Public Finance

Economist Richard Holden examines the virtues and risks of low interest rates, mobile money, and cryptocurrencies and explains how these three elemental forces will continue to play out—in our wallets, on the blockchain, and throughout major economies—in the decades to come. Holden weaves in the stories of three people who have exerted massive influence over the future of modern money: US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin, and Raghuram Rajan, chief economist at the International Monetary Fund.

An eye-opening account of the failures of our financial system, the sources of its staying power, and the path to meaningful economic reform.

The United States has been through one of the most tumultuous decades in recent history. Polls show people on both sides of the ideological divide believe that the country has gone off track. If something isn't done quickly, Americans face a bleak future - continuing decline and disarray in a world that grows ever more dangerous. Steve Forbes explains how today's malaise has been caused by years of Obama's destructive policies, a broken tax system, and the Federal Reserve's Soviet-style controls over credit and money.

When it comes to the afflictions of the global economy, almost everyone - and especially Donald Trump - is quick to point the finger of blame at the state of international trade. But what about unconstrained capital flows? Unfettered capital has resulted in a string of financial and economic crises that have left our political systems strained and dialogue corroded. The once perceived benefits of openness have been cast to the wayside and the cracks in the global order can no longer be ignored.

Pessimism is ubiquitous throughout the Western world as the pressing issues of massive debt, high unemployment, and anemic economic growth divide the populace into warring political camps. Right-and left-wing ideologues talk past each other, with neither side admitting the other has any good ideas. In American Gridlock, leading economist and political theorist H. Woody Brock bridges the left/right divide, illuminating a clear path out of our economic quagmire. Brock reveals fresh ideas for tackling issues central to the 2012 US Presidential election.

Using dozens of vivid examples to show how society overprescribed competition as a solution and when unbridled rivalry hurts consumers, kills entrepreneurship, and increases economic inequality, two free-market thinkers diagnose the sickness caused by competition overdose and provide remedies that will promote sustainable growth and progress for everyone, not just wealthy shareholders and those at the top.

Before the global financial meltdown of 2008, India's economy was thriving and its GDP growth was cruising at an impressive 8.8 percent. The economic boom impacted a large section of Indians, even if unequally. With sustained high growth over an extended period, India could have achieved what economists call a "take-off" (rapid and self-sustained GDP growth). The global financial meltdown disrupted this momentum in 2008.

This book is a critical assessment of five years of the brand of economics Prime Minister Narendra Modi has championed, often referred to as "Modinomics". Brought into power with the biggest political mandate in almost three decades, did the NDA government succeed in gainfully transforming India's economic trajectory or did it squander a once-in-a-generation opportunity? The book conjectures it is the latter, and analyses why the Modi government's stewardship of the economy is a "great disappointment".

In this provocative book, Jonathan Rothwell draws on the latest empirical evidence from across the social sciences to demonstrate how rich democracies have allowed racial politics and the interests of those at the top to subordinate justice. He looks at the rise of nationalism in Europe and the United States, revealing how this trend overlaps with racial prejudice and is related to mounting frustration with a political status quo that thrives on income inequality and inefficient markets. But economic differences are by no means inevitable.

Throughout the 20th century, "free enterprise" has been a contested keyword in American politics, and the cornerstone of a conservative philosophy that seeks to limit government involvement into economic matters. Lawrence B. Glickman shows how the idea first gained traction in American discourse and was championed by opponents of the New Deal. Those politicians, believing free enterprise to be a fundamental American value, held it up as an antidote to a liberalism that they maintained would lead toward totalitarian statism.

Finally, a practical, realistic plan to rescue, preserve and enhance nature. This is an economist's approach to environmentalism, including a summary of Britain's green assets, a look towards possible futures and an achievable 25-year plan to a green and prosperous world. News about Britain’s wildlife and ecosystems tends to be grim. In Green and Prosperous Land, Dieter Helm, a member of the Department of Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and advisor to the government, shares a radical but tangible plan for positive change.

Donald Trump promised the American people a transformative change in economic policy after eight years of stagnation under Obama. But he didn’t adopt a conventional left or right economic agenda. In Trumponomics, conservative economists Stephen Moore and Arthur B. Laffer offer a well-informed defense of the president's approach to trade, taxes, employment, infrastructure, and other economic policies.

The free-market, limited-government development model has been an ecological and social disaster for the developing world. Sustainable and equitable development is only possible with the active involvement of a strong central state that can guide the economy, protect the environment, and prioritize meeting their people’s basic needs. In this sure-to-be-controversial audiobook, Chandran Nair shows that the market-dominated model followed by the industrialized West is simply not scalable.

Families today are squeezed on every side - from high childcare costs and harsh employment policies to workplaces without paid family leave or even dependable and regular working hours. Many realize that attaining the standard of living their parents managed has become impossible. Alissa Quart, executive editor of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, examines the lives of many middle-class Americans who can now barely afford to raise children.

Andy Puzder, the former CEO of Carl's Jr. and Hardee's, says that "capitalism" is not a dirty word, and thankfully President Trump understands this; his pro-business policies will bring back economic growth and secure our future. Leftist forces in the United States have been seeking to tarnish the pursuit of prosperity and to paint profit as an evil motivation fit only for greedy plutocrats.

Defender hoy en día las ideas liberales tiene mucho mérito estando como estamos, aleccionados sobre los males que una excesiva libertad implica, infectados por el virus del populismo en el seno de la izquierda europea y acomplejados por ideas proteccionistas y antiliberales en la derecha. Y si este alegato viene además de un representante de las nuevas generaciones de jóvenes liberales, la valía e interés que ha de suscitar es todavía mayor.

Los economistas pueden engañarnos cuando hablan de la economía como si ésta fuese una ciencia exacta que proporciona análisis y respuestas únicas, objetivas y ajenas a los valores y a los intereses de cada persona. Juan Torres López plantea cincuenta grandes preguntas relativas al funcionamiento más general de la economía para mostrar, a través de sus respuestas, que los problemas económicos tienen soluciones diferentes según las hipótesis de partida de cada economista y en función de a quién se quiera beneficiar con ellas.

In Putinomics, Chris Miller examines the making of Russian economic policy since Vladimir Putin took power in 1999. Miller argues that Putin's economic strategy has functioned far more effectively than most Westerners realize. While acknowledging that part of Putin's successes - above all, quadrupling per capita GDP in just a decade and a half - can be attributed to cashing in on high oil prices, Miller details the government policies that have also been fundamental to Russia's growth.

For speakers who want to make their presentations more impressive than the tens of thousands of speeches delivered (and immediately forgotten) every day, The How of WOW offers a refreshing antidote to the usual formulas. The How of WOW offers hundreds of practical tips, techniques, and illuminating examples to help speakers at every stage of the speech process, from considering an invitation to speak to making sure that the message is remembered even after the speech is over.

How serious are the threats to our environment? Here is one measure of the problem: if we continue to do exactly what we are doing, with no growth in the human population or the world economy, the world in the latter part of this century will be unfit to live in. Of course human activities are not holding at current levels—they are accelerating, dramatically—and so, too, is the pace of climate disruption, biotic impoverishment, and toxification.