“Keyu Jin is a brilliant thinker.” —Tony Blair, former prime minster of the United KingdomA myth-dispelling, comprehensive guide to the Chinese economy and its path to ascendancy.China's economy has been booming for decades now. A formidable and emerging power on the world stage, the China that most Americans picture is only a rough sketch, based on American news coverage, policy, and ways of understanding. Enter Keyu Jin: a world-renowned economist who was born in China, educated in the U.S., and is now a tenured professor at the London School of Economics. A person fluent in both Eastern and Western cultures, and a voice of the new generation of Chinese who represent a radical break from the past, Jin is uniquely poised to explain how China became the most successful economic story of our time, as it has shifted from primarily state-owned enterprise to an economy that is thriving in entrepreneurship, and participation in the global economy.China’s economic realm is colorful and lively, filled with paradoxes and conundrums, and Jin believes that by understanding the Chinese model, the people, the culture and history in its true perspective, one can reconcile what may appear to be contradictions to the Western eye.What follows is an illuminating account of a burgeoning world power, its past, and its potential future. Read more

The Community of Advantage asks how economists should do normative analysis. Normative analysis in economics has usually aimed at satisfying individuals' preferences. Its conclusions have supported a long- standing liberal tradition of economics that values economic freedom and views markets favourably. However, behavioural research shows that individuals' preferences, as revealed in choices, are often unstable, and vary according to contextual factors that seem irrelevant for welfare. Robert Sugden proposes a reformulation of normative economics that is compatible with what is now known about the psychology of choice. The growing consensus in favour of paternalism and 'nudging' is based on a very different way of reconciling normative economics with behavioural findings. This is to assume that people have well-defined 'latent' preferences which, because of psychologically-induced errors, are not always revealed in actual choices. The economist's job is then to reconstruct latent preferences and to design policies to satisfy them. Challenging this consensus, The Community of Advantage argues that latent preference and error are psychologically ungrounded concepts, and that economics needs to be more radical in giving up rationality assumptions. Sugden advocates a kind of normative economics that does not use the concept of preference. Its recommendations are addressed, not to an imagined 'social planner', but to citizens, viewed as potential parties to mutually beneficial agreements. Its normative criterion is the provision of opportunities for individuals to participate in voluntary transactions. Using this approach, Sugden reconstructs many of the normative conclusions of the liberal tradition. He argues that a well-functioning market economy is an institution that individuals have reason to value, whether or not their preferences satisfy conventional axioms of rationality, and that individuals' motivations in such an economy can be cooperative rather than self-interested. Read more

Discover everything you need to know about economics with this unique graphic guide.Combining clear, jargon-free language and bold, eye-catching graphics, How Economics Works is a comprehensive and user-friendly guide to all aspects of economics.Covering everything from economic theories to economies in action, the book presents the groundbreaking ideas of key economists—from Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes to Joseph Schumpter and Milton Friedman—in a uniquely visual and easy-to-understand way. Beginning with foundational economic ideas, such as scarcity, marginalism, and the free market, entries then explore the role of choice, markets, trade, and finance, and how whole economies work and are influenced by decisions made by governments and central banks, such as raising taxes or interest rates.With its unique graphic approach and clear, authoritative text, How Economics Works is the perfect introduction to the subject. Read more

