores everything we know about human cooperation. In this book, leading economists describe an alternate model for climate agreements, drawing on the work of the late Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom and others. They show that a "common commitment" scheme is more effective than an "individual commitment" scheme; the latter depends on altruism while the former involves reciprocity ("we will if you will"). The contributors propose that global carbon pricing is the best candidate for a reciprocal common commitment in climate negotiations. Each country would commit to placing charges on carbon emissions sufficient to match an agreed global price formula. The contributors show that carbon pricing would facilitate negotiations and enforcement, improve efficiency and flexibility, and make other climate policies more effective. Additionally, they analyze the failings of the 2015 Paris climate conference. Contributors Richard N. Cooper, Peter Cramton, Ottmar Edenhofer, Christian Gollier, Éloi Laurent, David JC MacKay, William Nordhaus, Axel Ockenfels, Joseph E. Stiglitz, Steven Stoft, Jean Tirole, Martin L. Weitzman

Price : $65.00
A rigorous theory of money, credit, and bankruptcy in the context of a mixed economy, uniting Walrasian general equilibrium with macroeconomic dynamics and Schumpeterian innovation. This book offers a rigorous study of control, guidance, and coordination problems of an enterprise economy, with attention to the roles of money and financial institutions. The approach is distinctive in drawing on game theory, methods of physics and experimental gaming, and, more generally, a broader evolutionary perspective from the biological and behavioral sciences. The proposed theory unites Walrasian general equilibrium with macroeconomic dynamics and Schumpeterian innovation utilizing strategic market games. Problems concerning the meaning of rational economic behavior and the concept of solution are noted. The authors argue that process models of the economy can be built that are consistent with the general equilibrium system but become progressively more complex as new functions are added. Explicit embedding of the economy within the framework of government and society provides a natural, both formal and informal, control system. The authors describe how to build and analyze multistate models with simple assumptions about behavior, and develop a general modeling methodology for the construction of models as playable games.

Price : $100.00
The new edition of a textbook that combines economic concepts with empirical evidence, updated with material on the Affordable Care Act and other developments. This book introduces students to the growing research field of health economics. Rather than offer details about health systems without providing a theoretical context, Health Economics combines economic concepts with empirical evidence to enhance readers' economic understanding of how health care institutions and markets function. The theoretical and empirical approaches draw heavily on the general field of applied microeconomics, but the text moves from the individual and firm level to the market level to a macroeconomic view of the role of health and health care within the economy as a whole. The book takes a global perspective, with description and analysis of institutional features of health sectors in countries around the world. This second edition has been updated to include material on the U.S. Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, material on the expansion of health insurance in Massachusetts, and an evaluation of Oregon's Medicaid expansion via lottery. The discussion of health care and health insurance in China has been substantially revised to reflect widespread changes there. Tables and figures have been updated with newly available data. Also new to this edition is a discussion of the health economics literature published between 2010 and 2015. The text includes readings, extensive references, review and discussion questions, and exercises. A student solutions manual offers solutions to selected exercises. Downloadable supplementary material is available for instructors.

Price : $35.00
An exploration of a new division of labor between machines and humans, in which people provide value to the economy with little or no compensation. The computerization of the economy--and everyday life--has transformed the division of labor between humans and machines, shifting many people into work that is hidden, poorly compensated, or accepted as part of being a "user" of digital technology. Through our clicks and swipes, logins and profiles, emails and posts, we are, more or less willingly, participating in digital activities that yield economic value to others but little or no return to us. Hamid Ekbia and Bonnie Nardi call this kind of participation--the extraction of economic value from low-cost or free labor in computer-mediated networks--"heteromation." In this book, they explore the social and technological processes through which economic value is extracted from digitally mediated work, the nature of the value created, and what prompts people to participate in the process. Arguing that heteromation is a new logic of capital accumulation, Ekbia and Nardi consider different kinds of heteromated labor: communicative labor, seen in user-generated content on social media; cognitive labor, including microwork and self-service; creative labor, from gaming environments to literary productions; emotional labor, often hidden within paid jobs; and organizing labor, made up of collaborative groups such as citizen scientists. Ekbia and Nardi then offer a utopian vision: heteromation refigured to bring end users more fully into the prosperity of capitalism.

