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L. S. Ayres and Company
The Store at the Crossroads of America
Kenneth L. Turchi
Indiana Historical Society Press, 2012
In 1872 Lyman Ayres acquired a controlling interest in the Trade Place, a dry-goods store in Indianapolis. Two years later, he bought out his partners and renamed the establishment L. S. Ayres and Company. For the next century, Ayres was as much a part of Indianapolis as Monument Circle or the Indianapolis 500. Generations of midwestern families visited the vast store to shop, to see the animated Christmas windows, and, of course to visit Santa Claus and enjoy lunch in the Tea Room. But Ayres was more than just a department store. At its helm across three generations was a team of visionary retailers who took the store from its early silk-and-calico days to a diversified company with interests in specialty stores and discount stores (before Target and Wal-Mart). At the same time, Ayres never lost sight of its commitment to women’s fashion that gave the store the same cachet as its larger competitors in New York and Chicago.
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L.A. Story
Immigrant Workers and the Future of the U.S. Labor Movement
Ruth Milkman
Russell Sage Foundation, 2006
Sharp decreases in union membership over the last fifty years have caused many to dismiss organized labor as irrelevant in today's labor market. In the private sector, only 8 percent of workers today are union members, down from 24 percent as recently as 1973. Yet developments in Southern California—including the successful Justice for Janitors campaign—suggest that reports of organized labor's demise may have been exaggerated. In L.A. Story, sociologist and labor expert Ruth Milkman explains how Los Angeles, once known as a company town hostile to labor, became a hotbed for unionism, and how immigrant service workers emerged as the unlikely leaders in the battle for workers' rights. L.A. Story shatters many of the myths of modern labor with a close look at workers in four industries in Los Angeles: building maintenance, trucking, construction, and garment production. Though many blame deunionization and deteriorating working conditions on immigrants, Milkman shows that this conventional wisdom is wrong. Her analysis reveals that worsening work environments preceded the influx of foreign-born workers, who filled the positions only after native-born workers fled these suddenly undesirable jobs. Ironically, L.A. Story shows that immigrant workers, who many union leaders feared were incapable of being organized because of language constraints and fear of deportation, instead proved highly responsive to organizing efforts. As Milkman demonstrates, these mostly Latino workers came to their service jobs in the United States with a more group-oriented mentality than the American workers they replaced. Some also drew on experience in their native countries with labor and political struggles. This stock of fresh minds and new ideas, along with a physical distance from the east-coast centers of labor's old guard, made Los Angeles the center of a burgeoning workers' rights movement. Los Angeles' recent labor history highlights some of the key ingredients of the labor movement's resurgence—new leadership, latitude to experiment with organizing techniques, and a willingness to embrace both top-down and bottom-up strategies. L.A. Story's clear and thorough assessment of these developments points to an alternative, high-road national economic agenda that could provide workers with a way out of poverty and into the middle class.
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Labor and Community
Mexican Citrus Worker Villages in a Southern California County, 1900-1950
Gilbert G. González
University of Illinois Press, 1994
The emergence, maturity, and decline of the southern California citrus industry is seen here through the network of citrus worker villages that dotted part of the state's landscape from 1910 to 1960.  Labor and Community shows how Mexican immigrants shaped a partially independent existence within a fiercely hierarchical framework of economic and political relationships. González relies on a variety of published sources and interviews with longtime residents to detail the education of village children; the Americanization of village adults; unionization and strikes; and the decline of the citrus picker village and rise of the urban barrio. His insightful study of the rural dimensions of Mexican-American life prior to World War II adds balance to a long-standing urban bias in Chicano historiography.
 
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Labor Economics and Industrial Relations
Markets and Institutions
Clark Kerr and Paul D. Staudohar
Harvard University Press, 1994

In twenty-three original essays this book reviews the course of labor economics over the more than two centuries since the publication of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. It fully examines the contending theories, changing environmental contexts, evolving issues, and varied policies affecting labor’s participation in the economy.

While the intellectual framework of the book looks partly to the past—explaining the labor factor in classical and neoclassical systems—its emphasis is on contemporary problems that will figure prominently in future developments, such as the operation of internal labor markets, dispute resolution, concession bargaining, equal employment opportunity, and individual labor contracting.

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Labor, Free and Slave
Workingmen and the Anti-Slavery Movement in the United States
Bernard Mandel.Introduction by Brian Kelly
University of Illinois Press, 2006
A classic piece of Old Left scholarship made available to a new generation of students and activists

Bernard Mandel's classic study provides a concise overview of the relationship between organized abolitionism and the fledgling labor movement in the period before the Civil War. Mandel argues that slavery reinforced the powerlessness of white workers North and South, and the racial divisions that it upheld rendered effective labor solidarity impossible. Deep distrust between abolitionists and the working classes, however, compelled Northern workers to find their own way into the antislavery ranks.

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Labor in Crisis
THE STEEL STRIKE OF 1919
David Brody
University of Illinois Press, 1965
Conceived as a prologue to the 1930s industrial-union triumph in steel, Labor in Crisis explains the failure of unionization before the New Deal era and the reasons for mass-production unionism's eventual success.
Widely regarded as a failure, the great 1919 steel strike had both immediate and far-reaching consequences that are important to the history of American labor. It helped end the twelve-hour day, dramatized the issues of the rights to organize and to engage in collective bargaining, and forwarded progress toward the passage of the Wagner Act, which, in turn, helped trigger John L. Lewis's decision to launch the CIO.
 
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Labor in Finland
Carl Erik Knoellinger
Harvard University Press
Finland’s precarious proximity to Russia makes this small country a unique and revealing study in contemporary social and economic patterns. The author demonstrates that “in spite of Finland’s deep-rooted cultural kinship with Scandinavia…new factors, often political in nature, have affected the development of society very differently in each of these countries.” One of the most decisive differences, as his book makes clear, is the position of the Communist party in Finnish politics. In this first English book on the Finnish situation, Carl Erik Knoellinger makes perceptive analyses of detailed data on the varied aspects of his subject.
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Labor in the New Economy
Edited by Katharine G. Abraham, James R. Spletzer, and Michael Harper
University of Chicago Press, 2010

As the structure of the economy has changed over the past few decades, researchers and policy makers have been increasingly concerned with how these changes affect workers. In this book, leading economists examine a variety of important trends in the new economy, including inequality of earnings and other forms of compensation, job security, employer reliance on temporary and contract workers, hours of work, and workplace safety and health.

In order to better understand these vital issues, scholars must be able to accurately measure labor market activity. Thus, Labor in the New Economy also addresses a host of measurement issues: from the treatment of outliers, imputation methods, and weighting in the context of specific surveys to evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of data from different sources. At a time when employment is a central concern for individuals, businesses, and the government, this volume provides important insight into the recent past and will be a useful tool for researchers in the future.

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Labor in the South
F. Ray Marshall
Harvard University Press

In this first general history of organized labor in the south, F. Ray Marshall analyzes the main factors influencing union growth in the region from the earliest times to the present. Writing within the context of the south’s political, social, and economic history, the author provides valuable material on labor economics and labor relations.

An opening section lays the foundation for the analysis by reviewing the south’s unique economic and social characteristics, with a discussion of the beginnings of unions in the area and some of their activities and problems prior to 1928. The author then traces in detail the growth of key unions before 1932 and presents an evaluation of the 1930 southern organizing campaign of the AFL. An examination follows of the impact of the social ferment inspired by the New Deal. In Part IV, Marshall discusses union growth during and after the Second World War, with emphasis on the influence of the War Labor Board and other governmental agencies. Finally, in Part V he draws together all the main factors responsible for union expansion and union weakness in the south—economic forces, law and politics, union structure and philosophy, the characteristics of the workers, and social forces. In his concluding chapter the author assesses the possibilities for future union growth in the south through a projection of the trends brought to light in the previous chapters.

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Labor Leaders in America
Edited by Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren Van Tine
University of Illinois Press, 1987
Here are the life stories of the men and women who led the labor movement in America from Reconstruction to recent times, from William H. Sylvis, the first major labor leader, to Cesar Chavez, who organized California's farm workers in the 1960s. In each profile, a leading authority provides a profile of the figure's life and work. Taken together, these short biographies provide a broad overview of the American labor movement that will appeal to students, interested readers, and specialists. Profiles include: William H. Sylvis, Terence V. Powderly, Samuel Gompers, Eugene V. Debs, William D. "Big Bill" Haywood, William Green, Rose Schneiderman, John L. Lewis, Sidney Hillman, Philip Murray, A. Philip Randolph, Walter Reuther, Jimmy Hoffa, George Meany, and Cesar Chavez
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Labor Markets and Firm Benefit Policies in Japan and the United States
Edited by Seiritsu Ogura, Toshiaki Tachibanaki, and David A. Wise
University of Chicago Press, 2003
This volume, the fourth to result from a remarkably productive collaboration between the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Japan Center for Economic Research, presents a selection of thirteen high-caliber papers addressing issues in the employment practices, labor markets, and health, benefit, and pension policies of the United States and Japan.

After an opening chapter assessing the recent ascendance of the U.S. economy, papers diverge to tackle a range of specific issues. Focusing less on international comparison than on the assembly of high-quality research, contributors hone in on a variety of individual topics. Chapters delve into issues of youth employment, participatory employment, information sharing, fringe benefits, and drug coverage in Japan, as well as the dynamics of medical savings accounts, private insurance coverage, and benefit options in the U.S.

Like previous volumes stemming from NBER/JCER collaboration, this book represents a valuable mass of empirical data on some of the most notable employment and benefits issues in each nation, information that will both anchor and provoke scholarly analysis of these topics well into the future.
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Labor Markets in Action
Essays in Empirical Economics
Richard B. Freeman
Harvard University Press, 1989

Economists rarely perform controlled experiments, so how do they find out how markets function? In what ways does empirical economics contribute to our understanding of important and controversial social issues? What has been discovered about the operation of the labor markets in which nearly all of us participate? Labor Markets in Action addresses these questions in lively style. The topics cover issues of deep social concern, encompassing the jobs and wages of college graduates, discrimination and inner-city youth, homelessness, unionism, and the differences between U. S. labor market institutions and those of other developed countries, including Japan.

A thoughtful introduction to each essay reveals the human side of research on these controversial issues. Freeman lays out five guiding principles for empirical social science: to analyze situations in which markets undergo sharp exogenous shocks, creating "natural experiments"; to focus on fundamental first-order economic principles and behavior rather than on abstract fine points; to probe empirical findings with different data sets and alternative specifications; to gather new information from survey research rather than rely on existing data sets; to discuss issues and interpretations with workers, labor leaders, businessmen, and other market participants. With chapters that range from broad overviews of research to essays employing detailed statistical techniques, this book will appeal to economists, students, and policymakers concerned with how labor markets function and how economists go about their business of discovery without laboratory controls.

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Labor Politics American Style
The California State Federation of Labor
Philip Taft
Harvard University Press

State federations of labor have been the political arms of organized labor for more than 100 years and the California State Federation is one of the most interesting and representative examples. Philip Taft traces the activities, policies, and problem of the Federation from its beginnings in 1901 until the merger of the AFL-CIO in 1958. The attitudes on migrant labor and the controversial McNamara and Mooney cases are discussed as well as the changing views of the Federation over the years. In the process, the author explores the reasons why organized labor in the United States did not commit itself to a third party.

Instead of reviewing the debates of national labor leaders, Taft focuses on the sentiments and needs of workers at the grass roots level and examines their critical role in determining the character of organized labor’s political tactics. He shows that at no time did the American labor movement eschew politics; it always understood the importance of legislation for social advancement. Starting with modest funds and little support, the California State Federation became, relatively early in its history, the primary spokesman on legislative matters for the workers in the state. Its efforts, Taft demonstrates, were not limited to legislation affecting the narrow interests of a special group, but encompassed matters concerning the entire community. As the influence of the Federation grew and its aims broadened, it came to rely heavily on the sympathy and backing of the state legislative and executive branches of government.

Taft explains the methods by which Federation programs were and are developed and how candidates are endorsed. He surveys the expanding task of defending legislation before administrative bodies and courts. Throughout his study, he emphasizes the significance of the California Federation as a political institution and relates its development to the growth of the labor movement in the United States.

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Labor Relations in the Aviation and Aerospace Industries
Robert W. Kaps, J. Scott Hamilton, Timm J. Bliss
Southern Illinois University Press, 2012

In this textbook designed for courses on aviation labor relations, the authors-experts with many years of experience in these sectors-examine and evaluate the labor process for all aspects of the aviation and aerospace industries, including aerospace manufacturing, airlines, general aviation, federal and state administrative agencies, and public airports.

Divided into three parts-Public Policy and Labor Law; Principles, Practices and Procedures in Collective Bargaining and Dispute Resolution; and the Changing Labor Relations Environment-the book provides an overview of the industries and the development of US labor law and policy, then explores the statutory, regulatory, and case laws applicable to each industry segment before concluding with an examination of current and developing issues and trends. The authors present the evolution of aviation and aerospace labor laws, going as far back as the early nineteenth century to lay the historical foundation, and cover the development and main features of the principal statutes governing labor relations in the United States today, the Railway Labor Act, the National Labor Relations Act, and the Civil Service Reform Act. They also investigate the growth of the industries and their impact on labor relations, as well as the current issues and challenges facing management and labor in each segment of this dynamic, sometimes volatile, business and their implications for collective bargaining. Twenty case studies not only illuminate practical applications of such fundamental concepts as unfair labor practices and unions' duty of fair representation but also enliven the subject, preparing the reader to use the concepts in real-world decision making. 

A study guide with review questions, online assignments, supplemental readings, and exercises is available for students. For those teachers using the textbook in their courses, there is an instructor's manual with additional resources for developing courses in the classroom, online, or by blended learning, as well as a variety of assignments and materials to enhance and vary the mock negotiation exercise. 

