Showing titles in Economic History

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

Drive through rural America and you’ll see small town after small town empty and decaying. As you drive past the abandoned manufacturing plants and shuttered Victorian homes once inhabited by its workers and executives, you can picture what the town was like forty years ago. A thriving community where the company president and assembly line worker went to the same church and whose children went to the same school.

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

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

After the 2008 financial crisis, investment banks and other professional investors had the edge when it came to bailouts and stock trading. The crisis also ushered in a wave of new small-scale retail investors who were hell-bent on crushing the big guys by using social media channels to connect, share ideas, promote stocks, and reap the rewards—Robin Hood-style. But did the meme short squeeze stand a chance in a rigged playing field? This concise, definitive account of a daring Wall Street heist exposes a fight to the death against a fraudulent system.

Forbes editor John Tamny uses entertaining stories from sports, movies, popular culture, and famous businesses to demonstrate the basic principles of economics. The Rolling Stones, the Dallas Cowboys, and Paris Hilton become examples of good and bad tax policy. The Godfather, Gone With the Wind, and The Sopranos reveal the downside of antitrust regulation while the Michigan Wolverines' 2007 loss to Appalachian State explains why regulations often fail to achieve their intended purposes.

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

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

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

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

With over twenty-five contributions by some of the nation's most influential progressive voices, Labor's Partisans brings to life a history of labor that is of immediate relevance to our own times. Introduced and edited by leading labor historians Nelson Lichtenstein and Samir Sonti, this essential volume reveals the powerful currents and debates running through the labor movement, from the 1950s to today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The financial crisis that crested in 2008 destroyed the credibility of the economic thinking that had guided policymakers for a generation. But what will take its place? In How the Economy Works, one of our leading economists provides a jargon-free exploration of the current crisis, offering a powerful argument for how economics must change to get us out of it. Roger E. A. Farmer traces the swings between classical and Keynesian economics since the early 20th century, gracefully explaining the elements of both theories.