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  • École de Paris (art movement)
    ...drawings, carried out in a pen technique of unheard-of sublimity, represent a high point of modern drawing. In France, drawing plays a major role, especially in the work of the painters of the École de Paris (School of Paris), such as Pierre Soulages and Hans Hartung, who consider the line, the framework of lines, and the network of lines, as primary manifestations of form. Wols......
  • “École des armes, L’” (work by Angelo)
    ...were sound and methodical, employing a combination of actions useful for both practice and dueling. Angelo’s classic treatise, L’École des armes (1763; The School of Fencing), included colourful instructional sketches by London’s most accomplished illustrators; some historians have suggested that the chevalier d’Éon...
  • École des Chartes (school, Paris, France)
    ...Treatise on Diplomatic”), a work that surpassed Mabillon’s only in its greater wealth of material. Another important event in the history of the science of diplomatics was the founding of the École des Chartes (an institute for the training of French archivists) in Paris in 1821. During the next decades important collections of early-medieval French documents were printed i...
  • “École des femmes, L’ ” (play by Molière)
    The first night of L’École des femmes (The School for Wives), December 26, 1662, caused a scandal as if people suspected that here was an emergence of a comic genius that regarded nothing as sacrosanct. Some good judges have thought this to be Molière’s masterpiece, as pure comedy as he ever attained. Based on Paul Scarron’s version (La Pr...
  • “École des muses, L’ ” (work by Gilson)
    ...the results of which were summed up in History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (1955). Among his most charming books is L’École des muses (1951; The Choir of Muses), a study of writers whose works were inspired by love for a woman. Gilson was a lover and collector of painting, on which he wrote Painting and Reality (1957) and......
  • École des Ponts et Chaussées (engineering school, France)
    The beginnings of civil engineering as a separate discipline may be seen in the foundation in France in 1716 of the Bridge and Highway Corps, out of which in 1747 grew the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées (“National School of Bridges and Highways”). Its teachers wrote books that became standard works on the mechanics of materials, machines, and hydraulics, and......
  • École Française d’Extrême Orient (French historical group)
    ...and concern. Working at first independently and then, in the first half of the 20th century, under the aegis of the government-sponsored École Française d’Extrême Orient (French School of the Far East), a group of French archaeologists and philologists initiated a comprehensive program of research, which yielded much of the knowledge now possessed about the history o...
  • École Littéraire de Montréal (Canadian literary movement)
    By the end of the century, Montreal had become the province’s commercial metropolis, and the next literary movement was founded there by Jean Charbonneau and Louvigny de Montigny in 1895 with the École Littéraire de Montréal (Montreal Literary School). The society continued to exist, although intermittently, for nearly 40 years. Its members published extensively, mostly...
  • école maternelle (education)
    a French school for children between two and six years old. Private schools for young children were founded in France around 1779, under the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Émile. The central government took over most of them in 1833 and named them maternal schools, hoping that the care would be like that of a mother. Pauline Kergomard, general inspecto...
  • École Militaire (academy, Paris, France)
    From the 2-acre (0.8-hectare) base of the tower, the Champ-de-Mars (Field of Mars), an immense field, stretches to the Military Academy (École Militaire), which was built from 1769 to 1772 and later became the site of the War College (École Supérieure de Guerre). The Champ-de-Mars, which originally served as the school’s parade ground, was the scene of two vast rallies....
  • École Nationale d’Administration (school, France)
    ...overhauling the administrative structure of the central government, centralizing personnel selection, creating a special ministry for civil service affairs, and setting up a special school, the École National d’Administration, for the training of senior civil servants. This school in particular has attracted worldwide attention for its ability to instill in its graduates both......
  • École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées (engineering school, France)
    The beginnings of civil engineering as a separate discipline may be seen in the foundation in France in 1716 of the Bridge and Highway Corps, out of which in 1747 grew the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées (“National School of Bridges and Highways”). Its teachers wrote books that became standard works on the mechanics of materials, machines, and hydraulics, and......
  • École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (school, Paris, France)
    school of fine arts founded (as the Académie Royale d’Architecture) in Paris in 1671 by Jean-Baptiste Colbert, minister of Louis XIV; it merged with the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (founded in 1648) in 1793. The school offered instruction in drawing, painting, sculpture, architecture, and engraving to students selected by competitive examinat...
