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Nomadland: Surviving america in the twenty-first century
By Jessica Bruder. 2017
From the beet fields of North Dakota to the wilderness campgrounds of California to an Amazon warehouse in Texas, people…
who once might have kicked back to enjoy their sunset years are hard at work. Underwater on mortgages or finding that Social Security comes up short, they're hitting the road in astonishing numbers, forming a new community of nomads: RV and van-dwelling migrant laborers, or "workampers." Building on her groundbreaking Harper's cover story, "The End of Retirement," which brought attention to these formerly settled members of the middle class, Jessica Bruder follows one such RVer, Linda, between physically taxing seasonal jobs and reunions of her new van-dweller family, or "vanily." Bruder tells a compelling, eye-opening tale of both the economy's dark underbelly and the extraordinary resilience, creativity, and hope of these hardworking, quintessential Americans?many of them single women?who have traded rootedness for the dream of a better lifeThe Economic and Social Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Romania in a European Context (Contributions to Economics)
By Valentina Vasile, Elena Bunduchi. 2024
This volume examines the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the labor market and the business environment in the European…
Union (EU), with a specific focus on Romania, the least developed country in the EU. The book emphasizes the need to rethink recovery models and suggests a new normal based on the pillars of economic, climatic, and social resilience. Is proposed the redefinition the policies’ mix that will allow fundamental changes in development, focused also on social and societal profit, the redefinition of productivity and environmental performance of businesses, and the rebalancing of work and leisure life. The COVID-19 crisis not only accelerated the digital transformation of society but also reconfigured the coordinates of economic development by prioritizing sustainable development for all, based on green jobs as a starting point for business innovation and decent jobs for active social protection. Following this approach, the contributions discuss selected issues with importance to the development of society in the post-pandemic world. The book is of interest to students, scholars and researchers in economics, business, management and political science, as well as to policy makers and practitioners, for a better understanding of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the labor market and the business environment in European Union.Chinese Investment in Africa: Its Variegated and Contradictory Character in Relation to Land, Agriculture, Mining and Infrastructure (Economic Geography)
By Freedom Mazwi, George T. Mudimu, Kirk Helliker. 2024
This edited volume systematically interrogates the Chinese investment presence in Africa, focusing on land and agriculture, mining and other infrastructural…
projects. In doing so, the form and extent of Chinese debt will be brought into perspective, with comparisons made to investments in Africa emanating from metropolitan capitalism. The volume examines the development potential of these investments by focusing on the labour regimes created and the effects of investments on the land-based agricultural livelihoods of the African peasantry. This entails the use of a political economy approach which incorporates the state, international actors and local communities into the analysis, with gender dynamics also of great significance. Overall, the contributions in this volume focus on an array of African nations (with a specific focus on Zimbabwe) and they deploy a large wealth of primary field-based data collected over a number of years by established and emerging scholars living andworking on the continent.The Brief explores the relationship between industrial dynamics, business strategies, and environmental regulations in the agrochemical industry. Focusing on contested…
technologies that continue to be used despite evidence of their hazardous impacts, the book calls for investigating the potential hazards during the inventive phase of companies to anticipate future risks. Combining patent analysis with computational chemistry and toxicology, the author examines the toxicity of chemical inventions and the effectiveness of environmental regulations in curbing harmful products. The result is a comprehensive dataset that combines patent data with chemical structures, which provides valuable insights into firms' innovation strategies as well as their potential hazards. Underscoring the importance of effective regulation in addressing social and environmental challenges, this Brief will be of interest to researchers and practitioners at the intersection of numerous fields, including economic policy, industrial economics, agribusiness, management, life sciences, and sustainability.This book covers various data scientific approaches to analyze the issue of grid integration of renewable energy for which the…
