Economic-union Books

This monograph offers much that is more than questionable, but since Trotsky as a political figure is generally dealt with by means of ideological cliché ("failed Stalin", "militarizer", and so on) one has to acknowledge that Day has instead dealt with him as a real political leader concerned with concrete issues, and not as a bogey.

This is a must read for anyone interested in the history of monetary unions or alternatively interested in the development of Economic and monetary Union in Europe.

Published by the London based Institute of Economic Affairs this small but insightful book looks at selected monetary unions and draws on the experiences to put forward some lessons for policy-makers to draw upon as the Eurozone countries move inexorably towards a single European currency.

Almost as good as the original text are the contributions by way of commentaries from six luminaries from the world of economics who serve to place the original paper in a broader context of the greater EMU debate.

The result is a well balanced, thoughtful and well-argued book which I am sure will generate much debate and discussion about economic and monetary union. In a typical cogent and lucid way with a breezy style I would highly recommend this book to students and policy-makers alike from both sides of the Atlantic.

Sidney Hook's philosophical works, notably those expounding pragmatism and Marxism, are of enduring value and are still in print. But his most consistent writings were his shorter pieces attacking totalitarianism and defending the ideals of a free society. It was a feature of his exemplary life that he wrote an enormous volume of correspondence, where he felt it worthwhile to explain and explicate democratic values.

This book contains a small, chronologically-ordered selection of those letters, which make fascinating reading. The defence of democracy is never less than erudite and thought-provoking. Hook was often criticised for being impatient of those who differed from him, but these letters give no such indication. On the contrary, his unfailing generosity of spirit is evident in the letters reproduced here to his fellow-philosopher and humanist Corliss Lamont, who unfailingly defended the vicissitudes of Stalin and than whom no more egregious apologist for Soviet tyranny existed. The editor, Edward Shapiro provides a useful introduction to each decade's correspondence, and observes that in later years Hook's political writings were dominated by the subject of the Communist threat, and that the spark seemed to be lacking in, for example, Hook's defence of social democracy. I am sure this is right, and equally I am sure that Hook's emphasis was justified. The differences between conservatives and social democrats on economic philosophy are family differences among those who share a commitment to democratic processes and institutions; the differences between that heterogeneous collection of democrats and totalitarianism are fundamental and extreme. Hook's letters provide a powerful contribution to the defence of democratic values.

This is an excellent applied macroeconomics' book written by a non Francophone scholar. The book begins with an excellent introduction to the two institutions (BCEAO and BEAC) and an historical economic outline of the fourteen members of the CFA Franc Zone. Then it mentions a body of economic theory predicting the pre-commitment to a fixed exchange rate reducing the inflation, and presents an empirical model that allows investigating whether the exchange rate pegs is helpful in reducing the inflation (Chapter 2 CFA memberships, exchange rate pegs and inflation). Next, David Fielding compares the short run monetary adjustments in the Zone to the Anglophone Africa ones (Kenya and Tanzania). The fourth chapter deals with public debt and the strategic interaction of monetary and fiscal policies. In this chapter, by using a game-theoretic model, it is shown that CFA membership engenders greater monetary prudence in average than one can expect from countries with their own currency and central bank, and the free riding problem represents a potential inefficiency. The Fifth chapter addresses the asset demand and the monetary transmission mechanism by taking Cote d'Ivoire's cases. Chapter six tests capital market integration between CFA countries and France, whereas Chapter 7 introduces the problem of savings, investment and CFA membership and provides with time-series evidence from a comparison of Cote d'Ivoire with Kenya. Finally this book deals with CFA Franc membership and the role of relative price stability in investment performance.

I highly recommend this book to graduate students and scholars in economics willing to have different empirical macroeconomic evidences of the monetary union including the former French sub-saharan colonies. This manuscript can be an excellent complement to Masson and Patillo, Semedo and Villieu, and Guillaumont's books on CFA zone. Nevertheless in his conclusion and perspectives, Fielding did not consistently mention the peg to euro and the actual appreciation of CFA Franc via Euro, and some interesting scenarios such as an independent African currency around the CFA, the development of ECOWAS and the potential separation of the two CFAs, and the possibility to move toward a less rigid peg (e.g. Target Zone and Crawling bands for CFA Franc).
Leopold Engozogo Mba, Washington DC

Not the usual planning text at all - in fact, a planning thriller, as Faludi and Waterhout chart the twists and turns of how Europe struggles for something like a spatial policy. Arguably this book sees the issues more from a north European than a south European perspective: but it is full of rare insights, and moves with pace. A good read!

In 1985 the "Australian" Government took me Court (6 Court cases) over the legal aspects of our Currency.

The Court decided that there were no existing precedents. So We used the contents of "The Legal Aspects of Money" (previous edition) as our main defence. The Government did not use this book.

