Recommending Books for Purchase (Bulletin 182 - January 2022): Oxford University Press

Recommending Books for Purchase : (Bulletin 182 - January 2022): Oxford University Press Titles

Titles

Subject Areas: Business Law, Communication, Business entrepreneurship, Management, Sociology, Civilization, Political Sciences

Cases Without Controversies: Uncontested Adjudication in Article III Courts by James E. Pfander
ISBN: 9780197571408
Publication Date: 2021

Description: As it interprets the U.S. Constitution, the Supreme Court defines the rights of individuals and referees disputes between the branches of government. For many years, the Court has limited access to those claimants who satisfy a shifting and sometimes amorphous case-or-controversy requirement. Drawing on historical practice to clarify the meaning of the constitutional terms in question, this book calls upon the Court to offer broader access to federal court and greater deference to congressional choices.
Competition: What It Is and Why It Happens by Stefan Arora-Jonsson (Editor); Nils Brunsson (Editor); Raimund Hasse (Editor); Katarina Lagerström (Editor)
ISBN: 9780192898012
Publication Date: 2021-09-02

Description: One of the predominant trends of modern society is the pervasive presence of competition. No longer just a function of economic markets or democratic systems, competition has become a favoured tool for governing people and organizations, from the provision of schooling and elder care to theway we consume popular culture. Yet social scientists have played a surprisingly modest role in analysing its implications, as the discussion of competition has largely been confined to its narrow economic meaning.This book opens up competition for the study of social scientists. Its central message is that while competition seems ubiquitous, it should not be taken for granted or be naturalized as an inevitable aspect of human existence. Its emergence, maintenance, and change are based on institutions andorganizational efforts, and a central challenge for social science is to learn more about these processes and their outcomes.With the use of a novel definition of competition, more fundamental questions can be addressed than merely whether or not competition works. How is competition constructed - and by whom? Which behaviours result from competition? What are its consequences? Can competition be removed? And, how dothese factors vary with the object of competition - be it money, attention, status, or other scarce and desired objects? This book investigates these and more questions in studies of competition among and within schools, universities, multinational corporations, auditors, waste-disposal firms,fashion designers, and more.
Digital Nomads: In Search of Meaningful Work in the New Economy by Rachael Woldoff and Robert C. Litchfield
ISBN: 9780190931810
Publication Date: 2021

Description: A small but growing group of today's knowledge workers actively seek a lifestyle of freedom, using technology to perform their jobs, traveling far and wide, and moving as often as they like. These digital nomads have left their local coffee shops behind and now proudly post their "office of the day" photos from exotic locales, but what do their lives really look like?

In Digital Nomads, Rachael Woldoff and Robert Litchfield take readers into an expatriate digital nomad community in Bali, Indonesia to better understand this growing demographic of typically Millennial workers. Through dozens of interviews and several stints living in a digital nomad hub, Woldoff and Litchfield present new answers to classic questions about community, creativity, and work. They further show why digital nomads leave their conventional lives behind, arguing that creative class and Millennial workers, though successful, often feel that their "world class cities" and desirable jobs are anything but paradise. They first follow their transitions into freelancing, entrepreneurship, and remote work, then explain how digital nomads create a fluid but intimate community abroad in the company of like-minded others. Ultimately, Woldoff and Litchfield provide insight into digital nomads' efforts to live and work in ways that balance freedom, community, and creative fulfillment in the digital age.

