Tyler Cowen’s controversial New York Times bestseller—the book heard round the world that ignited a firestorm of debate and redefined the nature of America’s economic malaise. America has been through the biggest financial crisis since the great Depression, unemployment numbers are frightening, media wages have been flat since the 1970s, and it is common to expect that things will get worse before they get better. Certainly, the multidecade stagnation is not yet over. How will we get out of this mess? One political party tries to increase government spending even when we have no good plan for paying for ballooning programs like Medicare and Social Security. The other party seems to think tax cuts will raise revenue and has a record of creating bigger fiscal disasters that the first. Where does this madness come from? As Cowen argues, our economy has enjoyed low-hanging fruit since the seventeenth century: free land, immigrant labor, and powerful new technologies. But during the last forty years, the low-hanging fruit started disappearing, and we started pretending it was still there. We have failed to recognize that we are at a technological plateau. The fruit trees are barer than we want to believe. That's it. That is what has gone wrong and that is why our politics is crazy. In The Great Stagnation, Cowen reveals the underlying causes of our past prosperity and how we will generate it again. This is a passionate call for a new respect of scientific innovations that benefit not only the powerful elites, but humanity as a whole.

In recent decades Japan has changed from a strongly growing, economically successful nation regarded as prime example of social equality and inclusion, to a nation with a stagnating economy, a shrinking population and a very high proportion of elderly people. Within this, new forms of inequality are emerging and deepening, and a new model of Japan as 'gap society' (kakusa shakai) has become common-sense. These new forms of inequality are complex, are caused in different ways by a variety of factors, and require deep-seated reforms in order to remedy them. This book provides a comprehensive overview of inequality in contemporary Japan. It examines inequality in labour and employment, in welfare and family, in education and social mobility, in the urban-rural divide, and concerning immigration, ethnic minorities and gender. The book also considers the widespread anxiety effect of the fear of inequality; and discusses how far these developments in Japan represent a new form of social problem for the wider world.

A Powerful Look at Corporate Change and Why Mergers, Reorganizations, and Transformations Succeed or Fail “[One of the] best business books of 2001 . . . [a] useful and intelligent tool for coping with the inevitable metamorphoses of business (and life).” —Miami Herald “Provocative imagery . . . useful questions for managers to ask themselves.” —Harvard Business Review “The Change Monster not only talks intelligently about the social dynamics and emotions of people [in change efforts], it does so with wisdom, insight, and practicality.”—Daniel Leemon, executive vice president and chief strategy officer, Charles Schwab Corporation “A practitioner’s primer on revitalization that puts you in the shoes of some who have failed and others who have succeeded. In doing so, Jeanie Daniel Duck graphically delivers her main message to management: Learn to master the emotions and obsessions of those who stand in the way of change, including your own, and once you do, you have your hands on a miraculous engine for change.” —Michael Useem, professor of management and director of the Center for Leadership and Change at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and author of The Leadership Moment and Leading Up “Duck is an acute and empathetic observer of the changes erupting in the workplace from the convulsive nature of corporate evolution. . . . Jeanie Duck’s terrific book is a . . . useful and intelligent tool for coping with the inevitable metamorphoses of business (and life). Sensitive but tough, Duck’s compassionate wisdom is street smart without a trace of glibness.” —Miami Herald

The thesis analyses the role of Muslim voluntary welfare associations in Jordan from the perspective of their religious discourse and the related social activities, to assess whether they contribute to empowerment or reinforce dependency

The primary objective of this book is to advance the state of the art in specifying and ?tting to data structural multi-sector dynamic macroeconomic models, and empirically implementing them. The fundamental construct upon which we build is the Ramsey model. A most attractive feature of this model is the insights it provides into the dynamics of an economy in tr- sition to long-run equilibrium. With some exceptions, Ramsey models are highly aggregated – typically single sector models. However, interest often lies in understanding the forces of e- nomic growth across multiple sectors of an economy and on how policy impacts likely play out over time. Such analyses call for moredisaggregatedmodelsthatcanbe?ttocountryorregional data.Thisbookshowshowto:(i)extendthebasicmodeltom- tiple sectors, (ii) how to adapt the basic model to account for policy instruments, and (iii) ?t the model to data, and obtain equilibrium values both forward and backward in time from the data points to which the model is initially ?t.

Organizational Change is a complex yet essential process for growth and development in business. The second edition of this insightful book examines the nature of this critical process in the light of the rapid changes in the business environment and intense global competition.The author revisits fundamental concepts, as well as presents new ideas, activities, and processes associated with how to plan, implement and manage effective transformational change. The book highlights:- The nature and process of transformational change and the paradigms basic to the change process- The basic concepts and strategic leverages of change- The need for and ways of aligning current tasks, systems, processes, and culture with organizational goals- The support systems required for change and the need to develop and maintain these systems- Ways of tuning organizations for change- Managing change through people by optimizing individual and group effortsSupported by numerous case studies and written in a lucid and reader-friendly style, this book will be a definitive guide for students, scholars, and practitioners.

