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453 books match the query 'Economic policy' and 19 start with g

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Gangsters to Governors

Clary, David

Rutgers University Press, 2017

Winner of the 2018 Current Events/Social Change Book Award from the Next Generation Indie Book Awards
Winner of the 2018 Bronze Current Events Book Award from the Independent Publisher Book Awards

Generations ago, gambling in America was an illicit activity, dominated by gangsters like Benny Binion and Bugsy Siegel. Today, forty-eight out of fifty states permit some form of legal gambling, and America’s governors sit at the head of the gaming table. But have states become addicted to the revenue gambling can bring? And does the potential of increased revenue lead them to place risky bets on new casinos, lotteries, and online games?

In Gangsters to Governors, journalist David Clary investigates the pros and cons of the shift toward state-run gambling. Unearthing the sordid history of America’s gaming underground, he demonstrates the problems with prohibiting gambling while revealing how today’s governors, all competing for a piece of the action, promise their citizens payouts that are rarely delivered.

Clary introduces us to a rogue’s gallery of colorful characters, from John “Old Smoke” Morrissey, the Irish-born gangster who built Saratoga into a gambling haven in the nineteenth century, to Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino magnate who has furiously lobbied against online betting. By exploring the controversial histories of legal and illegal gambling in America, he offers a fresh perspective on current controversies, including bans on sports and online betting. Entertaining and thought-provoking, Gangsters to Governors considers the past, present, and future of our gambling nation.

Author's website (http://www.davidclaryauthor.com)

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Gentrification Down the Shore

Molly Vollman Makris

Rutgers University Press, 2021

Makris and Gatta engage in a rich ethnographic investigation of Asbury Park to better understand the connection between jobs and seasonal gentrification and the experiences of longtime residents in this beach-community city. They demonstrate how the racial inequality in the founding of Asbury Park is reverberating a century later. This book tells an important and nuanced tale of gentrification using an intersectional lens to examine the history of race relations, the too often overlooked history of the postindustrial city, the role of the LGBTQ population, barriers to employment and access to amenities, and the role of developers as the city rapidly changes. Makris and Gatta draw on in-depth interviews, focus groups, ethnographic observation, as well as data analysis to tell the reader a story of life on the West Side of Asbury Park as the East Side prospers and to point to a potential path forward.

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Geopolitical Economy

The South Korean FTA Strategy

Jonathan Krieckhaus

University of Michigan Press, 2018

Geopolitical Economy examines the significance and nature of free trade agreements (FTAs), the primary policy tool through which modern nations seek access to international markets and promote economic growth. The book focuses specifically on how South Korea, the world’s leader in the number and significance of FTAs as well as the world’s sixth largest export economy, uses FTAs.

Jonathan Krieckhaus argues that geopolitics—the struggle between powerful nations over specific geographic regions around the globe—influenced FTA strategy and economic policy in South Korea and beyond. This perspective illustrates the security approach to FTAs, but adds that the geographic specificity of security concerns deeply shape FTA policy.

Geopolitical Economy also looks at Korean FTAs through the lens of development strategy. South Korea is singularly successful in garnering FTAs with all three players in the global economy: the United States, the European Union, and China. This unprecedented success was built on a strong commitment from three consecutive Korean presidential administrations, each operating within a favorable state-society context that enjoyed the existence of a centralized and effective trade bureaucracy.

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Germany and the Politics of Europe's Money

Karl Kaltenthaler

Duke University Press, 1998

As countries in the European Union struggle to comply with the Maastricht Treaty, the question of monetary integration is at the forefront of European politics. Germany and the Politics of Europe’s Money explores how and why Germany—whose economic power makes it a pivotal player in the European monetary system—has developed inconsistent policies toward European monetary institutions and how international institutions affect domestic politics that, in turn, influence state policies toward these institutions.
Moving away from state-centered and Marxist approaches to the study of the European monetary integration process, Karl Kaltenthaler offers a new analytical framework to assess the dynamics within and among the participating countries. Using official and unofficial documents as well as interviews with players ranging from presidents of the Bundesbank to functionaries in the trade unions, Kaltenthaler argues that the number of decision makers negotiating policy and their accountability to interest groups, political parties, government ministries, and Germany’s central bank have made Germany’s fluctuations in policy inevitable. Germany and the Politics of Europe’s Money examines twenty years of German policy through an analysis of four key episodes: the creation of the European Monetary System, the creation of the Franco-German Economic and Financial Council, the establishment of policy toward the European Monetary Union, and the institutional transformation of the EMS in the 1990s. It thus brings a new understanding to Germany’s dynamic policies and the political forces behind them.

