The Spirit of Green: The Economics of Collisions and Contagions in a Crowded World
By: William D. Nordhaus – Yale University
In a discussion that ranges from the history of the environmental movement to the Green New Deal, Nordhaus explains how the spirit of green thinking provides a compelling and hopeful new perspective on modern life. At the heart of green thinking is a recognition that the globalized world is shaped not by isolated individuals but rather by innumerable interactions inside and outside the economy. He shows how rethinking economic efficiency, sustainability, politics, profits, taxes, individual ethics, corporate social responsibility, finance, and more would improve the effectiveness and equity of our society. And he offers specific solutions—on how to price carbon, how to pursue low-carbon technologies, how to design an efficient tax system, and how to foster international cooperation through climate clubs.
Can Heterodox Economics Make a Difference? Conversations With Key Thinkers
By: Phil Armstrong – University of Southampton
In a series of in-depth interviews with leading economists and policy-makers from different schools including Austrian, Monetarist, New-Keynesian, Post-Keynesian, Modern Monetary Theory, Marxist and Institutionalist, this intriguing book sheds light upon the behaviour of economists and the sociology of the economics profession by enabling economists to express their views on a wide range of issues. Exploring why the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis did not pave the way for an uptake in heterodox economic approaches, these key thinkers consider why mainstream economics still reigns supreme and explore whether an alternative approach can be developed to rival it. The most important issues facing the discipline are addressed, and the book offers a particular focus upon the extent to which radical economists can work together to provide a genuine alternative to orthodoxy. Some of the economists interviewed include: Riccardo Reis, Charles Goodhart, Roger Farmer, Anwar Shaikh and L. Randall Wray.
The Economics and Politics of European Integration Populism, Nationalism and the History of the EU
By: Ivan T. Berend – UCLA
The Economics and Politics of European Integration offers a comprehensive history of European integration, from the conceptualization of a United States of Europe, to the present day. The special role of the United States in this process of integration, and the expansion and evolution of the European Union, is critically analyzed. The book also thoroughly discusses the current view of the EU and the complex crises emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic.
In this compelling new book Ivan Berend places different issues currently facing the European Union – further enlargement, migration, anti-EU populism, economic crisis, Covid-19 – in the context of a sweeping history of the idea and reality of European integration since World War II.
Janick Marina Schaufelbuehl, University of Lausanne
Veblen – The Making of an Economist Who Unmade Economics
By: Charles Camic – Northwestern University
A bold new biography of the thinker who demolished accepted economic theories in order to expose how people of economic and social privilege plunder their wealth from society’s productive men and women. Thorstein Veblen was one of America’s most penetrating analysts of modern capitalist society. But he was not, as is widely assumed, an outsider to the social world he acidly described. Veblen overturns the long-accepted view that Veblen’s ideas, including his insights about conspicuous consumption and the leisure class, derived from his position as a social outsider.
Camic’s Veblen weaves together narrative, analytic interpretation, and social theory to create a compelling, engaging, and revolutionary account that tells us something new about a familiar and fascinating figure while conveying a powerful sense of melancholy. There is really nothing quite like it.
George Steinmetz, University of Michigan
