Disrupted Economic Relationships – Disasters, Sanctions, Dissolutions
Authors: Tibor Besedeš and Volker Nitsch – Georgia Institute of Technology, Darmstadt University of Technology
Cross-border economic relationships gradually strengthened in the decades after World War II; for most of the postwar period, international trade and investment have grown faster than output, a process often termed “globalization.” In recent years, however, economic relationships have grown more fragile, subject to disruption by such factors as political conflict, economic sanctions, and the dissolution of institutional arrangements. This timely CESifo volume offers empirical studies and theoretical analyses that examine the causes and consequences of these disrupted economic relationships.
Evolution or Revolution? Rethinking Macroeconomic Policy after the Great Recession
Authors: Olivier Blanchard, Lawrence H. Summers – Peterson Institute for International Economics, Harvard University
Should the financial crisis and the Great Recession lead to yet another major reassessment, to another intellectual revolution? Will it? If so, what form should it, or will it, take? These are the questions taken up in this book, in a series of contributions by policymakers and academics. The contributors discuss the complex role of the financial sector, the relative roles of monetary and fiscal policy, the limits of monetary policy to address financial stability, the need for fiscal policy to play a more active role in stabilization, and the relative roles of financial regulation and macroprudential tools. The general message is a warning against going back to precrisis ways—to narrow inflation targeting, little use of fiscal policy for stabilization, and insufficient financial regulation.
Licence to be Bad – How Economics Corrupted Us
Author: Jonathan Aldred – University of Cambridge
Licence to be Bad tells the story of how a group of economics theorists changed our world, and how a handful of key ideas, from free-riding to Nudge, seeped into our decision-making and, indeed, almost all aspects of our lives. Aldred reveals the extraordinary hold of economics on our morals and values. Economics has corrupted us. But if this hidden transformation is so recent, it can be reversed.
Welcome to the topsy-turvy world of modern economics, where behaving badly is not just normal but definitely smart and even virtuous. In this highly enlightening and hugely entertaining book, Jonathan Aldred guides us through these badlands, revealing its pitfalls, quicksand, and quagmires. It is going to change the way in which we understand many modern debates about economics, politics, and society.
Ha-Joon Chang, University of Cambridge
The Technology Trap – Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation
Author: Carl Benedikt Frey – University of Oxford
From the Industrial Revolution to the age of artificial intelligence, The Technology Trap takes a sweeping look at the history of technological progress and how it has radically shifted the distribution of economic and political power among society’s members. As Carl Benedikt Frey shows, the Industrial Revolution created unprecedented wealth and prosperity over the long run, but the immediate consequences of mechanization were devastating for large swaths of the population. Middle-income jobs withered, wages stagnated, the labor share of income fell, profits surged, and economic inequality skyrocketed. These trends, Frey documents, broadly mirror those in our current age of automation, which began with the Computer Revolution.
Anybody interested in the economic impact of digital and AI, in particular on jobs, will want to read [The Technology Trap].
Diane Coyle, University of Cambridge