  • École Normale Israelite Orientale (school, Paris, France)
    ...of Freiburg, where he attended seminars by Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) and Heidegger. After completing a doctoral dissertation at the Institut de France in 1928, Lévinas taught at the École Normale Israelite Orientale (ENIO), a school for Jewish students, and the Alliance Israelite Universelle, both in Paris. Serving as an officer in the French army at the outbreak of World....
  • École Normale Supérieure (school, Paris, France)
    institution for the training of teachers. One of the first schools so named, the École Normale Supérieure (“Normal Superior School”), was established in Paris in 1794. Based on various German exemplars, the school was intended to serve as a model for other teacher-training schools. Later it became affiliated with the University of Paris....
  • École Polytechnique (school, Palaiseau, France)
    (French: “Polytechnic School”), engineering school located originally in Paris but, since 1976, in Palaiseau, Fr., and directed by the Ministry of Defense. It was established in 1794 by the National Convention as the École Centrale des Travaux Publics (“Central School of Public Works”) under the leadership of Lazare Carnot and Gaspard Monge. It took its present n...
  • école primaire supérieure (French education)
    ...program generally entered civil service or other white-collar occupations. With the development of commerce and industry in the 19th century, France instituted the écoles primaires supérieures, or “higher primary schools,” for those who did not go on to universities but who needed a better education than the primary schools......
  • école romane (French literary group)
    In 1891, soon after his arrival in Paris, Maurras founded, with Jean Moréas, a group of young poets opposed to the Symbolists and later known as the école romane. The group favoured classical restraint and clarity over what they considered to be the vague, emotional character of Symbolist work. After the “Dreyfus affair,” which polarized French opinion of the......
  • École Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr (military academy, Coëtquidan, France)
    French national military academy at Coëtquidan, founded in Fontainebleau in 1803 by Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1808 Napoleon moved it to the town of Saint-Cyr-l’École near Versailles, on the site of a famous school founded in the 17th century by Madame de Maintenon, wife of Louis XIV. The buildings at Saint-Cyr-l’École were destroyed in 1944, and a...
  • ecological anthropology
    One of the most famous works in ecological anthropology is Roy Rappaport’s study of the Tsembaga Maring of highland New Guinea. In it he argued that Tsembaga ritual regulated pig husbandry and the incidence of warfare and thereby responded to environmental “feedback” by adjusting human population densities, work effort, food production, and a host of other factors. Rappaport...
  • ecological efficiency (biology)
    ...consumers convert the chemical energy of their food into their own biomass is called secondary productivity. The efficiency at which energy is transferred from one trophic level to another is called ecological efficiency. On average it is estimated that there is only a 10 percent transfer of energy (Figure 2)....
  • ecological genetics (biology)
    British population geneticist who made substantial contributions to the genetics of natural selection and defined and developed the science of ecological genetics....
  • ecological isolation (biology)
    Populations may occupy the same territory but live in different habitats and so not meet. The Anopheles maculipennis group consists of six mosquito species, some of which are involved in the transmission of malaria. Although the species are virtually indistinguishable morphologically, they are isolated reproductively, in part because they breed in different......
  • ecological niche (ecology)
    Animals arose from protozoans and initially were simply larger, more complex, and successful competitors for the same sources of food. The early animals (parazoans, coelenterates, flatworms, and extinct groups) exhibited the same basic strategies of obtaining food as did the protozoans. Because of their larger size, however, they had an advantage over protozoans: they could prey on them and......
  • ecological restoration (conservation)
    Once a habitat has been destroyed, the only remaining conservation tool is to restore it. The problems involved may be formidable, and they must include actions for dealing with what caused the destruction. Restorations are massive ecological experiments; as such, they are likely to meet with different degrees of success in different places. Restoration of the Everglades, for example, requires......
  • ecological succession (biology)
    The structure of communities is constantly changing. All communities are subject to periodic disturbances, ranging from events that have only localized effects, such as the loss of a tree that creates a gap in the canopy of a forest, to those that have catastrophic consequences, which include wildfires that sweep across vast landscapes or storms that pound immense stretches of shoreline. Each......
  • ecological systems theory (sociology)
    Finally, ecological theories focus on the influence of neighbourhood organization on criminal activity. Researchers have found that poorer neighbourhoods, where families frequently move from one location to another and where there is a relatively high proportion of single-parent households, tend to have higher crime rates. Ecological theorists argue that this is a result of the inability of......
