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quarta-feira, 29 de janeiro de 2014

Capital in the 21st. century: a controversial book by Thomas Piketty

Cover: Capital in the Twenty-First Century, from Harvard University PressCover: Capital in the Twenty-First Century in HARDCOVER

Capital in the Twenty-First Century

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HARDCOVER
$39.95 • £29.95 • €35.00
Publication: April 2014
Available 03/10/2014
696 pages
6-1/8 x 9-1/4 inches
96 graphs, 18 tables
World
What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories. In Capital in the Twenty-First CenturyThomas Piketty analyzes a unique collection of data from twenty countries, ranging as far back as the eighteenth century, to uncover key economic and social patterns. His findings will transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality.
Piketty shows that modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have allowed us to avoid inequalities on the apocalyptic scale predicted by Karl Marx. But we have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality as much as we thought in the optimistic decades following World War II. The main driver of inequality—the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth—today threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values. But economic trends are not acts of God. Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past, Piketty says, and may do so again.
A work of extraordinary ambition, originality, and rigor, Capital in the Twenty-First Century reorients our understanding of economic history and confronts us with sobering lessons for today.

quinta-feira, 12 de dezembro de 2013

Niall Ferguson: The Ascendance of the West (selection from his book Civilization)

Civilization
Niall Ferguson
From Delanceyplace, December 12, 2013

In today's selection -- from Civilization by Niall Ferguson. The year 2013 is a vantage point from which we can clearly see the ascendance of China and much of the rest of Asia. This stands as a reminder that five centuries ago, China was the world's most advanced country, and Western Europe was a backwater. In fact, while in 1500 the future imperial powers of Europe accounted for 10 percent of the world's land, 16 percent of its population, and 43 percent of its GDP, by 1913 -- with their colonial acquisitions and the ascendance of America -- these eleven countries* accounted for 58 percent of the world's land, 57 percent of its population, and a staggering 79 percent of world GDP:

"If, in the year 1411, you had been able to circumnavigate the globe, you would probably have been most impressed by the quality of life in Oriental civilizations. The Forbidden City was under construction in Ming Beijing, while work had begun on reopening and improving the Grand Canal; in the Near East, the Ottomans were closing in on Constantinople, which they would finally capture in 1453. The Byzantine Empire was breathing its last. The death of the warlord Timur (Tamerlane) in I405 had removed the recurrent threat of murderous invading hordes from Central Asia -- the antithesis of civilization. For the Yongle Emperor in China and the Ottoman Sultan Murad II, the future was bright.

The Beijing Palace City Scroll, depicting the Forbidden City, 15th century.
"By contrast, Western Europe in 1411 would have struck you as a miserable backwater, recuperating from the ravages of the Black Death -- which had reduced population by as much as half as it swept eastwards between 1347 and 1351 -- and still plagued by bad sanitation and seemingly incessant war. In England the leper king Henry IV was on the throne, having successfully overthrown and murdered the ill-starred Richard II. France was in the grip of internecine warfare between the followers of the Duke of Burgundy and those of the assassinated Duke of Orleans. The Anglo-French Hundred Years' War was just about to resume. The other quarrelsome kingdoms of Western Europe -- Aragon, Castile, Navarre, Portugal and Scotland -- would have seemed little better. A Muslim still ruled in Granada. The Scottish King, James I, was a prisoner in England, having been captured by English pirates. The most prosperous parts of Europe were in fact the North Italian city-states: Florence, Genoa, Pisa, Siena and Venice. As for fifteenth-century North America, it was an anarchic wilderness compared with the realms of the Aztecs, Mayas and Incas in Central and South America, with their towering temples and skyscraping roads. By the end of your world tour, the notion that the West might come to dominate the Rest for most of the next half-millennium would have come to seem wildly fanciful.
"And yet it happened.

"For some reason, beginning in the late fifteenth century, the little states of Western Europe, with their bastardized linguistic borrowings from Latin (and a little Greek), their religion derived from the teachings of a Jew from Nazareth and their intellectual debts to Oriental mathematics, astronomy and technology, produced a civilization capable not only of conquering the great Oriental empires and subjugating Africa, the Americas and Australasia, but also of converting peoples all over the world to the Western way of life -- a conversion achieved ultimately more by the word than by the sword. ...

"No previous civilization had ever achieved such dominance as the West achieved over the Rest. In 1500 the future imperial powers of Europe accounted for about 10 per cent of the world's land surface and at most 16 per cent of its population. By 1913, eleven Western empires* controlled nearly three-fifths of all territory and population and more than three-quarters (a staggering 79 per cent) of global economic output. Average life expectancy in England was nearly twice what it was in India. Higher living standards in the West were also reflected in a better diet, even for agricultural laborers, and taller stature, even for ordinary soldiers and convicts. Civilization, as we have seen, is about cities. By this measure, too, the West had come out on top. In 1500, as far as we can work out, the biggest city in the world was Beijing, with a population of between 600,000 and 700,000. Of the ten largest cities in the world by that time only one -- Paris -- was European, and its population numbered fewer than 200,000. London had perhaps 50,000 inhabitants. Urbanization rates were also higher in North Africa and South America than in Europe. Yet by 1900 there had been an astonishing reversal. Only one of the world's ten largest cities at that time was Asian and that was Tokyo. With a population of around 6.5 million, London was the global megalopolis. Nor did Western dominance end with the decline and fall of the European empires. The rise of the United States saw the gap between West and East widen still further. By 1990 the average American was seventy-three times richer than the average Chinese."

