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The development of the Mexican financial system as it has related to the remarkable growth of the Mexican economy is examined in this book.

Believing that a better understanding of the past will permit a more nearly accurate appraisal of contemporary problems and facilitate the choice of intelligent policies in the future, the authors present a detailed chronicle and analysis of components of the Mexican financial system, with primary emphasis on the period from 1940 to the mid-1960s.

Separate chapters are devoted to the money and capital market, the formulation and execution of monetary and financial policies, and the nature of Mexican financial experience in both the public and private sectors of the economy. The authors offer a theoretical explanation of the record of Mexican experience, based upon their analysis of relationships between monetary policy, domestic stability, and external equilibrium, as well as upon their analysis of factors governing the growth of domestic indebtedness, the development of financial intermediation, and the operation of the loanable funds market. The final chapter of the book, a review of Mexican experience from 1960 to 1965, speculates with respect to the future course of Mexican financial development and offers specific proposal for future monetary and financial policies.

This record of Mexican financial development contains much that should be of interest to others engaged in related theoretical and empirical studies, including many lessons for those countries confronted with circumstances and problems not too unlike those encountered in Mexico.

Prior to the millennium, economists and policy makers argued that free trade between the United States and Mexico would benefit both Americans and Mexicans. They believed that NAFTA would be a “win-win” proposition that would offer U.S. companies new markets for their products and Mexicans the hope of living in a more developed country with the modern conveniences of wealthier nations. Blending rigorous economic and statistical analysis with concern for the people affected, Mexican Women in American Factories offers the first assessment of whether NAFTA has fulfilled these expectations by examining its socioeconomic impact on workers in a Mexican border town.

Carolyn Tuttle led a group that interviewed 620 women maquila workers in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. The responses from this representative sample refute many of the hopeful predictions made by scholars before NAFTA and reveal instead that little has improved for maquila workers. The women’s stories make it plain that free trade has created more low-paying jobs in sweatshops where workers are exploited. Families of maquila workers live in one- or two-room houses with no running water, no drainage, and no heat. The multinational companies who operate the maquilas consistently break Mexican labor laws by requiring women to work more than nine hours a day, six days a week, without medical benefits, while the minimum wage they pay workers is insufficient to feed their families. These findings will make a crucial contribution to debates over free trade, CAFTA-DR, and the impact of globalization.

Elizabeth Zanoni provides a cutting-edge comparative look at Italian people and products on the move between 1880 and 1940. Concentrating on foodstuffs—a trade dominated by Italian entrepreneurs in New York and Buenos Aires—Zanoni reveals how consumption of these increasingly global imports affected consumer habits and identities and sparked changing and competing connections between gender, nationality, and ethnicity. Women in particular—by tradition tasked with buying and preparing food—had complex interactions that influenced both global trade and their community economies. Zanoni conveys the complicated and often fraught values and meanings that surrounded food, meals, and shopping.

A groundbreaking interdisciplinary study, Migrant Marketplaces offers a new perspective on the linkages between migration and trade that helped define globalization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The story of how today’s dairy farmers are navigating a historic crossroads of agriculture and rural life in a rapidly changing world.
For generations, the dairy farmer has embodied the character, resilience, and values of the Midwest. Yet between 2005 and 2020, Wisconsin—known as America’s Dairyland—lost half of its dairy farms, marking one of the most profound economic and cultural transformations in its history. In Milk Shake: Abundance and Loss in America’s Dairyland, journalist Garbo Wedde delivers a thorough and emotionally resonant portrait of the farm families living through this time of change in rural life.
Drawing on extensive research and candid conversations with dozens of dairy farmers and industry stakeholders, Wedde looks beyond statistics to reveal the human stories behind the decline of the small family dairy farm. At the heart of the book are four Wisconsin farm families grappling with an uncertain future and how to respond: one leaves the industry, one embraces automation, one finds hope in a new generation willing to carry on the work, and one faces mounting financial strain that culminates in tragedy.
Interwoven among these narratives is a penetrating examination of the rise of large-scale industrial farms, their economic and environmental impacts, and the ways communities are responding. Wedde also explores the political, economic, demographic, and cultural forces reshaping dairy farming, from environmental regulation and labor shortages to gerrymandering, changing consumer preferences, and growing consolidation of small farms into agribusiness.
Richly observed scenes—from dairy breakfasts and farm auctions to public hearings on concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs)—bring readers inside a world that is both quintessentially American and increasingly endangered. Part social history and part elegy, Milk Shake captures a pivotal moment in America’s Dairyland while exploring questions that reach far beyond Wisconsin: What is lost when family farms disappear, and what does that loss mean for the communities, traditions, and values they sustain?

The third installment in the definitive account of the famed economist's role in economic debate—and his lasting influence on economic policy.

Milton Friedman is widely recognized as one of the most significant contributors to economics in the modern age. Yet no previous study has distilled Friedman’s vast body of writings into an authoritative account of his research, his policy views, and his interventions in public debate. Through his sweeping series on the most influential economist of the second half of the twentieth century, Edward Nelson closes this gap: Milton Friedman and EconomicDebate in the United States is the defining narrative on the famed public intellectual—the first to grapple comprehensively with Friedman’s research output, economic framework, and legacy.

