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The purpose of the paper is to identify common ways of dealing with conflict, specifically in C‐level teams, and how to confront them frankly and respectfully.

The author presents his views based on over 30 years' experience as an executive coach.

One of the most important ingredients for success in any business is to hire smart, confident and assertive people. However, it is impossible to put a bunch of smart, assertive people together without them bumping heads. Nothing creative ever happens in boring, non‐confrontational environments. A lack of overt conflict can be a symptom of apathy. In conflict avoidant or passive aggressive teams, conflict shows up in subversive ways, for example back stabbing, or failing to deliver a commitment on the date to which the requesting executive thought his fellow executives had agreed to deliver.

It is imperative for senior teams to be able to work well together and confront conflicts that arise. Rare is the person that is consistently comfortable addressing conflict. Some of the most seasoned CEOs often express sentiments such as “I don't know what it is about X, but it just hard talking to him. I know it's going to be a difficult conversation and find myself putting it off.” This article explains how to do so.

This article provides constructive, usable plans of action for confronting conflict in senior teams.

The primary and secondary market activity in collectible sportscards has evolved into that of a primitive, but organised financial market. This report reviews some aspects of the collectible sportscard market. The objective of the report is to introduce the sportscard investment medium to finance professionals, including those interested in the research potential of the market. The report includes an empirical analysis of the performance of some selected sportscard portfolio strategies for the period between March 1988 and December 1993. Sportscard collecting has evolved from an adolescent hobby of the 1950s into an active national market, estimated to involve approximately $5 billion and 3 million persons and served by a network of dealers and price information suppliers. The evolution of the sportscard market into its current state is described in this presentation. The description includes an empirical analysis of the performance of some selected sportscard portfolio strategies for the period between March 1988 and December 1993. The objective of the report is to provide information to those considering collectible sportscards as an investment medium and to those who might be interested in conducting financial research with collectible sportscard pricing data.

BOURNEMOUTH fulfilled some of the high expectations of those who attended it. The welcome was cordial, the local arrangements good, as we were entitled to expect from so proved an organizer as Mr. Charles Riddle and from his committee and staff, and, when fine, the town was most attractive. The weather, however, was bad, and too warm at the same time for most of us. One thing that certainly emerged from this experience was the real need to change the time of the conference. Only librarians among similar bodies appear to meet in the summer season. The accountants, engineers and other professional people confer in late May or in June, when they do not compete with holiday‐makers for accommodation and attention. The Council might well consider the re‐arrangement of its year with such a change in view.

The theory of monopoly price was originally formulated by Carl Menger at the inception of the marginalist revolution in 1871 and represented the dominant theoretical approach to monopoly until the 1930s. Despite its impeccable doctrinal pedigree and lengthy dominance, the theory abruptly disappeared from the mainstream neoclassical literature after the Monopolistic Competition Revolution, to be revived and reformulated after World War II by Ludwig von Mises. The present paper describes the theory as it was offered in its most sophisticated pre‐war form by American economist Vernon A. Mund, who published an unjustifiably neglected volume on monopoly theory that appeared in the same year as the classic works by Joan Robinson and Edward Chamberlain. This paper then attempts to draw out the critical implications of Mund’s formulation of the theory for the current neoclassical orthodoxy in monopoly and competition theory, including the elasticity of demand curves facing individual producers under competition, the time perspectives that are most relevant in analyzing the pricing process, the proper role of long‐run equilibrium in this analysis, and the misapplication of the marginal revenue and marginal cost concepts. Finally, the paper suggests a number of reasons why the theory was swept aside in the aftermath of the Chamberlain/Robinson Revolution with almost no resistance from its most prominent exponents.