Price : $17.95
How the immigration battle plays out in America, from curriculum disputes to federal raids to the civil rights activism of young "Dreamers." Illegal immigration continues to roil American politics. The right-wing media stir up panic over "anchor babies," job stealing, welfare dependence, bilingualism, al-Qaeda terrorists disguised as Latinos, even a conspiracy by Latinos to "retake" the Southwest. State and local governments have passed more than 300 laws that attempt to restrict undocumented immigrants' access to hospitals, schools, food stamps, and driver's licenses. Federal immigration authorities stage factory raids that result in arrests, deportations, and broken families--and leave owners scrambling to fill suddenly open jobs. The DREAM Act, which would grant permanent residency to high school graduates brought here as minors, is described as "amnesty." And yet polls show that a majority of Americans support some kind of path to citizenship for those here illegally. What is going on? In this book, John Tirman shows how the resistance to immigration in America is more cultural than political. Although cloaked in language about jobs and secure borders, the cultural resistance to immigration expresses a fear that immigrants are changing the dominant white, Protestant, "real American" culture. Tirman describes the "raid mentality" of our response to immigration, which seeks violent solutions for a social phenomenon. He considers the culture clash over Chicano ethnic studies in Tucson, examines the consequences of an immigration raid in New Bedford, and explores the civil rights activism of young "Dreamers." The current "round them up, deport them, militarize the border" approach, Tirman shows, solves nothing. Originally published under the title Dream Chasers: Immigration and the American Backlash.

Price : $34.95
Innovating is for doers: you don't need to wait for an earth-shattering idea, but can build one with a hunch and scale it up to impact. Innovation is the subject of countless books and courses, but there's very little out there about how you actually innovate. Innovation and entrepreneurship are not one and the same, although aspiring innovators often think of them that way. They are told to get an idea and a team and to build a show-and-tell for potential investors. In Innovating, Luis Perez-Breva describes another approach--a doer's approach developed over a decade at MIT and internationally in workshops, classes, and companies. He shows that to start innovating it doesn't require an earth-shattering idea; all it takes is a hunch. Anyone can do it. By prototyping a problem and learning by being wrong, innovating can be scaled up to make an impact. As Perez-Breva demonstrates, "no thing is new" at the outset of what we only later celebrate as innovation. In Innovating, the process--illustrated by unique and dynamic artwork--is shown to be empirical, experimental, nonlinear, and incremental. You give your hunch the structure of a problem. Anything can be a part. Your innovating accrues other people's knowledge and skills. Perez-Breva describes how to create a kit for innovating, and outlines questions that will help you think in new ways. Finally, he shows how to systematize what you've learned: to advocate, communicate, scale up, manage innovating continuously, and document--"you need a notebook to converse with yourself," he advises. Everyone interested in innovating also needs to read this book.

Price : $95.00
An issue-driven introduction to industrial organization, thoroughly updated and revised. The study of industrial organization (IO)--the analysis of the way firms compete with one another--has become a key component of economics and of such related disciplines as finance, strategy, and marketing. This book provides an issue-driven introduction to industrial organization. Although formal in its approach, it is written in a way that requires only basic mathematical training. It includes a vast array of examples, from both within and outside the United States. This second edition has been thoroughly updated and revised. In addition to updated examples, this edition presents a more systematic treatment of public policy implications. It features added advanced sections, with analytical treatment of ideas previously presented verbally; and exercises, which allow for a deeper and more formal understanding of each topic. The new edition also includes an introduction to such empirical methods as demand estimation and equilibrium identification. Supplemental material is available online.