grid flexibility is the key to cope with its intermittency. It provides readers with the scope to view renewable energy integration as establishing a distributed energy network instead of the traditional centralized energy system. Specifically, quantitative valuation system-wise of the levelized cost of energy, which includes both initial cost and various operational costs, enables readers to optimize energy systems in order to minimize economic cost and environmental impact. It is noted, however, that the high cost of integrating renewable energy on a large scale might slow economic growth considerably. Topics addressed in the book also include statistical comparative study of the relationship between energy and economic growth, a graphical model of determinant factors for foreign direct investment in renewable energy, the coupled oscillator model and unit commitment model to capture intermittency of renewable energy, and the network model of evolving micro-grids. The book explains desired innovation to reduce the integration cost significantly using innovative technologies such as energy storage with hydrogen production and vehicle-to-grid technology. Illustrated by careful analysis of selected examples of renewable integration using different types of grid flexibility, this volume is indispensable to readers who make policy recommendations to establish the distributed energy network integrated with large-scale renewable energy by disentangling the nexus of energy, environment, and economic growth.Homo Curator: Towards the Ethics of Consumption (Virtues and Economics #8)
By Péter Róna, László Zsolnai, Agnieszka Wincewicz-Price. 2024
This book explores the under-researched sources of the consumerist culture and the environmental damage it has brought about. The book…
is an outcome of the symposium on “The Ethics of Consumption” organised and hosted by the Las Casas Institute at the Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford as part of its Economics as a Moral Science Programme. It takes on two contemporary problems: the human weakness and capacity for wrong-doing, and the failure of modern economic theory to account for the moral character of human behaviour and its implicit encouragement of gluttonous life-styles. In a time when grand political schemes are proposed to revive sustainability of global economy, the authors of the papers collected in this book highlight the need for moral renewal without which the most revolutionary structural reforms are bound to fail at producing the desired outcome. Topics of the book include the meaning and sources of avarice, the attempt to define what is enough, exploration of philosophical and theological perspectives which can serve as building blocks for the ethics of consumption. This makes the book of great interest to a broad readership of economists, social scientists and philosophers.Business Schools Under Fire: Humanistic Management Education as the Way Forward (Humanism in Business Series)
By Wolfgang Amann and Michael Pirson and Claus Dierkmeier and Ernst von Kimakowitz and Heiko Spitzeck. 2011
In a time of instability trust in managers is low. Management education is being scrutinized for its impact on society and business…
schools have been considered as 'silent partners in corporate crime' This book outlines how business schools can get out of the line of fire by presenting the cornerstones of a humanistic business education.Four Worlds of the Welfare State in Latin America
By Ilán Bizberg. 2024
This book explores the trajectories and structures of Latin American welfare states using a typology developed through conceptual and historical…
analyses of social protection systems in Latin America. It argues that social protection can be accomplished by different actors in distinct societies, be that the State, civil society, the market, or families. This work defines four types of welfare worlds based on who administers and allocates resources: the socio-corporatist, the statist, the commodified, and the familial. Author Ilan Bizberg delves on the historical trajectories of ten Latin American countries, each with a unique analysis of the corresponding social protection system: Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Chile, Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador The book begins with a meaningful discussion on the welfare state as a necessity of modern capitalist societies. Then, it counters the consequences of the disembeddedness of the economy from societyand the way the social protection system protects the society against this rupture. Chapters focus on the health system, pensions, and assistance programs of these countries, with diverse case studies that include analyzing the performance of the health systems during the pandemic. The book closes with a discussion on gender and the situations women face and encounter under and within different social-protection regimes.This book presents machine learning approaches to identify the most important predictors of crucial variables for dealing with the challenges…