A sympathetic yet critical take on this emerging group of workers, Digital Nomads provides a revealing take on the changing nature of work and the problems of the new economy.
Failure Management: Malfunctions of Technologies, Organizations, and Society by William B. Rouse
ISBN: 9780198870999
Publication Date: 2021-04-02

Description: Failures are a common phenomena in civilization. Things fail and society responds, often very slowly, sometimes inappropriately. What kinds of things go wrong? Why do they go wrong? How do people and organizations react to failures, and what are the best ways to react? William B. Rouse takes an analytic approach to these questions and addresses eighteen well-known cases of high-consequence failures. He employs a multi-level framework to integrate findings across the case studies, and in turn uses these to outline a conceptual approach to integrated failure management. Though diverse in their causes and outcomes, his analysis shows that the conceptual design of an integrated approach to failure management can encompass each of the case studies, all of which would have benefitted from the same conceptual decision support architecture. This enables cross-cutting system design principles and practices, assuring that failure management in every new domain and context need not start with a blank slate.
Grand Transitions: How the Modern World Was Made by Vaclav Smil
ISBN: 9780190060664
Publication Date: 2021-03-01

Description: What makes the modern world work? The answer to this deceptively simple question lies in four "grand transitions" of civilization--in populations, agriculture, energy, and economics--which have transformed the way we live. Societies that have undergone all four transitions emerge into an era of radically different population dynamics, food surpluses (and waste), abundant energy use, and expanding economic opportunities. Simultaneously, in other parts of the world, hundreds of millions remain largely untouched by these developments. Through erudite storytelling, Vaclav Smil investigates the fascinating and complex interactions of these transitions. He argues that the moral imperative to share modernity's benefits has become more acute with increasing economic inequality, but addressing this imbalance would make it exceedingly difficult to implement the changes necessary for the long-term preservation of the environment. Thus, managing the fifth transition--environmental changes from natural-resource depletion, biodiversity loss, and global warming--will determine the success or eventual failure of the grand transitions that have made the world we live in today.
Monetary Policy in Times of Crisis: A Tale of Two Decades of the European Central Bank by Massimo Rostagno; Carlo Altavilla; Giacomo Carboni; Wolfgang Lemke; Roberto Motto; Arthur Saint Guilhem; Jonathan Yiangou
ISBN: 9780192895912
Publication Date: 2021-08-10

Description: The first twenty years of the European Central Bank (ECB) offer a clear demonstration of how a central bank can navigate macroeconomic insecurity and crisis. As the global economy moves into a new phase of unheralded uncertainty, the story of the ECB holds multiple lessons of widersignificance for the central banking community and researchers of monetary policy.This volume provides a unique account of how the ECB has reacted to the challenges confronting the euro area through its monetary policy, turning to innovative measures and unprecedented policy actions to fend off the various threats posed by the global financial turmoil of 2007/08, the euro areasovereign debt market crisis, and the subsequent period of anaemic growth and deflationary pressures.It also addresses some of the criticisms the ECB has faced regarding its policy initiatives. It identifies the ultimate motivation behind the ECB's cautious attitude in the early phases of the financial crisis, and its peculiar definition of price stability and attention for credit creation, as wellas addressing the criticism that central banks were fundamentally unprepared to head off a major financial cataclysm as they were wedded to a deficient economic paradigm which made them blind to financial risks. It also shows that the ECB's unconventional low-interest policies have not compromisedthe position of financial intermediaries in the way commentators initially predicted they would.By condensing the facts and lessons of the first 20 years of the ECB, this volume will acquaint the reader with the structures and decision-making processes behind the complex, often controversial, crisis measures that were taken during some of the toughest economic challenges in the history ofmodern Europe, and provide them with fresh ex-post analysis on their effect on the real economy and inflation.
Murder in Our Midst: Comparing Crime Coverage Ethics in an Age of Globalized News by Romayne Smith Fullerton; Maggie Jones Patterson
ISBN: 9780190863531
Publication Date: 2021-01-04

Description: As immigration, technological change, and globalization reshape the world, journalism plays a central role in shaping how the public adjusts to moral and material upheaval. This, in turn, raises the ethical stakes for journalism. In short, reporters have a choice in the way they tell thesestories: They can spread panic and discontent or encourage adaptation and reconciliation. In Murder in Our Midst, Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson compare journalists' crime coverage decisions in North America and select Western European countries as a key to examine culturallyconstructed concepts like privacy, public, public right to know, and justice. Drawing from sample news coverage, national and international codes of ethics and style guides, and close to 200 personal interviews with news professionals and academics, they highlight differences in crime news reportingpractices and emphasize how crime stories both reflect and shape each nation's attitudes in unique ways. Murder in Our Midst is both an empirical look at varying journalistic styles and an ethical evaluation of whether particular story-telling approaches do or do not serve the practice ofdemocracy.
Pensions Imperilled: The Political Economy of Private Pensions Provision in the UK by Craig Berry
ISBN: 9780198782834
Publication Date: 2021-03-12

