Search results for ""author jurgen brauer""

"Castles, Battles, and Bombs" reconsiders key episodes of military history from the point of view of economics - with dramatically insightful results. For example, when looked at as a question of sheer cost, the building of castles in the High Middle Ages seems almost inevitable: though stunningly expensive, a strong castle was far cheaper to maintain than a standing army. The authors also reexamine the strategic bombing of Germany in World War II and provide new insights into France's decision to develop nuclear weapons. Drawing on these examples and more, Jurgen Brauer and Hubert van Tuyll suggest lessons for today's military, from counter terrorist strategy and military manpower planning to the use of private military companies in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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"Castles, Battles, and Bombs" reconsiders key episodes of military history from the point of view of economics - with dramatically insightful results. For example, when looked at as a question of sheer cost, the building of castles in the High Middle Ages seems almost inevitable: though stunningly expensive, a strong castle was far cheaper to maintain than a standing army. The authors also reexamine the strategic bombing of Germany in World War II and provide new insights into France's decision to develop nuclear weapons. Drawing on these examples and more, Jurgen Brauer and Hubert van Tuyll suggest lessons for today's military, from counter terrorist strategy and military manpower planning to the use of private military companies in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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This work addresses new directions in research on the economic theory of conflict, the cost of war, and the benefits of peace. A collection of 17 papers drawing on contributors from all continents, the volume is divided into four sections. The first discusses novel ways to think about the economics of conflict and peace from theory perspectives. These include discussions of conflict from the perspectives of standard neoclassical analysis and economic geography. An especially interesting paper in this section addresses conflict in the context of the emerging theory of international public finance. A second section deals with military expenditures, economic/human development and economic growth in the US and developing nations of Asia and Africa. The volume enters new territory in sections three and four. Section three contains a set of papers on the economic cost of war and war’s aftermath, significantly expanding economists’ rather modest efforts to date. Section four is concerned with how the concepts of economics might be operationalized and institutionalized to foster security.

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"Economics of War and Peace: Economic, Legal, and Political Perspectives" brings together recent, cutting-edge research on economic factors affecting peace and war. This important area of continuing research was the focus of an international conference held at the University of Sydney in June 2009 and these chapters are partly drawn from among the best contributions to that meeting. The book weaves together threads from a number of themes in current research including new theoretical perspectives on the economic foundations of peace, violence and war within countries, connections between international trade and inter-state conflict, and the role of legal/institutional factors in international and internal conflict. Through a focused exploration of these related topics emerge areas of scholarly consensus as well as areas of continued debate. International in scope, it is the only book to explicitly bring together economic, legal and political scholarship to focus on the problem of conflict. It employs a range of modern social science analytical methods, including qualitative cases, econometrics, and game-theoretic models, to rigorously advance understanding of conflict within and between countries.

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