ECON Summer Bridge: Popular Reading

Three IMF economists show that the increase in inequality has been a political choice--and explain what policies we should choose instead to achieve a more inclusive economy. Confronting Inequality is a rigorous and empirically rich book that is crucial for a time when many fear a new Gilded Age.

Bringing to bear more than thirty years of experience working closely with farmers, agricultural researchers and food system activists, he explores the eclipse of food ethics during the rise of nutritional science, and examines the reasons for its sudden re-emergence in the era of diet-based disease. Thompson discusses social injustice in the food systems of developed economies and shows how we have missed the key insights for understanding food ethics in the developing world.

Microfinance began with the noble aim of alleviating poverty through the extension of small loans to poor borrowers, and has grown to now serve approximately 200,000,000 people - the majority of whom are female. In a thorough-going ethical assessment of the industry, this book examines the central microfinance model and whether or not it is effective, the extent to which the practice creates the conditions for exploitation and coercion to occur, and whether the distribution of the benefits and burdens of microfinance is likely to be an ethical one.

Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes argues for guaranteed basic income. This book, grounded in Hughes's personal experience, is intended to start a frank conversation about how we earn in modern America, how we can combat income inequality, and ultimately, how we can give everyone a fair shot.

Transitions in life are now a reality for everyone. This book takes you through the journey to create your own Personal Brand and take ownership of and address these transitions based on your values, career, skills, knowledge and aims. Drawing upon well-known Personal Brands, including Walt Disney, Nelson Mandela and Steve Jobs, this book helps readers to reevaluate themselves critically and honestly.

This book looks at several successful African American women and chronicles their success, obstacles, challenges, and lessons learned. The authors have first person access to each of these women and break down their stories to help other aspiring entrepreneurs achieve their dreams of starting or owning their own business.

This book demonstrates how controlled experiments can be a useful in providing evidence relevant to economic research. The authors take the standard model in applied econometrics as a basis to the methodology of controlled experiments. Methodological discussions are illustrated with standard experimental results. This book provides future experimental practitioners with the means to construct experiments that fit their research question, and new comers with an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of controlled experiments.

Tapping the Oceans explores the perspectives, disputes and politics surrounding water desalination on a broad geographical scale. Water supplies for cities around the world are undergoing profound geographical, technological and political transformations. Increasingly, water-stressed cities are looking to the oceans to fix unreliable, contested and over-burdened water supply systems. Yet the use of emerging desalination technologies is accompanied by intense debates on their economic cost, governance, environmental impact and poses wider questions for the sustainable and just provision of urban water.

This book examines how the growing use of self-service technology in the U.S. economy has contributed to Americans' feelings of busyness and overwork by asking them to perform a variety of tasks in work-like settings for free. Has self-service technology changed the meaning of service in an economy where the boundaries between work and leisure are becoming increasingly blurred? Are big businesses simply being cheap and lazy? And what exactly are shoppers getting when they go through the self-checkout lane? To answer these questions, the author takes readers inside SuperFood, a regional supermarket chain, drawing upon extensive interviews with managers, staff, and customers as well as an array of examples, retail studies, and statistics to separate fact from fiction and figure out what is actually happening in stores.

The New York Times bestselling author of The Talent Code unlocks the secrets of highly successful groups and provides tomorrow's leaders with the tools to build a cohesive, motivated culture.

NYT bestselling author and well-known podcaster (The Tim Ferriss Show) crystallized his interviews with people who are living examples of striving for excellence in many areas of their professional and personal lives (business people, athletes, scientists, politicians, creatives). Ferriss probes into routines, philosophies, and personal experience and reports on ideas to aid self-development, financial and career success. We also have a print edition of this publication.

The author, a leading sociologist of money, examines the nature of money, in order to help the reader gain new perspective after the global financial crisis and with the emergence of new forms and systems of it, such as mobile money and Bitcoin. He covers the utopian aspects of money and the ways in which its transformation could in turn transform society, politics, and economics.

This NYT & WSJ Bestseller was ased on an in-depth analysis of over 2,600 leaders drawn and overturn the myths about what it takes to get to the top and succeed. Their groundbreaking research was the featured cover story in the May-June 2017 issue of HBR. This book provides practical advice from these findings, and is for everyone who aspires to rise up through the organization and achieve their full potential.

Essential reading for any would-be entrepreneur by bestselling author and CEO Mike Alden, who discusses what it takes to ''make it,'' and gives you the real-world guidance you need to hear.

The authors provide a full, historical, economic, and political context through which to understand the actions of the people and government of Mexico, and they give insights into how those actions impinge -- and might continue to impinge -- on the United States.

Rich in natural resources, straddling Europe and Asia, and home to markets of immense scale, Russia is an essential, critical player in a complex global economy. Based on the April 2017 international conference held at Harvard University, this book brings together world-renowned thinkers to offer the current research on financial risk, institutional policy, and financial stability, all while weaving sound economic analyses around countercyclical expansionary macro-trends within the global market, current fiscal and monetary policies, and business cycles.

Global Business Intelligence refers to an organization's ability to gather, process and analyze pertinent international information in order to make optimal business decisions in a timely manner. This book offers a cast of international experts and thought leaders who explore the implications of business intelligence on contemporary management.

Wei Yen explores how differences in world views between Eastern and Western thought and culture have on management and leadership behaviors, and explores how these differences impact today's leadership and management practices.

Cathrin Huber investigates the reputation of multinational corporations and provides novel insights and important implications for researchers and managers based on theoretical considerations and empirical analyses.

This book resents an overview of the best practices and ethics for marketing products that target children as consumers and analyzes the most effective promotional strategies being utilized. Highlighting both the advantages and challenges of targeting young consumers, this book is a reference source for marketers, professionals, researchers, upper-level students, and practitioners interested in emerging perspectives on children's consumption behavior.

The author sorts out the practices and ethics of data collection on individuals for profit, and the intersections of the motivations of Wall Street and Silicon Valley.

Adland examines modern advertising from its origins and evolution to its recent forms. The author emphasizes key developments in print copy, radio and television and digital media, then interviews leading names in advertising today and the recent past. This volume covers roots of advertising industry in New York and London (from Hopkins and Lasker to the Mad Men of the 50s) then covers today's big communication groups and the emerging markets of Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America.

NYT bestseller and named Best Marketing Book of 2014 by the American Marketing Association. Wharton marketing professor Jonah Berger has spent the last decade answering questions like What makes things popular? People don't listen to advertisements, they listen to their peers. If you've wondered why certain stories get shared, e-mails get forwarded, or videos go viral, Contagious explains why, and shows how to leverage these concepts to craft contagious content. This book provides a set of specific, actionable techniques for helping information spread--for designing messages, advertisements, and information that people will share.

This book covers leading organizations and motivating all who work there through optimism, enthusiasm and positive energy. It looks at drivers of short- and long-term success and covers how to have a positive organizational culture.

Samuel B. Bacharach specifies why organizations fall into patterns of inertia and details the critical pragmatic leadership skills leaders need to regain organizational momentum. He employs case illustrations to identify clunky tendencies and inertia within organizations across a wide range of business sectors including technology, finance, banking, home entertainment, and retail. Illustrations are drawn from organizations such as Amazon, Apple, Borders, Merrill Lynch, Nintendo, Starbucks, and Unilever, among many others.