Predictable Profits

Does democracy promote the creation of market economies and robust state institutions? Do state-building and market-building go hand in hand? Or do they work at cross-purposes? This book examines the relationship between state-building and market-building in 25 post-communist countries from 1990 to 2004. Based on cross-national statistical analyses, surveys of business managers, and case studies from Russia, Bulgaria, Poland, and Uzbekistan, Timothy Frye demonstrates that democracy is associated with more economic reform, stronger state institutions, and higher social transfers when political polarization is low. But he also finds that increases in political polarization dampen the positive impact of democracy by making policy less predictable. He traces the roots of political polarization to high levels of income inequality and the institutional legacy of communist rule. By identifying when and how democracy fosters markets and states, this work contributes to long-standing debates in

Does democracy promote the creation of market economies and robust state institutions? Do state-building and market-building go hand in hand? Or do they work at cross-purposes? This book examines the relationship between state-building and market-building in 25 post-communist countries from 1990 to 2004. Based on cross-national statistical analyses, surveys of business managers, and case studies from Russia, Bulgaria, Poland, and Uzbekistan, Timothy Frye demonstrates that democracy is associated with more economic reform, stronger state institutions, and higher social transfers when political polarization is low. But he also finds that increases in political polarization dampen the positive impact of democracy by making policy less predictable. He traces the roots of political polarization to high levels of income inequality and the institutional legacy of communist rule. By identifying when and how democracy fosters markets and states, this work contributes to long-standing debates in

Stochastic processes with jumps and random measures are importance as drivers in applications like financial mathematics and signal processing. This 2002 text develops stochastic integration theory for both integrators (semimartingales) and random measures from a common point of view. Using some novel predictable controlling devices, the author furnishes the theory of stochastic differential equations driven by them, as well as their stability and numerical approximation theories. Highlights feature DCT and Egoroff's Theorem, as well as comprehensive analogs results from ordinary integration theory, for instance previsible envelopes and an algorithm computing stochastic integrals of càglàd integrands pathwise. Full proofs are given for all results, and motivation is stressed throughout. A large appendix contains most of the analysis that readers will need as a prerequisite. This will be an invaluable reference for graduate students and researchers in mathematics, physics, electrical en

Samuel Squire Sprigge (1860–1937) was a qualified physician who worked for The Lancet from 1892 and was editor from 1909 until his death. He published several books including a history of the journal and its founder, and a volume of essays, Physic and Fiction. The Methods of Publishing first appeared in 1890 and is Sprigge's passionate contribution to the late-nineteenth-century discussion on how the question of literary property is best resolved. Sprigge argues that this matter is often treated in a cavalier manner that disadvantages authors, particularly in the relationship between publisher and author. In his view, book prices are too low, copyright protection for authors is insufficient, the royalty system is in chaos, and authors do not obtain a fair share of profits. He proposes that literary property questions be treated with the same legal formality and protection as is found in other business dealings.

Today's presidents enter office having campaigned on an ambitious policy agenda, eager to see it enacted, and willing to push so that it is. The central question of presidents' legislative leadership, therefore, is not a question of resolve, it is a question of strategy: by what means can presidents build winning coalitions for their agenda? Pushing the Agenda uncovers the answer. It reveals the predictable nature of presidents' policy making opportunities and the systematic strategies White House officials employ to exploit those opportunities. Drawing on an eclectic array of original evidence - spanning presidents from Dwight Eisenhower to George W. Bush and issues ranging from education to energy, and healthcare to taxes - Matthew N. Beckmann finds modern presidents' influence in Congress is real, often substantial, and - to date - largely underestimated.

