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      • Annual Conference
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        • Rybczynski Prize Terms & Conditions
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Reading Room
  • Book reviews
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Book reviews

You're Paid What You're Worth

And Other Myths of the Modern Economy

Reviewer: Rosemary Connell

A myth-busting book challenges the idea that we’re paid according to objective criteria and places power and social conflict at the heart of economic analysis.

Superpower Showdown

Reviewer: William Allen, National Institute of Economic and Social Research

This is the inside story of the US–China trade war, how relations between these superpowers unraveled, darkening prospects for global peace and prosperity, as told by two Wall Street Journal reporters, one based in Washington, D.C., the other in Beijing, who have had more access to the decision makers in the White House and in China’s Zhongnanhai leadership compound than anyone else.

Mission Economy

A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism

Reviewer: Bridget Rosewell

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, capitalism was stuck. It had no answers to a host of problems, including disease, inequality, the digital divide and, perhaps most blatantly, the environmental crisis. Taking her inspiration from the 'moonshot' programmes which successfully co-ordinated public and private sectors on a massive scale, Mariana Mazzucato calls for the same level of boldness and experimentation to be applied to the biggest problems of our time.

1 comment

China:

The Bubble That Never Pops

Reviewer: Andrew Peaple

Tom Orlik, a veteran of more than a decade on the ground in Beijing and Shanghai, turns the spotlight on China's fragile fundamentals, and resources for resilience. Drawing on discussions with the Communist cadres planning China's rise, the bankers providing the financing, and the laborers sweating the construction sites, Orlik pieces together a unique perspective on China's past, present, and possible futures.

Quantitative Easing:

The Great Central Bank Experiment

Reviewer: Dean Turner

This book offers a thorough and perspicacious analysis of QE, which has become a recovery method of last resort. Whilst it was successful in averting another Great Depression and stimulating growth, it remains controversial and continues to promote widespread debate in economics, financial, and political-economy circles. This book is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand central banking in the national economy.

Dynamism:

The Values That Drive Innovation, Job Satisfaction, and Economic Growth

Reviewer: Kevin Gardiner, Rothschild & Co/Cardiff Capital Region Economic Growth Partnership

Phelps, Raicho Bojilov, Hian Teck Hoon, and Gylfi Zoega find evidence that differences in nations’ values matter—and quite a lot. It is no accident that the most innovative countries in the West were rich in values fueling dynamism. Nor is it an accident that economic dynamism in the United States, Britain, and France has suffered as state-centered and communitarian values have moved to the fore.

Boom and Bust:

A Global Financial History of Bubbles

Reviewer: Keith Wade, Schroders

Why do stock and housing markets sometimes experience amazing booms followed by massive busts and why is this happening more and more frequently? In order to answer these questions, William Quinn and John D. Turner take us on a riveting ride through the history of financial bubbles, visiting, among other places, Paris and London in 1720, Latin America in the 1820s, Melbourne in the 1880s, New York in the 1920s, Tokyo in the 1980s, Silicon Valley in the 1990s and Shanghai in the 2000s.

Central banking before 1800

Reviewer: William A Allen

Central Banking Before 1800 rehabilitates pre-1800 central banking, including the role of numerous other institutions, on the European continent. It argues that issuing central bank money is a natural monopoly, and therefore central banks were always based on public charters regulating them and giving them a unique role in a sovereign territorial entity.

The Classical School:

The Turbulent Birth of Economics in Twenty Extraordinary Lives

Reviewer: Rosemary Connell

This book covers the works of twenty economic thinkers spanning about three centuries (1600-1900). Few of us, though, have read their works. Fewer still realise that the economies that many of them were analysing were quite unlike our modern one, or the extent to which they were indebted to one another. So join the Economist's Callum Williams to join the dots.

Austerity:

When It Works And When It Doesn’t

Reviewer: James Smith, Resolution Foundation

In this masterful book, three of today's leading policy experts cut through the political noise to demonstrate that there is not one type of austerity but many. Looking at thousands of fiscal measures adopted by sixteen advanced economies since the late 1970s, Austerity assesses the relative effectiveness of tax increases and spending cuts at reducing debt.

