Armed with the knowledge of today, a scholar revisits the US historical experience with fiscal federalism and learns how it avoided three pitfalls now facing the euro area.The lingering crisis of the euro area has made leading observers call for the completion of the economic and monetary union with fiscal federalism. They point to the US federation as the example to emulate. Opponents can point to evidence from US history that strong fiscal capacities at the federal level lead to free-riding at the member state level, with “spectacular debt accumulation and disastrous failures of macroeconomic policy” (Rodden, 2006: 2) in its wake. This paper revisits the historical US evidence with the knowledge of today. It takes lessons from the euro area crisis to see whether they apply to the history of the US dollar area. The first lesson asks whether political-fiscal union should come before monetary union; a second lesson concerns the need for fiscal union; and the final lesson is about the question where fiscal discipline should be located in a monetary union. Lessons from the euro area crisis reveal trade-offs that neither monetary union can evade. This becomes apparent if one looks at the interfaces of a fiscal federation with financial and monetary integration.

As new federations take shape and old ones are revived around the world, a difficult challenge is to create incentives for fiscal discipline. By combining theory, quantitative analysis, and historical and contemporary case studies, this book lays out the first systematic explanation of why decentralized countries have had dramatically different fiscal experiences. It provides insights into current policy debates from Latin America to the European Union, and a new perspective on a tension between the promise and peril of federalism that has characterized the literature since The Federalist Papers.

In a scholarly, yet accessible work, Bernstein reveals the Founding Fathers not as shining demigods but as imperfect human beings who nevertheless achieved political greatness.

A radical reconsideration of the meaning of freedom and morality in the modern world.

No amateur or math authority can be without this ultimate compendium of classic puzzles, paradoxes, and puzzles from America's best-loved mathematical expert. 320 line drawings.

This anthology, the first to bring together the most importantphilosophical essays on the paradoxes, analyses the concepts underlyingthe Prisoner's Dilemma and Newcomb's Problem and evaluates theproposed solutions. The relevant theories have been developed over thepast four decades in a variety of disciplines: mathematics, economics,psychology, political science, biology, and philosophy. And theproblems these paradoxes uncover can arise in many different forms: indebates over nuclear disarmament, labour-management disputes, maritalconflicts, Calvinist theology, and even in the evolution of diseasethrough the "cooperation" of microorganisms. Thepossibilities for application are virtually limitless.

Of all of the Founding Fathers of the American republic none, with the possible exception of Thomas Jefferson, has evoked more passions and aroused more controversy than Alexander Hamilton. In this absorbing new biography, eminent historian Lawrence Kaplan examines Hamilton's conception of America's role in the world and the foreign policies that followed from his vision. Kaplan looks at how Hamilton acted upon his views in shaping the course of American foreign relations. The author provides a focused, accessible biography of Hamilton and a nuanced assessment of his impact on Federalist Era foreign policy. In the Jefferson-Jackson era Hamilton's persona as an elitist urban aristocrat condemned him as an enemy of an expanding democratic America-an Anglophile at a time when Great Britain was the major adversary. Such was his reputation as an enemy of the common man that his deep-seated opposition to the institution of slavery won little recognition from northern abolitionists. This book will fascinate readers with its insights into Hamilton and the formative years of the United States of America.