Book Description

Providing a comprehensive introduction to modern auction theory and its important new applications, this book is written by a leading economic theorist whose suggestions guided the creation of the new spectrum auction designs. Aimed at graduate students and professionals in economics, the volume provides the most up-to-date analysis of traditional theories of "optimal auctions" as well as newer theories of multi-unit auctions and package auctions, and shows by example how these theories are used.It explores the limitations of prominent older designs, such as the Vickrey auction design, and evaluates the practical responses to those limitations. Paul Milgrom is the Leonard and Shirley Ely Professor of Humanities and Sciences and Professor of Economics, Stanford University. He is the author of more than sixty articles and co-author of the influential textbook, Economics, Organization and Management (Prentice Hall, 1992). Professor Milgrom is a pioneer in the economic theory of auctions and co-designer of the simultaneous, multiple round auction that the FCC adopted for selling radio spectrum licenses. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Very dry
Paul Milgrom is a great guy and a good teacher, and clearly, his knowledge of auction theory is unparalleled. But, as such, his proofs are very slick, sometimes leaving little room for intuition, and overall, the book is extremely dry. For an advanced reader in auctions, this may be the right book, but if you're simply a game theorist/economist eager to learn the basics and foundations, I would recommend Krishna's book instead. ... Read more

Book Description

In the seven years since the publication of the first edition of Wall Street, America's financial industry has undergone a series of wrenching events that have dramatically changed the nation's economic landscape. The bull market of the 1990's came to a close, ushering in the end of the dot com boom, a record number of mergers occurred, and accounting scandals in companies like Enron and WorldCom shook the financial industry to its core. In this wide-ranging volume, financial historian Charles Geisst provides the first history of Wall Street, explaining how a small, concentrated pocket of lower Manhattan came to have such enormous influence in national and world affairs. In this updated edition, Geisst sums up the recent turbulence that has threatened America's financial industry. He shows how in 1997 thirty NASDAQ market makers paid a record $1.3 billion fine for price irregularities in stocks. He makes sense of the closing of the bull market, and explains a major change in the accounting rules for mergers that caused monumental losses for companies like AOL Time Warner. And he recounts how in the aftermath of the speculative fever that swept Wall Street in the 1990's, the scandals at Enron, Tyco, Worldcom, and Conseco represent a last gasp of mergermania and a fallout from a bubble-like market. Wall Street is at once the story of the street itself, from the days when the wall was merely a defensive barricade built by Peter Stuyvesant, to the modern billion-dollar computer-driven colossus of today. In a broader sense it is an engaging economic history of the United States, the role Wall Street played in making America the most powerful economy in the world, and the many challenges to that role it has faced in recent years. ... Read more

Book Description

Research on economic growth has exploded in the past decade. Hundreds of empirical studies on economic growth across countries have highlighted the correlation between growth and a variety of variables. Determinants of Economic Growth, based on Robert Barro's Lionel Robbins Memorial Lectures, delivered at the London School of Economics in February 1996, summarizes this important literature.

The book contains three essays. The first is a survey of the research on the determinants of long-run growth through the estimation of panels of cross-country data. The second essay details the interplay between growth and political freedom or democracy and finds some evidence of a nonlinear relationship. At low levels of political rights, an expansion of rights stimulates growth; however, once a moderate level of democracy has been obtained, a further expansion of rights reduces growth. The final essay looks at the connection between inflation and economic growth. Its basic finding is that higher inflation goes along with a lower rate of economic growth. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

For advanced students
The person who buys this book must be really acquainted with economics (senior or master). It involves, as the title states, the determinants of growth and inflation, along with political matters. I really liked this book because it gathers econometric models to support the essays that consists in many political variables just as democracy and civil rights. Barro, as a Harvard professor, has a well-known academic life. So I would suggest for every macroeconomic student to buy this book, it really helps for courses just as Macroecon or Development Economics.

A careful study.
This book is essentially a report on a series of analyses of the determinants of growth, democracy, civil liberties, and inflation. As a statistical analysis with interpretation, it is excellent. If you want to know what factors really affect these variables, you will find answers here. However, the utility for modelers is limited, because the author inexplicably omits to report the extimated constant terms in any of his regressions. One hopes that succeeding publications will provide more help to those who are trying to construct dynamic models of economic growth. ... Read more

Book Description

Is your investment in that new Internet stock a sign of stock market savvy or an act of peculiarly American speculative folly? How has the psychology of investing changed--and not changed--over the last five hundred years? Edward Chancellor examines the nature of speculation--from medieval Europe to the Tulip mania of the 1630s to today's Internet stock craze. A contributing writer to The Financial Times and The Economist, Chancellor looks at both the psychological and economic forces that drive people to "bet" their money in markets; how markets are made, unmade, and manipulated; and who wins when speculation runs rampant. Drawing colorfully on the words of such speculators as Sir Isaac Newton, Daniel Defoe, Ivan Boesky, and Hillary Rodham Clinton, Devil Take the Hindmost is part history, part social science, and purely illuminating: an erudite and hugely entertaining book that is more timely today than ever before.

"Entertaining, useful, admirable scholarship . . . Chancellor seems to have read everything." --Adam Smith, The New York Times Book Review

"Anyone contemplating a stock market venture and certainly anyone now involved should read this book."--John Kenneth Gailbraith ... Read more

Reviews (49)

Well written, informative, and informed!
For everyone interested in macroeconomic development and, of course, financial "speckulation" (read the book and you'll understand), this is required reading. Splendidly written and very informed--as one would expect from an Oxbridge educated lad, writing for the FT and The Economist--the author is able to pull of an exciting journey through the very early beginnings of speculation and to describe more thoroughly the most important bubbles; their origins, their devleopment and their ending. Most striking is the many parallels and the never ending belief of speculators in a "new" era, where old measures, a good biz plan, earnings and profits for a company (or "fundamentals") can be easily neglected for promises in the future due to a "new economy" where everything has changed. Sounds familiar? Well, ask the British in the late seventeenth hundreds...

