Retailers today are drowning in data but lacking in insight:They have huge volumes of information at their disposal. Butthey're unsure of how to sort through it and use it to make smartdecisions. The result? They're struggling with profit-sappingsupply chain problems including stock-outs, overstock, anddiscounting. It doesn't have to be that way. In The New Science of Retailing,supply chain experts Marshall Fisher and Ananth Raman explain howto use analytics to better manage your inventory for faster turns,fewer discounted offerings, and fatter profit margins. Featuring case studies of retailing exemplars from around theworld, this practical new book shows you how to: · Mine your sales data to identify "homerun" products you'remissing · Reinvent your forecasting and pricing strategies · Build end-to-end agility into your supply chain · Establish incentives that align your supply chain partnersbehind shared objectives · Extract maximum value from technologi

Mikael H?rnqvist challenges us to rethink the overall meaningand importance of Machiavelli's political thinking. Machiavelli andEmpire combines close textual analysis of The Prince and TheDiscourses with a broad historical approach, to establish theimportance of empire-building and imperial strategy inMachiavelli's thought. The primary context of Machiavelli's work,H?rnqvist argues, is not the mirror-for-princes genre or medievaland Renaissance republicanism in general, but a tradition ofFlorentine imperialist republicanism dating back to the latethirteenth-century, based on the twin notions of liberty at homeand empire abroad. Weaving together themes and topics drawn fromcontemporary Florentine political debate, Medicean ritual andRenaissance triumphalism, this study explores how Machiavelli inhis chancery writings and theoretical works promoted the longstanding aspirations of Florence to become a great and expandingempire, modelled on the example of the ancient Roman republic. Thisis a distinctive an

There is an ongoing perception that public accountability inmodern-day governance is in 'crisis', caused by globalization andthe increasing power of private economic interests. This bookresponds to that idea, providing the most comprehensive survey todate of how different organizations hold persons acting in thepublic interest to account, and the various problems they face. Thebook shows how key issues, such as public-mindedness, democracy andresponsibility, and structures, such as bureaucracy, markets andtransparency, adopt radically different and sometimes contradictoryinterpretations when viewed from different experientialperspectives. It also demonstrates how underlying all this are corecommunities of experiences that bind these diverse interpretationsand perspectives into a complex web of mutual interaction andinfluence. The book includes studies not only of Anglo-Americanexperiences, but also of the experiences of foreign andtransnational organizations: NGOs, transnational resistancemovements, th

The lively and enthralling tale of three notoriouscounterfeiters offers insights into the makings of the Americanfinancial mind. In Moneymakers , BenTarnoff chronicles the lives of three colorful counterfeiters whoflourished in early America, shedding fresh light on the country'sfinancial coming of age. The speculative ethos that pervades WallStreet today, Tarnoff suggests, has its origins in the craft ofcounterfeiters who first took advantage of a turbulent Americaneconomy. Few nations have as rich a counterfeiting history as the UnitedStates. Since the colonies suffered from a chronic shortage ofprecious metals, they were the first place in the Western world touse easily forged paper bills. And until the national currency wasstandardized in the last half of the nineteenth century, the UnitedStates had a dizzying variety of banknotes, making early America acounterfeiter's paradise. In Moneymakers , Tarnoff recounts how three of America'smost successful counterfeiters-Owen

In early 2009, many economists, financiers, and media pundits were confidently predicting the end of the American-led capitalism that has shaped history and economics for the past 100 years. Yet the U.S. economic model, far from being discredited, may be strengthened by the financial crisis. In this provocative book, Anatole Kaletsky re-interprets the financial crisis as part of an evolutionary process inherent to the nature of democratic capitalism. Capitalism, he argues, is resilient. Its first form, Capitalism 1.0, was the classical laissez-faire capitalism that lasted from 1776 until 1930. Next was Capitalism 2.0, New Deal Keynesian social capitalism created in the 1930s and extinguished in the 1970s. Its last mutation, Reagan-Thatcher market fundamentalism, culminated in the financially-dominated globalization of the past decade and triggered the recession of 2009-10. The self-destruction of Capitalism 3.0 leaves the field open for the next phase of capitalism’s evolution. Capitalism is likely to

In the classroom, ABC looks like a great way to manage acompany’s resources. But many executives who have tried toimplement ABC on a large scale in their organizations have foundthe approach limiting and frustrating. Why? The employee surveysthat companies used to estimate resources required for businessactivities proved too time-consuming, expensive, and irritating toemployees. This book shows you how to implement time-driven activity-basedcosting (TDABC), an easier and more powerful way to implement ABC.You can now estimate directly the resource demands imposed by eachbusiness transaction, product, or customer. The payoff? You spendless time and money obtaining and maintaining TDABC data—and moretime addressing problems that TDABC reveals, such as inefficientprocesses, unprofitable products and customers, and excesscapacity. The authors also show how to use TDABC to link strategicplanning to operational budgeting, to enhance the due diligenceprocess for mergers and acquisitions, and to supp