*The eleven were Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Of these only France, Portugal and Spain existed in 1500 in anything resembling their early twentieth-century form.
Author: Niall Ferguson    
Title: Civilization
Publisher: Penguin
Date: Copyright 2011 by Niall Ferguson
Pages: 3-5


Civilization: The West and the Rest
by Niall Ferguson by Penguin Books

If you wish to read further: Buy Now






quarta-feira, 23 de outubro de 2013

Policy Analysis in Brazil - a book by Jeni Vaitsman, José Mendes Ribeiro and Lenaura Lobato (editors)

Um livro com o qual tive a possibilidade de colaborar, respondendo questões e revisando o capítulo sobre think tanks.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Policy analysis in Brazil
Jeni Vaitsman, José Mendes Ribeiro and Lenaura Lobato (editors)
London: Policy Press, 2013

Presentation:
Policy analysis in Brazil is part of the International Library of Policy Analysis and is the first book
to paint a comprehensive panorama of policy analysis activities in Brazil. Highlighting the unique
features of the Brazilian example, it brings together 18 studies by leading Brazilian social
scientists on policy analysis as a widespread activity pursued in a variety of policy fields and
through different methods by governmental and non-governmental institutions and actors. It
shows how policy analysis emerged as part of Brazilian state-building from the 1930s onwards.
With the democratisation process of the late 1980s, policy analysis began to include innovative
elements of social participation in public management. This unique book offers key insights into
the practice of this field and is indispensable reading for scholars, policy makers and students of
the social sciences interested in learning how policy analysis developed and functions in Brazil.

Contents
1.Policy analysis in Brazil: the state of the art - Jeni Vaitsman, José
Mendes Ribeiro and Lenaura Lobato (editors)

PART I: STYLES AND METHODS OF POLICY ANALYSIS IN BRAZIL
2. Professionalisation of policy analysis in Brazil
Jeni Vaitsman, Lenaura Lobato and Gabriela R. B. Andrade
3.Policy Analysis Styles in Brazil
Christina Andrews 
4.Modernization of the state and bureaucratic capacity-building in the Brazilian Federal Government
Celina Souza

PART II: POLICY ANALYSIS BY GOVERNMENTS AND THE LEGISLATIVE
5.Policy analysis and governance innovations in the federal government
José Mendes Ribeiro and Aline Inglez Dias
6.Policy monitoring and evaluation systems: recent advances in Brazil’s federal public administration
Romulo Paes-Sousa and Aline Hellman
7. Privatization and policy decision making in Brazil
Licinio Velasco and Armando Castelar Pinheiro
8. Production of policy-related information and knowledge in Brazil: the state government agencies
Cristina de Almeida Filgueiras and Carlos Alberto Rocha
9. Policy analysis at the municipal level of government
Marta Farah
10. The role of the Brazilian legislature in the public policy decision making process
Fabiano Guilherme M. Santos

PART III: PARTIES, COUNCILS, INTEREST GROUPS AND ADVOCACY-BASED POLICY ANALYSIS
11. Brazil’s National Social Assistance Policy Council (CNAS) and the policy community supporting social assistance as a right
Soraya Vargas Cortes 
12. Brazilian response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic: integrating prevention and treatment
Elize Massard da Fonseca and Francisco I. Bastos
13. Media and policy analysis in Brazil: the process of policy production, reception and analysis through the media 
Fernando Lattman-Weltman
14. Parties and public policy: programmatic formulation and political processing of constitutional amendments
Paulo Fábio Dantas Neto
15. Business associations and public policy analysis
Renato Raul Boschi
16.Policy analysis in non-governmental organisations and the implementation of pro-diversity policies
João Bosco Hora Góis

PART IV: ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH INSTITUTES-BASED POLICY ANALYSIS.
17. Expert community and sectoral policy: the Brazilian Sanitary Reform
Nilson do Rosário Costa
18. Brazilian think-tanks: between the past and the future
Tatiana Teixeira
19. Policy analysis by academic institutions in Rio de Janeiro state
Cristiane Batista
20. Postgraduate instruction and policy analysis training in Brazil
Eliane Hollanda and Sandra Siqueira

sexta-feira, 17 de maio de 2013

Livro: Matthias Herdegen: Principles of International Economic Law (OUP, 2013)


Um livro indispensável, para oa estudiosos das relações econômicas internacionais.

Paulo Roberto de Almeida 


Principles of International Economic Law

Herdegen, Matthias

Oxford University Press, United Kingdom, 2013. 

Principles of International Economic Law gives a comprehensive overview of the central topics in international economic law, with an emphasis on the interplay between the different economic and political interests on both the international and domestic levels. The book sets the classic topics of international economic law, WTO law, investment protection, commercial law, and monetary law in context with human rights, environmental protection, good governance, and the needs of developing countries. It thus provides a concise picture of the current architecture of international economic law. Topics covered range from codes of conduct for multinational enterprises, to the human rights implications of the exploitation of natural resources. The book demonstrates the economic foundations and economic implications of legal frameworks. It puts into profile the often complex relationship between, on the one hand, international standards on liberalization and economic rationality and, on the other, state sovereignty and national preferences.It describes the new forms of economic cooperation which have developed in recent decades, such as the growing number of transnational companies in the private sector, and forms of cooperation between states such as the G8 or G20. Providing a perfect introductory text to the field of international economic law, the book thoroughly analyses legal developments within their wider political, economic, or social context.


