In mainstream economic theory money functions as an instrumentfor the circulation of commodities or for keeping a stock of liquidwealth. In neither case is it considered fundamental to theproduction of goods or the distribution of income. Augusto Grazianichallenges traditional theories of monetary production, arguingthat a modern economy based on credit cannot be understood withouta focus on the administration of credit flows. He argues thatmarket asset configuration depends not upon consumer preferencesand available technologies but on how money and credit are managed.A strong exponent of the circulation theory of monetary production,Graziani presents an original and perhaps controversial argumentthat will stimulate debate on the topic.

In an important contribution to educational policy, DanieleChecchi offers an economic perspective on the demand and supply ofeducation. He explores the reasons why, beyond a certain point,investment in education has not resulted in reductions in socialinequalities. Starting with the seminal work of Gary Becker,Checchi provides an extensive survey of the literature on humancapital and social capital formation. He draws on individual dataon intergenerational transmission of income and education for theUSA, Germany and Italy, as well as aggregate data on income andeducational inequality for a much wider range of countries. Checchiexplores whether resources spent in education are effective inraising students' achievement, as well as analysing alternativeways of financing education. The Economics of Education thusprovides the analytical tools necessary to understand the complexrelationships between current income inequality, access toeducation and future inequality.

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.

《PICC培训教材：保险基础知识（2014版）》是遵循科学创新、与时俱进的原则，在2006年版的基础上进行的一项工作。新修订的教材保持了原教材的基本框架，根据保险市场及公司业务发展，补充和调整了相关章节及内容。新修订的教材共分16章，力争突出内容新颖、结构完整、实操性强的特点。

This 1992 book examines alternative methods for achievingoptimality without all the apparatus of economic planning (such asinformation retrieval, computation of solutions, and separateimplementation systems), or a vain reliance on sufficiently'perfect' competition. All rely entirely on the self-interest ofeconomic agents and voluntary contract. The author considersmethods involving feedback iterative controls which require theprior selection of a 'criterion function', but no prior calculationof optimal quantities. The target is adjusted as the results foreach step become data for the criterion function. Implementation isbuilt in by the incentive structure, and all controls rely onconsistency with the self-interest of individuals. Theapplicability of all the methods is shown to be independent of theform of ownership of enterprises: examples are given for industrieswhich are wholly privately owned, wholly nationalized, mixed andlabour-managed.

This book describes the statistical mechanics of classicalspin systems with quenched disorder. The first part of the bookcovers the physics of spin-glass states using results obtainedwithin the framework of the mean field theory of spin glasses. Thetechnique of replica symmetry breaking is explained in detail,along with a discussion of the underlying physics. The second partis devoted to the theory of critical phenomena in the presence ofweak quenched disorder. This includes a systematic derivation ofthe traditional renormalization group theory, which is then used toobtain a new 'random' critical regime in disordered vectorferromagnets and in the two-dimensional Ising model. The third partof the book describes other types of disordered systems, relatingto new results at the frontiers of modern research. The book issuitable for graduate students and researchers in the field ofstatistical mechanics of disordered systems.

Based on the author's graduate course taught over many years inseveral physics departments, this book takes a 'reductionist' viewof statistical mechanics, while describing the main ideas andmethods underlying its applications. It implicitly assumes that thephysics of complex systems as observed is connected to fundamentalphysical laws represented at the molecular level by Newtonianmechanics or quantum mechanics. Organised into three parts, thefirst section describes the fundamental principles of equilibriumstatistical mechanics. The next section describes applications tophases of increasing density and order: gases, liquids and solids;it also treats phase transitions. The final section deals withdynamics, including a careful account of hydrodynamic theories andlinear response theory. This textbook is suitable for a one yeargraduate course in statistical mechanics for physicists, chemistsand chemical engineers. Problems are included following eachchapter, with solutions to selected problems provided.

Natural Resources and Economic Development, first published in2005, explores a key paradox: why is natural resource exploitationnot yielding greater benefits to the poor economies of Africa, Asiaand Latin America? Part I examines this paradox both through ahistorical review of resource use and development and throughexamining current theories which explain the under-performance oftoday's resource-abundant economies, and proposes a frontierexpansion hypothesis as an alternative explanation. Part IIdevelops models to analyse the key economic factors underlying landexpansion and water use in developing countries. Part III exploresfurther the 'dualism within dualism' structure of resourcedependency, rural poverty and resource degradation withindeveloping countries, and through illustrative countrycase-studies, proposes policy and institutional reforms necessaryfor successful resource-based development.