Today's presidents enter office having campaigned on an ambitious policy agenda, eager to see it enacted, and willing to push so that it is. The central question of presidents' legislative leadership, therefore, is not a question of resolve, it is a question of strategy: by what means can presidents build winning coalitions for their agenda? Pushing the Agenda uncovers the answer. It reveals the predictable nature of presidents' policy making opportunities and the systematic strategies White House officials employ to exploit those opportunities. Drawing on an eclectic array of original evidence - spanning presidents from Dwight Eisenhower to George W. Bush and issues ranging from education to energy, and healthcare to taxes - Matthew N. Beckmann finds modern presidents' influence in Congress is real, often substantial, and - to date - largely underestimated.

Competition between firms is usually the most effective way of delivering economic efficiency and what consumers want. However, there is a balance to be struck. Firms must not be over-regulated and so hampered in their development of innovative products and new strategies to compete for customers. Nor must they be completely free to satisfy a natural preference for monopoly, which would give them higher profits and a quieter life. The economic role of competition policy (control of anticompetitive agreements, mergers and abusive practices) is to maintain this balance, and an effective policy requires a nuanced understanding of the economics of industrial organization. Cases in European Competition Policy demonstrates how economics is used (and sometimes abused) in competition cases in practical competition policy across Europe. Each chapter summarizes a real case investigated by the European Commission or a national authority, and provides a critique of key aspects of the economic anal

Competition between firms is usually the most effective way of delivering economic efficiency and what consumers want. However, there is a balance to be struck. Firms must not be over-regulated and so hampered in their development of innovative products and new strategies to compete for customers. Nor must they be completely free to satisfy a natural preference for monopoly, which would give them higher profits and a quieter life. The economic role of competition policy (control of anticompetitive agreements, mergers and abusive practices) is to maintain this balance, and an effective policy requires a nuanced understanding of the economics of industrial organization. Cases in European Competition Policy demonstrates how economics is used (and sometimes abused) in competition cases in practical competition policy across Europe. Each chapter summarizes a real case investigated by the European Commission or a national authority, and provides a critique of key aspects of the economic anal

This book is concerned primarily with certain constructions in English, often referred to as 'stylistic,' whose use is restricted to particular contexts to discourse. Within the general framework of Chomskyan Government-Binding Theory, Michael Rochemont and Peter Culicover demonstrate how these constructions can be accommodated naturally within grammatical theory. Indeed, the existence of these constructions in English follows directly from general assumptions about the nature of English grammar. Along with explaining the formal properties of these constructions, the book investigates why it is that they are judged to be 'stylistic.' Rochemont and Culicover argue that what is perceived as stylistic does in fact follow from the special 'focus' property itself is predictable from general grammatical principles. This is an original study of 'stylistic constructions' in any depth, integrating them into syntactic theory. It will interest linguists and other scholars working within the area

During the last thirty years we have witnessed sweeping changes in health care worldwide, including new and expensive biomedical technologies, an increasingly powerful and influential pharmaceutical industry, steadily increasing health care costs in industrialised nations, and new threats to medical professionalism. The essays collected in this book concern costs and profits in relation to just health care, the often controversial practices of pharmaceutical companies, and corruption in the professional practice of medicine. Leading experts discuss justice in relation to business-friendly strategies in the delivery of health care, access to life saving drugs, the ethics of pharmaceutical company marketing practices, exploitation in drug trials, and undue industry influence over medicine. They offer guidance regarding the ethical delivery of health care products and services by profit-seeking organisations operating in a global marketplace, and recommend pragmatic solutions to enhance o

During the last thirty years we have witnessed sweeping changes in health care worldwide, including new and expensive biomedical technologies, an increasingly powerful and influential pharmaceutical industry, steadily increasing health care costs in industrialised nations, and new threats to medical professionalism. The essays collected in this book concern costs and profits in relation to just health care, the often controversial practices of pharmaceutical companies, and corruption in the professional practice of medicine. Leading experts discuss justice in relation to business-friendly strategies in the delivery of health care, access to life saving drugs, the ethics of pharmaceutical company marketing practices, exploitation in drug trials, and undue industry influence over medicine. They offer guidance regarding the ethical delivery of health care products and services by profit-seeking organisations operating in a global marketplace, and recommend pragmatic solutions to enhance o

