First published in 1990, this is an analysis of the history of western economics from Petty to Supply-Side, through the prism of the controversies over productive labour and its product. It treats the early economists’ "productive-unproductive" dichotomies as shorthands for many other sets of distinctions relevant for boundaries, value and welfare. Central to the debates is the question of whether the economy is said to generate a ‘surplus’. Economists and politicians with views on these matters include the Physiocrats, Smith and Ricardo, Marx and his Soviet and western admirers, the marginalists, Keynes, Polanyi, Becker, and Reagan. The book maps the shifting emphases that economists and social thinkers have placed on markets and ‘mode’ of production generally. This reissue will be useful to students of economic thought, welfare theory and policy, growth economics and economic systems.

Originally published in1984. Regional development planning has grown rapidly in recent years, as both an academic specialism and a focus of policy and practice. Books and articles on the subject have proliferated, and all across the Third World governments have become commited to it, setting up large new departments and even ministries. Charles Gore argues that this growing popularity of regional planning in developing countries is profoundly paradoxical.

First published in 1985, this title explores theories of leisure in a capitalist society. Basing his argument on a refutation of the conventional association of leisure with freedom and free time, Chris Rojek examines the four main structural characteristics of modern leisure practice: privatisation, individuation, commercialisation and pacification. The writings of Marx, Durkheim, Weber, and Freud are used to locate the question of leisure in more mainstream social theory. This interesting reissue will be of particular value to students of sociology and leisure studies, and those with an interest in the relationship between leisure and power.

First published in 1962, The Theory of Economic Integration provides an excellent exposition of a complex and far-reaching topic. Professor Balassa has been remarkably successful in covering so much ground with such care and balance, in a treatment which is neither in any way abstruse nor unnecessarily technical. His book will interest economists in Europe by reason of its subject and treatment, but it is also a valuable and reliable textbook for students tackling integration as part of a course of International Economics and for those studying Public Finance. He distinguishes between the various forms of integration (free trade area, customs union, common market, economics union, and total integration). In addition, he applies the theoretical principles to current projects such as the European Common Market and Free Trade Area, and to Latin American integration projects. In offering this theoretical study, the author builds on the conclusions of other writers, but goes beyond this in providing a unifying framework for previous contributions and in exploring questions that in the past received little attention – in particular, the relationship between economic integration and growth (especially the interrelationship between market size and growth, and the implications of various factors for economic growth in an integrated area).

First published in 1936, this book gives the reader an insight into the tendencies and spirit of the monetary reform movement as a whole, as accomplished or proposed since the First World War. The author marks the consideration of the overall reform as being more important than specifically looking at the actual proposals and measures involved, and the views he attributes to the various monetary reform schools are therefore composite views of the various factions of those schools. As a comparatively recent convert to the idea of monetary reform, at the time of writing, the author offers a balanced view of the subject as he also has extensive experience of the ideas of the orthodox monetary system. However, he does not believe that monetary reform alone can achieve the desired end without considerable economic planning. Indeed, he suggests that the monetary reform movement he discusses desperately needs to adopt a broader perspective and thus, he suggests a compromise.

First published in 1981, this book brings together different types of work by numerous fragmented groups in the field of Marxist history and puts them in dialogue with each other. It takes stock of then recent work, explores the main new lines, and looks at the political and ideological circumstances shaping the direction of historical work, past and present. The scope of the book is international with contributions on African history, fascism and anti-fascism, French labour history, and the transition from feudalism to capitalism. It also incorporates feminist history and gives attention to some of the leading questions raised for social history by the women’s movement.

First published in 1996, this book seeks to establish Gabriel A.D. Preinreich as an important accounting theorist and redress the neglect that his work has suffered despite its foundational importance to prominent areas of modern research. Two criteria were used to select the papers included in this volume — papers related to dividends, yield, valuation, goodwill and depreciation were selected while those that were primarily concerned with mathematical economics were omitted. The collected articles and other items were written between 1931 and 1944 and grouped into three sections: accounting from the investor’s viewpoint; valuation and goodwill; and depreciation.

The articles in this edited collection, first published in 1985, consider the competing theories of the nature of development and underdevelopment in Southeast Asia. Each chapter challenges the academic orthodoxies and dominant traditions of Southeast Asian studies, particularly in relation to orientalist history, behaviourist political science and development economics. Overall, the contributions offer an alternative framework for analysis, which considers the structural changes to the political economy of Southeast Asia, as well as the relationship between the state, economy and class at a domestic level. This is a fascinating collection, of value to students and academics with an interest in Southeast Asian politics, economics and history.

First published in 1981, Professor Mishan’s Economic Efficiency and Social Welfare: Selected Essays on Fundamental Aspects of the Economic Theory of Social Welfare is a collection of 22 pioneering essays written while the author was teaching at the London School of Economics and chosen to indicate landmarks in the development of his own thought. Professor Mishan, who also enjoys an international reputation as a popular writer on the impact of modern economic growth on social welfare, is among the foremost authorities in the field of resource allocation, and his influence in his subject area has been profound. Mishan’s essays, while generally accessible to the layman due to the author’s lucidity, his economy in the use of mathematical notation and his concern with perspective, are invaluable reading for the economics undergraduate. The essays are particularly relevant to upper level students of project appraisal, welfare economics and cost benefit analysis requiring a coherent survey of their field of study.

The great inter-war depression has long been seen as an unprecedented economic disaster for the peoples of the non-European world. This book, with its detailed assessment of the impact of the depression on the economies of Africa and Asia, challenges the orthodox view, and is essential reading for those with a teaching or research interest in the modern economic history of those continents. Established specialists in the modern economic history of parts of Africa or Asia put forward a number of revisionist arguments. They show that some economies were left essentially unscathed by the depression, and that for many export-dependent peasant communities which did face a severe drop in cash income as world commodity prices collapsed from the late 1920s, there was a range of important responses and reactions by which they could defend their economic welfare. For many peasant communities the depression was not a disaster but an opportunity.