Companion to the History of Economic Thought (Blackwell Companions to Contemporary Economics)

Book Description

Assembling contributions from top thinkers in the field, this Companion offers a comprehensive and sophisticated exploration of the history of economic thought. The volume has a threefold focus: the history of economic thought, the history of economics as a discipline, and the historiography of economic thought. The essays in the first part focus on the history of economic ideas, with topics ranging from ancient, medieval, and Islamic thought, to Marxian, Utopian, and postwar thought. The second part explores important historiographical topics, including the sociology of economics, methodology, exegesis, and textuality.Each essay serves as a complex introduction to the chosen topic, and gathered together they provide an extensive synthesis of the field as a whole. The volume is an essential resource for anyone researching or studying the history of economic thought, and will also serve as an excellent text for courses in this area.

Companion to Contemporary Economic Thought (Routledge Reference)

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Companion to Contemporary Economic Thought (Routledge Reference)
D. Greenaway
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Theory | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Reference | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0415026121

Book Description

Companion to Contemporary Economic Thought presents its reader with a comprehensive picture of current economic theory and applied economics. Its forty-one constituent articles are arranged under four broad themes: Methodological Perspectives, Economic Theory, Applied Economics, and Interfaces. This last section, a feature unique to this book, explores the current points of contact between economics and related disciplines.

Each article considers its topic in depth, conveying the full detail of current advances. The contributors explain their ideas in ways that will be understandable to others, both inside and outside economics. Also included is an extensive bibliography and suggestions for further reading, as well as a detailed index of topics and people. Companion to Contemporary Economic Thought takes stock of the subject, providing--in a concise form--unified coverage appropriate to the student, the teacher and the professional alike.

Contributors: William J. Baumol, Richard Blundell, A. W. Coats, W. Max Corden, Phyllis Deane, Dennis C. Mueller, Sir Alan Peacock, M. Hashem Pesaran, Warren J. Samuels, Robert M. Solow.

Blackwell Companion to the History of Economic Thought

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Blackwell Companion to the History of Economic Thought
Samuels Biddle DAVIS
Manufacturer: Blackwell Publishing (UK)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000N59B2U

Book Description

Why do currency crises happen? What conditions set the stage for such a crisis? How severe will it be? When will it happen? This book answers these questions, illustrating the points by examining the exchange rate realignments of the European Monetary System. It also shows how balancing the tension between domestic and international politics plays a vital part in a government's willingness to uphold its exchange rate commitments. The book pays particular attention to the role of domestic elections, since these may prevent governments from credibly committing to a fixed exchange rate and from responding quickly and coherently to market instability, thus encouraging speculation.

Book Description

The national retail apparel business has grown to a $172 billion per year industry, and the employment rate for designers is expected to outpace that of all other occupations through the year 2008. The Fashion Designer Survival Guide is a must-have for the thousands of talented designers who want to see their dream of creating an independent fashion line become a reality.

Mary Gehlhar, author, industry authority, and consultant to hundreds of designers (including newcomers Alicia Bell, Keanan Duffty, and Milly), gives readers behind-the-scenes advice and essential business information on creating and sustaining a successful career as an independent designer. The Fashion Designer Survival Guide provides the necessary tools to get a fashion line or label up and moving on the right track, including: •Start-up costs and financing •Legal issues •Business plans •Public relations and sales •Marketing and manufacturing •Distribution-trade, trunk, and runway shows

This book also provides case studies from independent designers at different stages of their careers, including tough letdowns and exciting successes. Young designers weigh-in on topics important to them when they were starting out, while several top name designers offer personal perspectives on a single question, providing a window to their world and a variety of answers.

Designers are bursting with creativity but often fall flat going into business as an independent. The Fashion Designer Survival Guide provides designers with the one thing design school didn’t-intelligent and successful business practices.

Customer Reviews:

This book is a must have to start your own fashion line.......2007-10-10

It tells you step by step what to do and what not to do, it even gives you places to go so you can get started and gives you that extra push you need to make it

Everything you need to know and more.......2007-06-10

This book is the most concise source of information on how to mindfully start one's own clothing line. Detailed and clear, it outlines everything one needs to know from inseption and development through financials, incorporation, press, factory relations, shows and beyond. It is, by far, the most complete resource for any aspiring designer.

A must have.......2007-06-01

I f you are starting a business this is the best book you can find.
You ll find a lot of advices that will be very helpful.