Each verb in natural language is associated with a set of arguments, which are not systematically predictable from the verb's meaning and are realized syntactically as the projected sentence's subject, direct object, etc. Babby puts forward the theory that this set of arguments (the verb's 'argument structure') has a universal hierarchical composition which directly determines the sentence's case and grammatical relations. The structure is uniform across language families and types, and this theory is supported by the fact that the core grammatical relations within simple sentences of all human languages are essentially identical. Babby determines and empirically justifies the rigid hierarchical organization of argument structure on which this theory rests. The book uses examples taken primarily from Russian, a language whose complex inflectional system, free word order, and lack of obligatory determiners make it the typological polar opposite of English.

This work contains a history of farming in a Spanish Basque town where the farmers changed their subsistence farms into highly profitable commercial enterprises in response to demand created by tourism and industrialisation. In the period of highest profits however, the young Basques began to abandon their farms and turned to factory work at a much lower standard of living. The institutional problems within both the farm families and the local municipality are described along with the Basque ideas about the dignity of work to help explain why such successful maximisers of economic gain should ultimately reject economic rewards in favour of other values. Davyyd Greenwood carefully examines the relationships between workers of economic gain and the institutional and cultural aspects of human behaviour. In particular he argues that human behaviour is a complex mix of motivations and that our methods must reflect this complexity.

This book revolves around one central question: do political dynamics have a systematic and predictable influence on distributional outcomes in the United States? The answer is a resounding yes. Utilizing data from mass income surveys, elite surveys and aggregate time series, as well as theoretical insights from both American and comparative politics, Kelly shows that income inequality is a fundamental part of the US macro political system. Shifts in public opinion, party control of government and the ideological direction of policy all have important consequences for distributional outcomes. Specifically, shifts to the left produce reductions in inequality through two mechanisms - explicit redistribution and market conditioning. Whereas many previous studies focus only on the distributional impact of redistribution, this book shows that such a narrow strategy is misguided. In fact, market mechanisms matter far more than traditional redistribution in translating macro political shifts

Good quality non-executive directors are essential to good corporate governance. They bring a wealth of experience to the boardroom, and together with their fellow board members they are responsible for the company's annual report and accounts. However, very few are trained accountants. This volume explains the key elements of a listed company's annual report and accounts. Part I explains the difference between profit and cash flows, the accounting profession, the international harmonisation of accounting rules, the origins of the rules governing the preparation of accounts, the regulation of financial reporting and the overarching principles behind accounting rules. Part II discusses issues relevant to listed companies: mergers and acquisitions; earnings per share; realised and distributable profits; financial instruments; and other key topics. An appendix sets out 50 questions, linked to the chapters, which non-executive directors might like to ask at meetings of the board and audit

Strategic decisions deal with the long-term direction of the firm and its main activities, usually the responsibility of the top managers in an organization. Because the firm is the critical unit of analysis in strategy, we need to define what firms are, how they create value, and what their organizational boundaries are in order to understand their overall performance. However, this must be done in a manner that is most useful for strategic analysis and decision making. In other words, we need a theory of the firm for business strategy. Theory of the Firm for Strategic Management integrates and expands key existing theories, like transaction costs economics and the resource-based view, to develop a value-based theory of the firm. This provides a framework to show how firms can create value for customers and, at the same time, capture economic profits for their owners through business, corporate, international, and social strategies.

Strategic decisions deal with the long-term direction of the firm and its main activities, usually the responsibility of the top managers in an organization. Because the firm is the critical unit of analysis in strategy, we need to define what firms are, how they create value, and what their organizational boundaries are in order to understand their overall performance. However, this must be done in a manner that is most useful for strategic analysis and decision making. In other words, we need a theory of the firm for business strategy. Theory of the Firm for Strategic Management integrates and expands key existing theories, like transaction costs economics and the resource-based view, to develop a value-based theory of the firm. This provides a framework to show how firms can create value for customers and, at the same time, capture economic profits for their owners through business, corporate, international, and social strategies.

