Economics or Communicating in Business and Professional Settings

Economics: Private and Public Choice with Xtra! CD-ROM and InfoTrac

Author: James D Gwartney

A cornerstone of Harcourt¦s publishing program for 25 years, Economics: Private and Public Choice is considered the best existing principles of economics textbook emphasizing free markets. The strengths of this text are its clarity, emphasis on the economic way of thinking, and its application to the world around us. Economics: Private and Public Choice has an amazing approach to introducing students to a moderate amount of economic data analysis while applying the concept to a real-world story.

Booknews

This book/CD-ROM text seeks to make economics understandable to freshman and sophomore undergraduates and to illustrate the relevance of economics in daily life. Core chapters cover material usually taught in economics principles courses, and include short units (designed for one class period) on topics such as the future of social security, and readings which highlight the organizational and institutional factors that underlie economic prosperity. The CD-ROM contains a graphing workshop and animated tutorials, interactive graphing exercises, video lectures on difficult topics, and video news segments. Gwartney teaches economics at Florida State University. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Book review: Pot Luck or Rodeos and Recipies

Communicating in Business and Professional Settings

Author: Michael S Hanna

Designed for the business communication course, this lively text offers a blend of current theory and research within the context of actual organizations. The text focuses on communication in differing contexts, teaching students how to communicate in a variety of situations. Real life examples from a broad range of business and professional settings abound, reflecting the authors belief that theory and practice go hand in hand. The fourth edition includes new chapters on diversity, technology in the workplace, and conflict management, plus several new pedagogical features.

Michael S. Hanna is Professor of Communication at the University of South Alabama. He has co-authored six books and has been a frequent consultant to business and industry, having worked most recently with corporations as Courtaulds Fibers, DuPont, Degussa, Olin Corporation and Ciba-Geigy.

Table of Contents:

	Preface
Pt. I	Preliminary Considerations: Communication and Organizations	1
Ch. 1	A Communication Perspective	3
Ch. 2	The Organization - Theoretical Perspectives	24
Ch. 3	Leadership and Communication in Organizations	47
Ch. 4	Diversity in the Workplace	70
Pt. II	Basic Considerations: Foundations for Communication in Organizations	95
Ch. 5	Perception and Listening	97
Ch. 6	Language and Nonverbal Communication	123
Ch. 7	Technology in the Workplace	152
Pt. III	Organizational Contexts: Interpersonal	179
Ch. 8	Interpersonal Communication	181
Ch. 9	Conflict Management	204
Ch. 10	Interviewing and Interviews: On the Job	232
Ch. 11	The Selection Interview: Hiring and Being Hired for the Job	260
Pt. IV	Organizational Contexts: The Group Context	305
Ch. 12	Small Group Communication Processes	307
Ch. 13	Communicating with a Group or Staff	333
Pt. V	Organizational Contexts: The One-to-Many Context	371
Ch. 14	Thinking about the Ideas and Arguments	373
Ch. 15	Organizing the Presentation	394
Ch. 16	Delivering the Presentation	411
	Epilogue	426
	Troubleshooting the Organization	427
App	Writing in Business and Professional Settings	443
	Index	453

Reinventing Marxism or Urban Economics

Reinventing Marxism

Author: Howard J Sherman

The collapse of the Soviet Union provides economist Howard Sherman the opportunity to re-evaluate Marxism as an alternative to conventional pro-capitalist perspectives. Arguing that Soviet Marxism distorted Marxian thought, Sherman acknowledges that Marxism must move beyond its traditional Soviet formulation. What is needed, he writes, is a new, critical Marxism that is integral to a radical political economy--a Marxism that sees society as an organic whole, dependent upon an integrated set of relationships.

"There is no other book that shows the relevance and importance of dialectics to so many major debates now going on in the Academy, and it does all this with a thorough grasp of the relevant scholarship and a clear and crisp writing style that shouldn't be possible on such a complex topic (but obviously is)."--Bertell Ollman, Department of Politics, New York University.

"A major contributor for many years to the tradition of political economy, Sherman offers a persuasive argument for a new kind of Marxism. The timing is right, partly because it ties into current postmodern/modern debates, and partly because it offers a difference to that heretofore reigning orthodoxy produced above all within the former USSR. This is an extraordinarily ambitious book. It deserves to be read."--Stephen Resnick, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

"Reinventing Marxism is the product of three decades of intense scholarly work. It will be exciting to institutional economists because it is high-quality Marxism utilizing an evolutionary andholistic approach."--William M. Dugger, University of Tulsa

Booknews

Eschewing the obscurantist jargon of technical economics, Sherman presents a basic framework for the entire field of Marxism which is critical of conventional social science, but also critical of the old, Stalinist, Soviet Marxism. He effectively synthesizes the numerous specialized contributions to a new critical Marxism into a coherent paradigm, stating the new Marxism as a unity of all the social sciences. The volume is divided into four parts: the political economy of history; political economy--a relational-historical approach; the critical method; and a radical program for the 21st century. Paper edition (unseen), $16.95. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Table of Contents:

	Preface
	Acknowledgments
Pt. I	The Political Economy of History	1
Ch. 1	Why Reinvent Marxism?	3
Ch. 2	A Critique of Reductionism	13
Ch. 3	The Relational Approach	29
Ch. 4	The Historical Approach	56
Ch. 5	A Critique of Individualism and Extreme Collectivism	85
Ch. 6	Class Analysis	109
Pt. II	Political Economy: A Relational-Historical Approach
Ch. 7	Poverty, Inequality, and Exploitation	129
Ch. 8	Unemployment and Business Cycles	152
Ch. 9	Democracy and Capitalism	177
Ch. 10	The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union	193
Pt. III	The Critical Method
Ch. 11	Dialectics as a Critical Method	215
Ch. 12	The Conflict of Paradigms	243
Ch. 13	Determinism and Predeterminism	270
Ch. 14	Marxian Humanism and Liberal Humanism	286
Pt. IV	A Radical Program for the Twenty-first Century
Ch. 15	Reinventing Socialism	317
	References	339
	Name Index	359
	Subject Index	364

New interesting book: Die Ökonometrie von Finanzmärkten

Urban Economics

Author: Arthur OSullivan

Arthur O’Sullivan’s Urban Economics is the leading text for this small, but exciting market. This book covers urban economics as the discipline that lies at the intersection of geography and economics. The sixth edition is a thorough revision of previous incarnations—the author has reorganized and rewritten every chapter to produce a sleek and up-to-date text that will bring renewed attention to the Urban Economics course.

This sixth edition offers an extreme makeover from previous editions while also incorporating the remarkable progress in the field of urban economics in the last ten to fifteen years. Part I of the book explains why cities exist and what causes them to grow or shrink. Part II examines the market forces that shape cities and the role of government in determining land-use patterns. Part III looks at the urban transportation system, exploring the pricing and design of public transit systems and the externalities associated with automobile use (congestion, environmental damage, collisions). Part IV uses a model of the rational criminal to explore the causes of urban crime and the spatial consequences. Part V explains the unique features of the housing market and examines the effects of government housing policies. The final part of the book explains the rationale for our fragmented system of local government and explores the responses of local governments to intergovernmental grants and the responses of taxpayers to local taxes.

All of the economic concepts used in the book are covered in the typical intermediate microeconomics course, but a Tools of Microeconomics appendix isincluded that covers the key concepts for students whose exposure to microeconomics is limited to an introductory course or who could benefit from a review of intermediate concepts.

Women in Medieval English Society or Innovation New Technologies

Women in Medieval English Society

Author: Mavis E Mat

This book presents a concise and accessible introduction to the various issues and debates surrounding women and their position in medieval society. Professor Mate examines the role women played in the economy, clarifies legal provisions for women and highlights the importance of class, as well as gender, in determining marriage and opportunities.

Booknews

Mate (medieval history, U. of Oregon) begins her introduction: "More has been written about medieval women in the last fifteen years than in the previous one hundred and fifty." Here she looks at the ways in which historians have seen the position of women in medieval society from the beginning of the Anglo-Saxon period to the end of the 15th century. She focuses on legal rights, women's contribution to the economy, and political and religious power, as well as changes over time, and the existence or non-existence of a "golden age." Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

See also: Savory Suppers and Fashionable Feasts or Clambake

Innovation, New Technologies: Financial Crisis, Corporate Reform and Institutional Transition, Vol. 14

Author: Cristiano Antonelli

This authoritative book from Cristiano Antonelli provides a systematic account of recent advances in the economics of innovation. By integrating this account with the economics of technological change, the book elaborates an understanding of the effects of the introduction of new technologies.
The innovation economics community will appreciate this excellent, comprehensive account, provided by a respected expert, and it is also a book that must be read by all those with an interest in Economic Theory.

Table of Contents:

	List of figures
	Foreword
	Acknowledgments
1	Introduction
Pt. I	The building blocks	1
2	Shifting heuristics in the economics of innovation	3
3	The retrieval of the economics of technological change	38
Pt. II	Innovation and structural change	47
4	Composition effects: the direction of technological change and the context of its introduction	49
5	New technologies and structural change: constraints and inducements to innovation	64
6	Industrial dynamics and technological change	81
7	The dynamics of factors markets and technological change	94
8	Product innovation and barriers to entry	107
9	Relative prices and international competition in the global economy	118
10	Feedbacks, path-dependence and evolution	127
Pt. III	Applications and implications	131
11	Understanding the economics of new information and communication technology in the global economy	133
12	Policy implications: a European perspective	145
13	Conclusions	151
	Notes	167
	Bibliography	172
	Index	185