A revision and expansion of Robert W. Kaps's Air Transport Labor Relations, this outstanding new volume provides students and teachers with valuable information and perspectives on industries that are highly dependent on technologically skilled labor. Labor Relations in the Aviation and Aerospace Industries offers a sweeping and thorough treatment of labor relations, public policy, law, and practice and is the definitive work on the labor process in the aviation and aerospace sectors.
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Labor Relations in the Aviation and Aerospace Industries
Study Guide
Robert W. Kaps, J. Scott Hamilton, Timm J. Bliss
Southern Illinois University Press, 2012

This Study Guide is designed to be used with the textbook Labor Relations in the Aviation and Aerospace Industries.  It is intended to assist students in comprehending basic terminology and principles of labor relations and the law, to relate those principles to unique features of the aviation and aerospace industry, and to prepare for the kinds of labor relations–related decisions students will soon be making as aviation professionals, whether in private or public sector employment. It includes review questions, online assignments, supplemental readings, and exercises.

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Labor Relations in the Lithographic Industry
Fred C. Munson
Harvard University Press
Describing the structure of industrial relations in the lithographic industry, the author explains its separation from the industrial relations system in printing, showing the instability of present collective bargaining practices and how the division of crafts is likely to change. Fred Munson integrates data from trade associations, union surveys, and government sources whose incompatibility has been a familiar complaint. Providing a typical economic model, this detailed study of lithographic industrial relations is relevant to the entire field of union-management relations today.
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Labor Statistics Measurement Issues
Edited by John Haltiwanger, Marilyn E. Manser, and Robert H. Topel
University of Chicago Press, 1998
Rapidly changing technology, the globalization of markets, and the declining role of unions are just some of the factors that have led to dramatic changes in working conditions in the United States. Little attention has been paid to the difficult measurement problems underlying analysis of the labor market. Labor Statistics Measurement Issues helps to fill this gap by exploring key theoretical and practical issues in the measurement of employment, wages, and workplace practices.

Some of the chapters in this volume explore the conceptual issues of what is needed, what is known, or what can be learned from existing data, and what needs have not been met by available data sources. Others make innovative uses of existing data to analyze these topics. Also included are papers examining how answers to important questions are affected by alternative measures used and how these can be reconciled. This important and useful book will find a large audience among labor economists and consumers of labor statistics.

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The Labor Wars in Córdoba, 1955–1976
Ideology, Work, and Labor Politics in an Argentine Industrial City
James P. Brennan
Harvard University Press, 1994

Córdoba is Argentina’s second-largest city, a university town that became the center of its automobile industry. In the decade following the overthrow of Juan Perón’s government in 1955, the city experienced rapid industrial growth. The arrival of IKA-Renault and Fiat fostered a particular kind of industrial development and created a new industrial worker of predominantly rural origins. Former farm boys and small-town dwellers were thrust suddenly into the world of the modern factory and the multinational corporation.

The domination of the local economy by a single industry and the prominent role played by the automobile workers’ unions brought about the greatest working-class protest in postwar Latin American history, the 1969 Cordobazo. Following the Cordobazo, the local labor movement was one characterized by intense militancy and determined opposition to both authoritarian military governments and the Peronist trade union bureaucracy. These labor wars have been mythologized as a Latin American equivalent to the French student strikes of May–June 1968 and the Italian “hot summer” of the same period. Analyzing these events in the context of recent debates on Latin American working-class politics, James Brennan demonstrates that the pronounced militancy and even political radicalism of the Cordoban working class were due not only to Argentina’s changing political culture but also to the dynamic relationship between the factory and society during those years.

Brennan draws on corporate archives in Argentina, France, and Italy, as well as previously unknown union archives. Readers interested in Latin American studies, labor history, industrial relations, political science, industrial sociology, and international business will all find value in this important analysis of labor politics.

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Laboring Below the Line
The New Ethnography of Poverty, Low-Wage Work, and Survival in the Global Economy
Frank Munger
Russell Sage Foundation, 2002
As the distribution of wealth between rich and poor in the United States grew more and more unequal over the past twenty years, this economic gap assumed a life of its own in the popular culture. The news and entertainment media increasingly portrayed the lives of the poor with such stereotypes as the lazy welfare mother and the thuggish teen, offering Americans few ways to learn how the "other half" really lives. Laboring Below the Line works to bridge this gap by synthesizing a wide range of qualitative scholarship on the working poor. The result is a coherent, nuanced portrait of how life is lived below the poverty line, and a compelling analysis of the systemic forces in which poverty is embedded, and through which it is perpetuated. Laboring Below the Line explores the role of interpretive research in understanding the causes and effects of poverty. Drawing on perspectives of the working poor, welfare recipients, and marginally employed men and women, the contributors—an interdisciplinary roster of ethnographers, oral historians, qualitative sociologists, and narrative analysts—dissect the life circumstances that affect the personal outlook, ability to work, and expectations for the future of these people. For example, Carol Stack views the work aspirations of an Oakland teenager for whom a job is important, even though it strains her academic performance. And Ruth Buchanan looks at low-wage telemarketing workers who are attempting to move up the economic ladder while balancing family, education, and other important commitments. What emerges is a compelling picture of low-wage workers—one that illustrates the precarious circumstances of individuals struggling with the economic conditions and institutions that surround them Each chapter also explores the capacity for economic survival from a different angle, with ancillary commentary complementing the ethnographies with perspectives from other fields of study, such as economics. At this moment of governmental retrenchment, ethnography's complex, nonstereotypical portraits of individual people fighting against poverty are especially important. Laboring Below the Line reveals the ambiguities of real lives, the potential for individuals to change in unexpected ways, and the even greater intricacy of the collective life of a community.
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Laboring For Rights
edited by Gerald Hunt
Temple University Press, 1999
How do unions around the world respond to issues raised by sexual minorities? Much as been written on labor's response to issues raised by women and racial minorities, but there has been little work done on labor's engagement with gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and the transgendered. The original essays in this collection attempt to fill that void by bringing together a group of experts who examine labor's response to such issues as benefits for same-sex partners, anti-discrimination language in collective agreements, and education. Speaking from a variety of racial backgrounds, sexual orientations, and political views, the contributors bring their unique personal perspectives and scholarly approaches to this groundbreaking book.

The chapters included in Laboring for Rights give a global vision to the increasingly important subject of equity in the workplace. They offer a much-needed look at labor's involvement with current international workplace conditions from such diverse countries as the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany, Britain, France, the Netherlands, and South Africa, as well as parts of the South Pacific. Some of these countries have strong and progressive labor unions; some, like the U.S., have relatively weak labor organizations. But whatever the context, as these articles demonstrate, there seems to be a growing and in some instances prospering gay/lesbian labor alliance in many parts of the world.

Laboring for Rights is a pioneering text in an important new area of labor study. It will engage readers interested in equality in the workplace, labor and organizational studies, gay and lesbian activism, and international, comparative studies.
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Laboring in the Shadow of Empire
Race, Gender, and Care Work in Portugal
Celeste Vaughan Curington
Rutgers University Press, 2024

Laboring in the Shadow of Empire: Race, Gender and Care Work in Portugal examines the everyday lives of an African descendant care service workforce that labors in an ostensibly “anti-racial” Europe and against the backdrop of the Portuguese colonial empire. While much of the literature on global care work has focused on Asian and Latine migrant care workers, there is comparatively less research that explicitly examines African care workers and their migration histories to Europe. Sociologist Celeste V. Curington focuses on Portugal—a European setting with comparatively liberal policies around family settlement and naturalization for migrants. In this setting, rapid urbanization in the late twentieth century, along with a national push to reconcile work and family, have shaped the growth of paid home care and cleaning service industries. Many researchers focus on informal work settings where immigrant rights are restricted, and many workers are undocumented or without permanent residence status. Curington instead examined workers who have accessed citizenship or permanent residence status and also explores African women’s experiences laboring in care and service industries in the formal market, revealing how deeply colonial and intersectional logics of a racialized and international division of reproductive labor in Portugal render these women “hyper-invisible” and “hyper-visible” as “appropriate” workers in Lisbon.

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Labor's End
How the Promise of Automation Degraded Work
Jason Resnikoff
University of Illinois Press, 2022
Labor's End traces the discourse around automation from its origins in the factory to its wide-ranging implications in political and social life. As Jason Resnikoff shows, the term automation expressed the conviction that industrial progress meant the inevitable abolition of manual labor from industry. But the real substance of the term reflected industry's desire to hide an intensification of human work--and labor's loss of power and protection--behind magnificent machinery and a starry-eyed faith in technological revolution. The rhetorical power of the automation ideology revealed and perpetuated a belief that the idea of freedom was incompatible with the activity of work. From there, political actors ruled out the workplace as a site of politics while some of labor's staunchest allies dismissed sped-up tasks, expanded workloads, and incipient deindustrialization in the name of technological progress.

A forceful intellectual history, Labor's End challenges entrenched assumptions about automation's transformation of the American workplace.

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Labor's Outcasts
Migrant Farmworkers and Unions in North America, 1934-1966
Andrew J. Hazelton
University of Illinois Press, 2022
In the mid-twentieth century, corporations consolidated control over agriculture on the backs of Mexican migrant laborers through a guestworker system called the Bracero Program. The National Agricultural Workers Union (NAWU) attempted to organize these workers but met with utter indifference from the AFL-CIO. Andrew J. Hazelton examines the NAWU's opposition to the Bracero Program against the backdrop of Mexican migration and the transformation of North American agriculture. His analysis details growers’ abuse of the program to undercut organizing efforts, the NAWU's subsequent mobilization of reformers concerned by those abuses, and grower opposition to any restrictions on worker control. Though the union's organizing efforts failed, it nonetheless created effective strategies for pressuring growers and defending workers’ rights. These strategies contributed to the abandonment of the Bracero Program in 1964 and set the stage for victories by the United Farm Workers and other movements in the years to come.
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Labor's Story In The United States
Philip Nicholson
Temple University Press, 2004
In this, the first broad historical overview of labor in the United States in twenty years, Philip Nicholson examines anew the questions, the villains, the heroes, and the issues of work in America. Unlike recent books that have covered labor in the twentieth century, Labor's Story in the United States looks at the broad landscape of labor since before the Revolution. In clear, unpretentious language, Philip Yale Nicholson considers American labor history from the perspective of institutions and people: the rise of unions, the struggles over slavery, wages, and child labor, public and private responses to union organizing. Throughout, the book focuses on the integral relationship between the strength of labor and the growth of democracy, painting a vivid picture of the strength of labor movements and how they helped make the United States what it is today. Labor's Story in the United States will become an indispensable source for scholars and students.
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Labor's Time
Shorter Hours, The Uaw, And The
Jonathan Cutler
Temple University Press, 2004
The movement for a shorter workweek that once defined the labor movement in the United States was largely displaced by the new corporatist structure of organized labor in the post-New Deal era. Labor's Time examines the changes that occurred within organized labor and traces their influence on the decline of the shorter hours movement. Focusing on the internal union politics of the influential United Automobile Workers and Local 600, its chapter at Henry Ford's massive River Rouge factory, Jonathan Cutler demonstrates how an all-but-forgotten interracial movement for a shorter workweek during the 1950s and 1960s became a casualty of an increasingly top-heavy union bureaucracy that lost touch with the desires, fears, and aspirations of rank and file workers and dug its own grave in the process. Jonathan Cutler examines the political context in which the shorter hours movement emerged within Local 600 in the 1940s, then chronicles the attempts by Walter Reuther, the head of the UAW, to suppress it. Cutler also reviews the role the Communist Party played in the controversy. Finally, he documents the UAW response to rank and file pressure for a shorter workweek, and how the local's own organizational flaws allowed Reuther and the national union to wrest control from the dissidents. Fresh and boldly written, Labor's Time recreates a moment when unions—as a movement, not as an amalgam of leaders—could have transformed the landscape of work in the United States.
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Labour and the Challenges of Globalization
What Prospects for Transnational Solidarity?
Andreas Bieler, Ingemar Lindberg and Devan Pillay
Pluto Press, 2008
This book examines the main challenges facing the world labor force and possible responses from trade unions.



The working classes across the world are feeling the effects of globalization and the race to the bottom that it encourages. Core jobs for workers in the developed world are being outsourced to countries where pay and conditions are terrible and union membership is often forbidden. Much of the work of the world economy is now taking place in a burgeoning informal sector, making worldwide organization of labor very difficult.



Case studies from 11 different countries, including China, Germany, Canada and South Africa, illustrate what is happening and show how workers and trade unions can successfully adapt to the neoliberal world.

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Ladies of the Ticker
Women and Wall Street from the Gilded Age to the Great Depression
George Robb
University of Illinois Press, 2017
Long overlooked in histories of finance, women played an essential role in areas such as banking and the stock market during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yet their presence sparked ongoing controversy. Hetty Green’s golden touch brought her millions, but she outraged critics with her rejection of domesticity. Progressives like Victoria Woodhull, meanwhile, saw financial acumen as more important for women than the vote.

George Robb’s pioneering study explores the financial methods, accomplishments, and careers of three generations of women. Plumbing sources from stock brokers’ ledgers to media coverage, Robb reveals the many ways women invested their capital while exploring their differing sources of information, approaches to finance, interactions with markets, and levels of expertise. He also rediscovers the forgotten women bankers, brokers, and speculators who blazed new trails--and sparked public outcries over women’s unsuitability for the predatory rough-and-tumble of market capitalism.

Entertaining and vivid with details, Ladies of the Ticker sheds light on the trailblazers who transformed Wall Street into a place for women’s work.

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Land and the Given Economy
The Hermeneutics and Phenomenology of Dwelling
Todd S. Mei
Northwestern University Press, 2017

Alarming environmental degradation makes ever more urgent the reconciliation of political economy and sustainability. Land and the Given Economy examines how the landed basis of human existence converges with economics, and it offers a persuasive new conception of land that transcends the flawed and inadequate accounts in classical and neoclassical economics.

Todd S. Mei grounds this work in a rigorous review of problematic economic conceptions of land in the work of John Locke, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, Henry George, Alfred Marshall, and Thorstein Veblen.

Mei then draws on the thought of Martin Heidegger to posit a philosophical clarification of the meaning of land—its ontological nature. He argues that central to rethinking land is recognizing its unique manner of being, described as its "givenness." Concluding with a discussion of ground rent, Mei reflects on specific strategies for incorporating the philosophical account of land into contemporary economic policies.

