Economy Of Words

Markets are artifacts of language—so Douglas R. Holmes argues in this deeply researched look at central banks and the people who run them. Working at the intersection of anthropology, linguistics, and economics, he shows how central bankers have been engaging in communicative experiments that predate the financial crisis and continue to be refined amid its unfolding turmoil—experiments that do not merely describe the economy, but actually create its distinctive features. Holmes examines the New York District Branch of the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, Deutsche Bundesbank, and the Bank of England, among others, and shows how officials there have created a new monetary regime that relies on collaboration with the public to achieve the ends of monetary policy. Central bankers, Holmes argues, have shifted the conceptual anchor of monetary affairs away from standards such as gold or fixed exchange rates and toward an evolving relationship with the public, one rooted in sentiments and expectations. Going behind closed doors to reveal the intellectual world of central banks,Economy of Words offers provocative new insights into the way our economic circumstances are conceptualized and ultimately managed.

It was only in the sixteenth century that texts began to refer to the significance of "economic activity" -- of sustaining life. This was not because the ordinary business of life was thought unimportant, but because the principles governing economic conduct were thought to be obvious or uncontroversial. The subsequent development of economic writing thus parallels the development of capitalism in Western Europe. From the seventeenth to the twenty-first century there has been a constant shift in content, audience, and form of argument as the literature of economic argument developed. The Economy of the Word proposes that to understand the various forms that economic literature has taken, we need to adopt a more literary approach in economics specifically, to adopt the instruments and techniques of philology. This way we can conceive the history of economic thought to be an on-going work in progress, rather than the story of the emergence of modern economic thinking. This approach demands that we pay attention to the construction of particular texts, showing the work of economic argument in different contexts. In sum, we need to pay attention to the "economy of the word". The Economy of the Word is divided into three parts. The first explains what the term "economy" has meant from Antiquity to Modernity, coupling this conceptual history with an examination of how the idea of national income was turned into a number during the first half of the twentieth century. The second part is devoted to Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, considering first the manner in which Smith deals with international trade, and then the way in which the book was read in the course of the nineteenth century. Part III examines the sources used by Karl Marx and Léon Walras in developing their economic analysis, drawing attention to their shared intellectual context in French political economy.

Economix is an essential and accessible guide to understanding the economy and economic practices. This New York Times bestseller is a must-read for every citizen and every voter. With clear, witty writing and quirky, accessible art, this important and timely graphic novel transforms “the dismal science” of economics into a fun, fact-filled story about human nature and our attempts to make the most of what we’ve got . . . and sometimes what our neighbors have. Economix explains it all, from the beginning of Western economic thought; to markets free and otherwise; to economic failures, successes, limitations, and future possibilities. Everybody’s talking about the economy, but how can we, the people, make sense of what Wall Street or Washington say they know? Read the New York Times bestselling Economix, from author Michael Goodwin and illustrator Dan E. Burr. “Goodwin brilliantly contextualizes economic theories with historical narrative, while Burr’s simple but elegant illustration employs classical techniques like caricaturing politicians and symbolizing big businesses (as a gleeful factory) to help the reader visualize difficult concepts.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “This witty and elegant volume takes on a number of complex issues—in this case, economics, history and finance—and makes them comprehensible for mere mortals.” —Miami Herald “Michael Goodwin hasn’t just written a great graphic novel—he’s written one that should be required for every school, newsroom, and library in the United States.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

Between the turn of the century and about 1940, dramatic changes took place in both British and American print culture. Publishers scrambled as new markets developed or were created through advertising. Lithographers and designers helped establish the preeminence of "modern" aesthetics. And the centuries-old printing industry was transformed by unprecedented technological advances. In Trading Words Claire Hoertz Badaracco examines these fascinating developments in an engaging study of the economics of literary design. She investigates how writers sold their poetry by marketing their reputations, how book printers used American literature to break the long hold of European classics on the mass-market literary imagination, and how direct mail and advertising made or broke subscription publishing enterprises during the 1930s. Drawing on rare books and manuscript materials from distinguished collections in the history of printing and marketing, Badaracco freshly surveys the development of twentieth-century "mass culture" and reinterprets the philosophies, ideals, and schemes of the poets, typographers, and publishers who succeeded in capturing the public imagination.

In this short but ambitious book, Arjun Appadurai argues that the failure of the financial system in 2007-08 in the United States was primarily a failure of language. This argument does not deny that greed, ignorance, weak regulation, and irresponsible risk-taking were important factors in the collapse. But the new role of language in the marketplace, for Appadurai, is the condition of possibility for all these more easily identifiable flaws. Attempts to rectify the social pathologies of contemporary finance must address that failure of language. "Banking on Words "focuses on derivatives as the distinctive innovation of our financial era. Derivatives are written promises concerning the uncertain future prices of financial assets and the substance of these contracts is expressed in terms of money. The recent failure of derivatives markets was systematic and should be understood as failed promises. While it is well-known that derivatives pile risk on risk with little basis in real production and trade, Appadurai reveals this process in a fresh light from which some policy conclusions may be drawn. While critical of derivative finance s present social infrastructure and supporting ideology, Appadurai acknowledges its capacity for creating vast new forms of wealth and asks the crucial question: if we want access to that wealth, what kind of social arrangements would we need to make sure that it benefits all of society rather than reinforcing a system that benefits the few who are already well off? His bold answer involves not the repair of the force of promises but rather the repair and reconstruction of the idea of the individual to enable new sorts of solidarity between dividuals, agents whose very partiality may allow for new aggregations of aspiration, interest and affiliation. This amounts to nothing less than a new ideology of sociality."

