Book Description

This brand new text by Manfred Gartner, based on his successful A Primer in Macroeconomics, takes a distinctive real world approach to macroeconomics, uniquely blending theory with applications.

Key features: Applies a rigorous, comprehensive approach to macroeconomics that is not available elsewhere. Integrated case material with extensive coverage of issues affecting Europe and the rest of the world. Full range of pedagogical features used to maximum effect to aid learning, including chapter objectives and summaries, graphs, diagrams, cases, margin notes, key terms and concepts, recommended reading, exercises to test understanding and applied problems for hands-on experience of empirical data. Full supplementary package, including an Instructor's Manual and an innovative Companion Website.

Macroeconomics is aimed at intermediate courses in macroeconomics and in European economics. ... Read more

Book Description

In many countries, monetary policy decisions are made by committees. In the United States, these decisions are made by the Federal Reserve's Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which consists of the seven members of the Board of Governors and the presidents of the twelve district banks. This book examines the process by which the preferences of the FOMC's individual members are translated into collective policy choices. This focus on the aggregation of individual preferences into group decisions is unique and provides an important perspective on the evolution of monetary policy choices.

To study decision making by the FOMC, the authors have used both formal voting records and detailed transcripts and summaries of deliberations contained in the committee's Memoranda of Discussion and FOMC Transcripts. The latter sources have been used to construct data sets describing individual committee members' policy preferences for the 1970-1978 and 1987-1996 periods when the FOMC was chaired by Arthur Burns and Alan Greenspan, respectively. These data are used to estimate monetary policy reaction functions for individual Committee members and to explore the role of majoritarian pressures, pressures for consensus, and the power of the chairman in collective decision making. The rich anecdotal evidence found in the Memoranda of Discussion and FOMC Transcripts inspires the narrative approach taken in two chapters, on the influence of political pressure on FOMC deliberations and on the relevance of the time inconsistency problem for the rise of inflation in the 1970s. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Why isn't there a Table of Contents to see?
First: I haven't read the book so ...Please disregard the 3-star rating as the system requires me to put in the rating before I can submit this....
This sounds like an interesting book for graduate students and professional macroeconomists. But why isn't there at least a Table of Contents for potential buyers to see? It's a pity. I will certainly consider buying this book but need more information.

Nice approach, not so nice delivery
First, let me praise Favero's effort. He is absolutely right in his approach, i.e, in emphasizing the comparison of the most important "schools" of macroeconometrics. In general, what you have is a textbook about the Cowles Comissionn approach, another about the LSE approach, another about recursive methods and callibration and etc. As many people just read one or two books about macroeconometrics at grad school, it's obvious that very few know about the diversity of techniques available in the field.
Favero, correctly, points out that rather than trying to obscure the differences within the profession, macroeconometricians should expose them. This choice involves practical problems, though. It's obvious, for example, that the book has to cover a lot of ground. The author, however, opted for writting a relatively thin book. Indeed, the book is almost like the collected notes of a grad student in an advanced course (especially because at many points the presentation is very similar to Greene's). It may be (and I think it is) very informative if you already know the stuff (some illustrative E-views programes throughout the book were especially interesting to me), but you won't learn from it. The huge amount of typos in this first edition (what happened to Oxford University Press quality control?) doesn't help it either.
So, the book doesn't work as a textbook (given its incredibly brief presentation of important topics), but is a nice collection of notes - with a correct approach - that will be very useful for the professional macroeconomist. ... Read more

Book Description

This book contends that central bank policy pits the Federal Reserve against consumers, creating business cycles and inflation. As the cycle progresses, the velocity of money starts to rise, complicating the central bank's problems. Ultimately, either a depression or a runaway inflation develops. The gold standard would not alter patterns of supply and demand and would prevent business cycles and inflation. This is a challenging, provocative guide for investment professionals and corporate economists. ... Read more

Book Description

From sugar to indentured laborers, tobacco to reggae music, Europe and North America have been relentlessly consuming the Caribbean and its assets for the past five hundred years. In this fascinating book, Mimi Sheller explores this troublesome history, investigating the complex mobilities of producers and consumers as well as material and cultural commodities consumed by tourists and outside settlers -- everything from sugar and coffee to slave labor and domestic servers to native music and natural resources.
Consuming the Caribbean demonstrates how colonial exploitation of the Caribbean led directly to contemporary forms of consumption of the region and its products, aiming to trouble innocent indulgence in the pleasures of thoughtless consumption. This book is sure to change anyone's opinion of this tropical paradise. ... Read more

Book Description

"I like the fact that the book is relatively even-handed - appreciating spectacle even while forcing students to question critically the effects of consumption in their lives and those of their fellow citizens."

