The Tragic Science – How Economists Cause Harm (Even as They Aspire to Do Good)
By: George F. DeMartino – University of Denver
In The Tragic Science, George F. DeMartino says what economists have too long repressed: that economists do great harm even as they aspire to do good. Economist-induced harm, DeMartino shows, results in part from economists’ “irreparable ignorance”—from the fact that they know far less than they tend to believe they know—and from disciplinary training that treats the human tolls of economic policies and interventions as simply the costs of promoting social betterment. DeMartino details the complicated nature of economic harm, explores economists’ frequent failure to recognize it, and makes a sobering case for professional humility and for genuine respect for those who stand to be harmed by economists’ practice.
At a moment in history when the economics profession holds enormous power, DeMartino’s work demonstrates the downside of its influence and the responsibility facing those who practice the tragic science. Economics may be the science of trade-offs, yet economists are too ready to sweep under the rug the ethical trade-offs their practice entails. As DeMartino argues, these trade-offs arise both because economists claim more knowledge than they actually possess and because their preferred policies often cause irreparable harm for some people. DeMartino lays out a profoundly challenging agenda for economists—one for which there are no simple remedies yet must be confronted nevertheless.
Dani Rodrik – Harvard University
A Political Economy of Justice
Edited by: Danielle Allen, Yochai Benkler, Leah Downey, Rebecca Henderson, Josh Simons – Harvard University
If we can agree that our current social-political moment is tenuous and unsustainable—and indeed, that may be the only thing we can agree on right now—then how do markets, governments, and people interact in this next era of the world? A Political Economy of Justice considers the strained state of our political economy in terms of where it can go from here. The contributors to this timely and essential volume look squarely at how normative and positive questions about political economy interact with each other—and from that beginning, how to chart a way forward to a just economy.
A Political Economy of Justice collects fourteen essays from prominent scholars across the social sciences, each writing in one of three lanes: the measures of a just political economy; the role of firms; and the roles of institutions and governments. The result is a wholly original and urgent new benchmark for the next stage of our democracy.
Fragile Futures – The Uncertain Economics of Disasters, Pandemics, and Climate Change
By: Vito Tanzi – Former Director Fiscal Affairs Department, IMF
This book revisits a distinction introduced in 1921 by economists Frank Knight and John Maynard Keynes: that between statistically predictable future events (‘risks’) and statistically unpredictable, uncertain events (‘uncertainties’). Governments have generally ignored the latter, perceiving phenomena such as pandemics, natural disasters and climate change as uncontrollable Acts of God. As a result, there has been little if any preparation for future catastrophes. Our modern society is more interconnected and more globalized than ever. Dealing with uncertain future events requires a stronger and more globally coordinated government response. This book suggests a larger, more global government role in dealing with these disasters and keeping economic inequalities low. Major institutional changes, such as regulating the private sector for the common good and dealing with special harms, risks and crises, especially those concerning climate change and pandemics, are necessary in order to achieve any semblance of future progress for humankind.
Vito Tanzi has written an important book on a set of main challenges of our time: how to anticipate and manage pandemics, earthquakes, famines, nuclear accidents, climate change and ecological destabilization. The book identifies the difficulties posed by intractable uncertainty, missing markets, short-termism of governments, denial and neglect for finding adequate responses to shocks and processes that can have a high toll both on human lives and the planet. Tanzi’s writing is balanced, wise, elegant and well informed by theory and a wealth of historical episodes relevant for the world of today and tomorrow. Strongly recommended!
Andrés Solimano – University of Oxford
The New Economic Governance of the Eurozone
By: Paul Dermine – Court of Justice of the European Union
The Eurozone and the European Union have recently been confronted with a number of existential threats. The sovereign debt crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic have forced European decisionmakers to pass important reforms which have radically transformed the nature and scope of the Union’s powers in the field of economic and fiscal policy. As the new economic governance of the Eurozone emerges as the main driver of integration in today’s Europe, this book seeks to assess the solidity of the constitutional foundations supporting that system, and its compliance with the Union’s core founding value: the rule of law. Using competence allocation, regulatory quality, access to external review and fundamental rights sustainability as analytical benchmarks, this book argues that the recent metamorphosis of Eurozone economic governance has not been accompanied by a parallel strengthening of its constitutional settlement, leading to a problematic misalignment between the Union’s action and its governing principles.
