Economic Theory

From the American Revolution through the Civil Rights movement, Americans have long mobilized against political, social, and economic privilege. Hierarchies based on inheritance, wealth, and political preferment were treated as obnoxious and a threat to democracy. Mass movements envisioned a new world supplanting dog-eat-dog capitalism. But over the last half-century that political will and cultural imagination have vanished. Why? The Age of Acquiescence seeks to solve that mystery.

An innovative trend combining technology with economics is unraveling behemoth industries - including corporations, banks, farms, media conglomerates, energy systems, governments, and schools - that have long dominated business and society. Size and scale have become a liability. A new generation of upstarts is using artificial intelligence to automate tasks that once required expensive investment, and "renting" technology platforms to build businesses for hyper-focused markets, enabling them to grow big without the bloat of giant organizations.

In modern history, the story of capitalism has been a story of firms and financiers. That's all going to change thanks to the Big Data revolution. As Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, best-selling author of Big Data, and Thomas Ramge, who writes for The Economist, show, data is replacing money as the driver of market behavior. Big finance and big companies will be replaced by small groups and individual actors who make markets instead of making things: think Uber instead of Ford, or Airbnb instead of Hyatt. Will this be an age of prosperity or of calamity?

Taxing the Rich draws on unparalleled evidence from 20 countries over the last two centuries to provide the broadest and most in-depth history of progressive taxation available. Scheve and Stasavage explore the intellectual and political debates surrounding the taxation of the wealthy while also providing the most detailed examination to date of when taxes have been levied against the rich and when they haven't.

Goldstene uses a biographical approach to focus on key figures along a spectrum of political belief as they struggled to reconcile the inherent contradictions of equal opportunity. The Struggle for America's Promise includes such figures as Booker T. Washington, Samuel Gompers, Edward Bellamy, and Emma Goldman, who were more willing to step beyond the boundaries of the discourse about opportunity and question economic competition itself.

In The Silo Effect, award-winning journalist Gillian Tett examines the structural development of institutions such as UBS, Sony and the Bank of England. While the world is increasingly interlinked in some senses, it remains profoundly fragmented in others. As organisations become larger and more global than ever before, they are apt to be divided and subdivided into numerous different departments to facilitate productivity. However, there is a trap to the inevitability of these silos.

The Left has seized on our economic troubles as an excuse to “blame the rich guy” and paint a picture of capitalism and the free market as selfish, greedy, and cruel. Exactly the opposite is true, says Father Robert Sirico in his thought-provoking book Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy. Father Sirico argues that a free economy actually promotes charity, selflessness, and kindness. In Defending the Free Market, he shows why free-market capitalism is not only the best way to ensure individual success and national prosperity but also the surest route to a moral and socially just society.

From thriving Motor City to the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history, Detroit has become the nation's cautionary tale. But what led to the fateful day of the filing, and how did the city survive this crisis? Journalist Nathan Bomey delivers the inside story of Detroit's decline and the people who fought to save it against impossible odds: Governor Rick Snyder, a self-proclaimed nerd; emergency manager Kevyn Orr, a lawyer with singular dedication; Judge Steven Rhodes, the city's conscience; and retirees who fought to ensure that Detroit kept its promises.

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 Pulitzer entry, the author describes how we can find balance between our competitive drives and our cooperative drives so that we can operate at highest possible level, and shows us how nature relates to these traits and how they both tie into order and chaos, even to the universe. It gives us a dynamic equation for synthesizing cooperative order with competitive chaos, and teaches the universal law of co-opetition - which means to synthesize cooperation with competition.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Licence to be Bad by Jonathan Alred. Over the past 50 years, the way we value what is 'good' and 'right' has changed dramatically. Behaviour that to our grandparents' generation might have seemed stupid, harmful or simply wicked now seems rational, natural, woven into the very logic of things. And, asserts Jonathan Aldred in this revelatory new book, it's economics that's to blame.

The Skyscraper Curse is Dr. Mark Thornton's definitive work on booms and busts, and it explains why only Austrian economists really understand them. It makes business cycle theory accessible to a whole new 21st-century audience. And they need it, especially those under 40. Many of the brilliant quants working on Wall Street and at the Fed barely remember the Crash of 2008, much less understand it. But Mark Thornton does, and his book is a warning about overheated equity markets, overinflated housing prices, and clueless central bankers.

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?

What is the GDP, and what does it mean? Why does the stock market go down when interest rates go up? What causes a dreaded recession? Economics impacts everyone's life, but most people take on faith what they read in the newspaper. Now, for anyone who doesn't know much about economics, noted economist Todd Buchholz explains it all simply and clearly. With refreshing wit and irreverence, Buchholz takes listeners by the hand and reveals the basic rules behind everything from food prices to trade deficits.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall, one economic model emerged triumphant. Capitalism - spanning a spectrum from laissez-faire to authoritarian - shapes the market economies of all the wealthiest and fastest-growing nations. The trouble is cracking its shiny veneer. In the US, economic growth is no longer matched by economic development. Wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few, natural resources are exploited for short-term profits, and good jobs are hard to find.

The Last Days of New York: A reporter’s true tale tells the story of how a corrupted political system hollowed out New York City, leaving it especially vulnerable, all in the name of equity and “fairness”. When, in the future, people ask how New York City fell to pieces, they can be told - quoting Hemingway - “gradually, then suddenly”. New Yorkers awoke from a slumber of ease and prosperity to discover that their glorious city was not only unprepared for crisis, but that the underpinnings of its fortune had been gutted by the reckless mismanagement of Bill de Blasio.

2020년 코로나 19라는 초유의 사태로, 일찍이 경험해 보지 못한 일들이 잇달아 일어나고 있다. 모든 것이 그 이전과는 다른, 우리가 경험해보지 못한 '달라진 세계'에 대한 전망과 담론장이 폭발하고 있다. 하지만 그런 담론의 범람 속에서 고민의 '방향'을 함께 질문하려는 시도가 드문 것이 사실이다.

2020년 코로나 19라는 초유의 사태로, 일찍이 경험해 보지 못한 일들이 잇달아 일어나고 있다. 모든 것이 그 이전과는 다른, 우리가 경험해보지 못한 '달라진 세계'에 대한 전망과 담론장이 폭발하고 있다. 하지만 그런 담론의 범람 속에서 고민의 '방향'을 함께 질문하려는 시도가 드문 것이 사실이다.

Es imposible calcular el alcance exacto de la crisis del Coronavirus en nuestra economía, salud y forma de vida a partir de ahora. Lo único que sabemos es que salimos a un mundo distinto al que hemos conocido, y eso no tiene que ser necesariamente malo. Para vivir esta nueva era llena de desafíos, 20 maestros nos dan, cada cual desde su campo, un kit de supervivencia para vivir de forma proactiva, optimista y sin miedo.

In Not to Scale, Jamer Hunt investigates the complications of scale in the digital age, highlighting an interesting paradox: We now have a world of information at our fingertips, yet ironically the more informed we have become, the more overwhelmed we feel. The global effects of our daily choices (Paper or plastic? Own or lease? Shop local or buy online?) remain difficult for us to comprehend, and solutions to large-scale national and international issues feel inconceivable.