Table of Contents
 PART I. CONTENTS, HISTORY, AND STRUCTURE
OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC LAW
I. The Law of International Economic Relations: Contents and Structure 3
1. Understanding and Contents of International Economic Law 3
2. The Interaction .between International and Domestic Law 5
3. The Interaction of Different National Laws 7
4. Main Areas of International Economic Law 7
5. The Relationship between International Economic Law and
Economic Rationality 11
 II. Past and Present of the International Economic Order 13
1. The Historical Foundations of International Economic Law 13
2. The Concerns of Developing Countries and the Call for a 'New
Economic Order' 16
3. The System of the World Trade Organization 18
4. The Regional Integration of Markets 19
5. Globalization of Economic Relations: Chances,. Risks, and
Asymmetries " 19
 III. The Actors of International Economic Law 25
1. Subjects of International Law vs Actors in International
Economic Relations 25
2. States x 26
3. State Enterprises 26
4. International Organizations 28
5. Non-institutionalized Forums of Cooperation in Economic
Relations 33
6. International Inter-Agency Cooperation 35
7. Non-governmental Organizations 37
8. Private Corporations and Codes of Conduct for Transnational
Corporations 38
 IV. The Legal Sources of International Economic Law 42
1. International Law as an Order of Transboundary Economic Relations 42
2. The Law of the European Union 46
3. International Agreements on Private Economic Transactions 47
4. 'Transnational Law' and 'lex mercatorid 48
 PART II. INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC LAW AS
AN ORDER OF RULES AND PRINCIPLES
V. Basic Principles of the International Economic Order 53
1. States' Autonomy in Economic Choices 53
2. Trade Liberalization: Reduction of Tariffs and Elimination
of Non-Tariff Barriers 54
3. Fair Treatment of Foreign Investors 54
4. Non-discrimination 55
5. Favourable Conditions for Developing Countries 57
6. Sustainable Development 62
7. Respect for Human Rights 63
 VI. Sovereignty and International Economic Relations 65
1. A Modern Concept of Sovereignty: Response to Globalization
and Deference to Democratic Choices 65
2. The Principle of Non-intervention 68
3. State Immunity 69
4. The Treatment of Foreign Persons 72
5. Diplomatic Protection 74
6. National Economic Law and its Extraterritorial Application 77
7. Criteria for Exercising Jurisdiction: Legitimating Links 86
8. The Extraterritorial Application of National Law 88
 VII. Human Rights and International Economic Relations 101
1. The Exploitation of Natural Resources 102
2. Treaties on Economic Cooperation and Economic Integration 107
3. The Impact and Liability of Transnational Corporations (TNC) 108
 VIII. Environmental Protection and Sustainable Development 118
1. Transboundary Impacts and Transboundary Harm 119
2. Sustainable Development , 121
3. The Precautionary Principle 122
4. Treaties on Pollution Control and on the Liability for
Environmental Contaminations 124
5. Treaties on the Protection of the Atmosphere and for
Climate Protection 126
 6. Treaties on Biodiversity, Access to Genetic Resources, and Biosafety 129
7. The Law of Biotechnology 136
 IX. Good Governance—The Internal Structure of States and Global
Economic Integration 139
1. Standards of Good Governance 140
2. Global Economic Integration: The Relevance of the
Constitutional and Economic Order 144
 X. Dispute Settlement 147
1. Mechanisms of International Dispute Settlement 147
2. International Commercial Arbitration 151
3. Jurisdiction of National Courts 156
4. Obtaining Evidence Abroad ' - —-• 164
5. Service of Process, Recognition, and Enforcement of Foreign
Judgments '• 166
 PART III. WORLD TRADE LAW AND
REGIONAL TRADE AGREEMENTS
XI. History and Development of World Trade Law 171
1. Development up to the Uruguay Round 171
2. The Uruguay Round 173
3. Post-Uruguay Perspectives and Challenges for the WTO System 175
 XII. The World Trade Organization 178
1. The WTO as Institutional Platform for Trade Relations 178
2. Members 178
3. Organs of the WTO 180
 XIII. The Multilateral and the Plurilateral Agreements on Trade 184
1. Multilateral and Plurilateral Trade Agreements:
Concentric Circles 184
2. The GATT 1994 and Related Trade Agreements 185
 XIV. The GATT 188
1. Objectives and< Basic Principles 188
2. Most-Favoured-Nation Treatment 189
3. National Treatment 195
4. General Exceptions (Article XX of the GATT) and Security
Exceptions (Article XXI of the GATT) 203
5. Safeguard Measures (Article XIX of the GATT) 212
6. Waivers 213
7. Burden of Proof 213
 XV. The Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and
Phytosanitary Measures (SPS) 215
XVI. The Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade 223
XVII. The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) 225
1. Scope and Relevance 225
2. Telecommunication Services 228
3. WTO Law and Financial Services 230
 XVIII. The Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual
Property Rights (TRIPS) ~  232
1. General Aspects 232
