Why Governments Get It Wrong
By: Dennis C. Grube – University of Cambridge
Barely a week goes by without another government U-turn and with the cost of living crisis and rising mortgage rates we really need those in charge to get it right. In this timely book Cambridge Professor Dennis C. Grube explores the pitfalls, failures and successes of those in power around the world.
We live in an era when we really need governments to be effective – the economy, our health and the future of the planet are at stake – but so often they can seem clueless, and their decisions leave us confused. With insight and wit, Grube explains how governments can improve their decision-making and by examining fascinating case studies he highlights the key factors that make for effective government. With the stakes higher than ever before, this original and important book is an essential read for any concerned citizen who wants to understand why governments make the wrong decisions and, crucially, what can be done about it.
A Monetary and Fiscal History of the United States, 1961–2021
By: Alan Blinder – Princeton University
Focusing on the most significant developments and long-term changes, Blinder traces the highs and lows of monetary and fiscal policy, which have by turns cooperated and clashed through many recessions and several long booms over the past six decades. From the fiscal policy of Kennedy’s New Frontier to Biden’s responses to the pandemic, the book takes readers through the stagflation of the 1970s, the conquest of inflation under Jimmy Carter and Paul Volcker, the rise of Reaganomics, and the bubbles of the 2000s before bringing the story up through recent events—including the financial crisis, the Great Recession, and monetary policy during COVID-19.
MegaThreats – Ten Dangerous Trends That Imperil Our Future, And How to Survive Them
By: Nouriel Roubini – New York University
There are no fewer than ten overlapping, interconnected threats that are so serious, he [Rounini] calls them Megathreats. From the worst debt crisis the world has ever seen, to governments pumping out too much money, to borders that are blocked to workers and to many shipments of goods, to the rise of a new superpower competition between China and the U.S., to climate change that strikes directly at our most populated cities, we are facing not one, not two, but ten causes of disaster. There is a slight chance we can avoid them, if we come to our senses—but we must act now.
In the 1970s, the U.S. faced stagflation: high rates of inflation combined with stagnant employment and growth. Today, we are heading toward a Great Stagflation that will make the 1970s look like a walk in the park.
Calm, clear-headed and possibly prescient, MegaThreats combines important historical analogies, broad-ranging discussion of current trends, and insightful economic analysis to produce a bracing assessment of long-term risks to the global economy. Dark, perhaps, but brilliant, for sure.
Kenneth Rogoff, Harvard University
Diminishing Returns – The New Politics of Growth and Stagnation
By: Mark Blyth, Jonas Pontusson, Lucio Baccaro – Max Planck Institute, Brown University, University of Geneva
As highlighted by the recent debate on ‘secular stagnation,’ economic growth has slowed down considerably, and this has given rise to a host of new problems, from financial instability to the collapse of mainstream parties. What happens when growth—the main mechanism of capitalist legitimation—is harder to come by and less broadly shared? And how should we think about capitalist diversity in the context of global stagnation?
In Diminishing Returns, Lucio Baccaro, Mark Blyth, and Jonas Pontusson address these questions by bringing together a number of comparative and international political economists with expertise across many different countries and regions. Going beyond the methodological nationalism common in most comparative research, each author departs from a common theoretical framework, the Growth Model Perspective, and contributes to develop it further. The outcome is a new theoretical framework to help social scientists, policymakers, and opinion makers, understand the politics of growth and stagnation, which offers state of the art empirical analyses at the country, regional, and global level.
