The Long Good Buy:
Analysing Cycles in Markets
Reviewer: Lavan Mahadeva
The Long Good Buy is an excellent introduction to understanding the cycles, trends and crises in financial markets over the past 100 years.
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.
Not Working:
Where Have All The Good Jobs Gone?
Reviewer: Kevin Gardiner
Don't trust low unemployment numbers as proof that the labor market is doing fine—it isn't. Not Working is about those who can’t find full-time work at a decent wage—the underemployed—and how their plight is contributing to widespread despair, a worsening drug epidemic, and the unchecked rise of right-wing populism.
Extreme Economies:
Survival, Failure, Future - Lessons from the World’s Limits
Reviewer: Dame Kate Barker
In search of a fresh perspective on the modern economy, Extreme Economies takes the reader off the beaten path, introducing people living at the world’s margins. From disaster zones and displaced societies to failed states and hidden rainforest communities, the lives of people who inhabit these little-known places tend to be ignored by economists and policy makers. Leading economist Richard Davies argues that this is a mistake, and explains why the world’s overlooked extremes offer a glimpse of the forces that underlie human resilience, help markets to function and cause them to fail, and will come to shape our collective future.
Women vs Capitalism:
Why We Can’t Have It All in a Free Market Economy
Reviewer: Ian Bright
The free market as we know it cannot produce gender equality. This is the bold but authoritative argument of Vicky Pryce, the government's former economics chief.
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The Wealth Effect:
How the great expectations of the middle class have changed the politics of banking crises
Reviewer: William Allen
The politics of major banking crises has been transformed since the nineteenth century. Analyzing extensive historical and contemporary evidence, Chwieroth and Walter demonstrate that the rising wealth of the middle class has generated 'great expectations' among voters that the government is responsible for the protection of this wealth.
Radical Uncertainty
Decision‑Making or an Unknowable Future
Reviewer: Vicky Pryce
We do not know what the future will hold. But we must make decisions anyway. So we crave certainties which cannot exist and invent knowledge we cannot have. But humans are successful because they have adapted to an environment that they understand only imperfectly. Throughout history we have developed a variety of ways of coping with the radical uncertainty that defines our lives.
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Central Banking in Turbulent Times
Reviewer: Mario Pisani
Central Banking in Turbulent Times examines fundamental questions about the central banking system, asking whether the model of an independent central bank devoted to price stability is the final resting point of a complex development that started centuries ago. It dissects the hypothesis that the Great Recession has prompted a reassessment of that model; a renewed emphasis on financial stability has emerged, possibly vying for first rank in the hierarchy of objectives of central banks.