It should be a required reading for everyone, I mean it
This is not just a history of financial speculation. This is really a history of mankind, of greed, of all the evil that we have repeated again and again through history. The author finished writing this book in Dec 98. Theoretically, if more people had known and read this book, much fewer would got "drown" in the internet bubble. However, when the Greater Fool theory was in full throttle, as prescribed by this book, that made no difference.

Basically this book had covered all the financial catastrophes of the past 5 centuries: Tulipomania, South Sea Bubble, Fool's Gold, Railway mania, Great Depression, Japanese Bubble Economy ba ba ba. You name it. The most valuable thing being that the author had not just given an exhaustive account of what happened, but some reasoning why things repeated themselves, and how. Say, the government officials were corrupted, there came a so called technology innovation or a new market (the terms "New Era/Never coming back of the business cycle" were also there in 1929), the Greater Fool Theory in full gear, all the simple things you can tell from hindsight.

As a CFA Level III candidate (I might become a charterholder this August, ha ha), I strongly recommend AIMR to put this book into the required list of reading to warn its members of the limitation of the financial techniques/theories/calculations we try to preach. Anyway, a must read for anyone, especially serious players!

Speculation: A Necessary Scourge?
Published at the height of the 1990s technology bubble and two years after the onset of the Asian financial crisis, "Devil Take the Hindmost" offers a remarkably insightful examination of historical asset bubbles. Chancellor first takes us to ancient Rome, where currency crises were the norm due to currency speculation, and where the Forum Romanum served as the venue for shady deals in stocks and bonds. Indeed, speculation as an economic activity was ab urbe condita, or literally since the founding of the city of Rome. He then takes us to Venice circa the Middle Ages, where, in all probability, some of the earliest instances of insider trading took place. A spectacular panorama of financial shenanigans then unfolds, chapter by chapter: the overblown demand for tulips in the Netherlands during the 17th century; the British debt conversion scheme during the 1700s which led to the South Sea bubble; the Gilded Age in the US; the Wall Street crash of 1929; and the bursting of the Japanese economic bubble.

Speculators absorb risk and provide liquidity in the marketplace. Arguably, their insight into market fluctuations and their intrepidity in assuming risk help lower the bid-ask spread of a certain asset. Speculation itself is not demonstrably malevolent, but is an intrinsic component of a functioning asset market. But at many junctions in history, as Chancellor prolifically demonstrates, excessive speculation had reached a point wherein prices had ceased to serve as useful signals of the intrinsic value of an asset.

Chancellor contends that speculative activities, at their crescendo, are intrinsically irrational, and convincingly argues that asset markets all too often went to excess. The potential for amassing gains through trading and speculation are nearly limitless, yet the social cost of market collapse due to manipulation and abuse cannot be ignored.

The book in effect questions the dogma regarding the seemingly omniscient ability of free markets to assign prices to assets, and the ability of prices to serve as an effective signaling mechanism. This is not a new argument. In their 1934 classic "Security Analysis," Dodd and Graham wrote that "[i]t is customary to refer with great respect to the bloodless verdict of the market place, as though it represented invariably the composite judgment of countless shrewd, informed, and calculating minds. Very frequently, however, these appraisals are based on mob psychology, on faulty reasoning, and on the most superficial examination of inadequate information."

Ultimately, however, unfettered speculation may be due to the incontrovertible propensity of people to hitch their wagons to a star, and this propensity is unduly magnified by a "vita brevis" (life is short) mentality. Through this depressingly short--given the significance of the topic--yet highly edifying volume, Chancellor gives us the opportunity to reflect on speculation, which he considers "an anarchic force."

The More Things Change...
That's the central thesis to Edward Chancellor's book on the history of financial booms, busts, swindles, panics and manias: the more things change, the more they stay the same. As a law student taking a few securities classes and a dabbling buy-and-hold investor, the book provides incredible insight into the way markets have worked and failed since they came into existence. Written in chronological order and ending in 1998 as the tech bubble burst, Chancellor is your tour guide to the cheats, robber barrons, over-rated innovations, emerging markets and herd mentality behind financial euphorias and depressions from Holland to Japan, Britain and the States. Chancellor's greatest accomplishment is pointing to the commonalities behind every crash and letting people know how to identify the signals of future bouts of irrational exuberance. The book demands limited sophistication, but the less you know about currency exchanges, derivatives and hedge funds, the more you will be resorting to an online investment dictionary. You will have to learn in order to enjoy this book. Chancellor's subject matter necessarily demands a critique of economic and political theories, and it is clear that he champions Keynes and greater government control over markets. His criticisms of conservative political/ economic philosophies, however, are relatively restrained, intelligent, and do not irritate those of opposing viewpoints. In the end, you may not be thinking on the same page as George Soros, but this book is a great education that may even have you making better investments.

Started a little slow but ended with a bang
At first, I sort of waded through this, but as it moved into the 20th Century, it really got interesting. I highly recommend the book. You realize that the latest boom, from the internet to Enron is nothing new; use useless collateral (stock/land) to finance spurious schemes, pump the price, and watch the suckers pore in.

