Keynes for Our Times
By: Robert Skidelsky – University of Warwick
John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) was arguably the most important economist of the twentieth century; his ideas have fundamentally altered the way governments approach economic policy. Exploring the enduring relevance of his ideas, Robert Skidelsky emphasizes Keynes’s conception of economics as a moral science. Keynes was deeply invested in the broader societal implications of economic policies, and this book highlights his belief in economics as a tool for achieving the good life.
Skidelsky sheds new light on Keynes’s views on capitalism, discusses his advocacy of low interest rates, and delves into his thoughts on economic instability. He also offers fresh insight into Keynes’s ideas about money, his philosophical foundations, and his unique approach to uncertainty and probability. Ultimately, Skidelsky shows how Keynes’s vision of an economic policy that prioritizes the common good can be adapted to help solve our current economic and political challenges.
The Common Good Economy
By: Mariana Mazzucato – University College London
Our economic system is broken. The climate crisis is accelerating. Inequality is deepening. Public trust is crumbling. Wealth concentrates in fewer hands while governments scramble to fix what markets can’t do, rather than to shape them from the outset.
For too long, economics has treated ‘the good’ – whether public goods or the commons – as merely correcting market or government failures. This economic framing traps us in an endless cycle of being reactive, patching problems rather than proactively building the economy we need.
In The Common Good Economy, Mariana Mazzucato builds on her visionary ideas of the entrepreneurial state and mission-oriented policies to establish a new theory of the common good, one which allows governments and businesses to develop purposeful economic relationships, creating value and building spaces where human flourishing can happen. She argues that how we achieve collective goals – through collective action, participation and reciprocity – matters as much as what those goals are. The book provides a practical ‘common good compass’ to help navigate our economies in a radically different direction.
Full of compelling real-world examples, from governing water to transforming procurement and finance, this is a rigorous reimagining of economics and a manifesto for a future economy that serves people and the planet. It could not be more timely.
Corporate Credit Analysis and AI – Advancing the Rating System at a Central Bank
Edited by: Antonio Scalia – Bank of Italy
This book presents cutting-edge methodologies, including AI techniques, for corporate credit analysis as developed for the in-house credit assessment system (ICAS) of Banca d’Italia. The first part illustrates the methods, applications and use cases of the existing system, that is employed to evaluate a large sample of Italian non-financial companies. The second part presents the rating systems in use at commercial banks and provides a benchmarking exercise of the latter systems against the ratings produced by ICAS. The third part presents new developments of the system, including the evaluation of climate transition risk, climate physical risk, social and governance factors, cyber risk, sentiment analysis. The book illustrates all state-of-the-art AI applications developed for ICAS, providing practical examples and empirical results.
We Are Not Machines
By: Sarah O’Connor – Financial Times
A tsunami of change, we are told, is sweeping the economy as robots and AI threaten to take over tasks done by humans. But while we worry that we’re robotizing our work, what if the real risk is that we’re robotizing ourselves?
When prize-winning Financial Times journalist Sarah O’Connor set out to investigate what was happening on the front lines of technological change, she found people who weren’t losing their jobs to machines, but who felt they were losing something else instead. From translators forced to edit AI output to university graduates interviewed by software and warehouse workers surrounded by robots, she heard stories of work becoming lonelier, less creative, less human.
But O’Connor also found hopeful stories of jobs being made better, safer and more enjoyable – where workers haven’t rejected the new tools, but instead have learned to control them. Exploring questions of power, design, institutions and ideas, her reporting shows that the way technology changes the world of work is not pre-determined, but must be contested and shaped by all of us.
Inspired by stories from nineteenth-century English cotton mills to twenty-first century Swedish mines, We Are Not Machines reveals how we can fight for work which is more respectful of our limits, and more worthy of our minds.
