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

In this spirited and timely book, Peter Dougherty shows how economists are drawing on Adam Smith's civic writings to illuminate how the market creates not only fiscal capital, but "social capital." Dougherty demonstrates how Smith's ideas are currently experiencing a renaissance. He then explores several impressive initiatives to demonstrate what today's theoretical and practicing economists are accomplishing in the...

For the most part, competition policy literature has focused on large economies. Yet the economic paradigms on which such policies are based do not necessarily apply to small market economies. This book demonstrates that optimal competition policy is very much dependent on the size of an economy. Whether and how firms compete is a matter of the natural conditions of the markets in which firms operate. A critical feature of small economies is the concentrated nature of many of their markets, which are often protected by high entry barriers. Competition policy must be designed to deal...

The Spirit of Capitalism answers a fundamental question of economics, a question neither economists nor economic historians have been able to answer: what are the reasons (rather than just the conditions) for sustained economic growth? Taking her title from Max Weber's famous study on the same subject, Liah Greenfeld focuses on the problem of motivation behind the epochal change in behavior, which from the sixteenth century on has reoriented one economy after another from subsistence to profit, transforming the nature of economic activity. A detailed analysis of the development of...

Qualifying claims by Alfred Chandler and David Landes that family firms tend to be dysfunctional, Harold James shows how and why these steel and engineering firms were successful over long periods of time. Indeed, he sees the family enterprise as particularly conducive to...

What determines the rate of growth, the distribution of income, and the structure of relative prices under capitalism? What, in short, makes capitalist economies tick? This watershed treatise analyzes the answers to these questions provided by three major theoretical traditions: neoclassical, neo-Marxian, and neo-Keynesian. Until now, the mutual criticism exchanged by partisans of the different traditions has focused disproportionately on the logical shortcomings of rival theories, or on such questions as whether or not input-output relationships can be described by a...

The renowned economist Joseph A. Schumpeter (1883-1950) made seminal contributions not only to economic theory but also to sociology and economic history. His work is now attracting wide attention among sociologists, as well as experiencing a remarkable revival among economists. This anthology, which serves as an excellent introduction to Schumpeter, emphasizes his broad socio-economic vision and his attempt to analyze economic reality from several different perspectives. An ambitious introductory essay by Richard Swedberg uses many new sources to enhance our understanding of Schumpeter's...

Democracy is overrated. Capitalism, on the other hand, doesn't get enough credit. In this provocative and engaging book, John Mueller argues that these mismatches between image and reality create significant political and economic problems--inspiring instability, inefficiency, and widespread cynicism. We would be far better off, he writes, if we recognized that neither system is ideal or disastrous and accepted instead the humdrum truth that both are "pretty good." And, to Mueller, that means good enough. He declares that what is true of Garrison Keillor's fictional store "Ralph's Pretty...

Many individuals proclaim that global capitalism is here to stay. Unfettered markets, they argue, now drive the world, and all countries must adjust, no matter how painful this may be for some. Robert Gilpin, author of the widely acclaimed Political Economy of International Relations (Princeton, 1987), urges us, however, not to take an open and integrated global economy for granted. Rather, we must consider the political circumstances that have enabled global markets to function and the probability that these conditions will continue. Gilpin's new book amounts to a magisterial...