Over the last several decades, employers have increasingly replaced permanent employees with temporary workers and independent contractors to cut labor costs and enhance flexibility.
Research on the spatial aspects of economic activity has flourished over the past decade due to the emergence of new theory, new data, and an intense interest on the part of policymakers, especially in Europe but increasingly in North America and elsewhere as well.
A sweeping intellectual history of the role of wealth in the church in the last days of the Roman EmpireJesus taught his followers that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven.
How did the industrialized nations of North America and Europe come to be seen as the appropriate models for post-World War II societies in Asia, Africa, and Latin America?
Optimal tax design attempts to resolve a well-known trade-off: namely, that high taxes are bad insofar as they discourage people from working, but good to the degree that, by redistributing wealth, they help insure people against productivity shocks.
A sweeping look at the evolution of commercial banks over the past two centuriesCommercial banks are among the oldest and most familiar financial institutions.
An authoritative look at the microeconomics of entrepreneurshipEntrepreneurs are widely recognized for the vital contributions they make to economic growth and general welfare, yet until fairly recently entrepreneurship was not considered worthy of serious economic study.
With little domestic fanfare and even less attention internationally, Japan has been reinventing itself since the 1990s, dramatically changing its political economy, from one managed by regulations to one with a neoliberal orientation.
From acclaimed economists George Akerlof and Robert Shiller, the case for why government is needed to restore confidence in the economyThe global financial crisis has made it painfully clear that powerful psychological forces are imperiling the wealth of nations today.
An inside look at the role and future of central banking in the global economyThe crash of 2008 revealed that the world's central banks had failed to offset the financial imbalances that led to the crisis, and lacked the tools to respond effectively.
One of the core assumptions of recent American foreign policy is that China's post-1978 policy of "e;reform and openness"e; will lead to political liberalization.
Reviving the Invisible Hand is an uncompromising call for a global return to a classical liberal economic order, free of interference from governments and international organizations.
Why America's public-private mortgage giants threaten the world economy-and what to do about itThe financial collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2008 led to one of the most sweeping government interventions in private financial markets in history.
How the fate of the Jews has been shaped by the development of capitalismThe unique historical relationship between capitalism and the Jews is crucial to understanding modern European and Jewish history.
A sweeping global history of entrepreneurial innovationWhether hailed as heroes or cast as threats to social order, entrepreneursand their innovationshave had an enormous influence on the growth and prosperity of nations.
Making Cities Work brings together leading writers and scholars on urban America to offer critical perspectives on how to sustain prosperous, livable cities in today's fast-evolving economy.
The Canal du Midi, which threads through southwestern France and links the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, was an astonishing feat of seventeenth-century engineering--in fact, it was technically impossible according to the standards of its day.
Economists and Societies is the first book to systematically compare the profession of economics in the United States, Britain, and France, and to explain why economics, far from being a uniform science, differs in important ways among these three countries.
In the standard analysis of economic institutions--which include social conventions, the working rules of an economy, and entitlement regimes (property relations)--economists invoke the same theories they use when analyzing individual behavior.
How writers after Adam Smith helped shape our thinking about economics and politicsFew issues are more central to our present predicaments than the relationship between economics and politics.
Ever since the French Revolution, Madame de Pompadour's comment, "e;Apres moi, le deluge"e; (after me, the deluge), has looked like a callous if accurate prophecy of the political cataclysms that began in 1789.
This book challenges the widely accepted notion that globalization encourages economic convergence--and, by extension, cultural homogenization--across national borders.
The collapse of Britain's powerful labor movement in the last quarter century has been one of the most significant and astonishing stories in recent political history.
In his best-selling Irrational Exuberance, Robert Shiller cautioned that society's obsession with the stock market was fueling the volatility that has since made a roller coaster of the financial system.