A brand new edition of the classic bestseller. Jim Slater makes available to the investor - whether the owner of only a few shares or an experienced investment manager with a large portfolio - the secrets of his success. Central to his strategy is The Zulu Principle, the benefits of homing in on a relatively narrow area. Deftly blending anecdote and analysis, Jim Slater gives valuable selective criteria for buying dynamic growth shares, turnarounds, cyclicals, shells and leading shares. He also covers many other vitally relevant aspects of investment such as creative accounting, portfolio management, overseas markets and the investor's relationship with his or her broker. From The Zulu Principle you will learn exactly when to buy shares and, even more important, when to sell - in essence, how to to make 'extraordinary profits from ordinary shares'.

Brazil is one of the world's best-known examples of inequitable growth. Since 1964 its military government has used a trickle-down development strategy that relies on the private market and high profits for owners of capital and at the same time relies on holding down wages of the unskilled and neutralizing the power of labour unions. Although this strategy did result in an impressive amount of economic growth, it has been harshly criticized for its unfairness. The general consensus is that most of the benefits of growth went to the rich, precious few to the poor. This study, first published in 1982 challenges the majority view. It shows that the poor benefited far more from growth than the income distribution statistics seem to imply. Despite appearances, the economy was a highly dynamic one for all groups. Job creation more than kept pace with the growth of the labour force, and most of the jobs created were good ones, rather than make-work employment in the informal sector.

This 2006 book provides a theory of the logic of survival of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), one of the most resilient autocratic regimes in the twentieth century. An autocratic regime hid behind the facade of elections that were held with clockwise precision. Although their outcome was totally predictable, elections were not hollow rituals. The PRI made millions of ordinary citizens vest their interests in the survival of the autocratic regime. Voters could not simply 'throw the rascals out of office' because their choices were constrained by a series of strategic dilemmas that compelled them to support the autocrats. The book also explores the factors that led to the demise of the PRI. The theory sheds light on the logic of 'electoral autocracies', among the most common type of autocracy, and is the only systematic treatment in the literature today dealing with this form of autocracy.

Examines the impact of medical and psychological illness on foreign policy decision making. Illness provides specific, predictable, and recognizable shifts in attention, time perspective, cognitive capacity, judgment, and emotion, which systematically affect impaired leaders. In particular, this book discusses the ways in which processes related to aging, physical and psychological illness, and addiction influence decision making. This book provides detailed analysis of four cases among the American presidency. Woodrow Wilson's October 1919 stroke affected his behavior during the Senate fight over ratifying the League of Nations. Franklin Roosevelt's severe coronary disease influenced his decisions concerning the conduct of war in the Pacific from 1943–1945 in particular. John Kennedy's illnesses and treatments altered his behavior at the 1961 Vienna conference with Soviet Premier Khrushchev. And Nixon's psychological impairments biased his decisions regarding the covert bombing of Cam

Examines the impact of medical and psychological illness on foreign policy decision making. Illness provides specific, predictable, and recognizable shifts in attention, time perspective, cognitive capacity, judgment, and emotion, which systematically affect impaired leaders. In particular, this book discusses the ways in which processes related to aging, physical and psychological illness, and addiction influence decision making. This book provides detailed analysis of four cases among the American presidency. Woodrow Wilson's October 1919 stroke affected his behavior during the Senate fight over ratifying the League of Nations. Franklin Roosevelt's severe coronary disease influenced his decisions concerning the conduct of war in the Pacific from 1943–1945 in particular. John Kennedy's illnesses and treatments altered his behavior at the 1961 Vienna conference with Soviet Premier Khrushchev. And Nixon's psychological impairments biased his decisions regarding the covert bombing of Cam