A practical guide to building fully operational financial cashflow models for structured finance transactions Structured finance and securitization deals are becoming morecommonplace on Wall Street. Up until now, however, marketparticipants have had to create their own models to analyze thesedeals, and new entrants have had to learn as they go. ModelingStructured Finance Cash Flows with Microsoft Excel provides readerswith the information they need to build a cash flow model forstructured finance and securitization deals. Financial professionalKeith Allman explains individual functions and formulas, while alsoexplaining the theory behind the spreadsheets. Each chapter beginswith a discussion of theory, followed by a section called "ModelBuilder," in which Allman translates the theory into functions andformulas. In addition, the companion CD-ROM features all of themodeling exercises, as well as a final version of the model that iscreated in the text. Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materi

Updated for paperback - an up-to-the-minute look at thechallenges met by Fed chair Ben Bernanke in trying to clean up theproblems affecting the U.S. economy that he inherited from hispredecessor, Alan Greenspan, informed by a historical look at howother central bankers have dealt with similar crises. Thesuccession of crises facing the U.S. economy in 2008 and 2009 havethrown a bright spotlight on Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke.Each of his moves to address the disastrous economic conditions arereported and analyzed at length in the press as he works tomitigate the effects of the sub-prime lending debacle and resultingcredit crisis. Bernanke is undergoing a stern test as America'scentral banker - a test created for him, in large part, by hispredecessor, Alan Greenspan. This new paperback edition of"Bernanke's Test" is completely updated with events through the endof 2009. As such, it's among the most valuable and up-to-the-minuteworks on Bernanke's career as Fed chair published to date, makingit a

In Export Now, two superbly qualified authorsexplain the secrets to taking your company global. Offering areal-world strategy that any sized business can use to go global,this book serves as a trustworthy handbook for identifying,evaluating, and profiting from global business opportunities.

In the classroom, ABC looks like a great way to manage acompany’s resources. But many executives who have tried toimplement ABC on a large scale in their organizations have foundthe approach limiting and frustrating. Why? The employee surveysthat companies used to estimate resources required for businessactivities proved too time-consuming, expensive, and irritating toemployees. This book shows you how to implement time-driven activity-basedcosting (TDABC), an easier and more powerful way to implement ABC.You can now estimate directly the resource demands imposed by eachbusiness transaction, product, or customer. The payoff? You spendless time and money obtaining and maintaining TDABC data—and moretime addressing problems that TDABC reveals, such as inefficientprocesses, unprofitable products and customers, and excesscapacity. The authors also show how to use TDABC to link strategicplanning to operational budgeting, to enhance the due diligenceprocess for mergers and acquisitions, and to supp

The fun and easy way to get down to business withstatistics Stymied by statistics? No fear ? this friendly guide offersclear, practical explanations of statistical ideas, techniques,formulas, and calculations, with lots of examples that show you howthese concepts apply to your everyday life. Statistics For Dummies shows you how to interpret and critiquegraphs and charts, determine the odds with probability, guesstimatewith confidence using confidence intervals, set up and carry out ahypothesis test, compute statistical formulas, and more. Tracks to a typical first semester statistics course Updated examples resonate with today's students Explanations mirror teaching methods and classroom protocol Packed with practical advice and real-world problems, StatisticsFor Dummies gives you everything you need to analyze and interpretdata for improved classroom or on-the-job performance.

Everyone interested in building a stronger business needs tounderstand and use the information captured in financialstatements. In Managing by the Numbers, business education andaccounting experts Chuck Kremer and Ron Rizzuto team up withopen-book management authority John Case to demystify the numbers.They present a practical, common-sense approach to readingfinancial statements and to managing the three bottom lines ofbusiness financial performance: net profit, operating cash flow,and return on assets. The book features numerous exercises andexamples (with associated templates available on the Web), apowerful new management tool known as The Financial Scoreboard, andan extensive glossary. Managing by the Numbers is an essentialresource for entrepreneurs, business owners, managers, and anyoneeager to improve their mastery of the financial side of running abusiness.

A proven guide to building financial models from scratch The"Second Edition "of "Building Financial Models with Microsoft Excel+ CD-ROM" provides beginning and intermediate level computer userswith step-by-step instructions on building financial models usingMicrosoft Excel 2007-the most popular spreadsheet programavailable. The accompanying CD-ROM contains Excel worksheets thattrack the course of the book and allow you to build your ownfinancial models. This comprehensive resource also covers importanttopics such as the concepts of valuation, sensitivity analysis, andcontribution margin. Offers accessible guidance on buildingfinancial models using Excel 2007 Illustrates how to integratefinancial statements such as the balance sheet, income statement,and statement of cash flows Covers the basics of building and usinga Capitalization Table Discusses how to best present a financialmodel Incorporating financial models into business decisions hasbecome an essential element of good business practice, and thisbook

Finding Out About explains how to build useful tools forsearching collections of text and other media. In the process ittakes a close look at the properties of textual documents that donot become clear until very large collections of them are broughttogether and shows that the constructions of effective searchengines requires knowledge of the statistical and mathematicalproperties of linguistic phenomena, as well as an appreciation forthe cognitive foundation we bring to the task as language users.The unique approach of this book is its even handling of thephenomena of both numbers and words, giving it a wide appeal. Thetextbook works for undergraduate and graduate classes oninformation retrieval, library science, and computationallinguistics. More exercises are available to instructors. Asupporting Web site includes recent additions to the book, as wellas links to sites of new topics and methods.