  • ecological terrorism
    destruction, or the threat of destruction, of the environment by states, groups, or individuals in order to intimidate or to coerce governments or civilians. The term also has been applied to a variety of crimes committed against companies or government agencies and intended to prevent or to interfere with activities allegedly harmful to the environment....
  • ecological theory (sociology)
    Finally, ecological theories focus on the influence of neighbourhood organization on criminal activity. Researchers have found that poorer neighbourhoods, where families frequently move from one location to another and where there is a relatively high proportion of single-parent households, tend to have higher crime rates. Ecological theorists argue that this is a result of the inability of......
  • ecology
    study of the relationships between organisms and their environment. Some of the most pressing problems in human affairs—expanding populations, food scarcities, environmental pollution including global warming, extinctions of plant and animal species, and all the attendant sociological and political problems—are to a great degree ecological....
  • ecology, cultural (sociology)
    ...structure adapts to the quality of natural resources and to the existence of other human groups. When this study is limited to the development and variation of cultural properties, it is called cultural ecology....
  • ecology movement (social movement)
    Beginning in the 1970s, anarchism became a significant factor in the radical ecology movement in the United States and Europe. Anarchist ideas in works by the American novelist Edward Abbey, for example, inspired a generation of eco-anarchists in the United States, including the radical Earth First! organization, to protest urban sprawl and the destruction of old-growth forests. Much......
  • Ecology of North America, The (work by Shelford)
    ...Bio-ecology, in which he developed the concept of the biome for the predominant vegetation, with its animal inhabitants, that characterizes a large geographic area. His well-known book The Ecology of North America (1963) summarized the major biomes, which include tundra, coniferous forest, deciduous forest, grassland, and desert. Shelford was particularly influential in......
  • Ecology Party (political party, Ireland)
    The Ecology Party of Ireland, the forerunner of the current Green Party, was formed in December 1981 in Dublin with about 40 members. A convention in March 1982 established the party’s basic principles, and in November the party fielded seven candidates in the general election, winning an average of 1 percent of the vote in the constituencies contested. The following year the party was rena...
  • ECOMOG (African organization)
    The AFRC was overthrown in February 1998 by Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) troops, who intervened with the support of the international community. President Kabbah’s government was restored in March, but ECOMOG and government troops continued to battle rebel forces until July 1999, when another peace accord—the Lomé Agreement—was sig...
  • ecomuseum
    ...continued to respond to the societies that created them, the emphasis on the building itself became less dominant. Open-air museums, comprising a series of buildings preserved as objects, and ecomuseums, involving the interpretation of all aspects of an outdoor environment, provide examples of this. In addition, so-called virtual museums exist in electronic form on the Internet. Although......
  • econometric model
    Dutch economist noted for his development of econometric models. He was the cowinner (with Ragnar Frisch) of the first Nobel Prize for Economics, in 1969....
  • econometrics (economic analysis)
    the statistical and mathematical analysis of economic relationships, often serving as a basis for economic forecasting. Such information is sometimes used by governments to set economic policy and by private business to aid decisions on prices, inventory, and production. It is used mainly, however, by economists to study relationships between economic variables....
  • economic and currency union (international trade)
    Other forms of economic integration include common markets, economic unions, and federations. Common markets allow free passage of labour, capital, and other productive resources by reducing or eliminating internal tariffs on goods and by creating a common set of external tariffs. Economic unions closely coordinate the national economic policies of their member countries. Federations (such as......
  • Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (writings by Marx)
    ...concept of alienation, describing the dialectic as a movement of the Absolute that was determined by its alienating and then regaining itself (thus overcoming the self-negation). Already in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (German ed., 1932; Eng. trans., 1959), Marx had enunciated a general critique of the Hegelian dialectic that revealed its a priori nature, which, in......
  • Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN)
    ...by the International Refugee Organization, which operated from 1947 to 1951. To assist in dealing with regional problems, in 1947 ECOSOC established the Economic Commission for Europe and the Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East. Similar commissions were established for Latin America in 1948 and for Africa in 1958. The major work of economic reconstruction, however, was delegated......
