economics-schools

The Frontier Issues in Economic Thought summaries, along with the overview essays, provide a markedly different service from the standard collection of abstracts. The series will benefit not only scholarly work but the application of our best thinking to the problems of the times.

Kenneth Prewitt, President, Social Sciences Research Council

This book changed my life profoundly by altering my perception of myself and the people around me. The school system rewards kids who can remember things, but being able to regurgitate facts in an exam does not by any means guarantee a successful career or life. The kids who are artistic, mechanically talented, emotionally perceptive, or naturally intuitive, will be branded "losers" by the education system if they don't do well in exams, even though these skills are at _least_ as valuable as memory. The world would be a much better place if everyone read Kiyosaki's masterpiece.

Helps you walk through the process, step by step, of determining what's important to you, your unique talents and skills, where you can apply those and the practical side of getting a job.. Fantastic.. I turn to it time and time again as I continue my 10+ years post MBA career..

This book is very informative. The pictures are great and really show how things were. I am a future teacher and plan on using this book while working in the field with my fifth grade class as we learn about the industrial revolution. I also recomend this book to parents who are homeschooling or anyone who wants to learn more about the industrial revolution.

The authors research the claims of the accounting profession about the importance of knowing the "accounting language" to make it in business. But find it not to be so. The information mosaic a manager truly uses is (1) close to where the action is in the different functional units of the organization and (2) tied to primary units of activity and not the monetary units used in the mainstream accounting practice.

Only half of working Americans admit they have thought about saving for retirement, and many of those who do try to save, don't know if they are setting aside enough to support themselves in old age. How, then, can employees, their employers, and the public sector boost old-age financial security? The contributors to this volume--economists, financial advisers, and housing and benefits specialists --argue that a strong retirement income system requires attention not only to assets conventionally dedicated to retirement purposes such as pensions, but also to the broader determinants of retiree wealth including housing, health, longevity, and intellectual capital.

This book outlines key problems involved in reducing financial risks in retirement, and then it goes on to propose fresh solutions. These include cash-balance pension plans that combine features of traditional defined benefit pensions and increasingly popular defined contribution plans. Other novel approaches discussed include reverse-annuity mortgages permitting people to benefit from the value of their homes without actually selling them, various forms of annuities, and long-term care insurance. A framework chapter sets the stage by examining what retirement planning can be expected to accomplish and how planning reduces risks by hedging, insuring, and diversifying. This book should be required reading for all who seek to strengthen retirement decision-making and old age protection.

Olivia S. Mitchell is Executive Director of the Pension Research Council and International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans Professor of Insurance and Risk Management at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Zvi Bodie is Professor of Finance at Boston University, P. Brett Hammond is Manager of Corporate Projects at TIAA-CREF. Stephen Zeldes is Benjamin Rosen Professor of Economics and Finance at Columbia University.

Murray Rothbard was one of the most powerful thinkers of the 20th century. Some of his most important work was printed in journals, out-of-print anthologies, presented at scholarly conferences, or available only in pamphlets. Fortunately, many of these essays are now collected in The Logic of Action (2 volumes), one of Edward Elgar's Economists of the Twentieth Century series

Volume 1 of the Logic of Action is subtitled "Method, Money, and the Austrian School." The range of these essays is simply incredible, and it's hard for a reviewer to know where to start. So, I might as well start with the first essay, The Mantle of Science. Here, Rothbard demolishes the claims of scientism. He must refute a dozen fallacies in 20 pages (such as false anologies to science like model-building, etc.). This essay was written in 1957 (but not published until 1960) when Rothbard traveled in Ayn Rand's circle. Incredibly, some Randroids even accused Rothbard of plagiarizing from Rand (see Justin Raimondo's excellent biography of Rothbard, An Enemy of the State, for details.) This prompted the great von Mises' response: "I really did not know that the concept that man has no automatic knowledge of how to survive and that the task of his reason . . . is to keep him alive was not known to mankind before the fall of 1957."

