International Economics

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.

The world is at a turning point. The benefits of globalization - through the freer flow of money, people, ideas, and trade - have been many. But rather than a world that is flat, what has emerged is one of jagged peaks and rough, deep valleys characterized by wealth inequality, indebtedness, political recession, and imbalances across the world's economies. These peaks and valleys are undergoing what Michael O'Sullivan calls "the levelling" - a major transition in world economics, finance, and power. What's next is a levelling-out of wealth....

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.

After a decade of rapid growth, the world’s most celebrated emerging markets are poised to slow down. Which countries will rise to challenge them? To identify the economic stars of the future, we should abandon the habit of extrapolating from the recent past and lumping wildly diverse countries together. We need to remember that sustained economic success is a rare phenomenon. As an era of easy money and easy growth comes to a close, China in particular will cool down.

What if the way we understand our world is wrong? What if it isn't politicians and events that shape our lives but secret deals made by people you've never heard of? This book tells the story of the secret deals that are changing the world and revolutionising everything we do, including money, the food we eat, what we buy and the drugs we take to stay well. These deals never make the news: they are made high up in boardrooms, on golf courses and in luxury cars, each sealed by world-changing handshakes.

When Bloomberg News invited the young American journalist Alex Cuadros to report on Brazil's emerging class of billionaires at the height of the historic Brazilian boom, he was poised to cover two of the biggest business stories of our time: how the giants of the developing world were triumphantly taking their place at the center of global capitalism and how wealth inequality was changing societies everywhere.

The news is full of accounts of the rise and fall of economies around the world, but you may not know how these changes can affect your life. 101 Things Everyone Needs to Know about the Global Economy takes the basics of global economics and breaks them into 10 straightforward chapters. From the organizations involved and trade imbalances to global risk and foreign investment, Dr. Michael Taillard describes the world markets in terms that you can recognize. You'll also learn how these matters affect the United States and your own financial future.

China today is visible everywhere: In the news, in the economic pressures battering America, in the workplace, and in every trip to the store. Provocative, timely, and essential, this dramatic account of China's growing dominance as an industrial super-power by journalist Ted C. Fishman explains how the profound shift in the global economic order has occurred, and why it already affects us all.

Though mankind has traded tangible goods for millennia, recent technology has changed the fundamentals of trade, in both legitimate and illegal economies. In the past three decades, the most advanced forms of illicit trade have broken with all historical precedents and, as Dark Commerce tells, now operate as if on steroids, tied to computers and social media. Author Louise Shelley examines how new technology, communications, and globalization fuel the exponential growth of dangerous forms of illegal trade and considers diverse ways of responding to this increasing challenge.

The Cost of Sexism is an urgent analysis of global gender inequality and a fervently argued case for change by a pioneer in the movement for women's economic empowerment. Drawing on decades of statistical evidence, original research and global on-the-ground experience, Linda Scott outlines a revolutionary, actionable plan to remove economic barriers against women, and in the process combat humankind's most pressing problems.

Over the past four decades, China's remarkable transformation has garnered admiration but also sparked concern. George Magnus draws on his intimate knowledge of this dynamic nation to uncover the origins of its ascent and show why the economic traps it faces at home and the political challenges it faces abroad pose a serious threat to its continued rise.

The industrial age made possible by fossil fuels will surely decline as these fuels run out. In The Ecotechnic Future John Michael Greer alerts the listener to possible changes future generations may face as these dwindling fuel supplies lead first to a deindustrial age, then to a society which salvages the remnants of our current plenty, and eventually to a time in which people may learn to live in balance with the environment: an ecotechnic society.

During the pandemic, government deficits skyrocketed to record highs while central banks primed the printing presses—and the time has come to pay for it. The ramifications of international COVID-19 spending could potentially last for decades, and inevitably one of the first consequences will be that central banks will lose control of interest rates, and subsequently, growth and inflation targets. The genie will be out of the bottle.

When Corporations Rule the World explains how economic globalization has concentrated the power to govern in global corporations and financial markets and detached them from accountability to the human interest. It documents the devastating human and environmental consequences of the successful efforts of these corporations to reconstruct values and institutions everywhere on the planet to serve their own narrow ends.

Historian and geopolitical expert Michael Auslin argues that far from being a cohesive powerhouse, Asia is a fractured region threatened by stagnation and instability. Here he provides a comprehensive account of the economic, military, political, and demographic risks that bedevil half of our world, arguing that Asia, working with the United States, has a unique opportunity to avert catastrophe - but only if it acts boldly.

Who really creates wealth in our world? And how do we decide the value of what they do? At the heart of today's financial and economic crisis is a problem hiding in plain sight. In modern capitalism, value extraction is rewarded more highly than value creation: the productive process that drives a healthy economy and society. From companies driven solely to maximise shareholder value to astronomically high prices of medicines justified through big pharma's 'value pricing', we misidentify taking with making, and have lost sight of what value really means.

Halfway through the twentieth century, the United States towered over the world in industrial might. After winning the 1948 election, Harry Truman hoped to use this economic strength to build on FDR’s achievements with new liberal reforms. But then, in just ten months between September 1949 and June 1950, the president’s ambitions were overtaken by events that left the country gripped by rage and fear. In the Shadow of Fear is an innovative and gripping history of this pivotal moment.

If Europe is to return to an innovative and dynamic economy - and if there is to be shared prosperity, social solidarity, and justice - then EU countries need to break with their current, destructive trajectory. This volume offers concrete strategies for renewal that would also reinvigorate the project of European integration, with fresh ideas in the areas of both macroeconomics and microeconomics, including central banking, public investment, corporate governance and competition policy, social policy, and international trade.

What would be the "right" price for your loved one - and can you avoid putting others at risk by paying it? What prevents criminals from maltreating hostages? How do you (safely) pay a ransom? Kidnap: Inside the Ransom Business uncovers how a group of insurers at Lloyd's of London have solved these thorny problems for their customers. Based on interviews with industry insiders (from both sides), as well as hostage stakeholders, it uncovers an intricate and powerful private governance system ordering transactions between the legal and the criminal economies.

Money is changing and this may mean a new world order. David Birch sets out the economic and technological imperatives concerning digital money, discussing the potential impact of it and the tensions involved - between public and private and between East and West - to contribute to the high-level debate that we must have to begin to shape the International Monetary and Financial System of the near future.