  • Economic and Social Committee (European organization)
    ...a commission, a ministerial council, an assembly, and a court. To advise the Commission and the Council of Ministers on a broad range of social and economic policies, the treaty created an Economic and Social Committee. In 1965 members of the EEC signed the Brussels Treaty, which merged the commissions of the EEC and Euratom and the High Authority of the ECSC into a single commission.......
  • Economic and Social Council (UN)
    one of the six principal organs of the United Nations (UN), responsible for the direction and coordination of the economic, social, humanitarian, and cultural activities carried out by the UN. It is the UN’s largest and most complex subsidiary body....
  • Economic and Social History of the World Wars (edited by Shotwell)
    ...and was subsequently a delegate to the Versailles peace conference. After the United States’ rejection of the League of Nations in 1919, Shotwell returned to Europe to edit the monumental Economic and Social History of the World Wars, 150 vol. (1919–29), sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He simultaneously worked on outlining the terms of both the....
  • economic anthropology
    Religion is always closely related to other realms of life, such as economic activities. These relations are partly direct and partly mediated by social forms. The latter are, on the one hand, at least partially dependent on economic conditions; on the other hand, social structures influence the formation of religious phenomena and often serve as models for their elaboration. In a negative......
  • economic block model
    Economic factors such as costs and expected revenues, which vary with grade and block location, are then applied; the result is an economic block model. Some of the blocks in the model will eventually fall within the pit, but others will lie outside. Of the several techniques for determining which of the blocks should be included in the final pit, the most common is the......
  • Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth (essay by Mises)
    ...the 20th century, some economists and political philosophers rediscovered aspects of the classical liberal tradition that were most distinctly individualist. In his seminal essay Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth (originally in German, 1920), the Austrian-American economist Ludwig von Mises challenged the basic tenets of socialism, arguing that a......
  • Economic Co-operation and Development, Organisation for
    international organization founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and world trade. Current members include Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece...
  • Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (UN)
    ...by the International Refugee Organization, which operated from 1947 to 1951. To assist in dealing with regional problems, in 1947 ECOSOC established the Economic Commission for Europe and the Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East. Similar commissions were established for Latin America in 1948 and for Africa in 1958. The major work of economic reconstruction, however, was delegated......
  • Economic Commission for Europe (UN)
    ...(UNRRA) in 1943. The UNRRA was succeeded by the International Refugee Organization, which operated from 1947 to 1951. To assist in dealing with regional problems, in 1947 ECOSOC established the Economic Commission for Europe and the Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East. Similar commissions were established for Latin America in 1948 and for Africa in 1958. The major work of economic......
  • Economic Commission for Latin America (UN)
    ...however, a reorientation of policy was explicitly called for by some of Latin America’s most influential figures, such as the Argentine economist Raúl Prebisch, head of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America. Prebisch and his followers insisted that the terms of trade and investment in the contemporary world were stacked in favour of the developed industrial nati...
  • Economic Community of Central African States (African organization)
    ...include: the Customs and Economic Union of Central Africa (UDEAC), comprising Cameroon, Gabon, the Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, and the Congo, which has become part of the larger Economic Community of Central African States (CEEAC) that also includes Angola, Burundi, Chad, Congo (Kinshasa), Rwanda, and São Tomé and Príncipe; the Economic Community of West......
  • Economic Community of West African States (African organization)
    African organization established by the Treaty of Lagos in May 1975 to promote economic trade, cooperation, and self-reliance. The organization seeks to harmonize agricultural policies and to facilitate the free movement of peoples, services, and capital between members. The original 15 members were Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania...
  • Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (African organization)
    The AFRC was overthrown in February 1998 by Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) troops, who intervened with the support of the international community. President Kabbah’s government was restored in March, but ECOMOG and government troops continued to battle rebel forces until July 1999, when another peace accord—the Lomé Agreement—was sig...
  • Economic Consequences of the Peace, The (work by Keynes)
    ...however, by transforming personal distress into public protest. In two summer months he composed the indictment of the Versailles settlement that reached the bookstores by Christmas 1919 as The Economic Consequences of the Peace. The permanent importance of this polemical essay lies in its economic analysis of the stringent reparations placed upon Germany and the corresponding......
  • Economic Cooperation Administration (United States government)
    Under Paul G. Hoffman, the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA), a specially created bureau, distributed over the next four years some $13 billion worth of economic aid, helping to restore industrial and agricultural production, establish financial stability, and expand trade. Direct grants accounted for the vast majority of the aid, with the remainder in the form of loans. To coordinate......