Volume 3 chronicles Friedman’s activities from 1973 to 1976, encompassing his final years at the University of Chicago and a period that saw his further ascension in national prominence. In the mid-1970s, economic news dominated American political discourse as the nation endured double-digit inflation and recession. It was during this time that Friedman’s views became a center of economic debate in both the research world and public debate, while his explanation for “stagflation” formed part of the critique of stabilization policy that would lead to his 1976 Nobel Prize. Nelson details the controversies that Friedman faced in the media—including his contrarian stances on inflation’s cure, the economic implications of oil price shocks, and the social responsibility of business—and how Friedman concluded that the world needed a “new Adam Smith” to press the case for free markets. Drawing upon a large body of documentary sources, interviews with dozens of the people closest to Friedman, and his own expertise in Friedman’s research area of monetary analysis, Nelson provides the definitive account of the formative (and uneven) events in Friedman’s foray into life as a public intellectual and how his research permanently shifted economic thinking.

The fourth installment of the sweeping account of the most influential economist in modern times, focusing on his crossover into the public sphere.

Milton Friedman is widely recognized as one of the most significant contributors to economics in the modern age. Yet no previous study has distilled Friedman’s vast body of writings into an authoritative account of his research, his policy views, and his interventions in public debate. Through his sweeping series on the most influential economist of the second half of the twentieth century, Edward Nelson closes this gap: Milton Friedman and EconomicDebate in the United States is the defining narrative on the famed public intellectual—the first to grapple comprehensively with Friedman’s research output, economic framework, and legacy.

Volume 4 of Nelson’s intellectual and policy biography offers an exacting portrait of Friedman’s career following his departure from the University of Chicago. Spanning 1977 to 1979, Nelson’s narrative details Friedman’s move to California and his greater immersion in public policy, including his project with Rose Friedman and television professionals to create a TV series giving his viewpoint. Nelson details the successes and failures of Friedman’s years of extraordinary influence, including:

• His warnings about US inflation returning to double digits in 1979;
• The changes in professional thinking in the US economics profession and policymaking toward acceptance of Friedman's view that inflation is a monetary phenomenon;
• The rise of Paul Volcker to head of the Federal Reserve and his integration of monetarist ideas into US monetary policy;
• Friedman's proposal to phase in a zero-tariff arrangement in the United States; 
• His role in the tax revolt of the 1970s—including his break with the emerging supply-side economics movement on the effects of tax cuts;
• The second oil-price shock and Friedman's critique of the Carter Administration's energy policy;
• The resilience after 1976 of Ronald Reagan's presidential ambitions and Friedman's 1979 endorsement of Reagan for president in the 1980 election.

Drawing upon a large body of documentary sources, interviews with dozens of the people closest to Friedman, and his own expertise in Friedman’s research area of monetary analysis, Nelson offers the definitive account of what proved to be pivotal years for Friedman and the field of economics.

The continent of Africa is rich in minerals needed by Western economies, but rather than forming the basis for economic growth the mining industry contributes very little to African development

Investigating the impact of the 2003 Extractive Industries Review on a number of African countries, the contributors find that a key dimension of the problem lies in the regulatory frameworks imposed on the African countries by the IMF and World Bank. They aim to convince academics, governments and industry that regulation needs to be reformed to create a mining industry favourable to social and economic development and environmental protection.

The book takes a multidisciplinary approach and provides a historical perspective of each country, making it ideal for students of development studies and development organisations.

An insider’s guide to university finances, for non-insiders.

The finances of higher education have never been more challenging. From two-year institutions to the Ivy Leagues, from department chairs to provosts, administrators face revenue shortfalls and financial insecurity. A fundamental understanding of financial management is more essential than ever for university leaders at every level—as is a true partnership between academic leaders and their CFOs.

In Margin and Mission, Daniel Diermeier and Brett Sweet distill the principles for successful financial management in higher education, based on their work together at Vanderbilt University. Their concise, practical guide develops the reader’s understanding step-by-logical-step with the help of real-world examples. Margin and Mission aims to give university leaders, from board members to department chairs, the knowledge to make sound economic decisions that preserve their institutions’ purpose—even in the face of uncertainty. 

Strongman governments are back. What becomes of their economies?

Autocracy has once again become a rising force. Today, two thirds of the world’s population live under regimes where electoral democracy is either absent or debased. Moreover, even many functioning democracies are now facing a significant share of their citizens who favor switching to authoritarian rule. But as states return to their old authoritarian ways, what happens to their still-modernized economies?

Simon Commander and Saul Estrin examine the scale of this change—and the unevenly distributed economic consequences that will soon accompany it. Modern Autocracy reveals how authoritarian economies generally perform worse than economies in democratic states, in part because many authoritarian states are centralized around a leader whose economic stewardship facilitates political favor and cronyism. In all, these features, combined with the likelihood of repression, sap economic vitality and stymie competition, innovation, and, ultimately, growth.

The exception, the authors reveal, is that autocracies can perform better when they’re built around an institutional framework rather than simply a leader. That is because they can pursue strategic goals, including innovation; even so, their autocratic foundations open up major vulnerabilities and tensions. Brimming with political relevance, Modern Autocracy is a defining taxonomy of economies and their natures in this century.