Commercial Society A Primer on Ethics and Economics
Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Cathleen Johnson teaches the Philosophy, Politics, Economics and Law program at the University of Arizona, USA.
Robert Lusch was Professor of Marketing at the University of Arizona, USA.
David Schmidtz is Kendrick Professor of Philosophy in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Eller Chair of Service-Dominant Logic in the Eller College of Management, both at the University of Arizona, USA.
Commercial Society is about how to understand a market economy. The book, part of the "Economy, Polity, and Society" series, is a primer on economics and ethical entrepreneurship. The authors (all, Univ. of Arizona) cover concepts in both microeconomics and macroeconomics, and they provide chapters on business and entrepreneurship. The chapters are brief and cover the basics; each chapter concludes with exercises and topics for class discussion. Each chapter also has a QR code, that, when scanned with a cell phone, takes the user to a website for more information. . . This work could serve as a textbook on economics for students who are not economics majors. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates, including students in technical programs.
Choice Reviews
The authors do an outstanding job of capturing the essential, complementary roles of commerce and ethics in short, concise chapters that are easily digestible for readers of almost any age and educational background. They adroitly link seemingly diverse concepts into a simple narrative of societal sustainability through human interdependence and cooperation. Commercial Society is a thoughtful, delightfully easy, and critically important read.
- Stephen L. Vargo, Professor of Marketing, University of Hawai’i at Manoa,
This thought-provoking text encourages exploration and engagement in life’s conversation regarding the connection of ethical behavior to commercial economic progress, as well as the importance of entrepreneurship in creating ways to make others better off. It is succinct and will engage students creatively and deeply in dialogue, study, and research.
- Candace Smith, Economics Teacher,
Learning economics is hard because it is part social science, part business discipline, part moral philosophy. You need to learn how the world works, how to flourish in business and life, and how choices benefit or harm others. Commercial Society is the first text that consistently stresses all three of these points in a clear and simple way. Highly recommended!
- Joshua C. Hall, Professor of Economics, West Virginia University,
A well-conceived and well-executed guide for young adults embarking on lives in our commercial society. The book provides a beautifully clear description of trade and its centrality to human life, the institutions supporting trade, and the ethics woven into its fabric. On the practical side it discusses personal and business finance and ends with a challenge to the reader to start his or her own business.
- David Keyt, Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, University of Washington, USA,
One of the greatest and most joyful challenges of adult life is to develop skills that make the people around us better off with us than without us. Integrity is a key part of that challenge. We are social animals, aiming not simply to trade but to make a place for ourselves in a community. You don’t want to have to pretend that you feel proud of fooling your customers into believing you could be trusted.
The ethical question is: how do people have to live in order to make the world a better place with them than without them?
The economic question is: what kind of society makes people willing and able to use their talents in a way that is good for them and for the people around them?
The entrepreneurial question is: what does it take to show up in the marketplace with something that can take your community to a different level?
In this book, the authors discuss the connections between the ethical, economic, and entrepreneurial dimensions of a life well-lived.
Ethics, Economy, and Entrepreneurship
Why Ethics?
Why Economy?
Why Entrepreneurship?
Part 1: Key Concept
Trade
Resources
Cost
Institutions
Value
Part 2: Progress
Adam Smith on Progress
Transaction Cost and Progress
Commerce and Progress
Production Possibilities Frontier
What Seems Like Progress
Part 3: Understanding Trade
Conditions for Trade
Comparative Advantage
Division of Labor
Buyers
Sellers
A Market: Supply and Demand
A Market Responds: Price and Quantity
Economic Surplus
Price Signals and Spontaneous Order
Price Controls
Economic Science: Putting Theory to the Test
Progress and Wealth Creation
Part 4: Trust, Agency, and Bystanders
Principal-Agent Framework
Cost to Bystanders
Competitors are not Bystanders
The Logic of the Commons
Environmental Tragedies
Property
Parcels
Communal Property
Trust
Benefits for Bystanders
Market Power
Monopoly Power
Monopsony Power
International Trade and Trade Protection
What Should Not be for Sale
Part 5: Management of a Commercial Society
Financial Institutions
Fractional Reserve Banking
Measuring Economies
Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
Unemployment Rate
Measuring the Price Level
Fiscal Policy
Monetary Policy
Public Choice
Corruption
Part 6: Personal and Business Finance
Accounting Basics
Compound Growth
Saving, Borrowing, and Investing
Marketing Fundamentals
Insurance
Break-Even Analysis
Budgeting
Financial Management
Part 7: Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Knowledge Discovery
It Takes More than Ideas
What Innovation Looks Like
Entry, Exit, and the Role of Profit
Creative Destruction
Entrepreneurs as Resource Integrators
Entrepreneurship as a Process
Markets Don’t Exist
Competitive Advantage - The Dynamics of Remaining Viable
The Big Errors
The Entrepreneur and Self-Assessment
The foundations of political economy — from Adam Smith to the Austrian school of economics, to contemporary research in public choice and institutional analysis — are sturdy and well established, but far from calcified. On the contrary, the boundaries of the research built on this foundation are ever expanding. One approach to political economy that has gained considerable traction in recent years combines the insights and methods of three distinct but related subfields within economics and political science: the Austrian, Virginia and Bloomington schools of political economy. The vision of this book series is to capitalize on the intellectual gains from the interactions between these approaches in order to both feed the growing interest in this approach and advance social scientists’ understanding of economy, polity, and society.This series seeks to publish works that combine the Austrian school’s insights on knowledge, the Virginia school’s insights into incentives in non-market contexts, and the Bloomington school’s multiple methods, real-world approach to institutional design as a powerful tool for understanding social behaviour in a diversity of contexts. This series is published in partnership with the Mercatus Center, George Mason University.
Series Editors: Virgil Storr and Jayme Lemke
Advisory Board: Paul Dragos Aligica, Mercatus Center, George Mason University, , Peter J. Boettke, George Mason University, , Christopher Coyne, George Mason University, , Monica De Zelaya, Universidad Francisco Marroquín, , Erwin Dekker, Erasmus University Rotterdam, , Stefanie Haeffele-Balch, Mercatus Center at George Mason University, , Jacob Levy, McGill University, , Paul Lewis, Kings’ College London, , Deirdre McCloskey, University of Illinois at Chicago, , Michael Munger, Duke University, , David Schmidtz, University of Arizona, , Rob Shields, University of Alberta Edmonton, , Richard Wilk, Indiana University Bloomington
Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Cathleen Johnson teaches the Philosophy, Politics, Economics and Law program at the University of Arizona, USA.
Robert Lusch was Professor of Marketing at the University of Arizona, USA.
David Schmidtz is Kendrick Professor of Philosophy in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Eller Chair of Service-Dominant Logic in the Eller College of Management, both at the University of Arizona, USA.