  • economic cycle
    periodic fluctuations in the general rate of economic activity, as measured by the levels of employment, prices, and production. , for example, shows changes in wholesale prices in four Western industrialized countries over the period from 1790 to 1940. As can be seen, the movements are not, strictly speaking, cyclic, and although some regularities are apparent, they are not exactly wavelike. For ...
  • economic democracy
    political ideology that advocates a peaceful, evolutionary transition of society from capitalism to socialism using established political processes. Based on 19th-century socialism and the tenets of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, social democracy shares common ideological roots with communism but eschews its militancy and totalitarianism. ...
  • economic determinism (sociology)
    The first theory, economic determinism, reflects the interest many sociologists had in the thought of Karl Marx, such as the idea that social differentiation and class conflict resulted from economic factors. This approach had its greatest popularity in Europe, where it remained a strong influence on some sociologists until the 1980s. It did not gain a significant foothold in the United States,......
  • economic development
    the process whereby simple, low-income national economies are transformed into modern industrial economies. Although the term is sometimes used as a synonym for economic growth, generally it is employed to describe a change in a country’s economy involving qualitative as well as quantitative improvements. The theory of economic development—how primitive and poor economies can evolve ...
  • Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx, The (work by Kautsky)
    ...after Engels was taken by Karl Kautsky, editor of the official organ of the German Social Democratic Party, Die Neue Zeit. He wrote Karl Marx’ ökonomische Lehren (1887; The Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx), in which the work of Marx is presented as essentially an economic theory. Kautsky reduced the ideas of Marx and Marxist historical dialectic to a kind of.....
  • economic forecasting
    the prediction of any of the elements of economic activity. Such forecasts may be made in great detail or may be very general. In any case, they describe the expected future behaviour of all or part of the economy and help form the basis of planning....
  • economic geography
    Economic geography has a long pedigree. Its traditional focus has been the distribution of various productive activities—with subdivisions into, for example, the geography of agriculture, industrial geography, and the geography of services—and patterns of trade such as transport geography. Such concentrations were strengthened by the move into spatial analysis. Relatively little......
  • economic geology
    scientific discipline concerned with the distribution of mineral deposits, the economic considerations involved in their recovery, and an assessment of the reserves available....
  • economic growth
    the process by which a nation’s wealth increases over time. Although the term is often used in discussions of short-term economic performance, in the context of economic theory it generally refers to an increase in wealth over an extended period....
  • economic indicator
    statistic used, along with other indicators, in an attempt to determine the state of general economic activity, especially in the future. A “leading indicator” is one of a statistical series that fairly reliably turn up or down before the general economy does. Common leading indicators are building permits (suggesting the future volume of new construction), common stock prices, busi...
  • economic integration
    Economic integration...
  • economic intelligence
    This is information concerning the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services, as well as labour, finance, taxation, and other aspects of a nation’s economy or of the international economic system. Economic intelligence allows a nation to estimate the magnitude of possible military threats and is also valuable in estimating the intentions of a potential enemy. In wartim...
  • economic interest group
    Economic interest groups are ubiquitous and the most prominent in all countries. There are literally thousands of them with offices in national capitals from London to Ottawa to New Delhi to Canberra. There are several different kinds of economic interests: business groups (e.g., the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, the Confederation of British Industry, and the Nestlé......
  • Economic Interpretation of History (work by Seligman)
    While working as a journalist after his graduation from Tokyo University in 1902, Kawakami translated from the English E.R.A. Seligman’s Economic Interpretation of History, the first analysis of dialectical materialism to appear in Japanese. In 1913 he went to Europe for further study. Upon his return in 1915 he became professor of economics at Kyōto Imperial University, where...
  • Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, An (work by Beard)
    ...and he collaborated with J.H. Robinson in writing several widely used textbooks on that subject. He then developed a schema of historical explanation that found its most famous expression in An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (1913). In this book he claimed that the Constitution had been formulated by interest groups whose motivations were just as......
  • economic model
    In addition to the theories discussed above, a large body of literature has developed involving abstract mathematical models. Because this field of analysis is so technical, only a general picture of the kinds of problems and questions discussed can be given. First, a set of equations is drawn up describing what the model builder feels are the important relations between economic variables such......