-Gary Alan Fine, Northwestern University

"Enchanting a Disenchanted World is a tour de force. Drawing upon a rich array of examples, George Ritzer provides an original and insightful analysis of the new means of consumption and how they are transforming our lives. . . . Analytically crisp, jargon free, and packed with fresh illustrations, Enchanting a Disenchanted World is equally effective as an engaging read for specialists and a lucid text for classroom use. Highly recommended to scholars and students."

-Kevin Fox Gotham, Tulane University

"I think this is a great book! I have enjoyed working with it, and so have my students. . . . I especially like the chapters that deal with social theory. These chapters are very effective in presenting social theory to students, as they contain very clear and straightforward explanations of the ideas of otherwise very complex and difficult social theorists."

-Ann Branaman, Florida Atlantic University

Megamalls. Restaurant chains. Elaborate casinos. Deluxe cruise ships. Enormous theme parks. Everywhere we turn, there is a new place being constructed in which to spend money. The Second Edition of Enchanting a Disenchanted World: Revolutionizing the Means of Consumption examines the development of these settings, and many others like them, in the last half century.

Author George Ritzer takes a look at how a revolutionary change has occurred in the places in which we consume goods and services, and how it has a profound effect not only on the nature of consumption but also on social life. In the process of taking capitalism to a new level, we have created new "cathedrals of consumption"-locales to which we make pilgrimages in order to practice our consumer religion. The book offers rich detail on consuming in places such as Las Vegas, Disney World, cruise ships, Wal-Mart, and McDonald’s-all competing to outdo one another to see which one can put on the greatest show and lure the most consumers.

Enchanting a Disenchanted World is a unique analysis of the world of consumption, examining how we are different consumers now than we were in the past, both in the U.S. and around the world. In the process of understanding this social development, a wide range of theoretical perspectives including Marxian, Weberian, critical theory, and postmodern theory are applied. The book also looks at concepts such as hyperconsumption, implosion, time and space, and simulation.

New to the Second Edition:

• A new Chapter 7 has been added discussing "landscapes of consumption," or locales that encompass two or more cathedrals of consumption, giving a broader geographic context to examine the changes in consumption settings, their impact on the lure of consumption, and the pressure to consume.
• A new section has been added to Chapter 3, devoted to the historical importance of the early Parisian arcades and to the thinking of the important social theorist, Walter Benjamin, on these sites.
• The book has been thoroughly revised and updated and discusses the new big players among the cathedrals of consumption, including Disney’s upcoming theme park in Hong Kong, the new Queen Mary II, the soon-to-be completed casino resort Wynn Las Vegas, and many more.

Enchanting a Disenchanted World connects the everyday world in a sociological and theoretical way, making it an ideal text for a wide range of undergraduate and graduate courses including introductory sociology, sociology of consumption , social change, popular culture, sociology of leisure, social theory, and economic sociology. The book will also be of value to anyone interested in exploring a sociological analysis of the world’s changing and expanding patterns and places of consumption.

Reviews (4)

Thoughtful and perceptive
This book changed the way I view my own habits of consumption. I found his analysis of contemporary trends in consumption interesting and provocative. Also interesting was his conclusion that as people grow accustomed to the new means of consumption that they have to be continually impressed by something new. I thought his remarks on the architecture of the "cathedrals of consumption" were also very important. The most unsettling aspect of the book was Ritzer's comparison of modern styles of consumption with religious institutions, and even the conformity of religious institutions to this new means of consumption (i.e., the mega-churches of today). It was a good read, too, not too dense or pretentious. Very engaging.

please do not buy this book
this has to be the most superficial and simplistic account on the new means of consumption; i.e., malls, theme parks, casinos, etc. it is hardly believable that ritzer takes in a seriuos manner his naive arguments, that in several occasions turn into pure idle talk, or worst pure stupidity. just to give one example, when he mentions that malls have their roots in the ancient greek and roman markets. although he states that his work is heavely influenced by the writtings of baudrillard he never explains in his matter why we consume in the first place. even worse, he never gives a concrete argumentation of why this world is disenchanted in the first place and why it has to be enchanted. so please do not make the same mistake that i did and do not buy this book. it is the first time that i have read something by this author but i think i had enough of him for the rest of my life. i might be a joy-killer to use the term of ritzer to describe an anthropologist but i least i am not as simplistic and stupid as he is.

