This collection of essays by the eminent financial and monetary historians Capie and Wood examines and offers explanations of the parts played by money and the banking system in the British economy over the last two centuries. It deals with financial crises, periods of stability, and Britain in the international system.
Central bankers worldwide welcome the recent increase of research on payment systems. This volume, providing an expert overview on this timely subject, should be required reading for us all". - Erkki Liikanen, Governor of the Bank of Finland Monetary policy has been at the centre of economic research from the early stages of economic thought, but payment system research has attracted increased academic attention only in the past decade. This book’s succeeds in merging these two so far largely separated fields. Innovative and groundbreaking, Schmitz and Woods initiate research on the interdependence of institutional change in the payments system and monetary policy, examining the different channels via which payment systems affect monetary policy. It explores important themes such as: conceptualization and methods of analysis of institutional change in the payments system determinants of institutional change in the payments system – political-economy versus technology empirics of institutional change in the retail and in the wholesale payments systems – policy initiatives and new technologies in the payments system implications of institutional change in the payments system for monetary policy and the instruments available to central banks to cope with it. The result is an accessible overview of conceptual and methodological approaches to institutional change in payment systems, and a comprehensive and yet thorough assessment of its implications for monetary policy. The insights this timely book provides will be invaluable for researchers and practitioners in the field of monetary economics.
In the first 20 years that followed the purinergic signalling hypothesis in 1972, most scientists were sceptical about its validity, largely because ATP was so well established as an intracellular molecule involved in cell biochemistry and it seemed unlikely that such a ubiquitous molecule would act as an extracellular signalling molecule. However, after the receptors for ATP and adenosine were cloned and characterized in the early 1990s and ATP was established as a synaptic transmitter in the brain and sympathetic ganglia, the tide turned. More recently it has become clear that ATP is involved in long-term (trophic) signalling in cell proliferation, differentiation and death, in development and regeneration, as well as in short-term signalling in neurotransmission and secretion. Also, important papers have been published showing the molecular structure of P2X receptors in primitive animals like Amoeba and Schistosoma, as well as green algae. This has led to the recognition of the widespread nature of the purinergic signalling system in most cell types and to a rapid expansion of the field, including studies of the pathophysiology as well as physiology and exploration of the therapeutic potential of purinergic agents. In two books, Geoffrey Burnstock and Alexej Verkhratsky have aimed at drawing together the massive and diverse body of literature on purinergic signalling. The topic of this first book is purinergic signalling in the peripheral and central nervous systems and in the individual senses. In a second book the authors focus on purinergic signalling in non-excitable cells, including those of the airways, kidney, pancreas, endocrine glands and blood vessels. Diseases related to these systems are also considered.
I enjoyed reading this volume. It is rare to see such a comprehensive report on hard data published these days, especially one so insightfully contextualised by the editors' introductory and concluding chapters. These scholars and the others involved in the work really know their stuff, and it shows. The editors connect the preoccupations of Pacific archaeologists with those of their colleagues working in other island regions and on "big questions" of colonisation, migration, interaction and patterns and processes of cultural change in hitherto-uninhabited environments. These sorts of outward-looking, big-picture contextual studies are invaluable, but all too often are missing from locally- and regionally-oriented writing, very much to its detriment. In sum, the work strongly advances our understanding of the early prehistory of Fiji through its well-integrated combination of original research and the reinterpretation of existing knowledge in the context of wider theoretical and historical concerns. In doing so The Early Prehistory of Fiji makes a truly substantial contribution to Pacific and archaeological scholarship. Professor Ian Lilley, The University of Queensland
In order to win the Cold War, American presidents embraced the mantra of equality of opportunity to justify racial reform efforts within the US military. The problem was that equality of opportunity never guaranteed acceptance—nor was it designed to. In The Racial Integration of the American Armed Forces, Geoffrey W. Jensen clarifies our understanding of the political processes that fundamentally altered the racial composition of the US military. Jensen examines nearly thirty years of military integration that unfolded during the Cold War. America’s racial woes were grist for the propaganda mills in Moscow and their integration effort was intended to curb this assault and protect the nation’s image during this largely ideological struggle. But integration of the armed forces needed more than just Cold War justification. It also required the willingness of the president to lead. Military integration occurred as the result of the longstanding tradition of Congress to allow the executive branch to control the staffing and composition of the military. While past accounts of the integration of the armed forces have focused on the critical roles played by the burgeoning leadership of the civil rights movement and the Black population, Jensen is the first to emphasize the importance of presidential leadership and their staffs. Jensen contends that understanding the action—and inaction—of Cold War presidents and their administrations matters just as much as understanding the efforts of those outside of Washington and the West Wing, as it was the presidents who were the ones dictating the pace at which reform was carried out. Jensen has carefully situated this story within the milieu of the Cold War, the civil rights movement, and, looming over it all, the emergence of Southern resistance to desegregation in the United States. Desperately committed to upholding and expanding their vision of white supremacy, the South recoiled in horror at the prospect of racially integrating the armed forces. From this vantage point, Jensen shows how the use of Black military personnel during the Cold War, and throughout all American history, was not born solely out of humanistic beliefs or desires to improve the social status of the Black community, but out of the strategic necessity of winning the war at hand.
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