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Ghost Protocol

Development and Displacement in Global China

Carlos Rojas and Ralph A. Litzinger, editors

Duke University Press, 2016

Even as China is central to the contemporary global economy, its socialist past continues to shape its capitalist present. This volume's contributors see contemporary China as haunted by the promises of capitalism, the institutional legacy of the Maoist regime, and the spirit of Marxist resistance. China's development does not result from historical imperatives or deliberate economic strategies, but from the effects of discrete practices the contributors call protocols, which stem from an overlapping mix of socialist and capitalist institutional strategies, political procedures, legal regulations, religious rituals, and everyday practices. Analyzing the process of urbanization and the ways marginalized communities and migrant workers are positioned in relation to the transforming social landscape, the contributors show how these protocols constitute the Chinese national imaginary while opening spaces for new emancipatory possibilities. Offering a nuanced theory of contemporary China's hybrid political economy, Ghost Protocol situates China's development at the juncture between the world as experienced and the world as imagined.

Contributors. Yomi Braester, Alexander Des Forges, Kabzung, Rachel Leng, Ralph A. Litzinger, Lisa Rofel, Carlos Rojas, Bryan Tilt, Robin Visser, Biao Xiang, Emily T. Yeh

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Give a Man a Fish

Reflections on the New Politics of Distribution

James Ferguson

Duke University Press, 2015

In Give a Man a Fish James Ferguson examines the rise of social welfare programs in southern Africa, in which states make cash payments to their low income citizens. More than thirty percent of South Africa's population receive such payments, even as pundits elsewhere proclaim the neoliberal death of the welfare state. These programs' successes at reducing poverty under conditions of mass unemployment, Ferguson argues, provide an opportunity for rethinking contemporary capitalism and for developing new forms of political mobilization. Interested in an emerging "politics of distribution," Ferguson shows how new demands for direct income payments (including so-called "basic income") require us to reexamine the relation between production and distribution, and to ask new questions about markets, livelihoods, labor, and the future of progressive politics.

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Global Political Economy

A Marxist Critique

Bill Dunn

Pluto Press, 2008

This is an ambitious survey of the history and state of the world economy, covering the major upheavals of the capitalist system over the last 100 years.

Bill Dunn provides an original and enlightening explanation of the state of the world economy. He covers all the main aspects of global political economy explaining the theories behind production, trade, finance and relations between rich and poor countries. He also tackles the question of the origin of capitalism, a debate that always proves popular among students and academics. Dunn also includes a critique of alternative perspectives, showing that Marxism still provides the best analytical tools for understanding the global economy.

This comprehensive text is a must for students of politics and economics who are keen to understand how the economy reached its current stage and what the future is likely to bring.

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Global Trends and Global Governance

Edited by Paul Kennedy, Dirk Messner, and Franz Nuscheler

Pluto Press, 2001

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Globalizations and Social Movements

Culture, Power, and the Transnational Public Sphere

John A. Guidry, Michael D. Kennedy, and Mayer N. Zald, Editors

University of Michigan Press, 2000

Globalization is a set of processes that are weakening national boundaries. Both transnational and local social movements develop to resist the processes of globalization--migration, economic interdependence, global media coverage of events and issues, and intergovernmental relations. Globalization not only spurs the creation of social movements, but affects the way many social movements are structured and work. The essays in this volume illuminate how globalization is caught up in social movement processes and question the boundaries of social movement theory.

The book builds on the modern theory of social movements that focuses upon political process and opportunity, resource mobilization and mobilization structure, and the cultural framing of grievances, utopias, ideologies, and options. Some of the essays deal with the structure of international campaigns, while others are focused upon conflicts and movements in less developed countries that have strong international components. The fourteen essays are written by both well established senior scholars and younger scholars in anthropology, political science, sociology, and history. The essays cover a range of time periods and regions of the world.

This book is relevant for anyone interested in the politics and social change processes related to globalization as well as social-movement theory.