Revivifying economic frameworks that fail to resolve the impasse between economic development and sustainability, Land and the Given Economy offers much of interest to scholars and readers of philosophy, environmentalism, and the full spectrum of political economy.

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Land Filled with Flies
A Political Economy of the Kalahari
Edwin N. Wilmsen
University of Chicago Press, 1989
"The image of a pristine isolation has been almost as common in research on foragers as in the popular media. Land filled with Flies is a sustanined argument against such views. Wilmsen marshals an enormous quantity of historical, archival, archeological, ethnographic, and survey data on the Kalahari Zhu to show how far from the reality these images are, how they have their own historical provenance, how they have been analytically distorting, and how they have proven politically pernicious for living groups like the Zhu."—Pauline Peters, Science

"[A] major work. . . . Anthropologists will, and should, use Wilmsen's meticulously detailed study to revise their early lectures in the introductory course, and no future study of African 'foragers' should ignore it."—Parker Shipton, American Anthropologist

"An impressive book. . . . The reader need only read the first few pages to judge both the quality and ambitiousness of the work. . . . Essential reading."—David R. Penna, Africa Today
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Land for the People
The State and Agrarian Conflict in Indonesia
Anton Lucas
Ohio University Press, 2013

Half of Indonesia’s massive population still lives on farms, and for these tens of millions of people the revolutionary promise of land reform remains largely unfulfilled. The Basic Agrarian Law, enacted in the wake of the Indonesian revolution, was supposed to provide access to land and equitable returns for peasant farmers. But fifty years later, the law’s objectives of social justice have not been achieved.

Land for the People provides a comprehensive look at land conflict and agrarian reform throughout Indonesia’s recent history, from the roots of land conflicts in the prerevolutionary period and the Sukarno and Suharto regimes, to the present day, in which democratization is creating new contexts for people’s claims to the land. Drawing on studies from across Indonesia’s diverse landscape, the contributors examine some of the most significant issues and events affecting land rights, including shifts in policy from the early postrevolutionary period to the New Order; the Land Administration Project that formed the core of land policy during the late New Order period; a long-running and representative dispute over a golf course in West Java that pitted numerous local farmers against the government and local elites; Suharto’s notorious “million hectare” project that resulted in loss of access to land and resources for numerous indigenous farmers in Kalimantan; and the struggle by Bandung’s urban poor to be treated equitably in the context of commercial land development. Together, these essays provide a critical resource for understanding one of Indonesia’s most pressing and most influential issues.

Contributors: Afrizal, Dianto Bachriadi, Anton Lucas, John McCarthy, John Mansford Prior, Gustaaf Reerink, Carol Warren, and Gunawan Wiradi.

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Land, Labor, and Capital in Modern Yucatan
Essays in Regional History and Political Economy
Jeffrey T. Brannon
University of Alabama Press, 1991

Owing to Yucatan’s relative isolation, many assume that the history and economy of the peninsula have evolved in a distinctive way, apart from the central government in Mexico City and insulated from world social and economic factors. The essays in this volume suggest that this has not been the case: the process of development in Yucatan has been linked firmly to national and global forces of change over the past two centuries. The essays are by U.S., Mexican, Canadian, and Belizean social scientists representing both well-established and younger scholars. The result is a perspective on Yucatan’s historical development that is at once international, interdisciplinary, and intergenerational.

    In this volume, all of the contributors are genuinely comfortable with the theories and approaches of several disciplines—economics, history, and anthropology, and sociology. All have used largely untapped, primary, archival sources, and the result is a fascinating offering of new information.
[more]

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Land of Bright Promise
Advertising the Texas Panhandle and South Plains, 1870-1917
By Jan Blodgett
University of Texas Press, 1988

“It shall be the chosen land, perpetual sunshine shall kiss its trees and vines, and, being storied in luscious fruits and compressed into ruddy wine, will be sent to the four points of the compass to gladden the hearts of all mankind . . . They will breathe the pure and bracing air, bask in the healing sunshine, drink the invigorating wine, and eat the life prolonging fruit.” —from a brochure advertising the Staked Plains from the Missouri Pacific Railway Company, 1889

Land of Bright Promise is a fascinating exploration of the multitude of land promotions and types of advertising that attracted more than 175,000 settlers to the Panhandle–South Plains area of Texas from the late years of the nineteenth century to the early years of the twentieth. Shunned by settlers for decades because of its popular but forbidding image as a desert filled with desperados, savage Indians, and solitary ranchers, the region was seen as an agricultural and cultural wasteland. The territory, consequently, was among the last to be settled in the United States.

But from 1890 to 1917, land companies and agents competed to attract new settlers to the plains. To this end, the combined efforts of local residents, ranchers and landowners, railroads, and professional real estate agents were utilized. Through brochures, lectures, articles, letters, fairs, and excursion trips, midwestern farmers were encouraged to find new homes on what was once feared as the “Great American Desert.” And successful indeed were these efforts: from 13,787 in 1890, the population grew to 193,371 in 1920, with a corresponding increase in the amount of farms and farm acreage.

The book looks at the imagination, enthusiasm, and determination of land promoters as they approached their task, including their special advertisements and displays to show the potential of the area. Treating the important roles of the cattlemen, the railroads, the professional land companies, and local boosters, Land of Bright Promise also focuses on the intentions and expectations of the settlers themselves. Of special interest are the fifteen historical photographs and reproductions of promotional pieces from the era used to spur the land boom. What emerges is an engaging look at a critical period in the development of the Texas Panhandle and an overview of the shift from cattle to agriculture as the primary industry in the area.

[more]

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A Land of Milk and Butter
How Elites Created the Modern Danish Dairy Industry
Markus Lampe and Paul Sharp
University of Chicago Press, 2018
How and why does Denmark have one of the richest, most equal, and happiest societies in the world today? Historians have often pointed to developments from the late nineteenth century, when small peasant farmers worked together through agricultural cooperatives, whose exports of butter and bacon rapidly gained a strong foothold on the British market.

This book presents a radical retelling of this story, placing (largely German-speaking) landed elites—rather than the Danish peasantry—at center stage. After acquiring estates in Denmark, these elites imported and adapted new practices from outside the kingdom, thus embarking on an ambitious program of agricultural reform and sparking a chain of events that eventually led to the emergence of Denmark’s famous peasant cooperatives in 1882. A Land of Milk and Butter presents a new interpretation of the origin of these cooperatives with striking implications for developing countries today.
 
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The Land of Too Much
American Abundance and the Paradox of Poverty
Monica Prasad
Harvard University Press, 2012

The Land of Too Much presents a simple but powerful hypothesis that addresses three questions: Why does the United States have more poverty than any other developed country? Why did it experience an attack on state intervention starting in the 1980s, known today as the neoliberal revolution? And why did it recently suffer the greatest economic meltdown in seventy-five years?

Although the United States is often considered a liberal, laissez-faire state, Monica Prasad marshals convincing evidence to the contrary. Indeed, she argues that a strong tradition of government intervention undermined the development of a European-style welfare state. The demand-side theory of comparative political economy she develops here explains how and why this happened. Her argument begins in the late nineteenth century, when America’s explosive economic growth overwhelmed world markets, causing price declines everywhere. While European countries adopted protectionist policies in response, in the United States lower prices spurred an agrarian movement that rearranged the political landscape. The federal government instituted progressive taxation and a series of strict financial regulations that ironically resulted in more freely available credit. As European countries developed growth models focused on investment and exports, the United States developed a growth model based on consumption.

These large-scale interventions led to economic growth that met citizen needs through private credit rather than through social welfare policies. Among the outcomes have been higher poverty, a backlash against taxation and regulation, and a housing bubble fueled by “mortgage Keynesianism.” This book will launch a thousand debates.

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The Land Question and the Irish Economy, 1870-1903
Barbara Lewis Solow
Harvard University Press, 1971
Here is a perceptive and convincing reinterpretation of economic development of Ireland after the Great Famine. Barbara Lewis Solow explodes the myth that Ireland’s economic difficulties were caused by defects in the land tenure system. In fact, she argues, the Irish economy made impressive progress in the decades between the famine of 1845 and the late 1870s. She investigates the sources and patterns of this progress, and, basing her conclusions on new quantitative estimates of significant economic variables, she reveals that there were determinants of Irish economic development much more important than the land system.
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Landlord and Labor in Late Imperial China
Case Studies from Shandong
Endymion Wilkinson
Harvard University Press, 1978

This well-documented study discusses the social and economic changes in Shandong province before the influence of the West was felt at the end of the nineteenth century. The authors show that by the sixteenth century, commercial and handicraft towns linked to national and local markets had already begun to emerge. Urban growth was made possible by increased agricultural production, which in turn stimulated specialization and increased commercialization in the agricultural sector. Another important change in rural society at this time was the emergence of a new stratum of wealthy landlords who managed their estates with wage labor. Case studies of managerial landlords, who form the main focus of this study, are included as well as generalizations drawn from questionnaire materials.

Jing Su and Luo Lun wrote this book while they were young researchers at Shandong University in the late 1950s, using data they had gathered in the culturally relaxed period of the Hundred Flowers. In his Introduction, Endymion Wilkinson analyzes the authors’ thesis and concludes that their Leninist model is inapplicable to premodern Chinese history. The value of this study lies not so much in its conclusion that even without the impact of Western imperialism China would of itself have developed a capitalist society, but rather in the wealth of data the authors present, in this first in-depth study of a relatively advanced region in north China.

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The Landrum-Griffin Act and Union Democracy
Doris B. McLaughlin and Anita L.W. Schoomaker
University of Michigan Press, 1979
The Landrum-Griffin Act and Union Democracy is the result of a two-year study conducted by the authors that involved well over one hundred in-depth interviews with union officers, labor lawyers, dissident union members and their advocates, academicians, and U.S. Department of Labor personnel charged with enforcing the Act, as well as with a few management representatives. In addition, rank-and-file members' knowledge of the Act and their assessment of their ability to exercise the rights accorded them under the Act were studied by means of the inclusion of a set of questions in three separate surveys conducted by the University of Michigan’s Survey Research Center—two nationwide and one involving the greater Detroit Metropolitan area. Participation in the three surveys enabled the authors to reach an additional 677 union members who would have been difficult to contact by any other means.
[more]

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Landscapes of Accumulation
Real Estate and the Neoliberal Imagination in Contemporary India
Llerena Guiu Searle
University of Chicago Press, 2016
Over the past few decades, India has experienced a sudden and spectacular urban transformation. Gleaming business complexes encroach on fields and villages. Giant condominium communities offer gated security, indoor gyms, and pristine pools. Spacious, air-conditioned malls have sprung up alongside open-air markets.
 
In Landscapes of Accumulation, Llerena Guiu Searle examines India’s booming developments and offers a nuanced ethnographic treatment of late capitalism. India’s land, she shows, is rapidly transforming from a site of agricultural and industrial production to an international financial resource. Drawing on intensive fieldwork with investors, developers, real estate agents, and others, Searle documents the new private sector partnerships and practices that are transforming India’s built environment, as well as widely shared stories of growth and development that themselves create self-fulfilling prophecies of success. As a result, India’s cities are becoming ever more inaccessible to the country’s poor. Landscapes of Accumulation will be a welcome contribution to the international study of neoliberalism, finance, and urban development and will be of particular interest to those studying rapid—and perhaps unsustainable—development across the Global South.
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Language at Work
Analyzing Communication Breakdown in the Workplace to Inform Systems Design
Keith Devlin and Duska Rosenberg
CSLI, 1996
People are very creative in their use of language. This observation was made convincingly by Chomsky in the 1950s and is generally accepted in the scientific communities concerned with the study of language. Computers, on the other hand, are neither creative, flexible, nor adaptable. This is in spite of the fact that their ability to process language is based largely on the grammars developed by linguists and computer scientists. Thus, there is a mismatch between the observed human creativity and our ability as theorists to explain it. Language at Work examines grammars and other descriptions of language by combining the scientific and the practical. The scientific motivation is to unite distinct intellectual traditions, mathematics and descriptive social science, which have tried to provide an adequate explanation of language and its use on their own to no avail. This volume argues that Situation Theory, a theory of information couched in mathematics, has provided a uniform framework for the investigation of the creative aspects of language use. The application of Situation Theory in the study of language use in everyday communication to improve human/computer interaction is explored and espoused.
[more]

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Las Vegas in Singapore
Violence, Progress and the Crisis of Nationalist Modernity
Lee Kah-Wee
National University of Singapore Press, 2018
Las Vegas in Singapore looks at the collision of the histories of Singapore and Las Vegas in the form of Marina Bay Sands, one of Singapore’s two integrated resorts.

The first history begins in colonial Singapore in the 1880s, when British administrators revised gambling laws in response to the political threat posed by Chinese-run gambling syndicates. Following the tracks of these punitive laws and practices, the book moves into the 1960s when the newly independent city-state created a national lottery while criminalizing both organized and petty gambling in the name of nation-building. The second history shifts the focus to corporate Las Vegas in the 1950s when digital technology and corporate management practices found each other on the casino floor. Tracing the emergence of the specialist casino designer, the book reveals how casino development evolved into a highly rationalized spatial template designed to maximize profits. Today an iconic landmark of Singapore, Marina Bay Sands is also an artifact of these two histories, an attempt by Singapore to normalize what was once criminalized in its nationalist history.

Lee Kah-Wee argues that the historical project of the control of vice is also about the control of space and capital. The result is an uneven landscape where the legal and moral status of gambling is contingent on where it is located. As the current wave of casino expansion spreads across Asia, he warns that these developments should not be seen as liberalization but instead as a continuation of the project of concentrating power by modern states and corporations.
[more]

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Last Paper Standing
A Century of Competition between the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News
Ken J. Ward
University Press of Colorado, 2023
Last Paper Standing chronicles the history of competition between the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News—from both newspapers’ origins to their joint operating agreement in 2001 to the death of the News in 2009—to tell a broader story about the decline of newspaper readership in the United States. The papers fought for dominance in the lucrative Denver newspaper market for more than a century, enduring vigorous competition in pursuit of monopoly control. 
 