Description: Private pensions provision in the UK is in crisis, yet it is not the crisis often depicted in political and popular discourses. While population ageing has affected traditional pensions practice, the imperilment of UK pensions is due in fact to the peculiar way policy-makers have responded to wider social and economic change. Pensions are a mechanism for managing failed futures, yet this function is being impeded by the individualization of provision. This book offers a political economy perspective on the development of private pensions, focusing specifically on how policy elites have sought to respond to perceived crises of demographic change, under-saving, and fund deficits, and in doing so have absorbed imperatives to subject individuals to a market-led regime under the influence of neoliberal ideology. This terrain is explored through chapters on the historical and comparative context of UK pensions provision, the demise of collectivist provision, the rise of pensions individualization and the state's role as facilitator and regulator in this regard, and the financial and economic context in which pensions provision operates. By placing the UK system in a comparative context of pensions reform agendas across the world, this book offers an original understanding of the unique temporality and materiality of pensions provision as a set of mechanisms for coping with generational change and forecast failures in capitalist economies. It also presents a nuanced account of the extent to which the state acts to anchor the process of pensions rematerialization and, crucially, concludes by outlining a coherent and radical programme of progressive pensions reform.
Projecting Imperial Power: New Nineteenth Century Emperors and the Public Sphere by Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly
ISBN: 9780198802471
Publication Date: 2021-10-25

Description: The nineteenth century is notable for its newly proclaimed emperors, from Franz I of Austria and Napoleon I in 1804, through Agustín of Mexico, Pedro I of Brazil, Napoleon III of France, Maximilian of Mexico, and Wilhelm I of Germany, to Victoria, empress of India, in 1876. These monarchs projected an imperial aura through coronations, courts, medals, costumes, portraits, monuments, international exhibitions, festivals, religion, architecture, and town planning. They relied on ancient history for legitimacy while partially espousing modernity. Projecting Imperial Power is the first book to consider together these newly proclaimed emperors in six territories on three continents across the whole of the long nineteenth century. The first emperors' successors--Pedro II of Brazil, Franz Joseph of Austria, and Wilhelm II of Germany--expanded their panoply of power, until Pedro was forced to abdicate in 1889 and the First World War brought the Austrian and German empires to an end. Britain invented an imperial myth for its Indian empire in the twentieth century, but George VI still had to relinquish the title of emperor in 1947. Using a wide range of sources, Projecting Imperial Power explains the imperial ambition behind the cities of Berlin, Paris, Vienna, and New Delhi. It discusses the contested place of the emperors and their empires in national cultural memory by examining how the statues that were erected in huge numbers in the second part of the period are treated today.
Schumpeter's Venture Money by Michael Peneder; Andreas Resch
ISBN: 9780198804383
Publication Date: 2021-04-04

