Despite all the talk of a New Economy and the revolutionary import of the Internet, this article suggests that there is nothing really new under the sun. When Christopher Columbus was building the ships for his expeditions to the East Indies, only the vaguest estimates could be made of their...

<DIV>In this book, Reuven Brenner argues that people bet on new ideas and are more willing to take risks when they have been outdone by their fellows on local, national, or international scales. Such bets mean that people deviate from the beaten path and either gamble, commit crimes, or come up with...</div>

Governments and the media have often attacked financiers for "speculating" in their countries' currencies, thereby forcing them to make drastic and sometimes painful changes in monetary and fiscal policies. This article argues that such accusations have no basis in economic theory, and that...