Interesting, yet hypocritial
Well, he even talks Amazon.com as a cathedral of consumption, and brings up such facts as doing what I am doing, reviewing books on amazon.com. I found it to be hypocritical for him to badmouth consumption so much, yet he profits from the things he badmouths, such as my purchase of his book at amazon.com He claims most are subject to consumption. Well, unless you go around naked, live in a cafe and eat sticks, everyone is. This book serves as a valuable tool to look into the methods of consumption that rule our daily lives, but don't get too caught up it how bad it is, consumption feeds the author and his family also.

Prepare to feel exploited
Ritzer does a good job of awakening the average consumer to the explotation they are undergoing daily. ... Read more

Book Description

Originally, economics was called political economy, and those studying it readily accepted that economic decisions are made in a political world. But economics eventually separated itself from politics to pursue rigorous methods of analyzing individual behavior and markets. Recently, an increasing number of economists have turned their attention to the old question of how politics shape economic outcomes. To date, however, this growing literature has lacked a cogent organization and a unified approach. Here, in the first full-length examination of how political forces affect economic policy decisions, Allan Drazen provides a systematic treatment, organizing the increasingly influential "new political economy" as a more established field at the highly productive intersection of economics and political science.

Although he provides an extraordinarily helpful guide to the recent explosion of papers on political economy in macroeconomics, Drazen moves far beyond survey, giving definition and structure to the field. He proposes that conflict or heterogeneity of interests should be the field's essential organizing principle, because political questions arise only when people disagree over which economic policies should be enacted or how economic costs and benefits should be distributed. Further, he illustrates how heterogeneity of interests is crucial in every part of political economy. Drazen's approach allows innovative treatment--using rigorous economic models--of public goods and finance, economic growth, the open economy, economic transition, political business cycles, and all of the traditional topics of macroeconomics.

This major text will have an enormous impact on students and professionals in political science as well as economics, redefining how decision makers on several continents think about the full range of macroeconomic issues and informing the approaches of the next generation of economists. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

A must in any economist's library
Numerous issues concerning conflict of interest and strategic behavior are involved in political matters and economic policy decisions in particular, and in macroeconomic outcomes in general. Allan Drazen presents the most complete analysis of the literature concerning these issues, both from a theoretical and an empirical perspective. I think this book is the Blanchard and Fischer's of Political Economy. Superb.

Political Economy in Macroeconomics
Though politics and economics continue to be the two most influential forces in our society, the discussion relating the two is often lofty and incomprehensible to common men. Drazen eases the burden of confusion by providing distinct discussion and wonderfully elaborated points of concern. A great tool for understanding politicla economy. ... Read more

Book Description

Both Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping drastically altered the course of contemporary China's economic development using opposing strategies. Mao froze China's economic system in a perennial state of consumer goods shortages and pervasive macro disequilibria. Deng, however, began thawing a rigidly structured system by introducing experimental reform measures. Mao's revolutionary rhetoric brought China's economy to the brink of bankruptcy. Deng's ideological pragmatism netted China glowing successes. Mao closed China to the outside world. Deng engineered China's reintegration into the world economy. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Outstanding for PhD macroeconomists!
Sargent is a leader in modern macroeconomic research. Anybody that is working toward a PhD in Economics with a concentration in Macroeconomics ought to study this book. Other people are quite likely to find the book to be much too difficult and abstract. ... Read more

Book Description

Early in 2000, Ecuador, confronted with a serious economic crisis, adopted the US dollar as its national currency.This book examines the conditions that led to this action, describing the repeated cycles of crisis and failed stabilization that fatally undermined confidence in the Ecuadoran sucre. The book then analyzes dollarization's initial results and its effects on inflation, growth, poverty, inequality, marganilization, gender, and the Ecuadoran family. It also puts the Ecuadoran experience with dollarization in an international perspective. Economists, policymakers, and anyone with a serious interest in Latin American affairs will find this book invaluable. ... Read more

Book Description

Inflation targeting -- when central bank policies set specific inflation rate objectives -- is widely used by both developed and developing countries around the world (although not by the United States or the European Central Bank). This collection of original essays looks at how Brazil's policy of inflation targeting, coupled with a floating exchange rate, survived a series of severe economic shocks and examines the policy lessons that can be drawn from Brazil's experience.

