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Pluralism in economics is the view that modern approaches to studying economic phenomena are too restrictive. It is an important issue within the development of the discipline as many approaches that were once deemed to be outside the mainstream have now become part of the consensus, e.g. game theory, behavioural economics, and information economics. Pluralism and Complexity explores the philosophical background to pluralism and shows how this can be applied to modern economics. It examines key moments like the Keynesian Revolution and the New Classical counter-revolution to show how different 'epistemic visions' arise from fundamentally different ways of handling and simplifying complexity. Examining the history of aggregate economic analysis, this book argues that the propagation of a dogmatic view of science by political and self-interested elites creates a severe deficit of pluralism in macroeconomic research and offers suggestions for reversing this dangerous trend in economics and beyond.
Bridging the gap between undergraduate and graduate macroeconomics, this book approaches DSGE models from a unified perspective based on the concept of competitive equilibrium (CE) and the equivalent social planner problem (SPP). Equilibrium conditions derived from a CE are used to motivate the methods that solve the models. A guided focus on Dynare enables students to solve problems while avoiding the typical pitfalls associated with the software. The approach is 'we have a need and here's a tool that solves it' instead of 'here's a tool and let's look for an application.' It is consistent with current practices: define an equilibrium, characterize its solution, find its steady state, approximate the equilibrium conditions, and solve for its policy functions. This book is for the student who wants to follow current macroeconomic research and build on that to gain a competitive edge in creating and solving empirical models with real-world applicability.
Ryan Jablonski's Dependency Politics examines how democracy works in aid-dependent countries. He draws on over six years of fieldwork to investigate relationships between donors and politicians, showing how politicians make policy and how aid dependency changes voters' assessments of politician performance. He reveals that voters don't simply reward politicians for aid, rather they condition their votes on beliefs about how politicians influence aid delivery. This leads to a 'visibility-uncertainty' paradox where aid can either enhance or erode democratic accountability. Revisiting assumptions about the effects of foreign aid on political behavior, he also explains how aid can cause citizens to vote against their interests and sometimes benefit opposition candidates over incumbents. Drawing on surveys, interviews, focus groups, and field experiments, Jablonski challenges conventional wisdom about foreign aid and offers lessons for balancing trade-offs over aid effectiveness, political capture and capacity-building. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Disclosure laws aim to empower individuals to make better decisions, yet in practice they often overwhelm readers with excessive and inaccessible information. Disclosure Laws in the Digital Era explains why traditional regulatory approaches fall short and how technological advances offer new opportunities to evaluate and improve disclosure quality. Through a comprehensive study of the U.S. franchise disclosure regime, Uri Benoliel demonstrates how AI and big data standards can assess whether disclosures genuinely help prospective franchisees understand key risks. Benoliel proposes a forward-looking framework that integrates technology into disclosure design, offering more reliable and scalable methods for regulatory oversight. Combining doctrinal analysis, empirical insights, and policy recommendations, the book offers valuable insights for scholars of disclosure, franchising, consumer protection, and contract law, as well as for policymakers, regulators, and legal practitioners seeking to strengthen transparency and informed decision-making in the digital era.
People often 'miswant.' They buy goods that do not make them happy and refuse to buy goods that would make their lives better. In The Price of Happiness, Cass R. Sunstein focuses on people's 'willingness to pay,' which is the foundation for free markets. He argues that willingness to pay deserves respect, and high honors in the annals of history, when buyers know what they are getting. It's when buyers lack information, or suffer from behavioral biases, that they might miswant. Special conundrums also arise when we try to monetize goods we don't normally consider in monetary terms, like pristine areas, human dignity, and social media. Exploring behavioral biases and their effect on human welfare, Sunstein shows how behavioral economics can be used to increase human happiness.
Businesses are increasingly leveraging big data in financial analysis to improve decision-making, risk management, and market competitiveness, and professionals who know how to apply this data are in high demand. Designed for graduate programs and advanced undergraduate studies, this text synthesizes traditional statistics and econometrics with contemporary artificial intelligence and machine learning methods, preparing readers for the realities of modern-day financial data analysis. It studies known unknowns versus unknown unknowns and provides a systematic and objective characterization of statistical versus actual significance. Applying advanced theoretical and empirical methods to massive high-frequency databases, the book explores market microstructure, risk, market efficiency, equities, fixed income securities, and options. Grounded in over three decades of research, consulting, management, and teaching experience, it serves as a comprehensive and practical resource for students, practitioners, and scholars in capital markets, advanced analytics, and litigation.
