John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) was the most influential economist of the first half of the twentieth century. During both world wars he was an adviser to the British treasury, and his theory of government stimulation of the economy through deficit spending influenced Franklin D. Roosevelt's "New Deal" administration. The mass unemployment caused by the Great Depression inspired his most famous work, General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1935-36).
Keynes first gained widespread prominence immediately following World War I, when he attended the Versailles peace conference as an economic adviser to British Prime Minister David Lloyd George. Disgusted with the harshly punitive and unrealistic provisions of the Versailles Treaty, as well as the political chicanery and general incompetence of the chief participants, he published The Economic Consequences of the Peace in 1919. This book gained a good deal of notoriety because of its withering portraits of both French premier Georges Clemenceau and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. Keynes described Clemenceau as motivated only by shortsighted nationalistic goals and vindictiveness, which aimed at crippling Germany for generations no matter what the consequences to the rest of Europe. He found fault with Wilson for his ivory tower idealism, lack of diplomatic savvy, and unfamiliarity with the political realities of Europe. This ineffectual combination ultimately dashed his best hopes for a League of Nations and a just resolution to the war in Europe. In a point-by-point analysis Keynes makes clear the ruinous consequences of the treaty to all of Europe and proposes substantial modifications. Unfortunately, few appreciated Keynes's prescience, and he saw his worst fears realized in the rise of Hitler and the devastation of World War II.
In The End of Laissez-Faire (1926) he presents a brief historical review of laissez-faire economic policy. Though he agrees in principle that a marketplace of free individuals pursuing their own self-interest without government interference has a better chance of improving society's economic situation than socialist alternatives, he suggests that government can play a constructive role in protecting individuals from the worst harms of capitalism's cycles, especially as concerns unemployment. Other useful government functions are the dissemination of information relating to business conditions, encouraging savings and investment along "nationally productive channels," and forming a national policy about the size of population.
Keynes's brilliant mind and lucid writing are evident on every page. Both of these works are still well worth reading for his many stimulating ideas and profound knowledge of economics.

This monumental work on the corporation is one of those enduring classics that many cite but few have read. Graced with a new introduction by Weidenbaum and Jensen, this new edition makes this classic available to a new generation. Written in the early 1930s, The Modern Corporation and Private Property remains the fundamental introduction to the internal organization of the corporation in modern society. Combining the analytical skills of an attorney with those of an economist, Berle and Means raise the central questions, even when their answers have been superseded by changing circumstances.<br /><br />The book's most enduring theme is the separation of ownership from control of the modern corporation and its consequences. Berle and Means display keen awareness of the divergent interests of directors and managers, and of each from owners of the firm. Among their predictions are the characteristic increase in size of the modem corporation and concentration of the economy. The authors view stock exchanges and stock markets as essential by-products of the rise of the modem corporation, and explore how these function. They address the difficult questions of whether corporations operate for the benefit of owners or managers, and explore what motivates managers to make effective use of corporate assets. Finally, they examine the role of the corporation as the prevailing form of organizing the production and distribution of goods and services.<br /><br />In their new introduction, Weidenbaum and Jensen, co-directors of the Center for the Study of American Business at Washington University, critically assess the impact of developments not fully anticipated by Berle and Means, such as the rise of the service sector, and the significant role played by institutional investors in the owner/manager equation. They note the authors' prescient observations, including the complex role of and motivating influences on professional managers, and the significance of inside information on stock markets. As they note, The Modern Corporation and Private Property remains of central value to all those concerned with the evolution of this major social institution of the twentieth century. Scholar and practitioner alike will find it of enduring significance.

Climate change, the resource constrained economy, and sustainability in general are amongst the hottest and most problematic topics in contemporary business today. Increasingly, new enterprises are being established to address key twenty-first century environmental challenges, incumbent industries are implementing new strategies to comply with stringent legislation to retain their licenses, and multi-nationals are endeavouring to link tackling issues from poverty to deforestation to their bottom line. This textbook is one of the first to offer students a comprehensive overview of how the world's sustainability challenges are affecting, and being affected by business, and has been written specifically to cater for the growing number of courses and modules at undergraduate and postgraduate levels focused on sustainability in the business context. The author adopts a mix of practitioner and theoretical perspectives and offers an insightful review of the subject across three core areas: the global business context, business management and ownership, and the external environment. Each of these areas contains chapters on particular aspects of sustainability and management, and draws from a range of global case studies and exercises. This textbook serves as a concise summary of contemporary sustainability issues for lecturers and students wanting a single resource on the subject. Online Resource Centre: For Students: Links to web resources e.g. company sustainability initiatives, sustainability organisations For Lecturers: Teaching suggestions for the case studies PowerPoint slides Links to films, online video and other AV resources for use in the classroom, including summaries of their content and how they could be used Electronic versions of figures and diagrams from the book

This book provides the original and definitive treatments of such fundamental concepts as bounded rationality, attention focus, and problem solving.