Don't waste your time or money........2007-03-20

Ok I read this book and this other book called Fashion For Profit. This author obivously does not sound like she has really worked in the garment industry. It would be very scary to start a business taking advice from this book. It kind of reminds me of that old sewing lady professor you have in home economics class trying to tell you like you are a 4 year old trying to run a company, scary stuff if you ask me. I got all I ever needed out of Fashion For Profit. That book is strictly business. It's twice as much ,but you get what you pay for. Apparently the author of Fashion for Profit has been voted numerous times in the top 10 most influential in the California Apparel Industry by the California Apparel News. Bottom line you get what you pay for.

This book is absolutely fabulous! .......2007-02-13

I would recommend this book to anyone thinking about starting their own fashion design business. It answers any and all questions and best of all it provides resources that we all need (especially if we have no one to guide us). If you're a student of course you would have the resources provided to you by the school itself, but for someone who is doing this from natural talent and ideas, it's GREAT!!!

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Field Guide to Starting a Business
Stephen M. Pollan , and Mark Levine
Manufacturer: Fireside
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Small Business & Entrepreneurship | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

New Business Enterprises | Small Business & Entrepreneurship | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0671675052

Book Description

From inception to implementation, from opening to expansion, this is the definitive nuts-and-bolts guide for the budding entrepreneur--be it the M.B.A. who wants out of the rat race to the homemaker who wants to work out of the living room.

Book Description

According to William Ury, it takes two sides to fight, but a third to stop. Distilling the lessons of two decades of experience in family struggles, labor strikes, and wars, he presents a bold new strategy for stopping fights. He also describes ten practical roles--as managers, teachers, parents, and citizens--that each of us can play every day to prevent destructive conflict.

Fighting isn't an inevitable part of human nature, Ury explains, drawing on his training as an anthropologist and his work among primitive tribes and modern corporations. We have a powerful alternative--The Third Side--which can transform our daily battles into creative conflict and cooperation at home, at work, and in the world.

Customer Reviews:

The Flow of Positivity.......2007-08-10

From his experience with working with children, married couples, business disputes, international conflict and more, William Ury demonstrates that an alternative to anger and violence is not only possible but much more productive and rewarding for all parties involved.

Although Ury specifies indentification and processes involved in all its various forms, you will not find much extrapilation here. Reading this provides a person that may be interested in dealing with conflict (whether at home, or at work, or even politically) a solid starting point and an enlightened positivity towards a more detail study on the subject.

Just a little more than 200 pages. The cover is treated to be fairly resistant to the elements so feel free to pass this along to friends or keep it on the coffee table for a quick reference to its diagrams.

If you have to develop a power point slide show on mediation, this is a big helper. Visit the website for more resources. [...]

Not so Provocative..........2006-04-14

The "third-side" idea of Ury's book was a neat one. I think that his idea of recognizing a third-side, may it be another person/people or a motivating force, and allowing it to assist in nonviolent conflict resolution is neat in that it helps us individually recognize the will to 'resolve'. I just don't know if that whole idea is actually that stimulating.
There is an over-simplification in his methodologies which proved to be a significant downfall of this book. Much of his examples were underdeveloped and it seems as if he molds the examples to fit his opinion, instead of his opinion fitting into the examples. The major dissappointment for me in the book was that he writes of other people and other cultures through the employment of racist techniques and makes it seem as though every conflict is simple enough that it can eventually just be "talked out".

The Third Side is the Best Side.......2004-11-17

An acclaimed negotiator and author of previous best sellers, "Getting to Yes" and "Getting Past No", William Ury first titled this book, "Getting to Peace". He later reverted to the original working title in order to de-emphasize the focus on global conflict, as he is a recognized world expert in peacekeeping negotiations. Instead he deals with conflict at all levels, from the family to the workplace and from the community to the world.

This is a 251-page paperback, written by an anthropologist who is concerned for his own human tribe, as he explores the reasons we are in conflict and sets forward a roadmap to resolution. In the first of three parts to the book, Ury describes the Third Side as the inside and outside factors to a dispute between two sides and explores the potential in recognizing its existence. Essentially, the Third Side is the neutral third party to such conflict.

In the fascinating second part, he examines the concept of fighting as an element of human nature from an archeological standpoint and points out that there was little organized violence in the first 99% of human history. As we moved from a society of hunters and gatherers to an agricultural and then an industrial society, the expandable pie became fixed and the potential for conflict increased. The recent technological change to a society based on knowledge has the potential for re-expanding the pie and allows for coexistence rather than coercion.

In the third segment, the author offers some solutions to prevent, resolve and contain conflict before it escalates to violent outcomes. He suggests that potential "third-siders" can transform conflict by assuming roles based on ten reasons for the escalation of disputes. He ends by challenging the reader to consider a number of steps towards mobilizing the third side.