Price : $50.00
Experts from the natural and social sciences examine the coexistence of productive and exploitative behavior strategies observable in many species at many levels. In the natural world, some agents (investors) employ strategies that provide resources, services, or information, while others (exploiters) gain advantages through these efforts. This behavior coexists and can be observed in many species and at many levels. For example, bacteria depend on the existence of biofilms to synthesize constituent proteins; cancerous cells employ angiogenesis to feed a tumor; and parents forgo vaccinating their children yet benefit from herd immunity. Two independent research traditions have developed to analyze this behavior--one couched in evolutionary theory championed by behavioral ecologists, the other in social science concepts advocated by economists. In this book experts from economics, evolutionary biology, behavioral ecology, public health, and anthropology look for commonalities in understanding and approach. The contributors consider parasitic strategies in ecological and economic terms; the governance of natural resources, with insights from "producer-scrounger models," forest management, and game theory; human health, discussing therapeutic opportunities, public health economics, and the integration of perspectives; and behavioral, social, and institutional consequences of exploitation strategies. Contributors Michal Arbilly, Zoltán Barta, Jan Börner, Sam P. Brown, Max Burton-Chellew, Juan Camilo Cardenas, Sasha R. X. Dall, Miguel dos Santos, Frédérique Dubois, Paul W. Ewald, Gigi Foster, Paul Frijters, Luc-Alain Giraldeau, Ben Greiner, Reem Hajjar, Philipp Heeb, Markus Herrmann, Tatsuya Kameda, Alex Kacelnik, Kiryl Khalmetski, Andrew J. King, Hanna Kokko, Michael Kosfeld, Wolfgang Leininger, Arnem Lotem, Kimberley J. Mathot, John M. McNamara, Friederike Mengel, Johan A. Oldekop, Daniel Pauly, Benjamin Roche, Devesh Rustagi, William J. Sutherland, Frédéric Thomas, Thomas J. Valone, Joël van der Weele, Björn Vollan, Claus Wedekind, Bruce Winterhalder

Price : $35.00
An examination of Liquidity Crunch in triggering and characterizing financial crises. Since the subprime mortgage crisis that began in 2007, advanced economies have felt a nagging sense of insecurity. In parallel, the profession has witnessed phenomena that are alien to mainstream macroeconomic models. Financial crises are systemic, occurring simultaneously in different economies. In this book, Guillermo Calvo focuses on liquidity factors as a commonality in financial crises. Specifically, he examines the role of "liquidity crunch" in triggering crises. He also identifies a fundamental (but overlooked) idea in Keynes's General Theory, termed by Calvo the price theory of money, to rationalize the resiliency of the U.S. dollar when other dollar-backed assets suffered a devastating liquidity crunch. Calvo shows that a sharp focus on liquidity reveals some characteristics of liquid assets that are easy to miss otherwise. He argues for liquidity's centrality, presenting what he calls the Liquidity Approach. He shows that simple extensions of standard monetary models help rationalize the implications of the liquidity crunch, and then examines slightly more technical models that highlight liquidity issues. He explores the empirical effects of liquidity crunch by studying systemic sudden stops (of capital inflows), presuming that they are triggered by liquidity crunch-type phenomena.

Price : $17.95
An investigation of the happiness-prosperity connection and whether economists can measure well-being. Can money buy happiness? Is income a reliable measure for life satisfaction? In the West after World War II, happiness seemed inextricably connected to prosperity. Beginning in the 1960s, however, other values began to gain ground: peace, political participation, civil rights, environmentalism. "Happiness economics"--a somewhat incongruous-sounding branch of what has been called "the dismal science"--has taken up the puzzle of what makes people happy, conducting elaborate surveys in which people are asked to quantify their satisfaction with "life in general." In this book, three economists explore the happiness-prosperity connection, investigating how economists measure life satisfaction and well-being. The authors examine the evolution of happiness research, considering the famous "Easterlin Paradox," which found that people's average life satisfaction didn't seem to depend on their income. But they question whether happiness research can measure what needs to be measured. They argue that we should not assess people's well-being on a "happiness scale," because that necessarily obscures true social progress. Instead, rising income should be understood as increasing opportunities and alleviating scarcity. Economic growth helps societies to sustain freedom and to finance social welfare programs. In this respect, high income may not buy happiness with life in general, but it gives individuals the opportunity to be healthier, better educated, better clothed, and better fed, to live longer, and to live well.

