The Curse of Cash
Reviewer: Ian Bright
Winner of the 2017 PROSE Award in Economics, Association of American Publishers Selected for Canada's Financial Post Best Personal Finance and Economics Books of 2016 One of Bloomberg's Best Books of 2016 One of Financial Times (FT.com) Best Economics Books of 2016 Longlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year 2016 "In a brilliant and lucid new book, The Curse of Cash, the Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff gives a fascinating and thorough account of the argument against cash."–John Lanchester, New York Times Magazine
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The Great Convergence
Information Technology and the new globalisation
Reviewer: Bridget Rosewell, Volterra Partners
Between 1820 and 1990, the share of world income going to today s wealthy nations soared from twenty percent to almost seventy. Since then, that share has plummeted to where it was in 1900. As Richard Baldwin explains, this reversal of fortune reflects a new age of globalisation that is drastically different from the old. Because globalisation is now driven by fast-paced technological change and the fragmentation of production, its impact is more sudden, more selective, more unpredictable, and more uncontrollable. As The Great Convergence shows, the new globalisation presents rich and developing nations alike with unprecedented policy challenges in their efforts to maintain reliable growth and social cohesion.
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Dynamic Economic Decision Making
Strategies for Financial Risk, Capital Markets, and Monetary Policy
Reviewer: Dame Kate Barker
Financial decision-making requires one to anticipate how their decision will not only affect their business, but also the economic environment. Unfortunately, all too often, both private and public sector decision-makers view their decisions as one-off responses and fail to see their decisions within the context of an evolving decision-making framework.
In Decision-Making in a Dynamic Economic Setting, John Silvia, Chief Economist of Wells Fargo and one of the top 5 economic forecasters according to Bloomberg News and USA Today, skillfully puts this discipline in perspective.
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Connectedness and Contagion
Protecting the financial system from panics
Reviewer: William Allen, NIESR
The Dodd–Frank Act of 2010 was intended to reform financial policies in order to prevent another massive crisis such as the financial meltdown of 2008. Dodd–Frank is largely premised on the diagnosis that connectedness was the major problem in that crisis – that is, that financial institutions were overexposed to one another, resulting in a possible chain reaction of failures. In this book, Hal Scott argues that it is not connectedness but contagion that is the most significant element of systemic risk facing the financial system.
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How Change Happens
Reviewer: Vicky Pryce
This book bridges the gap between academia and practice, bringing together the best research from a range of academic disciplines and the evolving practical understanding of activists to explore the topic of social and political change. Drawing on many first-hand examples from the global experience of Oxfam, one of the world's largest social justice NGOs, as well as the author's insights from studying and working on international development, it tests ideas on How Change Happens and offers the latest thinking on what works to achieve progressive change.
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The 99 Essential Business Questions
To take you beyond the obvious management actions
Reviewer: Vicky Pryce
The authors bring combined experience from across a wide range of business sectors to solve your professional problems! The 99 Essential Business Questions will provide you with the answers you're looking for - but it only contains questions and scenarios, ideas and strategies. This is not a straightforward question and answer book. The right questions, and your answers, provide you with the insight to take the right decisions and act in a way that goes beyond the blatantly obvious.
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The Euro and the Battle of Ideas
Reviewer: Rebecca Harding
The authors discuss how the troubles faced by the Euro have led its member states to focus on national, as opposed to collective, responses, a reaction explained by the resurgence of the battle of economic ideas: rules vs. discretion, liability vs. solidarity, solvency vs. liquidity, austerity vs. stimulus. Weaving together economic analysis and historical reflection, The Euro and the Battle of Ideas provides a forensic investigation and a road map for Europe's future.
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The Disruption Dilemma
Reviewer: David Lancefield, Partner, PwC
"Disruption" is a business buzzword that has gotten out of control. Today everything and everyone seem to be characterized as disruptive – or, if they aren't disruptive yet, it's only a matter of time before they become so. In this book, Joshua Gans cuts through the chatter to focus on disruption in its initial use as a business term, identifying new ways to understand it and suggesting new tools to manage it.
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What they Do with your Money
How the financial System Fails us and How to Fix it
Reviewer: Vicky Pryce, Board member of CEBR
A call to reboot capitalism and preserve $85 trillion in retirement savings for their owners-not for use as the financial industry's ATM. Each year we pay billions in fees to those who run our financial system. The money comes from our bank accounts, our pensions, our borrowing, and often we aren't told that the money has been taken. These billions may be justified if the finance industry does a good job, but as this book shows, it too often fails us.
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Legislating instability
Adam Smith, Free Banking, and the Financial Crisis of 1772
Reviewer: William A Allen, Economic & Financial Consultant
From 1716 to 1845 Scotland's banks were among the most dynamic and resilient in Europe, effectively absorbing a series of economic shocks that rocked financial markets in London and on the continent. Legislating Instability explains the seeming paradox that the Scottish banking system achieved this success without the government controls usually considered necessary for economic stability.
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