Growth Triumphant


Book Description

Taking a longer view than most literature on economic development, Richard A. Easterlin stresses the enormous contrast between the collective experience of the last half century in both developed and developing countries and what has gone before. An economic historian and demographer, the author writes in the tradition of the "new economic history," drawing on economic theory and quantitative evidence to interpret the historical experience of economic theory and population growth. He reaches beyond the usual disciplinary limits to draw, as appropriate, on sociology, political science, psychology, anthropology, and the history of science. The book will be of interest not only to social scientists but to all readers concerned with where we have been and where we are going. ". . . Easterlin is both an economic historian and a demographer, and it is the combination of these two disciplines and the fine balance between theory and experience that make this well-written, refreshingly optimistic book excellent reading." --Population and Development Review "In this masterful synthesis, Richard Easterlin draws on the disciplines of economic history, demography, sociology, political science, psychology, and the history of science to present an integrated explation of the origins of modern economic growth and of the mortality revolution. . . . His book should be easily accessible to non-specialists and will give them a sense of why economic history can inform our understanding of the future." --Dora L. Costa, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, EH.Net and H-Net "Growth Triumphant is, simply, a fascinating book. Easterlin has woven together a history of economic growth, economic development, human mortality and morbidity, the connections each has with the others, and the implications of this nexus of forces on the future. . . . This book deserves a wide audience." --Choice "In what must surely be the most fair-minded, well-balanced, and scrupulously reasoned and researched book on the sensational subjects implied in its title--the Industrial Revolution, the mortality and fertility revolutions, and the prospects for future happiness for the human race--Professor Easterlin has set in place the capstone of his research career." --Journal of Economic History Richard A. Easterlin is Professor of Economics, University of Southern California.




Triumphant Capitalism


Book Description

Best remembered today for his fierce opposition to labor, especially during the Homestead Strike of 1892, Henry Clay Frick was also one of the most powerful and innovative industrialists of the nineteenth century.After consolidating the vital bituminous coke fields of the Connellsville region in western Pennsylvania, Frick became the most important of Andrew Carnegie's partners and the manager of Carnegie's steel interests. Later, his bitter oppositon to Carnegie was one factor in the events leading to the 1901 purchase of the Carnegie Steel Company by J. P. Morgan and the formation of the Unites States Steel Corporation.Kenneth Warren is the first historian to be given unrestricted access to the extensive Frick archives in Pittsburgh. Drawing on Frick's personal and business papers, as well as the records of the H. C. Frick Coal & Coke Company, the Carnegie Steel Company, and the U.S. Steel Corporation, Warren provides a wealth of new insights into Frick's relationship with such contemporaries as Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, Charles Schwab, and Elbert Gary. He describes and analyzes the key decisions that formed labor and industrial policy in the iron and steel industry during a period of growth that remains unparalled in American business history.Not only an industrial biography of a driving force in American industry and the organization of American business, Triumphant Capitolism, now available in paperback, makes a major contribution to our understanding of the history of the basic industries, the shaping of society, locality, and region - and thereby of laying the foundations for the value systems and landscapes of present-day America.




Railroads Triumphant


Book Description

Martin (history, formerly Harvard and Bradley) details the expansion of the US from a coast-hugging nation to its current population distribution along the rails. He is confident that environmental pressures and the efficiency of trains will return railroads to their deserved place at the top of land transport. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR




Life During Growth


Book Description

The progress of life during growth is surprisingly uneven. This paper reaches this conclusion with a panel dataset of 95 indicators covering up to 4 time periods (1960, 1970, 1980, and 1990). The indicators cover 7 subjects: (1) individual rights and democracy, (2) political instability and war, (3) education, (4) health, (5) transport and communications, (6) inequality across class and gender, and (7) "bads". Virtually all of these indicators show quality of life across nations to be positively associated with per capita income. However, when country effects are removed using either fixed effects or an estimator in first differences, I find that the effects of growth on "life" are uneven and often nonexistent. Moreover, exogenous time shifts are more important than growth effects in the majority of indicators. With the fixed effects estimator, growth has an impact on the quality of life that is significant, positive, and more important than exogenous shifts for 12 out of 95 indicators. With a first-differences IV estimator, growth has a causal impact on the quality of life that is significant, positive, and more important than exogenous shifts for 7 out of 79 quality of life. The conclusion speculates about such explanations for the uneven results as (1) the long and variable lags that may come between growth and changes in the quality of life, and (2) the possibility that world growth is more important than home country growth for many quality of life indicators.