This frequently sensational, sometimes outlandish, and occasionally bloody battle spanned numerous eras of journalism, embodying the rise and fall of the newspaper industry during the twentieth century in the lead up to the fall of American newspapering. Drawing on manuscript collections scattered across the United States as well as oral histories with executives, managers, and journalists from the papers, Ken J. Ward investigates the strategies employed in their competition with one another and against other challenges, such as widespread economic uncertainty and the deterioration of the newspaper industry. He follows this competition through the death of the Rocky Mountain News in 2009, which ended the country’s last great newspaper war and marked the close of the golden age of Denver journalism.
 
Fake news runs rampant in the absence of high-quality news sources like the News and the Post of the past. Neither canonizing nor vilifying key characters, Last Paper Standing offers insight into the historical context that led these papers’ managers to their changing strategies over time. It is of interest to media and business historians, as well as anyone interested in the general history of journalism, Denver, and Colorado.
 
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Last Resort
The Financial Crisis and the Future of Bailouts
Eric A. Posner
University of Chicago Press, 2018
The bailouts during the recent financial crisis enraged the public. They felt unfair—and counterproductive: people who take risks must be allowed to fail. If we reward firms that make irresponsible investments, costing taxpayers billions of dollars, aren’t we encouraging them to continue to act irresponsibly, setting the stage for future crises? And beyond the ethics of it was the question of whether the government even had the authority to bail out failing firms like Bear Stearns and AIG.
           
The answer, according to Eric A. Posner, is no. The federal government freely and frequently violated the law with the bailouts—but it did so in the public interest. An understandable lack of sympathy toward Wall Street has obscured the fact that bailouts have happened throughout economic history and are unavoidable in any modern, market-based economy. And they’re actually good. Contrary to popular belief, the financial system cannot operate properly unless the government stands ready to bail out banks and other firms. During the recent crisis, Posner agues, the law didn’t give federal agencies sufficient power to rescue the financial system. The legal constraints were damaging, but harm was limited because the agencies—with a few exceptions—violated or improvised elaborate evasions of the law. Yet the agencies also abused their power. If illegal actions were what it took to advance the public interest, Posner argues, we ought to change the law, but we need to do so in a way that also prevents agencies from misusing their authority. In the aftermath of the crisis, confusion about what agencies did do, should have done, and were allowed to do, has prevented a clear and realistic assessment and may hamper our response to future crises.

Taking up the common objections raised by both right and left, Posner argues that future bailouts will occur. Acknowledging that inevitability, we can and must look ahead and carefully assess our policy options before we need them.
[more]

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Last Rights
Revisiting *Four Theories of the Press*
Edited by John C. Nerone
University of Illinois Press, 1995

Though subjected to years of criticism, Four Theories of the Press remains a core text in communications. Its influence on the field, impact on generations of journalists, and ability to spark debate on why the press acts as it does continue to make it an oft-quoted source and classroom staple. 

In Last Rights, eight communications scholars critique and expand on the classic text. The authors argue that Four Theories spoke to and for a world beset by a cold war ended long ago. At the same time, they praise the book for offering an alternative view of the press and society and as a useful tool for helping scholars and citizens alike grapple with contradictions in classical liberalism. They also raise important questions about the Internet and other major changes in communications systems and society since the original publication of Four Theories

Contributors: William E. Berry, Sandra Braman, Clifford Christians, Thomas G. Guback, Steven J. Helle, Louis W. Liebovich, John C. Nerone, and Kim B. Rotzoll

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Lasting Legacy to the Carolinas
The Duke Endowment, 1924–1994
Robert F. Durden
Duke University Press, 1998
Like the majority of the founders of large philanthropic foundations in the United States, James B. Duke assumed that the Duke Endowment, which he established in 1924, would continue its charitable activity forever. Lasting Legacy to the Carolinas is an examination of the history of this foundation and the ways in which it has—and has not—followed Duke’s original design.

In this volume, Robert F. Durden explores how the propriety of linking together a tax-free foundation and an investor-owned, profit-seeking business like the Duke Power Company has significantly changed over the course of the century. Explaining the implications of the Tax Reform Act of 1969 for J. B. Duke’s dream, Durden shows how the philanthropist’s plan to have the Duke Endowment virtually own and ultimately control Duke Power (which, in turn, would supply most of the Endowment’s income) dissolved after the death of daughter Doris Duke in 1993, when the trustees of the Endowment finally had the unanimous votes needed to sever that tie. Although the Endowment’s philanthropic projects—higher education (including Duke University), hospitals and health care, orphan and child care in both North and South Carolina, and the rural Methodist church in North Carolina—continue to be served, this study explains the impact of a century of political and social change on one man’s innovative charitable intentions. It is also a testimony to the many staff members and trustees who have invested their own time and creative energies into further benefiting these causes, despite decades of inevitable challenges to the Endowment.

This third volume of Durden’s trilogy relating to the Dukes of Durham will inform not only those interested in the continuing legacy of this remarkable family but also those involved with philanthropic boards, charitable endowments, medical care, child-care institutions, the rural church, and higher education.

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Late Ch'ing Finance
Hu Kuang-yung as an Innovator
C. John Stanley
Harvard University Press

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Latin America and the World Economy since 1800
John H. Coatsworth
Harvard University Press

The fifteen essays in this volume apply the methods of the new economic history to the history of the Latin American economies since 1800. The authors combine the historian's sensitivity to context and contingency with modern or "neoclassical" economic theory and quantitative methods.

The essays shed new light on the economic history of all the major economies from Mexico and Cuba to Brazil and Argentina. Some focus on comparing macroeconomic policies and performance, others analyze key sectors such as foreign trade, finance, transportation, and industry, and still others focus on the impact of property rights, government regulation, and political upheaval.

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Latin American Macroeconomic Reforms
The Second Stage
Edited by José Antonio González, Vittorio Corbo, Anne O. Krueger, and Aaron Tornell
University of Chicago Press, 2003
Hidden behind a number of economic crises in the mid- to late 1990s-including Argentina's headline-grabbing monetary and political upheaval-is that fact that Latin American economies have, generally speaking, improved dramatically in recent years. Their success has been due, in large part, to macroeconomic reforms, and this book brings together prominent economists and policymakers to assess a decade of such policy shifts, highlighting both the many success stories and the areas in which further work is needed. Contributors offer both case studies of individual countries and regional overviews, covering monetary, financial, and fiscal policy.

Contributors also work to identify future concerns and erect clear signposts for future reforms. For instance, now that inflation rates have been stabilized, one suggested "second stage" monetary reform would be to focus on reducing rates from high to low single digits. Financial sector reforms, it is suggested, should center on improving regulation and supervision. And, contributors argue, since fiscal stability has already been achieved in most countries, new fiscal reforms need to concentrate on institutionalizing fiscal discipline, improving the efficiency and equity of tax collection, and modifying institutional arrangements to deal with increasingly decentralized federal systems.

The analysis and commentary in this volume-authored not only by academic observers but by key Latin American policymakers with decades of firsthand experience-will prove important to anyone with an interest in the future of Latin American's continuing economic development and reform.

Contributors to this volume:

José Antonio González, Stanford University
Anne O. Krueger, International Monetary Fund
Vittorio Corbo, Pontifical Catholic University, Chile
Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel, Central Bank of Chile
Alejandro Werner, Bank of Mexico
Márcio G. P. Garcia, Pontifical Catholic University, Rio
Tatiana Didier, World Bank
Gustavo H. B. Franco, former president, Central Bank of Brazil
Francisco Gil Díaz, Minister of the Treasury, Mexico
Roberto Zahler, former governor, Central Bank of Chile
Ricardo J. Caballero, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Philip L. Brock, University of Washington
Stephen Haber, Stanford University
Pablo E. Guidotti, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires
Vito Tanzi, International Monetary Fund
Enrique Dávila, Ministry of Finance, Mexico
Santiago Levy, Mexican Social Security Institute
Ricardo Fenochietto, private consultant, Buenos Aires
Rogério L. F. Werneck, Pontifical Catholic University, Rio
Carola Pessino, Universidad Torcuato di Tella, Buenos Aires
Michael Michaely, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
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Latinas on the Line
Invisible Information Workers in Telecommunications
Melissa Villa-Nicholas
Rutgers University Press, 2022
Latinas on the Line provides a compelling analysis and historical and theoretical grounding of the oral histories, never before seen, of Latina information workers in the Bell System from their entrance in 1973 to their retirements by 2015. Author Melissa Villa-Nicholas demonstrates the importance of Latinas of the field of telecommunications through their own words and uses supporting archival research to provide an overview of how Latinas engage and remember a critical analysis of their work place, information technologies, and the larger globalized economy and shifting borderlands through their intersectional identities as information workers. The book offers a rich and engaging portrait of the critical history of Latinas in telecommunications, from their manual to automated to digitized labor.

 
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Latin@s' Presence in the Food Industry
Changing How We Think about Food
Meredith E. Abarca
University of Arkansas Press, 2016

Latin@s’ Presence in the Food Industry takes the holistic culinary approach of bringing together multidisciplinary criticism to explore the diverse, and not always readily apparent, ways that Latin@s relate to food and the food industry.

The networks Latin@s create, the types of identities they fashion through food, and their relationship to the US food industry are analyzed to understand Latin@s as active creators of food-based communities, as distinctive cultural representations, and as professionals. This vibrant new collection acknowledges issues of labor conditions, economic politics, and immigration laws—structural vulnerabilities that certainly cannot be ignored—and strives to understand more fully the active and conscious ways that Latina@s create spaces to maneuver global and local food systems.

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The Launch Lens
20 Questions Every Entrepreneur Should Ask
Jim Price
Michigan Publishing Services, 2018

Too often, innovative individuals and teams come up with new-business ideas only to hit the proverbial wall, become discouraged, and fail to follow through. How can you get more traction with your ideas and see them through to fruition? As with so many things in life, half the battle is knowing what questions to ask. In this book, serial entrepreneur and business professor Jim Price illustrates a simple, yet powerful framework known as the Launch Lens. Price’s method leads innovators through a structured process to clearly define and communicate their concept, distinguish the good ideas from the not-so-good, and lay the cornerstones of the startup planning process.

The Launch Lens is comprised of twenty critical questions or Focal Points, organized according the classic new-business planning categories: problem, solution, market, business model, marketing and sales, finance, capital, and team. The book leads readers through explanations of how to address each question, illustrated by useful examples, tips, and red flags. Already in active use by thousands of innovators – ranging from aspiring entrepreneurs to early-stage startup teams and venture investors, from incubators and accelerators to intrapreneurs within established corporations and non-profits – The Launch Lens can help you bring your new-business concepts into clear focus.

[more]

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Law & Capitalism
What Corporate Crises Reveal about Legal Systems and Economic Development around the World
Curtis J. Milhaupt and Katharina Pistor
University of Chicago Press, 2008
Recent high-profile corporate scandals—such as those involving Enron in the United States, Yukos in Russia, and Livedoor in Japan—demonstrate challenges to legal regulation of business practices in capitalist economies. Setting forth a new analytic framework for understanding these problems, Law and Capitalism examines such contemporary corporate governance crises in six countries, to shed light on the interaction of legal systems and economic change. This provocative book debunks the simplistic view of law’s instrumental function for financial market development and economic growth.
            Using comparative case studies that address the United States, China, Germany, Japan, Korea, and Russia, Curtis J. Milhaupt and Katharina Pistor argue that a disparate blend of legal and nonlegal mechanisms have supported economic growth around the world. Their groundbreaking findings show that law and markets evolve together in a “rolling relationship,” and legal systems, including those of the most successful economies, therefore differ significantly in their organizational characteristics. Innovative and insightful, Law and Capitalism will change the way lawyers, economists, policy makers, and business leaders think about legal regulation in an increasingly global market for capital and corporate governance.
 
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Law and Happiness
Edited by Eric A. Posner and Cass R. Sunstein
University of Chicago Press, 2010

Since the earliest days of philosophy, thinkers have debated the meaning of the term happiness and the nature of the good life. But it is only in recent years that the study of happiness—or “hedonics”—has developed into a formal field of inquiry, cutting across a broad range of disciplines and offering insights into a variety of crucial questions of law and public policy.

Law and Happiness
brings together the best and most influential thinkers in the field to explore the question of what makes up happiness—and what factors can be demonstrated to increase or decrease it. Martha Nussbaum offers an account of the way that hedonics can productively be applied to psychology, Cass R. Sunstein considers the unexpected relationship between happiness and health problems, Matthew Adler and Eric A. Posner view hedonics through the lens of cost-benefit analysis, David A. Weisbach considers the relationship between happiness and taxation, and Mark A. Cohen examines the role crime—and fear of crime—can play in people’s assessment of their happiness, and much more.

The result is a kaleidoscopic overview of this increasingly prominent field, offering surprising new perspectives and incisive analyses that will have profound implications on public policy.

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Law and Macroeconomics
Legal Remedies to Recessions
Yair Listokin
Harvard University Press, 2019

A distinguished Yale economist and legal scholar’s argument that law, of all things, has the potential to rescue us from the next economic crisis.

After the economic crisis of 2008, private-sector spending took nearly a decade to recover. Yair Listokin thinks we can respond more quickly to the next meltdown by reviving and refashioning a policy approach whose proven success is too rarely acknowledged. Harking back to New Deal regulatory agencies, Listokin proposes that we take seriously law’s ability to function as a macroeconomic tool, capable of stimulating demand when needed and relieving demand when it threatens to overheat economies.

Listokin makes his case by looking at both positive and cautionary examples, going back to the New Deal and including the Keystone Pipeline, the constitutionally fraught bond-buying program unveiled by the European Central Bank at the nadir of the Eurozone crisis, the ongoing Greek crisis, and the experience of U.S. price controls in the 1970s. History has taught us that law is an unwieldy instrument of macroeconomic policy, but Listokin argues that under certain conditions it offers a vital alternative to the monetary and fiscal policy tools that stretch the legitimacy of technocratic central banks near their breaking point while leaving the rest of us waiting and wallowing.

