In this book, based on the 1995 Ohlin Lectures, Deepak Lal provides an accessible, interdisciplinary account of the role of culture in shaping economic performance. Topics addressed include a possible future "clash of civilizations," the role of Asian values in the East Asian economic miracle,...

The innovative approach to economic history known as the New Comparative Economic History represents a distinct change in the way that many economic historians view their role, do their work, and interact with the broader economics profession. The New Comparative Economic History reflects a...

This second edition of an innovative undergraduate text offers an approach to understanding different economic systems that reflects both recent transformations in the world economy and recent changes in the field of Comparative Economic Systems. The traditional way of teaching comparative...

Few aspects of the great European integration project have been as difficult and fraught with political conflict as the creation of a single financial market and monetary union. It is clear, however, that monetary union and financial integration are now on the front-burner in Europe, and will...

Recent commentators on Russia's economic reforms have almost uniformly declared them a disappointing and avoidable failure. In this book, two American scholars take a new and more balanced look at the country's attempts to build capitalism on the ruins of Soviet central planning. They show how...

The arms race continues to turn resources and priorities away from international development. Diminishing aid programs, growing Third World debt, a population that may reach 10 billion people in the foreseeable future in spite of all efforts to control it, increasing division of the world into...

Today's wide economic gap between the postindustrial countries of the West and the poorer countries of the third world is not new. Fifty years ago, the world economic order--two hundred years in the making--was already characterized by a vast difference in per capita income between rich and poor...

The Uprising is an Autonomist manifesto for today’s precarious times, and a rallying cry in the face of the catastrophic and irreversible crisis that neoliberalism and the financial sphere have established over the globe. In his newest book, Franco “Bifo” Berardi argues that the notion of...

The assembly line was invented in 1913 and has been in continuous operation ever since. It is the most familiar form of mass production. Both praised as a boon to workers and condemned for exploiting them, it has been celebrated and satirized. (We can still picture Chaplin’s little tramp...

What does a pack of cigarettes cost a smoker, the smoker's family, and society? This longitudinal study on the private and social costs of smoking calculates that the cost of smoking to a 24-year-old woman smoker is $86,000 over a lifetime; for a 24-year-old male smoker the cost is $183,000. The...