Mayer Zald is Professor of Sociology, University of Michigan. Michael Kennedy is Vice Provost for International Programs, Associate Professor of Sociology, and Director of the Center for Russian and East European Affairs, University of Michigan. John Guidry is Assistant Professor of Political Science, Augustana College.

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Golden Rule

The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems

Thomas Ferguson

University of Chicago Press, 1995

"To discover who rules, follow the gold." This is the argument of Golden Rule, a provocative, pungent history of modern American politics. Although the role big money plays in defining political outcomes has long been obvious to ordinary Americans, most pundits and scholars have virtually dismissed this assumption. Even in light of skyrocketing campaign costs, the belief that major financial interests primarily determine who parties nominate and where they stand on the issues—that, in effect, Democrats and Republicans are merely the left and right wings of the "Property Party"—has been ignored by most political scientists. Offering evidence ranging from the nineteenth century to the 1994 mid-term elections, Golden Rule shows that voters are "right on the money."

Thomas Ferguson breaks completely with traditional voter centered accounts of party politics. In its place he outlines an "investment approach," in which powerful investors, not unorganized voters, dominate campaigns and elections. Because businesses "invest" in political parties and their candidates, changes in industrial structures—between large firms and sectors—can alter the agenda of party politics and the shape of public policy.

Golden Rule presents revised versions of widely read essays in which Ferguson advanced and tested his theory, including his seminal study of the role played by capital intensive multinationals and international financiers in the New Deal. The chapter "Studies in Money Driven Politics" brings this aspect of American politics into better focus, along with other studies of Federal Reserve policy making and campaign finance in the 1936 election. Ferguson analyzes how a changing world economy and other social developments broke up the New Deal system in our own time, through careful studies of the 1988 and 1992 elections. The essay on 1992 contains an extended analysis of the emergence of the Clinton coalition and Ross Perot's dramatic independent insurgency. A postscript on the 1994 elections demonstrates the controlling impact of money on several key campaigns.

This controversial work by a theorist of money and politics in the U.S. relates to issues in campaign finance reform, PACs, policymaking, public financing, and how today's elections work.

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Good Company

Economic Policy after Shareholder Primacy

Lenore Palladino

University of Chicago Press, 2024

On the faulty intellectual origins of shareholder primacy—and how policy can win back what’s been lost.

In an era of shareholder primacy, share price is king. Businesses operate with short-term goals to deliver profits to shareholders, enjoying stability (and bonuses) in the process. While the public bemoans the doctrine for its insularity and wealth-consolidating effects, its influence over corporate governance persists. Good Company offers an exacting argument for why shareholder primacy was never the right model to follow for truly understanding how corporations operate.

Lenore Palladino shows that corporations draw power from public charters—agreements that allow corporations to enjoy all manner of operational benefits. In return, companies are meant to innovate for the betterment of the societies that support them. However, that debt—increasingly wielded for stock buybacks and shareholder bonuses—is not being repaid. Palladino theorizes a modern corporation that plays its intended role while delivering social and economic good in the process and offers tangible policy solutions to make this a reality. Good Company is both an expert introduction to the political economy of the firm—as it was, as it is, as it can be—and a calibrating examination of how public policy can shape companies, and societies, for the better.

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Government and the American Economy

A New History

Price V. Fishback et al.

University of Chicago Press, 2007

The American economy has provided a level of well-being that has consistently ranked at or near the top of the international ladder. A key source of this success has been widespread participation in political and economic processes. In The Government and the American Economy, leading economic historians chronicle the significance of America’s open-access society and the roles played by government in its unrivaled success story.

America’s democratic experiment, the authors show, allowed individuals and interest groups to shape the structure and policies of government, which, in turn, have fostered economic success and innovation by emphasizing private property rights, the rule of law, and protections of individual freedom. In response to new demands for infrastructure, America’s federal structure hastened development by promoting the primacy of states, cities, and national governments. More recently, the economic reach of American government expanded dramatically as the populace accepted stronger limits on its economic freedoms in exchange for the increased security provided by regulation, an expanded welfare state, and a stronger national defense.

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Grassroots Economies

Living with Austerity in Southern Europe

Susana Narotzky

Pluto Press, 2020

The austerity crisis has radically altered the economic landscape of Southern Europe. But alongside the decimation of public services and infrastructure lies the wreckage of a generation's visions for the future. In Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal, there is a new, difficult reality of downward mobility.