After a successful start in early 1999, Brazil's policy regime had to manage mounting difficulties, including a sudden reversal of capital flows and its effects on the exchange rate and public debt, the contagion of Argentina's severe economic problems, a domestic energy crisis, and the political uncertainty of the 2002 presidential campaign. The contributors, prominent Brazilian and international economists, draw important lessons from Brazil's experience, including the necessity of accompanying monetary policy with fiscal improvement, the trade-offs involved in dollar-linked debt, the importance of fiscal institutions in an emerging market economy, and the importance of keeping inflation under control. ... Read more

Book Description

This book describes and evaluates the literature on exchange rate economics. It provides a wide-ranging survey of the different theories that attempt to explain the behavior of exchange rates, and outlines the salient institutional characteristics of the modern foreign exchange market in the context of an evolving international monetary system. An important feature of the book is its emphasis throughout on the main policy issues relating to the stabilization of exchange rates. The level of exposition is relatively nontechnical, and will be intelligible to undergraduate students. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A useful adictional tool for FX traders
Beyond the technical analisys, the FX trader must understand the macro movers of a country exchange rate. The economic movers are very important on the medium-long term investing. This book help you to understand those indicators. ... Read more

Book Description

This book synthesizes and extends modern political-economic theory to explain the postwar evolution of macroeconomic policy in developed democracies. The chapters study transfers, debt, and monetary/wage policy-making and outcomes, stressing that participation enhances transfer policy responsiveness to inequality and vice versa, that policy-making veto actors retard fiscal policy adjustments, inducing greater long run debt-responses to all other political-economic stimuli, and that monetary policy's nominal and real effects depend, respectively, on the broader political-economic interest structure and on wage price bargainers' sectorial composition and coordination. ... Read more

Book Description

A cornerstone, Macroeconomics: Private and Public Choice is considered to be the best existing principles of economics textbooks emphasizing free markets. The strengths of this text are its clarity, emphasis on the economic way of thinking and its application to the world around us. Macroeconomics: Private and Public Choice has an amazing approach to introducing students to a moderate amount of economic data analysis while applying the concept to a real-world story. This edition had added a new introductory Chapter 4 "Supply and Demand: Applications and Extensions" allowing the instructor a second full chapter to help develop the basic foundation of supply and demand. Chapter 5 "The Economic Role of the Government" and Chapter 6 "The Economics of Collective Decision Making" now stress the role of government and the economics of collective decision making. Chapter 16 "Economic Growth" integrates growth into the macroeconomic coverage. At the end of the text are extra Applications and Special Topics that allow instructors to include a more involved application in classroom discussions. The authors continue to succeed at enabling students to understand the basic concepts and apply those concepts that are central to the principles of economics class. ... Read more

Book Description

Between 1200 and 1520 medieval English society went through a series of upheavals--wars, pestilence, and rebellion. This book looks at aristocrats, peasants, townsmen, wage-earners, and paupers, and examines how they obtained and spent their incomes. Did the aristocracy practice conspicuous consumption?Did the peasants really starve? The book focuses on the varying fortunes of different social groups in the inflation of the thirteenth century, the crises of the fourteenth, and the apparent depression of the fifteenth.Dr. Dyer explains the changes in terms of the dynamics of a social and economic system subjected to stimuli and stresses. ... Read more

Book Description

The world knows that there is a global crisis of inequality in pay.But what caused it?Where is it more and where less severe?What can be done?This book deploys new techniques and a new global data set to advance striking answers to these questions, answers that have eluded even the largest international research institutions such as the OECD and the World Bank. Chapters trace the U.S. wage structure back to 1920, the relationship of inequality and unemployment in Europe, and the relationships of inequality to economic growth, liberalization, financial crisis, state violence and industrial policy in more than fifty developing countries. ... Read more

