Disposable people

Sample

Neil Fraser, Rodolfo Gutierrez, Ramon Pena-Casas

This is a study of a complex but important concept, working poverty (or in-work poverty), involving individuals both as workers and members of households. It is caused by low pay, but also weak labour force attachment and high needs. The most recently available version of the household survey, EU-SILC, is analyzed to explain factors behind working poverty in different European countries. There has been a growth of jobs in Europe in the last fifteen years, but this has not decreased poverty because of a relative expansion of low quality jobs. Now economic crisis threatens to increase poverty further. But there is quite a diversity of situations within the EU which this book explores. It includes discussion of working poverty in relation to gender, to migration, and policies like tax-credits. Case studies of UK, France, Spain, Sweden and Poland are included and these countries are given special attention in most of the chapters.

Sample

Leila Janah

"Leila Janah, a dynamic social entrepreneur, shares the story of how she founded one of the hottest non-profit startups. Leila Janah has the solution for the world's bottom billions. She founded Samasource with the belief that giving dignified work to the world's poorest people is the most effective tool for fighting poverty. Fast Company named Samasource one of the 50 Most Innovative Companies in 2016 because they go into communities lacking living-wage jobs--from the refugee camps of Sierra Leone to rural Arkansas--and train people to do digital work, such as verifying data that makes Google's search algorithms smarter. Inspired by and then partnering with cutting-edge Silicon Valley companies, Janah bridges the divide between the nonprofit world and the tech and private sectors to help the world's poorest lift themselves out of poverty. The steady salary from these jobs from companies like Google, Getty, and Microsoft enables people to move to better neighborhoods, attain more education, and send their children to school. It changes the lives of the poor permanently, offering them dignity and independence in a way that aid simply cannot. Give Work is based on Janah's firsthand experience in all corners of the world, from a school for the blind school in Ghana to the World Bank. A Harvard-educated former management consultant, Janah applies the scrappy, entrepreneurial spirit and innovative mindset of a Silicon Valley startup. She shares her entrepreneurial journey as well as the poignant stories of the thousands of people who have benefited from Samasource's work. Like Blake Mycoskie's Start Something That Matters, Give Work offers a blueprint for social entrepreneurs"--

Sample

Rolf Jungnickel

"Foreign-owned firms (FoFs) can have significant implications in terms of employment, income and technology for the national economies involved. This book compares domestic and foreign-owned firms, and looks at the performance of FoFs in several countries. It also includes an in-depth study of sources of comparative advantage for FoFs, and discusses implications for the host economies." "Contributors take a broad view of research approaches, focusing on the use of firm-specific data from France, Germany, Austria and Sweden. They conclude that, although foreign-ownership matters, the real difference is not between FoFs and national firms but between multinational and domestic firms." "This book is an importance resource in the ongoing debate on the effects of globalization."--Jacket.

Sample

Johannes Voit

From the reviews of the first edition - "Provides an excellent introduction for physicists interested in the statistical properties of financial markets. Appropriately early in the book the basic financial terms such as shorts, limit orders, puts, calls, and other terms are clearly defined. Examples, often with graphs, augment the reader’s understanding of what may be a plethora of new terms and ideas… [This is] an excellent starting point for the physicist interested in the subject. Some of the book’s strongest features are its careful definitions, its detailed examples, and the connection it establishes to physical systems." PHYSICS TODAY "This book is excellent at illustrating the similarities of financial markets with other non-equilibrium physical systems. [...] In summary, a very good book that offers more than just qualitative comparisons of physics and finance." (www.quantnotes.com) This highly-praised introductory treatment describes parallels between statistical physics and finance - both those established in the 100-year-long interaction between these disciplines, as well as new research results on capital markets. The random walk, well known in physics, is also the basic model in finance, upon which are built, for example, the Black-Scholes theory of option pricing and hedging, or methods of risk control using diversification. Here the underlying assumptions are discussed using empirical financial data and analogies to physical models such as fluid flows, turbulence, or superdiffusion. On this basis, new theories of derivative pricing and risk control can be formulated. Computer simulations of interacting agent models of financial markets provide insights into the origins of asset price fluctuations. Stock exchange crashes can be modelled in ways analogous to phase transitions and earthquakes. These models allow for predictions. This new study edition has been updated with a presentation of several new and significant developments, e.g. the dynamics of volatility smiles and implied volatility surfaces, path integral approaches to option pricing, a new and accurate simulation scheme for options, multifractals, the application of nonextensive statistical mechanics to financial markets, and the minority game.