  • Economic Opportunity Act (United States [1964])
    ...education programs for disadvantaged preschool children. Compensatory intervention techniques include providing intensive instruction and attempting to restructure home and living conditions. The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 provided for the establishment of the Head Start program, a total program that was designed to prepare the child for success in public schools and that includes......
  • Economic Opportunity, Office of (United States government)
    ...Great Society programs of the presidential administration of Lyndon B. Johnson. Work, training, and rehabilitation programs were established in 1964 for welfare recipients. Between 1964 and 1969 the Office of Economic Opportunity began a number of programs, including the Head Start program for preschool children, the Neighborhood Youth Corps, and the Teacher Corps. Responding to allegations of....
  • Economic Organisation, The (work by Knight)
    Knight also produced a monograph entitled The Economic Organisation, which became a classic exposition of microeconomic theory. Its lucidity in perceiving logical distinctions may have been due to Knight’s early training as a philosopher, which made him skeptical of much economic theory....
  • Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy, The (work by Beard)
    ...of material interests embodied in the Constitution by the Founding Fathers, the book was received by academicians as an innovative study on motivational factors among socioeconomic groups. In The Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy (1915), Beard placed somewhat more emphasis on the philosophical context of political struggles, but he nevertheless reaffirmed his view of the......
  • economic planning
    the process by which key economic decisions are made or influenced by central governments. It contrasts with the laissez-faire approach that, in its purest form, eschews any attempt to guide the economy, relying instead on market forces to determine the speed, direction, and nature of economic evolution....
  • economic policy
    the process by which key economic decisions are made or influenced by central governments. It contrasts with the laissez-faire approach that, in its purest form, eschews any attempt to guide the economy, relying instead on market forces to determine the speed, direction, and nature of economic evolution....
  • economic regionalism (international relations)
    institutional arrangements designed to facilitate the free flow of goods and services and to coordinate foreign economic policies between countries in the same geographic region. Economic regionalism can be viewed as a conscious attempt to manage the opportunities and constraints created by the dramatic increase in international economic ties since the end of World War II. Examples of economic reg...
  • economic rent (economics)
    in economics, the income derived from the ownership of land and other free gifts of nature. The neoclassical economist Alfred Marshall, and others after him, chose this definition for technical reasons, even though it is somewhat more restrictive than the meaning given the term in popular usage. Apart from renting land, it is of course possi...
  • Economic Report (United States government publication)
    The president sends three documents to Congress in January: the State of the Union Message, the Budget, and the Economic Report. The first is addressed to broad national policy, whereas the Economic Report is concerned with economic policy alone. In particular, it seeks to assess the economic impact of the budget and its effect on employment and prices. It is therefore mainly concerned with the......
  • Economic Stabilization Plan (Spanish history)
    ...were a failure, and by the late 1950s the country was on the verge of economic collapse. This crisis led to a major change in economic policy, and in 1959 a team of technocrats announced the Economic Stabilization Plan. This plan allowed a less-restrained market economy and the fuller integration of Spain into the international capitalist economy. The Stabilization Plan set the stage for......
  • economic stabilizer
    any of the institutions and practices in an economy that serve to reduce fluctuations in the business cycle through offsetting effects on the amounts of income available for spending (disposable income). The most important automatic stabilizers include unemployment compensation and other transfer payment programs, farm price supports, and family and corporate ...
  • economic stagnation
    Another influential idea embodied in Keynes’s writing was that of economic stagnation. He suggested that in the advanced industrial countries people tended to save more as their incomes grew larger and that private consumption tended to be a smaller and smaller part of the national income. This implied that investment would have to take a continually larger share of the national income in o...
  • economic strike (industrial relations)
    collective refusal by employees to work under the conditions required by employers. Strikes arise for a number of reasons, though principally in response to economic conditions (defined as an economic strike and meant to improve wages and benefits) or labour practices (intended to improve work conditions). Other strikes can stem from sympathy with other striking unions or from......
  • economic system
    the way in which humankind has arranged for its material provisioning. One would think that there would be a great variety of such systems, corresponding to the many cultural arrangements that have characterized human society. Surprisingly, that is not the case. Although a wide range of institutions and social customs have been associated with the economic activities of society, only a very small ...