The Court decided, that there was "no case to answer" on all 6 cases and this was agreed by the Appeals Court. It is widely reported that that case cost the Government over 22 million dollars and me $175.

It also appears that all traces of the Court action have been removed from their system. I suppose it is no wonder, they would not want people to know.

This compehensive text book should be used by all students and Courts in such matters, without exception. I am sure the new edition will be just as valuable.

John, The Grand Duke of Avram
www.grandduchy.org
www.royalbanker.org

Methods of environmental impact assessmemnt is a comprehensive and panoramic view of how to evaluate the most fundamental variables of the envronment. This in turn is vey helpful for the practiotioner to get acquianted with the variables which a project could have impactas on as well as the different methods of assesing those impacts.
In its two parts which total seventeeth chapters the editor lets the student and the practitioner drink form the knowledge and experience of over thrity authors who know well what they are saying.
This book is a tool that is helping and will continue to help technicians and scientists of the environment worldwide.
This book is really a good library which should be studied by those who are looking for academic rigor as well as practical insight.

This fascinating book written by Ravil Bukharayev is an excellent example of serious, scholarly approach to the subject of economic and political reform in post-Communist societies. This is a book that ought to be recommended to Vladimir Putin, the leader who is expected to continue the course of reforms in Russia. Tatarstan's example of slow but steady movement toward the market economy and democratic system ought to be emulated by Russia, which over the last 10 years stumbled from one crisis to another on its way to the same goal. President Shaimiyev's leadership in Tatarstan ensured a much more successful and effective transition to what Russia has been trying to achive without much success.

2002 Marshall Shulman Book Prize sponsored by the Harriman Institute at Columbia University is awarded annually by the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS) for an outstanding monograph on the international behavior of the countries of the former communist bloc.
The award committee wrote:
In National Purpose in the World Economy: Post-Soviet States in Comparative Perspective, Rawi Abdelal combines considerable theoretical sophistication with extraordinarily in-depth empirical grounding. Asking how states develop foreign economic policy in the aftermath of imperial domination, Abdelal builds a new approach distinct from the dominant realist and liberal paradigms within the field of International Political Economy. He argues that neither statist realism nor economic liberalism captures the importance of national identity, and he demonstrates the power of his nationalist approach by comparing the foreign economic policies developed by Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union. His rich case studies are based on extensive interviewing with the key actors. Finally, lest the readers believe the argument is relevant only to the experience of post-Soviet states, Abdelal concludes with additional evidence from the experience of post-Habsburg Eastern Europe, 1950s Indonesia, and 1960s French West Africa. In this outstanding book, Abdelal makes a major contribution to the fields of post-Soviet studies and international political economy.
The 2002 Marshall Shulman Book Prize was awarded during the AAASS National Convention in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on November 23, 2002 at the Saturday Reception and Awards Presentation.

This is without a doubt the most thorough analysis of the causes of crop failure in the harvest of 1932 which led to the famine that killed about 2.5 million Ukrainians and another couple million non-Ukrainians. Cold War propaganda has long-maintained that the crop of 1932 was perfectly adequate to feed people and that famine only occurred because of the exports of food. This line has been further advanced by willfully distorting the facts about what was exported and when. In fact, most of the grain exported in 1933 (about five-sixths of the total) was exported after the 1933 crop was in at a time when the famine was essentially over. Yet hoaxers like James Mace and Robert Conquest used to imply that most of this was exported during the time of famine in an effort to suggest that the famine could have been almost entirely avoided if only such exports had not been done. In reality, actual crop failure was the principal source of the famine. The Soviet government can be charged with having underestimated the extent of the problem as a case of real crop failure. But most of the charges circulating claiming that the famine was deliberately conjured up in an effort to destroy "Ukrainian nationalism" are without foundation.

Tauger here provides a clear analysis on how and why the crop failure of 1932 occurred. He discusses a miriad of causes, the most important of which was plant rust. Rustic plant diseases had the capacity to reduce the quantity of grain growing within an individual stalk, while the stalks themselves grew and hence created the appearance of an abundant crop. This was what fed the rumors of a plentiful crop and consequently the paranoia that someone (kulaks, communists, etc.) had taken the crops away and thereby created the famine "artificially." As Tauger establishes in detail, the famine was in no way artificial but was the result of an actual natural disaster. That natural disaster was then aggravated by the human failure to identify natural disaster as the root cause and to see that only massive imports of food from abroad could reduce the famine.

Tauger's work is representative of the real benefits which have come from opening up many archives from the old Soviet files. It's unfortunate that many people hold to the misconception that THE BLACK BOOK OF COMMUNISM is representative of what the archives have revealed. In fact THE BLACK BOOK simply repeats Cold War versions which were already being debunked by the newly opened archives at the time THE BLACK BOOK was published. Studying Tauger's work will give people a better grasp of what the archives have actually shown.