Combining historical study, theorization, and experimental fiction, this book takes commodity culture and book retail around 1900 as the prime example of a market of symbolic goods. With the port of Southampton, England, as his case study, Simon R. Frost reveals how the city's bookshops, with their combinations of libraries, haberdashery, stationery, and books, sustained and were sustained by the dreams of ordinary readers, and how together they created the values powering this market. The goods in this market were symbolic and were not "consumed" but read. Their readings were created between other readers and texts, in happy disobedience to the neoliberal laws of the free market. Today such reader-created social markets comprise much of the world's branded economies, which is why Frost calls for a new understanding of both literary and market values.

Why has an economy that has done so many things right failed to grow fast? Under-Rewarded Efforts traces Mexico’s disappointing growth to flawed microeconomic policies that have suppressed productivity growth and nullified the expected benefits of the country’s reform efforts. Fast growth will not occur doing more of the same or focusing on issues that may be key bottlenecks to productivity growth elsewhere, but not in Mexico. It will only result from inclusive institutions that effectively protect workers against risks, redistribute towards those in need, and simultaneously align entrepreneurs’ and workers’ incentives to raise productivity.

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

Cloud native infrastructure is more than servers, network, and storage in the cloud—it is as much about operational hygiene as it is about elasticity and scalability. In this book, you’ll learn practices, patterns, and requirements for creating infrastructure that meets your needs, capable of managing the full life cycle of cloud native applications. Justin Garrison and Kris Nova reveal hard-earned lessons on architecting infrastructure from companies such as Google, Amazon, and Netflix. They draw inspiration from projects adopted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), and provide examples of patterns seen in existing tools such as Kubernetes. With this book, you will: Understand why cloud native infrastructure is necessary to effectively run cloud native applications Use guidelines to decide when—and if—your business should adopt cloud native practices Learn patterns for deploying and managing infrastructure and applications Design tests to prove that your infrastructure works as intended, even in a variety of edge cases Learn how to secure infrastructure with policy as code

Air bags cause accidents, because well-protected drivers take more risks. This well-documented truth comes as a surprise to most people, but not to economists, who have learned to take seriously the proposition that people respond to incentives. In The Armchair Economist, Steven E. Landsburg shows how the laws of economics reveal themselves in everyday experience and illuminate the entire range of human behavior. Why does popcorn cost so much at the cinema? The 'obvious' answer is that the owner has a monopoly, but if that were the whole story, there would also be a monopoly price to use the toilet. When a sudden frost destroys much of the Florida orange crop and prices skyrocket, journalists point to the 'obvious' exercise of monopoly power. Economists see just the opposite: If growers had monopoly power, they'd have raised prices before the frost. Why don't concert promoters raise ticket prices even when they are sure they will sell out months in advance? Why are some goods sold at auction and others at pre-announced prices? Why do boxes at the football sell out before the standard seats do? Why are bank buildings fancier than supermarkets? Why do corporations confer huge pensions on failed executives? Why don't firms require workers to buy their jobs? Landsburg explains why the obvious answers are wrong, reveals better answers, and illuminates the fundamental laws of human behavior along the way. This is a book of surprises: a guided tour of the familiar, filtered through a decidedly unfamiliar lens. This is economics for the sheer intellectual joy of it.

As the most successful sitcom of all time, the television series Seinfeld provides a rich environment for learning basic economic principles. Chronicling the lives of four close friends—Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer—the show highlights human behavior at its best and its worst. The major characters paint themselves as some of the most self-interested individuals in all of popular culture, and are faced with dilemmas that force them to make decisions. Those decisions are at the heart of economics. Each chapter in this book explores one or more key economic concepts and relates them to key scenes from the show. These principles are then applied to other real-world situations, arming readers with the tools needed to make better economic decisions. Written in a light-hearted and conversational style, this book is a must-read for fans of Seinfeld and anyone who wants to learn something from "the show about nothing." It is an ideal supplement for all economics classes.

This book gives an overview of the key issues related to books and reading within the field of cultural economics and identifies additional lacunae in this area of research. The field of cultural economics is surprisingly short on research on the book market and on the activity of reading compared with other more recently invented media such as films and musical recordings. In addition, books and reading are strongly impacted by the disruptive innovations of digital technology and the use of online distribution platforms that fuel much of the research on the more recently invented cultural media. This book shows that the area of books and reading has had contributions in historically established areas of cultural economics and those currently exciting attention - chiefly with respect to digital disruption. Finally, it explains how books and reading are a fully developed rational addition model rather than something just based on the addition of past behaviour. Previously published in Journal of Cultural Economics Volume 43, issue 4, December 2019