The section on Japan is awesome. ... Read more

Amazon.com

Professor David S. Landes takes a historic approach to the analysis of the distribution of wealth in this landmark study of world economics. Landes argues that the key to today's disparity between the rich and poor nations of the world stems directly from the industrial revolution, in which some countries made the leap to industrialization and became fabulously rich, while other countries failed to adapt and remained poor. Why some countries were able to industrialize and others weren't has been the subject of much heated debate over the decades; climate, natural resources, and geography have all been put forward as explanations--and are all brushed aside by Landes in favor of his own controversial theory: that the ability to effect an industrial revolution is dependent on certain cultural traits, without which industrialization is impossible to sustain. Landes contrasts the characteristics of successfully industrialized nations--work, thrift, honesty, patience, and tenacity--with those of nonindustrial countries, arguing that until these values are internalized by all nations, the gulf between the rich and poor will continue to grow. ... Read more

Reviews (127)

academic overspecialization at its worst
I am an economics major at the University of Chicago. I started this book on a reccomendation from an economist friend of mine, and while I was not impressed by his language in the first chapter, I can honestly say that I still seriously expected to find some penetrating economic analysis. What I found was a really bad case of somebody trying to do something he obviously wasn't trained to do. His main point is that culture, or more precisely, values, matter to economic development. This has long been of interest to anthropologists and sociologists and they have done a lot of good, sophisticated writing on the subject, which David Landes obviously hasn't read. The really sad thing about this is that, in addition to being much more subtle and clever, they make a lot of the same points (but without the vulgarity and racism). See, for example, Benedict Anderson's Imagined_Communities, which discusses the rise and role of nationalism.

He supports his arguments with a crude analysis of European and Japanese cultural and industrial developments. But as he says, the questions of why the West industrialized and why the rest of the world didn't are really one and the same. And he singularly fails to give an effective analysis of the other cultures. Here's an example: he says that the armies "Oriental despots" fought poorly because they had no reason to be loyal to a despotic government. He cites as evidence (if it can even be called that) just one case where British troops fought against an Indian ruler, whose troops mostly ran away. He never asks whether they did this in battles against other Indian rulers who didn't have the prestige or technical sophistication of the British. He even goes so far as to say that these "Oriental despotisms," which he does not differentiate, appointed officials by fiat and not by merit. I shouldn't need to mention the Chinese examination system. Even he does't think knowledge of Confucian classics counts as merit, he should have known that during the Tang dynasty the officials were selected by a practical exam rather than Confucian classics. But that's exactly the problem--he's trying to write a history of the world that compares European and non-European cultures starting from the assumption that since Europe invented almost everything, only Europe needs to be seriously researched (if you don't believe me, check the bibliography). And he finds (surprise) that only Europe has made significant contributions to the industrial revolution and that this was contributed to by its culture (was anything any society ever did not influenced by the culture?). The reasoning is highly circular. Anybody that disagrees with him is, he says, just writing feel-good history with no regard to the facts (the irony here is just unbearable). I would say that he should leave history to the historians and sociology to the sociologists, but most of these don't know economics well enough to write an economic history. What we really need is for more economists to throw away their ridiculous pretension that economics is the only "scientific" social science and start taking the other social sciences seriously. This one in particular clearly has a lot to learn from them.

Insightful analysis of Earth history
The beauty of this book is that it makes you realize that that the forces which shaped the history of the world are taking place right now--you can apply Landes' theories to today's headlines. Landes takes the ET-looking-at-Earth approach--and it is convincing. An alien intelligence would see that a country called Great Britain started industrializing in the l800s and the rest of the world is catching up to this very day (note China). The other major theme is that freedom of thought and democracy is the prime motivator of invention and industry, and that state-controlled societies remain static. I live in Japan which is a combination of the two--and hence explains to a large degree its rapid development after World War 2 as well as its current economic malaise. The most controversial factor of Landes' equation is the variable of culture and values. The undisputable historical fact, however, is that some countries have been more aware of "being behind the times" than others. Lack of a national consciousness (Landes' phrase: "they knew who they were") with a corresponding awareness of the rest of the world keeps societies in the past. Only knowledge and the desire for change sets people moving. That is why the Internet is such as boon for the free market--and why countries such as Japan are striving to catch up with the world's leader in this current hot technolgy--the U.S. Ever since the Meiji Restoration, the Japanese have been a trend-conscious people; it's in their culture. And you can bet your Palm Pilots that when China adopts more liberal reforms (perhaps even the disbanding of the Communist State itself), it will be a world titan by the middle of the 21st century.

Excellent Book
Very good book. Logical, factual and thorough research. The conclusions are not tinted by political opinions. Gives an honest, even maybe harsh, reasoning behind the current state of economic developments throughout the world.

Great overview of world history from the Economic viewpoint
Whats not to like about this book? If you have any interest in history, sociology, or economics it will be right up your alley. As a Senior finishing up my Econ degree I found the background information in the book to be very illuminating. Despite high level of information contained inside it is written clearly and in a manner that the layperson may understand. This book will rest on my shelf amidst my favorites.

Simply Idiotic
Though I enjoyed Landes' humour sometimes, this book is by no means an honest endeavour to answer the question posed by the title. The work is mostly rhetoric. Though I agree with some of his conclusions but his arguments are almost always fellacious. This is my first history reading and I have almost no background on the subject. Still after few chapters it became clear that the book does not meet the criteria of an academic writing. It is a shame for Harvard that Landes carries its credentials! ... Read more

Book Description

This book introduces students to optimization theory and its use in economics and allied disciplines.The first of its three parts examines the existence of solutions to optimization problems in Rn, and how these solutions may be identified.The second part explores how solutions to optimization problems change with changes in the underlying parameters, and the last part provides an extensive description of the fundamental principles of finite- and infinite-horizon dynamic programming.A preliminary chapter and three appendices are designed to keep the book mathematically self-contained. ... Read more

Reviews (5)

The title says it all
A first course in Optimization theory - that is what the book is. The target audience is those who are inetersted in the theory of optimization. Some familiarity with Mathematical Analysis and Matrix Algebra would be helpful; however the first chapter lays the mathematical foundation and a careful reading would enable the reader to tackle the rest of the book.

Previous reviews have made a chapter by chapter analysis of the book and hence I will just highlight some of the things I liked about the approach used by the author. Whenever a theorem is stated different examples are given to emphasize the points. For example when stating the Lagrange Theorem and Kuhn-Tucker theorem the author points out when the theorems fail and gives detailed examples to illustrate the ideas. The author often draws from examples in finance to illustrate the practical importance of the theory. The one I liked most was how a cost minimization problem was solved by reducing the solution space to a compact space and then applying the Weierstrass theorem. The author also shows how some of the "cookbook" procedures really work and warns the readers against potential pitfalls in applying such procedures. If you are planning to study optimization theory and are looking for a good entry point into the subject this book is for you.

