Puzzles, Paradoxes, Controversies, and the Global Economy

Puzzles, Paradoxes, Controversies, and the Global Economy

Author: Charles Wolf Jr.

Publisher: Hoover Press

Published: 2015-06-01

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 0817918566

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In this wide-ranging collection of essays first published between 2007 and 2014, Charles Wolf Jr. shares his insights on the world's economies, including those of China, the United States, Japan, Korea, India, and others. First appearing in such periodicals as in Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, and the Weekly Standard, among others, these chapters take on a range of questions about the global economy. Wolf discusses the paradoxes and puzzles within China's political economy and in its interactions with the United States. He analyzes the shortcomings of Keynesian economics as a response to the 2008 recession, as well as the weaknesses of policies and actions inferred from the theory, and compares those weaknesses with those of austerity policies intended to limit government spending and indebtedness. He also offers his views on economic inequality and where its principal sources may truly lay, China's currency and the continuing controversy about whether and when it may become a major international reserve currency, and many more insights on key economic issues affecting the global economy. Bringing these essays together for the first time in a single volume, including two essays not yet published elsewhere, this book enables the reader to absorb the author's expert perspective during the years in a collection in which the whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts. Each chapter includes a brief "postaudit" in which the author attempts to grade how well or ill the essay seems in retrospect.


Yo-Yo Diplomacy (Tom Plate on Asia): An American Columnist Tackles The Ups-and-Downs Between China and the US

Yo-Yo Diplomacy (Tom Plate on Asia): An American Columnist Tackles The Ups-and-Downs Between China and the US

Author: Tom Plate

Publisher: Marshall Cavendish International Asia Pte Ltd

Published: 2017-07-15

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 9814779482

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The third of the “Tom Plate on Asia” series, Yo-Yo Diplomacy compiles the compelling and insightful columns on Asia by award-winning journalist Tom Plate over the past two years. From tensions in the South China Sea to China’s stock market turbulence and Hong Kong’s bookseller saga, the veteran columnist continues to examine the rise of Asia and the role of America in this dynamic and diverse region. The collection is enlivened with thoughtful retrospectives and personal comments providing vivid backstories. The result is an informative and readable anthology that would prove valuable not only political and current affairs commentators, but also to the layperson wishing to learn more about pivotal developments in the Asia-Pacific region


Controversies in Economics and Finance

Controversies in Economics and Finance

Author: Imad A. Moosa

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2020-11-27

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1839105623

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In this fascinating book, Imad A. Moosa challenges existing preconceptions surrounding normative economics, arguing that what some economists see as undisputed facts of life may be myths caused by dogmatic thinking. Plausible explanations are suggested for puzzles in various areas of economics and finance, such as the home bias puzzle, the PPP puzzle and the presidential puzzle. Controversies in Economics and Finance is a thought-provoking and stimulating read that exposes common flaws in economic analysis. It will be of great benefit to academics, graduate students and policy-makers looking to understand the limits of economic analysis.


Puzzles and Paradoxes in Economics

Puzzles and Paradoxes in Economics

Author: Mark Skousen

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 1997-05-15

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 1800886489

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Economics is full of puzzles and paradoxes that often frustrate and challenge everyone, including economists. This engaging book includes fifty puzzles and focuses on three types of paradox. First, everyday observations that appear to belie common sense (such as why some supermarket items sell for more per ounce in larger sizes). Secondly, those paradoxes which have perplexed economists in the past but have since been fairly resolved (such as the diamond–water paradox). Finally, empirical or conceptual anomalies that remain unresolved and present a challenge to today’s economists (such as the voting paradox).


China Into Its Second Rise: Myths, Puzzles, Paradoxes, And Challenge To Theory

China Into Its Second Rise: Myths, Puzzles, Paradoxes, And Challenge To Theory

Author: James Chieh Hsiung

Publisher: World Scientific

Published: 2012-03-20

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9814462829

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This book seeks to demystify the re-ascendancy of China as a civilization state. China's politics and society are examined in the light of its living civilization, which is the only one of the ancient civilizations that has survived to this day. The book also contrasts China's development with that of the West and Japan. By combining the impact of internal political and socio-economic developments in China and its external relations (from the silk routes, the tribute system, to the modern day), it unravels the existing myths, puzzles, and paradoxes surrounding China and questions the adequacy of most of the Western political theories (such as realism in international relations) in an attempt to explicate China's re-emergence as a world power. It attempts to tackle squarely the question: Is China a threat to world order?The book traces the rationale for contemporary developments in China to the roots in the country's tradition as well as foreign influences and seeks to unravel the puzzle about the unique China Model that defies conventional thinking in political economy, with its sustained and incredibly rapid economic growth over the past three decades. This study on China's second rise provides a broad background that includes a meaningful scrutiny of the country's behavior during its first rise (713-1820) and beyond. In comparing China's ongoing second rise with its first ascent, the book not only refocuses on and reinterprets the example set during its first rise, but also takes into account the crucial lessons it learned during its century in eclipse in the interregnum, for the effects they have on the country's current orientation and behavior. The book follows an interdisciplinary approach, combining the cultural, intellectual-historical, normative-ideological, and social-scientific perspectives, to lend a more solid grasp of the present-day China. It ends with an educated speculation, based on the foregoing analyses, on the contours of a Pax Sinica that is likely to result from the impact of China's second rise as a world power.


