EU capital markets have changed radically over the past 20 years. In the 1980s, countries had their own financial industries and rules. Now there is one 'Champions League' of banks, and member states have transferred crucial regulatory powers to Brussels. Drawing on policy documents and more than fifty in-depth interviews, Widen the Market, Narrow the Competition argues that financial industry interests have been key to this power shift. Continental banks initially feared a single European market, and governments followed their protectionist impulses. In the 1990s the mood changed, and the likes of ABN AMRO and Deutsche Bank rushed into international investment banking. They emerged as the crucial lobby for the supranational governance in place today. Linked by the interests of centrally placed firms, EU financial integration and supranational governance have been two sides of the same coin. At the same time, national parliaments and ordinary citizens have been pushed to the sidelines.

The first series of Smith "Critical Assessments" included major articles on Adam Smith and set a new standard for Smith scholarship. However, the years since its publication have seen further developments in the vast field of work on this leading economist. "Adam Smith: Critical Assessments--Second Series" completes the project of the earlier volumes by making available the many significant articles which have appeared during the past decade. It will be an invaluable reference for scholars of Smith. Together, the two series provide those interested in the history of contemporary economics with immediate access to the intellectual legacy of one of the world's greatest economic theorists.

"The object of this Essay is to examine the nature and the causes of the present depression of trade. Its first task, therefore, is to trace the background of the depression and the broad conditions amid which it was generated. "To do this it is necessary to draw the picture on a canvas wider than that which would at first sight seem appropriate to an enterprise of this nature. The onset of the present crisis may perhaps be dated from the autumn of 1929." Chapter One The Great Depression Baron Lord Lionel Robbins, Phd., FBA We are on the brink of a major disruption in an Upcoming Global Economic SuperStorm 2012. To see what is valuable after such a disruption this book is essential reading to augment one's view of the Upcoming New World Order. Lord Robbins does this wonderfully and I highly recommend this book to all. Dave DeKeesh, MS

The New Deals of America and Britain were a decade-long calamity that exceeded the damage of the economic downturn itself. The theory behind the policy was all wrong, but no one can say that the correct theory was not in circulation. This splendid book by Robbins presented the entire cause and remedy - in 1934! Rothbard himself says that this book is one of two excellent studies. Sadly, the power of the state and the myth that it could dig the world out of depression prevailed over the Robbins view that the depression was the result of a previous inflation and the best cure was to free the market and let it properly correct. This book has been obscure and difficult to find for far too long. But with this new Mises Institute edition, the proof is at last available that at least one great economist in the English speaking world had it precisely right. The world would have been spared much grief had his, instead of Keynes's, views prevailed.

In Development as Freedom Amartya Sen explains how in a world of unprecedented increase in overall opulence millions of people living in the Third World are still unfree. Even if they are not technically slaves, they are denied elementary freedoms and remain imprisoned in one way or another by economic poverty, social deprivation, political tyranny or cultural authoritarianism. The main purpose of development is to spread freedom and its 'thousand charms' to the unfree citizens. Freedom, Sen persuasively argues, is at once the ultimate goal of social and economic arrangements and the most efficient means of realizing general welfare. Social institutions like markets, political parties, legislatures, the judiciary, and the media contribute to development by enhancing individual freedom and are in turn sustained by social values. Values, institutions, development, and freedom are all closely interrelated, and Sen links them together in an elegant analytical framework. By asking 'What is the relation between our collective economic wealth and our individual ability to live as we would like?' and by incorporating individual freedom as a social commitment into his analysis Sen allows economics once again, as it did in the time of Adam Smith, to address the social basis of individual well-being and freedom.