As a result of the strength and dominance of the centralized state, ritual action in China often takes its logic from political action. In this book Emily Ahern explores the implications of this. She argues that forms of control attempted ritually on non-human persons (gods and other spirits) in China parallel those forms of control which people regard as effective in ordinary life, namely political control, and draws important conclusions from this. She shows that in China it is possible to discard terms such as 'magic', which imply that acts directed to spirits operate on a different basis from acts in ordinary life. She also challenges claims in anthropology that, since they seem arbitrary and the actions of participants in them highly predictable, rituals support established authority. Her book will be of interest not only to specialists in Chinese studies, but to social anthropologists and others interested in the link between ritual and political processes.

Why do some governing parties limit their opportunistic behaviour and constrain the extraction of private gains from the state? This analysis of post-communist state reconstruction provides surprising answers to this fundamental question of party politics. Across the post-communist democracies, governing parties have opportunistically reconstructed the state - simultaneously exploiting it by extracting state resources and building new institutions that further such extraction. They enfeebled or delayed formal state institutions of monitoring and oversight, established new discretionary structures of state administration, and extracted enormous informal profits from the privatization of the communist economy. By examining how post-communist political parties rebuilt the state in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia, Grzymala-Busse explains how even opportunistic political parties will limit their corrupt behaviour and abuse of

Why do some governing parties limit their opportunistic behaviour and constrain the extraction of private gains from the state? This analysis of post-communist state reconstruction provides surprising answers to this fundamental question of party politics. Across the post-communist democracies, governing parties have opportunistically reconstructed the state - simultaneously exploiting it by extracting state resources and building new institutions that further such extraction. They enfeebled or delayed formal state institutions of monitoring and oversight, established new discretionary structures of state administration, and extracted enormous informal profits from the privatization of the communist economy. By examining how post-communist political parties rebuilt the state in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia, Grzymala-Busse explains how even opportunistic political parties will limit their corrupt behaviour and abuse of

This book provides a systematic analysis of the performance of Brazil's large state-owned enterprises. The Brazilian economic system encourages private enterprise, but the government itself owns and operates such critical industries as petrochemicals, steel, electricity and telecommunications. The Brazilian state has assumed the role of an entrepreneur not for ideological reasons, but as a pragmatic means of speeding up the process of economic growth. The author examines the economic and financial performance of these state-owned enterprises in terms of their contribution to economic growth. He concludes that in Brazil they have been effective substitutes for private investment in a number of strategic industries and that their ability to assemble large amounts of capital, to attract skilled managers, and to earn reasonable profits permitted the Brazilian economy to grow more rapidly during the 1960s and 1970s than would have been the case in their absence.

This work presents a Clean Quantum Theory of the Electron, based on Dirac's equation. "Clean" in the sense of a complete mathematical explanation of the well known paradoxes of Dirac's theory and a co

This 2006 book provides a theory of the logic of survival of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), one of the most resilient autocratic regimes in the twentieth century. An autocratic regime hid behind the facade of elections that were held with clockwise precision. Although their outcome was totally predictable, elections were not hollow rituals. The PRI made millions of ordinary citizens vest their interests in the survival of the autocratic regime. Voters could not simply 'throw the rascals out of office' because their choices were constrained by a series of strategic dilemmas that compelled them to support the autocrats. The book also explores the factors that led to the demise of the PRI. The theory sheds light on the logic of 'electoral autocracies', among the most common type of autocracy, and is the only systematic treatment in the literature today dealing with this form of autocracy.