Financial Times, Best Books of 2022: Economics The startling picture of how China’s revolution in finance and technology is changing both Wall Street and the way individuals manage their personal finances. The future of finance – the way Wall Street operates and how individuals manage their money - is on the verge of upheaval. And the force underlying the change comes from China, where finance and technology are being merged into a system with consequences that resonate far beyond China’s border. The changes of this global revolution in finance and technology - fintech - will be as powerful as those wrought in social media, retailing and advertising by giants such as Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Twitter, which have overturned how we shop and communicate. China reinvented money with lightning speed, transforming a backward, antiquated cash-based finance system into one centered on super-apps created by technology giants Alibaba and Tencent. More powerful than anything available outside of China, they allow their billion users to pay, borrow, invest, buy goods and services, travel, chat (and far more) all fused together in one mobile phone application. Think Facebook, Google, Twitter, Goldman Sachs, Amazon, J.P. Morgan Chase all rolled into one app. We in the West need to understand China’s cashless revolution for reasons ranging from the macroeconomic to issues of personal liberty: The cutting edge of finance is now in China, forcing major financial firms in the United States and the West to figure out how not to be left behind.. China’s cashless revolution is also a harbinger of our future if we let the genie out of the bottle and allow big tech to become big finance. As money goes digital and central banks around the world consider launching digital currencies, we may have both immense convenience and a frightening concentration of power that could violate our privacy, stifle competition, increase financial risk, and give big firms or the government more control over our financial lives. And, once this genie is out of the bottle, the struggle to put it back in may be impossible.   Read more

The bastard step-child of Milton Friedman and Anthony Bourdain, Socialism Sucks is a bar-crawl through former, current, and wannabe socialist countries around the world. Free market economists Robert Lawson and Benjamin Powell travel to countries like Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, and Sweden to investigate the dangers and idiocies of socialism—while drinking a lot of beer. Read more

We can't sit at the feet of Mises at his famous Vienna private seminar. We can't go back in time and attend his New York seminar, or follow him to the speaking engagements that he held in the 1950s and '60s.But we do have access to what he said. He is warm, funny, passionate, and learned. This book provides a candid look at the man and his teaching style. It demonstrates his dazzling command over the material, and teaches in a breezier way than his treatises.This volume contains nine lectures delivered over one week, from June 23 to July 3, 1952, at the San Francisco Public Library. Mises was at his prime as a teacher and lecturer. He shares a lifetime of learning on topics that were (and remain) central to American public life.As the title indicates, his main focus is on Marxism. He discusses Marx and his place in the history of ideas, the destruction wrought by his dangerous ideology, the manner in which his followers have covered up his errors, and how the Marxists themselves have worked for so long to save Marxism from itself. He discusses Marxist claims about history and refutes the Marxist smear of the Industrial Revolution.The approach is systematic but casual, so the reader encounters wonderful insights in the form of short asides. For example, "The worst thing that can happen to a socialist is to have his country ruled by socialists who are not his friends."As a lecturer, Mises is steady and relentless. The reader can nearly "hear" him speaking through the prose. And there are times when he reveals a level of rhetorical passion that you would never encounter in print. That's because what is printed here are not prepared lectures. They were transcribed by Bettina Bien Greaves from what he actually said.Thus can we hear this passage: "It is not true, as Marx said, that the improvements in technology are available only to the exploiters and that the masses are living in a state much worse than on the eve of the Industrial Revolution. Everything the Marxists say about exploitation is absolutely wrong! Lies! In fact, capitalism made it possible for many persons to survive who wouldn't have otherwise."Some readers of Mises's larger works have said that while his rigor is dazzling, the man himself can seem remote. Whether or not you agree with this observation, Mises comes across in these lectures as brilliant but very warm and charming in an old world sense.To search for Mises Institute titles, enter a keyword and LvMI (short for Ludwig von Mises Institute); e.g., Depression LvMI Read more

The title comes from Mises's description of the reality of central planning and socialism, whether of the national variety (Nazism) or the international variety (communism). Rather than creating an orderly society, attempts at central planning have precisely the opposite effect. By short-circuiting the price mechanism and forcing people into economic lives contrary to their own chosing, central planning destroys the capital base and creates economic randomness that eventually ends by killing prosperity.This important work was written decades after Mises's original essay on economic calculation and includes the broadest and boldest attack on all forms of state control.To search for Mises Institute titles, enter a keyword and LvMI (short for Ludwig von Mises Institute); e.g., Depression LvMI Read more

