John Perkins's sensational New York Times bestseller Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (more than 300,000 sold) revealed just the tip of the iceberg of the secret world of economic hit men and the web of global corruption. Now more economic hit men and investigators tell the whole shocking story.

Now with a new epilogue that speaks directly to the currentenergy crisis, The Prize recounts the panoramic history ofthe world's most important resource: oil. Daniel Yergin's timelessbook chronicles the struggle for wealth and power that hassurrounded oil for decades and that continues to fuel globalrivalries, shake the world economy, and transform the destiny ofmen and nations. This updated edition categorically proves theunwavering significance of oil throughout the twentieth century andinto the twenty-first by tracing economic and political clashesover precious "black gold." With his far-reaching insight and in-depth research, Yergin isuniquely positioned to address the present battle over energy,which undoubtedly ranks as one of the most vital issues of ourtime. The canvas of his narrative history is enormous -- from thedrilling of the first well in Pennsylvania through two great worldwars to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, Operation Desert Storm, andnow both the Iraq War and climate change. The definit

Pack your cutlass and blunderbuss--it's time to go a-pirating "The Invisible Hook" takes readers inside the wily world of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century pirates. With swashbuckling irreverence and devilish wit, Peter Leeson uncovers the hidden economics behind pirates' notorious, entertaining, and sometimes downright shocking behavior. Why did pirates fly flags of Skull and Bones? Why did they create a "pirate code"? Were pirates really ferocious madmen? And what made them so successful? "The Invisible Hook" uses economics to examine these and other infamous aspects of piracy. Leeson argues that the pirate customs we know and love resulted from pirates responding rationally to prevailing economic conditions in the pursuit of profits."The Invisible Hook" looks at legendary pirate captains like Blackbeard, Black Bart Roberts, and Calico Jack Rackam, and shows how pirates' search for plunder led them to pioneer remarkable and forward-thinking practices. Pirates understood the advantages of consti

Over its eighty-seven-year history,American International Group,better known as AIG,has achieved unparalleled success by adjusting to changing economic trends,regulatory rules,and political situations.While founder Cornelius Vander Starr—who led this Shanghai start-up for fifty years—built an extraordinary insurance franchise,it was his hand-picked successor,Maurice "Hank" Greenberg,who would turn that franchise into one of the world's most profitable and powerful financial services companies. Now,in Fallen Giant,author Ron Shelp—who worked alongside Greenberg and within the AIG organization for more than a decade—sheds light on AIG,the company,and Hank Greenberg,the man.Through in-depth research,candid interviews,and firsthand experiences,Shelp provides a detailed look at how AIG was originally created and reveals the trouble that Greenberg and company eventually ran into when New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer turned his sights on them. Entertaining and informative,Fallen Gian

Book De*ionIncorporating recent advances in modern macroeconomics， this fifth edition offers increased coverage of long-run analysis and a new treatment of US policy rules and price adjustment. The authors provide a thorough account of the Solow Growth Model， develop the insights of endogenous-growth theory， explain the role of fiscal and monetary policy in the long run， and present a structural look at unemployment. Having examined the US monetary system and the Fed's policy rule， and on fluctuations in inflation and output， the book goes on to discuss how the policy rule is integrated into the general model of the economy. Also available are a corresponding study guide， instructor's manual， and test-item file. 作者简介： Robert E.Hall is professor of economics at Standford University and also Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He received his B.A.from the University of California， Berkeley， and his Ph.D.from the Massachusetts Insititute of Technology. He taught at

'Truly eye-opening ...There is almost no situation that Harford cannot dissect with his sharp economist's tools ...economics has never been this cool' NEW STATESMAN If humans are so clever, why do we smoke and gamble, or take drugs, or fall in love? Is this really rational behaviour? And how come your idiot boss is so overpaid? In fact, the behaviour of even the unlikeliest of individuals - prostitutes, drug addicts, racists and revolutionaries - complies with economic logic, taking into account future costs and benefits, even if we don't quite realise it. We are rational beings after all.

