New Books in Economics

In this podcast Owen Bennett-Jones discusses the future of rational decision making with Professor Olivier Sibony who after 25 years with McKinsey & Company in France, is now at HEC Paris and the Saïd Business School in Oxford University. In 2021 he co-wrote the book Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment (Little, Brown Spark, 2021) with Cass R. Sunstein and Daniel Kahneman. For those trying to resist th...

As the US contends with issues of populism and de-democratization, this timely study considers the impacts of digital technologies on the country’s politics and society. In Algorithms and the End of Politics: How Technology Shapes 21st-Century American Life (Bristol University Press, 2021), Dr. Scott Timcke provides a Marxist analysis of the rise of digital media, social networks and technology gi...

As the US contends with issues of populism and de-democratization, this timely study considers the impacts of digital technologies on the country’s politics and society. In Algorithms and the End of Politics: How Technology Shapes 21st-Century American Life (Bristol University Press, 2021), Dr. Scott Timcke provides a Marxist analysis of the rise of digital media, social networks and technology gi...

In the first decades after World War II, many newly independent Asian and African countries and established Latin American states pursued a socialist development model. In Ripe for Revolution: Building Socialism in the Third World (Harvard UP, 2022), Jeremy Friedman traces the socialist experiment over forty years through the experience of five countries: Indonesia, Chile, Tanzania, Angola, and Ir...

In her book Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century (Oxford UP, 2022), Cambridge academic Helen Thompson gets beyond the ephemeral and analyses instead the role of more fundamental drivers of events – including the energy markets and the international monetary system. That’s one way in which her book is distinctive. It’s also a very broad book. While much of academic output has a very narrow focu...

Nothing has had a more profound impact on the lives of humans than economic growth. Thus, understanding economic growth is, on its own, understanding the essence of humanity. This is the objective of The Journey of Humanity: The Origins of Wealth and Inequality (Dutton, 2022) by Oded Galor. A fascinating book that explores the universal forces behind economic growth and prosperity. With a marvelou...

In her book Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century (Oxford UP, 2022), Cambridge academic Helen Thompson gets beyond the ephemeral and analyses instead the role of more fundamental drivers of events – including the energy markets and the international monetary system. That’s one way in which her book is distinctive. It’s also a very broad book. While much of academic output has a very narrow focu...

Skill—specifically the distinction between the “skilled” and “unskilled”—is generally defined as a measure of ability and training, but Does Skill Make Us Human?: Migrant Workers in 21st-Century Qatar and Beyond (Princeton UP, 2021) shows instead that skill distinctions are used to limit freedom, narrow political rights, and even deny access to imagination and desire. Natasha Iskander takes reader...

Private corporations are rarely discussed as playing a role in efforts to curb civil violence, even though they often have strong interests in maintaining stability. Violence often damages the infrastructure necessary to deliver goods to market or may directly target companies. Corporations also have a normative obligation to conduct business in ways that promote peace. While there are historical...

In the modern world, human trafficking and slavery take various forms: one such example is forced labor. But understanding exactly how and where forced labor might occur has been a challenge for researchers and regulatory authorities. In the third episode of our new themed series In Chains, we speak with Dr. Alexis Aronowitz from University College Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands, who is the aut...

We speak with Richard Detweiler about his new book The Evidence Liberal Arts Needs: Lives of Consequence, Inquiry and Accomplishment (MIT Press, 2021). This multi-year project, which entailed interviews with a national sample of over 1,000 college graduates aged 25-64, provides convincing evidence of the benefits the liberal arts in enabling individuals to lead more fulfilling lives and successful...

From princes to peasants, musicians to masons, cement plant owners to casual labourers—the State Bank of India (SBI) has been the go-to bank for the people of India. Widely trusted and near-ubiquitous, the SBI has come to symbolise banking across the length and breadth of the Indian nation. This book traces the SBI’s deep connection to India’s economic progress, and the bank’s proactive approach t...

