Chapter 9 considers the strengths and weaknesses of pluralist theory as an account of the media’s role in a democracy. It suggests that several changes and additions are necessary to make it more complete and to bring it up to date with the digital age. The second part of the chapter uses this more complete account of pluralism to assess the role of the media in British democracy. It picks out what effects the media have and do not have and makes some suggestions about future research.

Leithart takes Thomas Aquinas to Starbucks to illustrate how gratitude between persons is complicated by commercial transactions. But rather than eliminating gratitude, Leithart finds a place for gratitude in a money economy, when it is subordinated to the divine economy of love, which is founded on the notion of God as giver.

This chapter provides an introduction to the basic structure and themes of the book. We begin with a description of the basic features of a corporation. We then discuss the intellectual foundations of corporate governance, including an overview of the doctrine of shareholder primacy and the view that a corporation is merely a nexus of contracts. We begin to catalog some of the cracks in these foundations, focusing on the shortcomings of the long-standing arguments for the exclusive shareholder franchise. Next, we make clear that our the criticisms of shareholder primacy and the exclusive shareholder franchise do not question, but indeed make extensive use of, the basic principles of standard economics and social choice theory. In other words, both our critique and our positive theory come from within the very tradition that gave rise to the original arguments for shareholder control. We conclude the chapter with a detailed plan for the rest of the book.

The chapter traces the incorporation of the ideal of frugality in its sense of material sobriety, as devised especially by Cicero drawing upon the middle Stoa, into Christian thought and its subsequent ‘demoralisation’ by David Hume and Adam Smith on the grounds that luxury or opulence would enhance the overall material well-being of society. It argues that the two Scottish philosophers nevertheless partially re-incorporated ‘frugality’ in their system of thought as economic prudence directed to the acquisition of fortune as a way of sacrificing present advantage for greater return in future.

Roman monetary history, like all history, is history of mind. Purposeful action, as a product of the human mind, creates history. Economic models, methods and agendas, therefore, which ignore or assume away the mind are of only limited use for historians. Historians, however, can use the tools and concepts in this book to clarify and redeem some economic theories and concepts in order to better understand the societies they study.

To understand the economic nature and impact of apprenticeship, we have to be alert to its features as an economic institution. Skills are often tacit or ‘implicit’ knowledge. Moreover, the apprenticeship contract is an unequal and non-repeated exchange between two parties, where the master teaches in the expectation that the apprentice will repay him through his work. The informational asymmetry led to contractual issues that required institutions that each had their own agendas and challenges. Guilds might want to limit entry, but their members also needed skilled workers; private contracts might be difficult and expensive to enforce and for outsiders to observe. Still, these institutions together allowed large numbers of youngsters to be apprenticed outside their family circle, with potentially large human capital effects. After 1500, the institutional forms of apprenticeship contracts in Europe were decisive in determining the rate at which innovations could spread across the larger environment and across communities.