逆向投资之所以会获得成功，是因为进行预测的投资者不知道自己的局限性所在。（大卫·德雷曼） 历经半世纪，四次全面改版的投资经典 1970年，《逆向投资策略（原书第4版）》前身《心理学与证券市场》面世。 1979年，经改版后的《逆向投资策略：证券市场成功心理学》面世。 1982年，79年版的《逆向投资策略》修订版问世。 1998年，临近世纪之交，德雷曼根据时代变化与十多年来积累的经验重写了《逆向投资策略》一书。 2012年，在华尔街经历了互联网泡沫与次贷危机的洗礼后，行为金融与投资心理的重要性日益凸显，在新世纪跨入第二个十年之际，德雷曼再次重新演绎了自己的这本经典著作，对章节结构进行了全面调整，最终将本书呈现给广大读者。 在本版《逆向投资策略（原书第4版）》中，德雷曼向读者展现了这样一个投资世界： 从心理学的角度诠

For over 40 years, satellites have been orbiting the Earthquietly monitoring the state of our planet. Unseen by most of us,they are providing information on the many changes taking place,from movements in the land and volcanic eruptions, to human-causedchanges such as the growth of cities, deforestation and the spreadof pollutants in the atmosphere and oceans. Led by four editorswith support from a production team at NASA Goddard Space FlightCenter, many of the world's top remote sensing scientists showcasesome spectacular and beautiful satellite imagery along withinformed essays on the science behind these images and theimplications of what is shown. This is a stunningly attractive andinformative book for anyone interested in environmental issues andthe beauty of our home planet, providing inspiration for students,teachers, environmentalists and the general public alike.

This book, based largely on the Cambridge World History ofFood, provides a look at the globalization of food from the days ofthe hunter-gatherers to present-day genetically modified plants andanimals. The establishment of agriculture and the domestication ofanimals in Eurasia, Africa, the Pacific, and the Americas are alltreated in some detail along with the subsequent diffusion offarming cultures through the activities of monks, missionaries,migrants, imperialists, explorers, traders, and raiders. Muchattention is given to the 'Columbian Exchange' of plants andanimals that brought revolutionary demographic change to everycorner of the planet and led ultimately to the European occupationof Australia and New Zealand as well as the rest of Oceania. Finalchapters deal with the impact of industrialization on foodproduction, processing, and distribution, and modern-dayfood-related problems ranging from famine to obesity to geneticallymodified food to fast food.

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

This volume examines just why and in what sense, Sir KarlPopper's view of empirical falsifiability as the distinguishingcharacteristic of science has found appeal among economists. Thelimitations of this tenet, both for a philosophy of science and asa guideline to economic inquiry, are examined, as are several ofthe proposed alternatives.

Of the twenty most costly catastrophes since 1970, more than half have occurred since 2001. Is this an omen of what the 21st century will be? How might we behave in this new, uncertain and more dangerous environment? Will our actions be rational or irrational? A select group of scholars, innovators, and Nobel Laureates was asked to address challenges to rational decision making both in our day-to-day life and in the face of catastrophic threats such as climate changes, natural disasters, technological hazards, and human malevolence. At the crossroads of decision sciences, behavioral and neuro-economics, psychology, management, insurance, and finance, their contributions aim to introduce readers to the latest thinking and discoveries. The Irrational Economist challenges the conventional wisdom about how to make the right decisions in the new era we have entered. It reveals a profound revolution in thinking as understood by some of the greatest minds in our day, and underscores the growing role and

Of the many different ways in which economists have tried toanalyse public expenditure, the most relevant to Indian economicdevelopment is that which links the level of public expenditurewith the rate at which the state can accumulate capital. Theabstract theory of this link, however, must be complemented by ahistorical account of the degree to which a state accumulationpolicy was understood by Indian policy makers, and of the other(often inconsistent) elements in the economic strategy of Indiannationalism. After attempting to provide accounts both of theabstract theory and of the institutional and policy context withinwhich it was applied, this book analyses original empirical data onpublic expenditure in India between 1960 and 1970. The real growthrate of public expenditure, its functional and economic compositionat the all-India level are presented, and the strong contrastbetween the patterns of the first and last five year periods iselucidated. The effect of the 1965-67 droughts and bad harvests in

Capitalism in the twentieth century has been marked by periodsof persistent bad performance alternating with episodes of goodperformance. Cornwall and Cornwall draw upon Schumpterian,Institutional and Keynesian economics to investigate how far theseswings can be explained as integral to capitalist development. Theauthors consider the macroeconomic record of the developedcapitalist economies over the past 100 years (including rates ofgrowth, inflation and unemployment) as well as the interaction ofeconomic variables with the changing structural features of theeconomy in the course of industrialization and transformation.