Growth and Empowerment


Book Description

Despite significant gains in promoting economic growth and living conditions (or "human progress") globally over the last twenty-five years, much of the developing world remains plagued by poverty and its attendant problems, including high rates of child mortality, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and war. In Growth and Empowerment, Nicholas Stern, Jean-Jacques Dethier, and F. Halsey Rogers propose a new strategy for development. Drawing on many years of work in development economics—in academia, in the field, and at international institutions such as the World Bank—the authors base their strategy on two interrelated approaches: building a climate that encourages investment and growth and at the same time empowering poor people to participate in that growth. This plan differs from other models for development, including the dogmatic approach of market fundamentalism popular in the 1980s and 1990s. Stern, Dethier, and Rogers see economic development as a dynamic process of continuous change in which entrepreneurship, innovation, flexibility, and mobility are crucial components and the idea of empowerment, as both a goal and a driver of development, is central. The book points to the unique opportunity today—after 50 years of successes and failures, and with a growing body of analytical work to draw on—to pursue new development strategies in both research and action.




Conversations on Growth, Stability and Trade


Book Description

This is a splendid book. It sits at the interface of economics and economic history, and provides both a textbook-style introduction to the key themes of macroeconomics and personal insights into the central debates gleaned from interviews with leading economists. David Greasley, Australian Economic History Review It should be in every library. A hundred years from now, it will be an important guide to what leading economists thought they knew, and what they knew they didn't know as of A.D. 2002. Christopher Hanes, EH.Net Conversations on Growth, Stability and Trade is a wonderful survey of the development of macroeconomic thinking over the past decades. Brian Snowdon has a knack for combining insightful essays on a subject with interviews of interesting, relevant, and diverse economists. The interviews give one an excellent sense of how economists approach policy issues. David Colander, Middlebury College, US Conversations on Growth, Stability and Trade has all the lucidity of A Modern Guide to Macroeconomics by Snowdon, Vane and Wynarczyk, combined with the fascination of Conversations with Leading Economists by Snowdon and Vane. Students will love it and their teachers will devour it the night before the big lecture. If only I had learned macroeconomics this way. Mark Blaug, University of London and University of Buckingham, UK These well informed and highly readable interviews provide a great introduction to some of the big issues in modern economics. Roger E. Backhouse, University of Birmingham, UK This unique volume provides a comprehensive survey of the major economic issues that have helped shape the modern world. It includes discussions of the latest research findings in macroeconomics and scrutinises some of the most important debates in economic history. The author examines the many controversies relating to the role of government in a modern economy, long-run growth and development, the spread of the Industrial Revolution, the causes and consequences of the Great Depression , the Great Peacetime Inflation , the conduct of stabilisation policy, international economic integration and globalisation. To shed light on these major issues the volume contains interviews with ten leading economists who have each contributed extensively to the literature on macroeconomics, economic growth and development, international economics and economic history. A major theme which runs throughout the book is the conviction that economists can gain valuable insights concerning important contemporary policy issues from a knowledge of history, especially economic history. The distinguished economists featured in this book are: Ben Bernanke, Jagdish Bhagwati, Alan Blinder, Nick Crafts, Bradford DeLong, Barry Eichengreen, Kevin Hoover, Charles Jones, Christina Romer and Joseph Stiglitz. Containing an extensive and up-to-date list of references, the book provides a comprehensive guide to the modern literature on macroeconomics and related fields. It will be an essential reference for all scholars and students of economics, especially those with an interest in economic growth, business cycles, inflation, unemployment, trade and globalisation. It will also be of considerable value to students of economic history and the history of economic thought.