of managing production units and designing agriculture policies. The book focuses on the agricultural sector in the European Union and considers statistical information from the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN).Presently, statistical databases present a lot of information for many indicators and, in these contexts, one of the main tasks is to identify the most important predictors of certain indicators. In this way, the book presents approaches to identifying the most relevant variables that best support the design of adjusted farming policies and management plans. These subjects are currently important for students, public institutions and farmers. To achieve these objectives, the book considers the IBM SPSS Modeler procedures as well as the respective models suggested by this software.The book is read by students in production engineering, economics and agricultural studies, public bodies and managers in the farming sector.This open access book provokes critical thinking regarding the most ambitious Chinese project since the founding of the People’s Republic…
of China, The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The book presents extensive quality research and original insights in assessing the status of China’s outbound investment and construction projects under the BRI umbrella. Referring to case studies and projects of selected countries from Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East, the author sheds new light on the issues and problems associated with the BRI's implementation and discusses both the readjustments and prospects for the BRI. Finally, this book demarcates the limits and potential of the world’s second largest economy in pushing for the BRI, which is challenged by enormous domestic tensions and external pressures. It also identifies and analyzes potential new collaboration areas between the Belt and Road countries and China under the BRI framework in the context of the post-COVID-19 era. It provides an outstanding reference for academics, students, policymakers, and the business community working in areas of international affairs and Asian economics and development, particularly those interested in Sino-relations and Chinese power dynamics in the global world order.Global Pension Challenges: Pensions, Saving and Retirement in the Twenty-First Century (Contemporary Issues in Finance)
By Patrick J. Ring, Jonquil Lowe, Lien Luu. 2024
National pension systems face a range of tough social and economic demands and pressures. These are complex to navigate, especially…
in a twenty-first century world that has ushered in global uncertainty and pressing challenges - even threatening the planet’s very sustainability – with implications for pensions that policymakers, financial services providers and individuals themselves must address.This book probes, and unpacks, what pension systems aim to achieve, the uncertainties they face and how they are attempting to resolve them. Analysing pension provision from the systemic, political-economy and individual perspectives, it sets out and contextualises commonalities and differences in pension systems across the globe, looking at current developments in both public and private pension provision, structures and regulation. Moreover, the reader is encouraged to question how national pension systems can best serve their populations and ensure the ‘sustainability’ of later-life incomes in the light of today’s global pension challenges.Global Pension Challenges: Pensions, Saving and Retirement in the Twenty‑First Century is an essential read for business, finance and social-policy academics and students, those working in the pensions industry and in the areas of welfare reform and advocacy, as well as the general public wishing to know more about the retirement issues we will all face in the coming years.Cooperative Enterprises is the first textbook to examine the evolution of the cooperative enterprise model and the contribution that cooperatives…
can make to the economy and society.It provides an accessible overview of the subject, looking at history, cooperative models, theories, legislation, and governance. Cooperative Enterprises takes an international approach throughout, drawing on examples from cooperatives from across the globe. The book offers a valuable historical perspective, placing cooperatives within their political, social, cultural, and economic contexts since the Industrial Revolution. It analyses and compares the cooperative law of 26 jurisdictions and showcases key defining moments for cooperative enterprises, cooperative development models, cooperative‑specific good practice standards, and compares the cooperative model with the private enterprise model, giving readers a comprehensive view of the subject. The book also demonstrates that cooperatives correct the market, complement the role of the state, support local economic development, reduce income and wealth inequalities, promote social cohesion, and promote economic democracy. Students are supported with a range of pedagogical features, including case studies, tables, figures, chapter summaries, and discussion questions to encourage critical thinking.This is the ideal textbook for undergraduate and postgraduate courses on cooperative studies, and will also be an illuminating resource for students, researchers, and policymakers interested in social enterprise, business history, economic history, corporate governance, economic democracy, and community development.Asian Economies: History, Institutions, and Structures
