An Expensive Education

Long out of print, this Highsmith classic resurfaces with a vengeance.

Incentives can be found everywhere--in schools, businesses, factories, and government--influencing people's choices about almost everything, from financial decisions and tobacco use to exercise and child rearing. So long as people have a choice, incentives seem innocuous. But Strings Attached demonstrates that when incentives are viewed as a kind of power rather than as a form of exchange, many ethical questions arise: How do incentives affect character and institutional culture? Can incentives be manipulative or exploitative, even if people are free to refuse them? What are the responsibilities of the powerful in using incentives? Ruth Grant shows that, like all other forms of power, incentives can be subject to abuse, and she identifies their legitimate and illegitimate uses.

Grant offers a history of the growth of incentives in early twentieth-century America, identifies standards for judging incentives, and examines incentives in four areas--plea bargaining, recruiting medical research subjects, International Monetary Fund loan conditions, and motivating students. In every case, the analysis of incentives in terms of power yields strikingly different and more complex judgments than an analysis that views incentives as trades, in which the desired behavior is freely exchanged for the incentives offered.

Challenging the role and function of incentives in a democracy, Strings Attached questions whether the penchant for constant incentivizing undermines active, autonomous citizenship. Readers of this book are sure to view the ethics of incentives in a new light.

Trademarks are a way of protecting your intellectual property. Intellectual property, or IP, is an intangible form of property (as opposed to real property or personal property). It is a creation of the mind, such as a symbol, name, design, image, or business method. In today's increasingly virtual world, intellectual property law is continuously evolving in order to provide protections for digital works.

With a special focus on the digital age, this short book is essential for anyone curious about how to protect their work in an online world.

Intellectual Property Operations and Implementation helps executives, attorneys, accountants, managers, and owners, understand the legal, technological, economic, and cultural changes that have affected corporate IP ownership and management.

Page by page, it provides practical examples and advice from seasoned and enduring professionals who have adopted new and streamlined methods and practices whether as in-house or outside counsel, or service providers.

• Timely and relevant in view of the substantially global economic recession amidst rampant technological development and the resulting changes in law, practice, and culture
• Examines the decision making processes, activities, and changes of significant corporate intellectual property owners in today's new economy