Download or read book Our elusive quest for prosperity written by David Castells-Quintana and published by Servei de Publicacions de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. This book was released on 2021-09-22 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We all want to have a prosperous life. We want to be happy. The pursuit of prosperity has indeed been a long quest for the human race. But what does it mean to be prosperous? Is it having material possessions such as clothes, furniture and electrical appliances? Or jewellery, cars and property? We want a vast range of things. We also crave new experiences, whether it’s playing sport, going to the cinema or traveling to new places. And we usually want it all; the more the better. And often, all is not enough. In 'Our Elusive Quest for Prosperity', David Castells-Quintana brings together, in a brief and easy-to-read book, centuries of economic thought: from the ideas of past empires and civilizations, the economic thinking of medieval times, the lessons of classical economists, Marxism, neoclassical economics and Keynesianism, to the neoliberal revolution and the most important contributions of modern times. All to help us understand the meaning of true wealth, the way we collectively work to achieve it, and the challenges we face in our elusive quest for shared prosperity and individual welfare.
Download or read book Under Rewarded Efforts written by Santiago Levy Algazi and published by Inter-American Development Bank. This book was released on 2018-07-11 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why has an economy that has done so many things right failed to grow fast? Under-Rewarded Efforts traces Mexico’s disappointing growth to flawed microeconomic policies that have suppressed productivity growth and nullified the expected benefits of the country’s reform efforts. Fast growth will not occur doing more of the same or focusing on issues that may be key bottlenecks to productivity growth elsewhere, but not in Mexico. It will only result from inclusive institutions that effectively protect workers against risks, redistribute towards those in need, and simultaneously align entrepreneurs’ and workers’ incentives to raise productivity.
Download or read book The Elusive Quest for Growth written by William R. Easterly and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2002-08-02 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why economists' attempts to help poorer countries improve their economic well-being have failed. Since the end of World War II, economists have tried to figure out how poor countries in the tropics could attain standards of living approaching those of countries in Europe and North America. Attempted remedies have included providing foreign aid, investing in machines, fostering education, controlling population growth, and making aid loans as well as forgiving those loans on condition of reforms. None of these solutions has delivered as promised. The problem is not the failure of economics, William Easterly argues, but the failure to apply economic principles to practical policy work. In this book Easterly shows how these solutions all violate the basic principle of economics, that people—private individuals and businesses, government officials, even aid donors—respond to incentives. Easterly first discusses the importance of growth. He then analyzes the development solutions that have failed. Finally, he suggests alternative approaches to the problem. Written in an accessible, at times irreverent, style, Easterly's book combines modern growth theory with anecdotes from his fieldwork for the World Bank.
Download or read book The Tyranny of Experts written by William Easterly and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2014-03-04 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this "bracingly iconoclastic” book (New York Times Book Review), a renowned economics scholar breaks down the fight to end global poverty and the rights that poor individuals have had taken away for generations. In The Tyranny of Experts, renowned economist William Easterly examines our failing efforts to fight global poverty, and argues that the "expert approved" top-down approach to development has not only made little lasting progress, but has proven a convenient rationale for decades of human rights violations perpetrated by colonialists, postcolonial dictators, and US and UK foreign policymakers seeking autocratic allies. Demonstrating how our traditional antipoverty tactics have both trampled the freedom of the world's poor and suppressed a vital debate about alternative approaches to solving poverty, Easterly presents a devastating critique of the blighted record of authoritarian development. In this masterful work, Easterly reveals the fundamental errors inherent in our traditional approach and offers new principles for Western agencies and developing countries alike: principles that, because they are predicated on respect for the rights of poor people, have the power to end global poverty once and for all.
Download or read book Progress Against Poverty written by Santiago Levy and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2007-08-29 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1997, Mexico launched a new incentive-based poverty reduction program to enhance the human capital of those living in extreme poverty. This book presents a case study of Progresa-Oportunidades, focusing on the main factors that have contributed to the program's sustainability, policies that have allowed it to operate at the national level, and future challenges.
Download or read book Economics Rules The Rights and Wrongs of the Dismal Science written by Dani Rodrik and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2015-10-13 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A hugely valuable contribution. . . . In setting out a defence of the best in economics, Rodrik has also provided a goal for the discipline as a whole.” —Martin Sandbu, Financial Times In the wake of the financial crisis and the Great Recession, economics seems anything but a science. In this sharp, masterfully argued book, Dani Rodrik, a leading critic from within, takes a close look at economics to examine when it falls short and when it works, to give a surprisingly upbeat account of the discipline. Drawing on the history of the field and his deep experience as a practitioner, Rodrik argues that economics can be a powerful tool that improves the world—but only when economists abandon universal theories and focus on getting the context right. Economics Rules argues that the discipline's much-derided mathematical models are its true strength. Models are the tools that make economics a science. Too often, however, economists mistake a model for the model that applies everywhere and at all times. In six chapters that trace his discipline from Adam Smith to present-day work on globalization, Rodrik shows how diverse situations call for different models. Each model tells a partial story about how the world works. These stories offer wide-ranging, and sometimes contradictory, lessons—just as children’s fables offer diverse morals. Whether the question concerns the rise of global inequality, the consequences of free trade, or the value of deficit spending, Rodrik explains how using the right models can deliver valuable new insights about social reality and public policy. Beyond the science, economics requires the craft to apply suitable models to the context. The 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers challenged many economists' deepest assumptions about free markets. Rodrik reveals that economists' model toolkit is much richer than these free-market models. With pragmatic model selection, economists can develop successful antipoverty programs in Mexico, growth strategies in Africa, and intelligent remedies for domestic inequality. At once a forceful critique and defense of the discipline, Economics Rules charts a path toward a more humble but more effective science.