By Jamus Jerome Lim. 2024
An insightful and thorough exploration of the economies of Asia In Asian Economies: History, Institutions and Structure, seasoned economist and…
professor Jamus Jerome Lim provides a comprehensive discussion and incisive analysis of the economies of Asia. In addition to discussing the sharp contrasts between the region’s three major economies—China, India, and Japan—Lim also provides an overview of the rise of the Dragon economies of the East, to the resource-rich economies of the West. The book adopts a unique approach to the treatment of these economies, weaving in aspects of these countries’ economic geography and history, their idiosyncratic institutions and structures, along with providing a comparative and international perspective. The book offers: Careful emphasis on the geographic preconditions and enduring legacy of economic history on the contemporary and future prospects of each of the countries and regions discussed within Examinations of the importance of the political and economic institutions, as well as market and industrial structures, in shaping the trajectories of the economies considered in the book Discussions of the dramatic differences and similarities between the Asian economies, as well as how these differences shape these economies’ interactions with the rest of the worldPerfect for undergraduate and graduate students of economics, Asian Economies will also earn a place on the bookshelves of business and finance professionals seeking to understand the economies of the world’s most diverse and dynamic region.Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance
By Melinda Cooper. 2024
A thorough investigation of the current combination of austerity and extravagance that characterizes government spending and central bank monetary policyAt…
the close of the 1970s, government treasuries and central banks took a vow of perpetual self-restraint. To this day, fiscal authorities fret over soaring public debt burdens, while central bankers wring their hands at the slightest sign of rising wages. As the brief reprieve of coronavirus spending made clear, no departure from government austerity will be tolerated without a corresponding act of penance.Yet we misunderstand the scope of neoliberal public finance if we assume austerity to be its sole setting. Beyond the zero-sum game of direct claims on state budgets lies a realm of indirect government spending that escapes the naked eye. Capital gains are multiply subsidized by a tax system that reserves its greatest rewards for financial asset holders. And for all its airs of haughty asceticism, the Federal Reserve has become adept at facilitating the inflation of asset values while ruthlessly suppressing wages. Neoliberalism is as extravagant as it is austere, and this paradox needs to be grasped if we are to challenge its core modus operandi.Melinda Cooper examines the major schools of thought that have shaped neoliberal common sense around public finance. Focusing, in particular, on Virginia school public choice theory and supply-side economics, she shows how these currents produced distinct but ultimately complementary responses to the capitalist crisis of the 1970s. With its intellectual roots in the conservative Southern Democratic tradition, Virginia school public choice theory espoused an austere doctrine of budget balance. The supply-side movement, by contrast, advocated tax cuts without spending restraint and debt issuance without guilt, in an apparent repudiation of austerity. Yet, for all their differences, the two schools converged around the need to rein in the redistributive uses of public spending. Together, they drove a counterrevolution in public finance that deepened the divide between rich and poor and revived the fortunes of dynastic wealth.Far-reaching as the neoliberal counterrevolution has been, Cooper still identifies a counterfactual history of unrealized possibilities in the capitalist crisis of the 1970s. She concludes by inviting us to rethink the concept of revolution and raises the question: Is another politics of extravagance possible?The Next Age of Uncertainty: How the World Can Adapt to a Riskier Future
By Stephen Poloz. 2022
*WINNER OF THE 2023 NATIONAL BUSINESS BOOK AWARD**FINALIST FOR THE 2023 OTTAWA BOOK AWARD**SHORTLISTED FOR THE SHAUGHNESSY COHEN PRIZE FOR…