Another path-breaking work is the essay, The Present State of Austrian Economics, presented at a scholary conference in 1992. Rothbard describes the path taken by Austrian economists in recent years and the divergence of Hayekians and Lachmannians from a Misesian persepective.

As David Gordon and Hans-Hermann Hoppe state in their introduction: "No introduction can do justice to the vast range and insight of Rothbard's work. Anyone who completes these two volumes will have an indelible impression of Rothbard's greatness."

Murray Rothbard was one of the most powerful thinkers of the 20th century. Some of his most important work was printed in journals, out-of-print anthologies, presented at scholarly conferences, or available only in pamphlets. Fortunately, many of these essays are now collected in The Logic of Action (2 volumes), one of Edward Elgar's Economists of the Twentieth Century series

Volume 2 of the Logic of Action is subtitled "Applications and Criticism from the Austrian School." The range of these essays is simply incredible, and it's hard for a reviewer to know where to start. So, I might as well start with the first essay, Freedom, Inequality, Primitivism, and the Division of Labor. As usual, Rothbard's reading is immense and he briliantly refutes the claims of primitivists that specialization is somehow the cause of our problems rather than the necessary result of an increasing standard of living. In fact, communists import an almost religious devotion to their communism that Kautsky even said that under communism "[t]he human average will rise to the level of an Aristotle, a Goethe, a Marx. Above these other heights new peaks will arise."

Another brilliant essay is the last, Karl Marx: Communist as Religious Eschatologist. Rothbard gets to the crux of the matter: "The Key to the intricate and massive system of thought created by Karl Marx is at bottom a simple one: Karl Marx was a communist." As against those who would downplay Marx's religious drive to create a utopian society, Rothbard shows that Marx is just one of many "religious eschatologists."

In between these two essays there are 20 more. Whether it's "value free" economics, free banking in Scotland, marginal productivity theory, or Henry George's fallacies, Rothbard always has something brilliant to say. I really enjoyed The Myth of Tax "Reform", which should be read by every conservative activist. "Every economic activity that escapes taxes and controls is not only a blow for freedom and property rights: it is also one more instance of a free flow of productive energy getting out from under parasitic repression. That is why we should welcome every new loophole, shelter, credit or exemption, and work, not to shut them down but to expand them to include everyone else, including ourselves."

As David Gordon and Hans-Hermann Hoppe state in their introduction: "No introduction can do justice to the vast range and insight of Rothbard's work. Anyone who completes these two volumes will have an indelible impression of Rothbard's greatness."

If you are like me, you were probably turned-off by economics in school with all the graphs and formulas to determine how many widgets to make, and sell at what price. I have found over the years though, that having an understanding of economic theory is very important to critical thinking, especially in terms of management, politics, and economics in general.

Malabre's Lost Prophets is a very friendly introduction to the various economic thinkers of the last 100 years. His journalistic writing style draws the reader into the thinkers realm, and explains the theory and history related to each "prophet."

The book is well written and easy to read. I have found it to be a complement to my other scholarly reference material.

A visit to www.georgewbush.com in January of 2001 indicated that the newly elected President believes that the reform of K-12 public education is the number one issue that confronts the United States as it enters the 21st Century. As noted at his web site, the reforms that the President intends to pursue will be designed to: (1) achieve equality in performance of disadvantaged students, (2) promote excellence through the pursuit of measurable goals, (3) stop funding failures, (4) restore local control, (5) provide parents with greater information and options, and (6) ensure that every child can read. Readers of this journal, as well as most of the public, would not quibble with these desired goals. The difficulty, of course, is in choosing the appropriate public policy path to achieve them. Well, Mr. President (as well as state-based policymakers interested in public school reform), in your quest to find this path, I have just the book for you.

