"This exciting new volume examines the development of market performance from Antiquity until the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Efficient market structures are agreed by most economists to serve as evidence of economic prosperity, and to be prerequisites for further economic growth....

1. Introduction: natural resources and economic development : what can we learn from history? / Henry Willebald, Marc Badia-Miro and Vicente Pinilla -- 2. From resource curse to rent curse : a theoretical perspective / Richard M. Auty -- 3. Scarcity, frontiers and the resource curse : a...

1. Introduction -- 2. Early central banks -- 3. Central banking in the United States, 1847-1913 -- 4. The Federal Reserve sysyem, 1913-51 -- 5. The Federal Reserve, 1951-99 -- 6. The Great Recession -- 7. Bank regulation -- 8. Conclusion : the necessity and possibility of replacing the Fed.

pt. 1. Methodology -- pt. 2. Market performance in Babylonia and the Mediterranean in antiquity -- pt. 3. Market performance from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century -- pt. 4. Markets and money -- pt. 5. Long-term patterns -- pt. 6. Conclusion.

"Since the days of Adam Smith, Mercantilism has been a hotly debated issue. Condemned at the end of the 18th century as a "false" system of economic thinking and political practice, it has returned paradoxically to the forefront in regard to issues such as the creation of economic growth in...