En el siglo XIX y hasta 1930, Argentina y Australia recorrieron una trayectoria que aparentaba ser común, a tal punto que en 1901 un político australiano publicó un libro en el que presentaba a nuestro país como su gran rival. Un siglo después, cuando la brecha de riqueza entre las dos naciones es abismal, nadie las consideraría adversarios económicos de la misma talla. ¿Cuáles son los factores que explican el desarrollo en un caso y el deterioro en el otro? ¿Es posible encontrar un momento anterior australiano semejante al presente argentino? Y si esto fuera así, ¿será una enseñanza para los argentinos?¿Por qué Argentina no fue Australia? cuenta, con lucidez e inteligencia, ciento cincuenta años de historia económica y política. Si ambos países compartieron un conflicto social –en tanto productores de materias primas que se exportan y a la vez integran la canasta de consumo de las clases populares– y una desventura nacional –esas materias primas fueron perdiendo participación y precio en los mercados mundiales–, cabe preguntarse por la magnitud y el modo en que cada uno tramitó esos procesos, para entender las divergencias y las oportunidades del presente. A lo largo de un relato que se detiene en los momentos clave, los autores sostienen un interrogante crucial: ¿cómo rearmar el rompecabezas de la modernización con equidad? ¿Podrá servir Australia como referencia inspiradora para nuestro propio "tratado de paz" social?Atentos a las distintas maneras en que Argentina y Australia procesaron el conflicto que las atraviesa, Pablo Gerchunoff y Pablo Fajgelbaum van más allá del ejercicio de futurología: proponen repensar, a partir de las lecciones de la historia comparada, cómo construir una noción colectivamente compartida de normalidad distributiva. Read more

WHY FEEL EMBARRASSED BY BUSINESS? Every American benefits every day from the phenomenal productivity of the free market, so why do so many people feel guilty or skeptical about our business system? In this passionately argued, eye-opening book, talk-radio star and bestselling author Michael Medved provides detailed and devastating rebuttals to the most widely circulated smears against capitalism. MYTH: Big business is bad, small business is good. TRUTH: Every big business began life as a small business, and every small business today yearns for enough success to become a big business tomorrow. For some products—like cars or electrical power—little companies can’t benefit their workers or customers as reliably as huge corporations. MYTH: Business executives are overpaid and corrupt. TRUTH: Top leaders will always command top dollar, and a company can’t limit executive pay without limiting its access to talent. Ferocious, long-term competition in the corporate world ultimately rewards focus and hard work, not short cuts and corruption. MYTH: You can count on better treatment from the government than from business. TRUTH: If a private company deals with you poorly, you can take your business elsewhere. But with the government’s power, you get only two choices: compliance or jail.  Medved responds to business-bashing lies with the slashing wit, irrefutable facts, fascinating historical nuggets, illuminating anecdotes, and liberating clarity that made him one of the top-ten talk-radio hosts in the United States. This audaciousand urgently needed book provides energy and inspiration for a beleaguered free-market system poised for its unstoppable comeback. Read more

Two Crises, Different Outcomes examines East Asian policy reactions to the two major crises of the last fifteen years: the global financial crisis of 2008–9 and the Asian financial crisis of 1997–98. The calamity of the late 1990s saw a massive meltdown concentrated in East Asia. In stark contrast, East Asia avoided the worst effects of the Lehman Brothers collapse, incurring relatively little damage when compared to the financial devastation unleashed on North America and Europe. Much had changed across the intervening decade, not least that China rather than Japan had become the locomotive of regional growth, and that the East Asian economies had taken numerous steps to buffer their financial structures and regulatory regimes. This time Asia avoided disaster; it bounced back quickly after the initial hit and has been growing in a resilient fashion ever since.The authors of this book explain how the earlier financial crisis affected Asian economies, why government reactions differed so widely during that crisis, and how Asian economies weathered the Great Recession. Drawing on a mixture of single-country expertise and comparative analysis, they conclude by assessing the long-term prospects that Asian countries will continue their recent success. Read more

