In Calculating Race, Benjamin Wiggins analyzes the historical relationship between statistical risk assessment and race in the United States. He illustrates how, through a reliance on the variable of race, actuarial science transformed the nature of racism and helped usher racial disparities in wealth, incarceration, and housing from the nineteenth century into the twentieth. Wiggins begins by tracing how the life insurance industry utilized race in its calculations at the end of ...

In Calculating Race, Benjamin Wiggins analyzes the historical relationship between statistical risk assessment and race in the United States. He illustrates how actuarial science transformed the nature of racism and helped usher racial disparities in wealth, incarceration, and housing from the nineteenth century into the twentieth.Wiggins begins by tracing how the life insurance industry utilized race in its calculations at the end of the nineteenth century, focusing parti...

“Read this book. It explains so much about the moment…Beautiful, heartbreaking work.”—Ta-Nehisi Coates“A deep accounting of how America got to a point where a median white family has 13 times more wealth than the median black family.”—The Atlantic“Extraordinary…Baradaran focuses on a part of the American story that’s often ignored: the way African Americans were locked out of the financial engines that create ...

Perhaps the most peculiar feature of a financial bubble – one that Charles Kindleberger's classic work Manias, Panics and Crashes draws particular attention to – is the inability of those trapped inside it to grasp the seriousness of their predicament. They know in principle that bubbles exist, and they know that the financial crashes that result from them are capable of destroying individuals' wealth and entire economies. Yet whenever and wherever a bubble begins to form, we're told that ...

Are Thomas Piketty’s analyses of inequality on target? Where should researchers go from here in exploring the ideas he pushed to the forefront of global conversation? In After Piketty, a cast of economists and other social scientists tackle these questions in dialogue with Piketty, in what is sure to be a much-debated book in its own right.

To gain a deep understanding of contract law, one needs to master not only the rules and principles of the field, but also its underlying theory and justification, and its long and intricate history. This book offers an accessible introduction to all aspects of American contract law, useful to both first-year law students and advanced contract scholars. The book is grounded on up-to-date scholarship and contains detailed references to cases, statutes, Restatements and international legal p...

Until the nineteenth century, “risk” was a specialized term: it was the commodity exchanged in a marine insurance contract. Freaks of Fortune tells how the modern concept of risk emerged in the United States. Born on the high seas, risk migrated inland and became essential to the financial management of an inherently uncertain capitalist future.

"Brilliant. . . . A masterpiece in quantitative and qualitative economic research destined to become a classic in its field." ― Library JournalUnequal Gains offers a radically new understanding of the economic evolution of the United States. While other economic historians base their accounts on American wealth, Peter Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson focus instead on income—and the result is a bold reassessment of the American economic experience.

An in-depth examination of the economic and social transition from slavery to capitalism during ReconstructionAt the center of the upheavals brought by emancipation in the American South was the economic and social transition from slavery to modern capitalism. In Between Slavery and Capitalism, Martin Ruef examines how this institutional change affected individuals, organizations, and communities in the late nineteenth century, as blacks and whites alike l...

Why "wealth bias" is a holdover from a pre-democratic past—and how to restore a healthier balance of power: "Thought-provoking . . . well-documented and readable." — Library JournalWealth inequality, corporate welfare, and industrial pollution are symptoms—the fevers and chills of the economy. The underlying illness, says Business Ethics magazine founder Marjorie Kelly, is shareholder primacy: the corporate drive to make profits ...

Why have so many central and inner cities in Europe, North America and Australia been so radically revamped in the last three decades, converting urban decay into new chic? Will the process continue in the twenty-first century or has it ended? What does this mean for the people who live there? Can they do anything about it? This book challenges conventional wisdom, which holds gentrification to be the simple outcome of new middle-class tastes and a demand for urban living. It reveals gentr...

Investment Banking: Institutions, Politics, and Law provides an economic rationale for the dominant role of investment banks in the capital markets, and uses it to explain both the historical evolution of the investment banking industry and also recent changes to its organization. Although investment decisions rely upon price-relevant information, it is impossible to establish property rights over it and hence is very hard to coordinate its exchange. The authors argue that investm...