The study of the electronic structure of materials is at amomentous stage, with the emergence of computational methods andtheoretical approaches. Many properties of materials can now bedetermined directly from the fundamental equations for theelectrons, providing insights into critical problems in physics,chemistry, and materials science. This book provides a unifiedexposition of the basic theory and methods of electronic structure,together with instructive examples of practical computationalmethods and real-world applications. Appropriate for both graduatestudents and practising scientists, this book describes theapproach most widely used today, density functional theory, withemphasis upon understanding the ideas, practical methods andlimitations. Many references are provided to original papers,pertinent reviews, and widely available books. Included in eachchapter is a short list of the most relevant references and a setof exercises that reveal salient points and challenge thereader.

Do economics and statistics succeed in explaining human socialbehaviour? To answer this question. Leland Gerson Neuberg studiessome pioneering controlled social experiments. Starting in the late1960s, economists and statisticians sought to improve social policyformation with random assignment experiments such as those thatprovided income guarantees in the form of a negative income tax.This book explores anomalies in the conceptual basis of suchexperiments and in the foundations of statistics and economics moregenerally. Scientific inquiry always faces certain philosophicalproblems. Controlled experiments of human social behaviour,however, cannot avoid some methodological difficulties not evidentin physical science experiments. Drawing upon several examples, theauthor argues that methodological anomalies prevent microeconomicsand statistics from explaining human social behaviour as coherentlyas the physical sciences explain nature. He concludes thatcontrolled social experiments are a frequently overrate

The case for the inevitable failure of a paper money economyand what that means for the future All paper money systems in history have ended in failure. Eitherthey collapsed in chaos, or society returned to commodity moneybefore that could happen. Drawing upon novel new research, PaperMoney Collapse conclusively illustrates why paper moneysystems—those based on an elastic and constantly expanding supplyof money as opposed to a system of commodity money of essentiallyfixed supply—are inherently unstable and why they must lead toeconomic disintegration. These highly controversial conclusions clash with the presentconsensus, which holds that elastic state money is superior toinflexible commodity money (such as a gold standard), and thatexpanding money is harmless or even beneficial for as long asinflation stays low. Contradicting this, Paper Money Collapse showsthat: The present crisis is the unavoidable result of continuouslyexpanding fiat money The current policy of accelerat

Privatizing China: Inside china's Stock Markets goes behind the hype and the headlines to show the reality of China's stock markets. Understanding these markets and knowing how they need to develop is essential to the rising generation of foreign investors, fund managers, executives and regulators who only recently have been given access. It is the only book to provide a comprehensive analysis of how the market was established and how this history has shaped its current strengths and weaknesses. In this second edition of Privatizing China, the authors Carl Walter and Fraser Howie have completely revised and updated their account of the evolution of China's equity markets. As long-term market participants, the authors have added three new chapters that provide an insider's view of the political struggle over market reform, an in-depth look at the resulting 2005 G share reforms and a full treatment of the policies and market practice of the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor （QFll）channel.

Perhaps the hottest field in macroeconomics, economic growth is fascinating to theorists and critically important to policy makers. Charles Jones, a rising star in the field, explains the inroads economists have made in understanding how economies grow. The story begins with empirical evidence: how rich are the rich countries, how poor are the poor, and how fast do the rich and poor countries grow? Jones then presents major theories of growth, from the Nobel Prize-winning work of Robert Solow to the new growth theory that has ignited the field in recent years.