Price : $95.00
The new edition of a comprehensive treatment of monetary economics, including the first extensive coverage of the effective lower bound on nominal interest rates. This textbook presents a comprehensive treatment of the most important topics in monetary economics, focusing on the primary models monetary economists have employed to address topics in theory and policy. Striking a balance of insight, accessibility, and rigor, the book covers the basic theoretical approaches, shows how to do simulation work with the models, and discusses the full range of frictions that economists have studied to understand the impacts of monetary policy. For the fourth edition, every chapter has been revised to improve the exposition and to reflect recent research. The new edition offers an entirely new chapter on the effective lower bound on nominal interest rates, forward guidance policies, and quantitative and credit easing policies. Material on the basic new Keynesian model has been reorganized into a single chapter to provide a comprehensive analysis of the model and its policy implications. In addition, the chapter on the open economy now reflects the dominance of the new Keynesian approach. Other new material includes discussions of price adjustment, labor market frictions and unemployment, and moral hazard frictions among financial intermediaries. References and end-of-chapter problems allow readers to extend their knowledge of the topics covered. Monetary Theory and Policy continues to be the most comprehensive and up-to-date treatment of monetary economics, not only the leading text in the field but also the standard reference for academics and central bank researchers.

Price : $50.00
A new edition of a book presenting a unified framework for studying the role of money and liquid assets in the economy, revised and updated. In  Money, Payments, and Liquidity, Guillaume Rocheteau and Ed Nosal provide a comprehensive investigation into the economics of money, liquidity, and payments by explicitly modeling the mechanics of trade and its various frictions (including search, private information, and limited commitment). Adopting the last generation of the New Monetarist framework developed by Ricardo Lagos and Randall Wright, among others, Nosal and Rocheteau provide a dynamic general equilibrium framework to examine the frictions in the economy that make money and liquid assets play a useful role in trade. They discuss such topics as cashless economies; the properties of an asset that make it suitable to be used as a medium of exchange; the optimal monetary policy and the cost of inflation; the coexistence of money and credit; and the relationships among liquidity, asset prices, monetary policy; and the different measures of liquidity in over-the-counter markets. The second edition has been revised to reflect recent progress in the New Monetarist approach to payments and liquidity. Rocheteau and Nosal have added three new chapters: on unemployment and payments, on asset price dynamics and bubbles, and on crashes and recoveries in over-the-counter markets. The chapter on the role of money has been entirely rewritten, adopting a mechanism design approach. Other chapters have been revised and updated, with new material on credit economies under limited commitment, open-market operations and liquidity traps, and the limited pledgeability of assets under informational frictions.

Price : $27.95
Stories about objects left in the wake of transactions, from cryptocurrencies to leaf-imprinted banknotes to records kept with knotted string. Museums are full of the coins, notes, beads, shells, stones, and other objects people have exchanged for millennia. But what about the debris, the things that allow a transaction to take place and are left in its wake? How would a museum go about curating our scrawls on electronic keypads, the receipts wadded in our wallets, that vast information infrastructure that runs the card networks? This book is a catalog for a museum exhibition that never happened. It offers a series of short essays, paired with striking images, on these often ephemeral, invisible, or unnoticed transactional objects--money stuff. Although we've been told for years that we're heading toward total cashlessness, payment is increasingly dependent on things. Consider, for example, the dongle, a clever gizmo that processes card payments by turning information from a card's magnetic stripe into audio information that can be read by a smart phone's headphone jack. Or dogecoin, a meme of a smiling, bewildered dog's interior monologue that fueled a virtual currency similar to Bitcoin. Or go further back and contemplate the paper currency printed with leaves by Benjamin Franklin to foil counterfeiters, or khipu, Incan records kept in knotted string. Paid's authors describe these payment-adjacent objects so engagingly that for a moment, financial leftovers seem more interesting than finance. Paid encourages us to take a moment to look at the nuts and bolts of our everyday transactions by looking at the stuff that surrounds them. Contributors Bernardo Bátiz-Lazo, Maria Bezaitis, Finn Brunton, Lynn H. Gamble, David Graeber, Jane I. Guyer, Keith Hart, Sarah Jeong, Alexandra Lippman, Julien Mailland, Scott Mainwaring, Bill Maurer, Taylor C. Nelms, Rachel O'Dwyer, Michael Palm, Lisa Servon, David L. Stearns, Bruce Sterling, Lana Swartz, Whitney Anne Trettien, Gary Urton