The authors examine the conditions under which democratic events, including elections, cabinet formations, and government dissolutions, affect asset markets. Where these events have less predictable outcomes, market returns are depressed and volatility increases. In contrast, where market actors can forecast the result, returns do not exhibit any unusual behavior. Further, political expectations condition how markets respond to the political process. When news causes market actors to update their political beliefs, market actors reallocate their portfolios, and overall market behavior changes. To measure political information, Professors Bernhard and Leblang employ sophisticated models of the political process. They draw on a variety of models of market behavior, including the efficient markets hypothesis, capital asset pricing model, and arbitrage pricing theory, to trace the impact of political events on currency, stock, and bond markets. The analysis will appeal to academics, gradua

The authors examine the conditions under which democratic events, including elections, cabinet formations, and government dissolutions, affect asset markets. Where these events have less predictable outcomes, market returns are depressed and volatility increases. In contrast, where market actors can forecast the result, returns do not exhibit any unusual behavior. Further, political expectations condition how markets respond to the political process. When news causes market actors to update their political beliefs, market actors reallocate their portfolios, and overall market behavior changes. To measure political information, Professors Bernhard and Leblang employ sophisticated models of the political process. They draw on a variety of models of market behavior, including the efficient markets hypothesis, capital asset pricing model, and arbitrage pricing theory, to trace the impact of political events on currency, stock, and bond markets. The analysis will appeal to academics, gradua

The sustainable exploitation of the marine environment depends upon our capacity to develop systems of management with predictable outcomes. Unfortunately, marine ecosystems are highly dynamic and this property could conflict with the objective of sustainable exploitation. This book investigates the theory that the population and behavioural dynamics of predators at the upper end of marine food chains can be used to assist with management. Since these species integrate the dynamics of marine ecosystems across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales, they offer new sources of information that can be formally used in setting management objectives. This book examines the current advances in the understanding of the ecology of marine predators and will investigate how information from these species could be used in management.

Primate and Human Evolution provides a synthesis of the evolution and adaptive significance of human anatomical, physiological and behavioral traits. Using paleontology and modern human variation and biology, it compares hominid traits to those of other catarrhine primates both living and extinct, presenting a new hominization model that does not depend solely on global climate change, but on predictable trends observed in catarrhines. Dealing with the origins of hominid tool use and tool manufacture, it compares tool behavior in other animals and incorporates information from the earliest archaeological record. Examining the use of non-human primates and other mammals in modeling the origins of early human social behavior, Susan Cachel argues that human intelligence does not arise from complex social interactions, but from attentiveness to the natural world. This book will be a rich source of inspiration for all those interested in the evolution of all primates, including ourselves.

Athapaskan languages are well known for their intricate morphology, in particular the complexity of their verbs. The significance of these languages for linguistic theory is widely acknowledged. In this book, Keren Rice offers a rich typological survey of morpheme ordering in Athapaskan verbs, with implications for both synchronic grammar and language change. She shows that verb structure is in fact widely predictable across Athapaskan languages if appropriate syntactic factors and an overarching principle of semantic scope are taken into account. The presentation also includes a detailed study of argument and aspectual systems. This landmark volume was the first major comparative study of its type for the Athapaskan language family, combining descriptive depth with a contemporary theoretical perspective. Clear and insightful, it will interest Athapaskanists, typologists, historical and theoretical linguists alike.

In this new work, Bernd Heine claims that the structure of grammatical categories is predictable to a large extent once we know the range of possible cognitive structures from which they are derived. The author uses as his example the structure of predicative possession, and shows how most of the possessive constructions to be found in the world's languages can be traced back to a small set of basic conceptual patterns. Heine identifies these patterns, and using grammaticalization theory he describes how each affects the word order and morphosyntax of the resulting possessive construction. He argues that grammaticalization theory explains much of the observable typological diversity which characterizes 'have'-constructions in the world's languages. Illustrated by a wealth of examples, this is an original and important statement from a leading linguist.