[more]

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Law and Public Choice
A Critical Introduction
Philip P. Frickey and Daniel A. Farber
University of Chicago Press, 1991
In Law and Public Choice, Daniel Farber and Philip Frickey present a remarkably rich
and accessible introduction to the driving principles of public choice. In this, the first
systematic look at the implications of social choice for legal doctrine, Farber and Frickey
carefully review both the empirical and theoretical literature about interest group influence and provide a nonmathematical introduction to formal models of legislative action. Ideal for course use, this volume offers a balanced and perceptive analysis and critique of an approach which, within limits, can illuminate the dynamics of government decision-making.

Law and Public Choice is a most valuable contribution to the burgeoning literature. It
should be of great interest to lawyers, political scientists, and all others interested in issues at the intersection of government and law.”—Cass R. Sunstein, University of Chicago Law
School
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Law and Social Norms
Eric A. Posner
Harvard University Press, 2002

What is the role of law in a society in which order is maintained mostly through social norms, trust, and nonlegal sanctions? Eric Posner argues that social norms are sometimes desirable yet sometimes odious, and that the law is critical to enhancing good social norms and undermining bad ones. But he also argues that the proper regulation of social norms is a delicate and complex task, and that current understanding of social norms is inadequate for guiding judges and lawmakers. What is needed, and what this book offers, is a model of the relationship between law and social norms. The model shows that people's concern with establishing cooperative relationships leads them to engage in certain kinds of imitative behavior. The resulting behavioral patterns are called social norms.

Posner applies the model to several areas of law that involve the regulation of social norms, including laws governing gift-giving and nonprofit organizations; family law; criminal law; laws governing speech, voting, and discrimination; and contract law. Among the engaging questions posed are: Would the legalization of gay marriage harm traditional married couples? Is it beneficial to shame criminals? Why should the law reward those who make charitable contributions? Would people vote more if non-voters were penalized? The author approaches these questions using the tools of game theory, but his arguments are simply stated and make no technical demands on the reader.

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Law and the Balance of Power
The Automobile Manufacturers and their Dealers
Stewart Macaulay
Russell Sage Foundation, 1966
Stewart Macaulay teaches contracts at the University of Wisconsin Law School and is interested in the part the legal system plays in implementing, regulating, and hindering economic relationships, and how it does these things. This book is a descriptive analysis of organizational change that has resulted from automobile dealers' attempts to find a legal remedy for what they consider unfair practices of the manufacturers. It advances our understanding of the limitations and the positive functions of formal rules in the regulation of human conduct, and shows how informal procedures can develop as a result of pressure for changes in the formal rules.
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Law and the Economy in a Young Democracy
India 1947 and Beyond
Tirthankar Roy and Anand V. Swamy
University of Chicago Press, 2021
An essential history of India's economic growth since 1947, including the legal reforms that have shaped the country in the shadow of colonial rule.

Economists have long lamented how the inefficiency of India's legal system undermines the country’s economic capacity. How has this come to be? The prevailing explanation is that the postcolonial legal system is understaffed and under-resourced, making adjudication and contract enforcement slow and costly.

Taking this as given, Law and the Economy in a Young Democracy examines the contents and historical antecedents of these laws, including how they have stifled economic development. Economists Roy and Swamy argue that legal evolution in independent India has been shaped by three factors: the desire to reduce inequality and poverty; the suspicion that market activity, both domestic and international, can be detrimental to these goals; and the strengthening of Indian democracy over time, giving voice to a growing fraction of society, including the poor.

Weaving the story of India's heralded economic transformation with its social and political history, Roy and Swamy show how inadequate legal infrastructure has been a key impediment to the country's economic growth during the last century. A stirring and authoritative history of a nation rife with contradictions, Law and the Economy in a Young Democracy is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand India's current crossroads—and the factors that may keep its dreams unrealized.
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Law and the Economy in Colonial India
Tirthankar Roy and Anand V. Swamy
University of Chicago Press, 2021
Since the economic reforms of the 1990s, India’s economy has grown rapidly. To sustain growth and foreign investment over the long run requires a well-developed legal infrastructure for conducting business, including cheap and reliable contract enforcement and secure property rights. But it’s widely acknowledged that India’s legal infrastructure is in urgent need of reform, plagued by problems, including slow enforcement of contracts and land laws that differ from state to state. How has this situation arisen, and what can boost business confidence and encourage long-run economic growth?
           
Tirthankar Roy and Anand V. Swamy trace the beginnings of the current Indian legal system to the years of British colonial rule. They show how India inherited an elaborate legal system from the British colonial administration, which incorporated elements from both British Common Law and indigenous institutions. In the case of property law, especially as it applied to agricultural land, indigenous laws and local political expediency were more influential in law-making than concepts borrowed from European legal theory. Conversely, with commercial law, there was considerable borrowing from Europe. In all cases, the British struggled with limited capacity to enforce their laws and an insufficient knowledge of the enormous diversity and differentiation within Indian society. A disorderly body of laws, not conducive to production and trade, evolved over time. Roy and Swamy’s careful analysis not only sheds new light on the development of legal institutions in India, but also offers insights for India and other emerging countries through a look at what fosters the types of institutions that are key to economic growth.
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Law and Transaction Costs in the Ancient Economy
Dennis P. Kehoe, David M. Ratzan, and Uri Yiftach, editors
University of Michigan Press, 2015
Transaction costs (TC) are the “friction” in an economic system, and their analysis is vital to understanding institutional design and economic performance. Law and Transaction Costs in the Ancient Economy is the first volume to collect specific studies from a transaction cost perspective. The volume offers models of this new way of looking at ancient evidence, and suggests ways in which traditional subject areas might inform problems in contemporary economics and legal studies.

After the editors’ methodological introduction, the contributors investigate the roles and effects of transaction costs in fourth-century Athens, Ptolemaic Egypt, the Roman Empire, and late antiquity, on the basis of legal texts, papyri, and inscriptions. Collected here are some of the leading voices on TC analysis in ancient history, as well as established scholars, including several who do not usually publish in English: Alain Bresson, Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci, Rudolf Haensch, Dennis Kehoe, François Lerouxel, J. G. Manning, Brian Muhs, Josiah Ober, David M. Ratzan, Gerhard Thür, and Uri Yiftach.

This volume will speak to those who identify with traditional subject areas, like epigraphy or Greek law, and will also demonstrate the value of experimenting with this new way of looking at ancient evidence.
 
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Law, Legislation and Liberty, Volume 1
Rules and Order
F. A. Hayek
University of Chicago Press, 1978
This volume represents the first section of F. A. Hayek's comprehensive three-part study of the relations between law and liberty. Rules and Order constructs the framework necessary for a critical analysis of prevailing theories of justice and of the conditions which a constitution securing personal liberty would have to satisfy.
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Law, Legislation, and Liberty, Volume 19
F. A. Hayek
University of Chicago Press, 2022
A new edition of F. A. Hayek’s three-part opus Law, Legislation, and Liberty, collated in a single volume
In this critical entry in the University of Chicago’s Collected Works of F. A. Hayek series, political philosopher Jeremy Shearmur collates Hayek’s three-part study of law and liberty and places Hayek’s writings in careful historical context. Incisive and unrestrained, Law, Legislation, and Liberty is Hayek at his late-life best, making it essential reading for understanding the philosopher’s politics and worldview. 

These three volumes constitute a scaling up of the framework offered in Hayek’s famed The Road to Serfdom. Volume 1, Rules and Order, espouses the virtues of classical liberalism; Volume 2, The Mirage of Social Justice, examines the societal forces that undermine liberalism and, with it, liberalism’s capacity to induce “spontaneous order”; and Volume 3, The Political Order of a Free People, proposes alternatives and interventions against emerging anti-liberal movements, including a rule of law that resides in stasis with personal freedom. 

Shearmur’s treatment of this challenging work—including an immersive new introduction, a conversion of Hayek’s copious endnotes to footnotes, corrections to Hayek’s references and quotations, and the provision of translations to material that Hayek cited only in languages other than English—lends it new importance and accessibility. Rendered anew for the next generations of scholars, this revision of Hayek’s Law, Legislation, and Liberty is sure to become the standard.
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Law, Legislation and Liberty, Volume 2
The Mirage of Social Justice
F. A. Hayek
University of Chicago Press, 1977
F. A. Hayek made many valuable contributions to the field of economics as well as to the disciplines of philosophy and politics. This volume represents the second of Hayek's comprehensive three-part study of the relations between law and liberty. Here, Hayek expounds his conviction that he continued unexamined pursuit of "social justice" will contribute to the erosion of personal liberties and encourage the advent of totalitarianism.
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Law, Legislation and Liberty, Volume 3
The Political Order of a Free People
F. A. Hayek
University of Chicago Press, 1979
Incisive, straightforward, and eloquent, this third and concluding volume of F. A. Hayek's comprehensive assessment of the basic political principles which order and sustain free societies contains the clearest and most uncompromising exposition of the political philosophy of one of the world's foremost economists.
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Laws of Creation
Property Rights in the World of Ideas
Ronald A. Cass and Keith N. Hylton
Harvard University Press, 2012

While innovative ideas and creative works increasingly drive economic success, the historic approach to encouraging innovation and creativity by granting property rights has come under attack by a growing number of legal theorists and technologists. In Laws of Creation, Ronald Cass and Keith Hylton take on these critics with a vigorous defense of intellectual property law. The authors look closely at the IP doctrines that have been developed over many years in patent, copyright, trademark, and trade secret law. In each area, legislatures and courts have weighed the benefits that come from preserving incentives to innovate against the costs of granting innovators a degree of control over specific markets. Over time, the authors show, a set of rules has emerged that supports wealth-creating innovation while generally avoiding overly expansive, growth-retarding licensing regimes.

These rules are now under pressure from detractors who claim that changing technology undermines the case for intellectual property rights. But Cass and Hylton explain how technological advances only strengthen that case. In their view, the easier it becomes to copy innovations, the harder to detect copies and to stop copying, the greater the disincentive to invest time and money in inventions and creative works. The authors argue convincingly that intellectual property laws help create a society that is wealthier and inspires more innovation than those of alternative legal systems. Ignoring the social value of intellectual property rights and making what others create and nurture “free” would be a costly mistake indeed.

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Lawsuits in a Market Economy
The Evolution of Civil Litigation
Stephen C. Yeazell
University of Chicago Press, 2018
Some describe civil litigation as little more than a drag on the economy; Others hail it as the solution to most of the country’s problems. Stephen C. Yeazell argues that both positions are wrong. Deeply embedded in our political and economic systems, civil litigation is both a system for resolving disputes and a successful business model, a fact that both its opponents and its fans do their best to conceal.

Lawsuits in a Market Economy explains how contemporary civil litigation in the United States works and how it has changed over the past century. The book corrects common misconceptions—some of which have proved remarkably durable even in the face of contrary evidence—and explores how our constitutional structure, an evolving economy, and developments in procedural rules and litigation financing systems have moved us from expecting that lawsuits end in trial and judgments to expecting that they will end in settlements. Yeazell argues that today’s system has in some ways overcome—albeit inconsistently—disparities between the rich and poor in access to civil justice. Once upon a time, might regularly triumphed over right. That is slightly less likely today—even though we continue to witness enormous disparities in wealth and power.

The book concludes with an evaluation of recent changes and their possible consequences.
 
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Le spectre du capital
Joseph Vogl
Diaphanes, 2010
Dans un contexte de crise financière omniprésente et durablement installée, Joseph Vogl interroge le système capitaliste, ses arcanes, ses modes de fonctionnement, la manière dont il se perpétue. Censé reposer sur une confiance multilatérale, le système des marchés est en réalité traversé d’inquiétude et d’instabilité. Ce qu’on définit comme ses « excès », en particulier la spéculation sous ses formes les plus extrêmes, semble au contraire en faire partie intégrante. Inscrit dans un rapport au temps qui refuse toute réflexion à long terme et passe d’un présent à l’autre ; régi par des responsabilités diluées dans une « main invisible », un spectre agitant dans l’ombre les flux de capitaux ; le monde financier se voit entouré d’une aura mystérieuse, aussi incompréhensible qu’imprévisible. L’enjeu de ce livre est de saisir comment l’économie financière tente de comprendre un monde qu’elle a elle-même engendré.
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Leadership and Decision-Making
Victor H. Vroom
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1976

It has become a truism that “leadership depends upon the situation,” but few behavioral scientists have attempted to go beyond that statement to examine the specific ways in which leaders should and do vary their behavior with situational demands. Vroom and Yetton select a critical aspect of leadership style-the extent to which the leader encourages the participation of his subordinates in decision-making. They describe a normative model which shows the specific leadership style called for in different classes of situations. The model is expressed in terms of a “decision tree” and requires the leader to analyze the dimensions of the particular problem or decision with which he is confronted in order to determine how much and in what way to share his decision-making power with his subordinates.

Other chapters discuss how leaders behave in different situations. They look at differences in leadership styles, and what situations induce people to display autocratic or participative behavior. 
 

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Leadership
Beyond Establishment Views
Edited by James G. Hunt, Uma Sekaran, and Chester A. Schriesheim
Southern Illinois University Press, 1981

Volume 6 of the Leadership Symposia—sponsored by the Department of Admin­istrative Sciences and College of Business Ad­ministration at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale—charts the state of the field of leadership through a judicious mixture of established and emerging scholars.

The text is broken into four parts, with each part containing an Introduction by the editors. Part 1 consists of “Leadership and Managerial Behavior as Loosely Coupled Systems for Moving Beyond Establishment Views,” by the editors; “The Relevance of Some Studies of Managerial Work and Be­havior to Leadership Research,” Rosemary Stewart; “Unstructured, Nonparticipant Ob­servation and the Study of Leaders’ Interper­sonal Contacts,” Robert S. Bussom, Lars L. Larson, and William M. Vicars; “Leaders on Line,” Michael M. Lombardo and Morgan W. McCall, Jr.; and “Various Paths Beyond Es­tablishment Views,” Bernard Wilpert.

