Multinational firms in the world economy

Depending on one's point of view, multinational enterprises are either the heroes or the villains of the globalized economy. Governments compete fiercely for foreign direct investment by such companies, but complain when firms go global and move their activities elsewhere. Multinationals are seen by ...

Japan's financial crisis

institutional rigidity and reluctant change

At the beginning of the 1990s, a massive speculative asset bubble burst in Japan, leaving the nation's banks with an enormous burden of nonperforming loans. Banking crises have become increasingly common across the globe, but what was distinctive about the Japanese case was the ...

That eminent tribunal

judicial supremacy and the Constitution

License to harass

Law, hierarchy, and offensive public speech

Offensive street speech--racist and sexist remarks that can make its targets feel both psychologically and physically threatened--is surprisingly common in our society. Many argue that this speech is so detestable that it should be banned under law. But is this an area covered by the ...

The jewish Century

Jews and the American soul

human nature in the twentieth century

Relics of the Buddha

Buddhism is popularly seen as a religion stressing the truth of impermanence. How, then, to account for the long-standing veneration, in Asian Buddhist communities, of bone fragments, hair, teeth, and other bodily bits said to come from the historic Buddha? Early European and American scholars ...

Individual strategy and social structure

an evolutionary theory of institutions

Neoclassical economics as-sumes that people are highly rational and can reason their way through even the most complex economic problems. In Individual Strategy and Social Structure, Peyton Young argues for a more realistic view in which people have a limited understanding of their environment, are ...

What price the moral high ground?

ethical dilemmas in competitive environments

Financial disasters - and stories of the greedy bankers who precipitated them - seem to underscore the idea that self-interest will always trump concerns for the greater good. Indeed, this idea is supported by the prevailing theories in both economics and evolutionary biology. But is it valid ...

Heidegger's children

Hannah Arendt, Karl Löwith, Hans Jonas, and Herbert Marcuse

Martin Heidegger is perhaps the twentieth century's greatest philosopher, and his work stimulated much that is original and compelling in modern thought. A seductive classroom presence, he attracted Germany's brightest young intellects during the 1920s. Many were Jews, who ultimately would have to ...

Credit risk

pricing, measurement, and management

Michelangelo´s Florence Pietá

Financial crisis, contagion, and containment

from Asia to Argentina

This book provides a sweeping, up-to-date, and boldly critical account of the financial crises that rocked East Asia and other parts of the world beginning with the collapse of the Thai baht in 1997. Retracing the story of Asia's "Crisis Five"--Indonesia, Malaysia, South ...

Econometrics and the philosophy of economics

theory-data confrontations in economics

As most econometricians will readily agree, the data used in applied econometrics seldom provide accurate measurements for the pertinent theory's variables. Here, Bernt Stigum offers the first systematic and theoretically sound way of accounting for such inaccuracies. He and a distinguished group of contributors ...

In search of prosperity

analytic narratives on economic growth

The economics of growth has come a long way since it regained center stage for economists in the mid-1980s. Here for the first time is a series of country studies guided by that research. The thirteen essays, by leading economists, shed light on some of ...

An economic analysis of the family

What do economists have to say about behavior within the context of the family? This book improves our understanding of how families and markets interact, why important aspects of families have been changing in recent decades, and how families respond to, and are affected by ...

Behavioral game theory

experiments in strategic interaction

Game theory, the formalized study of strategy, began in the 1940s by asking how emotionless geniuses should play games, but ignored until recently how average people with emotions and limited foresight actually play games. This book marks the first substantial and authoritative effort to close ...

Knowledge, information, and expectations in modern macroeconomics

In honor of Edmund S. Phelps

Monopsony in motion

imperfect competition in labor markets

The economics of e-commerce

a strategic guide to understanding and designing the online marketplace

Despite the recent misfortunes of many dotcoms, e-commerce will have major and lasting effects on economic activity. But the rise and fall in the valuations of the first wave of e-commerce companies show that vague promises of distant profits are insufficient. Only business models based ...

Economic geography and public policy

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. However ...

Principles of economic sociology

The last fifteen years have witnessed an explosion in the popularity, creativity, and productiveness of economic sociology, an approach that traces its roots back to Max Weber. This important new text offers a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of economic sociology. It also advances the field ...