Download or read book Why Nations Fail written by Daron Acemoglu and published by Currency. This book was released on 2013-09-17 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are? Simply, no. None of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone, are mired in poverty and violence? Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it). Korea, to take just one of their fascinating examples, is a remarkably homogeneous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The south forged a society that created incentives, rewarded innovation, and allowed everyone to participate in economic opportunities. The economic success thus spurred was sustained because the government became accountable and responsive to citizens and the great mass of people. Sadly, the people of the north have endured decades of famine, political repression, and very different economic institutions—with no end in sight. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created these completely different institutional trajectories. Based on fifteen years of original research Acemoglu and Robinson marshall extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, medieval Venice, the Soviet Union, Latin America, England, Europe, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, including: - China has built an authoritarian growth machine. Will it continue to grow at such high speed and overwhelm the West? - Are America’s best days behind it? Are we moving from a virtuous circle in which efforts by elites to aggrandize power are resisted to a vicious one that enriches and empowers a small minority? - What is the most effective way to help move billions of people from the rut of poverty to prosperity? More philanthropy from the wealthy nations of the West? Or learning the hard-won lessons of Acemoglu and Robinson’s breakthrough ideas on the interplay between inclusive political and economic institutions? Why Nations Fail will change the way you look at—and understand—the world.
Download or read book The Elusive Quest of the Spiritual Malcontent written by Timothy C. F. Stunt and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2015-08-31 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Timothy C. F. Stunt has gathered a range of his essays, both published and unpublished in a collection of largely biographical studies. His subjects range from discontented Quakers hesitating over their identity, to respectable Anglicans who were fascinated with the charismatic phenomena of tongue speaking and healing. Some of the characters with whom he is concerned can be described as "mavericks" on account of their strikingly individualist inclinations. Occasionally their unpredictability takes on a quasi-comic identity, which could even qualify them to be described as "loose cannons." On the other hand, some of them like Edward Irving, Norris Groves, and John Darby played a crucial part in the development of nineteenth-century evangelicalism. In their quest for the ideal church of their dreams, they were often disappointed but one cannot but admire the single-mindedness of their quest.
Download or read book Good Intentions Bad Outcomes written by Santiago Levy and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Argues that incoherent social programs significantly contribute to poverty and little growth. Proposes converting the existing social security system into universal social entitlements. Advocates eliminating wage-based social security contributions and raising consumption taxes on higher-income households to increase the rate of GDP growth, reduce inequality, and improve benefits for workers"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Beyond Success written by Jeff Gitterman with Andrew Appel and published by Balboa Press. This book was released on 2014-05 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wealth Management for the Soul: a four part plan for financially oriented people in spiritual crisis and spiritually oriented people in financial crisis.
Download or read book Globalization and Its Enemies written by Daniel Cohen and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Counters the argument that the global economy forces a system on people who do not want it, contending that globalization shows people material prosperity that they do want, and that poor countries have been excluded, not exploited.
Download or read book Wealth and Power written by Orville Schell and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two leading experts on China evaluate its rise throughout the past one hundred fifty years, sharing portraits of key intellectual and political leaders to explain how China transformed from a country under foreign assault to a world giant.
Download or read book The Elusive Quest written by Melvyn P. Leffler and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2017-10-10 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leffler argues that American officials did not disregard European developments after World War I but, rather, they sought to settle the war debt and reparations controversies, to stabilize European currencies, and to revive European markets. Leffler bridges the gap between revisionist and traditionalist studies by integrating the diverse aspects of foreign policy and elucidates many new aspects of the foreign policymaking process in the postwar period. Originally published in 1979. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.
