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Book reviews

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The Shifts and the Shocks

What we’ve learned - and have still to learn - from the financial crisis

Reviewer: Mark Cleary, Kinetic Economics

Chief Economics Commentator of the Financial Times Martin Wolf gives an insightful and timely analysis of why the financial crisis occurred, and of the radical reforms needed if we are to avoid a future repeat.

How Good Can We Be

Ending The Mercenary Society And Building A Great Country

Reviewer: Christine Shields, Shields Economics

Britain is beset by a crisis of purpose. For a generation we have been told the route to universal well-being is to abandon the expense of justice and equity and so allow the judgments of the market to go unobstructed. What has been created is not an innovative, productive economy but instead a capitalism that extracts value rather than creates it, massive inequality, shrinking opportunity and a society organised to benefit the top 1%. The capacity to create new jobs and start-ups should not disguise that in the main the new world is one of throw away people working in throw away companies. The British are at a loss.

British Financial Crises since 1825

Reviewer: Bridget Rosewell

This book provides a history of British financial crises since the Napoleonic wars. Interest in crises lapsed during the generally benign financial conditions which followed the Second Word War, but the study of banking markets and financial crises has returned to centre stage following the credit crunch of 2007-8 and the subsequent Eurozone crisis.

Climate Shock: The Economic Consequences of a Hotter Planet

Reviewer: David Fell, Director, Brook Lyndhurst

In Climate Shock, Gernot Wagner and Martin Weitzman explore in lively, clear terms the likely repercussions of a hotter planet, drawing on and expanding from work previously unavailable to general audiences

Money, blood and revolution

How Darwin and the doctor of King Charles I could turn economics into a science

Reviewer: Keith, Wade, Chief Economist, Schroders

Economics is a broken science, living in a kind of Alice in Wonderland state believing in multiple, inconsistent, things at the same time. Prior to the financial crisis, mainstream economics argued simultaneously for small government on taxation, regulation and spending, but big government on monetary policy. After the financial crisis, economics is now arguing for more government spending and for less government spending.

The premise of this book is that the internal inconsistencies between economic theories - the apparently unresolvable debates between leading economists and the incoherent policies of our governments - are symptomatic of economics being in a crisis. Specifically, in a scientific crisis.

Unbalanced: The co‑dependency of America and China

Reviewer: Christine Shields, Shields Economics

The Chinese and U.S. economies have been locked in an uncomfortable embrace since the late 1970s. Although the relationship initially arose out of mutual benefits, in recent years it has taken on the trappings of an unstable codependence, with the two largest economies in the world losing their sense of self, increasing the risk of their turning on one another in a destructive fashion. In Unbalanced: The Codependency of America and China Stephen Roach, senior fellow at Yale University and former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, lays bare the pitfalls of the current China-U.S. economic relationship.

How to Speak Money

Reviewer: Anna Leach, Head of Economic Analysis, CBI

Money is our global language. Yet so few of us can speak it. The language of the economic elite can be complex, jargon-filled and completely baffling. Above all, the language of money is the language of power - power in the hands of the same economic elite.

Now John Lanchester, bestselling author of Capital and Whoops! sets out to decode the world of finance for all of us, explaining everything from high-frequency trading and the World Bank to the difference between bullshit and nonsense.

Can financial markets be controlled?

Reviewer: Kitty Ussher, Managing Director, Tooley Street Research

The Global Financial Crisis overturned decades of received wisdomon how financial markets work, and how best to keep them in check.Since then a wave of reform and re–regulation has crashed overbanks and markets. Financial firms are regulated as never before.

But have these measures been successful, and do they go farenough? In this smart new polemic, former central banker andfinancial regulator, Howard Davies, responds with a resounding no . The problems at the heart of the financial crisis remain. There is still no effective co–ordination of internationalmonetary policy. The financial sector is still too big and,far from protecting the economy and the tax payer, recentgovernment legislation is exposing both to even greater risk.

Wrong

Nine economic policy disasters and what we can learn from them

Reviewer: James Howatt, Capital Economics

In recent years, the world has been rocked by major economic crises. In Wrong, economist Richard Grossman addresses why these came about, shining a light on the poor thinking behind nine of the worst economic policy mistakes of the past 200 years, missteps whose outcomes ranged from appalling to tragic.

The Rise of the Reluctant Innovator

Reviewer: Adrian Woods, Eurekazone

The Rise of the Reluctant Innovator" provides a welcome challenge to conventional wisdom in social entrepreneurship. It highlights the personal stories of ten social innovators from around the world.

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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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