Deidre N. McCloskey's work in economics calls into question its reputation as "the dismal science". She writes with passion and an unusually wide scope, drawing on literature and intellectual history in exciting, if unorthodox, ways. In this pamphlet, McCloskey reveals what she sees as the secret sins of economics that no one will discuss - two sins that "cripple" economics as a "scientific enterprise."

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview: #1 While it is true that markets are competitive, and that some firms will succeed and others will fail, this does not have to be a negative thing. Because markets are positivesum, not zerosum, the wealth they create is positivesum as well. #2 There are two main ways to get something from someone: by taking it forcibly from them, or by defrauding them and promising to pay them in the future but not doing so. These are examples of zerosum exchanges. #3 Until about 1800, the average person’s percapita wealth was extremely low, between $1 and $3 per day. But there is another way to get what you want from another person: make an offer of exchange that the other party is free to accept or decline. If both parties benefit from the exchange, it is a positivesum exchange. #4 The morally superior way to deal with others is to engage in cooperative exchanges instead of extractive ones. This was a great leap forward in human morality, and it has become clear that the only properly moral way to deal with others is to treat them as equals in dignity and agency.

Sleepy rustic Carmarthenshire was secretly a hotbed of debauchery, violence and drunkenness according to Russell Davies in a new edition of his very successful book, ‘Secret Sins’. Behind the facade of idyllic rural life, there was a twilight world of mental illness, suicide, crime, vicious assaults, infanticide, cruelty and other assorted acts of depravity. This almost anecdotal historical study is often funny, sometimes disturbing, always revealing.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 While it is true that markets are competitive, and that some firms will succeed and others will fail, this does not have to be a negative thing. Because markets are positive-sum, not zero-sum, the wealth they create is positive-sum as well. #2 There are two main ways to get something from someone: by taking it forcibly from them, or by defrauding them and promising to pay them in the future but not doing so. These are examples of zero-sum exchanges. #3 Until about 1800, the average person’s per-capita wealth was extremely low, between $1 and $3 per day. But there is another way to get what you want from another person: make an offer of exchange that the other party is free to accept or decline. If both parties benefit from the exchange, it is a positive-sum exchange. #4 The morally superior way to deal with others is to engage in cooperative exchanges instead of extractive ones. This was a great leap forward in human morality, and it has become clear that the only properly moral way to deal with others is to treat them as equals in dignity and agency.

Samuelson is a key figure in economic thinking. This gathers the essential assessments of this important economist, and provides an unparalleled insight into his lasting impact on economics.

The last 200 years have witnessed a 100-fold leap in well-being. Deirdre McCloskey argues that most people today are stunningly better off than their forbearers were in 1800, and that the rest of humanity will soon be. A purely materialist, incentivist view of economic change does not explain this leap. We have now the third in McCloskey's three-volume opus about how bourgeois values transformed Europe. Volume 3 nails the case for that transfiguration, telling us how aristocratic virtues of hierarchy were replaced by bourgeois virtues (more precisely, by attitudes toward virtues) that made it possible for ordinary folk with novel ideas to change the way people, farmed, manufactured, traveled, ruled themselves, and fought. It is a dramatic story, and joins a dramatic debate opened up by Thomas Piketty in his best-selling Capital in the 21st Century. McCloskey insists that economists are far too preoccupied by capital and saving, arguing against the position (of Piketty and most others) that capital induces a tendency to get more, that money reproduces itself, that riches are created from riches. Not so, our intrepid McCloskey shows. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, among the biggest wealth accumulators in our era, didn't get rich through the magic of compound interest on capital. They got rich through intellectual property, creating billions of dollars from virtually nothing. Capital was no more important an ingredient to the original Apple or Microsoft than cookies or cucumbers. The debate is between those who think riches are created from riches versus those who, with McCloskey, think riches are created from rags, between those who see profits as a generous return on capital, or profits coming from innovation that ultimately benefits us all.

Economic geographers have always argued that space is key to understanding the economy, that the processes of economic growth and development do not occur uniformly across geographic space, but rather differ in degree and form as between different nations, regions, cities and localities, with major implications for the geographies of wealth and welfare. This was true in the industrial phase of global capitalism, and is no less true in the contemporary era of post-industrial, knowledge-driven global capitalism. Indeed, the marked changes occurring in the structure and operation of the economy, in the sources of wealth creation, in the organisation of the firm, in the nature of work, in the boundaries between market and state, and in the regulation of the socio-economy, have stimulated an unprecedented wave of theoretical, conceptual and empirical enquiry by economic geographers. Even economists, who traditionally have viewed the economy in non-spatial terms, as existing on the head of the proverbial pin, are increasingly recognising the importance of space, place and location to understanding economic growth, technological innovation, competitiveness and globalisation. This collection of previously published work, though containing but a fraction of the huge explosion in research and publication that has occurred over the past two decades, seeks to convey a sense of this exciting phase in the intellectual development of the discipline and its importance in grasping the spatialities of contemporary economic life.