An accessible, intuitive outline of key developments in central banking practice and thinking.

In the crises of the past fifteen years, central bankers have become big public players in a drama that affects all our lives, involving financial market crashes, public health threats and devastating economic downturns. Having played a lead role in the global financial crisis and the coronavirus crisis, they are now being asked to broaden their appeal. But the key aim has always been one of simply ensuring monetary and financial stability. In this book, NIESR director Jagjit Chadha unpacks the world of central banking, explaining in accessible language the analytical techniques, policy toolkits or simple story-telling that they use to understand the economy, to implement monetary policy and to communicate their decisions to key decision-makers and the wider public.

This work focuses on the social constructions of motherhood in Scandinavia and discusses questions of central concern to western industrialized nations, asking what is the relationship between women and the welfare state and, how do women reconcile work and family responsibilities.

This book uses the discipline of socio-analysis to explore the meaning of money, markets and the broad financial world that so strongly affects our daily lives. The insight that the financial crisis ‘was essentially psychological in origin’ (Robert Shiller) and that the world of finance is broadly shaped if not determined by irrational often unconscious factors is not yet broadly shared. This book appears to be one of the first, if not the first contribution that explicitly focuses on what is beneath the surface of money, finance and capital. It invites the reader to explore the financial world in depth.

First published in 1979, this book looks at the subject of childminding in Britain at the time it was written. It is based on a national survey that was commissioned by the Social Science Research Council and on action to help childminders funded by the Wates Foundation at Manchester University, UK. Previous to this study it was calculated that more than one million children under the age of five had a working mother, but little research had been done into childminders themselves. This book evaluates the number and nature of the childminders in Britain that were looking after the nation’s children in the 70s. It argues that parents have a right to choose to work if society can guarantee loving and skilled care for their children. However, the authors suggest that this was not the case at the time and state that childminders were in need of better governmental support.

Popular Mechanics inspires, instructs and influences readers to help them master the modern world. Whether it’s practical DIY home-improvement tips, gadgets and digital technology, information on the newest cars or the latest breakthroughs in science -- PM is the ultimate guide to our high-tech lifestyle.

Survival, the IISS’s bimonthly journal, challenges conventional wisdom and brings fresh, often controversial, perspectives on strategic issues of the moment. In this issue: Marcus Willet argues that the Russia–Ukraine war reveals much about the nature of cyber warfare, including the battle for hearts and minds and the role of ‘vigilantes’ Angela Stent contends that Putin badly misjudged how Germany would respond to the war in Ukraine in failing to anticipate that Olaf Scholz would provisionally jettison Ostpolitik Jude Blanchette and Evan S. Medeiros assess likely drivers and characteristics of Xi Jinping’s upcoming third term as Chinese leader Nicholas Crawford and David F. Gordon make the case that the green-energy transition is essential, despite new geopolitical risks caused by ‘greenflation’ Nigel Gould-Davies examines the recent foreign-policy failures of Belarus and Russia and sets out three lessons for a post-war order in the region And five more thought-provoking pieces, as well as our regular Book Reviews and Noteworthy column.