Export Dynamics and Economic Growth in Latin America


Book Description

This title was first published in 2000: This text aims to be essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand the microeconomic foundations behind the Latin American export boom, the ways in which government policies affecting exports may retard or promote economic growth, and the future prospects of the proposed Free Trade Association of the Americas. The authors conduct an econometric analysis which uses measures of export diversification, structural change in exports, and exports similarity which provide a basis for region-wide comparisons. The cases of Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela are analyzed in particular detail. Cross-country analysis focuses on the potential role of export diversification in promoting economic growth, in the context of other important determinants of growth.




Wealth, Poverty, and Human Destiny


Book Description

The rapid spread of the liberal market order across the globe poses a host of new and complex questions for religious believers—indeed, for anyone concerned with the intersection of ethics and economics. Is the market economy, particularly as it affects the poor, fundamentally compatible with Christian moral and social teaching? Or is it in substantial tension with that tradition? In Wealth, Poverty, and Human Destiny, editors Doug Bandow and David L. Schindler bring together some of today’s leading economists, theologians, and social critics to consider whether the triumph of capitalism is a cause for celebration or concern. Michael Novak, Richard John Neuhaus, Max Stackhouse, and other defenders of democratic capitalism marshal a number of arguments in an attempt to show that, among other things, capitalism is more Christian in its foundation and consequences than is conceded by its critics—that, as Stackhouse and Lawrence Stratton write, “the roots of the modern corporation lie in the religious institutions of the West,” and that, as Novak contends, “globalization is the natural ecology” of Christianity. The critics of liberal economics argue, on the other hand, that it is historically and theologically shortsighted to consider the global capitalist order and the liberalism that sustains it as the only available option. Any system which has as its implicit logic that “stable and preserving relationships among people, places, and things do not matter and are of no worth,” in the words of Wendell Berry, should be regarded with grave suspicion by religious believers and all men and women of goodwill. Bandow and Schindler take up these arguments and many others in their responses, which carefully consider the claims of the essayists and thus pave the way for a renewed dialogue on the moral status of capitalism, a dialogue only now re-emerging from under the Cold War rubble. The contributors’ fresh, insightful examinations of the intersection between religion and economics should provoke a healthy debate about the intertwined issues of the market, globalization, human freedom, the family, technology, and democracy.




Hope


Book Description

Whether organizations face uncertainty or meet the challenge of the constant pressure to innovate, leaders must dig deep to keep their focus and stay effective. In this landmark book, Andrew Razeghi isolates the critical factor that is at the core of successful leadership in any climate. Hope is based on research from neuroscience and behavioral psychology and interwoven with real-world stories of entrepreneurs, elite athletes, political leaders, and groundbreaking scientists. Razeghi shows that hope is a proven tool for competitive advantage and clearly demonstrates how it can be nurtured and developed. Throughout the book, he outlines a proven strategy for honing leadership skills and shows how to apply this strategy to individuals, teams, and organizations.




Demographic Change and Long-Run Development


Book Description

Recent approaches to economic demography, investigating the effect of the transition to low mortality and low fertility on economic development. Over the last two hundred years, mortality and fertility levels in the Western world have dropped to unprecedented levels. This demographic transition was accompanied by an economic transition that led to widespread education and economic growth after centuries of near-stagnation. At the same time, other changes have occurred in family structures, culture, and the organization of society. Economists have only recently begun to take into account the demographic transition from high mortality and high fertility when modeling and researching economic development. This CESifo volume reviews recent approaches to economic demography, considering such topics as the bio-geographic origins of comparative development differences, the role of health improvements and mortality decline, as well as physiological, familial, cultural, and social aspects. After an overview of the study of demography and economic demography, the chapters cover subjects including the Neolithic era and the period of the formation of states and social institutions; longevity and economic growth; household decision making and fertility; land inequality, education, and marriage in nineteenth century Prussia; and caste systems and technology in pre-modern societies. The book concludes with a call for further investigation of the institutional and social factors that influence demographics and economies, suggesting that unified growth theory offers a potential approach to studying development. Contributors Matteo Cervellati, Francesco Cinnirella, David de la Croix, Carl-Johann Dalgaard, Matthias Doepke, Elena Esposito, Davide Fiaschi, Tamara Fioroni, Oded Galor, Boris Gershman, Erik Hornung, Fabian Kindermann, Nils-Petter Lagerlöf, Holger Strulik, Uwe Sunde, David N. Weil