Download or read book Cool written by Steven Quartz and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-04-14 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Neuroscientist and philosopher Steven Quartz and political scientist Anette Asp bring together the latest findings in brain science, economics, and evolutionary biology to form a ... theory of consumerism, revealing how the brain's 'social calculator' and an instinct to rebel are the crucial missing links in understanding the motivations behind our spending habits. Applying their theory to everything from grocery shopping to the near-religious devotion of Harley-Davidson fans, Quartz and Asp explore how the brain's ancient decision-making machinery guides consumer choice. Using these ... insights, they show how we use products to advertise ourselves to others in an often unconscious pursuit of social esteem"--
Download or read book Present Shock written by Douglas Rushkoff and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-02-25 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: People spent the twentieth century obsessed with the future. We created technologies that would help connect us faster, gather news, map the planet, and compile knowledge. We strove for an instantaneous network where time and space could be compressed. Well, the future's arrived. We live in a continuous now enabled by Twitter, email, and a so-called real-time technological shift. Yet this "now" is an elusive goal that we can never quite reach. And the dissonance between our digital selves and our analog bodies has thrown us into a new state of anxiety: present shock.
Download or read book How Markets Fail written by Cassidy John and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2013-01-31 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did we get to where we are? John Cassidy shows that the roots of our most recent financial failure lie not with individuals, but with an idea - the idea that markets are inherently rational. He gives us the big picture behind the financial headlines, tracing the rise and fall of free market ideology from Adam Smith to Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan. Full of wit, sense and, above all, a deeper understanding, How Markets Fail argues for the end of 'utopian' economics, and the beginning of a pragmatic, reality-based way of thinking. A very good history of economic thought Economist How Markets Fail offers a brilliant intellectual framework . . . fine work New York Times An essential, grittily intellectual, yet compelling guide to the financial debacle of 2009 Geordie Greig, Evening Standard A powerful argument . . . Cassidy makes a compelling case that a return to hands-off economics would be a disaster BusinessWeek This book is a well constructed, thoughtful and cogent account of how capitalism evolved to its current form Telegraph Books of the Year recommendation John Cassidy ... describe[s] that mix of insight and madness that brought the world's system to its knees FT, Book of the Year recommendation Anyone who enjoys a good read can safely embark on this tour with Cassidy as their guide . . . Like his colleague Malcolm Gladwell [at the New Yorker], Cassidy is able to lead us with beguiling lucidity through unfamiliar territory New Statesman John Cassidy has covered economics and finance at The New Yorker magazine since 1995, writing on topics ranging from Alan Greenspan to the Iraqi oil industry and English journalism. He is also now a Contributing Editor at Portfolio where he writes the monthly Economics column. Two of his articles have been nominated for National Magazine Awards: an essay on Karl Marx, which appeared in October, 1997, and an account of the death of the British weapons scientist David Kelly, which was published in December, 2003. He has previously written for Sunday Times in as well as the New York Post, where he edited the Business section and then served as the deputy editor. In 2002, Cassidy published his first book, Dot.Con. He lives in New York.
Download or read book Prosperity Consciousness written by Audrey Craft Davis and published by Blue Dolphin Pub. This book was released on 2006 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prosperity Consciouness A Magnificent Journey Audrey Craft Davis "It Is Natural to Be Wealthy." God provided enough of everything for everyone on the planet. Begin today to remove the barriers that have kept you from your share. It is costly to be poor and it does no good. Once you attain "prosperity consciousness," you will know it is easier to be wealthy than to give into poverty. "Your Thought Is a Command." You give permission for every happening in your life by your thought. Once you release a thought, you are responsible for it. It is your offspring. Never say, "The Devil Made Me Do It." Why give the dark forces power over your life? When a minister goes into the pulpit and teaches that the devil is responsible for all poverty, sickness and lack, does he realize he is giving the dark forces the power to inflict pain, illness and poverty? You are responsible for every dark thought you send into God's universe. "What You See Is What You Get." You cannot think without forming a picture in your mind. When you form a picture, your Angels use it as a grid. This is like a command to them. They were assigned to you to fulfill your wishes. That picture in your mind, good or bad, will happen. Your Angels will see to it! Why does negative faith work so well? Declare a negative and 80 to 90 percent of the population will back it up. Some scientists believe tornadoes and earthquakes are caused by the collective thoughts and actions of negative people. We are programmed to look for negatives. Watch what happens when you set a goal. Instead of picturing all the good things that can help you succeed, your negative programming takes over and you begin to set up barriers by thinking, "What defenses must I initiate to make sure nothing goes wrong which can keep me from my goal?" As you can see prosperity consciousness is really a journey into an over-all philosophy of living. It is truly a magnificent journey. Endorsements "This is an important book. It is to be hoped that it will be widely read by those interested in prosperity and also by those whose main interests lie outside the field but who are interested in the question of where the results of the spiritual and metaphysical fields seem to be heading. Magnificent Journey into Prosperity Consciousness contains great wisdom to help you attain the elusive "Prosperity Consciousness." It is here to guide you on your own journey toward prosperity. I urge you to take this book and read and digest every word. It is a valuable tool for anyone wanting to achieve prosperity - both material and spiritual." Rev. Dr. Paul F. Daniele, Ph.D., Th.D., D.D., P.C., President Emeritus, The College of Metaphysical Studies