Good introduction to the field of optimization
This book gives a nice introduction to the theory of optimization from a purely mathematical standpoint. The computational and algorithmic aspects of the subject are not treated, with emphasis instead placed on existencetheorems for various optimization problems. The author does an effective job of detailing the mathematical formalism needed in optimization theory. After a brief review of background mathematics in the first chapter, the author outlines the objectives of optimization theory in Chapter Two. He also gives some examples of optimization problems, such as utility maximization, expenditure minimization, profit maximization, cost minimization, and portfolio choice. All of these examples are extremely important in industrial, logistical, and financial applications. The author is also careful in this chapter to outline his intentions in later chapters, namely, that of finding the existence of solutions to optimization problems, and also in the characterization of the set of optimal points. The existence question is outlined in Chapter Three using only elementary calculus, and the Weierstrass theorem is proved. Necessary conditions for unconstrained optima are examined in the next chapter, again using only elementary calculus and linear algebra. Lagrange multipliers and how they are used in constrained optimization problems are effectively discussed in Chapter 5. To discuss how optimization problems vary with a set of parameters, in particular if they vary continuously with the set of parameters, the author introduces the concept of a corespondence. This is essentially a map that assigns sets to points. His discussion of upper and lower-semicontinuity is very clear and I think one of the best presentations given at this level. He then proves a maximum theorem, showing that parametrized optimization problems can have continuous solutions under certain conditions. A game-theoretic application follows along with statements, but not proofs, of the Kakutani and Brouwer Fixed Point theorems. The author introduces an order relation on the parameter space and discusses parametric monotonicity in the next chapter. Again a game theory application is given along with a statement (but not a proof) of the Tarski Fixed Point theorem. The last two chapters cover dynamic programming and these are the most interesting chapters of the book. It is here that the author makes the connection with more advanced treatments of optimization theory, via Banach spaces and nonlinear functional analysis. With further reading in real analysis and topology, readers will be well on their way to understanding more advanced treatments of optimization theory that use nonlinear functional analysis and differential topology.

Unless you're into theory, this book is NOT for you
I'm a applied mathematician with over 40 quarter hours of theoretical math under my belt, and frankly I feel this book would be rough going for anyone who does not have a rigid math theory background. In other words, if you're not a graduate student or a theoretical practioner in the field of optimization, this is NOT the book for you (most likely). But I also have two other problems with this book.

First, it is touted to have numerious examples of both theory and applications. Theory, as I mentioned above, it has in abundance. But it is very thin on practical applications.

Second, this book has numerious problems at the ends of the chapters WITH NONE OF THEM WORKED OUT! Frankly, I'm not really interested in paying almost $30 for a paperback book that is unfinished.

Perhaps I was expecting much more than what I got after reading the glowing reviews above; and in hindsight, I really should have paid more attention to the title as "Theory" is indeed the operative word. My irritation is not in the book itself, as the author states in his forward that he is writing a book aimed the graduate school set; but is aimed at the reviewers above which led me to think that this text was much wider based than it turned out to be.

Great book and an even greater value
This book was organized and written with perfection. The explanations are remarkable and the "cookbook" procedures for Lagrange and K-T methods were great. I especially admired the fact that the author actually mentioned how these procedures could fail to yield an optimized value. This is worthwhile in today's university mathematics where one is simply taught to plug numbers into formulae and algorithms to get the desired answer. The book also slants towards optimization problems in economic theory as well as other disciplines. Finally, in an age when textbooks can easily run over $100, it was nice to see this book, filled with a wealth of information, so moderately priced.

Excellent book for PhD students in Operations Management
This is an excellent book for anybody interested in non-linear optimization within economics framework. The book is self-contained and includes all the basic theory one needs to know to understand optimization. To my knowledge, this is the only book merging non-linear optimization with game theory and such concepts as supermodularity and parametric monotonicity. ... Read more

Book Description

This volume surveys the economic history of British North America, including Canada and the Caribbean, and of the early United States, from early settlement by Europeans to the end of the eighteenth century.The book includes chapters on the economic history of Native Americans (to 1860), and also on the European and African backgrounds to colonization.Subsequent chapters cover the settlement and growth of the colonies; British mercantilist policies and the American colonies; and the American Revolution, the Constitution, and economic developments through 1800. ... Read more

Book Description

Every day, the financial markets bravely price trillions of dollars in such risky securities as stocks, bonds, options, futures, and derivatives. The systematic determination of their values--asset pricing--has developed dramatically in the last few years due to advances in financial theory and econometrics. In one of the most highly anticipated books in financial economics, John Cochrane unifies and brings this science up to date for the benefit of advanced students and professionals.

Cochrane traces the pricing of all assets back to a single idea--price equals expected discounted payoff--that captures the macroeconomic risks underlying each security's value. By using a single, stochastic discount factor rather than a separate set of tricks for each asset class, Cochrane builds a unified account of modern asset pricing. He presents applications to stocks, bonds, and options. Each model--consumption-based, CAPM, multifactor, term structure, and option pricing--is derived as a different specification of the discount factor.

The discount factor framework also leads to a state-space geometry for mean-variance frontiers and asset pricing models. It puts payoffs in different states of nature on the axes rather than mean and variance of return, leading to a new and conveniently linear geometrical representation of asset pricing ideas.

Cochrane approaches empirical work with the Generalized Method of Moments, which studies sample average prices and discounted payoffs to determine whether price does equal expected discounted payoff. He translates between the discount factor, GMM, and state-space language and the beta, mean-variance, and regression language common in empirical work and earlier theory. The book also includes a review of recent empirical work on return predictability, value and other puzzles in the cross section, and equity premium puzzles and their resolution.

