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For nearly sixty years, the Soviet Union had the most militarized economy in history. The sheer volume of arms produced, and the physical and human dimensions of the industrial apparatus used to produce those arms, was unmatched. Militarization affected every fiber of the economic system; for individuals and households, it provided support for measures to restrict free choice in almost every aspect of people's personal lives, from where they lived and worked to what they ate and wore. All of this has now changed radically. Russia has removed nearly all the restrictions on individuals and it is now drastically reducing its military-industrial sector. By some measures, one could say that the country has already demilitarized. Russia today produces only a small fraction of the arms it did five years ago, but militarization of the economy is far from an issue of the past for Russia. As this book clearly demonstrates, the costs which it imposed represent one of the biggest continuing burdens that Russia will have to bear. One of Clifford Gaddy's main purposes of this book is to uncover the enduring costs of militarization. This book differs from other studies of the overall effect of militarization on Soviet society in two ways. First, it stresses the connection between market reform and demilitarization. It shows how introducing market prices and giving citizens and firms freedom of choice have progressively stripped away many of the advantages previously enjoyed by the Soviet military-industrial complex. Second, the book concentrates on the consequences of militarization and demilitarization not only for enterprises, but also for individuals and local communities. This broad view provides new insights into how pervasive militarization really was in the past and how difficult demilitarization is and will continue to be in the transition period. The book is divided into two parts that focus loosely on "the system" and "the people." The first tal
Using individual-level survey data for both advanced economies and emerging markets spanning over 45 years for 42 countries, we show that cohorts who have had higher exposure to past inflationary episodes (levels, as well as to more persistent or to more volatile inflation), systematically express higher concerns over rising prices. The link between past high inflation exposure and expressed concerns over price stability is particularly strong when an individual’s exposure occurs in the latter part of her working-age (as in lifecycle theory). The impact of past exposure to high inflation on contemporaneous preferences over price stability increases when surveyed in the midst of high ongoing inflation and with macroeconomic instability (as measured by GDP growth volatility), but diminishes with the quality of institutions.
This well illustrated, full-color, site-by-site survey of prehistory captures the popular interest, excitement, and visual splendor of archaeology as it provides insight into the research, interpretations, and theoretical themes in the field. The new edition maintains the authors' innovative solutions to two central problems of the course: first, the text continues to focus on about 80 sites, giving students less encyclopedic detail but essential coverage of the discoveries that have produced the major insights into prehistory; second, it continues to be organized into essays on sites and concepts, allowing professors complete flexibility in organizing their courses..
A comprehensive and profoundly relevant history of interest from one of the world’s leading financial writers, The Price of Time explains our current global financial position and how we got here In the beginning was the loan, and the loan carried interest. For at least five millennia people have been borrowing and lending at interest. The practice wasn’t always popular—in the ancient world, usury was generally viewed as exploitative, a potential path to debt bondage and slavery. Yet as capitalism became established from the late Middle Ages onwards, denunciations of interest were tempered because interest was a necessary reward for lenders to part with their capital. And interest performs many other vital functions: it encourages people to save; enables them to place a value on precious assets, such as houses and all manner of financial securities; and allows us to price risk. All economic and financial activities take place across time. Interest is often described as the “price of money,” but it is better called the “price of time:” time is scarce, time has value, interest is the time value of money. Over the first two decades of the twenty-first century, interest rates have sunk lower than ever before. Easy money after the global financial crisis in 2007/2008 has produced several ill effects, including the appearance of multiple asset price bubbles, a reduction in productivity growth, discouraging savings and exacerbating inequality, and forcing yield starved investors to take on excessive risk. The financial world now finds itself caught between a rock and a hard place, and Edward Chancellor is here to tell us why. In this enriching volume, Chancellor explores the history of interest and its essential function in determining how capital is allocated and priced.
Modernity in the late eighteenth century transformed all domains of European life -intellectual, industrial, and social. Not least affected was the experience of time itself: ever-accelerating change left people with briefer intervals of time in which to gather new experiences and adapt. In this provocative and erudite book Reinhart Koselleck, a distinguished philosopher of history, explores the concept of historical time by posing the question: what kind of experience is opened up by the emergence of modernity? Relying on an extraordinary array of witnesses and texts from politicians, philosophers, theologians, and poets to Renaissance paintings and the dreams of German citizens during the Third Reich, Koselleck shows that, with the advent of modernity, the past and the future became 'relocated' in relation to each other.The promises of modernity -freedom, progress, infinite human improvement -produced a world accelerating toward an unknown and unknowable future within which awaited the possibility of achieving utopian fulfillment. History, Koselleck asserts, emerged in this crucial moment as a new temporality providing distinctly new ways of assimilating experience. In the present context of globalization and its resulting crises, the modern world once again faces a crisis in aligning the experience of past and present. To realize that each present was once an imagined future may help us once again place ourselves within a temporality organized by human thought and humane ends as much as by the contingencies of uncontrolled events.