Part 2 contains “Multiplexed Supervision and Leadership,” Fred Dansereau, Jr., Joseph A. Alutto, Steven E. Markham, and Mac­Donald Dumas; “A Theory of Leadership Categorization,” Robert G. Lord, Roseanne J.     Foti, and James S. Phillips; “Leadership Ac­tivation Theory,” John E. Sheridan, Jeffrey L. Kerr, and Michael A. Abelson; and “Intensity of Relation, Dyadic-Group Considerations, Cognitive Categorization, and Transforma­tional Leadership,” Bernard M. Bass; “Strat­egies for Dealing with Different Processes in Different Contexts,” Ian Morley, “A Multi­plexed Response to Bass and Morley,” Fred Dansereau, Jr., Joseph A. Alutto, Steven E. Markham, and MacDonald Dumas; and “Properly Categorizing the Commentary,” Roseanne J. Foti, Robert G. Lord, and James S. Phillips.

Part 3 contains “SYMLOG and Leader­ship Theory,” Robert F. Bales and Daniel J. Isenberg; “Toward a Macro-Oriented Model of Leadership: An Odyssey,” James G. Hunt and Richard N. Osborn; and “Toward a Par­adigm Shift in the Study of Leadership,” Henry J. Tosi, Jr.

Essays in part 4 are “If You’re Not Serving Bill and Barbara, Then You’re Not Serving Leadership,” Henry Mintzberg; “Beyond Establishment Leadership Views: An Epilog,” by the editors; “Leadership Research and the European Connection: An Epilog,” Dian-­Marie Hosking and James G. Hunt; and “Conclusion: The Leadership-Management Controversy Revisited,” Schriesheim, Hunt, and Sekaran.

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Leadership for Sustainability
Strategies for Tackling Wicked Problems
R. Bruce Hull, David P. Robertson, and Michael Mortimer
Island Press, 2020
Solving today’s environmental and sustainability challenges requires more than expertise and technology. Effective solutions will require that we engage with other people, wrestle with difficult questions, and learn how to adapt and make confident decisions despite uncertainty. We need new approaches to leadership that empower professionals at all levels to tackle wicked problems and work towards sustainability.
 
Leadership for Sustainability gives readers perspective and skills for promoting creative and collaborative solutions. Blending systems thinking approaches with leadership techniques, it offers dozens of strategies and specific practices that build on the foundation of three main skills: connecting, collaborating, and adapting. Inspiring case studies show how the book’s strategies and principles can be applied to diverse situations:
 
  • Coordinating the activities of widely dispersed individuals and groups who may not even know they are connected, illustrated by the work of urban planners, local businesses, citizens, and other stakeholders advancing ambitious climate action goals via a Community Energy Plan in Arlington County, Virginia
  • Collaborating with diverse stakeholders to span boundaries despite their differences of opinion, expertise, and culture, as illustrated by the bold actions of a social entrepreneur who transformed the global food service industry with the “plant-forward” movement
  • Adapting to continuous change and confounding uncertainty, as a small nonprofit organization mobilizes partners to tackle poverty, water scarcity, sanitation, and climate change in rural India
Readers will come away with a holistic understanding of how to lead from where they are by applying leadership principles and practices to a wide range of wicked situations. While the challenges we face are daunting, the authors argue that these situations present opportunities for creating a more just, healthy, and prosperous world.
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Leadership Without Easy Answers
Ronald Heifetz
Harvard University Press, 1994

The economy uncertain, education in decline, cities under siege, crime and poverty spiraling upward, international relations roiling: we look to leaders for solutions, and when they don’t deliver, we simply add their failure to our list of woes. In doing do, we do them and ourselves a grave disservice. We are indeed facing an unprecedented crisis of leadership, Ronald Heifetz avows, but it stems as much from our demands and expectations as from any leader’s inability to meet them. His book gets at both of these problems, offering a practical approach to leadership for those who lead as well as those who look to them for answers. Fitting the theory and practice of leadership to our extraordinary times, the book promotes a new social contract, a revitalization of our civic life just when we most need it.

Drawing on a dozen years of research among managers, officers, and politicians in the public realm and the private sector, among the nonprofits, and in teaching, Heifetz presents clear, concrete prescriptions for anyone who needs to take the lead in almost any situation, under almost any organizational conditions, no matter who is in charge, His strategy applies not only to people at the top but also to those who must lead without authority—activists as well as presidents, managers as well as workers on the front line.

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Leading for Tomorrow
A Primer for Succeeding in Higher Education Leadership
Pamela L. Eddy
Rutgers University Press, 2020
When faculty climb the ranks into leadership positions, they come with years of knowledge and experience, yet they are often blindsided by the delicate interpersonal situations and political minefields they must now navigate as university administrators. What are the specific skills that faculty need to acquire when they move into administrative positions, and how can they build upon their existing abilities to excel in these roles? What skills can other mid-level leaders learn to help in their positions?

Using an engaging case study approach, Leading for Tomorrow provides readers with real-world examples that will help them reflect on their own management and communication styles. It also shows newly minted administrators how they can follow best practices while still developing a style of leadership that is authentic and uniquely their own.

The book’s case studies offer practical solutions for how to deal with emerging trends and persistent problems in the field of higher education, from decreasing state funding to political controversies on campus. Leading for Tomorrow gives readers the tools they need to get the best out of their team, manage conflicts, support student success, and instill a campus culture of innovation that will meet tomorrow’s challenges.
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Leading Roles
50 Questions Every Arts Board Should Ask
Michael M. Kaiser
Brandeis University Press, 2010
Not-for-profit arts organizations struggled to survive the recent economic recession. In this increasingly hardscrabble environment, it is absolutely imperative that the boards of these organizations function as energetically, creatively, and efficiently as possible. Michael M. Kaiser’s personal history with boards of arts organizations began when he served on the board of the Washington Opera (now the Washington National Opera) in 1983. Today, in his capacity as president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Kaiser recently completed a 50-state, 69-city Arts in Crisis tour. Board issues came up repeatedly as central to the success or failure of the organization. Drawing on these and many other conversations, nationally and internationally, Kaiser’s book offers members of boards and staffs the information they need to create the healthy atmosphere necessary to thriving arts organizations. Organized in a clear, readable, question-and-answer format, Leading Roles covers every aspect of board participation in the life of the organization, including mission and governance; fundraising and marketing responsibilities; the relationship of the board to the artistic director, executive director, and staff; and its responsibilities for planning and budgeting. Kaiser addresses boards in crisis, international boards, and boards of arts organizations of color. Throughout, he emphasizes the importance of transparency and clarity in the board’s dealings with its own members and those of the arts community of which it is a part, showing how anything less results in contentiousness that can immobilize an arts organization, or even tear it apart.
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Leading with the Brain
The 7 Neurobiological Factors to Boost Employee Satisfaction and Business Results
Sebastian Purps-Pardigol
Campus Verlag, 2016
How do business leaders inspire their employees so deeply that employees strive to surpass their own best work, helping managers and their staff to achieve mutual success? Sebastian Purps-Pardigol has figured it out—and the answer starts with the brain. Based on insights from neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral economics, as well as one hundred and fifty interviews with employees and CEOs, he has devised a new, innovative approach to the meaning of leadership today and what it takes to make businesses unbeatable.

In Leading with the Brain, Purps-Pardigol presents seven factors all business leaders should keep in mind to not only make their workforce feel more satisfied, but also to increase the overall health and well-being of their staff. Drawing on real-life examples of businesses that succeed by managing according to scientific findings, Purps-Pardigol shows that by leading in a people-oriented, humane way, managers can release their employees’ hidden energies to the benefit of all.
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Learning about Risk
Consumer and Worker Responses to Hazard Information
W. Kip Viscusi and Wesley A. Magat
Harvard University Press, 1987

How do people decide whether or not to take chances with their health and safety? Do they pay attention to warnings about hazardous products used at home or on the job? What is the best way to present this information? These questions are becoming increasingly important as direct government regulation is replaced by programs to educate workers and consumers about risk. Information itself is becoming a regulatory device, but until now little has been known about its use and effectiveness.

Learning about Risk offers important new evidence on how people process information about risk and how they make choices under uncertainty. Drawing on work in a variety of disciplines—economics, decision science, marketing, and psychology—as well as on extensive original survey data, the authors take a close look at one type of risk information: the labeling of hazardous products and chemicals. They use the word labeling to mean all the tangible ways in which information is transmitted, including not merely warnings on bottles and cans but also leaflets and brochures, signs in the workplace, and store displays. The authors surveyed hundreds of consumers and chemical workers to explore a range of issues—the accuracy and appropriateness of people's risk assessments, the types of precautions they take, the values they attach to these measures, the wages they expect for performing risky jobs, and the relationship between the precaution taken and the content, wording, and format of the warning.

Overall, the authors show that information policies are a promising approach to controlling risks in the marketplace and on the job. Their findings will be of interest to government officials, policy analysts, economists, psychologists, and managers concerned professionally with the labeling of hazardous products.

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Learning by Doing in Markets, Firms, and Countries
Edited by Naomi R. Lamoreaux, Daniel M. G. Raff, and Peter Temin
University of Chicago Press, 1998
Learning by Doing in Markets, Firms, and Countries draws out the underlying economics in business history by focusing on learning processes and the development of competitively valuable asymmetries. The essays show that organizations, like people, learn that this process can be organized more or less effectively, which can have major implications for how competition works.

The first three essays in this volume explore techniques firms have used to both manage information to create valuable asymmetries and to otherwise suppress unwelcome competition. The next three focus on the ways in which firms have built special capabilities over time, capabilities that have been both sources of competitive advantage and resistance to new opportunities. The last two extend the notion of learning from the level of firms to that of nations. The collection as a whole builds on the previous two volumes to make the connection between information structure and product market outcomes in business history.


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Learning From Robben Island
Govan Mbeki’s Prison Writings
Govan Mbeki
Ohio University Press, 1991

In the late fifties and early sixties, Govan Mbeki was a central figure in the African National Congress and director of the ANC campaigns from underground. Born of a chief and the daughter of a Methodist minister in the Transkei of South Africa in 1910, he worked as a teacher, journalist, and tireless labor organizer in a lifetime of protest against the government policy of apartheid. Over two decades of imprisonment on Robben Island did not consign him to obscurity. Along with Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu, his name has become a symbol of resistance, not only to the oppressed people of South Africa, but also to the international community who have conferred on him many honors and awards.

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Learning from Shenzhen
China’s Post-Mao Experiment from Special Zone to Model City
Edited by Mary Ann O'Donnell, Winnie Wong, and Jonathan Bach
University of Chicago Press, 2017
This multidisciplinary volume, the first of its kind, presents an account of China’s contemporary transformation via one of its most important yet overlooked cities: Shenzhen, located just north of Hong Kong. In recent decades, Shenzhen has transformed from an experimental site for economic reform into a dominant city at the crossroads of the global economy. The first of China’s special economic zones, Shenzhen is today a UNESCO City of Design and the hub of China’s emerging technology industries.

Bringing China studies into dialogue with urban studies, the contributors explore how the post-Mao Chinese appropriation of capitalist logic led to a dramatic remodeling of the Chinese city and collective life in China today. These essays show how urban villages and informal institutions enabled social transformation through cases of public health, labor, architecture, gender, politics, education, and more. Offering scholars and general readers alike an unprecedented look at one of the world’s most dynamic metropolises, this collective history uses the urban case study to explore critical problems and possibilities relevant for modern-day China and beyond.
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Learning to Love Form 1040
Two Cheers for the Return-Based Mass Income Tax
Lawrence Zelenak
University of Chicago Press, 2013
No one likes paying taxes, much less the process of filing tax returns. For years, would-be reformers have advocated replacing the return-based mass income tax with a flat tax, federal sales tax, or some combination thereof. Congress itself has commissioned studies on the feasibility of a system of exact withholding. But might the much-maligned return-based taxation method serve an important yet overlooked civic purpose?

In Learning to Love Form 1040, Lawrence Zelenak argues that filing taxes can strengthen fiscal citizenship by prompting taxpayers to reflect on the contract they have with their government and the value—or perceived lack of value—they receive in exchange for their money. Zelenak traces the mass income tax to its origins as a means for raising revenue during World War II. Even then, debates raged over the merits of consumption-based versus income taxation, as well as whether taxes should be withheld from payroll or paid at the time of filing. The result is the income tax system we have today—a system whose maddening complexity, intended to accommodate citizens in widely different circumstances, threatens to outweigh any civic benefits.

If sitcoms and political cartoons are any indication, public understanding of the income tax is badly in need of a corrective. Zelenak clears up some of the most common misconceptions and closes with suggestions for how the current system could be substantially simplified to better serve its civic purpose.