2. Patent Rights ' 233
3. The Protection of Intellectual Property Rights in Broader
International Context 241
 XIX. Subsidies and Anti-dumping Measures 245
1. Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCM Agreement) 245
2. The Agreement on Agriculture 252
3. Dumping and Anti-Dumping Measures 254
 XX. Dispute Settlement in the WTO 256.
XXI. WTO Law in Broader Perspective: The Interplay with
Other Regimes of International Law 264
XXII. WTO Law in Domestic Law 269
XXIII. The Regional Integration of Markets ' 274
1. Forms of Regional Market Integration (Free Trade Areas,
Customs Unions, and Economic Communities) 274
2. The Free Movement of Goods and Services in the European
Union 277
3. EFTA and the European Economic Area 281
4. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) 284
5. Regional Integration in South America 286
6. Regional Integration in Central America and the Caribbean 290
7. Regional Integration in Asia and the Pacific 291
8. Regional Integration in Africa 292
9. Bilateral Trade Agreements of die European Union and
of the United States 293
 PART IV. INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS LAW
XXIV. International Sales and Contract Law 299
1. Introduction 299
2. The Rome Convention, the Rome I Regulation, and
the Common European Law on Sales 302
3. UN Convention on Contracts for the International
Sale of Goods (CISG) 304
4. Electronic Commerce 316
 XXV. Letters of Credit 318
1. Documentary Credit 318
2. Standby Letters of Credit 321
 XXVI. International Building and Construction Contracts 323
1. FIDIC Manuals - 323
2. Long-term Contracts (BOT,  BOO, BOOT, BLOT, BOTT) 324
 XXVII. International Company, Competition, and Tax Law 326
1. Relevance 326
2. The Proper Law of a Corporation 326
3. Recognition of Foreign Corporations and Deference to
'Home' Regulation 328
4. EU Company Law: the Societas Europaea 330
 5. Corporate Governance 332
XXVIII. International Accounting Standards 334
XXDC International Competition Law % 336
 1. National and International Rules against Anti-Competitive
Behaviour 336
2. The Application of Competition Law and Extraterritorial Effects 338
3. Bilateral Cooperation 340
4. Convergences and Divergences between EU Competition
Law and US Antitrust Law , 342
XXX. International Tax Law 346
PARTV. THE INTERNATIONAL LAW OF
FOREIGN INVESTMENT
XXXI. Foreign Investment in Practice 353
1.  Economic and Political Relevance 353
2. Direct and Indirect Investment 354
3. Investors 355
4. The Control of Foreign Investment 357
 XXXII. Customary International Law 359
1. Customary Standards and Foreign Investment 359
2. Expropriation and Compensation 360
3. The Extraterritorial Effects of Expropriations 368
 XXXIII. Concessions and Investment: Agreements between States
and Foreign Companies 375
1. Stabilization and Internationalization 375
2. Concessions 378
 XXXIV. Treaties on Investment Protection 380
1. Bilateral and Multilateral Agreements on the Protection
of Investments 380
2. Personal Scope of Protection 384
3. Protected 'Investments' 388
4. Modern Standards of Investment Protection 391
5. Dispute Setde'ment 411
 XXXV. The International Centre for Settlement of Investment
Disputes 416
XXXVI. Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency 420
XXXVII. The Interplay of Investment Protection and Other Areas
of International Law 422
 PART VI. INTERNATIONAL MONETARY
LAW AND THE INTERNATIONAL
FINANCIAL ARCHITECTURE
XXXVIII. International Monetary Law and International Economic
Relations 427
1. The Impact of Monetary Relations on International
Trade and Business 427
2. The Bretton Woods System and the Development
of Currency Exchange Arrangements 428
3. Currency Exchange Regimes 430
4. Monetary Unions 431
5. 'Eurodollars' and other Eurocurrencies 435
 XXXK. The International Monetary Fund: Objectives, Organization,
and Functions 437
1. Objectives 437
2. Membership 438
 3. Organization 439
4. Financing of the IMF 439
5. IMF Members' General Obligations and the Surveillance
of Exchange Rate Policies: Stability and Fair Competitive
Conditions 440
6. Convertibility of Currencies and Restriction of Exchange
Controls 444
7. Exchange Control Regulations and their Extraterritorial
Effect 446
8. Special Drawing Rights 449
9. Use of the Fund's Financial Resources_for Members in
Economic Difficulties 450
XL. The World Bank and Other International Financial
Institutions 455
 1. The World Bank Group 455
2. Regional Development Banks 460
3. The Bank for International Settlements 461
XLI. Debt Crises and State Insolvency 463
 1. The International Management of Debt Crises 463
2. For Restructuring Sovereign Debt: The 'Paris Club'
and the'London Club' 465
3. State Insolvency and International Law 465
 XLII. International Regulation of the Banking Sector 477
1. The Need for Enhanced Cooperation of Supervisory
Authorities and for Harmonized Standards 477
2. Supervisory Authorities and Macro-Prudential Oversight
of the Financial System 478
3. Global Regulatory Standards for Adequate Bank Capital
and Risk Management: the Basel Accords 480
Index 483














