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The resource curse, or paradox of plenty, refers to the long-established notion central in development economics that countries rich in natural resources, particularly minerals and fuels, perform less well economically than countries with fewer natural resources. In other words, resources are an economic curse rather than a blessing.
This short primer explores the complexities of this idea and the debates that surround it, in particular under what conditions the resource curse might operate, if not universal. Discussion ranges over the nature of resource booms, the benefits and costs of export-led growth, the problems of deindustrialization and manufacturing base erosion, rent-seeking behaviour and corruption and the empirical evidence of the effects of natural resource dependence on growth. The book also considers the links between resource rents and the risk of conflict and civil war.
The treatment draws throughout on a range of illustrative examples from across the developed and developing world and offers an authoritative introduction to one of the most perplexing issues for economic growth.
The negotiation of international trade agreements has become the issue of the moment. With Brexit, a change in administration in the United States, a fragile economic recovery in the Eurozone and China facing a slowdown in its growth, nothing is more critical to the future global economy than the terms of trade between its largest economic blocs. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is Europe's most controversial trade agreement ever. Aimed at reducing regulatory barriers between the United States and the EU, it was expected to be fairly straightforward given strong business support on both sides of the Atlantic. It has not been so. The negotiations have dragged on far longer than anticipated and now look set to fail altogether. Yet the process of its negotiation, the terms of the potential agreement and its sticking points provide valuable lessons for policy-makers and academics tasked to bring future trade deals and arrangements to successful conclusions.
Alasdair Young offers a penetrating analysis of the complexities of the TTIP negotiations and explores why they have proved so difficult to conclude, what motivates the different parties concerned and what implications there are for politics and policy. Young throws light on the limits of the transatlantic cooperation and the processes of globalization and teases out the implications for the UK in its post-Brexit trade negotiations and for other nations now facing a more protectionist stance from the United States.
As a broad introduction to the history of economic thought - based on courses the authors have taught for many years - this book provides a magisterial overview for students and teachers who have not had the opportunity to cover the development of the field of economics in its historical context.
The text is presented as a series of twenty-four lectures, which can be used as the basis for self-study or for the delivery of a course. Each lecture presents an outline of aims, a select bibliography, a chronology, an overview of between 3,000 and 4,000 words, and questions for further study or reflection.
Contemporary understanding of economic principles sheds little light on the manner in which past thinkers thought, so the reader is provided with the much-needed context behind the development of ideas, as well as being guided through the original writings of economists such as Smith, Jevons, Marshall, Robbins, Keynes and others. The emphasis is on the broad developing stream of economic argument from the seventeenth century to the present, seeking to emphasize a diversity that is sometimes suppressed in more conventional textbooks, which tend to organize their histories into sequences of schools of thought.
Backhouse and Tribe bring their considerable insight and knowledge to bear on the text, having honed their presentation to the needs of those with no previous background in the subject, without sacrificing analysis or rigour. The book will be warmly welcomed by students and teachers alike.
Global financial capitalism has eroded the moral economy on which all economic exchanges ultimately depend. The principles of reciprocity, responsibility and redistribution, which for centuries defined the market place, have been increasingly pushed aside by a growth model that places the pursuit of profit above all else.
Luigino Bruni and Stefano Zamagni draw on a rich Italian tradition of civic humanism to advocate a more well-mannered type of economic market - a civil economy - one that places well-being, virtue and the common good alongside more familiar economic goals. They provide a succinct introduction to the civil economy approach and outline the thought and ideas of some of its pioneers and main representatives. The many different fields of application of the civil economy, from the determination of gross domestic product to the management of common goods, from welfare to the organization of production and consumption, are considered.
Unlike many post-growth or degrowth movements, rather than seek to replace the market, civil economy seeks to find solutions to social problems within the market, while maximizing human values and minimizing government intervention. It is a distinct and valuable approach, and one that offers individuals, corporations and governments a framework for a humane and socially accountable, yet productive and competitive, system of markets.
Over recent years, tabloid readers have become familiar with the concept of the 'white working class', those thought to have been 'left behind' by globalization, including immigration. Such sentiments were weaponized by politicians on all sides to fuel the anti-immigrant rhetoric of the Brexit campaign. And this racialized narrative has emerged repeatedly in mature democracies - in the political campaigns of Trump, Le Pen and others - and continues to gain traction in the guise of economic nationalism and populism. The need to understand the putative emergence of the white working class has become both intellectually significant and politically urgent.