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Learning to Work
The Case for Reintegrating Job Training and Education
W. Norton Grubb
Russell Sage Foundation, 1996
"Grubb's powerful vision of a workforce development system connected by vertical ladders for upward mobility adds an important new dimension to our continued efforts at system reform. The unfortunate reality is that neither our first-chance education system nor our second-chance job training system have succeeded in creating clear pathways out of poverty for many of our citizens. Grubb's message deserves a serious hearing by policy makers and practitioners alike." —Evelyn Ganzglass, National Governors' Association Over the past three decades, job training programs have proliferated in response to mounting problems of unemployment, poverty, and expanding welfare rolls. These programs and the institutions that administer them have grown to a number and complexity that make it increasingly difficult for policymakers to interpret their effectiveness. Learning to Work offers a comprehensive assessment of efforts to move individuals into the workforce, and explains why their success has been limited. Learning to Work offers a complete history of job training in the United States, beginning with the Department of Labor's manpower development programs in the1960s and detailing the expansion of services through the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act in the 1970s and the Job Training Partnership Act in the 1980s.Other programs have sprung from the welfare system or were designed to meet the needs of various state and corporate development initiatives. The result is a complex mosaic of welfare-to-work, second-chance training, and experimental programs, all with their own goals, methodology, institutional administration, and funding. Learning to Work examines the findings of the most recent and sophisticated job training evaluations and what they reveal for each type of program. Which agendas prove most effective? Do their effects last over time? How well do programs benefit various populations, from welfare recipients to youths to displaced employees in need of retraining? The results are not encouraging. Many programs increase employment and reduce welfare dependence, but by meager increments, and the results are often temporary. On average most programs boosted earnings by only $200 to $500 per year, and even these small effects tended to decay after four or five years.Overall, job training programs moved very few individuals permanently off welfare, and provided no entry into a middle-class occupation or income. Learning to Work provides possible explanations for these poor results, citing the limited scope of individual programs, their lack of linkages to other programs or job-related opportunities, the absence of academic content or solid instructional methods, and their vulnerability to local political interference. Author Norton Grubb traces the root of these problems to the inherent separation of job training programs from the more successful educational system. He proposes consolidating the two domains into a clearly defined hierarchy of programs that combine school- and work-based instruction and employ proven methods of student-centered, project-based teaching. By linking programs tailored to every level of need and replacing short-term job training with long-term education, a system could be created to enable individuals to achieve increasing levels of economic success. The problems that job training programs address are too serious too ignore. Learning to Work tells us what's wrong with job training today, and offers a practical vision for reform.
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Leave Me Alone and I'll Make You Rich
How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World
Deirdre Nansen McCloskey and Art Carden
University of Chicago Press, 2020
The economist and historian Deirdre Nansen McCloskey has been best known recently for her Bourgeois Era trilogy, a vigorous defense, unrivaled in scope, of commercially tested betterment.  Its massive volumes, The Bourgeois Virtues, Bourgeois Dignity, and Bourgeois Equality, solve Adam Smith’s puzzle of the nature and causes of the wealth of nations, and of the moral sentiments of modernity.   The world got rich, she argues, not chiefly by material causes but by an idea and a sentiment, a new admiration for the middle class and its egalitarian liberalism.  

For readers looking for a distillation of McCloskey’s magisterial work, Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich is what you’ve been waiting for. In this lively volume, McCloskey and the economist and journalist Carden bring together the trilogy’s key ideas and its most provocative arguments. The rise of the west, and now the rest, is the story of the rise of ordinary people to a dignity and liberty inspiring them to have a go. The outcome was an explosion of innovation after 1800, and a rise of real income by an astounding 3,000 percent.  The Great Enrichment, well beyond the conventional Industrial Revolution, did not, McCloskey and Carden show, come from the usual suspects, capital accumulation or class struggle.  It came from the idea of economic liberty in Holland and the Anglosphere, then Sweden and Japan, then Italy and  Israel and China and India, an idea that bids fair in the next few generations to raise up the wretched of the earth.  The original shift to liberalism arose from 1517 to 1789 from theological and political revolutions in northwest Europe, upending ancient hierarchies.  McCloskey and Carden contend further that liberalism and “innovism” made us better humans as well as richer ones.  Not matter but ideas.  Not corruption but improvement.

Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich draws in entertaining fashion on history, economics, literature, philosophy, and popular culture, from growth theory to the Simpsons. It is the perfect introduction for a broad audience to McCloskey’s influential explanation of how we got rich.  At a time when confidence in the economic system is under challenge, the book mounts an optimistic and persuasive defense of liberal innovism, and of the modern world it has wrought.
 
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Leaving Science
Anne E. Preston
Russell Sage Foundation, 2004
The past thirty years have witnessed a dramatic decline in the number of U.S. students pursuing advanced degrees in science and an equally dramatic increase in the number of professionals leaving scientific careers. Leaving Science provides the first significant examination of this worrisome new trend. Economist Anne E. Preston examines a wide range of important questions: Why do professionals who have invested extensive time and money on a rigorous scientific education leave the field? Where do these scientists go and what do they do? What policies might aid in retaining and improving the quality of life for science personnel? Based on data from a large national survey of nearly 1,700 people who received university degrees in the natural sciences or engineering between 1965 and 1990 and a subsequent in-depth follow-up survey, Leaving Science provides a comprehensive portrait of the career trajectories of men and women who have earned science degrees. Alarmingly, by the end of the follow-up survey, only 51 percent of the original respondents were still working in science. During this time, federal funding for scientific research decreased dramatically relative to private funding. Consequently, the direction of scientific research has increasingly been dictated by market forces, and many scientists have left academic research for income and opportunity in business and industry. Preston identifies the main reasons for people leaving scientific careers as dissatisfaction with compensation and career advancement, difficulties balancing family and career responsibilities, and changing professional interests. Highlighting the difference between male and female exit patterns, Preston shows that most men left because they found scientific salaries low relative to perceived alternatives in other fields, while most women left scientific careers in response to feelings of alienation due to lack of career guidance, difficulty relating to their work, and insufficient time for their family obligations. Leaving Science contains a unique blend of rigorous statistical analysis with voices of individual scientists, ensuring a rich and detailed understanding of an issue with profound consequences for the nation's future. A better understanding of why professionals leave science can help lead to changes in scientific education and occupations and make the scientific workplace more attractive and hospitable to career men and women.
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Lectures on Economic Growth
Robert E. Lucas Jr.
Harvard University Press, 2004

In this book the Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Lucas collects his writings on economic growth, from his seminal On the Mechanics of Economic Development to his previously unpublished 1997 Kuznets Lectures.

The chapters progress from a general theory of how growth could be sustained and why growth rates might differ in different countries, to a model of exceptional growth in certain countries in the twentieth century, to an account of the take-off of growth in the Industrial Revolution, and finally to a prediction about patterns of growth in this new century. The framework in all the chapters is a model with accumulation of both physical and human capital, with emphasis on the external benefits of human capital through diffusion of new knowledge or on-the-job learning, often stimulated by trade. The Kuznets Lectures consider the interaction of human capital growth and the demographic transition in the early stages of industrialization. In the final chapter, Lucas uses a diffusion model to illustrate the possibility that the vast intersociety income inequality created in the course of the Industrial Revolution may have already reached its peak, and that income differences will decline in this century.

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Left Behind
Latin America and the False Promise of Populism
Sebastian Edwards
University of Chicago Press, 2010

The political and economic history of Latin America has been marked by great hopes and even greater disappointments. Despite abundant resources—and a history of productivity and wealth—in recent decades the region has fallen further and further behind developed nations, surpassed even by other developing economies in Southeast Asia and elsewhere.

In Left Behind, Sebastian Edwards explains why the nations of Latin America have failed to share in the fruits of globalization and forcefully highlights the dangers of the recent turn to economic populism in the region. He begins by detailing the many ways Latin American governments have stifled economic development over the years through excessive regulation, currency manipulation, and thoroughgoing corruption. He then turns to the neoliberal reforms of the early 1990s, which called for the elimination of deficits, lowering of trade barriers, and privatization of inefficient public enterprises—and which, Edwards argues, held the promise of freeing Latin America from the burdens of the past. Flawed implementation, however, meant the promised gains of globalization were never felt by the mass of citizens, and growing frustration with stalled progress has led to a resurgence of populism throughout the region, exemplified by the economic policies of Venezuela’sHugo Chávez. But such measures, Edwards warns, are a recipe for disaster; instead, he argues, the way forward for Latin America lies in further market reforms, more honestly pursued and fairly implemented. As an example of the promise of that approach, Edwards points to Latin America's giant, Brazil, which under the successful administration of President Luis Inácio da Silva (Lula) has finally begun to show signs of reaching its true economic potential.

As the global financial crisis has reminded us, the risks posed by failing economies extend far beyond their national borders. Putting Latin America back on a path toward sustained growth is crucial not just for the region but for the world, and Left Behind offers a clear, concise blueprint for the way forward.

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The Left Behind
Reimagining Britain's Socially Excluded
James
Pluto Press, 2022

Examines the ways in which the 'Left Behind' have been used to symbolize and foment social divisions in contemporary Britain.

'The Left Behind' is a defining motif of contemporary British political discourse. It is the thread that knits together the 2016 Brexit referendum, the crumbling of the fabled 'Red Wall' in the North, and the pernicious culture war being waged today. But who are the Left Behind?

James Morrison goes in search of the reality behind the rhetoric, offering the first comprehensive, historical analysis of the origins, uses and meanings of the term. He interrogates the popular archetype of the Left Behind - as a working-class, Leave-voting white male from a former industrial heartland - and situates the concept in the context of longstanding, demonizing discourses aimed at communities seen as backward and 'undeserving'.

Analyzing national newspaper coverage and parliamentary discussions, and drawing on interviews with MPs, community leaders, charities, and people with direct lived experiences of poverty and precarity, The Left Behind grapples with the real human cost of austerity for neglected post-industrial communities and other marginalized groups across the world, and the stigmatizing discourse that does little to serve them.

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Legacies, Logics, Logistics
Essays in the Anthropology of the Platform Economy
Jane I. Guyer
University of Chicago Press, 2016
Legacies, Logics, Logistics brings together a set of essays, written both before and after the financial crisis of 2007–08, by eminent Africanist and economic anthropologist Jane I. Guyer. Each was written initially for a conference on a defined theme. When they are brought together and interpreted as a whole by Guyer, these varied essays show how an anthropological and socio-historical approach to economic practices—both in the West and elsewhere—can illuminate deep facets of economic life that the big theories and models may fail to capture.

Focusing on economic actors—whether ordinary consumers or financial experts—Guyer traces how people and institutions hold together past experiences (legacies), imagined scenarios and models (logics), and situational challenges (logistics) in a way that makes the performance of economic life (on platforms made of these legacies, logics, and logistics) work in practice. Individual essays explore a number of topics—including time frames and the future, the use of percentages in observations and judgments, the explanation of prices, the coexistence of different world currencies, the reapplication of longtime economic theories in new settings, and, crucially, how we talk about the economy, how we use stable terms to describe a turbulent system. Valuable as standalone pieces, the essays build into a cogent method of economic anthropology. 
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Legal Instruments of Foundations
Frank Emerson Andrews
Russell Sage Foundation, 1958
This study contains fifty-eight documents from forty-nine different foundations, selected to represent a wide variety of these organizations. Included are documents from at least one perpetuity, dissolving fund, discretionary perpetuity; at least one company-sponsored foundation, family foundation, foundation engaged in unrelated business activities, association of foundations, "captive" foundation; at least one research foundation, special-purpose foundation, community trust scholarship fund. Several documents have been included for historical interest; documents of two foreign foundations for their comparison values. A final chapter introduces certain operational documents: grant notification form, agreement with consultants, outline for grant applicants, publication agreement.
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Legal Plunder
Households and Debt Collection in Late Medieval Europe
Daniel Lord Smail
Harvard University Press, 2016

As Europe began to grow rich during the Middle Ages, its wealth materialized in the well-made clothes, linens, and wares of ordinary households. Such items were indicators of one’s station in life in a society accustomed to reading visible signs of rank. In a world without banking, household goods became valuable commodities that often substituted for hard currency. Pawnbrokers and resellers sprang up, helping to push these goods into circulation. Simultaneously, a harshly coercive legal system developed to ensure that debtors paid their due.

Focusing on the Mediterranean cities of Marseille and Lucca, Legal Plunder explores how the newfound wealth embodied in household goods shaped the beginnings of a modern consumer economy in late medieval Europe. The vigorous trade in goods that grew up in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries entangled households in complex relationships of credit and debt, and one of the most common activities of law courts during the period was debt recovery. Sergeants of the law were empowered to march into debtors’ homes and seize belongings equal in value to the debt owed. These officials were agents of a predatory economy, cogs in a political machinery of state-sponsored plunder.

As Daniel Smail shows, the records of medieval European law courts offer some of the most vivid descriptions of material culture in this period, providing insights into the lives of men and women on the cusp of modern capitalism. Then as now, money and value were implicated in questions of power and patterns of violence.

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Legal Writing in Plain English
A Text with Exercises
Bryan A. Garner
University of Chicago Press, 2001
Admirably clear, concise, down-to-earth, and powerful-unfortunately, these adjectives rarely describe legal writing, whether in the form of briefs, opinions, contracts, or statutes. In Legal Writing in Plain English, Bryan A. Garner provides lawyers, judges, paralegals, law students, and legal scholars sound advice and practical tools for improving their written work. The book encourages legal writers to challenge conventions and offers valuable insights into the writing process: how to organize ideas, create and refine prose, and improve editing skills. In essence, it teaches straight thinking—a skill inseparable from good writing.

Replete with common sense and wit, the book draws on real-life writing samples that Garner has gathered through more than a decade of teaching in the field. Trenchant advice covers all types of legal materials, from analytical and persuasive writing to legal drafting. Meanwhile, Garner explores important aspects of document design. Basic, intermediate, and advanced exercises in each section reinforce the book's principles. (An answer key to basic exercises is included in the book; answers to intermediate and advanced exercises are provided in a separate Instructor's Manual, free of charge to instructors.) Appendixes include a comprehensive punctuation guide with advice and examples, and four model documents.

Today more than ever before, legal professionals cannot afford to ignore the trend toward clear language shorn of jargon. Clients demand it, and courts reward it. Despite the age-old tradition of poor writing in law, Legal Writing in Plain English shows how legal writers can unshackle themselves.

Legal Writing in Plain English includes:

*Tips on generating thoughts, organizing them, and creating outlines.
*Sound advice on expressing your ideas clearly and powerfully.
*Dozens of real-life writing examples to illustrate writing problems and solutions.
*Exercises to reinforce principles of good writing (also available on the Internet).
*Helpful guidance on page layout.
*A punctuation guide that shows the correct uses of every punctuation mark.
*Model legal documents that demonstrate the power of plain English.
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Legislating Instability
Adam Smith, Free Banking, and the Financial Crisis of 1772
Tyler Beck Goodspeed
Harvard University Press, 2016

From 1716 to 1845, Scotland’s banks were among the most dynamic and resilient in Europe, effectively absorbing a series of adverse economic shocks that rocked financial markets in London and on the continent. Legislating Instability explains the seeming paradox that the Scottish banking system achieved this success without the government controls usually considered necessary for economic stability.

Eighteenth-century Scottish banks operated in a regulatory vacuum: no central bank to act as lender of last resort, no monopoly on issuing currency, no legal requirements for maintaining capital reserves, and no formal limits on bank size. These conditions produced a remarkably robust banking system, one that was intensely competitive and served as a prime engine of Scottish economic growth. Despite indicators that might have seemed red flags—large speculative capital flows, a fixed exchange rate, and substantial external debt—Scotland successfully navigated two severe financial crises during the Seven Years’ War.

