Unbound – How Inequality Constricts Our Economy and What We Can Do about It
By: Heather Boushey – Washington Center for Equitable Growth
Boushey argues that inequality undermines growth in three ways. It obstructs the supply of talent, ideas, and capital as wealthy families monopolize the best educational, social, and economic opportunities. It also subverts private competition and public investment. Powerful corporations muscle competitors out of business, in the process costing consumers, suppressing wages, and hobbling innovation, while governments underfund key public goods that make the American Dream possible, from schools to transportation infrastructure to information and communication technology networks. Finally, it distorts consumer demand as stagnant wages and meager workplace benefits rob ordinary people of buying power and pushes the economy toward financial instability. Boushey makes this case with a clear, accessible tour of the best of contemporary economic research, while also injecting a passion for her subject gained through years of research into the economics of work–life conflict and policy work in the trenches of federal government.
Measuring What Counts – The Global Movement for Well-Being
By: Joseph E. Stiglitz, Jean-Paul Fitoussi, Martine Durand – Columbia University, SciencesPo,
[I]n Measuring What Counts, Stiglitz, Fitoussi, and Martine Durand—summarizing the deliberations of a panel of experts on the measurement of economic performance and social progress hosted at the OECD, the international organization incorporating the most economically advanced countries—propose a new, “beyond GDP” agenda. This book provides an accessible overview of the last decade’s global movement, sparked by the original critique of GDP, and proposes a new “dashboard” of metrics to assess a society’s health, including measures of inequality and economic vulnerability, whether growth is environmentally sustainable, and how people feel about their lives. Essential reading for our time, it also serves as a guide for policy makers and others on how to use these new tools to fundamentally change the way we measure our lives—and to plot a radically new path forward.
Good Economics for Hard Times
By: Abhijit V. Banerjee, Esther Duflo MIT
In this revolutionary book, prize-winning economists Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo show how economics, when done right, can help us solve the thorniest social and political problems of our day. From immigration to inequality, slowing growth to accelerating climate change, we have the resources to address the challenges we face but we are so often blinded by ideology. It builds on cutting-edge research in economics – and years of exploring the most effective solutions to alleviate extreme poverty – to make a persuasive case for an intelligent interventionism and a society built on compassion and respect. A much-needed antidote to polarized discourse, this book shines a light to help us appreciate and understand our precariously balanced world.
The Artist as Economist – Art and Capitalism in the 1960s
By: Sophie Cras – Université Paris 1, Panthéon, Sorbonne
Bearing witness to the changing economic landscape amid the Cold War, artists in the 1960s created works that critiqued, reshaped, and sometimes reinforced the spirit of capitalism. At a time when currency and finance were becoming ever more abstracted—and the art market increasingly an arena for speculation—artists on both sides of the Atlantic turned to economic themes, often grounded in a human context. The Artist as Economist examines artists who approached these issues in critical, imaginative, and humorous ways: Andy Warhol and Larry Rivers incorporated the iconography of printed currency into their paintings, while Ray Johnson sought to disrupt and reinvent circuits of commerce with his mail art collages. Yves Klein and Edward Kienholz critiqued conceptions of artistic and monetary value, as Lee Lozano and Dennis Oppenheim engaged directly with the New York Stock Exchange. Such examples, which author Sophie Cras insightfully situates within their historic economic context, reveal capitalism’s visual dimension. As art and economics grow more entangled, this volume offers a timely consideration of art’s capacity to reflect on and reimagine economic systems.
