On The Road To Riches

Out-of-control costs. Box office bombs that should have been foreseen. A mania for sequels at the expense of innovation. Blockbusters of ever-diminishing merit. What other industry could continue like this--and succeed as spectacularly as Hollywood has? The American movie industry's extraordinary success at home and abroad--in the face of dire threats from broadcast television and a wealth of other entertainment media that have followed--is David Waterman's focus in this book, the first full-length economic study of the movie industry in over forty years. Combining historical and economic analysis, Hollywood's Road to Riches shows how, beginning in the 1950s, a largely predictable business has been transformed into a volatile and complex multimedia enterprise now commanding over 80 percent of the world's film business. At the same time, the book asks how the economic forces leading to this success--the forces of audience demand, technology, and high risk--have combined to change the kinds of movies Hollywood produces. Waterman argues that the movie studios have multiplied their revenues by effectively using pay television and home video media to extract the maximum amounts that individual consumers are willing to pay to watch the same movies in different venues. Along the way, the Hollywood studios have masterfully handled piracy and other economic challenges to the multimedia system they use to distribute movies. The author also looks ahead to what Internet file sharing and digital production and distribution technologies might mean for Hollywood's prosperity, as well as for the quality and variety of the movies it makes.

Profiles of some of America's richest people and how they got that way—and how you can too! While we can't promise that this book will elevate you to the ranks of the super-rich, we can say that within its pages you'll discover everything you need to know about how, exactly, many of America's most famous (and infamous) millionaires and billionaires acquired their fortunes. The big surprise is that all of the super-wealthy it profiles got where they are today by taking one of just ten possible roads—including starting a business, buying real estate, investing wisely, and marrying extremely well. Whether you aspire to shameful wealth or just a demure fortune, bestselling author and self-made billionaire, Ken Fisher, will show you how to walk in the footsteps of tycoons—all the way to the financial success you dream of and deserve. Packed with amusing anecdotes of individuals who have traveled (or tumbled) down each road to wealth Extracts valuable lessons on how you, too, can achieve serious wealth, and, just as importantly, hold onto it Provides powerful tools for determining what you need to do to position yourself for success and "Guideposts" and "Warning Signs" to help keep you safely on your road to success Second Edition features more profiles and instructive examples than were found in the bestselling first edition

The history of mankind's instinctive desire to create material wealth- an investigation from earliest times into the next millenium

Profiles of some of America's richest people and how they got that way—and how you can too! While we can't promise that this book will elevate you to the ranks of the super-rich, we can say that within its pages you'll discover everything you need to know about how, exactly, many of America's most famous (and infamous) millionaires and billionaires acquired their fortunes. The big surprise is that all of the super-wealthy it profiles got where they are today by taking one of just ten possible roads—including starting a business, buying real estate, investing wisely, and marrying extremely well. Whether you aspire to shameful wealth or just a demure fortune, bestselling author and self-made billionaire, Ken Fisher, will show you how to walk in the footsteps of tycoons—all the way to the financial success you dream of and deserve. Packed with amusing anecdotes of individuals who have traveled (or tumbled) down each road to wealth Extracts valuable lessons on how you, too, can achieve serious wealth, and, just as importantly, hold onto it Provides powerful tools for determining what you need to do to position yourself for success and "Guideposts" and "Warning Signs" to help keep you safely on your road to success Second Edition features more profiles and instructive examples than were found in the bestselling first edition

Building effective state institutions before introducing democracy is widely presumed to improve different development outcomes. Conversely, proponents of this “stateness-first” argument anticipate that democratization before state building yields poor development outcomes. In this Element, we discuss several strong assumptions that (different versions of) this argument rests upon and critically evaluate the existing evidence base. In extension, we specify various observable implications. We then subject the stateness-first argument to multiple tests, focusing on economic growth as an outcome. First, we conduct historical case studies of two countries with different institutional sequencing histories, Denmark and Greece, and assess the stateness-first argument (e.g., by using a synthetic control approach). Thereafter, we draw on an extensive global sample of about 180 countries, measured across 1789–2019 and leverage panel regressions, preparametric matching, and sequence analysis to test a number of observable implications. Overall, we find little evidence to support the stateness-first argument.

Semiautobiographical and universal in appeal, Street of Riches is about a young girl's growing up in a suburb of Winnipeg, Manitoba. Here is Christine, the perceptive narrator of The Road Past Altamont (also a Bison Book), awakening to natural and sometimes terrifying beauty, to family history, to the nuances of social life, to sexuality, to selfhood. A mother's romantic yearning for freedom, a father's roving career as an immigration officer, a beautiful sister's early demise, a host of others in very human situations - all contribute to the way Christine will view the world as a writer. Gabrielle Roy has been called the Canadian Willa Cather because of their affinity in style and theme. Street of Riches won both the Governor-General's Award for Fiction and the French Prix Duvernay.