Africa is often portrayed in terms of dictators, starvation, corruption, tribalism, war, disease, poverty and crime. In this podcast Professor James A. Robinson of the University of Chicago who is co-author (with Daron Acemoglu of Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (Currency, 2013) explains why those stereotypes are often wrong and why he believes Africa has a brighter...

As the glittering skyline in Shanghai seemingly attests, China has quickly transformed itself from a place of stark poverty into a modern, urban, technologically savvy economic powerhouse. But as Scott Rozelle and Natalie Hell show in Invisible China, the truth is much more complicated and might be a serious cause for concern. China’s growth has relied heavily on unskilled labor. Most of the worke...

Drawing on decades of experience covering the global economy, New York Times' journalist Peter S. Goodman profiles five representative Davos Men-members of the billionaire class-chronicling how their shocking exploitation of the global pandemic has hastened a fifty-year trend of wealth centralization. Alongside this reporting, Goodman delivers textured portraits of those caught in Davos Man's wake...

Dr. Maryam Ziaee is a University Lecturer at Victoria University in Australia teaching and researching Operations and Supply Chain Management. Dr. Ziaee has developed a cutting-edge model for big data analytics adoption in Australia’s pharmaceutical manufacturers that has garnered more attention in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic which has thrown the global supply chain into disarray. Manufactu...

Prototype Nation: China and the Contested Promise of Innovation (Princeton University Press, 2020) reveals how a growing distrust in Western models of progress and development, including Silicon Valley and the tech industry after the financial crisis of 2007–8, shaped the vision of China as a “new frontier” of innovation. Author Silvia Lindtner unpacks how this promise of entrepreneurial life has...

I spoke with Prof Julie Froud and Prof Karel Williams about Foundational Economy: The Infrastructure of Everyday Life (Manchester University Press, 2022). This book originally published in English in 2018 synthesises the collective’s work of the previous five years in developing the foundational approach. It should now be read in conjunction with our The Foundational Approach (2020) guide to curre...

Many have experienced moments where algorithms have made us uncomfortable or suspicious. In Algorithms and Autonomy: The Ethics of Automated Decision Systems (Cambridge University Press, 2021), Rubel, Phan, and Castro outline the stories of teachers and citizens subject to the criminal justice system who face serious consequences at the hands of algorithms. With a focus on locating the a philosoph...

How can we each do our part to reduce inequality and help the poor, not just in our own communities but around the world? As a devout Christian, Bruce Wydick views helping the poor as an essential requirement of his faith. But is it enough just to give if it may not even be helping? We all have limited time and resources, so where do we allocate them? As an economist, Professor Wydick has the tool...

Dark Finance: Illiquidity and Authoritarianism at the Margins of Europe (Stanford University Press, 2020) offers one of the first ethnographic accounts of financial expansion and its political impacts in Eastern Europe. Following workers, managers, and investors in the Macedonian construction sector, Fabio Mattioli shows how financialization can empower authoritarian regimes—not by making money ac...

A World without Soil: The Past, Present, and Precarious Future of the Earth Beneath Our Feet (Yale University Press, 2021) by celebrated biologist Jo Handelsman lays bare the complex connections among climate change, soil erosion, food and water security, and drug discovery. Humans depend on soil for 95 percent of global food production, yet let it erode at unsustainable rates. In the United State...

How can we understand well-being? In Understanding Well-being Data: Improving Social and Cultural Policy, Practice and Research (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), Susan Oman, a Lecturer in Data, AI and Society at the University of Sheffield, explores the history of well-being, the history of measurement, and cultural policy. The book covers a huge range of subjects but is written in a clear and accessibl...

The COVID-19 pandemic forced an unprecedented experiment that reshaped white-collar work and turned remote work into a kind of new normal. Now comes the hard part. Many employees want to continue that normal and keep working remotely, and most at least want the ability to work occasionally from home. But for employers, the benefits of employees working from home or hybrid approaches are not so obv...

Silicon Valley is known for its lavish perks, intense work culture, and spiritual gurus. Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley (Princeton UP, 2022) explores how tech companies are bringing religion into the workplace in ways that are replacing traditional places of worship, blurring the line between work and religion and transforming the very nature of spiritual experience i...