Description: Distinctively tying history with theory, political economist Joseph A. Schumpeter reached far back in time to understand what drives economic development and determines its course. Historical and empirical research provided a laboratory for learning. At the same time, he reached for a long-term vision through theoretical inspection and utmost abstraction, seeking to distil a phenomenon's essential nature and function. He believed that good theory can indicate where the economy is headed in the future. Schumpeter's attention to history and theory also informed the plan for this book. Part I trails the historical stream of financial innovations and the scholarly struggle to assimilate them in monetary thought, while Part II focuses on Schumpeter's own monetary theory. Its deliberate reconstruction from scattered sources reveals a strikingly original and still modern conception. Drawing from the detailed study of documents at various archives in Austria, Part III then concentrates on the business history of Schumpeter's failed personal endeavours in banking and as a proto-venture capitalist. Finally, Part IV casts light on the legacy of Schumpeter's monetary ideas on contemporary thought. It depicts how monetary theory initially left them behind, yet has more recently set out to return to his ideas on money, financial innovation, and growth. Overall, a surprisingly coherent picture emerges from the study of Schumpeter's neglected monetary theory, his personal history, and his intellectual legacy on the present day.
The Challenges of Technology and Economic Catch-Up in Emerging Economies by Jeong-Dong Lee (Editor); Keun Lee (Editor); Dirk Meissner (Editor); Slavo Radosevic (Editor); Nicholas Vonortas (Editor)
ISBN: 9780192896049
Publication Date: 2021-08-24

Description: Innovation is a pivotal driving force behind economic growth. Technological capability deepens and diversifies industrial activity, which fundamentally enhances growth potential. Consequently, failure to build effective technological capability can lead to slow long-term economic growth. Thisbook synthesizes and interprets existing knowledge on technology upgrading failures in order to better understand the challenges of technology upgrading in emerging economies. The objective is to bring together diverse evidence on three major dimensions of technology upgrading: paths of technologyupgrading, structural changes in the nature of technology upgrading, and the issues of technology transfer and technology upgrading. Knowledge on these three dimensions is synthesized at the firm, sector, and macro levels across different countries and world macroregions.Compared to the challenges and uncertainties facing emerging economies, our understanding of technology upgrading is sparse, unsystematic, and scattered. The recent growth slowdown in many emerging economies, often known as the middle-income trap, has reinforced the importance of understanding thetechnology upgrading challenges they experience. While our understanding of these issues from the 1980s and 1990s is relatively more systematised, the more recent changes that took place during the globalization and proliferation of global value chains, and the effects of the 2008 financial crisis,have not been explored and compared synthetically. The current effects of COVID-19, geopolitical struggles, and the growing concern around environmental sustainability add significant complexity to an already problematic situation. The time is ripe to take stock of our existing knowledge onprocesses of technology upgrading in emerging economies and make further inroads in research on this crucial issue.
The Diaspora and Returnee Entrepreneurship: Dynamics and Development in Post-Conflict Economies by Nick Williams
ISBN: 9780190911881
Publication Date: 2021

Description:
With increased movements of people around the world, the role of transnational economic activity is becoming ever more significant. Yet little is understood about the motivations and contribution of those who return to their homeland to undertake entrepreneurial activity.

The Diaspora and Returnee Entrepreneurship analyzes the role that the diaspora play when returning as entrepreneurs to their homeland. Nick Williams investigates "returnee entrepreneurs," or people who have moved away from their home country, lived as part of the diaspora, and later returned home to live, invest, or both. Based on exhaustive research, this book examines the motivations and activities of these returnee entrepreneurs coming back to challenging homeland economies. Williams draws on evidence from the post-conflict economies of Bosnia, Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Montenegro, all of which are characterized by relatively weak institutional environments. His analysis shows how return to complex environments is often not based on perceived profit opportunities but is due to an emotional attachment informing investment decisions. Exploring questions of isolation versus assimilation, institutional involvement, and personal networking, the book covers more than just the policy approaches that extract higher levels of remittances and studies broad and varied approaches being used by governments around the world, specifically those in post-conflict economies.

Through an in-depth study of the dynamics of return and entrepreneurship, this book shows that concerted efforts need to be made to improve perceptions of state political institutions among the diaspora to secure further assimilation, investment, and prosperity. Williams proves that by understanding the challenges and opportunities associated with diaspora return entrepreneurship, more effective strategies can, and should, be put in place.
The Political Economy of Automotive Industrialization in East Asia by Richard F. Doner; Gregory W. Noble; John Ravenhill
ISBN: 9780197520253
Publication Date: 2021-05-05