Written to be a summary for academics and professionals as well as a textbook for advanced graduate students, this book condenses and advances recent scholarship in financial economics. ... Read more

Reviews (14)

Modern finance in a book finally
This book presents finance in the modern way: p=E(mx). After having read it, the reader should be able to understand the papers currently published in the field. That's the big advantage of the book, because, in this sense, it is better than Duffie's, Dothan's or Ingersoll's. Be advised that the book is not worried about technicallities or math, but the economics underlying the models in it.

However some deep discussions assumes the reader knows: mean-variance frontier, (C)CAPM, APT, and so on, including the several empirical tests already performed on these models and their results. This is not always true, and the reader can easily get lost.

The author uses graphs to clarify the ideas. It is not always successful. Many graphs are confusing. For instance, the author assumes the reader knows how to add and to subtract vectors graphically, which is really easy if you knew that in advance, but difficult to figure out if you do not.

Also there are several minor mistakes the reader should take care of. I am sure the second edition of the book will correct those mistakes and will make the book a lot better.

I think the part talking about the GMM econometrics very clear and that helps a lot to implement the models presented in it.

I recommend the book, mainly because there is no other book treating modern finance like that. Once you get used to it, you'll see the book is not difficult and very useful.

Awesome
I am a bit baffled by the negative reviews of this book. There is a very nice blend of theory and empirics. The writing style is that of an entertaining lecture - a boon for those of us who don't get to listen to John Cochrane every week. I like the connections drawn between asset pricing and macroeconomics (in fact I would have liked to hear more of Cochrane's thoughts here). The emphasis on the unifying stochastic discount factor framework gives the reader a good way to look at what would otherwise appear to be a number of different pricing theories. (This recalls Feynman's lectures on statistical mechanics where he points out that everything is a special case of the canonical distribution). Cochrane's chat about open problems, puzzles, anomolies, and warnings gives the reader helpful hints or ideas to examine. Once again, I am totally baffled by the negative reviews here.

Don't test my patience.
Sorry to the author.
But I do want to ask him if he knows what he has written down.
Or at least I wonder if he wants the readers to understand his book.

I spent a lot of time for this book.
Even after finance class with this book as a textbook
and even after reading some other materials,
I am still saying to myself "what the xxxx is going on?" whenever I read this book. (I don't mean some arithmatics used there)

Some reviewers said that it would depend on who you are. Really?

I think I finished enough courses in statistics, economics, finance, and mathematics. And some of them are Ph.D level.
Do I need stronger backgound to understand?
Or Do I have to skip so many paragraghs in every pages?
So many typos? Anything conceptual?

Typos
I don't think most of this people who reviewed this book actually read this book. Surely, if they had, they'd have mentioned the unbelievable number of typos that plague this book. There is a typo or math mistake on practically every page. I'm not kidding.

When this book is released in another edition, everyone who bought the first edition should get the new edition free. Excluding mistakes, though, I'd give the book five stars.

Model Textbook
Cochrane has written the model for a bad textbook. The elements include recycled material, the absence of clarifying narrative, and the absence of applications.

This book has no real world sample problems and therefore no real world solutions. There is no evidence in this textbook to suggest the author is capable of solving real world finance problems. It's a mystery how students are supposed to learn asset pricing from this text.

There is no value added in presenting well-worn equations with zero interpretation. This book is weakened by presenting old theory with no useful discourse. ... Read more

Book Description

One of the first U.S. economic history books on the market, this classic text ties America?s past to the economic policies and debates of today and beyond. Presenting economic events chronologically for ease of understanding and to provide continuity, the authors equip students with a firm foundation in the evolution of American economic history. ... Read more

Product Description

An economic study of the role of slavery in providing the capital for the industial revolution and the role of mature industrial capitalism in destroying the slave system. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Ground breaking economic history--and support for reparation
The transformation from subsistance society where everyone more or less consumed what they produced, to international capitalism required as a precondition the accumulation of capital. That is, some people had to be able to produce more than they consumed before they could have anything to invest.

Williams contribution to the literature of this transformation is to focus on the role of the slave trade. On the one hand, it provided a source of raw materials (human beings) which could be sold at a profit by traders, and then used to produce even more wealth by the buyers (slaveholders). This double accumulation of wealth went a long way toward allowing a few very wealthy people to accumulate capital, which coul;d then be invested in things like machinery.

At the same time, the slave trade provided an economic foundation for a large scale international trading network (the famous molasses, slave, rum triangle, later includeing cotton). Without this international network of shippers and merchants, the English (and later New England) cotton mills would not have had anywhere to sell their manufactured product (cotton cloth), nor a cheap source of cotton to use as raw materials.

Williams' ground breaking contirbution was to link all of this together, and argue that without the immoral slave trade, the industrial revolution, and thus capitalism as we know it, would not have happened. The inescapable conclusion is that since much of modern wealth was founded on slavery, some form of reparations is warranted.

Omits precapitalistic slave societies
Slavery was widespread through the Inca and Aztec cultures. Islam embraces slavery without reservation, it is expressly approved in the Koran. Segal documents the fact that 11 million Black Africans were kidnapped from their home by Islamic traders from 700 A.D. to 1900 B.C. Mohammed left many pages of directions to SLAVEHOLDERS on how to handle their slaves. The Ummyad dynasty of Islamic rulers castrated male Black African slaves and used them in battle between 700 A.D. and 1200 A.D.
By the way, where does one find a successful, stable, democratic non-capitalistic society? Planned economies don't work.