Book Description

Macroeconomics 2e offers a new approach to the subject. Drawing upon vast experience teaching, researching, and advising the U.S. government on policy has enabled the authors to write an intermediate macroeconomics book that will set the standard for books in this area for years to come.For example, DeLong/Olney focuses on the interest rate rather than the AS/AD diagram and includes expanded coverage of the crucial topic of long-run growth.This lively text is modern, provides extensive insight into economic policy, incorporates a strong international perspective, and offers a broad historical perspective. ... Read more

Reviews (9)

Nice piece of work
This intermediate level textbook does an excellent job of covering the subject.DeLong writes well.The book requires the requisite introductory macroeconomics background and some facility with algebra and mathematical functions.Those not possessing that background will most likely find themselves frustrated because of their lack of preparation.Anyone who wants to take their knowledge of macroeconomics to the next level should take a look at the book as a potential guide and source.

Without doubt one of the best on the market
I don't normally bother to review books, but the comments on this book are so bizarre I feel the need to respond.This is a textbook for the intermediate macroeconomics level.Someone coming to this book with no economics background at all might find the book hard going in places, but that is to be expected; it is not intended as a piece of popular writing on economics.

I am very familiar with intermediate macroeconomic textbooks -- indeed, I wrote ancillary material for one of the leading textbooks currently on the market -- and I think DeLong's textbook is one of the best books around.For many topics it is *the* best book.

I would put most low reviews of this work down to politics
This is an excellent intermediate Macro textbook, and the writing style is more acessible than one usually encounters at this level of economics.
The theory is up-to-date and couched in less political dogma than similar products from other sources.

This is not an introduction to Macro!
This is a first-term MBA or intermediate BA/BS course!

Given the lower quality of the competing texts I have read, I put down most low reviews to sight-unseen grousing by partisans who wish to inflict monetary loss on Professor DeLong for his political views.
In todays political climate this is unsurprising, but it is quite disturbing that it has reached this far into solid science.

Ghastly, Garbage and Grotesque
This is just a poorly written book. I am surprised that this book has not been reviewed extensively. This was so bad that I could not find places where I can say that I learned something valuable without hitting myself. This is so bad that one cannot fine anything that is good and praise it. Bradford Delong is just an awful writer and doing no justice with the subject. I found his book worse than the already worse textbook in the market. I hope there is no second edition to this ridiculous experiment that has gone bad.

Excellent intermediate macroeconomics textbook
I'm a little baffled at the complaints leveled at DeLong's macroeconomics textbook.Though I wouldn't recommend it as an introductory textbook, as an intermediate level text, I found it quite impressive (Berkeley compacts intro. micro and macro in a one semester course, then mandates seperate intermediate micro and macro courses for majors).DeLong's writing is lively and engaging, a breath of fresh air when compared to the mechanical breakdown and prose of most economics books.More than that, however, its explanation of macroeconomic concepts is clear.I haven't come across a better econ textbook yet. ... Read more

Book Description

Amid mounting concern over the loss of jobs to low-wage economies, one fact is clear: America's prosperity hinges on the ability of its businesses to continually introduce new products and services. But what makes for a creative economy?How can the remarkable surge of innovation that fueled the boom of the 1990s be sustained?

For an answer, Richard K. Lester and Michael J. Piore examine innovation strategies in some of the economy's most dynamic sectors. Through eye-opening case studies of new product development in fields such as cell phones, medical devices, and blue jeans, two fundamental processes emerge.

One of these processes, analysis--rational problem solving--dominates management and engineering practice. The other, interpretation, is not widely understood, or even recognized--although, as the authors make clear, it is absolutely crucial to innovation. Unlike problem solving, interpretation embraces and exploits ambiguity, the wellspring of creativity in the economy.By emphasizing interpretation, and showing how these two radically different processes can be combined, Lester and Piore's book gives managers and designers the concepts and tools to keep new products flowing.

But the authors also offer an unsettling critique of national policy. By ignoring the role of interpretation, economic policymakers are drawing the wrong lessons from the 1990s boom. The current emphasis on expanding the reach of market competition will help the analytical processes needed to implement innovation. But if unchecked it risks choking off the economy's vital interpretive spaces.Unless a more balanced policy approach is adopted, warn Lester and Piore, America's capacity to innovate--its greatest economic asset--will erode.