domingo, 10 de fevereiro de 2013

The Bretton Woods transcripts: available online

Para todos os que se interessam pela história "íntima" (se ouso dizer) de Bretton Woods, aqui vai uma dica:

The Bretton Woods Transcripts
The Transcripts | Did You Know? | Documents and Memorabilia | Blog | The Project
The Bretton Woods Transcripts, edited by Center for Financial Stability (CFS) Senior Fellow Kurt Schuler and CFS Research Associate Andrew Rosenberg, offer the reader a front row seat at the conference that has shaped the international monetary system for nearly 70 years. The Bretton Woods Transcripts were never intended for publication, and give an inside perspective of what participants at this major international gathering said behind closed doors.
The Transcripts reveal an untold story from World War II, as well as the vision of luminaries such as John Maynard Keynes, future presidents, prime ministers, and other world leaders. Despite a war still waging in 1944, delegates from 44 nations worked tirelessly in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire to construct a financial system that would promote growth, minimize global imbalances, and foster stability. Show More
Quotes from The Bretton Woods Transcripts


Harry Dexter White (left), chief U.S. negotiator of the Bretton Woods agreements, and John Maynard Keynes, chief British negotiator, at the first meeting of the IMF and World Bank governors in 1946.
Enlarge
On international economic cooperation…
Fred Vinson (U.S. delegate, future Supreme Court chief justice): We are met here in Bretton Woods in an experimental test, probably the first time in the history of the world, that forty-four nations have convened seeking to solve difficult economic problems. We fight together on sodden battlefields. We sail together on the majestic blue. We fly together in the ethereal sky. The test of this conference is whether we can walk together, solve our economic problems, down the road to peace as we today march to victory. Sometimes [certain] problems seem to be most important on a particular day. Some folks think that the problems of the world were made to be solved in a day or in one conference. That can’t be. We must have cooperation, collaboration; utilize the machinery, the instrumentalities, that have been set up to provide succor to those who are hungry and ill; to set up, establish instrumentalities that will stabilize or tend toward stabilization of economies of our world.
(Commission I, seventh meeting)
Praise for The Bretton Woods Transcripts
Schuler, along with his coeditor, Andrew Rosenberg, has done a superb job in putting this treasure trove in shape for publication. Even though there have been thousands and thousands of pages written about the Bretton Woods Conference, nothing beats the transcripts for a first-hand feel of what transpired.”
From the preface by Jacques de Larosière, Managing Director of the IMF from 1978-1987, and Steve H. Hanke, Professor of Applied Economics, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore
Kurt Schuler, Andrew Rosenberg and the Center for Financial Stability deserve our thanks and congratulations for having unearthed and then nicely reproduced and edited the original Bretton Woods transcripts. This is truly a treasure trove for historians, showing exactly who said what to whom, when and why at that iconic Conference.”
Charles Goodhart, Financial Markets Group, London School of Economics; Former Chief Advisor, Bank of England
“The global economy is stuck with low growth rates and over indebtedness in very many leading countries today. The two issues - growth and fiscal/private debt overhangs - are the classical scopes of work of the International Monetary Fund; and we see that in this epoch the global institution named, has been relegated only to a back seat, while the so called ‘Troika’ does most of the diagnosis and most of the decision-making.

“Thus, what better than to counter now with a primary testimony of how the founding fathers of the IMF and the World Bank discussed, convened, negotiated and came about to a broad consensus at Mount Washington, New Hampshire, in order to create an institutionality with a clear technical, financial, and macro mandate?”

Eduardo Aninat, Former Deputy Managing Director, IMF; Former Finance Minister of Chile; Present, Director General, UNIAPAC Foundation, Paris
“Bretton Woods set the standard for all future international economic conferences. These transcripts are a precious contribution to historical study and more importantly an inspiration for those charged with shaping the future.
Lawrence H. Summers, Former Secretary, US Treasury; Charles W. Eliot University Professor of Harvard University, Harvard Kennedy School, Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government
“A fascinating and useful new e-book, The Bretton Woods Transcripts, has just been published by the Center for Financial Stability (CFS). While an 822 page ‘transcript’ might turn off all but the most serious monetary scholars, Kurt Schuler, who discovered the transcripts in the Treasury, and his coeditor Andrew Rosenberg have done a remarkable job of making the book user friendly. Their commentary is fascinating in its own right. Moreover, standard search engines allow one to easily scan through the document looking for topics or participants.

“In reading through various passages, I was most impressed by the foresight of the participants at the conference and their spirit of international cooperation, as they hammered out the agreements.

John B. Taylor, Former Under Secretary, US Treasury; Mary and Robert Raymond Professor of Economics, Stanford University; and George P. Shultz Senior Fellow and Chair of Working Group on Economic Policy, Hoover Institution
“Everyone thinks they know what happened at Bretton Woods, but what they know has been filtered by generations of historical accounts. By publishing the Bretton Woods transcripts, Kurt Schuler and Andrew Rosenberg provide the unfiltered version. International monetary history will never be the same.
Barry Eichengreen, George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee Professor of Economics and Political Science, University of California, Berkeley
“Historical memory, as we well know, can often fade, becoming encrusted with distortions and misperceptions. With the publication of these transcripts, Kurt Schuler and Andrew Rosenberg have done us all a lasting service. Economists and historians will gain fresh insight into what really happened and what was really intended at Bretton Woods. Diplomats and policy makers can gain valuable lessons about how to successfully organize and manage a complex international negotiation.”
Benjamin J. Cohen, Louis G. Lancaster Professor of International Political Economy, University of California, Santa Barbara
Contact
If you would like to contribute information or have questions about Bretton Woods, please contact Kurt Schuler, kschuler@the-cfs.org.

Book Details
eBook: 800 pages
Publisher: Center for Financial Stability
Price: $9.00
ISBN-13: 9781941801000
Excerpt includes table of contents, preface, introduction, and sample transcript.

sábado, 8 de dezembro de 2012

Jared Diamond - The World Until Yesterday (most recent book)

O mais recente livro do autor de Armas, Germes e Aço e de Colapso.

The World Until Yesterday

by Jared Diamond

This book is available for download on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iBooks and on your computer with iTunes. Books must be read on an iOS device.

Description

The World Until YesterdayMost of us take for granted the features of our modern society, from air travel and telecommunications to literacy and obesity. Yet for nearly all of its six million years of existence, human society had none of these things. While the gulf that divides us from our primitive ancestors may seem unbridgeably wide, we can glimpse much of our former lifestyle in those largely traditional societies still or recently in existence. Societies like those of the New Guinea Highlanders remind us that it was only yesterday—in evolutionary time—when everything changed and that we moderns still possess bodies and social practices often better adapted to traditional than to modern conditions.

The World Until Yesterday provides a mesmerizing firsthand picture of the human past as it had been for millions of years—a past that has mostly vanished—and considers what the differences between that past and our present mean for our lives today.
This is Jared Diamond’s most personal book to date, as he draws extensively from his decades of field work in the Pacific islands, as well as evidence from Inuit, Amazonian Indians, Kalahari San people, and others. Diamond doesn’t romanticize traditional societies—after all, we are shocked by some of their practices—but he finds that their solutions to universal human problems such as child rearing, elder care, dispute resolution, risk, and physical fitness have much to teach us. A characteristically provocative, enlightening, and entertaining book, The World Until Yesterday will be essential and delightful reading.
 