Writing in the June 1965 issue of theEconomic Journal, Harry G. Johnson begins with a sentence seemingly calibrated to the scale of the book he set himself to review: "The long-awaited monetary history of the United States by Friedman and Schwartz is in every sense of the term a monumental scholarly achievement--monumental in its sheer bulk, monumental in the definitiveness of its treatment of innumerable issues, large and small . . . monumental, above all, in the theoretical and statistical effort and ingenuity that have been brought to bear on the solution of complex and subtle economic issues." Friedman and Schwartz marshaled massive historical data and sharp analytics to support the claim that monetary policy--steady control of the money supply--matters profoundly in the management of the nation's economy, especially in navigating serious economic fluctuations. In their influential chapter 7, The Great Contraction--which Princeton published in 1965 as a separate paperback--they address the central e

The impact of protectionism is currently a contentious policyissue. This book evaluates the effects of protectionism on theBritish interwar economy. In contrast to most studies of the periodand the conclusions of orthodox economic theory, Kitson and Solomoushow that the introduction of the General Tariff in 1932 provided asubstantial stimulus to the domestic economy - a stimulus which canhelp to explain the trend improvement in British economic growth inthe 1930s. The authors show that the tariff made encouraging importsubstitution and macroeconomic expansion. The empirical evidence isexamined at two levels. First, a sectoral study shows that thenewly protected sector of the 1930s saw an improvement inperformance following the introduction of the tariff. Secondly, thelarge fall in manufacturing imports generated favourable effects onmacroeconomic performance by helping to reduce the importpropensity of the economy. The policy implication of this study isthat trade policies should be constructed in the contex

For most of the last three millennia, the world’s commercialcenters have used one or another variant of a gold standard. Itshould be one of the best understood of human institutions, butit’s not. It’s one of the worst understood, by both its advocatesand detractors. Though it has been spurned by governments manytimes, this has never been due to a fault of gold to serve itsduty, but because governments had other plans for their currenciesbeyond maintaining their stability. And so, says Nathan Lewis,there is no reason to believe that the great monetary successes ofthe past four centuries, and indeed the past four millennia, couldnot be recreated in the next four centuries. In Gold, he makes aforceful, well–documented case for a worldwide return to the goldstandard. Governments and central bankers around the world todayunanimously agree on the desirability of stable money, ever more soafter some monetary disaster has reduced yet another economy tosmoking ruins. Lewis shows how gold provides

The Wealth and Poverty of Nations is David S. Landes's acclaimed, best-selling exploration of one of the most contentious and hotly debated questions of our time: Why do some nations achieve economic success while others remain mired in poverty? The answer, as Landes definitively illustrates, is a complex interplay of cultural mores and historical circumstance. Rich with anecdotal evidence, piercing analysis, and a truly astonishing range of erudition, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations is a "picture of enormous sweep and brilliant insight" (Kenneth Arrow) as well as one of the most audaciously ambitious works of history in decades.

No major enterprise or financial institution can avoid doing business with China—if not directly, then through myriad hidden connections. Global businesses either use Chinese resources or sell to and in China or compete with companies that do. Because there’s no avoiding China, business leaders need a framework that orders the different (and seemingly contradictory) streams of data that hint at its future. That framework is The China Strategy. In this invaluable book, Edward Tse explains the ever-changing nature of China's business environment, its increasingly complex relationship with the rest of the world, and the global business implications—not just for our current environment but for the next decade. Change, Tse argues, is taking place in non-linearly. Some dimensions (like Chinese entrepreneurship) are expanding exponentially, while others (like the value of China's labor arbitrage) may be reaching a plateau. Eschewing easy explanations, Tse shows how to build and execute a global

Will the sun set on the greatest currency in the history ofthe world? For decades the dollar has been the undisputed champ. It’s not onlythe currency of America but much of the world as well, the fuel ofglobal prosperity. As the superengine of the world’s onlysuperpower, it’s accepted everywhere. When an Asian company tradeswith South America, those transactions are done in dollars, thecurrency of international business. But for how much longer? Economists fear America is digging a holewith an economy based on massive borrowing and huge deficits thatcloud the dollar’s future. Will the buck be eclipsed by the euro oreven China’s renminbi? Should Americans worry when the value of themighty U.S. dollar sinks to par with the Canadian “loonie”? Craig Karmin’s in-depth “biography” of the dollar explores theseissues. It also examines the green-back’s history, allure, andunique role as a catalyst for globalization, and how the Americanbuck became so almighty that $ became perhaps the most po