Your shortcut to the most important ideas on capitalism, finance, and the global economy.
Economics drives the modern world and shapes our lives, but few of us feel we have time to engage with the breadth of ideas in the subject. 50 Economics Classics is the smart person's guide to two centuries of discussion of finance, capitalism and the global economy. From Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations to Thomas Piketty's bestseller Capital in the Twenty-First Century, here are the great reads, seminal ideas and famous texts clarified and illuminated for all.

Reporting first-hand from around the world - frozen Iceland, anxious America and Australia, invigorated India, bubbly Brazil and futuristic Shanghai - as well as from Britain, the book combines expert analysis with provocative opinion to warn of the dangers ahead.

Containing more than 950 all-new examples of outstanding creativity, this invaluable perennial organizes this year's ground breaking designs into seven categories: logos, complete identity programs, corporate identity manuals, letterhead designs, package designs, signage and environmental graphics, and corporate brochures.

The global financial crisis of 2007 to 2009 ruined businesses and banks,individuals and even nations, and seemed to land a mortal blow to the capitalist system. But capitalism was not destroyed, rather it was irrevocably altered: the forces that precipitated the crisis are now contributing to the evolution of a new, stronger version of the capitalist model.

The return of the best-selling, award-winning economist extraordinaire With the same powerful evidence, and range of reference, as his global bestseller Capital in the Twenty-First Century - and in columns of 700 words, rather than 700 pages - Chronicles sets out Thomas Piketty's analysis of the financial crisis, what has happened since and where we should go from here. Tackling a wider range of subjects than in Capital, from productivity in Britain to Barack Obama, it comprises the very best of his writing for Liberation from the past ten years. Now, translated into English for the first time, it will further cement Piketty's reputation as the world's leading thinker today.

How knowledge is created, and how innovation in products and practices occurs, have been long-standing concerns of socio-economists. This book argues that 'communities of practice', communities and networks of joint enterprise, are the prime site where knowledge and innovation are generated. It sees the everyday interaction that takes place in different working and professional contexts as producing this creativity, learning and knowing through action. In this book, leading international scholars examine the concept and our understanding of the relationship between situated practice and economic creativity. Chapters examine the development of the concept, the link between situated learning and knowing, and the economy in general, what challenges these links raise for organization and knowledge management to encourage knowledge exploitation and breakthrough innovation, and, more generally, the socio-spatial aspects of creativity in its different knowledge settings. Exploring the frontiers of current understanding of innovation and learning, this book is for all those interested in the economic sociology of knowledge creation.

How can your name affect how well you do in life? What do estate agents and the Ku Klux Klan have in common? Why do drug dealers live with their mothers?
The answer: Freakonomics. It's at the heart of everything we do and the things that affect us daily: from sex to crime, parenting to politics, fat to cheating, fear to traffic jams. And we can use it to get to the heart of what's really happening under the surface of everyday life.

This cult bestseller will show you how, by unravelling your life's secret codes, you can discover a totally new way of seeing the world.

Assume nothing, question everything. This is the message at the heart of Freakonomics, Levitt and Dubner's rule-breaking, iconoclastic book about crack dealers, cheating teachers and bizarre baby names that turned everyone's view of the world upside-down and became an international multi-million-copy-selling phenomenon.

'Information wants to be free' says influential technologist Stewart Brand at a 1984 hacker convention. These words became the mantra that shaped the Internet, and the conflict he predicted has led to a revolution in the way that our culture is funded and consumed. We have come to demand free content online, mistaking the packaging of physical products for what we were actually paying for- the creative content. Newspapers are being pressurised to give their content away for free online; music sales have plummeted due to piracy; and Amazon is using its market power to drive down the price of ebooks.

Good Economics for Hard Times offers the new thinking that we
need. It builds on cutting-edge research in economics - and years of
exploring the most effective solutions to alleviate extreme poverty - to
make a persuasive case for an intelligent interventionism and a society
built on compassion and respect. A much-needed antidote to polarized
discourse, this book shines a light to help us appreciate and understand
our precariously balanced world.

What are countries famous for making? For Japan, the answer might be electronic goods. For Germany, automobiles. For France, perhaps a Louis Vuitton bag. But what about Britain?Here, Evan Davis sets himself the task of finding out. Offering a fascinating look at our manufacturing industries and revealing the various companies that might not be household names, but are very much world leaders in their fields, he shows how we have learnt to specialise in high end and niche areas that are the envy of the world.