Technology and Workplace Skills for the Twenty-First Century examines many of the rapid changes taking place at the intersection of workplace demands and higher education throughout the Asia Pacific region. The globalized, interdependent twenty-first century workforce is built around computing, communication, and automation. These characteristics have changed the ways in which higher education is connected to the workforce and raised the stakes for educating students for the changing workforce. In this book, scholars and education leaders throughout Asia Pacific and the US investigate how the changing needs of the workforce have shaped higher education's curriculum, methods, and orientation, and show how different Asia Pacific countries have responded differently to these challenges. Read more

The parables are told by a fictional Babylonian character called Arkad, a poor scribe who became the "richest man in Babylon". Included in Arkad's advice are the "Seven Cures" (or how to generate money and wealth), and the "Five Laws of Gold" (or how to protect and invest wealth). A core part of Arkad's advice is around "paying yourself first", "living within your means", "investing in what you know", the importance of "long-term saving", and "home ownership". The content is from a series of pamphlets distributed by U.S. banks and insurance companies in 1920–24; the pamphlets were bound together and published as a book in 1926. The book is often referred to as a classic of personal financial advice, and appears in modern recommended reading lists on personal financial advice and wealth management, which has kept the book in print almost 90 years after its first edition with over 2 million copies sold. Clason himself published an illustrated hardback edition in 1930 titled The Richest Man in Babylon and Other Stories which now sells for USD 1,250. The unusual structure of the book has inspired many modern derivative works providing further discussion and insights on the parables. Read more

In developed countries like the United States, Germany, and the UK, it has been observed that workers who perform non-routine activities, either cognitive or manual, have benefited in terms of employment and income, while those performing routinary tasks have seen their job prospects and wages decline. This has led to not only a polarization of the labor markets but also a decrease in certain measures of inequality. This phenomenon has been attributed to task-based technological change (TBTC), which differs from the skilled biased technological change in the fact that not only highly skilled workers have benefited from technology advancement. This book presents evidence of how digitalization and TBTC are affecting the labor markets of different regions of the world and examines the factors that cause this inequality among nations.It examines recent issues around the effect of TBTC on the labor market and the economy in general, with a comparison of different countries in Central and Eastern Europe, North America, and Latin America, as well as in other regions of the world. The incorporation of these regions presents relevant particularities for the subject matter addressed in the book. The book also considers questions such as how labor market effects differ by gender and what the impact of digital skills on employment, inequalities, and public policies might be. In so doing, it identifies the advances, opportunities, and changes that have taken place, while also making public policy proposals.This book will be a key reading to the global community of graduate students and researchers in the field of economics and, specifically, in the study of labor markets. Read more

Crack the world of money and understand the economic theory that has shaped nations and influenced the way you live now.From Keynesian models to how inflation affects interest rates, Cracking Economics will make the seemingly complex world of global finance easily understood. Subjects covered include:-Macro- and micro-economics-Inflation-Recession-Economic forecasting-How stock markets work-Globalisation-Labour markets-The credit crunch-Keynesian theory-Conceptual economics-The EuroAn accessible, comprehensive and fully illustrated guide to this fascinating field, Cracking Economics will get you conversing on currency and discussing the deficit with the best of them. Read more

“It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments.” – from The Theory of Money and CreditOriginally published in 1912, Ludwig von Mises’s The Theory of Money and Credit remains today one of economic theory’s most influential and controversial treatises. Von Mises’s examination into monetary theory changed forever the world of economic thought when he successfully integrated “macroeconomics” into “microeconomics” —previously deemed an impossible task —as well as offering explanations into the origin, value and future of money.One hundred years later, von Mises and the Austrian school of economic theory are still fiercely debated by world economists in their search for the solution to America’s current financial crisis. His theorems continue to inspire politicians and market experts who aim to raise up the common man and reduce the financial power of governments. In a preface added in 1952, von Mises urges the people of the world to see economic truth:“The great inflations of our age are not acts of God. They are man-made or, to say it bluntly, government-made. They are the off-shoots of doctrines that ascribe to governments the magic power of creating wealth out of nothing and of making people happy by raising the ‘national income.’”“The best book on money ever written.” —Murray Rothbard, economist and historian“The greatest economist of the twentieth century.” —Sandeep Jaitly, economist Read more