Description: East Asia is a powerhouse of automobile production. Yet, across the region, national automobile industries have had strikingly different patterns of development. Despite starting from equally low levels of performance and initially similar strategies, countries have experienced vastlydifferent results. From Thailand's success as an assembly hub for foreign automakers and China's unexpected achievements in building its own car industry, to South Korea's impressive development of an integrated industry, to the Philippines' persistent weakness, these divergent paths offer afascinating window into the determinants of economic growth.The Political Economy of Automotive Industrialization in East Asia provides a political explanation for why development strategies and performance have been so uneven within one of the world's most important regions. Utilizing interviews and original-language research from multiple nations, thisbook explains that factors such as market size and neoclassical economic policies alone cannot explain these patterns of development. Richard F. Doner, Gregory W. Noble, and John Ravenhill instead highlight the significance of two sets of factors: countries' very different capabilities forimplementing policies and the political forces that help to explain the emergence of effective institutions. Through cross-national analyses of China, Taiwan, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand, the book sets up a clear structure for understanding industrial developmentand how it enables or constrains the capabilities of domestic firms. Brief comparisons with Brazil, Mexico, and other developing countries confirm the utility of the analytic framework and demonstrate how it is superior both to accounts in mainstream economics and much of political science, whichfail to give sufficient emphasis to the role of public and public-private institutions, or provide an explanation of the political bases of those institutions.In a world where auto assemblers and suppliers are facing new challenges in an ever-evolving industry - such as the transition to electric and autonomous vehicles - this book offers a crucial perspective on the centrality of institutional capacities and political economy. By tracing the divergenttrajectories of seven nations, The Political Economy of Automotive Industrialization in East Asia offers lessons beyond the automobile industry that illustrate the broader importance of institutions to economic growth.
The Politics of Federal Prosecution by Christina L. Boyd; Michael J. Nelson; Ian Ostrander; Ethan D. Boldt
ISBN: 9780197554685
Publication Date: 2021-02-12

Description: Federal prosecutors have immense power and discretion to decide when to bring criminal charges, what plea bargains to offer, and how to implement the federal government's legal priorities in their districts. While U.S. Attorneys take pains to emphasize their independence, we know relatively little about the extent to which politics colors federal prosecutorial staffing and decision making. The Politics of Federal Prosecution draws upon a wealth of data from 1990s to the present to examine the interplay of political factors and federal prosecution. First, the authors find that congressional and presidential politics affect who becomes federal prosecutors and how long those individuals serve. Second, the book demonstrates that signals of presidential and congressional preferences, along with local priorities, affect key prosecutorial decisions: whether to bring prosecutions, how to approach plea bargaining negotiations, and when to utilize criminal asset forfeiture to cripple criminal activities. In short, the book demonstrates that politics affects the behavior of U.S. Attorneys at nearly every stage of their service.
The Poor and the Plutocrats: From the poorest of the poor to the richest of the rich by Francis Teal
ISBN: 9780198870142
Publication Date: 2021-06-15

Description: Why we are poor and others are so very rich, indeed, why they are so rich when we are still very poor. A decisive examination of inequality and its relationship to poverty and wealth, The Poor and the Plutocrats explores how we live in a world of very many poor people and a very few extremely rich ones - the poor and the plutocrats of the title. Globally the last twenty years have seen declines in inequality between countries and the fastest fall in the numbers of absolutely poor in history - those living on less than the World Bank extreme poverty line of US$1.90 per day. In parallel, inequality within some countries has increased markedly, particularly in the US and the UK. In The Poor and the Plutocrats, Francis Teal explains this pattern of falling absolute poverty and rising relative poverty (the decline of global inequality and the rise of inequality within countries) through the lens of how, over the last two centuries, the value of relatively unskilled labour has changed. To understand the co-existence of the poor and the plutocrats, Teal examines the patterns of growth in national income and how the 1% have captured, in some countries, an increasing share of that income. This book explains how we have come to live in a world of such high levels of income and such dissatisfaction with how that income is distributed.
The Power of the Sacred: An Alternative to the Narrative of Disenchantment by Hans Joas; Alex Skinner (Translator)
ISBN: 9780190933272
Publication Date: 2021-03-02

