New perspectives on the history of famine-and the possibility of a famine-free worldFamines are becoming smaller and rarer, but optimism about the possibility of a famine-free future must be tempered by the threat of global warming.
How radical free-market ideas achieved mainstream dominance in postwar America and BritainBased on archival research and interviews with leading participants in the movement, Masters of the Universe traces the ascendancy of neoliberalism from the academy of interwar Europe to supremacy under Reagan and Thatcher and in the decades since.
The story of GDP and why we need a better measurement of growthIn one lifetime, GDP, or Gross Domestic Product, has ballooned from a narrow economic tool into a global article of faith.
A new way to understand financial crises-and a blueprint for tomorrow's recoveryThe Leaderless Economy reveals why international financial cooperation is the only solution to today's global economic crisis.
How the United States became an imperial power by bowing to pressure to defend its citizens' overseas investmentsThroughout the twentieth century, the U.
A sweeping history of the drama, intrigue, and rivalry behind the creation of the postwar economic orderWhen turmoil strikes world monetary and financial markets, leaders invariably call for 'a new Bretton Woods' to prevent catastrophic economic disorder and defuse political conflict.
Power to the People examines the varied but interconnected relationships between energy consumption and economic development in Europe over the last five centuries.
What the loans and defaults of a sixteenth-century Spanish king can tell us about sovereign debt todayWhy do lenders time and again loan money to sovereign borrowers who promptly go bankrupt?
A Nobel Prize-winning economist tells the remarkable story of how the world has grown healthier, wealthier, but also more unequal over the past two and half centuriesThe world is a better place than it used to be.
Friedman and Schwartz's A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960, published in 1963, stands as one of the most influential economics books of the twentieth century.
A gripping history of the pioneers who sought to use science to predict financial marketsThe period leading up to the Great Depression witnessed the rise of the economic forecasters, pioneers who sought to use the tools of science to predict the future, with the aim of profiting from their forecasts.
How the Jewish people went from farmers to merchantsIn 70 CE, the Jews were an agrarian and illiterate people living mostly in the Land of Israel and Mesopotamia.
How our stone-age brains made modern society, and why it matters for relationships between men and womenAs countless love songs, movies, and self-help books attest, men and women have long sought different things.
We've been assured that the recession is over, but the country and the economy continue to feel the effects of the 2008 financial crisis, and people are still searching for answers about what caused it, what it has wrought, and how we can recover.
Although political and legal institutions are essential to any nation's economic development, the forces that have shaped these institutions are poorly understood.
Spain's development from a premodern society into a modern unified nation-state with an integrated economy was painfully slow and varied widely by region.
The Poverty of Clio challenges the hold that cliometrics--an approach to economic history that employs the analytical tools of economists--has exerted on the study of our economic past.
Why Americans aren't thrifty and the rest of the world isIf the financial crisis has taught us anything, it is that Americans save too little, spend too much, and borrow excessively.
The general assumption that social policy should be utilitarian--that society should be organized to yield the greatest level of welfare--leads inexorably to increased government interventions.
Today's wine industry is characterized by regional differences not only in the wines themselves but also in the business models by which these wines are produced, marketed, and distributed.
States of Credit provides the first comprehensive look at the joint development of representative assemblies and public borrowing in Europe during the medieval and early modern eras.
The story of personal debt in modern AmericaBefore the twentieth century, personal debt resided on the fringes of the American economy, the province of small-time criminals and struggling merchants.
An incisive economic and political history of the Panama CanalOn August 15, 1914, the Panama Canal officially opened for business, forever changing the face of global trade and military power, as well as the role of the United States on the world stage.
Why economics needs to focus on fairness and not just efficiencyOne of the central tenets of mainstream economics is Adam Smith's proposition that, given certain conditions, self-interested behavior by individuals leads them to the social good, almost as if orchestrated by an invisible hand.
How religious barriers stalled capitalism in the Middle EastIn the year 1000, the economy of the Middle East was at least as advanced as that of Europe.
The growth of technological and scientific knowledge in the past two centuries has been the overriding dynamic element in the economic and social history of the world.
Adam Smith turned economic theory on its head in 1776 when he declared that the pursuit of self-interest mediated by the market itself--not by government--led, via an invisible hand, to the greatest possible welfare for society as a whole.
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59) has long been recognized as a major political and social thinker as well as historian, but his writings also contain a wealth of little-known insights into economic life and its connection to the rest of society.
The acclaimed New York Times bestselling history of financial crisesThroughout history, rich and poor countries alike have been lending, borrowing, crashing, and recovering their way through an extraordinary range of financial crises.
International trade has shaped the modern world, yet until now no single book has been available for both economists and general readers that traces the history of the international economy from its earliest beginnings to the present day.
"e;Economists agree about many things--contrary to popular opinion--but the majority agree about culture only in the sense that they no longer give it much thought.
This book provides a surprising answer to two puzzling questions that relate to the very "e;soul"e; of the professional study of economics in the late twentieth century.
Ever since Adolph Berle and Gardiner Means wrote their classic 1932 analysis of the American corporation, The Modern Corporation and Private Property, social scientists have been intrigued and challenged by the evolution of this crucial part of American social and economic life.
In this major reinterpretation of the evolution of the American corporation, Mark Roe convincingly demonstrates that the ownership structure of large U.
From the point of view of economic history, the ideal way to study any institution of commercial law would be to compare the information contained in legal codes and treatises with the material relating to its application in economic life as manifested by actual contracts, letters, and business records found in archives and other repositories.
The triumphant rise of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte over his Republican opponents has been the central theme of most narrative accounts of mid-nineteenth-century France, while resistance to the coup d'etat generally has been neglected.