As with the other books he has co-authored, William Ury has presented some interesting ideas in a thoroughly readable format. In particular, his use of stories to illustrate these concepts is marvelous. They range from the basic fights between the Bushmen of Africa to the politically charged wars between nations in the Middle East. This is a provocative book and one that is extremely pertinent in today's contentious society.

Simply the best book on mediation there is.......2004-10-19

This is *the* definitive book on conflict management by the uber-guru of negotiation and mediation. Ury has mediated in the Middle East, the Balkans, N. Ireland and many other places.

Fighting is natural and human, and is the ultimate approach. But it is destructive and win-lose at best. Revenge and feuding turns it into lose-lose. Ury points out how the win-lose of the agrarian society is giving way to both-win or both-lose of the knowledge society as hierarchical control is being fractured by knowledge networks.

The 'third side' is the person on the sidelines in a conflict who wants to help. Third-siders can be neighbors, neutrals, bystanders, family, friends. Event the warring parties themselves can take the third side. This book describe ten roles that this person can take.

Their goal is always to prevent conflict before it happens. Even the presence of a third person will calm conflict, but doing nothing does not optimize the help they can give.

Three strategies (and roles within each) are offered to manage increasing levels of conflict:

* Prevent (Provider, Teacher, Bridge-builder)
* Resolve (Mediator, Arbiter, Equalizer, Healer)
* Contain (Witness, Referee, Peacekeeper)

They are:
1. Provider: When there is conflict is often over scarce resources the Provider finds ways for both sides to get what they need, even deep needs such as love, safety and esteem. They can also provide knowledge to enable intelligent decisions.
2. Teacher: People often fight because they know of no other way to resolve their differences. The Teacher shows them how to handle conflict without resorting to violence and arms.
3. Bridge-builder: People in conflict often become separated by deep divides which lead to ignorant stereotyping, etc. The Bridge-builder builds ways across the dividing chasm, for example by building trust, showing how the others are human too.
4. Mediator: Where there are conflicting interests, the Mediator tries to bring them to the table. If this fails, they use shuttle diplomacy, going back and forth. Sometimes a higher authority may be able to coerce them to the table.
5. Arbiter: When there are disputed rights or when mediation fails, the Arbiter acts a judge and selects a final solution, to which both parties must agree to be bound.
6. Equalizer: Where there is unequal power, the powerful may not seek help but the powerless deserve it. Their position of greater power may cause the powerful to rethink and bring them to the table.
7. Healer: Injured relationships can fester if left alone. The Healer seeks to calm emotion and soothe hurt, for example by listening and acknowledging within a climate of healing.
8. Witness: When nobody pays attention, atrocities may be committed. The Witness needs only see and tell the truth. Just by their presence, they may also dissuade the wrong-doer.
9. Referee: When people resort to conflict without rules, people get really hurt. When you cannot stop them fighting, the Referee at least sets and polices the rules.
10. Peacekeeper: Where people are completely vulnerable, they are open to easy attack. The Peacekeeper provides safety for the victims, interpose themselves between the warring parties and enforcing the peace.

These ten roles can be played in combination, even with the same person playing more than one role.

Overall, this is a wonderful and empowering must-have book, not just for mediators but anyone who encounters or stands at any time between warring people.

Does not show you how.......2001-11-06

This book just say that you should settle your disputes with methods such as mediation and negitiation but teach not tell you how you can do it.

A disappointment.

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The Third Side: Why We Fight and How We Can Stop
William L. Ury
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OJCYQU

Book Description

The vast majoirty of personal finance books are published in the US and there are really no suitable personal finance books aimed specifically at investors in Asia-Pacific. This timely and practical book will offer advice to readers on how to inculcate an understanding of the value of asset allocation and the importance of monitoring the overall performance of a portfolio rather than fixating on the performance of individual investments. It will be useful to readers who are quite new to investments and those who are relatively sophisticated.

Customer Reviews:

Good brief summary .......2004-12-29

This book covers a wide range of investment vehicles available to asia-pacific investors, in a brief way. It benefits beginner investors the most to provide a broad overview of investment. With a basic mostly-accurate overview, beginner investor can look up specific topics from other books. However, don't spend too much time on this book if you couldn't understand certain topics as they are covered too briefly. For an example, the book just mentioned the inverse relationship between the interest rate change and change of the market value of bonds without giving any explanation. However can a average beginner, to whom this book is targeted, understand this?

This book is somewhat useful to intermediate investors to refresh their knowledages on various topics from various sources. It pieces them together. Nothing is covered in depth, whatever is covered is the most essential and mostly-accurate.