The big economic story of our times is not the Great Recession. It is how China and India began to embrace neoliberal ideas of economics and attributed a sense of dignity and liberty to the bourgeoisie they had denied for so long. The result was an explosion in economic growth and proof that economic change depends less on foreign trade, investment, or material causes, and a whole lot more on ideas and what people believe. Or so says Deirdre N. McCloskey in "Bourgeois Dignity", a fiercely contrarian history that wages a similar argument about economics in the West. Here she turns her attention to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe to reconsider the birth of the Industrial Revolution and the rise of capitalism. According to McCloskey, our modern world was not the product of new markets, but rather the result of shifting opinions about them. An utterly fascinating sequel to her critically acclaimed book "The Bourgeois Virtues", "Bourgeois Dignity" is a feast of intellectual riches from one of our most spirited and ambitious historians.

Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" was the first comprehensive treatment of political economy. Originally delivered in the form of lectures at Glasgow, the book's publication in 1776 co-incided with America's Declaration of Independence. These volumes include Smith's assessment of the mercantile system, his advocacy of the freedom of commerce and industry, and his famous prophecy that "America will be one of the foremost nations of the world".
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"More than any thing else technology creates our world. It creates our wealth, our economy, our very way of being," says W. Brian Arthur. Yet, until now the major questions of technology have gone unanswered. Where do new technologies come from -- how exactly does invention work? What constitutes innovation, and how is it achieved? Why are certain regions -- Cambridge, England, in the 1920s and Silicon Valley today -- hotbeds of innovation, while others languish? Does technology, like biological life, evolve? How do new industries, and the economy itself, emerge from technologies? In this groundbreaking work, pioneering technology thinker and economist W. Brian Arthur sets forth a boldly original way of thinking about technology that gives answers to these questions. The Nature of Technology is an elegant and powerful theory of technology's origins and evolution. It achieves for the progress of technology what Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions did for scientific progress. Arthur explains how transformative new technologies arise and how innovation really works. Conventional thinking ascribes the invention of technologies to "thinking outside the box," or vaguely to genius or creativity, but Arthur shows that such explanations are inadequate. Rather, technologies are put together from pieces -- themselves technologies -- that already exist. Technologies therefore share common ancestries and combine, morph, and combine again to create further technologies. Technology evolves much as a coral reef builds itself from activities of small organisms -- it creates itself from itself; all technologies are descended from earlier technologies. Drawing on a wealth of examples, from historical inventions to the high-tech wonders of today, and writing in wonder fully engaging and clear prose, Arthur takes us on a mind-opening journey that will change the way we think about technology and how it structures our lives.

In recent years, economic growth has been regarded as a self-evident good, with political debate focussed on the best means to achieve it. But there are now signs that this shared assumption is weakening. Anger at 'greedy' bankers and their 'obscene' bonuses has given way to a deeper dissatisfaction with an economic system geared overwhelmingly to the accumulation of wealth. Huge income disparities and an ever-growing gap between the richest and the rest has brought us to one of those rare moments when the underlying assumptions of society, are changing.
In How Much is Enough? Robert and Edward Skidelsky argue that wealth is not an end in itself but a means to the achievement and maintenance of a 'good life', and that our economy should be organised to reflect this fact. The book includes a definition of the 'good life', discusses the relevance of 'Happiness Studies' and the environmental impact of our ever-growing need to consume. In doing so, it offers an escape from the trap of excessive specialization and a way to reinvigorate the idea of economics as a 'moral science'. It concludes by offering a radical new model for income redistribution - and a consideration of what human beings might really want from their lives.

Edith Penrose has been one of the most significantas economists of the second part of the twentieth century. Her contribution to the theory of the firm has reinvented and productively developed the classical tradition in economics, and informed the currently dominant, knowledge-based theory of
the firm. This volume builds on a special issue of Contributions to Political Economy that celebrated forty years since Penrose's classic The Theory of the Growth of the Firm. It includes fifteen chapters by leading contributors on the aforementioned aspects of Penrose's work.

A Humane Economy offers an understandable and compelling explanation of how economies operate. Over and over, the great Swiss economist stresses one simple point: You cannot separate economic principles from human behavior.

The Pursuit of Organizational Intelligence brings together the writing of one of the best--known academics in the field of decision making and organizational theory.

Much of what we know we cannot say. And much of what we do we cannot describe. For example, how do we know how to ride a bike when we can't explain how we do it? These abilities, which we are unable to articulate, were labeled "tacit knowledge" by chemist and philosopher Michael Polanyi, but here Harry Collins analyzes the term, and the behavior, in much greater detail, often departing from Polanyi's treatment. In "Tacit and Explicit Knowledge", Collins develops a common conceptual language to bridge the concept's disparate domains by explaining explicit knowledge and classifying tacit knowledge. Collins then teases apart the three very different meanings, which, until now, all fell under the umbrella of Polanyi's term: relational tacit knowledge (things we could describe in principle if we put in the effort), somatic tacit knowledge (things our bodies can do but we cannot describe, like balancing on a bike), and collective tacit knowledge (knowledge we draw on that is the property of society, such as the rules for language). Thus, bicycle riding consists of some somatic tacit knowledge and some collective tacit knowledge, such as the knowledge that allows us to navigate in traffic. The intermixing of the three kinds of tacit knowledge has led to confusion in the past; Collins' book unravels these complexities and thus enables us to make new and better use of the underlying concept.