Public Economics

In this stunning new story of political economy, author Eric Robert Morse examines why the modern system has become so unwieldy and explains what must be done to correct it. His astute analysis and fascinating storytelling take readers on an epic journey, from the dawn of free-market capitalism during the age of exploration, through the industrial revolution and Adam Smith, to the rise of Keynesianism and the dominance of the welfare state....

Free-market economists often have noted that there are winners and losers in a competitive capitalist world. The question of how to deal with the difficult real-life consequences faced by the losers, however, has largely been ignored. Populist politicians have tried repeatedly to address the issue by creating walls - of both the physical and economic kinds - to insulate communities and keep competition at bay. Economist Glenn Hubbard argues that because they delay needed adaptations to the ever-changing world, walls are essentially backward-looking and ultimately destined to fail.

In one lifetime GDP, or gross domestic product, has ballooned from a narrow economic tool into a global article of faith. It is our universal yardstick of progress. As The Little Big Number demonstrates, this spells trouble. While economies and cultures measure their performance by it, GDP ignores central facts such as quality, costs, and purpose.

This book demonstrates how economic tools have been used throughout history to accomplish goals of military conflict, how they can be used more effectively than traditional means of warfare in the modern era, and how we can derive a better understanding of economic strategy applicable - not just to the military, but also to market competition.

In the 1930s, battered and humbled by the Great Depression, the US financial sector struck a grand bargain with the federal government. Bankers gained a safety net in exchange for certain curbs on their freedom: transparency rules, record-keeping and anti-fraud measures, and fiduciary responsibilities. By the free-market era of the 1980s and 90s, however, Wall Street argued that rules embodied in New Deal-era regulations to protect consumers and ultimately taxpayers were no longer needed - and government agreed.

The world’s largest company, WalMart Stores, has revenues higher than the gross domestic product of all but twentyfive of the world’s countries. Its employees outnumber the populations of almost one hundred nations. The world’s largest asset manager, a New York company called BlackRock, controls assets greater than the national reserves of any country on the planet.

Though best known for his primary authorship of the Federalist Papers, his death in a duel at the hands of Vice President Aaron Burr on the banks of the Hudson River and his star role in a 21st-century musical, it is often overlooked that Alexander Hamilton was instrumental in creating the key financial building blocks of the young United States of America. The first incumbent of the office of secretary of the Treasury on September 11, 1789, Hamilton submitted a series of financial reports many of which became the economic foundations on which the US was built.

Wall Street lawyer Norm Champ spent nearly 20 years dealing with the SEC on behalf of his clients and as an industry representative working to educate the agency about hedge funds. Believing he could help reform the deeply flawed agency, Champ left his career in the private sector and joined the SEC. In Going Public, Champ presents a rare insider's look at how the SEC operates and explains exactly how the agency impacts the overall economic health of the country.

The bankruptcy of the investment bank Lehman Brothers was the pivotal event of the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession that followed. Ever since the bankruptcy, there has been heated debate about why the Federal Reserve did not rescue Lehman in the same way it rescued other financial institutions, such as Bear Stearns and AIG. The Fed's leaders from that time, especially former Chairman Ben Bernanke, have strongly asserted that they lacked the legal authority to save Lehman because it did not have adequate collateral for the loan it needed to survive.

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.

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.

The bailouts during the recent financial crisis enraged the public. They felt unfair - and counterproductive: people who take risks must be allowed to fail. If we reward firms that make irresponsible investments, aren't we encouraging them to continue to act irresponsibly? Bailouts have happened throughout economic history and are unavoidable in any modern, market-based economy. And they're actually good. Contrary to popular belief, the financial system cannot operate properly unless the government stands ready to bail out banks and other firms.

The experts say that America's best days are behind us, that mediocre long-term economic growth is baked in the cake, and that politically, socially, and racially, the United States will continue to tear itself apart. But David Smick - hedge fund strategist and author of the 2008 best seller The World Is Curved - argues that the experts are wrong.

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.

Published to mark the 30th anniversary of the financial revolution known as Big Bang, Crash Bang Wallop tells the gripping story of how the changes introduced in the 1980s in the City of London transformed our world. Attitudes to money and the way we measure value and status were completely reshaped by Big Bang, and it had an extraordinary impact on politics, on style, on technology, on the class system, on questions of public ownership, and on the geography of London.

This wide-ranging treatment of how money secretly influences our lives includes chapters on the many forms of money, why money is so easily worshipped, why money sometimes feels more important than life, hoarding money, the source of riches, inheritance, and the stock market. Crawford, a teller of entertaining tales, gathers stories and myths from around the world that help us understand why money is so much more than the useful tool that we may think it to be.

In a sweeping narrative that takes listeners from the production of Stone Age axes, to the invention of chocolate chip cookies, to the experience of Burning Man, Philip Auerswald argues that the key driver of human history is the advance of code. At each major stage in the advance of code over the span of centuries, shifts in the structure of society have challenged human beings to reinvent not only how we work, but who we are. We are at one of those stages now.