I'd like to give 4 stars until I read the last few chapters. Besides several obvious typos through out the book, there are two serious mistakes that I can't believe they could occur with a serious publisher like John Wiley, I have never encounter similar errors from any respectable publishers.

(1) In a chapter about insurance, the last paragraph on pg. 183 and first paragraph on the subsequent page are a direct cut-and-paste from pg. 138, which discusses efficient market theory. The paragraphs are total out of context.

(2) the only two formulas in this book is on pg. 214. both are formated in a very ugly way, the second is totally wrong, or it is too ugly for me the understand. The formulas are presented in a pure text format as in ".txt" file. You can imagine how horrible it is, and I can't imagine this could occurs to a publisher who is well-known for it scientific publications.

Book Description

In When Hollywood Had a King, the distinguished journalist Connie Bruck tells the sweeping story of MCA and its brilliant leader, a man who transformed the entertainment industry— businessman, politician, tactician, and visionary Lew Wasserman.

The Music Corporation of America was founded in Chicago in 1924 by Dr. Jules Stein, an ophthalmologist with a gift for booking bands. Twelve years later, Stein moved his operations west to Beverly Hills and hired Lew Wasserman. From his meager beginnings as a movie-theater usher in Cleveland, Wasserman ultimately ascended to the post of president of MCA, and the company became the most powerful force in Hollywood, regarded with a mixture of fear and awe.

In his signature black suit and black knit tie, Was-serman took Hollywood by storm. He shifted the balance of power from the studios—which had seven-year contractual strangleholds on the stars—to the talent, who became profit partners. When an antitrust suit forced MCA’s evolution from talent agency to film- and television-production company, it was Wasserman who parlayed the control of a wide variety of entertainment and media products into a new type of Hollywood power base. There was only Washington left to conquer, and conquer it Wasserman did, quietly brokering alliances with Democratic and Republican administrations alike.

That Wasserman’s reach extended from the underworld to the White House only added to his mystique. Among his friends were Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa, mob lawyer Sidney Korshak, and gangster Moe Dalitz—along with Presidents Johnson, Clinton, and especially Reagan, who enjoyed a particularly close and mutually beneficial relationship with Wasserman. He was equally intimate with Hollywood royalty, from Bette Davis and Jimmy Stewart to Steven Spielberg, who began his career at MCA and once described Wasserman’s eyeglasses as looking like two giant movie screens.

The history of MCA is really the history of a revolution. Lew Wasserman ushered in the Hollywood we know today. He is the link between the old-school moguls with their ironclad studio contracts and the new industry defined by multimedia conglomerates, power agents, multimillionaire actors, and profit sharing. In the hands of Connie Bruck, the story of Lew Wasserman’s rise to power takes on an almost Shakespearean scope. When Hollywood Had a King reveals the industry’s greatest untold story: how a stealthy, enterprising power broker became, for a time, Tinseltown’s absolute monarch.

From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews:

A Pebble in the Pond.......2007-07-21

Absolutely first-rate bio-history. It is the story of this remarkable man, but also the story of a great deal more. As I read this well-written biography, I thought of "Once Upon A Time In America," the film about the American Jewish mafia told by the Italian director Sergio Leone. This biography of Wasserman has all of the mythic power of that film chronicle of violence and dreams. Fear played such a role in the way Wasserman weilded power, it is a wonder that our political theorists have not included this book in their reading lists along with Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes. There is something "Oriental" about the use of power, the willingness to ruthlessly destroy, the seemingly endless, insatiable greed. His connection to the mob and to American presidents, such as Johnson and Nixon, is terribly interesting, as is the continuing fascination of Hollywood with power. I can think of no comparable mix of dread and beauty than that of the relationship between Stalin and Russian poets. This book is haunting and scary. Sleep tight.

When Hollywood was King!.......2003-08-07

When Hollywood was King and MCA ruled through aggressive, imaginative, creative, dirty, underhanded, political ways. This is not my favorite Hollywood book as I found "Showman, the life of David O. Selznick" by David Thomson and Peter Biskind's "easy Riders, Raging Bulls" far more entertaining. But Connie Bruck's book is more epic, covering as it does the business careers of Jules Stein and Lew Wassermann from the 1920s into the 21st Century in addition to telling the history of their company MCA and the industry they "ruled". Note I reference business careers because these individuals did not seem to have a personal life that did not revolve around business. There is not much surprising celebrity scandal that unfolds, except some strong hints that Ronald Reagan was a charming empty suit who received many sweetheart deals from the industry and he gave back in return. In some ways the Wasserman life story told here is one of the rise and fall, the young mans glory being used by younger students against him. And even though MCA associated with the mob and the mob with them Wasserman gave heavily to his industry and charity. A book for anyone interested in the history of Hollywood as a business in the 20th century.
An epic work that I highly recommend.

