Economic Theory

Caruso-Cabrera presents a modern and smart approach to correcting the economic woes of the nation. Denouncing the hypocrites, she calls out the radicals on both sides of the spectrum who have frustrated voters and left fiscally conservative but socially liberal Americans feeling like a people without a party. Caruso-Cabrera maintains that by focusing on socially invasive policies, our country has lost its course.

In this book, Nobel Prize-winning economist Edmund Phelps draws on a lifetime of thinking to make a sweeping new argument about what makes nations prosper--and why the sources of that prosperity are under threat today. Why did prosperity explode in some nations between the 1820s and 1960s, creating not just unprecedented material wealth but "flourishing"--meaningful work, self-expression, and personal growth for more people than ever before?

Historian Sean Wilentz presents two key insights that together reveal a clearer, much-needed vision of American political history. First, partisanship has almost always been a feature of American history and in fact has made possible the nation's greatest social reforms. There is little to be gained from a "postpartisan" political world. Second, the recent attention to economic inequality has a long history. From the founders' generation to the present, America's egalitarian tradition has appeared and reappeared like an underground river.

No single individual is ever the sole founder of any major stance in political philosophy. Nevertheless, if one were forced to name the founder of the classical liberal perspective in political thought which holds as its primary political principle that individual liberty is to be respected and protected, one would have to point to the English philosopher John Locke.

The Narendra Modi government's sudden demonetization of '500 and '1,000 notes in November 2016 failed to put a dent in the black economy but caused untold hardship to hundreds of millions of Indians. It has crippled the country's economy for a long time to come. In this book, Arun Kumar, the country's leading authority on the black economy, tells us why Modi's gambit failed.

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is a master of game theory, which is a fancy label for a simple idea: People compete, and they always do what they think is in their own best interest. Bueno de Mesquita uses game theory and its insights into human behavior to predict and even engineer political, financial, and personal events. His forecasts, which have been employed by everyone from the CIA to major business firms, have an amazing 90 percent accuracy rate.

The real wealth of nations, Riane Eisler argues, is not merely financial, but includes the contributions of people and our natural environment. Here, Eisler goes beyond the market to reexamine economics from a larger perspective - and shows that we must give visibility and value to the socially and economically essential work of caring for people and the planet if we are to meet the enormous challenges we face.

One of the great economists of the 20th century, Milton Friedman has always challenged the prevailing economic orthodoxy. At the same time, his work has become popular because it is engagingly written and because it helps in practical prediction. Thanks to Friedman, money is now regarded as a far more powerful factor than it had been before. It offers the prospect of permanently controlling the inflation that has become the most important economic problem of our age.

In order to illuminate the fallacies of economism, James Kwak first offers a primer on supply and demand, market equilibrium, and social welfare: the underpinnings of most popular economic arguments. Then he provides a historical account of how economism became a prevalent mode of thought in the United States - focusing on the people who packaged Econ 101 into sound bites that were then repeated until they took on the aura of truth.

In responding to the financial crash of 2008, both the Bush administration and the Obama administration have relied on prescriptions developed by John Maynard Keynes, the most important economist since Marx. But should we be relying on Keynes? What did Keynes actually say? Did he make his case? Hunter Lewis concludes that he did not. If Keynes was wrong then so are the economic policies of virtually all world governments today.

Economics can explain everything, from why people behave the way they do to how governments and businesses organize themselves. As the blockbuster best-seller Freakonomics demonstrated, economics can explain everything - from why people behave the way they do to how governments and businesses organize themselves. But are the basic assumptions and conclusions in Freakonomics true? Does the free market usually lead to unintended and negative consequences?

Buchanan believed deeply that each individual is morally equal to every other individual. Because no person is superior, ethically speaking, to any other person, no person’s opinions or preferences should be given special advantage over those of other persons. He believed that this conclusion holds fast despite the undeniable fact that some individuals are smarter, better educated, wealthier, or higher-born than others.

We face a crisis of sexuality. During the last few years, we have witnessed an unprecedented breakdown of traditions and mores concerning sexuality and the family. Countries across the West have suddenly and seemingly irrevocably instituted same-sex marriage; a former athlete has won awards for publicly changing gender; and no one seems to know what restroom to use any more. What used to be taboo and frowned upon has become normal and even encouraged. What used to be normal and sought after is now viewed as unnecessary and possibly harmful.

The Theory of the Leisure Class was written by Thorstein Veblen at the turn of the 20th century. It delves deeply into the nature of economics and the social institutions, exploring the forces that create and maintain class division, how these forces evolved through history, and how they influence the economy. In this work, Veblen presents a critique of capitalism on the basis of "conspicuous consumption", a term that he himself coined. He examines economics as a function of evolution, tracking the division of labor and stratification of class during the development of society.

Frederick Kaufman tackles the complex history of money, beginning with the earliest myths and wrapping up with Wall Street’s byzantine present-day doings. Along the way, he exposes a set of allegorical plots, stock characters, and stereotypical metaphors that have long been linked with money and commercial culture, from Melanesian trading rituals to the dogma of Medieval churchmen faced with global commerce, the rationales of Mercantilism and colonial expansion, and the U.S. dollar’s 1971 unpinning from gold.

Following books by Malcolm Gladwell and Dan Ariely, noted economics professor William L. Silber explores the Hail Mary effect, from its origins in sports to its applications to history, nature, politics, and business.

The leisure class has been replaced by a new elite. Highly educated and defined by cultural capital rather than income bracket, these individuals earnestly buy organic, carry NPR tote bags, and breast-feed their babies. They care about discreet, inconspicuous consumption. In The Sum of Small Things, Elizabeth Currid-Halkett dubs this segment of society "the aspirational class" and discusses how, through deft decisions about education, health, parenting, and retirement, the aspirational class deepens the ever-wider class divide.

Brian Clegg was always fascinated by Isaac Asimov's classic Foundation series of books, in which the future is predicted using sophisticated mathematical modelling of human psychology and behaviour. Only much later did he realise that Asimov's 'psychohistory' had a real-world equivalent: game theory. Originating in the study of probabilistic gambling games that depend on a random source—the throw of a dice or the toss of a coin—game theory soon came to be applied to human interactions: essentially, what was the best strategy to win, whatever you were doing?

Thirty years ago, “greed is good” and “maximizing shareholder value” became the new mantras woven into the fabric of our business culture, economy, and politics. Although, around the world, free-market capitalism has lifted more than a billion people from poverty, in the US, most of the benefits of economic growth have been captured by the richest 10 percent, along with providing justification for squeezing workers, cheating customers, avoiding taxes, and leaving communities in the lurch. As a result, Americans are losing faith that a free-market economy is the best system.

In The Hellhound of Wall Street, Michael Perino recounts in riveting detail the 1933 hearings that put Wall Street on trial for the Great Crash. Never before in American history had so many financial titans been called to account before the public, and they had come within a few weeks of emerging unscathed. By the time Ferdinand Pecora, a Sicilian immigrant and former New York prosecutor, took over as chief counsel, the investigation had dragged on ineffectively for nearly a year and was universally written off as dead....