Islamic slavery older and more extensive
Given Koranic blessing, 11 million Black Africans were kidnapped from their home for service as soldiers and concubines in the Islamic and later Ottoman empire beginning in 700 and continuing to this day. From time to time the soldier slaves revolted and such revolts were put down brutally. Male slaves were routinely castrated and the children of female slaves were taken from them. The slavery system covered most of North Africa, the Middle East, Iran and parts of India under Islamic control. Due to the Koranic blessing, SAudi Arabis did not outlaw slavery until 1964, nor did Kuwait until 1968. No discussion of the world view phenomena is complete without an examination of this "eastern" slave trade. Note also that the Inca and the Aztec practiced human slavery in a non-capitalist setting. The author would also allow you to forget that it wsa the hated colonial powers of England and France that pushed for the end of slavery in North Africa, not the Islamic east. ... Read more

Book Description

In The Gold Ring, Capitol Hill veteran Kenneth D. Ackerman tells the story of two dazzling con men who rose to the top of the Erie Railway Company before fixing their ambitions on a scam so great it would make them two of the richest men in America-and cement their reputation as two of the most corrupt. They were Jay Gould, the ruthless self-promoter who came to be recognized as the most hated, if brilliant, man of his generation, and his partner, the extravagant showman Jim Fisk, whose insatiable indulgences finally led to his demise. Featuring a cast of supporting characters that includes Boss Tweed, Albert Cardozo, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Ulysses S. Grant, The Gold Ring evokes an age of scandal and depravity in the world of high finance that makes today's climate of corporate excess and deception seem positively tame by comparison. Featuring numerous historic photographs, this is a compelling and fiercely entertaining insight into Wall Street's early years. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Great book.
I loved reading this account of the money game in old New York played by the masters Fisk and Gould. The story was gripping and the themes amazingly relevant to today. ... Read more

Book Description

This extraordinary text offers a proven combination of scholarship from an insightful economist and a renowned American historian. It recounts the development of capitalism and the age of machines through the voices of business leaders, working people, inventors, and an unusual cast of presidents, generals, and patriots. Unlike other books in the field of economic history, this text tells a story. While not ignoring statistics and percentages, this narrative focuses on the fact that America's economic transformation is an extraordinary drama--a drama that continues today. ... Read more

Book Description

It is widely recognised that mainstream economics has failed to translate micro consistently into macro economics and to provide endogenous explanations for the continual changes in the economic system. Since the early 1980s, a growing number of economists have been trying to provide answers to these two key questions by applying an evolutionary approach. This new departure has yielded a rich literature with enormous variety, but the unifying principles connecting the various ideas and views presented are, as yet, not apparent. This volume brings together fifteen original articles from scholars - each of whom has made a significant contribution to the field - in their common effort to reconstruct economics as an evolutionary science. Using meso economics as an analytical entity to bridge micro and macro economics as well as static and dynamic realms, a unified economic theory emerges, offering an entirely new approach to the foundations of economics. ... Read more

Book Description

This book brings together classic writings on the economic nature and organization of firms, including works by Ronald Coase, Armen Alchian and Harold Demsetz, Michael Jensen and William Meckling, and Oliver Williamson, as well as more recent contributions by Paul Milgrom and John Roberts, Bengt Holmstrom, and Oliver Hart.Part I explores the general theme of the firm's economic nature and its place in the market system; Part II covers the scope of the firm; Part III examines internal organization and the human factor; and Part IV ties the firm's organization and behavior to issues of financing and ownership. This second edition has twelve new selections and an introductory essay that surveys the new institutional economics of the firm. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Excellent compilation of readings for economics of the firm
All the information you need and the appropiate readings are here in this book, which can be very usefull for the study of the economics of a firm and many other topics in business economics. Worth a look! ... Read more

Book Description

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is clear: Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of the press. And yet a force seemingly even more powerful than the supreme law of the land threatens one of our nation's most precious guarantors of freedom.

For more than two centuries, American newspapers have collected, organized, and disseminated the information that makes democracy possible. Occasional opponents of a free press have not been able to cripple newspapers and despite dire predictions, neither have radio, television, or the Internet. But greed can kill American newspapers, thus eliminating the crucial synergy between journalism and democracy.

The reality that newspapers must remain financially viable has always dictated compromises between the competing missions of profit and public service. But in recent years the essential balancing of those missions has been replaced by a single-minded pursuit of profit. Whether the chosen method is scalingback of content, cutting corners to control costs, or dismantling the traditional wall separating the news and business departments, the result is the same: the watering down of newspaper journalism, which is the core of all American journalism. Without fundamental change in newspapers' corporate boardrooms, the flow of information that Americans need to govern themselves will dry up.

In Knightfall, Davis "Buzz" Merritt, a 40-year newspaperman whose career runs parallel to the seismic shift in journalism's landscape, examines one notable exemplar of this growing trend, Knight Ridder, America's second-largest newspaper company with holdings including The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Miami Herald, the Detroit Free Press, and the Mercury News in San Jose.

Merritt was a participant-observer in the 1974 marriage of two newspaper companies, a union that seemed made in heaven. Knight Newspapers' longstanding tradition of excellence in journalism coupled with Ridder Publications' business savvy should have created a unique company offering the best of both worlds.

That it did not happen is a reflection of complex changes in American society and the realities of modern business pressures driven by Wall Street. There are no pure heroes or pure villains in this story; the players were doing what their training, background, and respective family histories urged them to do. But the story's outcome is ominous for American democracy. Merritt's personal accounts of the 30 years since the merger illustrate the degree to which what we know is being limited. Further, his portraits of key figures, analysis of societal changes, and dozens of interviews with others who were (and are) there reveal that not only is he on target, he is also not alone in his unsettling conclusions.

A free press is a cornerstone of our democracy. The erosion of that foundation is a catastrophe in the making: the real possibility that the kind of journalism that gave rise to -- and preserves -- our democracy will disappear. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Hear It From the Horse's Mouth
It's not about David Haselhoff in 'Knight Rider.'Too bad -- he's a good singer; I had his CD but gave it to a 'friend' and wish I still had it!This book pushes the First Amendment concerning the freedom of the press.Funny, I thought it was all about freedom of speech.I have invoked it on more than one occasion.Jim Batten was CEO of Knight Ridder until his death in 1999.Now, they have a medal in his memory.Tony Ridder became CEO and his brother, Peter, is in charge of the TRIBUNE.