Price : $22.95
How the best companies prepare for and manage modern vulnerabilities--from cybersecurity risks to climate change: new tools, processes and organizations for developing corporate resilience. A catastrophic earthquake is followed by a tsunami that inundates the coastline, and around the globe manufacturing comes to a standstill. State-of-the-art passenger jets are grounded because of a malfunctioning part. A strike halts shipments through a major port. A new digital device decimates the sales of other brands and sends established firms to the brink of bankruptcy. The interconnectedness of the global economy today means that unexpected events in one corner of the globe can ripple through the world's supply chain and affect customers everywhere. In this book, Yossi Sheffi shows why modern vulnerabilities call for innovative processes and tools for creating and embedding corporate resilience and risk management. Sheffi offers fascinating case studies that illustrate how companies have prepared for, coped with, and come out stronger following disruption--from the actions of Intel after the 2011 Japanese tsunami to the disruption in the "money supply chain" caused by the 2008 financial crisis. Sheffi, author of the widely read The Resilient Enterprise, focuses here on deep tier risks as well as corporate responsibility, cybersecurity, long-term disruptions, business continuity planning, emergency operations centers, detection, and systemic disruptions. Supply chain risk management, Sheffi shows, is a balancing act between taking on the risks involved in new products, new markets, and new processes--all crucial for growth--and the resilience created by advanced risk management.

Price : $50.00
Solutions and detailed explanations for odd-numbered end-of-chapter exercises (107 problems) in Felix Muñoz-Garcia's Advanced Microeconomic Theory. Felix Muñoz-Garcia's Advanced Microeconomic Theory provides examples and exercises that help students understand how to apply theoretical models and offers tools for approaching similar problems on their own. This workbook provides solutions and step-by-step explanations for the odd-numbered exercises (107 problems in total). The answer key and detailed explanations emphasize the economic intuition behind the mathematical assumptions and results and, in combination with the textbook, enable students to improve both their theoretical and practical preparation.

Price : $60.00
A concise treatment of modern econometrics and statistics, including underlying ideas from linear algebra, probability theory, and computer programming. This book offers a cogent and concise treatment of econometric theory and methods along with the underlying ideas from statistics, probability theory, and linear algebra. It emphasizes foundations and general principles, but also features many solved exercises, worked examples, and code listings. After mastering the material presented, readers will be ready to take on more advanced work in different areas of quantitative economics and to understand papers from the econometrics literature. The book can be used in graduate-level courses on foundational aspects of econometrics or on fundamental statistical principles. It will also be a valuable reference for independent study. One distinctive aspect of the text is its integration of traditional topics from statistics and econometrics with modern ideas from data science and machine learning; readers will encounter ideas that are driving the current development of statistics and increasingly filtering into econometric methodology. The text treats programming not only as a way to work with data but also as a technique for building intuition via simulation. Many proofs are followed by a simulation that shows the theory in action. As a primer, the book offers readers an entry point into the field, allowing them to see econometrics as a whole rather than as a profusion of apparently unrelated ideas.

Price : $40.00
A new way to determine whether a business strategy will lead to profitability. This book teaches readers to understand profitability in a systematic way, equipping them to provide logically coherent answers to questions about whether a new venture will be profitable, if changes in business strategy will generate an increase in profits, or if "staying the course" will result in continued profitability. Unlike books by business gurus that offer one-size-fits-all advice, this book starts from the premise that you, the reader, are in the best position to make difficult judgments about your business. It shows how to turn these judgments into coherent analysis, presenting state-of-the art theory for understanding business strategy from an economic perspective. The basic building block is the value that is created when the buyer and seller make a deal. In simple terms, if a company is to be profitable, it must make a favorable deal with each and every customer. After setting out key principles and applying them to market situations, the book teaches readers to apply the analysis to their own businesses--in other words, to create their own business game, the main ingredients of which are people and the value that they can create. It addresses how to integrate strategic moves into the book's theory of value creation and competition in order to address the sustainability of a company's profits, the effectiveness of the "invisible hand," and restrictions to competition. Optional appendixes explain the relevant mathematics.