Grassroots Economies interrogates the effects of the economic crisis on the livelihood of working people, providing insight into their anxieties. Drawing on a rich seam of ethnographic material, it is a distinctive comparative analysis that explores the contradictions of their coping mechanisms and support structures.

With a focus on gender, the book explores values and ideologies, including dispossession and accumulation. Ultimately it demonstrates that everyday interactions on the local scale provide a significant sense of the global.

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Green Barons, Force-of-Circumstance Entrepreneurs, Impotent Mayors

Rural Change in the Early Years of Post-Socialist Capitalist Democracy

Nigel Swain

Central European University Press, 2013

An exemplary study in comparative contemporary history, this monograph looks at rural change in six countries: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. In the 1990s most of these nations experienced a fourth radical restructuring of agricultural relations in the twentieth century, and all went through the dramatic transition from communism to capitalism. The author analyzes attempts to activate democracy on a local level and recreate farming structures and non-agricultural businesses based on private ownership and private enterprise. He describes the emergence of a new business class that seeks to dominate local government structures; the recuperation of former communist farming entities by former managers; and the transformation of peasants into rural citizens, who nevertheless remain the underdogs. Swain exposes common features as well as specific divergences between the six countries; he portrays the winners, losers and engineers of transformations. He situates his themes in a wider context that will appeal to a broad range of social scientists and historians.

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Greenback Empire

Global Dollar Dominance and the New Cold War

Ho-fung Hung

University of Chicago Press, 2026

A critical history of the US dollar’s dominance in the world economy—and what has kept China’s currency from overtaking it.

The dollar is the primary currency of the world economy. With China now rivaling the United States on the world stage, a critical question hangs in the balance: will the Chinese renminbi challenge the status of the dollar and, in doing so, deprive America of its “exorbitant privilege”?

In GreenbackEmpire, Ho-fung Hung offers a powerful account of why, even as American shares of global production, ownership, and trade continue to decline, its currency has retained the support of governments and investors around the world. For six decades, Hung shows, the dominance of the dollar has rested on the security umbrella that the US offers to the world’s wealthiest countries—including oil producers. To these countries, support for the value of the dollar is tantamount to maintaining US protection. While China has become a serious geopolitical and economic rival to the US, the Chinese state’s airtight control of its financial system has delayed the free trading of the renminbi, limiting the currency’s internationalization. In short, the same strategy that engineered growth in China’s economy is restraining its currency's rise in opposition to the dollar. Hung’s Greenback Empire is an essential history of the dollar’s prowess, indispensable for understanding the future of the global monetary system.

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Growing Apart

Oil, Politics, and Economic Change in Indonesia and Nigeria

Peter M. Lewis

University of Michigan Press, 2007

"Growing Apart is an important and distinguished contribution to the literature on the political economy of development. Indonesia and Nigeria have long presented one of the most natural opportunities for comparative study. Peter Lewis, one of America's best scholars of Nigeria, has produced the definitive treatment of their divergent development paths. In the process, he tells us much theoretically about when, why, and how political institutions shape economic growth."
—Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution

"Growing Apart is a careful and sophisticated analysis of the political factors that have shaped the economic fortunes of Indonesia and Nigeria. Both scholars and policymakers will benefit from this book's valuable insights."
—Michael L. Ross, Associate Professor of Political Science, Chair of International Development Studies, UCLA

"Lewis presents an extraordinarily well-documented comparative case study of two countries with a great deal in common, and yet with remarkably different postcolonial histories. His approach is a welcome departure from currently fashionable attempts to explain development using large, multi-country databases packed with often dubious measures of various aspects of 'governance.'"
—Ross H. McLeod, Editor, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies

"This is a highly readable and important book. Peter Lewis provides us with both a compelling institutionalist analysis of economic development performance and a very insightful comparative account of the political economies of two highly complex developing countries, Nigeria and Indonesia. His well-informed account generates interesting findings by focusing on the ability of leaders in both countries to make credible commitments to the private sector and assemble pro-growth coalitions. This kind of cross-regional political economy is often advocated in the profession but actually quite rare because it is so hard to do well. Lewis's book will set the standard for a long time."

—Nicolas van de Walle, John S. Knight Professor of International Studies, Cornell University

Peter M. Lewis is Associate Professor and Director of the African Studies Program, Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies.

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