Greed may do what radio, television, or the iNternt weren't able to do in the demise of newspapers.Readers don't have respect now as they are not given the full story.Newspapers "compromise" on what they will print and use mainly what will sell papers for t hem.They are not in the business of public service but for a "for profit at any cost" not caring how omissionscan cause distress to those left out.This single-minded pursuit of profit in the media game as "watering down" of newspaper journalism.

Local t.v. stations are the opposite, constantly adding more newscasts; the public can't get enough.The latest was a 4 p.m. addition on one station (8) to compensate an "older" female anchor so they could get by with hiring a younger one who sounds like a kid in the early morning slot.They teamed the transient one with a sports reporter, and it works.They compete with a younger couple on Channel 10 who have a full hour of local news and events.At 5 p.m. Channel 6 gets into the fray.They are number one.Eight is on again at 5:30 and 7 p.m. with different anchors.All three are on the air at 6 p.m. and 11 p.m.

Daily newspapers (most are not locally owned) are harming the public they are meant to inform.This "complete" flow which we all need to "govern" ourselves is on the brink of drying up.Knight Ridder is the second-largest news company after Scripps Howard which owns the News-Sentinel in my hometown.This is the paper which doen't like to admit they have made an error; they refused to admit they need to correct a lapse in full coverage.In fact, they hired the old guy who left out the decade of the '50s in the coverage of the Tennessee Theater.

In 1974 (the year my last child was born), Knight merges with Ridder Publications.Since then, things have gone from bad to worse.Our "rights" are being limited as certain facts or matters are dropped for financial reasons.Buzz is right "on target" by informing the public about this situation.

His newspaper career spanned forty years and he was Senior Editor of 'The Wichita Eagle' when he retired in 1999.He's not the only former newsman to take on the big syndicates, but he tells the stories (facts) in a way we can understand.After all, journalism is on a third grade level.Fifty years ago, many adults didn't get past 3rd grade but in 2005 we have more PhDs and lesser college grads floating around out there -- trying to figure out why there's so little "news" in the local daily paper.

He feels that "the kind of journalism" which "gave rise to -- and preserves -- our democracy will disappear.Many people are unhappy and starting to let the press know how bad it is to let Morgan Stanley take over a "free press."One spectacular thing about the book is the larger print.Man, it is hard to read the newspapers these days, not just because the print is so small some folks have to use a magnifier -- the quality of recycled paper is a disgrace.On a 'note of caution' about the results of Buzz's research, contact your local daily paper and COMPLAIN.It probably won't make much difference but, at least, you'll feel better for getting your right to make a statement.

An Insider's View of What We Have All Suspected
On first glance, I was not sure if a review of Knightfall: Knight Ridder and How The Erosion of Newspaper Journalism Is Putting Democracy At Risk, by Davis Merritt (242 pages, American Management Association, 2005) would fit in the context of what I normally write. But as I read the book on Saturday evening, I found that although there was not necessarily a direct correlation on its face, the whole underlying theme of segregation of duties/responsibility resonated with me. Why? Because like in the business environment, the break down of barriers in corporate owned newspapers is significantly eroding journalistic integrity, and according to Merritt, puts the notion of Democracy at risk.

Right up front, Merritt admits his bias. As a former editor with Knight Ridder Newspapers, he was present at the beginning of this conglomerate. The merger between Knight, which focused on journalistic integrity, and Ridder, which focused on the bottom line, provides the backdrop for the perfect case study of what happens when two corporations with totally opposite core values and culture come together, and in this case how the bottom line becomes the driver when key mistakes are made in structuring the corporation.

The book does not flow as easily as others I have recently read and at times Merritt unnecessarily repeats himself. but he does manage to weave a story that starts back in the 19th Century when the two companies were originally formed. He examines what was fundamentally different in the two families, one small, and one large with many sons who needed businesses. The story then evolves into one of corporate positioning and internal culture wars as the two organizations tried to meld. Much like the merger of Lotus Development Corporation and IBM, the culture wars left many casualties and bad feelings as the integration slowly moved through the years.

It was during this time frame that Merritt went from being a journalist and editor focused on journalistic integrity to becoming a bean counter with orders to constantly cut costs. He uses a simple metric to show this decay: the number of Pulitzer Prizes won. What has happened over the past decade is that corporate owned newspapers with only one class of stock, and therefore beholden to Wall Street analysts and short term profit motives, have experienced a sharp decline in the number of Pulitzer Prizes as compared to newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Another disturbing trend Merritt notes is the decline of ethics in journalism, citing not front page stories like Jayson Blair, but other cases he has personally been involved in with his own subordinates. In the examples he gives, stronger business controls would have detected and prevented the transgressions. But this is the rub. Like academia, journalists bristle at any kind of controls as being a violation of their first amendment rights. It also leads to very public embarrassments.

So how does this all put democracy at risk? It happens, according to Merritt, by putting the bottom line above doing responsible, in-depth journalism whicho other medium as the time of resources to do well. Blogs, he acknowledges have a place, but still are without traditional journalistic review standards for accuracy. Given limited budgets, newspapers no longer are able to cover issues of importance to the public and uncover important stories such as Watergate. The question is whether this is journalistic arrogance (and Merritt admits he has been called as such in his fight with the corporate world) or a very real truth worth reflecting on.

If you are interested in reading an insider's view of this decay, this book may be worth a read. If you don't have the time to read it, just look at the newspapers produced by Knight-Ridder and decide if it is puff journalism or the real thing. And then ask yourselves if this is what you want from your newspapers, especially when even the worst ones make incredibly large profit margins.

