Economic Theory

Many blame today's economic inequality, stagnation, and political instability on the free market. The solution is to rein in the market, right? Radical Markets turns this thinking - and pretty much all conventional thinking about markets, both for and against - on its head. The book reveals bold new ways to organize markets for the good of everyone.

We like to think of ourselves as rational. This idea is the foundation for classical economic analysis of human behavior, including the awesome achievements of game theory. But as behavioral economics shows, most behavior doesn’t seem rational at all - which, unfortunately, casts doubt on game theory’s real-world credibility. In Hidden Games, Moshe Hoffman and Erez Yoeli find a surprising middle ground between the hyperrationality of classical economics and the hyper-irrationality of behavioral economics.

En los últimos años China se ha convertido en una verdadera superpotencia de la IA y el único verdadero contrapeso nacional a Estados Unidos en esta tecnología emergente. Por ello, la forma en que estos dos países decidan competir y cooperar podría llegar a tener consecuencias dramáticas para la economía y la gobernabilidad mundial.

One of the most influential books on economics ever written, Thomas Robert Malthus's An Essay on the Principle of Population remains one of the most controversial too. This 1798 work inspired naturalists Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace to develop the theory of natural selection. But it has also sparked criticism - Karl Marx famously called Malthus a "lackey of the bourgeoisie." Yet this hasn't stopped leading present-day environmentalists from taking up Malthus's ideas.

This slim primer distills Sharma's decades of experience into 10 rules for identifying nations that are poised to take off or crash. A wake-up call to economists who failed to foresee every recent crisis, including the cataclysm of 2008, 10 Rules is full of pioneering insights on signs of political, economic, and social change. Sharma explains, for example, why autocrats are bad for the economy; robots are a blessing, not a curse; and consumer prices don’t tell you all you need to know about inflation.

This classic statement of economic liberalism or the policy of laissez-faire was first published in 1776. It is an engrossing analysis of the economic facts of life. Several fundamental principles, many of which are now referred to as axioms, were introduced in this work, the division of labor, supply-and-demand, and free market capitalism being among the most obvious.

Talk about great timing. Rothbard's extraordinary book unravels the mystery of banking: What is legitimate enterprise and what is a government-backed shell game that can't last? His explanation is clear enough for anyone to follow and yet precise and rigorous enough to be the best textbook for college classes on the topic. This is because its expository clarity - in its history and theory - is essentially unrivaled. Most notably, he uses the T-account method of explaining the relationship between deposits and loans, showing the inherent instability of fractional reserve banking.

Mission Economy looks at the challenges facing us in a radically new way. Global warming, pollution, dementia, obesity, gun violence, mobility—these environmental, health, and social dilemmas are huge, complex, and have no simple solutions. Mariana Mazzucato argues we need to think bigger and mobilize our resources in a way that is as bold as inspirational as the moon landing—this time to the most "wicked" social problems of our time. We can only begin to find answers if we fundamentally restructure capitalism to make it inclusive, sustainable, and driven by innovation.

The author of the widely praised Age of Greed now gives us a bold indictment of some of our most accepted economic theories - why they’re wrong, the harm they’ve done, and the theories that would vastly improve them.

Our current democratic capitalist system is close to imploding. This book is the first to reveal the secret financial system dominating capitalism today and shows how we can create accountability to restore our democracy.

Political Realignment tracks the evolution of citizen and elite opinions on economic and cultural issues from the 1970s to the 2010s - and the impact of these changes on electoral politics and public policy. Citizen positions on these cleavages have realigned over time, producing a similar realignment in the structure of the party systems to represent these demands. Economic issues remain important, now joined by divisions on cultural issues as a backlash to modernization. Assembling a time series of empirical evidence, this study explains the new forces of elector change in both Europe and the United States.

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.

Decades after The Death and Life of Great American Cities forever changed the field of urban studies, Jane Jacobs—one of the few contemporary thinkers whose works will remain in print for generations—brought us a modern classic on economies and ecology. The Nature of Economies is written in the form of a Platonic dialogue, a conversation over coffee among five contemporary New Yorkers. The question they discuss is: Does economic life obey the same rules as those governing nature? The answers that emerge will shape the way people think about how economies really work.

Informed by meticulous research, field experience, and classroom-tested strategies, Dealmaking offers essential insights for anyone involved in buying or selling everything from cars to corporations. Leading business scholar Guhan Subramanian provides a lively tour of both negotiation and auction theory, then takes an in-depth look at his own hybrid theory, outlining three specific strategies listeners can use in complex dealmaking situations.

The award-winning author of The Battle of Bretton Woods reveals the gripping history behind the Marshall Plan—told with verve, insight, and resonance for today.

In the wake of World War II, with Britain’s empire collapsing and Stalin's on the rise, US officials under new secretary of state George C. Marshall set out to reconstruct western Europe as a bulwark against communist authoritarianism. Their massive, costly, and ambitious undertaking would confront Europeans and Americans alike with a vision at odds with their history and self-conceptions. In the process, they would drive the creation of NATO, the European Union, and a Western identity that continues to shape world events.

Focusing on the critical years 1947 to 1949, Benn Steil’s thrilling account brings to life the seminal episodes marking the collapse of postwar US-Soviet relations—the Prague coup, the Berlin blockade, and the division of Germany. In each case, we see and understand like never before Stalin’s determination to crush the Marshall Plan and undermine American power in Europe.

Given current echoes of the Cold War, as Putin’s Russia rattles the world order, the tenuous balance of power and uncertain order of the late 1940s is as relevant as ever. The Marshall Plan provides critical context into understanding today’s international landscape. Bringing to bear fascinating new material from American, Russian, German, and other European archives, Steil’s account will forever change how we see the Marshall Plan and the birth of the Cold War. A polished and masterly work of historical narrative, this is an instant classic of Cold War literature.

Do we have to choose between equality and prosperity? Many think that reducing economic inequality would require such heavy-handed interference with market forces that it would stifle economic growth. Heather Boushey insists nothing could be further from the truth. Presenting cutting-edge economics with journalistic verve, she shows how rising inequality has become a drag on growth and an impediment to a competitive United States marketplace for employers and employees alike.

The 20th century witnessed the triumph of democratic capitalism in the industrialized West, with widespread popular support for both free markets and representative elections. Today, that political consensus appears to be breaking down, disrupted by polarization and income inequality, widespread dissatisfaction with democratic institutions, and insurgent populism. Tracing the history of democratic capitalism over the past two centuries, Carles Boix explains how we got here - and where we could be headed.

The intensified globalization that ensued after the end of the Cold War has resulted in an unprecedented level of interconnectedness between the economies of all rising and established powers. Economic interdependence makes today's world a much more complex place than when balance of power theory was initially developed. International relations literature has overlooked the fact that great powers have been using institutions to soft balance each other's power and aggressive behavior. Restraining Great Powers places the evolution of balancing behavior in historical perspective.

‘Property is Theft’, a phrase which has passed into common parlance, was the rallying call of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s political treatise What Is Property? Proudhon (1809-1865) was both admired and excoriated. A political theorist of the first order, he was vilified in his native France by the Communists and the Monarchists alike, though admired by Karl Marx as well as many in the nation’s academia and judiciary who valued the clarity of his thought and analytical method.

Loneliness has become the defining condition of the 21st century. It is damaging our health, our wealth, and our happiness and even threatening our democracy. Never has it been more pervasive or more widespread, but never has there been more that we can do about it.