Understanding Affordability:

The Economics of Housing Markets

Reviewer: Dame Kate Barker, British Coal Staff Superannuation Scheme

Written by two distinguished housing economists, this ambitious book tackles one of the most important socio-economic issues facing households today. Drawing from theoretical and empirical frameworks, the authors challenge conventional wisdoms in housing economics and policy and offer innovative recommendations to improve housing affordability.

Greed is Dead:

Politics after Individualism

Reviewer: Bridget Rosewell, Volterra Partners

Collier and Kay show how a reaffirmation of the values of mutuality could refresh and restore politics, business and the environments in which people live. Politics could reverse the moves to extremism and tribalism; businesses could replace the greed that has degraded corporate culture; the communities and decaying places that are home to many could overcome despondency and again be prosperous and purposeful.

How to Make the World Add Up

Ten Rules for Thinking Differently About Numbers

Reviewer: Mario Pisani, HM Treasury

In How to Make the World Add Up, Tim Harford draws on his experience as both an economist and presenter of the BBC's radio show 'More or Less'. He takes us deep into the world of disinformation and obfuscation, bad research and misplaced motivation to find those priceless jewels of data and analysis that make communicating with numbers worthwhile.

Productivity Perspectives

Reviewer: Dame Kate Barker, British Coal Staff Superannuation Scheme

Productivity Perspectives offers a timely and stimulating social science view on the productivity debate, drawing on the work of the ESRC funded Productivity Insights Network. The book examines the drivers and inhibitors of UK productivity growth in the light of international evidence, and the resulting dramatic slowdown and flatlining of productivity growth in the UK.

The Deficit Myth:

Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s Economy

Reviewer: Melissa Davies

The Deficit Myth, by Stephanie Kelton, is a wonderful introduction to the ‘through-the-looking-glass’ economics of Modern Monetary Theory – the increasingly fashionable challenger to the orthodox thinking that has dominated macro policy-making since the taming of the Great Inflation

The Economics of Belonging:

A Radical Plan to Win Back the Left Behind and Achieve Prosperity

Reviewer: Matt Whittaker

A radical new approach to economic policy that addresses the symptoms and causes of inequality in Western society today Fueled by populism and the frustrations of the disenfranchised, the past few years have witnessed the widespread rejection of the economic and political order that Western countries built up after 1945. Political debates have turned into violent clashes between those who want to "take their country back" and those viewed as defending an elitist, broken, and unpatriotic social contract.

Schism

China, America and the Fracturing of the Global Trading System

Reviewer: Rebecca Harding

China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 was heralded as historic, and for good reason: the world's most populous nation was joining the rule-based system that has governed international commerce since World War II. But the full ramifications of that event are only now becoming apparent, as the Chinese economic juggernaut has evolved in unanticipated and profoundly troublesome ways.

Bit by Bit

Social Research in the Digital Age

Reviewer: Ian Bright

An innovative and accessible guide to doing social research in the digital age In just the past several years, we have witnessed the birth and rapid spread of social media, mobile phones, and numerous other digital marvels. In addition to changing how we live, these tools enable us to collect and process data about human behavior on a scale never before imaginable, offering entirely new approaches to core questions about social behaviour.

What's Wrong With Economics?

A Primer for the Perplexed

Reviewer: Bridget Rosewell, Senior Advisor, Volterra Partners

A passionate and informed critique of mainstream economics from one of the leading economic thinkers of our time.

Money in the Great Recession:

Did a Crash in Money Growth Cause the Global Slump?

Reviewer: Christine Shields

No issue is more fundamental in contemporary macroeconomics than identifying the causes of the recent Great Recession. The standard view is that the banks were to blame because they took on too much risk, 'went bust' and had to be bailed out by governments.

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Articles reflect the authors’ views which are not necessarily shared by the Society or the Editor. The Editor welcomes comments, ideas and articles on a wide range of applied economics topics and related issues of more general interest.

For Books and Reviews contact:
Ian Harwood
Book Reviews Editor, The Society of Professional Economists
harwoodfive@btinternet.com

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