As part of Goals 2000, passed in 1994, the U.S. Congress declared that "all students can learn and achieve to high standards and must realize their full potential if the United States is to prosper." As a follow up to this declaration, a later appropriations bill called for a study of K-12 public school finance by the National Academy of Sciences. A committee on education finance was established (which consisted of the top education and economic researchers in the field) and the key question posed to them was "How can education finance systems be designed to ensure that all students achieve high levels of learning and that education funds are raised and used in the most efficient and effective manner possible?" The not so simple answers are in the committee's report.

Since the 1966 publication of the Coleman Report, researchers have continually reexamined the report's controversial finding that after controlling for socioeconomic factors, variation in school resources does little to explain differences in student achievement. After examining the over 30 years of research that has followed this report, the committee on education finance that authored this study argues that money can and must be made to matter if the United States is to improve achievement in public schools for all students. A theme that emerges early in this work, and continues throughout, is the concept of funding adequacy. Adequacy in public school finance focuses not on the equality of per-capita expenditure, but on the sufficiency of funding for desired outcomes. Though the committee admits that applying an adequacy standard to school finance is an art, they argue forcefully throughout their report that it is part of the policy path that will yield the public education outcomes desired by the U.S. Congress in 1994 and by the President in 2001.

But, also in tune with popular perceptions, much of the book is devoted to documenting that making money matter requires more than just adequate funding. Explored are the often-suggested reforms of investing in the capacity of the education system, altering incentives, and empowering parents and schools to ensure that performance matters when officials make decisions about the use of adequate public school funds. Unfortunately, like many observers, the committee concludes that the challenges facing schools with a large percentage of disadvantages are particularly troubling and research offers few answers about how to improve educational opportunities for these youngsters.

Making Money Matter is written in a manner that makes it accessible and interesting to both policymakers and seasoned researchers. In Part I, the book begins with a brief overview of the charge to the committee, the shifting expectations placed upon public schools in the last half-century, and the real diversity that characterizes the existing system of governance and finance for public education in the United States. Given this backdrop, the committee lists the three goals they settled upon as a basis for their study: (1) a higher level of achievement in a cost-efficient manner, (2) breaking the nexus between student background and achievement, (3) raising revenue fairly and efficiently.

To better craft policy strategies to reach these goals, Part II of the book looks at fairness and productivity in school finance. Equity is first examined in terms of the struggle to reduce per-pupil-spending disparities through the courts. Next, they devote a chapter to examining the recent shift toward adequacy as the more desired goal of school finance reform, the technical challenges of implementing it, and the lukewarm response that state finance systems have given it. This study then examines the body of evidence on what improves the academic achievement of students. Concise, but thorough literature reviews are offered on the findings of regression based input-output studies, effective educational practice studies, and the institutional perspective.

In Part III, the committee assembled by the National Academy of Sciences offers specific strategies to achieve each of the three goals identified earlier. Better than just proposing a grand vision of overall reform, the committee chooses to summarize many feasible strategies, sites the relevant academic evidence on their viability, and then offers consensus opinions on the "best" strategies to pursue. Researchers should be interested in these consensus opinions because of the insight they offer regarding what a renowned group of economists, education specialists, psychologists, lawyers, and administrators jointly evaluate as the policy relevant implications that flow from the extensive body of research on this topic. Policymakers should pay particular attention to the suggested strategies because the consensus that formed them would also assist in building the political coalitions necessary to implement them.

Examples of a few of the suggested strategies to emerge from this book are that investing in the capacity of teachers is necessary and will be more effective if it is combined with a change in incentives that make performance count; charter schools and vouchers, rather than interdistrict or intradistrict choice programs, are the options most worthy of exploring for poor-performing city schools; and increasing adequacy and fairness in public school finance will require a greater revenue raising role for states and the federal government. On an optimistic note, the book concludes that most of the current challenges in public education can be met if the wealth of knowledge produced in this area is drawn upon. My hope is the appropriate people know of this valuable book and do exactly that.