View In iTunes
  • Available on iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.
  • Category: World
  • Expected Release: Dec 31, 2012
  • Publisher: Penguin Group US
  • Seller: Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
  • Print Length: 512 Pages
  • Language: English
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sexta-feira, 28 de setembro de 2012

Livros e cultura: o mundo complexo e seus descontentes - Brink Lindsey


A Complex World and Its Discontents
Who’s lagging behind in the modern economy, and what can we do about it?
The City Journal, 28 September 2012
Human Capitalism: How Economic Growth Has Made Us Smarter—and More Unequal, by Brink Lindsey (Princeton University Press, e-book, $3.82)
Every year in the United States, the amount of new information stored on paper, film, and electronic media reaches roughly 2 trillion megabytes—or 15,000 new book collections the size of the Library of Congress. Think about the mind-boggling number of e-mails, phone calls, and text messages that Americans send each other every day, and you’ll realize that our lives have become more complex and interconnected than ever before. However, some social groups have fallen behind in the increasingly complex modern economy. In his short and highly readable book, Brink Lindsey tries to explain why this happened and what can be done about it.
Formerly vice president for research at the Cato Institute, Lindsey is now a senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation, a think tank focused on promoting entrepreneurship. He has devoted his career to talking economic sense to those on the political Left, with whom he shares some views on social issues.
Lindsey’s central argument focuses on the increasing complexity of modern societies. As we get richer, our world gets more complicated. In pre-industrial societies, the accident of birth broadly determined social roles, and technology remained stationary. People did things the way they or their ancestors had always done them. In today’s world, such a mindset obviously wouldn’t get you very far. In the United States, for example, as a larger part of the economy revolves around processing information, competition is fiercer than ever before.
The economy thus places increasing pressure on our cognitive abilities. Psychologists believe that if we gave American children in 1932 an IQ test normed in 1997, their average IQ would come out to about 80—borderline deficient by today’s standards. The secular trend in measured IQ, known as the Flynn effect, is, according to Lindsey, a result of the rising complexity of the environments in which humans operate.
Unfortunately, while the United States has become much wealthier, some social classes lag behind—and others have done disproportionately well. Lindsey’s focus here is not on the “top 1 percent,” but rather on the growing disconnect between the top 30 percent—mostly highly skilled college graduates—and the rest of the income-distribution curve. Why haven’t poor people been more successful? Lindsey suggests two main reasons. The first is skills-based technological change. In modern economies, routine, rules-based jobs are more easily replaceable with computers, whereas jobs that involve problem-solving in complex environments become ever more valuable and lucrative.
The second reason is the persistent divide between “elite” culture and that of the bottom 70 percent. Because of the persistence of cultural norms, social groups in danger of becoming obsolete in the modern economy are not adapting by investing more in their human capital. “Culture is trumping economics,” says Lindsey, hence a fostering a “strong tendency for children immersed in working-class culture to remain in that culture through their adult lives.”
This is not a novel argument. Charles Murray, for one, has advanced it for decades, including in his recent book. Lindsey criticizes Murray, though, for offering little more than “plaintive moralizing.” But if the problem is cultural, then a change in culture and rhetoric has to be part of the solution. And, arguably, Murray is right-on when he advises people to “recognize that the guy who works on your lawn every week is morally superior in this regard to your neighbor’s college-educated son who won’t take a ‘demeaning’ job.”
Unlike Murray, Lindsey doesn’t offer a coherent theory for the growing cultural divide between the lower classes and the successful denizens of the global economy. Why have poor people retained detrimental cultural habits? Lindsey offers no justification for why cultural norms may have gotten more persistent in recent decades. He doesn’t ponder at least one plausible explanation: that material incentives favoring certain behaviors shape values in a way that locks people into poverty and dependence. This is a thesis that Murray has explored in great detail, as have others, including economist Walter Williams.
Even if some of Lindsey’s arguments leave a reader unconvinced, it’s difficult to object to his policy ideas. He proposes a reform of K-12 and college education, including limiting college-tuition subsidies, and he’s optimistic about early-childhood intervention among underprivileged children. Similarly, it’s tough to argue against a reform of entitlements that would motivate individuals to seek employment instead of encouraging dependency on the welfare system; or against removing barriers to entrepreneurship. But the hard truth is that, unless accompanied by a sustained change in culture and rhetoric among the poor, even the wisest policies are unlikely to make much of a difference.

quarta-feira, 4 de julho de 2012

Historia do pensamento economico - livro Sylvia Nasar


EH.NET BOOK REVIEW ------
Title: Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius
Published by EH.Net (July 2012)
Sylvia Nasar, Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011. xv + 559 pp. $35 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-0-684-87298-8.
Reviewed for EH.Net by Robert E. Prasch, Department of Economics, Middlebury College.