The exception was a severe financial crisis in 1772, seven years after the imposition of the first regulations on Scottish banking—the result of aggressive lobbying by large banks seeking to weed out competition. While these restrictions did not cause the 1772 crisis, Tyler Beck Goodspeed argues, they critically undermined the flexibility and resilience previously exhibited by Scottish finance, thereby elevating the risk that another adverse economic shock, such as occurred in 1772, might threaten financial stability more broadly. Far from revealing the shortcomings of unregulated banking, as Adam Smith claimed, the 1772 crisis exposed the risks of ill-conceived bank regulation.

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Legitimacy of Philanthropic Foundations
United States and European Perspectives
Kenneth Prewitt
Russell Sage Foundation, 2006
Though privately controlled, foundations perform essential roles that serve society at large. They spearhead some of the world's largest and most innovative initiatives in science, health, education, and the arts, fulfilling important needs that could not be addressed adequately in the marketplace or the public sector. Still, many people have little understanding of what foundations do and how they continue to earn public endorsement. The Legitimacy of Philanthropic Foundations provides a thorough examination of why foundations exist and the varied purposes they serve in contemporary democratic societies. The Legitimacy of Philanthropic Foundations looks at foundations in the United States and Europe to examine their relationship to the state, the market, and civil society. Peter Frumkin argues that unlike elected officials, who must often shy away from topics that could spark political opposition, and corporate officers, who must meet bottom-line priorities, foundations can independently tackle sensitive issues of public importance. Kenneth Prewitt argues that foundations embody elements of classical liberalism, such as individual autonomy and limited government interference in private matters and achieve legitimacy by putting private wealth to work for the public good. Others argue that foundations achieve legitimacy by redistributing wealth from the pockets of rich philanthropists to the poor. But Julian Wolpert finds that foundations do not redistribute money directly to the poor as much as many people believe. Instead, many foundations focus their efforts on education, health, and scientific research, making investments that benefit society in the long-term, and focusing on farsighted issues that a myopic electorate would not have patience to permit its government to address. Originating from private fortunes but working for the public good, independently managed but subject to legal prescriptions, philanthropic foundations occupy a unique space somewhere between the public and private sectors. The Legitimacy of Philanthropic Foundations places foundations in a broad social and historical context, improving our understanding of one of society's most influential—and least understood—organizational forms.
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Lending Power
How Self-Help Credit Union Turned Small-Time Loans into Big-Time Change
Howard E. Covington Jr.
Duke University Press, 2017
Established by Martin Eakes and Bonnie Wright in North Carolina in 1980, the nonprofit Center for Community Self-Help has grown from an innovative financial institution dedicated to civil rights into the nation's largest home lender to low- and moderate-income borrowers. Self-Help's first capital campaign—a bake sale that raised a meager seventy-seven dollars for a credit union—may not have done much to fulfill the organization's early goals of promoting worker-owned businesses, but it was a crucial first step toward wielding inclusive lending as a weapon for economic justice.
In Lending Power journalist and historian Howard E. Covington Jr. narrates the compelling story of Self-Help's founders and coworkers as they built a progressive and community-oriented financial institution. First established to assist workers displaced by closed furniture and textile mills, Self-Help created a credit union that expanded into providing home loans for those on the margins of the financial market, especially people of color and single mothers.
Using its own lending record, Self-Help convinced commercial banks to follow suit, extending its influence well beyond North Carolina. In 1999 its efforts led to the first state law against predatory lending. A decade later, as the Great Recession ravaged the nation's economy, its legislative victories helped influence the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and the formation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Self-Help also created a federally chartered credit union to expand to California and later to Illinois and Florida, where it assisted ailing community-based credit unions and financial institutions. 
Throughout its history, Self-Help has never wavered from its mission to use Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision of justice to extend economic opportunity to the nation's unbanked and underserved citizens. With nearly two billion dollars in assets, Self-Help also shows that such a model for nonprofits can be financially successful while serving the greater good. At a time when calls for economic justice are growing ever louder, Lending Power shows how hard-working and dedicated people can help improve their communities.
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Lessons from East Asia
Danny M. Leipziger, Editor
University of Michigan Press, 2001
This compilation of case studies and cross-country essays focuses on the role of public policy in the experience of East Asian economies. A major theme running through the volume is regional learning and regional contagion--the spread of that learning. Beginning with the model and experience of Japan and continuing with the impressive achievements of countries originally considered unviable in the 1950s and 1960s, like Korea and Taiwan, contributors demonstrate how regional policy lessons permeated borders easily. The 1980s brought further lessons and flows of capital to the second generation of rapid industrializers. And the 1990s have seen regional contagion benefit new aspirants like Vietnam. As the chapters cumulatively reveal, however, the transferability of lessons depends on the institutional framework in which policy is formulated, the consistency of policy, and the quality of implementation.
Part 1 includes the case studies for the first generation of rapidly developing East Asian economics--the tigers--while Part 2 incorporates the later generation success stories--the cubs--plus the Philippines, a country only now beginning to show significant progress. Part 3 includes cross-country essays on public investment, foreign direct investment, and cross-country patterns that synthesize the lessons learned and propose actions for other development aspirants to pursue.
The essays aim to fill two major gaps--the paucity of country-specific work on the institutional side of development policy and the failure to explain the mixed record of industrial policies in East Asia. The volume will appeal to students, scholars, and policymakers in development economics.
Danny M. Leipziger is Lead Economist, Latin America Region, World Bank.
This title was formally part of the Studies in International Trade Policy Series, now called Studies in International Economics.
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Lessons in Leadership
Steve Adubato, PhD
Rutgers University Press, 2016
In this practical guide, Emmy Award-winning public broadcasting anchor Steve Adubato teaches readers to be self-aware, empathetic, and more effective leaders at work and at home. His powerful case studies spotlighting dozens of leaders—from Pope Francis to New Jersey governor Chris Christie—are complemented by concrete tips and tools based in real-life scenarios. With Lessons in Leadership, readers can learn to steer others through difficult economic times, to mentor rising leaders, to provide straight talk to underperforming employees, and even how to lead a company through a significant change. 
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Let Me Live
Angelo Herndon
University of Michigan Press, 2007

Let Me Live tells the remarkable story of Angelo Herndon, a coal miner who worked as a labor organizer in Alabama and Georgia in the 1930s. Herndon led a racially integrated march of the unemployed in 1932 and was subsequently arrested when Communist Party literature was found in his bedroom. His trial made only small headlines at first, but eventually an international campaign to free him emerged, thanks to the efforts of the Communist Party and of labor unions interested in protecting the right to organize in the South. Herndon was finally set free by the U.S. Supreme Court, with the help of well-known leaders including C. Vann Woodward, Thurgood Marshall, A. Philip Randolph, and Whitney North Seymour, Sr.

Written while Herndon was in prison, Let Me Live tells the story behind his arrest and his struggle through the courts. It also describes his early life as a young boy in poverty, as a laborer in the Kentucky mines, and as a construction gang worker and traces the birth and development of his passion for the Communist Party. Originally published in 1937, this is the first new edition of Let Me Live since 1969, when Howard N. Meyer rescued it from obscurity. The book features texts from the Georgia and U.S. Supreme Court decisions, the text of Herndon’s speech, and newspaper editorials from the era. A substantive and thought-provoking introduction by Marlon B. Ross of the University of Virginia sheds light on this unique story and its importance to our understanding of the intersection of race and class in America—past and present.

“A book which every thoughtful American may do well to read. It is moving and challenging as the story of one man’s life and the question of one man’s fate.”

New York Times

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Leveling the Playing Field
How the Law Can Make Sports Better for Fans
Paul C. Weiler
Harvard University Press, 2000

The world of sports seems entwined with lawsuits. This is so, Paul Weiler explains, because of two characteristics intrinsic to all competitive sports. First, sporting contests lose their drama if the competition becomes too lopsided. Second, the winning athletes and teams usually take the "lion's share" of both fan attention and spending. So interest in second-rate teams and in second-rate leagues rapidly wanes, leaving one dominant league with monopoly power.

The ideal of evenly balanced sporting contests is continually challenged by economic, social, and technological forces. Consequently, Weiler argues, the law is essential to level the playing field for players, owners, and ultimately fans and taxpayers. For example, he shows why players' use of performance-enhancing drugs, even legal ones, should be treated as a more serious offense than, say, use of cocaine. He also explains why proposals to break up dominant leagues and create new ones will not work, and thus why both union representation of players and legal protection for fans--and taxpayers--are necessary.

Using well-known incidents--and supplying little-known facts--Weiler analyzes a wide array of moral and economic issues that arise in all competitive sports. He tells us, for example, how Commissioner Bud Selig should respond to Pete Rose's quest for admission to the Hall of Fame; what kind of settlement will allow baseball players and owners to avoid a replay of their past labor battles; and how our political leaders should address the recent wave of taxpayer-built stadiums.

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Leveraged
The New Economics of Debt and Financial Fragility
Edited by Moritz Schularick
University of Chicago Press, 2022
An authoritative guide to the new economics of our crisis-filled century. Published in collaboration with the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

The 2008 financial crisis was a seismic event that laid bare how financial institutions’ instabilities can have devastating effects on societies and economies. COVID-19 brought similar financial devastation at the beginning of 2020 and once more massive interventions by central banks were needed to heed off the collapse of the financial system. All of which begs the question: why is our financial system so fragile and vulnerable that it needs government support so often? 

For a generation of economists who have risen to prominence since 2008, these events have defined not only how they view financial instability, but financial markets more broadly. Leveraged brings together these voices to take stock of what we have learned about the costs and causes of financial fragility and to offer a new canonical framework for understanding it. Their message: the origins of financial instability in modern economies run deeper than the technical debates around banking regulation, countercyclical capital buffers, or living wills for financial institutions. Leveraged offers a fundamentally new picture of how financial institutions and societies coexist, for better or worse.  

The essays here mark a new starting point for research in financial economics. As we muddle through the effects of a second financial crisis in this young century, Leveraged provides a road map and a research agenda for the future.
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L'hypothèse d'instabilité financière
Les processus capitalistes et le comportement de l'économie
Hyman P. Minsky
Diaphanes, 2013
Comment expliquer et prévoir l’instabilité qui caractérise le développement des systèmes économiques ? Comment appréhender les « marchés sauvages » qui constituent notre réalité actuelle ? Dès les années 1960, Hyman Minsky développe une théorie consacrée à l’instabilité des systèmes. Il démontre que le krach financier est un phénomène intervenant régulièrement, qui n’est dû ni à des causes externes, ni à des erreurs d’appréciation : C’est la logique des marchés financiers elle-même, bien plus que des secousses issues de la périphérie du système, qui serait à l’origine des crises. En présentant le texte central de la théorie économique d’Hyman P. Minsky, L’hypothèse d’instabilité financière offre au lecteur une première approche passionnante de cette œuvre dense, fondamentale et jusqu’à présent méconnue en France.
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The Liberal Illusion
Does Trade Promote Peace?
Katherine Barbieri
University of Michigan Press, 2005
"A very important and long-awaited major contribution to the debate . . . Her work cannot be ignored."
--Nils Petter Gleditsch, Journal of Peace Research

"Barbieri builds on a solid foundation of work on trade and conflict and specifies the conditions under which trade reduces and increases conflict. . . . The bottom line is that this is an important book in the study of trade and conflict because of its comprehensive approach."
--Kathy L. Powers, Perspectives on Politics

"Barbieri's analysis reveals the fundamental and intellectual weaknesses of the various arguments on this topic. [A] solid and timely contribution to the literature"
--Choice


The Liberal Illusion sheds light on an increasingly important question in international relations scholarship and the domain of policy making-whether international trade promotes peace. By examining a broad range of theories about trade's impact on interstate relations and undertaking a set of empirical analyses of the trade-conflict puzzle, Katherine Barbieri provides a comprehensive assessment of the liberal view that trade promotes peace. Barbieri's stunning conclusions depart from conventional wisdom in international relations. Consequently, The Liberal Illusion serves as an important counterargument and a warning call to policymakers who rely upon trade-based strategies to promote peace, strategies that appear to offer little hope of achieving their goals.
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Liberalism's Last Man
Hayek in the Age of Political Capitalism
Vikash Yadav
University of Chicago Press, 2023

A modern reframing of Friedrich Hayek’s most famous work for the 21st century.

Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom was both an intellectual milestone and a source of political division, spurring fiery debates around capitalism and its discontents. In the ensuing discord, Hayek’s true message was lost: liberalism is a thing to be protected above all else, and its alternatives are perilous.

In Liberalism’s Last Man, Vikash Yadav revives the core of Hayek’s famed work to map today’s primary political anxiety: the tenuous state of liberal meritocratic capitalism—particularly in North America, Europe, and Asia—in the face of strengthening political-capitalist powers like China, Vietnam, and Singapore. As open societies struggle to match the economic productivity of authoritarian-capitalist economies, the promises of a meritocracy fade; Yadav channels Hayek to articulate how liberalism’s moral backbone is its greatest defense against repressive social structures.

[more]

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Liberalism's Last Man
Hayek in the Age of Political Capitalism
Vikash Yadav
University of Chicago Press, 2023

A modern reframing of Friedrich Hayek’s most famous work for the 21st century.

Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom was both an intellectual milestone and a source of political division, spurring fiery debates around capitalism and its discontents. In the ensuing discord, Hayek’s true message was lost: liberalism is a thing to be protected above all else, and its alternatives are perilous.

In Liberalism’s Last Man, Vikash Yadav revives the core of Hayek’s famed work to map today’s primary political anxiety: the tenuous state of liberal meritocratic capitalism—particularly in North America, Europe, and Asia—in the face of strengthening political-capitalist powers like China, Vietnam, and Singapore. As open societies struggle to match the economic productivity of authoritarian-capitalist economies, the promises of a meritocracy fade; Yadav channels Hayek to articulate how liberalism’s moral backbone is its greatest defense against repressive social structures.

[more]


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