Price : $16.95
The tumultuous life and career of a woman who fought gender bias on multiple fronts--in theory and in practice, for herself and for us all. "Myra Strober's Sharing the Work is the memoir of a woman who has learned that 'having it all' is only possible by 'sharing it all,' from finding a partner who values your work as much as you do, to fighting for family-friendly policies. You will learn that finding allies is crucial, blending families after divorce is possible, and that there is neither a good time nor a bad time to have children. Both women and men will find a friend in these pages." --Gloria Steinem Myra Strober became a feminist on the Bay Bridge, heading toward San Francisco. It is 1970. She has just been told by the chairman of Berkeley's economics department that she can never get tenure. Driving home afterward, wondering if she got something out of the freezer for her family's dinner, she realizes the truth: she is being denied a regular faculty position because she is a mother. Flooded with anger, she also finds her life's work: to study and fight sexism, in the workplace, in academia, and at home. Strober's generous memoir captures the spirit of a revolution lived fully, from her Brooklyn childhood (and her shock at age twelve when she's banished to the women's balcony at shul) to her groundbreaking Stanford seminar on women and work. Strober's interest in women and work began when she saw her mother's frustration at the limitations of her position as a secretary. Her consciousness of the unfairness of the usual distribution of household chores came when she unsuccessfully asked her husband for help with housework. Later, when a group of conservative white male professors sputtered at the idea of government-subsidized child care, Strober made the case for its economic benefits. In the 1970s, the term "sexual harassment" had not yet been coined. Occupational segregation, quantifying the value of work in the home, and the cost of discrimination were new ideas. Strober was a pioneer, helping to create a new academic field and founding institutions to establish it. But she wasn't alone: she benefited from the women's movement, institutional change, and new federal regulations that banned sex discrimination. She continues the work today and invites us to join her.

Price : $35.00
A rich collection of current research in the growing field of social economics, covering such issues as culture, gender, ethics, and philanthropic behavior. The growing field of social economics explores how individual behavior is affected by group-level influences, extending the approach of mainstream economics to include broader social motivations and incentives. This book offers a rich and rigorous selection of current work in the field, focusing on some of the most active research areas. Topics covered include culture, gender, ethics, and philanthropic behavior. Social economics grows out of dissatisfaction with a purely individualistic model of human behavior. This book shows how mainstream economics is expanding its domain beyond market and price mechanisms to recognize a role for cultural and social factors. Some chapters, in the tradition of Gary Becker, attempt to extend the economics paradigm to explain other social phenomena; others, following George Akerlof's approach, incorporate sociological and psychological assumptions to explain economic behavior. Loosely organized by theme--Social Preferences; Culture, Values, and Norms; and Networks and Social Interactions"--the chapters address a range of subjects, including gender differences in political decisions, "moral repugnance" as a constraint on markets, charitable giving by the super-rich, value diversity within a country, and the influence of children on their parents' social networks. Contributors Mireia Borrell-Porta, Sjoerd Beugelsdijk, Joan Costa-Font, Elwyn Davies, Julio Jorge Elias, Marcel Fafchamps, Luigi Guiso, Odelia Heizler, Ayal Kimhi, Mariko J. Klasing, Martin Ljunge, Mario Macis, Mark Ottoni-Wilhelm, Abigail Payne, Kelly Ragan, Jana Sadeh, Azusa Sato, Kimberley Scharf, Sarah Smith, Mirco Tonin, Michael Vlassopoulos, Evguenia Winschel, Philipp Zahn

