Kategoria BISAC: Business & Economics >> Free Enterprise & Capitalism

Why are some countries rich and others poor? Why does a farmer in Sweden have a higher standard of living than a farmer in South Africa? Why does a schoolteacher in Switzerland earn more than one in Chicago?According to leading economic theorist John Kay, economic markets are key to the wealth or poverty of the world's nations. In Culture and Prosperity, Kay explores why market economies outperform socialist or centrally directed markets -- and why the imposition of market institutions often fails. His search for the truth about markets takes him from the...

Arguably, the most important single work in classical sociology is Max Weber's thesis on how Protestantism makes its impact on capitalism. Cohen's argument is that Protestantism affects capitalism in several different ways. Each is linked as a separate mechanism of influence, and may therefore be assessed separately. Weber himself stated or suggested several possible mechanisms of influence. Protestantism gave the spirit of capitalism its duty to profit and thus helped to legitimate capitalism. Its religious asceticism also produced personalities well-suited for work discipline. Finally,...

The history of capitalism has long been thought to be a sequence of recurring crises that appear in various forms: crises in employing people, crises in obtaining resources, and financial crises. Marx's Crises Theory: Scarcity, Labor, and Finance provides a framework for interpreting Marx's theory of crises. In conclusion, the author asserts that as long as the financial structure leads to periodic breakdowns, Marx's writings on the subject will retain their importance as a source of theory and analysis of the dynamics of political economy.

The common wisdom that business contributions to the common good are counterproductive in the new competitive global marketplace does not hold up to empirical research. In fact, doing good is good for business, and a majority of businesses do provide some form of community support, which Besser discovered in her exhaustive survey of the Iowa business community. Business owners and managers often act out of a sense of community spirit and a certain obligation to better the common good. While the increasingly globalized economy has encouraged a number of large corporations to become...