  • economic theory
    Although nothing Beccaria achieved in later life approaches the importance of the treatise, his subsequent career was fruitful and constructive. In 1768 he accepted the chair in public economy and commerce at the Palatine School in Milan, where he lectured for two years. His reputation as a pioneer in economic analysis is based primarily on these lectures, published posthumously in 1804 under......
  • Economic Theory of Democracy, An (work by Downs)
    ...(which sometimes involved the use of mathematical notation) to all facets of political life. Many believed they had found the key that would at last make political science truly scientific. In An Economic Theory of Democracy (1957), an early work in rational choice theory, Anthony Downs claimed that significant elements of political life could be explained in terms of voter......
  • economic union (international trade)
    Other forms of economic integration include common markets, economic unions, and federations. Common markets allow free passage of labour, capital, and other productive resources by reducing or eliminating internal tariffs on goods and by creating a common set of external tariffs. Economic unions closely coordinate the national economic policies of their member countries. Federations (such as......
  • economic warfare (international law)
    the use of, or the threat to use, economic means against a country in order to weaken its economy and thereby reduce its political and military power. Economic warfare also includes the use of economic means to compel an adversary to change its policies or behaviour or to undermine its ability to conduct normal relations with other countries. Some common means of economic warfare are trade ...
  • Economics (work by Samuelson)
    ...become so well known that modern economists often use it in their own defenses of free trade; indeed, Paul Samuelson put it at the head of one chapter in his best-selling textbook, Economics (1948). Bastiat also emphasized what he called the “unseen” consequences of government policy....
  • economics
    social science that seeks to analyze and describe the production, distribution, and consumption of wealth. In the 19th century economics was the hobby of gentlemen of leisure and the vocation of a few academics; economists wrote about economic policy but were rarely consulted by legislators before decisions were made. Today there is hardly a government, international agency, or ...
  • Economics of Discrimination, The (work by Becker)
    ...aspects of human behaviour—not just the purchasing and investment decisions traditionally thought to influence economic behaviour. In his dissertation, published in 1957 as The Economics of Discrimination, Becker examined racial discrimination in labour markets, concluding that discrimination has costs for both the victim and the perpetrator. In ......
  • Economics of Imperfect Competition, The (work by Robinson)
    Robinson established her reputation in 1933 with the publication of The Economics of Imperfect Competition (2nd ed., 1969), in which she analyzed distribution, allocation, and the concept of exploitation....
  • Economics of Welfare, The (work by Pigou)
    Pigou’s most influential work was The Economics of Welfare (1920). In it, Pigou developed Marshall’s concept of externalties, which are the costs imposed or benefits conferred on others that are not accounted for by the person who creates these costs or benefits. Pigou argued that negative externalities (costs imposed) should be offset by a tax, while positive externalit...
  • Économie politique (work by Barre)
    Barre published a number of works on economics and politics, among them the widely used textbook Économie politique (1956; “Political Economy”), which frequently appeared in revised editions. Among his many honours was admission as a chevalier to France’s Legion of Honour....
  • Économies royales (work by Sully)
    ...under his domineering leadership, and in January 1611 the queen accepted his resignation. He spent the rest of his life in retirement, writing his Mémoires, otherwise known as the Économies royales (1638). These memoirs are remarkable for their often-reprinted account of the “Great Design,” which Sully attributes to Henry IV and which was a European......
  • Economist Building Group (buildings, London, United Kingdom)
    ...formal severity and clarity reminiscent of the work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, exemplifies the principles of New Brutalism in its exposed steel- and brickwork and exposed electrical conduits. The Economist Building Group (1959–64), St. James’s, London, consists of a 16-story office tower, a smaller residential tower, and a bank building. The three are connected by a raised asymm...
  • Economist, The (British journal)
    weekly magazine of news and opinion published in London and generally regarded as one of the world’s preeminent journals of its kind. It provides wide-ranging coverage of general news and particularly of international and political developments and prospects bearing on the world’s economy. It was founded in 1843 by Scotsman James Wilson as a voice against grain import tariffs. The pu...
  • economy (economics)
    weekly magazine of news and opinion published in London and generally regarded as one of the world’s preeminent journals of its kind. It provides wide-ranging coverage of general news and particularly of international and political developments and prospects bearing on the world’s economy. It was founded in 1843 by Scotsman James Wilson as a voice against grain import tariffs. The pu...
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