New Issues in Islamic Finance and Economics

New Issues in Islamic Finance and Economics

Author: Hossein Askari

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2011-12-19

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 1118179641

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New Issues in Islamic Finance & Economics: Progress and Challenges provides a review of the main issues and challenges facing Islamic finance. The application of Islamic finance is currently limited to banking. This book starts with an overview of the factors and motives behind the development of Islamic finance. A critical review of issues facing the industry is provided followed by a detailed analysis of areas where further attention is required. The book offers some original thinking on issues pertaining to governance, institutions, public finance and economic development within an Islamic financial system.


The Globalization Paradox

The Globalization Paradox

Author: Dani Rodrik

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2012-05-17

Total Pages: 442

ISBN-13: 0191634255

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For a century, economists have driven forward the cause of globalization in financial institutions, labour markets, and trade. Yet there have been consistent warning signs that a global economy and free trade might not always be advantageous. Where are the pressure points? What could be done about them? Dani Rodrik examines the back-story from its seventeenth-century origins through the milestones of the gold standard, the Bretton Woods Agreement, and the Washington Consensus, to the present day. Although economic globalization has enabled unprecedented levels of prosperity in advanced countries and has been a boon to hundreds of millions of poor workers in China and elsewhere in Asia, it is a concept that rests on shaky pillars, he contends. Its long-term sustainability is not a given. The heart of Rodrik’s argument is a fundamental 'trilemma': that we cannot simultaneously pursue democracy, national self-determination, and economic globalization. Give too much power to governments, and you have protectionism. Give markets too much freedom, and you have an unstable world economy with little social and political support from those it is supposed to help. Rodrik argues for smart globalization, not maximum globalization.


Bourgeois Equality

Bourgeois Equality

Author: Deirdre N. McCloskey

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2017-10-13

Total Pages: 830

ISBN-13: 022652793X

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The last 200 years have witnessed a 100-fold leap in well-being. Deirdre McCloskey argues that most people today are stunningly better off than their forbearers were in 1800, and that the rest of humanity will soon be. A purely materialist, incentivist view of economic change does not explain this leap. We have now the third in McCloskey's three-volume opus about how bourgeois values transformed Europe. Volume 3 nails the case for that transfiguration, telling us how aristocratic virtues of hierarchy were replaced by bourgeois virtues (more precisely, by attitudes toward virtues) that made it possible for ordinary folk with novel ideas to change the way people, farmed, manufactured, traveled, ruled themselves, and fought. It is a dramatic story, and joins a dramatic debate opened up by Thomas Piketty in his best-selling Capital in the 21st Century. McCloskey insists that economists are far too preoccupied by capital and saving, arguing against the position (of Piketty and most others) that capital induces a tendency to get more, that money reproduces itself, that riches are created from riches. Not so, our intrepid McCloskey shows. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, among the biggest wealth accumulators in our era, didn't get rich through the magic of compound interest on capital. They got rich through intellectual property, creating billions of dollars from virtually nothing. Capital was no more important an ingredient to the original Apple or Microsoft than cookies or cucumbers. The debate is between those who think riches are created from riches versus those who, with McCloskey, think riches are created from rags, between those who see profits as a generous return on capital, or profits coming from innovation that ultimately benefits us all.


Paradoxes Of China's Prosperity: Political Dilemmas And Global Implications

Paradoxes Of China's Prosperity: Political Dilemmas And Global Implications

Author: Guoguang Wu

Publisher: World Scientific

Published: 2015-01-15

Total Pages: 645

ISBN-13: 9814578029

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The world seems divided to either applaud or fear the rise of China, but this book probes deeper by investigating three aspects of the phenomenon in detail: 1) the institutional dilemmas of the prosperity as it integrates Asian authoritarianism with globalizing capitalism to create economic accomplishments; 2) the political struggles alongside the prosperity as Chinese citizens begin to demand equality, rights, and justice that might be viewed to disturb the continuity of stability and development; and 3) the global implications entailed by the prosperity — not only in power politics, war and peace, or competitions among nations, but especially on global public goods termed “human security”. Articles included here combine political economic analyses, lens with historical depth, and global concerns to add a perspective that highlights the “paradoxes” of prosperity surrounding the ongoing debate on the rise of China and its global ramifications.Readers will find an analysis that goes beyond the dichotomy viewing the rise of China either in positive or negative perspectives. Investigations on the internal dilemmas and the global implications of the rise of China are well-situated in the historical context of China's own search for modernization since the late 19th century. This is one of the few books in which China's rise is examined from a global perspective, rather than from a national perspective (of China, the United States or any other specific nation) — a global perspective that addresses the challenges facing all human societies with the rise of China.


Dragon Multinational

Dragon Multinational

Author: John A. Mathews

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2002-01-31

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 9780195352894

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The conventional view of globalization sees it as a process driven by giant firms from the Triad regions of North America, Europe, and Japan, shaping the world in their own image. This book contests such a view, describing the extraordinary success of a handful of multinationals from the "Periphery" in globalizing their operations extremely rapidly. Focusing on Acer, the Taiwanese IT company; the Hong Leong hotel group of Singapore; Ispat International in steel; Cemex of Mexico in cement; and Li and Fung from Hong Kong in contract manufacturing, Mathews demonstrates that these firms have been able to utilize strategies of international linkage and leverage to accelerate their global coverage. He contends that they are pioneers of a new kind of global firm, indicators that the global business civilization being created in the 21st century is like to be pluralistic and diverse, offering unprecedented opportunities for firms that know how to enmesh themselves in global networks.