The Nature of the Farm is a theoretical and empirical study of contracts and organization in agriculture based on the transaction cost framework. Transaction costs are important in agriculture because nature (for example, seasonality, weather, pests) plays such a critical role in determining output and limiting the ability of farmers to specialize. The book develops specific models and tests the implications of those models against data sets from across North American agriculture, as well as against historical case studies such as eighteenth-century European land contracts and the...

English Syntax is an authoritative, self-contained introduction to the subject for students who have had no prior coursework in syntactic theory. The detailed revisions throughout this new edition are aimed at increasing its clarity and usefulness. There are changes in almost every chapter, including a large number of new exercises and several new subsections. In addition there are two new appendixes, the first sketching the relation of English syntax to the wider field of generative syntactic theory, the second summarizing the basic syntactic structures discussed in the body of...

This biography describes the intellectual and political milieus that helped shape Noam Chomsky, a pivotal figure in contemporary linguistics, politics, cognitive psychology, and philosophy. It also presents an engaging political history of the last several decades, including such events as the Spanish Civil War, the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the march on the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam War. The book highlights Chomsky's views on the uses and misuses of the university as an institution, his assessment of useful political engagement, and his doubts about...

Since this classic work in phonology was published in 1968, there has been no other book that gives as broad a view of the subject, combining generally applicable theoretical contributions with analysis of the details of a single language. The theoretical issues raised in The Sound Pattern of English continue to be critical to current phonology, and in many instances the solutions proposed by Chomsky and Halle have yet to be improved upon.Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle are Institute Professors of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT.

What legal recourse do you have if someone has read your private e-mail without your consent? Who owns the copyright to the message you just posted on a bulletin board? Can you get into trouble for downloading a sexually explicit file? These are among the many questions that the authors, both practicing attorneys, address in Cyberspace and the Law. Without resorting to confusing legalese, they present a clear and concise analysis of legal issues in the anarchic world of cyberspace for members of the on-line world who have little or no legal background.The introduction provides a quick tour...

This important new text provides a clear, comprehensive, and accessible overview of major economic issues facing Latin America today, including balance of payments problems, inflation, stabilization, poverty, inequality, and land reform. It captures trends and common issues and at the same time illustrates the diversity of national experiences.

Each chapter centers around an economic problem from such new topics as debt to more enduring issues like poverty and agrarian reform -- and presents major economic theories on the causes and solutions to the problem. Complex equations and...

The often impassioned nature of environmental conflicts can be attributed to the fact that they are bound up with our sense of personal and social identity. Environmental identity -- how we orient ourselves to the natural world -- leads us to personalize abstract global issues and take action (or not) according to our sense of who we are. We may know about the greenhouse effect -- but can we give up our SUV for a more fuel-efficient car? Understanding this psychological connection can lead to more effective pro-environmental policymaking.

Identity and the Natural Environment...

Solutions manual for an innovative textbook accessible not only to graduate students in mathematical finance and financial engineering but also to undergraduate students and graduate students not specializing in finance. Contains solutions for selected end-of-chapter problems.

Virtual Music is about artificial creativity. Focusing on the author's Experiments in Musical Intelligence computer music composing program, the author and a distinguished group of experts discuss many of the issues surrounding the program, including artificial intelligence, music cognition, and aesthetics.

The book is divided into four parts. The first part provides a historical background to Experiments in Musical Intelligence, including examples of historical antecedents, followed by an overview of the program by Douglas Hofstadter. The second part follows the composition...