Scorecard: Par on an Average Par 4

The state of America's newspapers
In the interest of full disclosure, I need to explain that I worked for the author, Buzz Merritt, for 13 years at the Wichita Eagle. I have immense personal and professional respect for Buzz and I am grateful for all the lessons I learned while working as an editor in his newsroom.
This new book is a must read for anyone who has ever worked for Buzz, but more important, it's an instructive and revealing book for anyone interested in the state of America newspapering. Anyone who assumes the book is an indictment or critique of the present Knight Ridder corporate leadership will be missing this point. Buzz' point in this book is that democracy suffers when newspapers place excessive profits about their duty to engage citizens and readers in the rigorous debate of civic life. Knight Ridder is hardly the only newspaper company that has pushed profits dramatically upward while putting quality journalism at risk. It just happens to be the company that Buzz knows best. ... Read more

Book Description

In The Great Game, acclaimed business historian John Steele Gordon chronicles the rise of Wall Street from its humble beginnings as an American trading post to its domination of the world economy, bringing to life the remarkable cast of bankers and brokers, visionaries and crooks who made it happen. From Alexander Hamilton to Michael Milken, the history of Wall Street is a history of risk, courage, avarice, patriotism, power, genius, and, occasionally, remarkable stupidity. In Gordon, Wall Street has finally found a biographer worthy of its extraordinary story. ... Read more

Reviews (14)

The great game is a great book
If money interests you, then you should read this book. As a Wall Street professional I was enthralled by this easy read about the history of Wall Street. Mr. Gordon does an excellent job of taking us from Wall Street's unambitious start as a northern line of defense for a wilderness trading post to the its role as the most powerful stretch of pavement on Earth.

Some of the unique things you will learn include

1. Who invented modern capitalism (hint: Tulips, 1700th century)? 2. The establishment of our federal tax system 3. What structure made NY city the US's largest city 4. Wall Street's first and greatest speculators 5. The creation of the Federal Reserve System

Gordon does a great job of introducing us to the most powerful people the world may have ever known. The most notable include JP Morgan, arguably the world's greatest banker; Hetty Green, the richest (and most paranoid) woman in the world; Charles Merrill, the man who brought Wall Street to Main Street; and Michael Milliken, the world's most famous Wall Street villain to wear a toupee.

The story of Wall Street is truly extraordinary. Its history is littered with courage, greed, jealousy, genius and lots of stupidity! John Steele Gordon does an admirable job of hitting all the salient points while making the journey enjoyable and memorable. Buy this book and read it!

Interesting Overview of Wall Steet's History
John Steele Gordon is an engaging writer. Anyone familiar with his magazine articles in American Heritage knows he is adept at holding readers' attention over several thousand words.

This book reads like a collection of magazine articles. The chapters focus on different personalities or events that shaped (or epitomized) Wall Street over the last two centuries. While there are some attempts to link subjects to their past (notably in the development of rules and regulations), the book reads more like a collection from various time periods rather than a synthesized whole.

What the reader gets are interesting snapshots. And Gordon does make them interesting. Always an engaging writer, he mixes the right amount of fact and commentary to keep a credible story moving along at a nice pace. The author does justice to many fascinating personalities (Hamilton, Fisk, Gould, Vanderbilt, Morgan, Greene, Kennedy, Milkin and Boesky), and events (panics, depression, corners, theft, corruption, manipulation) that have shaped the American financial system since the dawn of our Republic. The chapters are just long enough to gain an appreciation for the subject at hand, but not too long as to bore.

This book is not a study or treatise on financial products or their development. These are mentioned in passing so as to give familiarity to the reader. But, do not expect to learn about how stocks, derivatives or mutual funds (etc., etc.) work in detail here.

While this is not an in depth study of the Street, it is an excellent and engaging survey that will interest the general reader.

From the inception to present day stock market
This book describes the events and how the stock market came into exsistence.It mentions the events that has fuelled the market booms and busts , the regulations and new rules that were placed after each bust to prevent another bust and the great people involved -- just reminds you that their is nothing new under the sun especially what is happening in the stock market now .I recommend this book to anyone interested in the mechanisms in the stock market and how the booms and busts have created a stock market that has created wealth and admiration all over the world

Outstanding History of a Global Power
I purchased this book after watching the CNBC adaptation, and was prepared for a less than sterling treatment (given CNBC's past book adaptations). I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Gordon has written an enjoyable and thorough treatment of the street. Indeed, in retrospect, the CNBC adaptation does not do justice to the work. I highly recommend this work.

The best financial history book I read
This book gives a comprehensive history of Wall Street from the colonial times to the present day. It is very comprehensive and detailed. ... Read more

Book Description

This book provides a multidisciplinary vocabulary for explaining general issues and trends facing the contemporary world involving cultural diversity, economic development, the natural environment, and international peace and violence. It affords equal time to the analysis of global issues using alternative perspectives.Eight major case studies—one for each of the central issues explored—encourage the application of concepts and perspectives presented in the narrative. These perspectives include Ethnicity and Global Diversity, Economic Development, Human Ecological Sustainability, World Ecology, and Peace and War.For individuals interested in an introduction to world issues—as they relate to anthropology, sociology, history, and political science. ... Read more

Book Description

The Evolution of Economic Thought, 6/e presents the history of economics and the philosophies that drive the economic way of thinking. It stresses the importance of understanding contemporary economics, by grasping new ideas, evidence, problems and values that call for reconsideration of basic disputes and major contributions of the past. The textbook explains the ideas of the great economic thinkers and their logical connections to the world of today and tomorrow. Updated pedagogial features provide clear insight into issues like antitrust perspectives and game theory. Introducing ideas like Robert Solow?s pioneering model to discuss recent renewed emphasis on growth theory and technological change, the author sheds historical light on modern debates and thoughts. Stanley Brue once again carries on the legacy of Jacob Oser, the book?s creator, by offering a scholarly and timely presentation of the history of economic thought. ... Read more