POLITICAL WRITING**SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 DONNER PRIZE*NATIONAL BESTSELLERFrom the former Governor of the Bank of Canada, a far-seeing guide to the powerful economic forces that will shape the decades ahead.The economic ground is shifting beneath our feet. The world is becoming more volatile, and people are understandably worried about their financial futures. In this urgent and accessible guide to the crises and opportunities that lie ahead, economist and former Governor of the Bank of Canada Stephen Poloz maps out the powerful tectonic forces that are shaping our future, and the ideas that will allow us to master them.These forces include an aging workforce, mounting debt, and rising income inequality. Technological advances, too, are adding to the pressure, putting people out of work, and climate change is forcing a transition to a lower-carbon economy. It is no surprise that people are feeling uncertain.The implications of these tectonic tensions will cascade throughout every dimension of our lives—the job market, the housing market, the investment climate, as well as government and central bank policy, and the role of the corporation within society. The pandemic has added momentum to many of them. Poloz skillfully argues that past crises, from the Victorian Depression in the late 1800s to the more recent downturn in 2008, give a hint of what is in store for us in the decades ahead. Unlike the purely destructive power of earthquakes, the upheaval that is sure to come in the decades ahead will offer unexpected opportunities for renewal and growth.Filled with takeaways for employers, investors, and policymakers, as well as families discussing jobs and mortgage renewals around the kitchen table, The Next Age of Uncertainty is an indispensable guide for those navigating the fault lines of the risky world ahead.Age of Discovery: Navigating the Risks and Rewards of Our New Renaissance
By Ian Goldin, Chris Kutarna. 2014
The present is a contest between the bright and dark sides of discovery. To avoid being torn apart by its…
stresses, we need to recognize the fact—and gain courage and wisdom from the past. Age of Discovery shows how.Now is the best moment in history to be alive, but we have never felt more anxious or divided. Human health, aggregate wealth and education are flourishing. Scientific discovery is racing forward. But the same global flows of trade, capital, people and ideas that make gains possible for some people deliver big losses to others—and make us all more vulnerable to one another. Business and science are working giant revolutions upon our societies, but our politics and institutions evolve at a much slower pace. That’s why, in a moment when everyone ought to be celebrating giant global gains, many of us are righteously angry at being left out and stressed about where we’re headed.To make sense of present shocks, we need to step back and recognize: we’ve been here before. The first Renaissance, the time of Columbus, Copernicus, Gutenberg and others, likewise redrew all maps of the world, democratized communication and sparked a flourishing of creative achievement. But their world also grappled with the same dark side of rapid change: social division, political extremism, insecurity, pandemics and other unintended consequences of discovery.Now is the second Renaissance. We can still flourish—if we learn from the first.Socionomics: How Social Mood Shapes Society
By Mikko Ketovuori. 2024
Socionomics: How Social Mood Shapes Society explores the main principles and applications of socionomic theory as elaborated by Robert Prechter.…
Socionomic theory posits that an omnipresent social mood, shifting constantly in a wave form through all aspects of society, is responsible for the aggregate tenor and character of all social, economic and cultural trends, from fluctuations in the stock market to the popularity of particular genres of music at a given time.The social mood as an endogenous and collective force has its roots in the herding instinct often identified amongst crowds. Individuals typically make rational decisions when acting alone, and in the context of certainty, but in groups and in context of uncertainty, mood-based mimetic behavior can affect all the participants. As social mood often goes unnoticed, people tend to give their collective feelings labels to rationalize them, thus constituting ‘public opinion’. Therefore, whilst ‘public opinion’ as presented in the media is usually seen as rational, it is in fact based on the social mood context that often determines how people think, feel and behave. As the internet and social media have become ubiquitous in our daily lives, these rationalizations are spreading faster and faster than ever before and creating a pseudo-reality which can corrupt the collective perception of what is real and what is not.This stimulating and thought-provoking book will be of great interest to academics, practitioners and policymakers with an interest in the humanities and social sciences, particularly sociology and economics.Growth‑enhancing structural change—a relocation of labour from low‑ to high‑productivity sectors—is increasingly perceived as inextricably linked with the sustainable development…