An updated look at what Fischer Black's ideas on business cyclesand equilibrium mean todayThroughout his career, Fischer Blackdescribed a view of business fluctuations based on the idea that awell-developed economy will be continually in equilibrium. In theessays that constitute this book, which is one of only two booksBlack ever wrote, he explores this idea thoroughly and reaches somesurprising conclusions.With the newfound popularity of quantitativefinance and risk management, the work of Fischer Black has garneredmuch attention. "Business Cycles and Equilibrium"-with its theorythat economic and financial markets are in a continualequilibrium-is one of his books that still rings true today, giventhe current economic crisis. This "Updated Edition" clearlypresents Black's classic theory on business cycles and the conceptof equilibrium, and contains a new introduction by the person whoknows Black best: Perry Mehrling, author of "Fischer Black and theRevolutionary Idea of Finance" (Wiley). Mehrling goes inside

An expos? on the delusion, greed, and arrogance that led toAmerica's credit crisis The collapse of America's credit markets in 2008 is quitepossibly the biggest financial disaster in U.S. history. ConfidenceGame: How a Hedge Fund Manager Called Wall Street's Bluff is thestory of Bill Ackman's six-year campaign to warn that the $2.5trillion bond insurance business was a catastrophe waiting tohappen. Branded a fraud by the Wall Street Journal and New YorkTimes, and investigated by Eliot Spitzer and the Securities andExchange Commission, Ackman later made his investors more than $1billion when bond insurers kicked off the collapse of the creditmarkets. Unravels the story of the credit crisis through an engaging andhuman drama Draws on unprecedented access to one of Wall Street's best-knowninvestors Shows how excessive leverage, dangerous financial models, and ablind reliance on triple-A credit ratings sent Wall Streetcareening toward disaster Confidence Game is a real world "Empero

It is in Books IV and V of The Wealth of Nations that AdamSmith offers his considered response to the French Physiocrats,perhaps the first great school of economic theorists, and assessesthe nature of the mercantile system, particularly the colonialrelationship with America, whose achievements could have been evenmore spectacular if conditions of free trade and economic union hadexisted. Even on the eve of the Declaration of Independence, Smithfamously predicted that America "will be one of the foremostnations of the world." It is also here that he develops the casefor a limited state role in economic planning, notably to combatmarket failure and induce efficiency in areas such as education,public works, justice, and defense. His pioneering analysis stillprovides many subtle and penetrating insights into one of today'smost vital and controversial policy debates. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Andrew Skinner

What happens when advances in technologg allow mang things to be produced for more or less nothing? And what happens when those things are then made available to us for free? In his groundbreaking new book, The Long Tail author Chris Anderson considers a brave new world where the old economic certainties are being undermined by a growing flood of free goods - newspapers, DVDs, T-shirts, phones, even holiday flights. He explains why this has become possible - why fast-evolvingtechnologies, particularly the Internet, have caused production and distribution costs in many sectors to plummet to levels unthinkable even a decade ago. He shows how the flexibility provided by the online world allows producers to trade ever more creatively, offering items for free to make real or perceived gains elsewhere. He pinpoints the winners and losers in the Free universe. And he demonstrates the wags in which, as an increasing number of things become available for free, our decisions to make use of them will be determined by tw

Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot. Call it what you like, it matters now more than ever. In "The Ascent of Money", Niall Ferguson shows that finance is the foundation of all human progress and the lifeblood of history. From the cash injection that funded the Italian Renaissance to the stock market bubble that sparked the French Revolution, from the bonds that fueled Britain's war effort to the Wall Street Crash and today's meltdown, this is the story of boom and bust as it's never been told before. Whether you're scraping by or rolling in it, there's no better time to understand the ascent of money.

A storm is coming, a turbulent new era in which the planet's supply of oil will be overtaken by demand. Fuel prices will soar and inflation will skyrocket-but with this guide, two leading financial strategists show you how to weather the worst of it, and even capture impressive returns. With the help of the author's 'all season' Oil Indicator, you'll learn how to choose the right investments for any market environment, as you discover; why oil and natural gas stocks should be core holdings in every investor's portfolio, why a cautious buy-and-hold strategy is a sure monet loser, why conventional 'safe' stocks are really the riskiest, why gold may be on the verge of a historic bull run, how the global oil wars make defense stocks a premium buy, where to find the best bets in the field of alternative energy, how to profit from real estate without actually owning any.