Engines of Enterprise: An Economic History of New England
Author: Peter Temin
New England's economy has a history as dramatic as any in the world. From an inauspicious beginning—as immigration ground to a halt in the eighteenth century—New England went on to lead the United States in its transformation from an agrarian to an industrial economy. And when the rest of the country caught up in the mid-twentieth century, New England reinvented itself as a leader in the complex economy of the information society.
Engines of Enterprise tells this dramatic story in a sequence of narrative essays written by preeminent historians and economists. These essays chart the changing fortunes of entrepreneurs and venturers, businessmen and inventors, and common folk toiling in fields, in factories, and in air-conditioned offices. The authors describe how, short of staple crops, colonial New Englanders turned to the sea and built an empire; and how the region became the earliest home of the textile industry as commercial fortunes underwrote new industries in the nineteenth century. They show us the region as it grew ahead of the rest of the country and as the rest of the United States caught up. And they trace the transformation of New England's products and exports from cotton textiles and machine tools to such intangible goods as education and software. Concluding short essays also put forward surprising but persuasive arguments—for instance, that slavery, while not prominent in colonial New England, was a critical part of the economy; and that the federal government played a crucial role in the development of the region's industrial skills.
Library Journal
The economy of New England experienced far-reaching changes over the centuries and led the way in the transformation of an American agrarian economy to a manufacturing powerhouse. This process of change is the subject of this well-knit collection of essays by economists and historians, edited by Temin (economics, MIT). The essays trace the fortunes of venture capitalists and investors in 18th-century New England, which, lacking staple crops to trade, made overseas ventures the foundation of the region's economy. In the early 19th century, Yankee ingenuity made New England the nation's leader in manufacturing, beginning with cotton textiles and machine tools. Eventually, other sections of the country forged ahead of New England in terms of factory output. Showing great ingenuity, however, New England reinvented itself as an important producer of less tangible but still valuable products and services, such as higher education and, in our own time, computer software. A scholarly work that effectively synthesizes much available information, this is recommended for the economic history collections of academic libraries.--Harry Frumerman, formerly with Hunter Coll., NY Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
New interesting book: Tea or Literary Feast
Beyond Self-Interest
Author: Jane J Mansbridg
A dramatic transformation has begun in the way scholars think about human nature. Political scientists, psychologists, economists, and evolutionary biologists are beginning to reject the view that human affairs are shaped almost exclusively by self-interest—a view that came to dominate social science in the last three decades.
In Beyond Self-Interest, leading social scientists argue for a view of individuals behavior and social organization that takes into account the powerful motivations of duty, love, and malevolence. Economists who go beyond "economic man," psychologists who go beyond stimulus-response, evolutionary biologists who go beyond the "selfish gene," and political scientists who go beyond the quest for power come together in this provocative and important manifesto.
The essays trace, from the ancient Greeks to the present, the use of self-interest to explain political life. They investigate the differences between self-interest and the motivations of duty and love, showing how these motivations affect behavior in "prisoners' dilemma" interactions. They generate evolutionary models that explain how altruistic motivations escape extinction.
They suggest ways to model within one individual the separate motivations of public spirit and self-interest, investigate public spirit and self-interest, investigate public spirit in citizen and legislative behavior, and demonstrate that the view of democracy in existing Constitutional interpretations is not based on self-interest. They advance both human evil and mothering as alternatives to self-interest, this last in a penetrating feminist critique of the "contract" model of human interaction.
Table of Contents:
PrefacePart I - Introduction
1. The Rise and Fall of Self-Interest in the Explanation of Political Life
Jane J. Mansbridge
Part II - Dimensions of the Problem
2. Rational Fools: A Critique of the Behavioral Foundations of Economic Theory
Amartya K. Sen
3. Selfishness and Altruism
Jon Elster
4. Varieties of Altruism
Christopher Jencks
Part III - An Ecological Niche for Altruism
5. A Theory of Moral Sentiments
Robert H. Frank
6. Cooperation for the Benefit of Us—Not Me, or My Conscience
Robyn M. Dawes, Alphons J. C. van de Kragt, and John M. Orbell
7. Culture and Cooperation
Robert Boyd and Peter J. Richerson
8. On the Relation of Altruism and Self-Interest
Jane J. Mansbridge
Part IV - Citizens
9. Self-Interest in Americans' Political Opinions
David O. Sears and Carolyn L. Funk
10. Justice, Self-Interest, and the Legitimacy of Legal and Political Authority
Tom R. Tyler
Part V - Legislators
11. Deregulation and the Politics of Ideas in Congress
Paul J. Quirk
12. Congress and Public Spirit: A Commentary
Steven Kelman
Part VI - Constitutional Interpretation
13. Political Self-Interest in Constitutional Law
Cass R. Sunstein
Part VII - International Relations
14. Empathy and International Regimes
Robert O. Keohane
Part VIII - Modeling
15. Dual Utilities and Rational Choice
Howard Margolis
16. Expanding the Range of Formal Modeling
Jane J. Mansbridge
Part IX. Alternatives to Self-Interest, Malevolent and Benevolent
17. The Secret History ofSelf-Interest
Stephen Holmes
18. Mothering versus Contract
Virginia Held
Notes
Reference List
List of Contributors
Index
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