Capital Flows and Crises

Capital Flows and Crises

The implications of capital mobility for growth and stability are some of the most contentious and least understood contemporary issues in economics. In this book, Barry Eichengreen discusses historical, theoretical, empirical, and policy aspects of the effects, both positive and negative, of capital flows. He focuses on the connections between capital flows and crises as well as on those between capital flows and growth.Eichengreen argues that international financial liberalization, like other forms of economic liberalization, can positively affect the efficiency of resource allocation and the rate of economic growth. But analyses of both recent and historical experience also show an undeniable association between capital mobility and crises, especially when domestic institutions are weak and the harmonization of capital account liberalization and other policy reforms is inadequate. In his conclusion, Eichengreen makes suggestions for policy design to maximize the benefits of international financial liberalization while minimizing the risks of financial instability.

Capital Flows and Crises

Boys Will Be Boys

Boys Will Be Boys

They were called America’s Team. Led by Emmitt Smith, the charismatic Deion ‘Prime Time’ Sanders, Hall of Famers Troy Aikman and Michael Irvinand lorded over by swashbuckling, power-hungry owner Jerry Jones and his two hard-living coaches, Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzerthe Cowboys seemed indomitable on the football field throughout the 1990s. Off the field the ‘Boys were a dysfunctional circus, fueled by ego, sex, drugs, and jaw-dropping excess. What they achieved on game day was astonishing; what they did the rest of the week was unbelievable.

Boys Will Be Boys

Art, Culture and the Semiotics of Meaning

Art, Culture and the Semiotics of Meaning

Do the arts mean? Do all the arts mean? Do they all mean in the same way? Does an art work mean in the same way in which a street sign means? More importantly, do all art works mean in a semiotically interesting way? This book argues for the importance of those formal meanings in the arts which most effectively enrich our knowledge of ‘the way things are’ and train our cognitive faculties to deal with them. Jackson Barry examines the meaning of art works as read through their material and formal constituents using a semiotic approach which clarifies the historical and cultural forces molding these sensorially elaborated ‘signs.’ Medieval wheel-of-fortune diagrams, a Shakespeare play, non-objective painting, and a stage set for Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, all demonstrate the interplay between concepts struggling for expression and the available matter and form for their manifestation. At the end, the author considers the biological basis for art as defined in contemporary cognitive science.

Art, Culture and the Semiotics of Meaning