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      • Annual Conference
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        • Rybczynski Prize Terms & Conditions
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Book reviews

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The Voltage Effect

How to make Good Ideas Great and Great Ideas Scale

Reviewer: Ian Bright

Why do some ideas make it big while others fail to take off? According to award-winning behavioural economist John List, the answer comes down to a single question: Can the idea scale?

If Then: How One Data Company Invented The Future

Reviewer: Robert Baker

Here Robert Baker reviews this book alongside "Kochland. The secret history of Koch Industries and corporate power in America", by Christopher Leonard, 2020, Simon & Schuster UK.

Kochland

The secret history of Koch Industries and corporate power in America

Reviewer: Robert Baker

Here Robert Baker reviews this book "If Then: How One Data Company Invented The Future", by Jill Lepore.

The Future of Money

How the Digital Revolution is Transforming Currencies and Finance

Reviewer: Carlo Cocuzzo, Digital Finance Specialist, Italy
Reviewer: Ian Bright, Consultant

We think we’ve seen financial innovation. We bank from laptops and buy coffee with the wave of a phone. But these are minor miracles compared with the dizzying experiments now underway around the globe, as businesses and governments alike embrace the possibilities of new financial technologies. As Eswar Prasad explains, the world of finance is at the threshold of major disruption that will affect corporations, bankers, states, and indeed all of us.

Cogs and Monsters

what economics is, and what it should be

Reviewer: Matt Whittaker, CEO, Pro Bono Economics

Digital technology, big data, big tech, machine learning, and AI are revolutionizing both the tools of economics and the phenomena it seeks to measure, understand, and shape. In Cogs and Monsters, Diane Coyle explores the enormous problems—but also opportunities—facing economics today if it is to respond effectively to these dizzying changes and help policymakers solve the world’s crises, from pandemic recovery and inequality to slow growth and the climate emergency.

The Spirit of Green

the economics of collisions and contagions in a crowded world

Reviewer: Keith Wade, Chief Economist, Schroders

The Spirit of Green by Nobel laureate William Nordhaus offers a primer on the economics of the environment and some key steps to limit global warming.

Adapting to Climate Change

Markets and the Management of an Uncertain Future

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

This book considers how individual economic choices in response to climate change will transform the larger economy.

The Magic Money Tree

and Other Economic Tales

Reviewer: Bridget Rosewell

Lorenzo Forni examines the tension between economics and politics and considers why so many mistakes in economic policy-making are made for political reasons.

Where Credit Is Due

How Africa’s Debt Can Be A Benefit, Not A Burden

Reviewer: Lavan Mahadeva

Gregory Smith guides us expertly through the travails and successes in forty years of Sub-Saharan Africa’s debt and warns that we may still see a rerun of the 1980s borrowing boom that ended in a two-decade-long debt crisis.

Two Hundred Years of Muddling Through

The surprising story of Britain’s economy from boom to bust and back again

Reviewer: Rosemary Connell

Two Hundred Years of Muddling Through tells the story of how Britain's economy and politics have interacted with each other from the time of the Industrial Revolution right up to the pandemic of 2020.

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Articles reflect the authors’ views which are not necessarily shared by the Society or the Editors. The Editors welcome 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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