Economic Theory

A manifesto for deep and radical change, Creating Freedom explores the limits placed on freedom by human nature and society. It explodes myths, calling for a profound transformation in the way we think about democracy, equality, and our own identities.

No single individual is ever the sole founder of any major stance in political philosophy. Nevertheless, if one were forced to name the founder of the classical liberal perspective in political thought which holds as its primary political principle that individual liberty is to be respected and protected, one would have to point to the English philosopher John Locke.

In order to illuminate the fallacies of economism, James Kwak first offers a primer on supply and demand, market equilibrium, and social welfare: the underpinnings of most popular economic arguments. Then he provides a historical account of how economism became a prevalent mode of thought in the United States - focusing on the people who packaged Econ 101 into sound bites that were then repeated until they took on the aura of truth.

The Narendra Modi government's sudden demonetization of '500 and '1,000 notes in November 2016 failed to put a dent in the black economy but caused untold hardship to hundreds of millions of Indians. It has crippled the country's economy for a long time to come. In this book, Arun Kumar, the country's leading authority on the black economy, tells us why Modi's gambit failed.

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, capitalism was stuck. It had no answers to a host of problems, including disease, inequality, the digital divide and, perhaps most blatantly, the environmental crisis. Taking her inspiration from the 'moonshot' programmes which successfully co-ordinated public and private sectors on a massive scale, Mariana Mazzucato calls for the same level of boldness and experimentation to be applied to the biggest problems of our time.

In The Progress Illusion, Jon D. Erickson charts the rise of the economic worldview and its infiltration into our daily lives as a theory of everything. Drawing on his own experience as a young economist inoculated in the 1980s era of "greed is good," Erickson shows how pseudoscience came to dominate economic thought. He pokes holes in the conventional wisdom of neo-classical economics, illustrating how flawed theories about financial decision-making and maximizing efficiency ignore human psychology and morality.

One of the great economists of the 20th century, Milton Friedman has always challenged the prevailing economic orthodoxy. At the same time, his work has become popular because it is engagingly written and because it helps in practical prediction. Thanks to Friedman, money is now regarded as a far more powerful factor than it had been before. It offers the prospect of permanently controlling the inflation that has become the most important economic problem of our age.

Hoodie Economics draws on alternative intelligence sources to look at the patterns of money, ownership and reductive thinking that we have inherited, and how we have the potential to create a new (old) foundation of equality – relational economies instead of transactional ones, and networks that are truly social. Just as Jack Manning Bancroft sets out to reimagine economics, Hoodie Economics rethinks the economics book, inviting all listeners to find their own way through its narratives and to feel energised by its ideas.

Drawing on insights from social psychology, moral philosophy and behavioural economics, as well as a range of illuminating case studies, world-renowned economist Paul Collier shares a galvanizing vision for a more inclusive, prosperous world.

Look at a map of the world and you'll see a neat patchwork of nation-states. But this is not where power actually resides. From the 1990s onwards, globalization has shattered the map, leading to an explosion of new legal entities: tax havens, free ports, city-states, gated enclaves and special economic zones. These new spaces are freed from ordinary forms of regulation, taxation and mutual obligation—and with them, ultracapitalists believe that it is possible to escape the bonds of democratic government and oversight altogether.

In this major new work, Peter F. Drucker discusses how the new paradigms of management will change our basic assumptions about the practices and principles of management. Drucker explains "The New Information Revolution", discussing the information an executive needs and the information an executive owes.

Ronald Coase (1910-2013) was one of the most influential economists of the 20th century. His influence is due largely to two publications, the only two cited in the announcement of his Nobel Prize: The Nature of the Firm (1937) and The Problem of Social Cost (1960). These two articles are among the most-cited works in economics.

Thomas Piketty's work has proved that unfettered markets lead to increasing inequality. Without meaningful regulation, capitalist economies will concentrate wealth in an ever smaller number of hands. Armed with this knowledge, democratic societies face a defining challenge: fending off a new aristocracy. For years Piketty has wrestled with this problem in his monthly newspaper column, which pierces the surface of current events to reveal the economic forces underneath.

Our daily experience, dominated by the corporate clock that so many of us contort ourselves to fit inside, is destroying us. It wasn't built for people, it was built for profit. This is a book that tears open the seams of reality as we know it-the way we experience time itself-and rearranges it, reimagining a world not centered around work, the office clock, or the profit motive. Explaining how we got to the point where time became money, Odell offers us new models to live by that make a more humane, more hopeful way of living seem possible.

In this sometimes shocking and always riveting book, Robert G. Kaiser who has covered Congress, the White House and national politics for The Washington Post since 1963, explains how and why over the last four decades, Washington became a dysfunctional capital.

Ben Price reveals that our constitution and legal system were intentionally designed to give more rights to the wealthy propertied class than the rest of us, and exposes how this hamstrings our ability to effectively address a host of pressing social and environmental problems - and what we can do about it. Many of today’s most serious issues - homelessness, gun violence, fracking, prison privatization, predatory lending, and many more - resist resolution because the “rights of property” undermine the rights of people.

Jede politische Ökonomie umkreist die Fragen nach der Evolution von Ungleichheit, der Konzentration von Wohlstand und den Chancen für ökonomisches Wachstum. Aber befriedigende Antworten gab es bislang kaum. Thomas Piketty untersucht Daten aus 20 Ländern, mit Rückgriffen bis ins 18. Jahrhundert, um die entscheidenden ökonomischen und sozialen Muster freizulegen. Seine Ergebnisse setzen die Agenda für eine neue Diskussion über Wohlstand und Ungleichheit.

A Participatory Economy presents a clear and accessible post-capitalist model for those without extensive training or understanding of economics. Robin Hahnel is a trained economist and a co-founder of the idea of Participatory Economics, an evolving concept that offers a comprehensive blueprint for an alternative to capitalism. Robin Hahnel shows how placing decision making into the hands of producers and consumers can be a way to meet needs responsibly.

Frederick Kaufman tackles the complex history of money, beginning with the earliest myths and wrapping up with Wall Street’s byzantine present-day doings. Along the way, he exposes a set of allegorical plots, stock characters, and stereotypical metaphors that have long been linked with money and commercial culture, from Melanesian trading rituals to the dogma of Medieval churchmen faced with global commerce, the rationales of Mercantilism and colonial expansion, and the U.S. dollar’s 1971 unpinning from gold.

From the development of international trade fairs in the 12th century to the innovations made in China, India, and the Arab world, it turns out that historical economies were much more sophisticated that we might imagine, tied together by webs of credit and financial instruments much like our modern economy.