If all measures of human advancement in the last hundredcenturies were plotted on a graph, they would show an almostperfectly flat line—until the eighteenth century, when theIndustrial Revolution would cause the line to shoot straight up,beginning an almost uninterrupted march of progress. In The Most Powerful Idea in the World , William Rosen tellsthe story of the men responsible for the Industrial Revolution andthe machine that drove it—the steam engine. In the process hetackles the question that has obsessed historians ever since: Whatmade eighteenth-century Britain such fertile soil for inventors?Rosen’s answer focuses on a simple notion that had become enshrinedin British law the century before: that people had the right to ownand profit from their ideas. The result was a period of frantic innovation revolvingparticularly around the promise of steam power. Rosen traces thesteam engine’s history from its early days as a clumsy but sturdymachine, to its coming-of-age driving the wheels of

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

This unique text uses Microsoft Excel workbooks toinstruct students. In addition to explaining fundamental conceptsin microeconomic theory, readers acquire a great deal ofsophisticated Excel skills and gain the practical mathematicsneeded to succeed in advanced courses. In addition to theinnovative pedagogical approach, the book features explicitlyrepeated use of a single central methodology, the economicapproach. Students learn how economists think and how to think likean economist. With concrete, numerical examples and novel, engagingapplications, interest for readers remains high as live graphs anddata respond to manipulation by the user. Finally, clear writingand active learning are features sure to appeal to modernpractitioners and their students. The website accompanying the textis found at www.depauw.edu/learn/microexcel .

This book explains how changing technology and economizingbehaviour induce vast changes in productivity, resource allocation,labour utilization, and patterns of living. Economic growth is seenas a process by which businesses, regimes, countries, and the wholeworld pass through distinct epochs, each one emerging from itspredecessor, each one creating the conditions for its successor.Viewed from a long-run perspective, growth must be characterized asan explosive process, marked by turbulent transitions in social andpolitical life as societies adapt to new opportunities, the demiseof old ways of living, and to the vast increase and redistributionof human populations. The book is based on a synthesis of classicaleconomics and contemporary concepts of adaptation and economicevolution. Although it is based on analytical methods, the text hasbeen stripped of all equations and with few exceptions is devoid oftechnical jargon.

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

Deeply romantic andextraordinarily suspenseful, TWILIGHT, NEW MOON, ECLIPSE andBREAKING DAWN capture the struggle between defying our instinctsand satisfying our desires. This stunning set makes the perfectgift for fans of this bestselling vampire love story. The set willgive existing fans a focus for their devotion and new fans will beentranced as the love story between Bella and the Vampire Edwarddevelops from tentative beginnings in Twilight to its stunningconclusion in the publishing phenomenon that is Breaking Dawn.

In 1997, a groundbreaking McKinsey study exposed the "war fortalent" as a strategic business challenge and a critical driver ofcorporate performance. Then, when the dot-com bubble burst and theeconomy cooled, many assumed the war for talent was over. It'snot. Now the authors of the original study reveal that, because ofenduring economic and social forces, the war for talent willpersist for the next two decades. McKinsey Company consultants Ed Michaels, HelenHandfield-Jones, and Beth Axelrod argue that winning the war forleadership talent is about much more than frenzied recruitingtactics. It's about the timeless principles of attracting,developing, and retaining highly talented managers-applied in boldnew ways. And it's about recognizing the strategic importance ofhuman capital because of the enormous value that better talentcreates. Fortified by five years of in-depth research on how companiesmanage leadership talent-including surveys of 13,000 executives atmore than 120 companies

Unrivaled in its unique combination of analytical rigor and accessibility, Intermediate Microeconomics: A Modern Approach has garnered one of the broadest adoption lists in the market. Now appearing in its Sixth Edition, Professor Varian's hallmark text is better than ever, featuring new treatments of game theory and competitive strategy, and a variety of new illustrative examples. Modern, authoritative, and above all crafted by an outstanding teacher and scholar, Intermediate Microeconomics, Sixth Edition will expand students' analytic powers and strengthen their understanding of microeconomics.