In his article on “What Is Still Wrong with Austrian economics?,” Peter Boettke considers matters of strategy for the Austrian school and stresses the importance of institutions and institutional analysis. This comment takes up both themes. Two possible strategies for institutional research are considered. Then the place and role of institutions in Austrian analysis are addressed. It is argued that Austrian thinking has been caught in a dilemma between making theory as general as possible, or of taking on board the historically specific character of key institutions in market economies. The different approaches of Ludwig Mises and Carl Menger to this quandary are compared, with attention to the central concepts of property and capital.

This chapter explores the origins of the theme of competitive advantage in 19th and early 20th century economics. This theme, which forms the core of modern Strategic Management, was a battleground for debates about the value of abstract theory versus observations about real-life events. Intellectual genealogies, citations, and other sources show the central roles played by the University of Vienna and Harvard University. These two institutions strongly influenced the theory of monopolistic competition as well as all three modern views of competitive advantage – the industrial as expressed by Porter, the resource-based as expressed by Penrose, and the evolutionary as expressed by Schumpeter.

Nobody concerned with political economy can neglect the history of economic doctrines. Structural changes in the economy and society influence economic thinking and, conversely, innovative thought structures and attitudes have almost always forced economic institutions and modes of behaviour to adjust. We learn from the history of economic doctrines how a particular theory emerged and whether, and in which environment, it could take root. We can see how a school evolves out of a common methodological perception and similar techniques of analysis, and how it has to establish itself. The interaction between unresolved problems on the one hand, and the search for better solutions or explanations on the other, leads to a change in paradigma and to the formation of new lines of reasoning. As long as the real world is subject to progress and change scientific search for explanation must out of necessity continue.

The present chapter analyzes land inequality's role in expanding mass literacy between North and South America. According to the central claims, countries with low land inequality, organized in family farms linked to commercial elites, such as the United States, have consistently shown higher literacy levels than latifundia countries with high land inequality and landed elites, such as Latin American countries, where literacy has tended to be blocked. To analyze this hypothesis, a new and original database of landginis, large holding ratio, and illiteracy rates has been calculated from the original censuses of each country, offering the most extensive collection of data on land inequality and literacy for America in this period. By employing panel ordinary least squares, fixed and random effects approach, it is found that, historically, countries with higher land inequality and latifundia systems had worse literacy levels. Nevertheless, not all Latin American countries had latifundia systems, high land inequality, and high illiteracy.

Furthermore, in the United States, some states had higher levels of land inequality and illiteracy than some Latin American regions. Moreover, the results suggest that land inequality accentuated illiteracy more among adults than younger ones. Land inequality acted as a barrier to literacy.

This is a study of Attilio da Empoli’s reception in English. Describes the search to find his works or references to him. Gives details of the search process. There are only a few references to his work in English. There is nothing about his life in English. The first biography in English, “Attilio da Empoli’s Life” is given. Describes and discusses his reception in the English language, including comments on the historical context in which his writing occurred. Contains observations about his only book in English and the theory it contains. Concludes that he deserves more recognition than he has received. Contains suggestions about the kind of research program that is needed to put him on the record in English.

American radical economists in the 1960s perceived China under Maoism as an important experiment in creating a new society, aspects of which they hoped could serve as a model for the developing world. But the knowledge of “actually existing Maoism” was very limited due to the mutual isolation between China and the US. This chapter analyses the First Friendship Delegation of American Radical Political Economists (FFDARPE) to the People’s Republic of China in 1972, consisting mainly of Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE) members, which was the first visit of a group of American economists to China since 1949. Based on interviews with trip participants as well as archival and published material, this chapter studies what we can learn about the engagement with Maoism by American radical economists from their dialogues with Chinese hosts, from their on-the-ground observations, and their reflection upon return. We show how the visitors’ own ideas conflicted and intersected with their perception of the Maoist practice on gender relations, workers’ management, and life in the communes. We also shed light on the diverging conceptions of the role for economic expertise between URPE and late Maoism. As the first in-depth study on the FFDARPE, we provide rich empirical insights into an ice-breaking event in the larger process of normalization in the Sino-US relations, which ultimately led to the disillusionment of the Left with China.