The Internet today is awash in platforms - Facebook is responsible for nearly 25 percent of total Web visits, and the Google platform crash in 2013 took about 40 percent of Internet traffic with it. Representing the ten most trafficked sites in the U.S., platforms are also prominent over the globe; in China, they hold the top eight spots in web traffic rankings. The advent of mobile computing and its ubiquitous connectivity have forever altered how we interact with each other, melding the digital and physical worlds and blurring distinctions between "offline" and "online."

This book challenges the mainstream paradigm, based on the inter-temporal optimisation of welfare by individual agents. It introduces a methodology for studying how institutions create flows of income, expenditure and production together with stocks of assets and liabilities, thereby determining how whole economies evolve through time.

Everything drug cartels do to survive and prosper they've learnt from big business - brand value and franchising from McDonald's, supply chainmanagement from Walmart, diversification from Coca-Cola. Whether it's human resourcing, R&D, corporate social responsibility, off-shoring,problems with e-commerce or troublesome changes in legislation, the drug lords face the same strategic concerns companies like Ryanair or Apple. So when the drug cartels start to think like big business, the only way to understand them is using economics.

For more than 25 years, Pocket World in Figures has been informing and entertaining readers around the world with its blend of the serious, the quirky and the downright surprising.

Where else would you find out, in a single volume, that a Big Mac will cost you twice as much in Israel as one in South Africa, that Rwanda, Bolivia and Cuba have the highest proportion of women in parliament or that the US space budget is six times that of its nearest rival, China?
The 2017 edition once again includes data from over 190 countries, presented in a series of rankings and country profiles. As always, the rankings will cover subjects as diverse as geography and demographics, business, economics and finance and society and culture. But this time, the book will also showcase the Economist's strength in data journalism by including a series of charts and graphs to supplement the rankings.

The world has never seen economic development as rapid or significant as Asia's during recent decades. Home to three-fifths of humanity, this restless continent will soon produce more than half of the world's economic output and consume more energy than the rest of the world combined. All but three of the planet's current and nascent nuclear powers are Asian, and it has the greatest growth in weapons spending of any other region. Surprisingly little hard thinking has been done about the future of Asia. Restless Continent is the first book to examine the economic, social, political and strategic trends across the world's largest continent and present a road-map for thinking about Asia's future-and the world. It looks at the psychology of countries becoming newly rich and powerful. It explores the 'corridors of blood'-the geography and politics of conflict. And it makes a case about how to avert a plunge into dispute, or even war. Written for general reader and policy specialist alike, Restless Continent is an agenda-shaping book about the shape of international affairs in the twenty-first century.

Are you desperate to get a grip on your finances but don’t know where to start? Does it seem impossible to think about saving in the current climate? Have you tried to budget in the past and failed? No matter what your attitude to money or how you’ve handled your finances in the past, this is the only guide you need to get back on track. Alvin’s tried and tested advice takes you through step-by-step, from clearing debt and managing credit, to saving, budgeting and planning for the future. Fully up-to-date with sections on how to save when things are tight, and how to deal with redundancy, Alvin’s simple, straightalking style provides the perfect antidote to the doom and gloom of news reports.By tackling money matters head on, you really can spend a bit less and live a lot more.

Steven Levitt, the original rogue economist, and Stephen Dubner have spent four years uncovering the hidden side of even more controversial subjects, from terrorism to shark attacks, cable TV to hurricanes. The result is Superfreakonomics. It reveals, among other things: - Why you are more likely to be killed walking drunk than driving drunk - How a prostitute is more likely to sleep with a policeman than be arrested by one- Why terrorists might be easier to track down than you would imagine- How a sex change could boost your salary. Because sometimes the most superfreaky solution is the simplest.

Jeffrey Sachs draws on his remarkable 25 years' experience to offer a thrilling and inspiring vision of the keys to economic success in the world today. Marrying vivid storytelling with acute analysis, he sets the stage by drawing a conceptual map of the world economy and explains why, over the past 200 years, wealth and poverty have diverged and evolved across the planet, and why the poorest nations have been so markedly unable to escape the trap of poverty. Sachs tells the remarkable stories of his own work in Bolivia, Poland, Russia, India, China and Africa to bring readers with him to an understanding of the different problems countries face. In the end, readers will be left not with an understanding of how daunting the world's problems are, but how solvable they are - and why making the effort is both our moral duty and in our own interests.