Sylvia Nasar, the author of A Beautiful Mind, has undertaken another ambitious project, this time a larger survey of economic thought. The result is a colorful and fast-moving narrative, brimming with fascinating characters and lively anecdotes. In a word, this book is a pleasure to read. Nasar’s experiences as a successful writer and professor of journalism enable her to bring a distinct talent for story-telling along with an outsider’s perspective to a field too often overlooked within and without the citadels of academe.
Though this book is a history of economic thought, it is far from comprehensive. Why certain figures or subjects are included and others neglected is, it must be said, something of a mystery. As far as I can tell, the answer seems to be how well they fit the larger project, which is to present an unabashedly Whig history of economics. However, that said, I was pleased that she elected to devote several pages to figures such as Henry Mayhew (pp. 18-22 and 28-32) and a full chapter to Beatrice Webb (Chapter 3). As Nasar correctly points out, each of them made substantial contributions to popular and elite discussions of poverty and what might be done to alleviate it. Unmentioned, but as important, was that they set an example of engaged empirical work that would lead to improved methods of data collection and analysis. Over time, these efforts would greatly improve our understanding of what we know, or think we know, about the actual economic condition of our fellow citizens. Again, Nasar is to be commended for this inclusion because, as readers of EH.Net are probably aware, books on the history of economic thought generally stress the development of economic theory to the neglect of other pursuits.
Now, that said, historians of economic thought will find much to criticize. As mentioned, this history is far from comprehensive. With its whiggish perspective providing a powerful filter, some important movements and writers are treated at length, others mentioned only briefly (and too-often inaccurately), and others neglected altogether. For example, the German Historicists are summarized and then dismissed as if they all merely echoed Gustav Schmoller on matters of economic theory and policy. Elsewhere, Nasar makes a passing reference to “so-called institutionalists” without suggesting why she wishes to downplay their role, although in another place Wesley C. Mitchell is referred to as a leader in business cycle research. John Commons makes no appearance whatsoever despite the prominence of the Wisconsin School in policy discussions throughout the Progressive Era. Another peculiar omission, since she so clearly appreciates the empirical studies conducted by Mayhew and Webb, is that the several prominent figures of the English Historical School fail to appear at all.
With regard to the subjects covered, the weakest link is her treatment of Karl Marx. She clearly dislikes him, which in itself is not objectionable, except insofar as it constitutes a barrier to her analysis. For example, the Labor Theory of Value is dismissed in a cavalier manner before any serious effort is made to present or understand it. She then suggests that things might have gone better if Marx had “engaged brilliant contemporaries such as John Stuart Mill” (p. 89). She appears not to notice that John Stuart Mill dutifully followed his mentor David Ricardo in adhering to the Labor Theory of Value. If Marx was confused on the theory of value, he was in excellent company.
The treatment of the post-World War II scene is also idiosyncratic. She begins with an extended and highly compelling treatment of Paul Samuelson. Few would doubt rationale for this emphasis. However, the discussion then moves on to a lengthy discussion of Joan Robinson followed by a similarly in-depth review of the life and work of Amartya Sen. Now, I have read and learned from the work of both of these prominent scholars. However, economists and historians of economic thought would likely agree that even a passing discussion of the past fifty years of economic analysis must include more than a brief reference to the work of John Hicks, Kenneth Arrow, the Chicago School, the rise and decline of Monetarism, and the Rational Expectations “revolution” of the 1970s and 1980s. Finally, the most mysterious lacuna of all, in light of Nasar’s wonderfully successful book on John Nash, may be the absence of any discussion of how Game Theory evolved from a fringe subject to its now-central place in contemporary microeconomics, Organizational Theory, and Industrial Organization.
But let us set these objections aside so that we may emphasize the most important aspect of this book. For too long the history of economic thought has not had an accessible, fun, and potentially popular book that we can recommend to our friends, colleagues, and students who are not members of our “guild.” While Nasar’s political commitments are very different, her entertaining style and captivating narrative suggests that her book has the potential to occupy the several niches once dominated by Robert Heilbroner’s The Worldly Philosophers. Should this occur, and her work contribute to a revival of interest in the history of economic thought, we will all be in debt to Professor Nasar.
Robert Prasch is the co-editor of Thorstein Veblen and the Revival of Free Market Capitalism (2007).
Copyright (c) 2012 by EH.Net. All rights reserved. This work may be copied for non-profit educational uses if proper credit is given to the author and the list. For other permission, please contact the EH.Net Administrator (administrator@eh.net). Published by EH.Net (July 2012). All EH.Net reviews are archived at http://www.eh.net/BookReview.

terça-feira, 8 de maio de 2012

Parasitas e desenvolvimento economico: um livro de historia

Existem vários tipos de parasitas no mundo, especialmente os de duas patas e de gravata. Vários deles prejudicam terrivelmente o desenvolvimento econômico.
Mas, vamos ver um livro sobre determinadas espécies de parasitas, com mais de duas patas...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida 



------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW ------
Title: Parasites, Pathogens, and Progress: Diseases and Economic Development
Published by EH.Net (May 2012)

Robert A. McGuire and Philip R. P. Coelho:
Parasites, Pathogens, and Progress: Diseases and Economic Development
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011. viii + 343 pp. $30 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-0-262-01566-0.
Reviewed for EH.Net by John E. Murray, Department of Economics, Rhodes College.