A Respectful Look at Lew Wasserman.......2003-07-26

Cinema fans of a certain age will no doubt recall the grand films of the 1940s and 1950s with a wry thought of "They don't make them like that anymore." The current boffo box office consists of pyrotechnical sequels starring beefcake (and cheesecake) performers, not matinee idols like Peck, Hepburn, Bogart and Lancaster.

But in the old days . . .

Connie Bruck, a veteran writer for The New Yorker, has compiled this fulsome biography of Lew Wasserman, one of the most powerful movers and shakers of an era when movies were virtually the only form of popular entertainment. The power wielded by Wasserman and his contemporaries could mean the difference between professional (and sometimes personal) life and death. (Bruck often discusses the Hollywood "gang" in terms of organized crime. Indeed, there was a great deal of dubious dealings with labor unions, often considered under the concern of the gangster trade.)

Wasserman was the type of leader who drew a mixture of respect and fear. He was "an entertainment mogul without peer," according to one admirer. To another, "he had an aura. He was my god." And like many such men, "his explosive tirades were legend."

Most of the book concerns the wheelings and dealings of the industry. For such a potentially juicy subject, Bruck dishes very little dirt/gossip. Instead she seems more concerned with the financial aspects, which readers will either find fascinating or tedious. There is often too much background that detracts from the overall sense of entertainment a book like this would seem to merit. In fact, Wasserman isn't even mentioned until well into the first chapter. Even the title is a bit hard to get through.

Another concern is that the author can't quite decide the direction of her book. The depth of research indicates a scholarly tome, but the voice seems more "popular" in nature.

Taken as a whole, however, Bruck offers a respectful look at Wasserman and a homage to the system when, to paraphrase a popular expression of today's younger crowd, "Hollywood ruled."

--- Reviewed by Ron Kaplan

A Larger Than Life Horatio Alger.......2003-07-23

When Lew Wasserman was growing up in his native Cleveland the Horatio Alger books were popular. They traced the rise of often penniless young men to the high pinnacles of economic and social power. I do not know if Wasserman read any of these stories in his boyhood, but he certainly ended up living them.

Beginning as a theater usher and later becoming a musician, Wasserman hooked up with Jules Styne and began booking musical acts. The dynamic duo recognized that the swing era of bands, which was their bailiwick, would have a limited life span. The Music Corporation of America then expanded into the world of motion pictures, retaining the name of an organization that sounds like and began as a company rooted in the movie field. One of Wasserman's clients in the late thirties was a young actor under contract to Warner Brothers by the name of Ronald Reagan. He would later be in a major position to assist Wasserman and MCA both as president of the Screen Actors Guild and beyond that as U.S. President. Reagan would always remain a bit miffed, however, that Wasserman, who developed solid relationships with presidents Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton, would retain his reputation as a loyal Democrat and hence supported Reagan's opponents. The firm was crafty, however, in keeping a foot in each camp, with Jules Styne and Taft Schreiber supporting Republicans assiduously. This factor helped when Reagan and Richard Nixon were in office.

Connie Bruck has provided an impressive body of research, including numerous interviews with the late Wasserman as well as those who worked with him and knew him well. Her industry pays off in the form of a fascinating study of a man who rose meteorically through the agent's ranks to become the supreme giant of the motion picture industry, the man others feared and envied, often at the same time.

Masterful, gripping nonfiction.......2003-07-02

This fascinating book is not only a look at Lew Wasserman and the MCA Hollywood empire he created, but a stunning and incisively written piece of business history -- indeed, a look at U.S. commerce, politics, and entertainment in the modern era. Bruck has the great ability to write about complex business issues and deals in a lucid and readable way. This is a must-read book for those interested in business stories, in modern American politics (Johnson, Nixon, and Reagan play key roles in the book), in Hollywood history (the break of the studio system, the movie stars, the move into TV). Bruck's canvas is so wide, yet she manages to combine all these various elements in a dramatic and compelling narrative. It's a brilliant book.

When Hollywood Had A King - Reign Of Lew Wasserman, Who Leveraged Talent Into Power And Influence

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When Hollywood Had A King - Reign Of Lew Wasserman, Who Leveraged Talent Into Power And Influence
Connie Bruck
Manufacturer: Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000RJ2I22

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