Drop a pebble in a pond and the results are quite predictable: circular waves flow from the point of impact. Hit a point on a crystalline solid, however, and the expanding waves are highly non-spherical: the elasticity of a crystal is anisotropic. This book provides a fresh look at the vibrational properties of crystalline solids, elucidated by new imaging techniques. From the megahertz vibrations of ultrasound to the near-terahertz vibrations associated with heat, the underlying elastic anisotropy of the crystal asserts itself. Phonons are elementary vibrations that affect many properties of solids - thermal, electrical and magnetic. This text covers the basic theory and experimental observations of phonon propagation in solids. Phonon imaging techniques provide physical insights into such topics as phonon focusing, lattice dynamics and ultrasound propagation. Scattering of phonons from interfaces, superlattices, defects and electrons are treated in detail. The book includes many stri

A considerable proportion of our everyday language is 'formulaic'. It is predictable in form, idiomatic, and seems to be stored in fixed, or semi-fixed, chunks. This book explores the nature and purposes of formulaic language, and looks for patterns across the research findings from the fields of discourse analysis, first language acquisition, language pathology and applied linguistics. It gradually builds up a unified description and explanation of formulaic language as a linguistic solution to a larger, non-linguistic, problem, the promotion of self. The book culminates in a new model of lexical storage, which accommodates the curiosities of non-native and aphasic speech. Parallel analytic and holistic processing strategies are the proposed mechanism which reconciles, on the one hand, our capacity for understanding and producing novel constructions using grammatical knowledge and small lexical units, and on the other, our use of prefabricated material which, though less flexible, als

This work examines tax policies and tax systems as they arise from democratic choices, set against the background of a market economy. Professors Hettich and Winer find that democratic institutions yield complex tax systems with features that follow a varied but predictable pattern. In developing their analysis, the authors use formal modelling of voting behavior, emphasizing recent advances in the theory of probabilistic voting. This book differs from the available tax literature by relating fiscal choices directly to voting and by examining tax systems in democratic countries from a variety of perspectives. While the authors primarily focus on explaining observed features of tax systems, they also devote considerable space to the discussion of the welfare and efficiency effects of taxation in the presence of collective choice, and to a review of other models and of the related literature. In addition, they use computational general equilibrium analysis and statistical research on nat

• What has been the real impact of past weather extremes (e.g. cold winters, droughts, floods, heatwaves and hurricanes) on historic events? • Is the frequency and impact of weather extremes changing? • Can we predict how the climate will behave in the future and what will be the consequences of these changes? • Are greater, less predictable changes just around the corner? Bill Burroughs seeks to answer these questions by providing a balanced and accessible analysis of the current debate on climatic change. Combining a historical perspective, economic and political analysis, together with meteorological and climatological explanations of the impact of extreme weather events on all aspects of society, it provides a basis for interpreting what is known about climatic change and the ability to forecast future changes and their economic and political consequences. The book also includes extensive discussions on El Niño. It will be of interest to all those concerned with the future of human

This book demonstrates that people's basic values and beliefs are changing, in ways that affect their political, sexual, economic, and religious behaviour. These changes are roughly predictable: to a large extent, they can be interpreted on the basis of a revised version of modernisation theory presented here. Drawing on a massive body of evidence from societies containing 85 percent of the world's population, the authors demonstrate that modernisation is a process of human development, in which economic development gives rise to cultural changes that make individual autonomy, gender equality, and democracy increasingly likely. The authors present a model of social change that predicts how the value systems play a crucial role in the emergence and flourishing of democratic institutions - and that modernisation brings coherent cultural changes that are conducive to democratisation.

This book demonstrates that people's basic values and beliefs are changing, in ways that affect their political, sexual, economic, and religious behaviour. These changes are roughly predictable: to a large extent, they can be interpreted on the basis of a revised version of modernisation theory presented here. Drawing on a massive body of evidence from societies containing 85 percent of the world's population, the authors demonstrate that modernisation is a process of human development, in which economic development gives rise to cultural changes that make individual autonomy, gender equality, and democracy increasingly likely. The authors present a model of social change that predicts how the value systems play a crucial role in the emergence and flourishing of democratic institutions - and that modernisation brings coherent cultural changes that are conducive to democratisation.