In Race and the Undeserving Poor, Robbie Shilliam does just this. He charts the development over the past 200 years of a shifting postcolonial settlement that has produced a racialized distinction between the 'deserving' and 'undeserving' poor, the latest incarnation of which is a distinction between a deserving, neglected white working class and 'others' who are undeserving, not indigenous, and not white. Shilliam's analysis shows that the white working class are not an indigenous constituency, but a product of the struggles to consolidate and defend imperial order that have shaped British society since the abolition of slavery.
Our sense-making capabilities and the relationship between our individual and collective intelligence and the comprehensibility of the world is both remarkable and deeply mysterious. Our capacity to make sense of the world and the fact that we pass our lives steeped in knowledge and understanding, albeit incomplete, that far exceeds what we are or even experience has challenged our greatest thinkers for centuries.
In Logos, Raymond Tallis steps into the gap between mind and world to explore what is at stake in our attempts to make sense of our world and our lives. With his characteristic combination of scholarly rigour and lively humour he reveals how philosophers, theologians and scientists have sought to demystify our extraordinary capacity to understand the world by collapsing the distance between the mind that does the sense-making and the world that is made sense of. Such strategies - whether by locating the world inside the mind, or making the mind part of the world - are shown to be deeply flawed and of little help in explaining the intelligibility of the world. Indeed, it is the distance that we need, argues Tallis, if knowledge is to count as knowledge and for there to be a distinction between the knower and the known.
The book showcases Tallis's enviable knack of making tricky philosophical arguments cogent and engaging to the non-specialist and his remarkable ability to help us see humankind more clearly.
The Indian economy has undergone dramatic changes over recent decades encompassing episodes of rapid growth and stagnation. It is a complex economic story that stretches back to the seismic events of 1947. This book charts the development of the Indian economy since independence and partition, and provides a rigorous presentation of India's contemporary political economy.
As well as providing a comprehensive survey of the main features of the Indian economy, the book critically examines key debates surrounding the country's economic trajectory, in particular those that link it to the dominance of particular class interests, and those that argue that India's economic growth has not delivered equivalent welfare gains. Throughout, the book uses revealing case studies of poverty and inequality, of education, health, work and gender issues to outline the human story behind the economic figures and performance indicators. The economic impact of internal geography, regional diversity and discrimination is also assessed. The distinct, and sometimes puzzling, features of India's political economy are explored, including the significance of the service sector, a weakening state, and the democratic failure of public service delivery.
The book offers an authoritative overview of the contemporary Indian economy suitable for students seeking an introduction to this most diverse of economies.
The world's eighth largest economy has a unique shape and structure. Characterized by strong social networks and a niche capitalism built on successful small and medium-sized enterprises, the Italian economy has a nature distinct from its European neighbours.
Vera Zamagni charts Italy's recent economic history from the postwar years of reconstruction through to the present day and the legacy of the financial crisis. Combining illustrative data with qualitative analysis, she provides a clear and rigorous presentation of the main features of the country's economy. The country's regional imbalances, political instability and corruption are situated alongside its strengths in social capital, its flourishing industrial districts and its high ranking in well-being indicators. Throughout, the contours of a much longer history are shown to have shaped the contemporary economy as much as recent trends, such as migration.
The book provides a concise survey suitable for a range of introductory readerships seeking to understand the nature of recent Italian economic performance.
Global money laundering transactions are estimated to be $3.5 trillion annually. Although global spending on anti-money laundering compliance was more than $8 billion in 2017, with most countries having adopted anti-money laundering measures, less than 1 per cent of illicit financial flows are seized by authorities. This collection of essays takes an integrated look at money laundering and the challenges facing regulators in the digital age.
The contributors examine the opportunities for money laundering presented by the emergence of new payment methods, such as crowdfunding and mobile payment services, the largely unregulated financial services sector of hedge funds, private equity funds and derivatives, the explosion of online gambling, and the rise of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.
The essays show how the anonymity, irreversibility and instantaneous nature of these online transactions, outside of the traditional banking system, make them ideally suited to hide, launder and move criminal revenues.
While highlighting the challenges these digital technologies present, each essay also considers some of the tools regulators have and can use to close down the opportunities for money laundering that continues to keep crime profitable and illegal activities funded.
We have become accustomed to economists and politicians talking about 'market forces' as if they are immutable laws of the universe. But what exactly is 'the market'? Originally an abstract idea from economic theory - the locus of supply and demand - it has come to inform the way we speak about our relationship to the economic system as a whole.
