International Economics

Chronicling the rise and fall of the efficient market theory and the century-long making of the modern financial industry, Justin Fox’s The Myth of the Rational Market is as much an intellectual whodunit as a cultural history of the perils and possibilities of risk. The book brings to life the people and ideas that forged modern finance and investing, from the formative days of Wall Street through the Great Depression and into the financial calamity of today.

Our world order is under pressure as never before. From new authoritarian regimes in the US, Turkey and Russia to the imminent breakup of the European Union and a social media awash with intolerance, things look set to fall apart just as abruptly as the Soviet Union did some 30 years ago. How did we get here, and what do we do now? In this searching new exploration of our crisis, Paul Mason argues that at its heart lies an attack on the idea of humanity itself.

In his previous book, The Elusive Quest for Growth, William Easterly criticized the utter ineffectiveness of Western organizations to mitigate global poverty, and he was promptly fired by his then-employer, the World Bank. The White Man's Burden is his widely anticipated counterpunch - a brilliant and blistering indictment of the West's economic policies for the world's poor.

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.

In Terrorism: What Everyone Needs to Know, Todd Sandler, one of America's leading scholars on the topic, provides a broad and example-rich overview of this perennially important issue. After clearly defining terrorism, he then discusses terrorism's causes, the nature of terrorist groups, how governments seek to counter terrorism, its economic consequences, and the future of terrorism.

With twenty years of experience in frontier markets, including a decade working in Africa, author Jonathan Berman engages with top business leaders on the vast opportunities and challenges of the continent. Success in Africa pushes past the headlines on Africa's growth to answer the questions often asked by companies and investors: Who do I work with there and what drives them? How do I deal with government? What about war, disease, and poverty? What about China? How do I win?

Is Social Security really going bust, and what does that mean to me? If I hire an immigrant, am I hurting a native-born worker? How much can presidents really affect economic outcomes? Why does the stock market go up when employment declines? What's a "living wage?" Why do I feel so squeezed? If you'd like to know the answers to these questions, premier economist Jared Bernstein is here to help.

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.

The global finance system can be regulated to prevent massive credit fraud, tame capitalism, confront the sovereign debt crisis, and move towards investing in the real economy and full employment. "Obamanomics" and American reinvention can lead to a sustained economic recovery but only together with major domestic, European, and global monetary reforms in cooperation with emerging nations.

With the US market in shambles, investors are looking for other places to put their money. Europe has become the destination of choice and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.

Una frattura si allarga sempre di più. L'abbiamo ignorata, sottovalutata, creduta lontana, eppure da cinquant'anni si amplia e si ramifica, spalancando voragini tra i continenti, le nazioni e i cittadini stessi. È "The Divide", il divario economico tra ricchi e poveri del mondo: 4,3 miliardi di persone vivono con meno di 5 dollari al giorno mentre otto uomini posseggono la stessa ricchezza della metà più povera del pianeta.

Jude Wanniski's masterpiece defined the policies at the heart of the Reagan economic boom that continues today and promises a coming century of global peace and prosperity. Writing with a simplicity and liveliness uncommon to his subject, Wanniski offers a fresh general theory of the world's political evolution that explains how and why economies fail and succeed, now and as far as we can imagine.

Shaped by his 25 years traveling the world and enlivened by encounters with tycoons, presidents, and villagers from Rio to Beijing, Ruchir Sharma's The Rise and Fall of Nations rethinks the "dismal science" of economics as a practical art. Narrowing the thousands of factors that can shape a country's fortunes to 10 clear rules, Sharma explains how to spot political, economic, and social changes in real time. He shows how to read political headlines, black markets, the price of onions, and billionaire rankings as signals of booms, busts, and protests.

Coffee is an indispensable part of daily life for billions of people around the world - one of the most valuable commodities in the history of global capitalism, the leading source of the world's most popular drug, and perhaps the most widespread word on the planet. Augustine Sedgewick's Coffeeland tells the hidden and surprising story of how this came to be, tracing coffee's 500-year transformation from a mysterious Muslim ritual into an everyday necessity.

For nearly half a century, Americans have been bombarded by neoliberal propaganda promoting the lie that wages are objectively determined by impersonal labor markets. This falsehood has been repeated by academics, journalists, business leaders, and politicians so often that even many on the liberal left and the populist right believe it. In Hell to Pay, Michael Lind, author of The New Class War, debunks this lie.

Blending economic analysis with political drama, EuroTragedy is a groundbreaking account of the euro's history and tragic consequences. In this vivid and compelling chronicle, Ashoka Mody describes how the euro improbably emerged through a narrow historical window as a flawed compromise wrapped in a false pro-European rhetoric of peace and unity.

Silicon Valley is imperializing the planet. With nearly bottomless supplies of cash and ambition, a small group of companies have been gradually seizing symbolic and practical civic leadership in America and worldwide. But Silicon Valley does not answer to the electorate; nor have they been voted into office. And the perils of their influence are only now making themselves known.

Trade was once an esoteric economic issue with little domestic policy resonance. Activists did not prioritize it, and grassroots political mobilization seemed unlikely to free trade advocates. The passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in the early 1990s was therefore expected to be a fait accompli. Yet, as Trade Battles shows, activists pushed back: They increased the public consciousness on trade, mobilized new constituencies against it, and demanded that the rules of the global economy protect the collective rights and common good of citizens.

Even if we live within sight of the sea, it is easy to forget that our world is an ocean world. The open ocean, that vast expanse of international waters, begins just a few miles out and spreads across three-fourths of the globe. It is a place of storms and danger, both natural and manmade. And at a time when every last patch of land is claimed by one government or another, it is a place that remains radically free.

South Korea's extraordinary economic and technological transformation after the Korean War (1950-1953) is often referred to by observers and historians as the "Miracle on the Han River." The nation underwent an astonishing makeover from being one of the poorest countries to become the 12th largest economy in the world and 4th in Asia. South Korea also became one of the most technologically advanced countries in a short span. As in other capitalist economies, some people have benefited from the economic and technological attainments, while others have been left out....