This volume provides an integrated and wide-ranging set of primary-source readings on the relationship between moral values and economic activity, as articulated by some of the leading figures in Western civilization. From the ancient Greeks to the present, Economic Morality: Ancient to Modern Readings offers substantial coverage to each major period of history: classical Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and the modern era. Everything from Aristotle to Adam Smith, from Marx to Hayek, and from Proudhon to Nozick has been...

The central thesis of the book is that in order to evaluate monetary policy, one should have a clear idea about the characteristics and functions of money as it evolved and in its current form. That is to say that without an understanding about how money evolved as a social institution, what it is today, and what is possible to know about monetary phenomena, it is not possible to develop a meaningful ethics for money; or, to put it differently, to find what kind of institutional arrangements may be deemed good money for the kind of society we are in. And without that, one faces severe...

This biography of Andrew Carnegie emphasizes the economic dimension of his career in industry. It examines his life as a dynamic innovator during the period when the steel industry rapidly expanded and the United States became a major industrial power. Carnegie rose from a poverty-stricken Scottish childhood to a position of international industrial leadership, philanthropy, and peace advocacy, by means of intelligence, entrepreneurship, ambition, tenacity, guile, and ruthless determination. It is shown that Carnegie excelled as an economic actor. His alertness to expected profit...

Water covers some 75% of the earth's surface, while land covers 25%, approximately. Yet the former accounts for less than 1% of world GDP, the latter 99% plus. Part of the reason for this imbalance is that there are more people located on land than water. But a more important explanation is that while land is privately owned, water is unowned (with the exception of a few small lakes and ponds), or governmentally owned (rivers, large lakes). This gives rise to the tragedy of the commons: when something is unowned, people have less of an incentive to care for it, preserve it, and protect it,...

Jane Austen's novels provide timeless insight into the practice of virtues and vices. They instruct their readers in rectitude and teach them that bad character inevitably leads to bad outcomes. Austen themes include the necessity of self-command, the importance of being "other directed," the virtues of prudence, benevolence, and justice, as well as the follies of vanity, pride, greed, and the human tendency to misjudge oneself and others. Austen offers a no-nonsense moral philosophy of practical living that is quite similar to that of Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith. Smith's...

Fiction can be a powerful force to educate students and employees in ways that lectures, textbooks, articles, case studies, and other traditional teaching approaches cannot. This anthology includes articles from a number of individuals from a range of different disciplines and perspectives. All of the contributors to Capitalism and Commerce in Imaginative Literature are committed to treating literary texts with integrity and believe that business should have a larger claim upon people's literary consciousness. In addition, they all value the important role of literature in dealing with the...

This book illuminates the real effects of regulations on people s everyday lives. It traces the effects of regulations on an economy by working through the ripple effects of changes. In so doing, the book provides a fundamental understanding for the economy as an organism rather than a machine, and enlightens the reader by offering a model for understanding the economy and market. Regulations, which are restrictions placed on the working of the economy, have consequences, both intended and unintended, direct and indirect. While the direct effects are well understood, the indirect effects are...

Water covers some 75% of the earth s surface, while land covers 25%, approximately. Yet the former accounts for less than 1% of world GDP, the latter 99% plus. Part of the reason for this imbalance is that there are more people located on land than water. But a more important explanation is that while land is privately owned, water is unowned (with the exception of a few small lakes and ponds), or governmentally owned (rivers, large lakes). This gives rise to the tragedy of the commons: when something is unowned, people have less of an incentive to care for it, preserve it, and protect it,...

Pride and Profit explores the ways in which Jane Austen's novels interact with the ideas of economist Adam Smith. Bohanon and Vachris show how Smithian perspectives on virtue are depicted in Austen's novels and how Smith's and Austen's perspectives reflect and define the bourgeois culture of the Enlightenment and industrial revolution.

Is macroeconomic equilibrium possible under capitalism? How do economic bubbles develop? How does a monetary system influence the market mechanism? Is the return on capital a beneficial feature of the economic system? How does complexity of a capitalist organization influence the market process? Can output under capitalism be easily measured and modeled? Such questions and many others relate to the central concept discussed in the book: heterogeneous structure of production, an envisioned theoretical connection between stages of the capitalist process. An inquiry into the functioning of a...