Economic growth transformed the world. It freed us from a world where nearly everyone was mired in poverty and half of all children died before reaching adulthood. However, these benefits have not been felt everywhere, nor by everyone. In this groundbreaking new account of the divergence between east and west, Philip T. Hoffman uncovers the ultimate causes of economic growth and the reasons why it originated in seventeenth-century western Europe. He examines the relative impacts of a wide range of economic, political, and social factors, from high wages, cheap capital, and financial institutions to political fragmentation, porous borders, and interstate warfare. Through accessible economic principles and fascinating case studies, he demonstrates why growth began in Britain, why it spread so unevenly elsewhere, and why inequality inhibits growth.
How is it possible that economists generally fail to foresee recession, yet forecasting has never lost its appeal and importance? Using a combination of published scientific and technical literature, newspaper articles as well as archival material from thirty-three research sites in six countries, Tools of Trust looks for an answer to this question. It tells the history of business forecasting in the twentieth century, tracing the emergence and fundamental transformations of forecasting techniques and their role in economic and political decision-making. It investigates how the role of business forecasting has changed and how this has transformed economic and political decision-making. Offering a nuanced understanding of the crucial role forecasting plays in managing economic uncertainty, this book examines how unforeseen economic crises have paradoxically reinforced the importance of forecasting, turning it into an indispensable tool to reduce economic uncertainty and stabilize the capitalist order.
Luigi L. Pasinetti was one of the most significant figures in the history of post-Keynesian economics. In his final book, he reflects on the history and future of post-Keynesian economics, as well as a broad range of issues relating to his previous work. He argues that the economics profession has reached a critical impasse, unable to grasp the true nature of the unprecedented world we now inhabit. He examines how modern economic thought has diverged from addressing real-world challenges, challenging outdated frameworks to offer, instead, a path for reflection and reorientation. With a rigorous critique of prevailing paradigms, Pasinetti proposes an alternative framework of analysis extending an invitation for economists to rethink foundational assumptions. Providing his final statement on these issues, this book delivers a compelling critique of the current state of economics and political economy and offers a vital contribution for reimagining these disciplines in extraordinary times.
Human interactions, in any group or social setting, rely on and generate shared knowledge and social understandings. These shared intellectual resources are just as important to the efficient operation of markets and organizations as are their shared legal and material infrastructures. Governing Corporate Knowledge Commons focuses on the formal and informal arrangements that govern the creation and community management of intellectual resources within and across organizational boundaries. It demonstrates how the Governing Knowledge Commons (GKC) framework can be fruitfully combined with existing theoretical work on firms and corporate governance found in economics, management, and sociology. The volume also proposes a new set of case studies, ranging from old industrial enterprises to modern venture capital, investor alliances, and decentralized autonomous organizations. Chapters explore the benefits of participatory approaches to the management of genomic or financial data, online gaming communities, and organic waste. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.
In post-Brexit Europe, it has never been more important to understand who benefits from the European Union and its Single Market. In this innovative approach to the history of European integration, Grace Ballor reconstructs the creation of the Single Market in the 1980s and 1990s through the lens of multinational business. She both shows how policymakers viewed big business as an ally in market integration and uncovers the diverse responses of European companies, ranging from enthusiastic support for the market to opposition to its attendant social and environmental policies. Drawing on institutional and corporate archives and interviews with key policymakers and business leaders, Ballor demonstrates how businesses adapted their strategies to the new realities of integration and how these adaptations in turn shaped international markets. This is essential reading for anyone wishing to make sense of contemporary European economics and the complex relationships between business and policymaking, economy and society.
Global value chains (GVCs) are an important way in which modern businesses optimise their production processes by choosing to locate them in different countries. Given their importance to the world economy, it is no surprise that there is now a large literature in business. However, much less has been said about how insights from economics can be used in the analysis of GVCs. Reshaping Global Value Chains offers an in-depth and interdisciplinary analysis of global value chains, highlighting their crucial role in transforming global trade, production and development. It focuses on methods and toolkits closer to economics rather than other social sciences to explore key themes such as resilience, sustainability, innovation and inclusion, addressing the challenges posed by geopolitical, environmental and pandemic crises. Written by an impressive line-up of international scholars, this book provides practical and conceptual tools for understanding and rethinking GVCs in an era of increasing global uncertainty.
