A large percentage of workers and firms operate in the informal economy, outside the line of sight of governments in emerging market and developing economies. This may hold back the recovery in these economies from the deep recessions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic--unless governments adopt a broad set of policies to address the challenges of widespread informality. This study is the first comprehensive analysis of the extent of informality and its implications for a durable economic recovery and for long-term development. It finds that pervasive informality is associated with significantly weaker economic outcomes--including lower government resources to combat recessions, lower per capita incomes, greater poverty, less financial development, and weaker investment and productivity.

Social justice is a matter of life and death. It affects the way people live, their consequent chance of illness, and their risk of premature death. We watch in wonder as life expectancy and good health continue to increase in parts of the world and in alarm as they fail to improve in others.

Encyclopedic in its coverage, this seminal work focuses on the architecture of Prague from the turn of the century to the end of the Second World War: a rich matrix within which to place the figures who created the powerful, innovative spirits of modern Czech architecture. The book documents the architects, structures, and theoretical underpinnings that helped to shape Prague's cultural heritage and present-day artistic spirit.

This work presents the main contributions and considerations of young European research workers and journalists on the question of discrimination in sport. Taking a multidisciplinary approach to the social sciences, The authors show how the media and those working in media can act as a relay, through their coverage of sports, For initiatives on the fight against discrimination. They also illustrate in detail not only the reality of discrimination in sport and the controversy surrounding this issue in the member states of the Council of Europe, but also the strength of research incipient in this field. The Enlarged Partial Agreement on Sport (EPAS) hopes to contribute in this way to the development of European research on education through sport involving researchers from different countries in order to better understand the phenomenon of discrimination.

In this pathbreaking book, a well-known feminist and sociologist--who is also the Founding Editor of Gender & Society--challenges our most basic assumptions about gender. Judith Lorber views gender as wholly a product of socialization subject to human agency, organization, and interpretation. In her new paradigm, gender is an institution comparable to the economy, the family, and religion in its significance and consequences. Drawing on many schools of feminist scholarship and on research from anthropology, history, sociology, social psychology, sociolinguistics, and cultural studies, Lorber explores different paradoxes of gender: --why we speak of only two "opposite sexes" when there is such a variety of sexual behaviors and relationships; --why transvestites, transsexuals, and hermaphrodites do not affect the conceptualization of two genders and two sexes in Western societies; --why most of our cultural images of women are the way men see them and not the way women see themselves; --why all women in modern society are expected to have children and be the primary caretaker; --why domestic work is almost always the sole responsibility of wives, even when they earn more than half the family income; --why there are so few women in positions of authority, when women can be found in substantial numbers in many occupations and professions; --why women have not benefited from major social revolutions. Lorber argues that the whole point of the gender system today is to maintain structured gender inequality--to produce a subordinate class (women) that can be exploited as workers, sexual partners, childbearers, and emotional nurturers. Calling into question the inevitability and necessity of gender, she envisions a society structured for equality, where no gender, racial ethnic, or social class group is allowed to monopolize economic, educational, and cultural resources or the positions of power.

Through an examination of election campaign propaganda and various public relations campaigns, reflecting new electioneering techniques borrowed from the United States, this work explores how conservative political and economic groups sought to construct and sell a political meaning of the Social Market Economy and the Economic Miracle in West Germany during the 1950s.The political meaning of economics contributed to conservative electoral success, constructed a new belief in the free market economy within West German society, and provided legitimacy and political stability for the new Federal Republic of Germany.

"Reinsurance has to be international in accordance with its nature." This is the well-known viewpoint of Carl von Thieme, one of the founders of Munich Re, who also served as its general director for many years. Thus, it was not a coincidence that the company rose to become the world market leader rather quickly after its founding in 1880. In the following period, Munich Re stayed on top or was occasionally second to Swiss Re. Nonetheless, the broader public does not know much about the company. Johannes Bähr and Christopher Kopper now present the first history of the reinsurer from its beginnings into the 1980s. Few companies have risen to become world market leaders as quickly as Munich Re, and only the fewest have succeeded in remaining at the top of the world market for as long. The company’s history reveals how insurers reacted to major catastrophes and technological shifts. Without sharing risks with reinsurers, countless direct insurers would not have survived the economic consequences of major natural catastrophes and would have been forced into bankruptcy by the weight of their payment obligations. Consequently, reinsurers even made coverage for some risks possible in the first place. Yet Munich Re itself also repeatedly contributed to the introduction of new segments of insurance, such as in the case of machine insurance or high-risk life insurance. Thus, the history of this pioneer of globalization is, at the same time, a history of dealing with risks and managing the distribution of risk. Last but not least, it is also the history of a German company that profited from the National Socialist dictatorship and, with great effort, had to find its way back into the world market after the two world wars.

“One of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades.”—John Gray, New York Times Book Review Hailed as “a magisterial critique of top-down social planning” by the New York Times, this essential work analyzes disasters from Russia to Tanzania to uncover why states so often fail—sometimes catastrophically—in grand efforts to engineer their society or their environment, and uncovers the conditions common to all such planning disasters. “Beautifully written, this book calls into sharp relief the nature of the world we now inhabit.”—New Yorker “A tour de force.”— Charles Tilly, Columbia University

A beautifully illustrated consideration of the life and career of modernist landscape architect Garrett Eckbo.