agenda. In the pursuit of structural change, policymakers have pinned their hopes on targeted policy tools such as special economic zones (SEZs). These geographically demarcated spaces designed to attract investment with a wide set of advantages have become de rigueur; however, a systematic evaluation of evidence‑informed policymaking is scarce due to conceptual and practical challenges. This book fills that gap and shows that SEZs are no ‘shortcut’ to economic development; their success in driving economic transformation depends on the complex interplay of sociopolitical, economic and strategic factors.This book contributes to the burgeoning literature on SEZs by providing the first systematic evaluation of the SEZ policy. It adopts the ‘policy cycle approach’ to organise policy evaluation into three hierarchical layers: input evaluation (agenda building), output evaluation (policy designs) and outcome evaluation (immediate effects of SEZs on firms’ behaviour and performance) with special reference to South Asian countries. The strategy is to bring together the findings of microeconomic evaluations to draw macro inferences on the contribution of SEZs to the broader objectives of structural transformation and competitiveness. Part I of the book delves into development challenges facing the region, lays out theoretical foundations underlying the relevance of SEZs in addressing them and examines the relevance of SEZs in the context of South Asia. Part II evaluates the policy first at systemic level to gauge whether and how the policy is rooted in broader development goals and then at the design level to examine the fit between the policy goals and designs. Part III presents a counterfactual evaluation of the impact of SEZs on investment climate; export competitiveness of firms; technology and innovation; and knowledge linkages of SEZ firms with the wider economy. The final chapter concludes by discussing the emerging challenges and the way forward.This will be a useful reference for academics, researchers, policymakers and professionals in international trade and business, public policy, industrial economics and regional integration.Moral Capitalism: Why Fairness Won't Make Us Poor
By Steven Pearlstein. 2018
"If anyone can save capitalism from the capitalists, it’s Steven Pearlstein. This lucid, brilliant book refuses to abandon capitalism to…
those who believe morality and justice irrelevant to an economic system." —Ezra Klein, founder and editor-at-large, VoxPulitzer Prize-winning economics journalist Steven Pearlstein argues that our thirty year experiment in unfettered markets has undermined core values required to make capitalism and democracy work.With a New Introduction by the AuthorThirty years ago, “greed is good” and “maximizing shareholder value” became the new mantras woven into the fabric of our business culture, economy, and politics. Although, around the world, free market capitalism has lifted more than a billion people from poverty, in the United States most of the benefits of economic growth have been captured by the richest 10%, along with providing justification for squeezing workers, cheating customers, avoiding taxes, and leaving communities in the lurch. As a result, Americans are losing faith that a free market economy is the best system.In Moral Capitalism, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Steven Pearlstein chronicles our descent and challenges the theories being taught in business schools and exercised in boardrooms around the country. We’re missing a key tenet of Adam Smith’s wealth of nations: without trust and social capital, democratic capitalism cannot survive. Further, equality of incomes and opportunity need not come at the expense of economic growth.Pearlstein lays out bold steps we can take as a country: a guaranteed minimum income paired with universal national service, tax incentives for companies to share profits with workers, ending class segregation in public education, and restoring competition to markets. He provides a path forward that will create the shared prosperity that will sustain capitalism over the long term.Previously published as Can American Capitalism Survive?The Holy Sh!t Moment: How Lasting Change Can Happen in an Instant
By James Fell. 2019
Motivation expert James Fell teaches readers how to skip the hard part and go directly from intention to committed action.After…
years of helping people change, James Fell had a sudden insight about sudden insight: significant life change doesn’t often come from just putting one foot in front of the other, carefully observing and altering habits, slogging through baby steps toward new behavior. Rather, the research reveals that serious life turnaround usually happens in a moment, with a flash of inspiration. Epiphany arrives like a lightning strike, rapidly shifting the recipient of such enlightenment onto a new path that creates a better life.Motivational psychology has traditionally focused on slow and steady—gradual improvement over time to reach a desired goal, whether it’s weight loss, career change, battling addiction, or success in relationships. We’ve been told since toddlerhood that the tortoise beats the hare. But, through compelling science and powerful stories, James Fell shows us that the hare has the edge; overwhelming desire can be awakened fast and furiously. When you learn to become attuned to that sensation of sudden awakening, a new path can be followed almost effortlessly, because it feels like destiny.Everyone has the ability to experience the lightning strike. The Holy Sh!t Moment will teach you how to create a life-changing epiphany and go directly from intention to action.