In The Future of the Euro, a group of the world's top political economists analyze the fundamental causes of the euro crisis, determine how it can be fixed, and consider what likely futures lie ahead for the currency. The book makes three interrelated arguments emphasizing the primacy of political over economic factors. First, the original plan for the euro focused on monetary union, but omitted a financial and banking union, mutually supporting institutions of fiscal union and economic government, and a legitimate political union. Second, the euro's unfinished design led to economic divergence-quietly altering the existing distribution of economic and political power within Europe prior to the crisis-which in turn determined the Eu's crisis response. The book highlights how the euro's four most important member states-Germany, France, Italy and Spain-each changed once they adopted the euro, why the crisis affected them so differently, and how each has since struggled to live with the commitments the euro necessitates. Third, the book examines three possible "euro futures" through the lens of the politics of its reluctant leader Germany; through the lens of the Eu's capacity to move forward through crises; and through the geopolitical lens of the international monetary system. Any successful long-term solution to the euro's predicament will need to start with the political foundations of markets.

Rapaille takes us on a journey through China, Brazil, India, England and everywhere in between to discover the new standards for luxury, pleasure, technology and education. How can elite brands compete in a world of knockoffs? How can universities maintain their prestige when a cheap master's degree or doctorate is only a click away? We must speak the language of the Global Tribe in order to succeed.

Here renowned entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk reveals how companies big and small can scale that kind of personal, one-on-one attention to their entire customer base, no matter how large, using the same social media platforms that carry consumer word of mouth. The Thank You Economy offers compelling, data-driven evidence that we have entered into an entirely new business era, one in which the companies that see the biggest returns won't be the ones that can throw the most money at an advertising campaign, but will be those that can prove they care about their customers more than anyone else. The businesses and brands that harness the word-of-mouth power from social media, those that can shift their culture to be more customer-aware and fan-friendly, will pull away from the pack and profit in today's markets.Filled with Vaynerchuk's irrepressible candor and wit, as well as real-world examples of companies that are profiting by putting Thank You Economy principles into practice, The Thank You Economy reveals how businesses can harness all the changes and challenges inherent in social media and turn them into tremendous opportunities for profit and growth.

Modern economies reward activities that extract value rather than
create it. This must change to ensure a capitalism that works for us
all.

This is the ultimate guide to the world of the Freak. Renegade thinkers and bestselling sensations Levitt and Dubner have carefully curated the very best of their blogs, conversations, wisecracks and advice from the last decade to reveal the outlandish truth about everything from lying to bankrobbing, fast food to sex taxes.

From the international bestselling auhor of Gomorrah, this searing expose of dirty money and the drug trade reveals how they are at the heart of our lives, our economy, and our world.'The most important book of the year ... Here it is, laid bare: cartel as corporation, corporation as cartel; cocaine as pure capitalism ...

The Federal Reserve System--the central bank of the United States, better known as The Fed--has never been more controversial. Criticism has reached such levels that Congressman Ron Paul, contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, published End the Fed, with blurbs from musician Arlo Guthrie and actor Vince Vaughn. And yet, amid a slow economy and partisan gridlock, the Fed has never been more important.Stephen H. Axilrod explains this influential agency-its powers, operations, how it sets policy-in The Federal Reserve, a timely addition to Oxford's acclaimed series What Everyone Needs to Know. Of the two major governmental tools for shaping the economy, Congress controls fiscal policy-taxation and spending-and the Fed makes monetary policy-influencing how much money circulates in the economy, and how quickly. Traditionally the Fed has relied on three instruments: open-market operations (buying and selling U.S. bonds), lending to banks, and setting reserve requirements on bank deposits. It also helps to regulate the financial system.Drawing on years of experience inside the Federal Reserve System, Axilrod shows how these tools actually work, and answers a series of increasingly detailed questions in the series format. He asks, for instance, if the system of regional Fed banks needs modification for today's technological landscape; if there is corruption in the Fed's governance; what happens to profits from its operations; the impact of political pressure; the extent of Congressional oversight; and just how independent it truly is. Whether discussing the Fed's balance sheet through the financial crisis of 2008 and beyond, the federal funds rate, or the international context, Axilrod displays a mastery of his subject. Coming in time for the Fed's 100th anniversary in 2013, this book deftly explains an institution that every American needs to understand.