A concise, easy-to-read source of essential tips and skills for writing research papers and career management In order to be truly successful in the biomedical professions, one must have excellent communication skills and networking abilities. Of equal importance is the possession of sufficient clinical knowledge, as well as a proficiency in conducting research and writing scientific papers. This unique and important book provides medical students and residents with the most commonly encountered topics in the academic and professional lifestyle, teaching them all of the practical nuances that are often only learned through experience. Written by a team of experienced professionals to help guide younger researchers, A Guide to the Scientific Career: Virtues, Communication, Research and Academic Writing features ten sections composed of seventy-four chapters that cover: qualities of research scientists; career satisfaction and its determinants; publishing in academic medicine; assessing a researcher’s scientific productivity and scholarly impact; manners in academics; communication skills; essence of collaborative research; dealing with manipulative people; writing and scientific misconduct: ethical and legal aspects; plagiarism; research regulations, proposals, grants, and practice; publication and resources; tips on writing every type of paper and report; and much more. An easy-to-read source of essential tips and skills for scientific research Emphasizes good communication skills, sound clinical judgment, knowledge of research methodology, and good writing skills Offers comprehensive guidelines that address every aspect of the medical student/resident academic and professional lifestyle Combines elements of a career-management guide and publication guide in one comprehensive reference source Includes selected personal stories by great researchers, fascinating writers, inspiring mentors, and extraordinary clinicians/scientists A Guide to the Scientific Career: Virtues, Communication, Research and Academic Writing is an excellent interdisciplinary text that will appeal to all medical students and scientists who seek to improve their writing and communication skills in order to make the most of their chosen career.

An accessible, thoroughly engaging look at how the economy really works and its role in your everyday life Not surprisingly, regular people suddenly are paying a lot closer attention to the economy than ever before. But economics, with its weird technical jargon and knotty concepts and formulas can be a very difficult subject to get to grips with on your own. Enter Greg Ip and his Little Book of Economics. Like a patient, good-natured tutor, Greg, one of today's most respected economics journalists, walks you through everything you need to know about how the economy works. Short on technical jargon and long on clear, concise, plain-English explanations of important terms, concepts, events, historical figures and major players, this revised and updated edition of Greg's bestselling guide clues you in on what's really going on, what it means to you and what we should be demanding our policymakers do about the economy going forward. From inflation to the Federal Reserve, taxes to the budget deficit, you get indispensible insights into everything that really matters about economics and its impact on everyday life Special sections featuring additional resources of every subject discussed and where to find additional information to help you learn more about an issue and keep track of ongoing developments Offers priceless insights into the roots of America's economic crisis and its aftermath, especially the role played by excessive greed and risk-taking, and what can be done to avoid another economic cataclysm Digs into globalization, the roots of the Euro crisis, the sources of China's spectacular growth, and why the gap between the economy's winners and losers keeps widening

Exploring the relevance of principles of optimization to the interface between syntax and semantics. In Economy and Semantic Interpretation, Danny Fox investigates the relevance of principles of optimization (economy) to the interface between syntax and semantics. Supporting the view that grammar is restricted by economy considerations, Fox argues for various economy conditions that constrain the application of covert operations. Among other things, he argues that syntactic operations that do not affect phonology cannot apply unless they affect the semantic interpretation of a sentence. This position has a number of consequences for the architecture of grammar. For example, it suggests that the modularity assumption, according to which a language's syntax must be characterized independently of its semantics, needs to be revised. Another consequence concerns new answers to the question of exactly where in the syntactic derivation the various constraints on interpretation apply. Linguistic Inquiry Monograph No. 35Copublished with the MIT Working Papers in Linguistics series.

Wendy Call visited the Isthmus of Tehuantepec?the lush sliver of land connecting the Yucatan Peninsula to the rest of Mexico?for the first time in 1997. She found herself in the midst of a storied land, a place Mexicans call their country'sø?little waist,? a place long known for its strong women, spirited marketplaces, and deep sense of independence. She also landed in the middle of a ferocious battle over plans to industrialize the region, where most people still fish, farm, and work in the forests. In the decade that followed her first visit, Call witnessed farmland being paved for new highways, oil spilling into rivers, and forests burning down. Through it all, local people fought to protect their lands and their livelihoods?and their very lives.ø ø Call?s story, No Word for Welcome, invites readers into the homes, classrooms, storefronts, and fishing boats of the isthmus, as well as the mahogany-paneled high-rise offices of those striving to control the region. With timely and invaluable insights into the development battle, Call shows that the people who have suffered most from economic globalization have some of the clearest ideas about how we can all survive it.

Why did coinage, tyranny, and philosophy develop in the same time and place? Marc Shell explores how both money and language give "worth" by providing a medium of exchange, how the development of money led to a revolution in philosophical thought and language, and how words transform mere commodities into symbols at once aesthetic and practical. Offering carefully documented interpretations of texts from Heraclitus, Herodotus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, and Ruskin, Shell demonstrates the kinship between literary and economic theory and production, introduces new methods of analyzing texts, and shows how literary and philosophical fictions can help us understand the world in which we live.