Matthew Watson unpacks the concept to ask what does it really mean to allow ourselves to submit to market forces. And does economic theory really provide insights into the market institutions that shape our everyday life? In tackling these questions, the book provides a major contribution to a deeper appreciation of the dominant economic language of our time, challenging the idea that we can simply defer to the 'logic of the market'.
Much of economics is a top-down analysis that simplifies and reduces the huge varieties between individuals to a predictable range of characteristics that lend themselves to systematic analysis. This book eschews this conventional perspective, which sees national economies as simply agglomerations of the activities of millions of people, and instead explores the role played by the individual in the economy, in particular, how the individual experiences the economy. In so doing, the book is able to illuminate the economic landscape for the non-technical reader in a much more engaging and accessible way.
Steve Coulter examines those areas of our lives that most direcly connect with the economy - jobs, education, healthcare, housing, personal finance, welfare, consumption - and explores how the individual choices we make are determined. He shows how the things we experience, need and consume fit into a fast-changing and interdependent global economic setting and highlights the role of government and markets in shaping our lives.
The 'living wage' is an old idea that has experienced a dramatic resurgence of political popularity in recent years. The underlying logic of the concept is quite clear: it is a wage that provides workers with enough income to live on at some level considered adequate. However, in practice the term has become blurred with that of the 'minimum wage' and in its implementation it has lacked a consistent meaning despite being widely used as a campaigning slogan.
This short primer traces the origins of the concept of the living wage and seeks to explain the current rise in its fortunes as an economic instrument with a social objective. It examines its impact on labour markets and wage levels, explores how it has been applied, and assesses whether it is an effective measure for raising living standards.
It offers a broad-ranging analysis of the debates, policy developments and limitations of wage floors in developed economies and will appeal to a wide readership in economics, public policy and sociology, as well as those working in non-profit and non-governmental organizations.
What is the future for progressive politics in advanced capitalism? With its political fortunes so low, how might the Left move forward?
These essays from leading left intellectuals - Dean Baker, Fred Block, David Coates, Hilary Wainwright, Colin Crouch, Wolfgang Streeck, Leo Panitch, Sam Gindin and Matthew Watson - reflect on the scale and nature of the task that the Left now faces and consider the following questions: (1) What in modern capitalism has brought the Left to this impasse?; (2) What role has the Left played in its own failings?; (3) What lessons can be learnt for progressive politics going forward?; and (4) What are the immediate options and how can they best be pursued?
The views and opinions expressed vary, but all offer searching insights into the task the Left now faces. All point to the intellectual and practical experience on which the Left now needs to draw as it deals with its contemporary challenges. These essays represent a major statement on the future for centre-left politics and offer a frank appraisal of the Left's current capacity to keep conservatism at bay and to strengthen radical politics again.
For generations, Europeans have become accustomed to rising prosperity, an increasingly supportive social safety net and the expectation that each generation will fare better than the last. Europe has built a social model that is second to none, and fashioned a continent of disparate nations into a community that shares common values with democratic institutions that are the envy of the world.
Yet, Europe, as a common project is increasingly questioned by its citizens. The emphasis on solidarity, the driving force behind the social and economic integration, has given way to suspicion and nationalism. Openness and tolerance are strained by xenophobic, anti-immigrant sentiments, while populists and extremists set the agenda and dominate the policy debate.
European countries have borne the brunt of the global economic forces that have strained its institutions and capacity to respond appropriately. Characterised by uncertainty and delay both in handling the Euro crisis, Greece's ongoing economic woes, Brexit and now a migrant crisis, Europe is at a crossroads in its development: a restructuring at the very least, if not a new settlement of power within the union, is on the cards. This book will attempt to understand what 'post-crisis Europe' will look like, and what the opportunities are to rethink its economic, social and institutional architecture as well as to address the nagging democratic deficit that undermines its legitimacy as a democratic entity.
The US subprime mortgage crisis, by nearly causing the collapse of the global financial system during the 2007-08 financial crisis, clearly revealed that household debt management is critical to the stability of the international economy. The configuration of mortgage finance systems of European economies, from the UK to Sweden to Spain, have profound effects on national macroeconomic and political outcomes.
In this book, Gregory Fuller reveals how national housing systems diverge in terms of their commodification and financialization: mortgages are far more common in some systems than others; some encourage families to treat housing as a tradeable asset while others do not; and certain states provide extensive social housing programmes while others offer virtually none. These differences are shown to have an impact on households' economic precarity, macroeconomic volatility, and ultimately on their political preferences. Drawing on these comparisons, Fuller offers a number of policy suggestions intended to weaken the links between housing, economic instability, and inequality.
