Credit is part science, part art, and part gut-feel.The trick is to get the right mix.While there is no one absolute right way to handle the credit,collections,and accounts receivable functions,there are a few that are totally and irrefutably wrong. It is the mission of this book to identify both for the reader. For the last eight plus years,I have been lucky enough to spend my days talking to …
Freud is not dead. Far from it. In the year of the 150th anniversary of his birth we can truly say that his ideas are undergoing a renaissance. Freud is everywhere. And especially in neuroscience, we are taking a new look at his work and concluding that it is “still the most coherent and intellectually satisfying view of the mind” (Kandel, 1998) that we have. (Mark Solms, 2006, last page) …
Psychology and the Conduct of Everyday Life moves psychological theory and research practice out of the laboratory and into the everyday world. Drawing on recent developments across the social and human sciences, it examines how people live as active subjects within the contexts of their everyday lives, using this as an analytical basis for understanding the dilemmas and contradictions people f…
This is a historical essay, not an encyclopedia: it expresses one person’s view of cognitive science as a whole. It’s driven by my conviction that cognitive science today—and, for that matter, tomorrow—can’t be properly understood without a historical perspective. In that sense, then, my account describes the field as it is now. It does this in a second sense too, for it features va…
Ten years ago Joe Salerno inherited the Mises Institute’s summer fellowship program from his predecessor, Jörg Guido Hülsmann.Generously funded by Peg Rowley, summer fellows are given time to study Austrian economics fi rsthand with some of the current masters. Not only is a sense of camaraderie inculcated amongst the participants, but they are also given access to the world’s best Austr…
This research investigates how synergies between the Web and social networks can enhance the process of obtaining relevant and trustworthy information. A review of literature on personalised search, social search, recommender systems, social networks and trust propagation reveals limitations of existing technology in areas such as relevance, collaboration, task-adaptivity and trust. I…
As we all know, information is power. Many of you may not think of accounting as a means to get key information and to stay in control of your business operation. You probably think of the world of accounting as a place with a language you don’t understand. You view it as a necessary evil that you must have around in order to present the necessary reports to your investors and supporting fin…
The Disaster Risk Management (DRM) Systems Analysis Guide provides a set of tools and methods to assess existing structures and capacities of national, district and local institutions with responsibilities for Disaster Risk Management (DRM) in order to improve their effectiveness and the integration of DRM concerns into development planning, with particular reference to disaster-prone areas, …
For many parents, learning about new media technologies can seem like playing catch-up with their children. Teenagers, especially, are quick to learn new technologies: putting their music collection on iPods, texting on mobile phones, chatting on instant messaging services. They are also quick to drop a technology they think is old: the bad news for parents who’ve just gotten to grips with em…
Since 2007 the question of growth has plagued the British economy. Though, at the time of writing in the early summer of 2014, growth has returned, a pervasive anxiety about the solidity, stability and sustain- ability of that growth persists, even in the most hallowed of elite polit- ical circles. Thus, even the recently appointed Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, is concerned that…
Before discussing the pros and cons of regulation in general and financial regulation in particular, we have to understand what regulation is all about and what forms it takes. Although there are arguments for and against regulation in general (hence against and for deregulation), some arguments are type-specific. For example, environmental regula- tion is motivated by the desire to protect hum…
Despite the impressive rebound seen on European financial markets following Mario Draghi’s famous speech in late July 2012, European leaders still face formidable challenges. The restoration of some confidence on financial markets should not conceal the long-term challenges to make the European Monetary Union function better in future and to make it more resilient to shocks. Despite somewhat …
France has been widely acknowledged as the principal driving force behind European economic and monetary union (EMU). Every French president from Georges Pompidou onwards has placed the creation of EMU at the centre of France’s European policy. President François Mitterrand finally clinched the deal when, in December 1991, he secured German Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s agreement at the Maas…
The purpose of this book is to move beyond a purely economic under- standing of the euro crisis and its likely aftermath by emphasizing the political foundations of markets. Our goals in doing so are threefold: first, to develop a holistic understanding of what caused the euro crisis, which incorporates political, ideational, institutional, as well as economic and financial factors; second, to …
This chapter provides a (necessarily) brief introduction to computer net- working concepts. For many applications of gawk to TCP/IP networking, we hope that this is enough. For more advanced tasks, you will need deeper background, and it may be necessary to switch to lower-level programming in C or C++. There are two real-life models for the way computers send messages to each other over a netw…
The rise of social networking websites such as MySpace and Facebook over the past decade has been nothing short of phenomenal. Once regarded as nothing more than a passing "fad", these websites have grown to astronomical proportions; each website currently boasts 60+ million unique visitors each month. Certain businesses are beginning to notice the potential for reaching out to their target aud…
Why would anyone who does not work in the banking industry want to read a book about banking? The subject should be a bore. Savings accounts are not fashionable. Mortgages do not entertain. Most of us – well, apart from banking professionals and a few banking professors like myself – have better things to do than think about payment cards or credit transfers. All we want from banks is secur…
Remember that phrase from your own childhood? It’s still a valid question, but now, it comes with a twist: “Do you know where your kids are — and who they’re chatting with online?” Social networking sites have morphed into a mainstream medium for teens and adults. These sites encourage and enable people to exchange information about themselves, share pictures and videos, and use …
I was a registered nurse with more than a decade of experience, but when my physician husband first mentioned the possibility that my then 21-month-old son Lucas might have autism, I was as bewildered and angry as any parent. To be honest, I had very little experience with autism and it simply never crossed my mind that my first-born was anything less than perfect. So what made my husband thi…