Price : $29.95
How big data is transforming the creative industries, and how those industries can use lessons from Netflix, Amazon, and Apple to fight back. "[The authors explain] gently yet firmly exactly how the internet threatens established ways and what can and cannot be done about it. Their book should be required for anyone who wishes to believe that nothing much has changed." --The Wall Street Journal "Packed with examples, from the nimble-footed who reacted quickly to adapt their businesses, to laggards who lost empires." --Financial Times Traditional network television programming has always followed the same script: executives approve a pilot, order a trial number of episodes, and broadcast them, expecting viewers to watch a given show on their television sets at the same time every week. But then came Netflix's House of Cards. Netflix gauged the show's potential from data it had gathered about subscribers' preferences, ordered two seasons without seeing a pilot, and uploaded the first thirteen episodes all at once for viewers to watch whenever they wanted on the devices of their choice. In this book, Michael Smith and Rahul Telang, experts on entertainment analytics, show how the success of House of Cards upended the film and TV industries--and how companies like Amazon and Apple are changing the rules in other entertainment industries, notably publishing and music. We're living through a period of unprecedented technological disruption in the entertainment industries. Just about everything is affected: pricing, production, distribution, piracy. Smith and Telang discuss niche products and the long tail, product differentiation, price discrimination, and incentives for users not to steal content. To survive and succeed, businesses have to adapt rapidly and creatively. Smith and Telang explain how. How can companies discover who their customers are, what they want, and how much they are willing to pay for it? Data. The entertainment industries, must learn to play a little "moneyball." The bottom line: follow the data.

Price : $18.00
Solutions to odd-numbered exercises in the second edition of Health Economics. Solutions to odd-numbered exercises in the second edition of Health Economics.

Price : $29.95
How the smartphone can become a personal concierge (not a stalker) in the mobile marketing revolution of smarter companies, value-seeking consumers, and curated offers. Consumers create a data trail by tapping their phones; businesses can tap into this trail to harness the power of the more than three trillion dollar mobile economy. According to Anindya Ghose, a global authority on the mobile economy, this two-way exchange can benefit both customers and businesses. In Tap, Ghose welcomes us to the mobile economy of smartphones, smarter companies, and value-seeking consumers. Drawing on his extensive research in the United States, Europe, and Asia, and on a variety of real-world examples from companies including Alibaba, China Mobile, Coke, Facebook, SK Telecom, Telefónica, and Travelocity, Ghose describes some intriguingly contradictory consumer behavior: people seek spontaneity, but they are predictable; they find advertising annoying, but they fear missing out; they value their privacy, but they increasingly use personal data as currency. When mobile advertising is done well, Ghose argues, the smartphone plays the role of a personal concierge--a butler, not a stalker. Ghose identifies nine forces that shape consumer behavior, including time, crowdedness, trajectory, and weather, and he examines these how these forces operate, separately and in combination. With Tap, he highlights the true influence mobile wields over shoppers, the behavioral and economic motivations behind that influence, and the lucrative opportunities it represents. In a world of artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, wearable technologies, smart homes, and the Internet of Things, the future of the mobile economy seems limitless.

Price : $30.00
The new edition of a popular guide to the key issues in tax reform, presented in a clear, nontechnical, and unbiased way. To follow the debate over tax reform, the interested citizen is often forced to choose between misleading sound bites and academic treatises. Taxing Ourselves bridges the gap between the oversimplified and the arcane, presenting the key issues clearly and without a political agenda. Tax policy experts Joel Slemrod and Jon Bakija lay out in accessible language what is known and not known about how taxes affect the economy and offer guidelines for evaluating tax systems--both the current tax system and proposals to reform it. This fifth edition has been extensively revised to incorporate the latest data, empirical evidence, and tax law. It offers new material on recent tax reform proposals, expanded coverage of international tax issues, and the latest enforcement initiatives. Offering historical perspectives, outlining the basic criteria by which tax policy should be judged (fairness, economic impact, enforceability), examining proposals for both radical change (replacement of the income tax with a flat tax or consumption tax) and incremental changes to the current system, and concluding with a voter's guide, the book provides readers with enough background to make informed judgments about how we should tax ourselves. Praise for earlier editions "An excellent book." --Jeff Medrick, New York Times "A fair-minded exposition of a politically loaded subject." --Kirkus Reviews