This masterwork is much more than a refutation of the economics of socialism (although on that front, nothing else compares). It is also a critique of the implicit religious doctrines behind Western socialist thinking, a cultural critique of socialist teaching on sex and marriage, an examination of the implications of radical human inequality, an attack on war socialism, and refutation of collectivist methodology. In short, Mises set out to refute socialism, and instead yanked out the egalitarian mentality from its very roots. For that reason, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis led dozens of famous intellectuals, including a young F.A. Hayek, into a crisis of faith and a realist/libertarian political orientation. All the collectivist literature combined cannot equal the intellectual achievement of this one volume.To Search for Mises Institute titles, enter a keyword and "LvMI" (short for Ludwig von Mises Institute); e.g., "Depression LvMI" Read more

This book, a bestseller in China with over a million copies sold, depicts the role played by the Chinese government in China‘s economic development. It explains how the Chinese government has gradually established and improved market mechanisms while promoting economic growth. The book particularly points out that the Chinese government not only governs the economy through policy guidance but also directly participates in the process of urbanization and industrialization as part of the market. It also introduces the specific mechanisms of government involvement in economic activities, which forms a bridge between economic theory and the reality of China. This book, a winner of the Wenjin Book Award by the National Library of China, will be an invaluable reference for scholars seeking to understand China‘s economic policy and government system reform in the years to come. Read more

The 10 Rules of Successful Nations offers a pithy guide to real-world economics, adapted from the New York Times bestseller The Rise and Fall of Nations.A wake-up call to economists who failed to foresee every recent crisis, including the cataclysm of 2008, The 10 Rules of Successful Nations is a slim primer full of pioneering insights on the political, economic, and social habits of successful nations.Distilled from Sharma’s quarter century traveling the world as a writer and investor, his rules challenge conventional textbook thinking on what matters—and what doesn’t—for a strong economy. He shows why successful nations embrace robots and immigrants, prefer democratic leaders to autocrats, elect charismatic reformers over technocrats, and pay no mind to the debate about big versus small government. He explains why rising stock prices matter as much or more than food prices, which measure of debt is the best predictor of economic crises, and why no one number can accurately capture the value of a currency. He also demonstrates how a close reading of the Forbes billionaire lists can offer the clearest real-time warning of populist revolts against the wealthy.Updated with brand-new data, 10 Rules reimagines economics as a practical art, giving general readers as well as political and business leaders a quick guide to the most important forces that shape a nation’s future. Read more

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights:#1 The discipline of global history still suffers from a Eurocentrism and a nation-state centered lens, which diminishes the role of non-European civilizations and global processes such as capitalism.#2 The birth of human civilization as we know it today began in West Asia. In Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, the introduction of basic farming tools during the Neolithic Revolution allowed humans to evolve from hunter-gatherer tribes into more settled agricultural communities.#3 The overland routes of commerce and culture reached as far as China, which by the first millennium BC had consolidated its administrative power in the Yangtze River valley. The Zhou Dynasty first articulated the notion of a Middle Kingdom to differentiate their imperial state from those of their vassals and the powerful fiefdoms of the northern plains.#4 The Zhou Dynasty in China, which had transition from bronze to iron farming tools, hydrological technologies such as dams, dikes, and canals, and the decimal system in mathematics, all existed during this time. The Qin Dynasty, which had restored stability, was supplanted by the Han Dynasty, which promoted Confucianism. Read more