The Next Great Globalization: How Disadvantaged Nations Can Harness Their Financial Systems to Get Rich
Author: Frederic Mishkin
Many prominent critics regard the international financial system as the dark side of globalization, threatening disadvantaged nations near and far. But in The Next Great Globalization, eminent economist Frederic Mishkin argues the opposite: that financial globalization today is essential for poor nations to become rich. Mishkin argues that an effectively managed financial globalization promises benefits on the scale of the hugely successful trade and information globalizations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This financial revolution can lift developing nations out of squalor and increase the wealth and stability of emerging and industrialized nations alike. By presenting an unprecedented picture of the potential benefits of financial globalization, and by showing in clear and hard-headed terms how these gains can be realized, Mishkin provides a hopeful vision of the next phase of globalization.
Mishkin draws on historical examples to caution that mismanagement of financial globalization, often aided and abetted by rich elites, can wreak havoc in developing countries, but he uses these examples to demonstrate how better policies can help poor nations to open up their economies to the benefits of global investment. According to Mishkin, the international community must provide incentives for developing countries to establish effective property rights, banking regulations, accounting practices, and corporate governance--the institutions necessary to attract and manage global investment. And the West must be a partner in integrating the financial systems of rich and poor countries--to the benefit of both.
The Next Great Globalization makes the casethat finance will be a driving force in the twenty-first-century economy, and demonstrates how this force can and should be shaped to the benefit of all, especially the disadvantaged nations most in need of growth and prosperity.
Foreign Affairs
The key message of this cogently argued book is that economicdevelopment requires a well-functioning financial market and that a well-functioning financial market requires extensive links to world capital markets. Not all developing countries need to import capital to foster growth, but all need competition and the demonstration of best practice to overcome local cliques or oligarchs that both foster and thrive on the exclusion of competition, which typically leads to serious misallocations of capital. In developing this central thesis, the Columbia University economist Mishkin addresses the need for regulatory reform in emerging markets, the measures required to avoid financial crises and to recover from them quickly when they occur, and the appropriate role for the international community, especially the International Monetary Fund. He provides excellent studies of the financial crises in Mexico (1994-95), South Korea (1997-98), and Argentina (2001-2), drawing lessons from both what was done badly and what was done well.
New interesting book: Exploring Business or Financial Accounting Fundamentals 2007
Kids Rule!: Nickelodeon and Consumer Citizenship
Author: Sarah Banet Weiser
In Kids Rule! Sarah Banet-Weiser examines the table network Nickelodeon in order to rethink the relationship between children, media, citizenship, and consumerism. Nickelodeon is arguably the most commercially successful cable network ever. Broadcasting original programs such as Dora the Explorer, SpongeBob SquarePants, and Rugrats (and producing related movies, Web sites, and merchandise), Nickelodeon has worked aggressively to claim and maintain its position as the preeminent creator and distributor of television programs for America's young children, tweens, and teens. Banet-Weiser argues that a key to its success is its construction of children as citizens within a commercial context. The network's self-conscious engagement with kids-its creation of a "Nickelodeon Nation" offering choices and empowerment within a world structured by rigid adult rules-combines an appeal to kids' formidable purchasing power with assertions of their political and cultural power.
About the Author:
Sarah Banet-Weiser is Associate Professor in the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California
Jennifer Zarr - Library Journal
Popular literature on the child as consumer focuses on children as victims of aggressive marketing campaigns, e.g., Juliet B. Schor's Born To Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture. According to Banet-Weiser (Annenberg Sch. for Communication, Univ. of Southern California; The Most Beautiful Girl in the World: Beauty Pageants and National Identity), however, the kid-centered cable station Nickelodeon sees children in a very different way-as media savvy consumers or, "consumer citizens." Not as educational as PBS or as commercial as toy-based programming on network television, Nickelodeon, says this author, is a commercial station with a mission: to empower kids by giving them a space where they can be themselves. Each of her six chapters is written as a separate essay. There is a chapter that traces the history of the station from its early days as "green vegetable" educational television to its current status as a hip, kid-centered media giant of original programming. Another two chapters are devoted to the network's dedication to representing racial diversity and its sensitivity to gender issues as part of the Nickelodeon brand. This is not the first book about this cable network giant (see, e.g., Heather Hendershot's Nickelodeon Nation: The History, Politics, and Economics of America's Only TV Channel for Kids), but the focus here, on children as "citizens" within a commercial context, is distinct. Recommended for academic libraries.
Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations ixAcknowledgments xi
"We, The People of Nickelodeon": Theorizing Empowerment and Consumer Citizenship 1
The Success Story: Nickelodeon and the Cable Industry 38
The Nickelodeon Brand: Buying and Selling the Audience 69
Girls Rule! Gender, Feminism, and Nickelodeon 104
Consuming Race on Nickelodeon 142
Is Nick for Kids? Irony, Camp, and Animation in the Nickelodeon Brand 178
Conclusion: Kids Rule: The Nickelodeon Universe 211
Notes 219
Bibliography 245
Index 259
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