Bernadette Mazurek Melnyk and Ellen Fineout-Overholt are creators of the ARCC (Advancing Research and Clinical practice through close Collaboration) Model, an innovative strategy for implementing and sustaining evidence-based practice in healthcare systems. The ARCC Model is cited as an exemplar of education in evidence-based practice in the Board on Health Care Services and the Institute of Medicine's book, Health Professions Education: A Bridge to Quality. "McInyk and Fineout-Overholt's book should be required reading in all graduate programs. Their text has provided a blueprint for the future of nursing practice and a rigorously substantiated and clearly described means for clinicians, educators, and administrators to participate in improving quality of care." Janet D. Allan, PhD, RN, FAAN Dean and Professor University of Maryland School of Nursing "Evidence-based Practice in Nursing & Healthcare: A Guide to Best Practice has been instrumental in developing a culture of evidence-based practice at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. It is fundamental to our curriculum provided to all levels of staff, from new graduate nurses to the highest levels of hospital leadership." Dr. Patricia Potter, RN, PhD, FAAN, Dr. Gail Rea, RN, PhD, CNE, Dr. Karen Balakas, RN, PhD, CNE, Jennifer Williams, MSN, RN, ACNS-BC, Elizabeth Pratt, MSN, RN, ACNS-BC Evidence Equals Excellence group at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Barnes-Jewish School of Nursing at Goldfarb Evidence-based Practice in Nursing & Healthcare: A Guide to Best Practice is an exemplary text that spans the continuum of nursing evidence to support best practice. Utilizing this text with undergraduate, RN to BSN, and graduate nursing students, it is the ONLY text that demonstrates how to retrieve, read, and analyze evidence whether it is published as an individual study, systematic review, meta-analysis, best practice guideline, or outcomes management report. Students learn how to utilize multiple complex databases and websites as they move through each chapter. And, they experience dissemination of evidence through the development of presentations, publications, posters, and grants. This is truly a remarkable book that embraces evidence as the basis for nursing practice and patient-centered care and safety. Having used this text with more than 1000 students over the past five years, I can honestly say that I have found no other text that facilitates learning and development of clinical judgment that is grounded in valid, reliable, and applicable evidence. This is a keeper! Alice E. Dupler, JD, APRN-BC Clinical Associate Professor Washington State University College of Nursing "I have used the book since I developed the Evidence-based Practice course for our College of Nursing in Fall 2007. It was the first course of its kind at Indiana State University. It has been well received and the preferred course for all nursing graduate students for completion of their final scholarly projects. The text was essential in developing the course and provides the foundation and guidance that the students need to develop their Evidence Based Practice projects...the students love the text!" Susan Eley PhD, RN, FNP-BC Assistant Professor Director FNP Program Indiana State University

Historical analysis of the German Democratic Republic has tended to adopt a top-down model of the transmission of authority. However, developments were more complicated than the standard state/society dichotomy that has dominated the debate among GDR historians. Drawing on a broad range of archival material from state and SED party sources as well as Stasi files and individual farm records along with some oral history interviews, this book provides a thorough investigation of the transformation of the rural sector from a range of perspectives. Focusing on the region of Bezirk Erfurt, the author examines on the one hand how East Germans responded to the end of private farming by resisting, manipulating but also participating in the new system of rural organization. However, he also shows how the regime sought via its representatives to implement its aims with a combination of compromise and material incentive as well as administrative pressure and other more draconian measures. The reader thus gains valuable insight into the processes by which the SED regime attained stability in the 1970s and yet was increasingly vulnerable to growing popular dissatisfaction and economic stagnation and decline in the 1980s, leading to its eventual collapse.

This book offers a novel explanation of the financial crisis and Great Recession that emphasizes the destruction of shared prosperity over the past thirty years. This contrasts with "black swan" styled explanations that emphasize unexpected financial shocks and speculation. The book explains why the economy is now confronted with stagnation rather than the quick recovery predicted by other accounts.

Political, social, and economic transformation is a complex historical phenomenon. It can adequately be analysed only by a multidisciplinary approach. The Handbook brings together an international team of scholars who are specialists in their respective research fields. It introduces the most important areas, theories, and methods in transformation research, with particular attention placed on the historical and comparative dimension. Although focussing on post-communist and other democratic transformations in our epoch, the Handbook therefore presents and discusses not only their problems, paths, and developments, but also deals with the antecedent 'waves', beginning with the Meiji Restoration in Japan in 1868 and its aftermath. The book is structured into six parts. Starting with basic concepts as systems, actors, and institutions (Section I), it gives an overview over major theoretical approaches and research methods (Sections II and III). The connection of theory and method with their application is essential, allowing special insights into the past and opens analytical avenues for transformation research in the future. Section (IV) provides a historically oriented description or interpretation of particular 'waves' or types of societal transformation. With a clear focus on present transformations, the contributions to Section V provide a description and discussion of the problems, structures, actors, and courses of the transformations within different spheres of (civil) society, politics, law, and economics. Finally, brief lexicographic entries in Section VI delineate research perspectives and facts about relevant issues of societal transformation. Each of the 79 contributions contains a concise list of the most important research literature.