Showing results by publisher "Ascent Audio" in Economics

In the early twenty-first century, environmental risks such as climate change, biodiversity loss, resource scarcity, large-scale migrations, and conflicts over critical resources have become our lived reality in a world where nearly 8 billion people struggle to thrive. These crises have proven impossible to address without fundamental transformations of our economic institutions—exactly as predicted in this groundbreaking work. First published in 1994, Taming the Dragon offers a careful investigation of the processes that have led to global environmental change.

From an award-winning professor of economics, an accessible and comprehensive introduction to what causes, and what can address, increases in the cost of living.

In Un-Civilizing America: How Win-Win Deals Make Us Better, bestselling author William Bonner delivers an incisive and engrossing account of the American economy, the four simple steps to earning money the honest way, and why many choose the dishonest way instead.

The question of what constitutes a fair price has been at the center of market interactions since the time of Aristotle. Should a seller sell to the highest bidder, or is there some other standard, such as a morally defined price, to be applied? Charles R. Geisst traces the ways that philosophers, religious leaders, and economists have sought to answer that question, from antiquity through the modern era.

As far back as we can trace human history, there have been entrepreneurs. Almost five millennia ago, copper tool manufacturers set up a factory in what today is southwest Spain, profiting for hundreds of years from trade around the Mediterranean. Papyri document the diverse investments of an ancient Egyptian businessperson, from grain-yielding land to flax for linen cloth. What do these figures have in common with renowned modern entrepreneurs, and how do their similarities help us achieve a deeper understanding of entrepreneurship?

Did you know that to make a task seem easier, all you have to do is lean back a little? Or that retail salespeople who mimic the way their customers speak and behave end up selling more? If you like stats like this, are intrigued by ideas, and find connecting the dots to be a critical part of your skill set—this book is for you. Culled from Harvard Business Review's popular newsletter, The Daily Stat, this book offers a compelling look at insights that both amuse and inform.

What exactly is capitalism? How has the meaning of capitalism changed over time? And what's at stake in our understanding or misunderstanding of it? In Capitalism, Michael Sonenscher examines the history behind the concept and pieces together the range of subjects bound up with the word. Sonenscher shows that many of our received ideas fail to pick up the work that the idea of capitalism is doing for us, without us even realizing it.

China GDP has grown from $300 per capita to more than $10,000 in the past thirty years and lifted more people into the middle class than in any other country at any other point in human history. It is important for investors, US companies and anyone interested in the global economy to understand China. Author Jonathan A. Krane provides an inside look at China's transformation into a global superpower and explains why the relationship between the US and China is the most critical economic relationship in the world today.

Successful Black Entrepreneurs is an insightful collection of Harvard Business School case studies about Black entrepreneurs succeeding in a variety of industries and through different routes, including start-ups, franchising, and acquisitions. The book also recognizes and celebrates Black entrepreneurial excellence, as it takes the listener through the stages of entrepreneurship, including ideation, raising capital, growing the company, and taking it public.

In The Great Lockdown: Lessons Learned During the Pandemic from Organizations Around the Globe, expert strategists Shivaji Das, Aroop Zutshi, and Janesh Janardhanan deliver an insightful exploration of this once-in-a-lifetime event to unearth invaluable learnings for the future. Told through the experiences of CXOs at billion-dollar companies, star start-ups, and nonprofits from around the world, the book chronicles the ups and downs of sophisticated organizations as they navigated the COVID-19 crisis through initiatives impacting people, processes, and technology.

Coinage - it is one of the most successful and consistent technologies ever invented. Nothing else we still use in everyday life has a history quite like it. Look around at all the things that would bewilder a Greek, Roman, or Renaissance ancestor; then, dig into your purse or pocket for that one artifact that they would immediately recognize. Historian Frank L. Holt takes us on a journey through the history of numismatics, the study of coins - one of the oldest and most important contributions to the arts and humanities.

Dubbed "CryptoDad" for his impassioned plea to Congress to acknowledge and respect cryptocurrencies as the inevitable product of a fast-growing technological wave and a free marketplace, Chris Giancarlo is considered one of "the most influential individuals in financial regulation." CryptoDad: The Fight for the Future of Money describes Giancarlo's own reckoning with the future of the global economy - at the intersection of markets, technology, and public policy - and lays out the fight for a Digital Dollar.

Today's business environment looks dramatically different than it did even a decade ago, and it continues to evolve at an increasing rate; macroeconomic shifts, consumer trends, technological advances, and changing competitive dynamics are accelerating the pace of change. A handbook for how to succeed in the age of big data, Optimizing Growth provides insightful guidance, real-world success stories, and practical tools to achieve growth in this new era, utilizing big data to achieve a deeper understanding of demand, customers, competitors, and opportunity.

This international best seller shows why the Danes are happy and how we can be, too. For decades Denmark has ranked at the top of the world's happiness surveys. How is it that these 5.6 million Danes are so content when they live in a country that is dark and cold nine months of the year and where income taxes are at almost 60 percent? At a time when talk across the Western world is focused on unemployment woes, government overreach, and anti-taxation lobbies, our Danish counterparts seem to breathe a healthier and fresher air.

Are we living the good life - and what defines good, anyway? Americans today are constructing a completely different framework for success than their parents' generation, using new metrics that TEDWomen speaker and columnist Courtney Martin has termed collectively the "New Better Off".

Basic principles always have a way of seeming simple, yet they can no more be oversimplified than can the law of gravity or the listing of chemical elements be oversimplified. What is needed in our complex society of millions of products sold by millions of business units to over 100 million traders through billions of transactions each year is to get back to simple economic principles. These are working tools for solving problems that seem more complex than they really are.

Although it is among the oldest of market institutions, the auction is ubiquitous in today's economy, used for everything from government procurement to selling advertising on the Internet to course assignment at MIT's Sloan School. Yet beyond the small number of economists who specialize in the subject, few people understand how auctions really work. This concise, accessible, and engaging book explains both the theory and the practice of auctions.

From Brian and Alan Beaulieu - the CEO and president of ITR Economics (ITR) - comes Prosperity in the Age of Decline, the must-have resource for thriving in uncertain economic times. ITR has mastered long-term economic trend forecasting, with an astounding 94.7 percent accuracy rate over the course of six and a half decades.

Enough of the imbalance that is causing the degradation of our environment, the demise of our democracies, and the denigration of ourselves. Enough of the pendulum politics of left and right and paralysis in the political center. We require an unprecedented form of radical renewal. In this book Henry Mintzberg offers a new understanding of the root of our current crisis and a strategy for restoring the balance so vital to the survival of our progeny and our planet.

We humans live by stories, says David Korten, and the stories that now govern our society set us on a path to certain self-destruction. In this profound new audiobook, Korten shares the results of his search for a story that reflects the fullness of human knowledge and understanding and provides a guide to action adequate to the needs of our time.