An old saw proposes that holding a hammer makes everything look like a nail.  When Robert McGuire and Philip Coelho suggest (p. 5) that Jared Diamond’s bestseller (1997) should have been titled Germs, Germs, and Germs, the reader may think that the authors carry not a hammer but a microscope.  Everywhere in this history, germs appear as the critical and virtually only influence on economic development.  By the end the reader better understands microbes in American history, but may still wonder if natural resource endowments, property rights and contract law, accumulating human capital, and flexible markets played a role as well.
Parasites, Pathogens, and Progress synthesizes a considerable literature on infectious disease and U.S. economic history, particularly before 1900.  On the purely economic side, a set of verbal and flowchart models of economic growth stress connections between ever greater population density and increasing infectious disease rates.  These connections, they argue, counterbalance better known Smithian growth models in which increasing density leads to the division of labor and Malthusian anti-growth models in which increasing density leads to food shortages.  Traditionally in neither of these stories do infectious diseases play much of a role.  This book aims to fix that omission.  The authors write (p. 6), “We do not claim that we are the first to bring parasites and pathogens into the history of humanity and the economy, but we do so with emphasis and conviction that are missing in other histories.”  Here is truth in advertising.  Readers familiar with the work of world historians such as William McNeill, Philip Curtin, or Alfred Crosby, or historians of medicine such as Kenneth Kiple, Todd Savitt, or Margaret Humphreys will find little new here.  The same disease agents, transmission processes, and racial differentials appear in this book as in the works of those historians.  To these factors the authors attribute monocausal explanatory power with iron single-mindedness.
Disease in economic development (or stagnation) is fascinating, and this book brings out much of that inherent interest, but with little subtlety.  Much of the authors’ case moves forward without reference to work of previous historians.  Concerning European contact with the New World, they write (p. 33), “The assumptions that the biological environment is unchanging and that the ecology is exogenous to human actions are spectacularly incorrect.”  But after McNeill’s Plagues and Peoples (1976) and Crosby’s Ecological Imperialism (1986), very few scholars believe in a static global disease environment.  The idea that disease might explain some of a historical episode rather than all of it generally is absent.  Two pages concern the irresistible Antebellum Paradox of declining adult heights and life expectancies in an era of increasing per capita incomes.  Expanding transportation networks integrated local, and then regional, and then national disease pools.  The authors conclude, “The deteriorating disease environment affected the biological standard of living and, as a result, average heights fell” (p. 53).  Full stop.  But no scholar doubts that disease mattered, and most try to account for its influences.  Despite the strongly worded conclusion, no evidence supports their absolute attribution, nor can the authors rule out the explanatory power of trends in pork production, income distribution, infant mortality, and urbanization.  The publication with the best evidence for the transport-disease connection (Haines, Craig, and Weiss 2003) is not cited in this book.
The bulk of the book is given over to the importance of infectious disease, primarily malaria, in determining that the labor force in the South would be drawn from African slaves rather than bound Europeans or Indians.  The authors cast their story of racial differentials in malaria susceptibility against Kenneth Stampp’s claim in The Peculiar Institution (1956) that Africans, Europeans, and their descendants were equally vulnerable to Plasmodium.  In contrast, write McGuire and Coelho, a sound scientific literature has arisen that attributes differential mortality rates by race to physiological differences such as the presence or absence of sickle cells or the Duffy antigen.  This discussion, in Chapter 6, is clearly presented, even in its technical parts, as well as engaging and informative.  But it is a bit beside the point because the hypothesis of differential malaria susceptibility and its consequences for our history is widely accepted by historians.  As a typical example, Humphreys concluded ten years ago in her Malaria (2001, p. 28; not cited in this book), “While no simple cause and effect can be directly established, and other diseases such as yellow fever certainly played their part, it can at least be concluded that malaria had a substantial impact on labor and settlement patterns in the American colonies, patterns that would ultimately lead to the Civil War.”
The authors occasionally succumb to the temptation to let inferences from their model replace historical evidence.  Here are two examples.  First, on the transition from temporarily-bound Europeans to permanently-bound Africans:  The authors describe a process of natural selection in favor of relative resistance of white people to cold weather diseases and of black people to hot weather diseases, which more or less accords with the scientific literature.  “As a result,” they write (p. 100), “there is (sic) an increase in the migration of European indentured servants” to the northern colonies.  To explain the absence of evidence for this claim, they note (p. 100) that “reliable data for indentured servants bound for New England are not available.”  They seem unaware that the lack of such data, reliable or otherwise, was due to the tendency of indentured servants to avoid New England in the first place, contrary to the conclusions of the authors’ model.  A second example concerns antebellum medical practice.  With no reference to its price, they assert (p. 161) that planters could afford quinine for their slaves, that a sufficient quantity of quinine to stem a malarial episode was cheaper than replacing a slave (almost certainly true), and there they stop.  Did planters actually provide quinine to their slaves?  We know from a standard work, Savitt’s Medicine and Slavery (1981, p. 155; not cited in this book), that in fact quinine was widely used on plantations.  A simple citation to Savitt’s findings would have completed their argument.
Disease has played an important role in American history, and the number of historians who think so are greater than this book seems to assume.  If infectious disease might have been overlooked at some point in the historiography, this book will help gain greater attention for its multifaceted influences.  Still, it would have helped the authors’ case if they had contented themselves with nominating parasites and pathogens to join the ranks of relevant subjects for historical study, rather than asserting their near-exclusive primacy.

References:
Crosby, Alfred. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997.
Haines, Michael, Lee Craig, and Thomas Weiss.  “The Short and the Dead: Nutrition, Mortality, and the ‘Antebellum Puzzle’ in the United States,” Journal of Economic History 63 (2003): 382-413.
Humphreys, Margaret. Malaria: Poverty, Race, and Public Health in the United States.  Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.
McNeill, William. Plagues and Peoples. New York: Anchor Press, 1976.
Savitt, Todd L. Medicine and Slavery: The Diseases and Health Care of Blacks in Antebellum Virginia.  Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978.
Stampp, Kenneth. The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South. New York: Vintage Books, 1956.

John E. Murray is Joseph R. Hyde III Professor of Political Economy at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee.  His next book, The Charleston Orphan House: Children’s Lives in the First Public Orphanage in America, will be published by the University of Chicago in early 2013.

Copyright (c) 2012 by EH.Net. All rights reserved. This work may be copied for non-profit educational uses if proper credit is given to the author and the list. For other permission, please contact the EH.Net Administrator (administrator@eh.net). Published by EH.Net (May 2012). All EH.Net reviews are archived at http://www.eh.net/BookReview.