Fifty years ago—on April 26, 1956—the freighter Ideal X steamed from Berth 26 in Port Newark, New Jersey. Flying the flag of the Pan-Atlantic Steamship Company, she set out for Houston with an unusual cargo: 58 trailer trucks lashed to her top deck. But they weren’t trucks—they were...

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- 1. Eating People Is Wrong -- 2. "Sufficiency and Sufficiency and Sufficiency" -- 3. Markets and Famines -- 4. Great Leap into Great Famine -- 5. Famine Is Not the Problem - For Now -- Bibliography -- Index

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Section One. No Banks without States, and No States without Banks -- 1. If Stable and Efficient Banks Are Such a Good Idea, Why Are They So Rare? -- 2. The Game of Bank Bargains -- 3. Tools of Conquest and Survival Why States Need Banks -- 4. Privileges with...

A frank assessment of economists’ blindness before the financial crash in 2007–2008 and what must be done to avert a sequel The failure of economists to anticipate the global financial crisis and mitigate the impact of the ensuing recession has spurred a public outcry. Economists are under...

Nineteenth-century Brazil’s constitutional monarchy credibly committed to repay sovereign debt, borrowing repeatedly in international and domestic capital markets without default. Yet it failed to lay the institutional foundations that private financial markets needed to thrive. This study...

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- One. Lombard Street, Old and New -- Two. Origins of the Present System -- Three. The Age of Management -- Four. The Art of the Swap -- Five. What Do Dealers Do? -- Six. Learning from the Crisis -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References --...

This book is the first comprehensive political and economic account of the birth and development of the Euro. Today the Euro is the supranational currency for sixteen European countries and the world’s second-largest reserve currency. David Marsh tells the story of the rivalries, intrigues,...

Parker Shipton brings a variety of perspectives-cultural, economic, political, and religious-philosophical-and years of field experience to this fascinating study about people who borrow and lend in the interior of Africa. His conclusions challenge the conventional wisdom of the past half...

How did the United States come to have its distinctive workplace-based health insurance system? Why did Progressive initiatives to establish a government system fail? This book explores the history of health insurance in the United States from its roots in the nineteenth-century sickness funds...

Two of the greatest financial fiascos of all time took place at the same time and were instigated by two acquaintances: the Mississippi Bubble, on which John Law at first made a vast fortune and gained sway over French finances; and the South Sea Bubble, launched by Law and Thomas Pitt, Jr.,...