Price : $26.95
Why the United States has developed an economy divided between rich and poor and how racism helped bring this about. The United States is becoming a nation of rich and poor, with few families in the middle. In this book, MIT economist Peter Temin offers an illuminating way to look at the vanishing middle class. Temin argues that American history and politics, particularly slavery and its aftermath, play an important part in the widening gap between rich and poor. Temin employs a well-known, simple model of a dual economy to examine the dynamics of the rich/poor divide in America, and outlines ways to work toward greater equality so that America will no longer have one economy for the rich and one for the poor. Many poorer Americans live in conditions resembling those of a developing country--substandard education, dilapidated housing, and few stable employment opportunities. And although almost half of black Americans are poor, most poor people are not black. Conservative white politicians still appeal to the racism of poor white voters to get support for policies that harm low-income people as a whole, casting recipients of social programs as the Other--black, Latino, not like "us." Politicians also use mass incarceration as a tool to keep black and Latino Americans from participating fully in society. Money goes to a vast entrenched prison system rather than to education. In the dual justice system, the rich pay fines and the poor go to jail.

Price : $19.95
Top economists consider how to conduct policy in a world where previous beliefs have been shattered by the recent financial and economic crises. Since 2008, economic policymakers and researchers have occupied a brave new economic world. Previous consensuses have been upended, former assumptions have been cast into doubt, and new approaches have yet to stand the test of time. Policymakers have been forced to improvise and researchers to rethink basic theory. George Akerlof, Nobel Laureate and one of this volume's editors, compares the crisis to a cat stuck in a tree, afraid to move. In April 2013, the International Monetary Fund brought together leading economists and economic policymakers to discuss the slowly emerging contours of the macroeconomic future. This book offers their combined insights. The editors and contributors--who include the Nobel Laureate and bestselling author Joseph Stiglitz, Federal Reserve Vice Chair Janet Yellen, and the former Governor of the Bank of Israel Stanley Fischer--consider the lessons learned from the crisis and its aftermath. They discuss, among other things, post-crisis questions about the traditional policy focus on inflation; macroprudential tools (which focus on the stability of the entire financial system rather than of individual firms) and their effectiveness; fiscal stimulus, public debt, and fiscal consolidation; and exchange rate arrangements.

Price : $19.95
An urgent case for climate change action that forcefully sets out, in economic, ethical, and political terms, the dangers of delay and the benefits of action. The risks of climate change are potentially immense. The benefits of taking action are also clear: we can see that economic development, reduced emissions, and creative adaptation go hand in hand. A committed and strong low-carbon transition could trigger a new wave of economic and technological transformation and investment, a new era of global and sustainable prosperity. Why, then, are we waiting? In this book, Nicholas Stern explains why, notwithstanding the great attractions of a new path, it has been so difficult to tackle climate change effectively. He makes a compelling case for climate action now and sets out the forms that action should take. Stern argues that the risks and costs of climate change are worse than estimated in the landmark Stern Review in 2006--and far worse than implied by standard economic models. He reminds us that we have a choice. We can rely on past technologies, methods, and institutions--or we can embrace change, innovation, and international collaboration. The first might bring us some short-term growth but would lead eventually to chaos, conflict, and destruction. The second could bring about better lives for all and growth that is sustainable over the long term, and help win the battle against worldwide poverty. The science warns of the dangers of neglect; the economics and technology show what we can do and the great benefits that will follow; an examination of the ethics points strongly to a moral imperative for action. Why are we waiting?

Price : $80.00
Leading trade esperts examine the world trading system today, from the multilateralism of the WTO to explosive bilateralism and the mega-regionals TPP and TTIP. When the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) metamorphosed into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1994, it seemed that the third pillar of the international economic superstructure was finally in place. And yet with the failure of member countries to close the Doha Round of trade negotiations and the emergence of bilateral and plurilateral preferential trade arrangements (PTAs) such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the future of the multilateral WTO seems uncertain. In this volume, leading economists examine issues in trade policy that have arisen during this shift. The contributors discuss such topics as the effect of trade on poverty and inequality, PTAs and litigation between trading partners, the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement, and the relationship of food security and trade liberalization. They also offer regional perspectives on the TPP and trans-Atlantic free trade. Contributors Rahel Aichele, Jagdish Bhagwati, Steve Charnovitz, Gabriel Felbermayr Dimitar Gueorguiev, Bernard Hoekman, Jonas Kasteng, Pravin Krishna, Mary Lovely, Petros Mavroidis, Devashish Mitra, Arvind Panagariya, Tom Prusa, Andre Sapir, Stefan Tangermann