By intelligence officials, for intelligent people

Provides information on such topics as politics, military expenditures, and economics, and shares comprehensive, country-by-country statistical and rate information.

This book is a practical and comprehensive guide to succeeding in ASEAN countries. It allows for a deeper understanding of the business environment of these diverse economies. You will be better able to evaluate the risk factors and make meaningful decisions.

"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.

This book is about good government-especially ethical and fair government. Using both theoretical methods and practical political analysis, John Attanasio shows how recent Supreme Court decisions and campaign finance regulations map onto a pernicious and growing inequality in America. He puts forward a novel solution grounded in a new principle of personal autonomy. Looking at the transformation of wealth and political influence in America, this book demonstrates that the defining campaign finance cases such as Buckley v. Valeo and Citizens United have created a new constitutional arrangement that correlates with the dramatic rise in U.S. wealth and income inequality since the 1970s. The book goes on to show that this distorted income allocation has adversely affected demand, which may be spawning American economic stagnation. The solution Attanasio proposes is the principle of "distributive autonomy," sharply contrasting it with the individualism of modern libertarian ideas, which have given rise to the radical inequality that reduces, rather than enhances, autonomy. Good governance must be centrally concerned with the distribution of freedom for all: if my autonomy matters, so does yours. Valuing the autonomy of others is authentic autonomy. Distributive autonomy is necessary to ensure that participatory democracy retains its truly democratic elements, which may be a necessary condition for long-term, prosperous capitalism. A profound synthesis of theory and practice, Politics and Capital is crucial to understanding the ominous political and economic problems besetting twenty-first century America.

The war in Syria, now in its eighth year, continues to take its toll on the Syrian people. More than half of the population of Syria remains displaced; 5.6 million persons are registered as refugees outside of the country and another 6.2 million are displaced within Syria's borders. The internally displaced persons include 2 million school-age children; of these, less than half attend school. Another 739,000 Syrian children are out of school in the five neighborhood countries that host Syria's refugees. The loss of human capital is staggering, and it will create permanent hardships for generations of Syrians going forward. Despite the tragic prospects for renewed fighting in certain parts of the country, an overall reduction in armed conflict is possible going forward. However, international experience shows that the absence of fighting is rarely a singular trigger for the return of displaced people. Numerous other factors—including improved security and socioeconomic conditions in origin states, access to property and assets, the availability of key services, and restitution in home areas—play important roles in shaping the scale and composition of the returns. Overall, refugees have their own calculus of return that considers all of these factors and assesses available options. The Mobility of Displaced Syrians: An Economic and Social Analysis sheds light on the 'mobility calculus' of Syrian refugees. While dismissing any policies that imply wrongful practices involving forced repatriation, the study analyzes factors that may be considered by refugees in their own decisions to relocate. It provides a conceptual framework, supported by data and analysis, to facilitate an impartial conversation about refugees and their mobility choices. It also explores the diversified policy toolkit that the international community has available—and the most effective ways in which the toolkit can be adapted—to maximize the well-being of refugees, host countries, and the people in Syria.

In spite of its key role in creating the ruinous financial crisis of 2008, the American banking industry has grown bigger, more profitable, and more resistant to regulation than ever. Anchored by six megabanks whose assets amount to more than 60 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, this oligarchy proved it could first hold the global economy hostage and then use its political muscle to fight off meaningful reform. 13 Bankers brilliantly charts the rise to power of the financial sector and forcefully argues that we must break up the big banks if we want to avoid future financial catastrophes. Updated, with additional analysis of the government’s recent attempt to reform the banking industry, this is a timely and expert account of our troubled political economy.

From a review of the first edition: "Modern Data Science with R... is rich with examples and is guided by a strong narrative voice. What’s more, it presents an organizing framework that makes a convincing argument that data science is a course distinct from applied statistics" (The American Statistician). Modern Data Science with R is a comprehensive data science textbook for undergraduates that incorporates statistical and computational thinking to solve real-world data problems. Rather than focus exclusively on case studies or programming syntax, this book illustrates how statistical programming in the state-of-the-art R/RStudio computing environment can be leveraged to extract meaningful information from a variety of data in the service of addressing compelling questions. The second edition is updated to reflect the growing influence of the tidyverse set of packages. All code in the book has been revised and styled to be more readable and easier to understand. New functionality from packages like sf, purrr, tidymodels, and tidytext is now integrated into the text. All chapters have been revised, and several have been split, re-organized, or re-imagined to meet the shifting landscape of best practice.