Over the past three decades, economic sociology has been revealing how culture shapes economic life even while economic facts affect social relationships. This work has transformed the field into a flourishing and increasingly influential discipline. No one has played a greater role in this development than Viviana Zelizer, one of the world's leading sociologists. Economic Lives synthesizes and extends her most important work to date, demonstrating the full breadth and range of her field-defining contributions in a single volume for the first time. Economic Lives shows how shared cultural understandings and interpersonal relations shape everyday economic activities. Far from being simple responses to narrow individual incentives and preferences, economic actions emerge, persist, and are transformed by our relations to others. Distilling three decades of research, the book offers a distinctive vision of economic activity that brings out the hidden meanings and social actions behind the supposedly impersonal worlds of production, consumption, and asset transfer. Economic Lives ranges broadly from life insurance marketing, corporate ethics, household budgets, and migrant remittances to caring labor, workplace romance, baby markets, and payments for sex. These examples demonstrate an alternative approach to explaining how we manage economic activity--as well as a different way of understanding why conventional economic theory has proved incapable of predicting or responding to recent economic crises. Providing an important perspective on the recent past and possible futures of a growing field, Economic Lives promises to be widely read and discussed.

"Milton Friedman and George J. Stigler shaped economics as we know it today - their Chicago School laid the groundwork for much of the neoclassical tradition in economic analysis. This book brings together a collection of letters from these two Noble laureates from the post-war years, containing new information about their personal and professional relationships, and also illuminating the development of ideas which are now fundamental to economic theory. The book, edited by Dan and Claire Hammond, contains an introductory chapter, chronologies for Friedman and Stigler, and transcripts of 71 letters written from 1945 to 1957 along with enclosures."--BOOK JACKET

Where you are in life today is the result of all of the past decisions which you have made or which have been made for you in response to the various situations and events, both expected and unexpected, that have impacted your life. The decisions that you will make from this point forward will determine the degree to which your future will be positive or negative. "Decision Time!" describes the subjective and multi-variable nature of real life decisions and demonstrates techniques for making complex decisions with ease and insight. "Decision Time!" provides guidance for many different decision-making situations with both personal and business aspects. Topics with examples from life include games, negotiation, the challenge of financing a college education, starting a small business, purchasing/shopping, family relationships, getting the government to listen to you, investments, and many more. "Decision Time!" gives you insight into the decision-making process as applied to both small and large choices you will face. It includes dynamic aspects, cultural effects, and morality as applied to decision-making for individuals, teams, and societies. "Decision Time!" prepares you to face the continuous impact of decision situations confidently and without hesitation.

This work is based upon a series of longitudinal case-studies of Russian enterprises that were tracked during the 1990s. It provides insight into the initial conditions that are being established in Russia, which will to a large extent determine the kind of market system that is emerging. This work also has a more general relevance and bears upon the broader theoretical debate on institutional and societal change that concerns not only Russia but elsewhere.