Far from witnessing the beginning of the end of organized labour as a major political force, Rethinking Global Labour argues that, post-financial crisis, we are entering a new era for workers and their organizations in which they will begin to impact decisively on the new global order.
In exploring the potential futures for the world's workers, the book provides an insightful account of how globalization has created a new global working class while increasing the insecurity and precarious nature of most employment. Moving beyond categories of North and South, Munck argues that the new global class of workers will be central both to the future of globalization and to its possible alternatives. In some ways the book poses a 'return to the future' drawing parallels with the birth of the labour and democratic movements before the consolidation of nation states.
At a time of growing unease with the negative effects of economic globalization, Rethinking Global Labour offers an important assessment of global labour and its potential for organization.
The notion of marginalism is central to modern economic theory. Its emergence, in the 1870s, underpinned the change from classical economics to modern (micro)economics, described by Schumpeter as a 'revolution'. This book explores the origins of the concept, its development and role in modern economics and shows why the marginalist approach is much more than a set of mathematical rules.
The book examines how marginalism and its development of calculus came about in a variety of different arenas, including as a reaction to Ricardo's dominant theory of rents, in von Thunen's location model, in the writings of German and French authors, both within the mainstream and outside it, before going on to look in detail at the work of Jevons, Walras and Menger, the economists most closely associated with the marginal revolution.
By exploring the origins and development of the marginalist approach within the history of economic thought, rather than seeking to explain it in forbidding formal terms, the book is better able to show students the wider importance of the marginalist approach in economic theory and its far-reaching societal implications in terms of the distribution of wages and capital. For anyone who has struggled with the technicalities of microeconomic theory, this approach will be warmly welcomed.
Collective bargaining has been a major force in delivering social justice and decent work in the workplace. However, the role of collective bargaining in achieving gender equality in the workplace is relatively under-researched.
In this book, Jane Pillinger and Nora Wintour investigate the complex and expanding area of collective union action for women's rights in the workplace. They explore how the feminization of unions in both developing and developed countries is changing bargaining agendas to address such issues as equal pay for work of equal value, work-life balance, maternity and parental leave rights, non-discrimination in access to employment, and the spill-over of domestic violence into the workplace.
The authors examine recent policy developments by the International Labour Organization, the United Nations, and the European Union, alongside many examples of national and industry-specific collective agreements to showcase how collective bargaining can be an effective tool for progressing equality in the workplace.
Choices made in macroeconomic policies - such as government spending, taxation, monetary policy and financial regulation - have distinct distributive consequences for women and men. They also shape the constraints within which efforts to advance gender equality must operate. The implications of gender dynamics for macroeconomics extends beyond consideration of distributive outcomes. The unpaid and non-market work that women perform - running a household, bringing up children - is unrecognized and uncounted in macroeconomic variables used to formulate policy. Yet the economic consequences of these unpaid activities are far-reaching: contributing to the well-being of society, affecting productive activities in the market economy and creating the foundation for the long-run sustainability of our economies.
It has long been assumed that economic growth and women's growing participation in the paid workforce would eventually take care of gender inequalities, and yet there is little evidence that faster growth will achieve this. In addition it ignores the valuable and quantifiable role that the unpaid work of women for their families contributes to the economy.
James Heintz tackles the shortcomings of macroeconomics in relation to gender dynamics and challenges the dominant methods and measurements, suggesting new ways of framing macroeconomic concepts. He concludes by considering implications for how this new way of thinking could transform policymaking in the future.
The 'gig economy' is a relatively recent term coined to describe a range of working arrangements that have previously been denoted as precarious, flexible and contingent. These may include casual workers, temporary agency workers, those on zero-hours contracts and dependent contractors.
This books seeks to get behind the contemporary buzz surrounding the term and provide some theoretical and empirical analysis of the gig work phenomenon. The book seeks to assess more critically some of the rhetorical claims made about gig work and to provide a balanced appraisal of the ramifications for individuals, employers and the economy and society in general of an increasingly insecure workforce. The regulatory framework, in particular, is examined and is shown to have lagged behind crucial developments in the gig economy, with many labour laws still historically rooted to the notion that a worker has to be an employee to be covered by employment rights.
The authors show that in many respects there is nothing new about the gig economy and that its growth in recent years was in some sense predictable. Perhaps its real significance, they argue, is its potential as a business model to 'gig-ize' other business operations far beyond relatively low-skilled work. When combined with automation and digitalization, the gig economy presents us with an opportunity to re-evaluate our understanding of the nature of work.