Public Economics

In The Black Boom, Jason L. Riley—acclaimed Wall Street Journal columnist and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute—digs into the data and concludes that the economic lives of black people improved significantly under policies put into place during the Trump administration.

In Oneness vs. the 1%, Vandana Shiva takes on the billionaires club of Gates, Buffet, and Zuckerberg, as well as other modern empires whose blindness to the rights of people, and to the destructive impact of their construct of linear progress, have wrought havoc across the world. Their single-minded pursuit of profit has undemocratically enforced uniformity and monocultures, division and separation, monopolies and external control - over finance, food, energy, information, health care, and even relationships.

Karl Marx's Capital is one of the most important texts written in the modern era. Since 1867, when the first of its three volumes was published, it has had a profound effect on politics and economics in theory and practice throughout the world. But Marx wrote in the context of capitalism in the second half of the 19th century: his assumptions and analysis need to be updated in order to address the technological, economic, and industrial change that has followed Capital's initial publication.

Neoliberalism - the doctrine that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action - has become dominant in both thought and practice throughout much of the world since 1970 or so. Writing for a wide audience, David Harvey, author of The New Imperialism and The Condition of Postmodernity, here tells the political-economic story of where neoliberalization came from and how it proliferated on the world stage.

The Constitution of Liberty is considered Hayek's classic statement on the ideals of freedom and liberty, ideals that he believes have guided - and must continue to guide - the growth of Western civilization. Here, Hayek defends the principles of a free society, casting a skeptical eye on the growth of the welfare state and examining the challenges to freedom posed by an ever-expanding government.

Inflation is back, and its impact can be felt everywhere, from the grocery store to the mortgage market to the results of elections around the world. Yet the conventional wisdom about inflation is stuck in the past. Since the 1970s, there has only really been one playbook for fighting inflation: raise interest rates, thereby creating unemployment and a recession, which will lower prices. But this simple story hides a multitude of beliefs about why prices go up and how policymakers can wrestle them back down, beliefs that are often wrong, damaging, and have little empirical basis.

Best-selling author Chris Turner brings listeners onto the streets of Fort McMurray, showing the myriad ways the oil sands of Alberta impact our lives and demanding that we ask the question: To both fuel the world and to save it, what do we do about the Patch? This is no conventional story about the oil business. Rather, it is a portrait of the life cycle of the Patch, showing just how deeply it continues to impact the lives of everyone around the world.

To modern Western society, capitalism is the air we breathe, and most people rarely think to question it, for good or for ill. But knowing what makes capitalism work - and what makes it fail - is crucial to understanding its long-term health and the vast implications for the global economy that go along with it.

By the winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize in Economics, an essential and paradigm-altering framework for understanding economic development - for both rich and poor - in the 21st century. Freedom, Sen argues, is both the end and most efficient means of sustaining economic life and the key to securing the general welfare of the world's entire population. Releasing the idea of individual freedom from association with any particular historical, intellectual, political, or religious tradition, Sen clearly demonstrates its current applicability and possibilities.

China's Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know® is a concise introduction to the most astonishing economic growth story of the last three decades. In the 1980s, China was an impoverished backwater, struggling to escape the political turmoil and economic mismanagement of the Mao era. Today it is the world's second biggest economy, the largest manufacturing and trading nation, the consumer of half the world's steel and coal, the biggest source of international tourists, and one of the most influential investors in developing countries from southeast Asia to Africa to Latin America.

This myth shattering book reveals the methods Nouriel Roubini used to foretell the current crisis before other economists saw it coming and shows how those methods can help us make sense of the present and prepare for the future. Renowned economist Nouriel Roubini electrified his profession and...

In A Splendid Exchange, William J. Bernstein tells the extraordinary story of global commerce from its prehistoric origins to the myriad controversies surrounding it today. He transports listeners from ancient sailing ships that brought the silk trade from China to Rome in the second century to the rise and fall of the Portuguese monopoly in spices in the 16th.

When turmoil strikes world monetary and financial markets, leaders invariably call for "a new Bretton Woods" to prevent catastrophic economic disorder and defuse political conflict. The name of the remote New Hampshire town where representatives of 44 nations gathered in July 1944, in the midst of the century's second great war, has become shorthand for enlightened globalization.

Alan Blinder, one of the world's most influential economists and one of the field's best writers, draws on his deep firsthand experience to provide an authoritative account of sixty years of monetary and fiscal policy in the United States. Spanning twelve presidents, from John F. Kennedy to Joe Biden, and eight Federal Reserve chairs, from William McChesney Martin to Jerome Powell, this is an insider's story of macroeconomic policy that hasn't been told before—one that is a pleasure to listen to, and as interesting as it is important.

Economics drives the modern world and shapes our lives, but few of us feel we have time to engage with the breadth of ideas in the subject. 50 Economics Classics is the smart person's guide to two centuries of discussion of finance, capitalism, and the global economy. From Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations to Thomas Piketty's best-seller Capital in the Twenty-First Century, here are the great books and seminal ideas, clarified and illuminated for all.

Trade disputes are usually understood as conflicts between countries with competing national interests, but as Matthew C. Klein and Michael Pettis show in this book, they are often the unexpected result of domestic political choices to serve the interests of the rich at the expense of workers and ordinary retirees. Klein and Pettis trace the origins of today's trade wars to decisions made by politicians and business leaders in China, Europe, and the United States over the past 30 years.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Federal Reserve deployed an extraordinary range of policy tools that helped prevent the collapse of the financial system and the U.S. economy. Chair Jerome Powell and his colleagues lent directly to U.S. businesses, purchased trillions of dollars of government securities, pumped dollars into the international financial system, and crafted a new framework for monetary policy that emphasized job creation.

For centuries, economics was dominated by the idea that we are rational individuals who optimize our own “utility”. Then, in the 1970s, psychologists demonstrated that the reality is a lot messier. We don’t really know what our utility is, and we care about people other than ourselves. We are susceptible to external nudges. And far from being perfectly rational, we are prone to “cognitive biases” with complex effects on decision-making, such as forgetting to prepare for retirement.

The more we know about the catastrophic implications of climate change, the more fossil fuels we burn. How did we end up in this mess? In this masterful new history, Andreas Malm claims it all began in Britain with the rise of steam power. But why did manufacturers turn from traditional sources of power, notably water mills, to an engine fired by coal? Contrary to established views, steam offered neither cheaper nor more abundant energy - but rather superior control of subordinate labor.

Far more than a rhetorical exercise, this book is designed to inform, inspire, and spur action. Based on Sachs' 14 years as director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and as special advisor to the United Nations Secretary-General on the Millennium Development Goals and Sustainable Development Goals, The Age of Sustainable Development is a landmark publication and a clarion call for all who care about our planet and global justice.