Description: Disenchantment is a key term in the self-understanding of modernity. But what exactly does this concept mean? What was its original meaning when Max Weber introduced it? And can the conventional meaning or Max Weber's view really be defended, given the present state of knowledge about the history of religion? In The Power of the Sacred, Hans Joas develops the fundamentals of a new sociological theory of religion by first reconstructing existing theories, from the eighteenth century to the present. Through a critical reading and reassessment of key texts in the three empirical disciplines of history, psychology, and sociology of religion, including the works of David Hume, J.G. Herder, Friedrich Schleiermacher, William James, Emile Durkheim, and Ernst Troeltsch, Joas presents an understanding of religion that lays the groundwork for a thorough study of Max Weber's views on disenchantment. After deconstructing Weber's highly ambiguous use of the concept, Joas proposes an alternative to the narratives of disenchantment and secularization which have dominated debates on the topic. He constructs a novel interpretation that takes into account the dynamics of ever new sacralizations, their normative evaluation in the light of a universalist morality as it first emerged in the "Axial Age," and the dangers of the misuse of religion in connection with the formation of power. Built upon the human experience of self-transcendence, rather than human cognition or cultural discourses, The Power of the Sacred challenges both believers and non-believers alike to rethink the defining characteristics of Western modernity.
The Reinvention of Development Banking in the European Union by Daniel Mertens (Editor); Matthias Thiemann (Editor); Peter Volberding (Editor)
ISBN: 9780198859703
Publication Date: 2021-04-09

Description: National development banks (NDBs) have transformed from outdated relics of national industrial policy to central pillars of the European Union's economic project. This trend, which accelerated after the Financial Crisis of 2007, has led to a proliferation of NDBs with an expanded size and scope. However, it is surprising that the EU -- which has championed market-oriented governance and strict competition policy -- has actually advocated for an expansion of NDBs. This book therefore asks, Why has the EU supported an increased role for NDBs, and how can we understand the dynamics between NDBs and European incentives and constraints? To answer these questions, the contributing authors analyze the formation and evolution of a field of development banking within the EU, identifying a new field around an innovative conceptualization of state-backed financing for the purposes of policy implementation. Yet rather than focusing solely on national development banks, the authors instead broaden the focus to the entire ecosystem of the field of development banking, which includes political institutions (both in Brussels and in the member states), financing vehicles (such as the Juncker Plan), regulatory bodies (Directorate-General for Competition, Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs), and commercial actors. Seven in-depth case studies on European NDBs, along with three chapters on European-level actors, detail this field of development banking, and answer the questions of when, where, and how development banking occurs within the EU.
The Spirit of Democracy: Corruption, Disintegration, Renewal by Sofia Näsström
ISBN: 9780192898869
Publication Date: 2021-08-20

Description: How does one revitalize democracy in times of crisis? Democracy is today challenged by populism and elitism, as well as by the resurgence of new forms of authoritarianism. The Spirit of Democracy: Corruption, Disintegration, Renewal shows that while we have good reasons to worry about thecorruption of democratic practices and ideals, these worries are often attributable to questionable assumptions about what democracy is.Drawing on Montesquieu's classical work on the spirit of laws, the book sets out to reconceive the ways in which we understand and conceptualise modern democracy: from sovereignty to spirit. According to Montesquieu, different political forms are animated and sustained by different spirits: arepublic by virtue, a monarchy by honour, and a despotic form by fear. This book argues that modern democracy is a sui generis political form animated and sustained by a spirit of emancipation. The removal of divine, natural, and historical authorities in political affairs unleashes a fundamentaluncertainty about the purpose and direction of society. In a democracy, we respond to that uncertainty by sharing and dividing it equally. It emancipates us from a state of self-incurred tutelage.Based on this argument, the book develops a new theoretical framework for studying the corruption, disintegration, and renewal of democracy: what it is, how it begins, and where in society it plays out.

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