Radical Markets – Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society
Authors: Eric A. Posner, E. Glen Wey – University of Chicago, Yale University
Many blame today’s economic inequality, stagnation, and political instability on the free market. The solution is to rein in the market, right? Radical Markets turns this thinking—and pretty much all conventional thinking about markets, both for and against—on its head. The book reveals bold new ways to organize markets for the good of everyone. It shows how the emancipatory force of genuinely open, free, and competitive markets can reawaken the dormant nineteenth-century spirit of liberal reform and lead to greater equality, prosperity, and cooperation.
One of the most exciting books in the social sciences published in the past several years. Very original, using a consistent ideological approach, and intellectually compelling.
Branko Milanovic, City University of New York
The Growth of Shadow Banking – A Comparative Institutional Analysis
Author: Matthias Thiemann – Sciences Po Paris
Matthias Thiemann examines how regulators came to tolerate the emergence of links between the banking and shadow banking systems. Through a comparative analysis of the US, France, the Netherlands and Germany, he argues that fractured domestic and global governance systems determining the regulatory approach to these links ultimately aggravated the recent financial crisis. Since 2008, shadow banking has even expanded and the incentives for banks to bend the rules have only increased with increasing regulation. Thiemann’s empirical work suggests how state-finance relations could be restructured to keep the banking system under state control and avoid future financial collapses.
The Italian Economy
Author: Vera Zamagni – University of Bologna
Focusing on economic developments since 1945, Zamagni explains how the contemporary economy is the result of the contours of this longer history, of the country’s geography—low on natural resources but blessed with good weather and shipping opportunities—and more recent factors such as the country’s membership in the EU and the changing profile of Italian demography and the country’s surprisingly measured response to the challenges of migration. Drawing upon both conventional and heterodox approaches, the book concludes with an assessment of the prospects for the Italian economy.
What would the great economist do? How Twelve Brilliant Minds Would Solve Today’s Biggest Problems
Author: Linda Yueh – Oxford University
In the light of current economic problems, and in particular economic growth, Yueh explores the thoughts of economists from Adam Smith and David Ricardo to contemporary academics Douglass North and Robert Solow. Along the way, she asks, for example, what do the ideas of Karl Marx tell us about the likely future for the Chinese economy? How do the ideas of John Maynard Keynes, who argued for government spending to create full employment, help us think about state intervention? And with globalization in trouble, what can we learn about handling Brexit and Trumpism?
An extremely engaging survey of the life times and ideas of the great thinkers of economic history, woven together with useful discussions of how their ideas still shape economic policy today. Yueh’s book is reminiscent of Heilbroner’s marvelous classic The Wordly Philosophers, but more focused on contemporary debates on inequality, trade and productivity. Although targeted at readers interested in economic issues, this book would also make an excellent supplementary reading for undergraduate courses in economics, politics and social studies.
Kenneth Rogoff, Harvard University