Recent populist waves raise crucial questions about why economically harmful policies such as tariffs, Brexit, or immigration restrictions gain popular support. Conventional explanations focus on economic self-interest or cultural values; however, Beatrice Magistro's Who Thinks Like an Economist argues that the puzzle lies in how voters think. She introduces the innovative Economist Mental Model (EMM), which predicts attitudes toward trade, immigration, AI, and more. She explains that those adopting the Economist Mental Model are more likely to favor welfare-enhancing policies and prioritize cost-benefit information over partisan cues, while individuals with Alternative Mental Models (AMMs) show limited responsiveness to economic information and tend to support policies promising short-term relief at the expense of long-term welfare. Drawing on surveys and experiments in Italy, the UK, and the U.S., Magistro offers an indispensable guide for scholars and policymakers seeking to understand—and counter— the appeal of populist policies that ultimately harm society.
Technological change and innovation have long fueled economic growth and employment. Yet, in recent decades, productivity gains have increasingly failed to translate into more jobs and higher wages. Jobless Growth and the New Great Transformation investigates this apparent paradox, by examining the theoretical and empirical evidence about the relationship between innovation and structural change. It combines rigorous and cutting-edge data analysis with EU case studies to reveal how recent technological breakthroughs, far from driving shared prosperity, have slowed growth, widened spatial divides and fueled societal polarization, partly due to excessive confidence in market deregulation. Drawing on data-driven analyses, the book explains why impacts of innovation vary so widely between regions and how history, institutions, and policy-not just market forces-determine who benefits from technological advances and who is left behind.
Kevin Dowd's Totalitarian Money? provides a comprehensive critique of proposals to establish CBDCs (central bank digital currencies) around the world. He argues that they are economically inefficient, as they provide no benefits that cannot be obtained by other means. He explains why CBDCs are dangerous to financial stability and personal freedom as they enable digital currency to be weaponised against people to comply with the political or social agendas of those in control. Dowd reveals that, despite being promoted by central banks as the next 'big thing', public demand for CBDCs is negligible and they have been rejected by the public wherever they have been introduced. Evaluating the track record of countries that have introduced CBDCs, Dowd explores the drawbacks of CBDCs and explains why the private sector is better equipped to provide a retail digital currency to the general public.
This comprehensive yet accessible guide to enterprise risk management for financial institutions contains all the tools needed to build and maintain an ERM framework. It discusses the internal and external contexts within which risk management must be carried out, and it covers a range of qualitative and quantitative techniques that can be used to identify, model and measure risks. This third edition has been thoroughly revised and updated to reflect new regulations and legislation. It includes additional detail on machine learning, a new section on vine copulas, and significantly expanded information on sustainability. A range of new case studies include Theranos and FTX. Suitable as a course book or for self-study, this book forms part of the core reading for the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries' examination in enterprise risk management.
Quantitative easing (QE) is a relatively new form of monetary policy whereby a central bank buys up government bonds and other financial assets to stimulate economic activity. It came to prominence in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-11 when standard monetary policy tools were unavailable to central banks due to low inflation levels. Quantitative tightening (QT) is the opposite whereby central banks sell off bonds and assets to reduce the size of their balance sheets. Quantitative Easing and Tightening brings together leading academics and practitioners to assess the legacy of quantitative easing and look at where new quantitative tightening measures may take us. It examines three of the most important actors in the QE/QT story: the Bank of England, the European Central Bank and the US Federal Reserve to provide an overview of the effectiveness, governance, and fiscal costs of quantitative easing and tightening.
Many developing countries are recognising that the traditional 'take–make–dispose' model of growth is no longer sustainable. This element explores that turning point and examines how the circular economy can offer a better path. A circular economy focuses on using resources for longer, reducing waste, and reusing or recycling materials. It offers a way to grow that can generate income, protect nature, and include more people in development. The element traces how circular economy ideas have evolved over the past decade, moving from a mainly global conversation to one increasingly shaped by local needs and realities. It argues that meaningful progress happens when three forces align: effective public policy, active communities, and strong cross-sector partnerships. Through case studies of businesses in developing countries, the element shows how firms with limited resources use creativity to redesign products and processes, turn waste into value, and collaborate to overcome constraints.