Download or read book An Economist in the Real World written by Kaushik Basu and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2016-02-11 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Appointed as the chief economic adviser (CEA) to the Government of India in 2009, Basu—a theorist, with special interest in development economics, and a professor of economics at Cornell University—discovered the complexity of applying economic models to the real world. Effective policymaking, Basu learned, integrates technical knowledge with political awareness. In this book, he describes the art of economic policymaking, viewed through the lens of his two and a half years as CEA.

Download or read book Foundations of Real World Economics written by John Komlos and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-01-11 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 2008 financial crisis, the rise of Trumpism and the other populist movements which have followed in their wake have grown out of the frustrations of those hurt by the economic policies advocated by conventional economists for generations. Despite this, textbooks continue to praise conventional policies such as deregulation and hyperglobalization. This textbook demonstrates how misleading it can be to apply oversimplified models of perfect competition to the real world. The math works well on college blackboards but not so well on the Main Streets of America. This volume explores the realities of oligopolies, the real impact of the minimum wage, the double-edged sword of free trade, and other ways in which powerful institutions cause distortions in the mainstream models. Bringing together the work of key scholars, such as Kahneman, Minsky, and Schumpeter, this book demonstrates how we should take into account the inefficiencies that arise due to asymmetric information, mental biases, unequal distribution of wealth and power, and the manipulation of demand. This textbook offers students a valuable introductory text with insights into the workings of real markets not just imaginary ones formulated by blackboard economists. A must-have for students studying the principles of economics as well as micro- and macroeconomics, this textbook redresses the existing imbalance in economic teaching. Instead of clinging to an ideology that only enriched the 1%, Komlos sketches the outline of a capitalism with a human face, an economy in which people live contented lives with dignity instead of focusing on GNP.

Download or read book The Little Book of Economics written by Greg Ip and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-01-14 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An accessible, thoroughly engaging look at how the economy really works and its role in your everyday life Not surprisingly, regular people suddenly are paying a lot closer attention to the economy than ever before. But economics, with its weird technical jargon and knotty concepts and formulas can be a very difficult subject to get to grips with on your own. Enter Greg Ip and his Little Book of Economics. Like a patient, good-natured tutor, Greg, one of today's most respected economics journalists, walks you through everything you need to know about how the economy works. Short on technical jargon and long on clear, concise, plain-English explanations of important terms, concepts, events, historical figures and major players, this revised and updated edition of Greg's bestselling guide clues you in on what's really going on, what it means to you and what we should be demanding our policymakers do about the economy going forward. From inflation to the Federal Reserve, taxes to the budget deficit, you get indispensible insights into everything that really matters about economics and its impact on everyday life Special sections featuring additional resources of every subject discussed and where to find additional information to help you learn more about an issue and keep track of ongoing developments Offers priceless insights into the roots of America's economic crisis and its aftermath, especially the role played by excessive greed and risk-taking, and what can be done to avoid another economic cataclysm Digs into globalization, the roots of the Euro crisis, the sources of China's spectacular growth, and why the gap between the economy's winners and losers keeps widening

Download or read book An Economist in the Real World written by Kaushik Basu and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2017-09-08 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An economist's perspective on the nuts and bolts of economic policymaking, based on his experience as the Chief Economic Adviser in India. In December 2009, the economist Kaushik Basu left the rarefied world of academic research for the nuts and bolts of policymaking. Appointed by the then Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh, to be chief economic adviser (CEA) to the Government of India, Basu—a theorist, with special interest in development economics, and a professor of economics at Cornell University—discovered the complexity of applying economic models to the real world. Effective policymaking, Basu learned, integrates technical knowledge with political awareness. In this book, Basu describes the art of economic policymaking, viewed through the lens of his two and a half years as CEA. Basu writes from a unique perspective—neither that of the career bureaucrat nor that of the traditional researcher. Plunged into the deal-making, non-hypothetical world of policymaking, Basu suffers from a kind of culture shock and views himself at first as an anthropologist or scientist, gathering observations of unfamiliar phenomena. He addresses topics that range from the macroeconomic—fiscal and monetary policies—to the granular—designing grain auctions and policies to assure everyone has access to basic food. Basu writes about globalization and India's period of unprecedented growth, and he reports that at a dinner hosted by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, President Obama joked to him, “You should give this guy some tips”—“this guy” being Timothy Geithner. Basu describes the mixed success of India's anti-poverty programs and the problems of corruption, and considers the social norms and institutions necessary for economic development. India is, Basu argues, at an economics crossroad. As CEA from 2009 to 2012, he was present at the creation of a potential economic powerhouse.

Download or read book The Armchair Economist written by Steven E. Landsburg and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-05-10 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Air bags cause accidents, because well-protected drivers take more risks. This well-documented truth comes as a surprise to most people, but not to economists, who have learned to take seriously the proposition that people respond to incentives. In The Armchair Economist, Steven E. Landsburg shows how the laws of economics reveal themselves in everyday experience and illuminate the entire range of human behavior. Why does popcorn cost so much at the cinema? The 'obvious' answer is that the owner has a monopoly, but if that were the whole story, there would also be a monopoly price to use the toilet. When a sudden frost destroys much of the Florida orange crop and prices skyrocket, journalists point to the 'obvious' exercise of monopoly power. Economists see just the opposite: If growers had monopoly power, they'd have raised prices before the frost. Why don't concert promoters raise ticket prices even when they are sure they will sell out months in advance? Why are some goods sold at auction and others at pre-announced prices? Why do boxes at the football sell out before the standard seats do? Why are bank buildings fancier than supermarkets? Why do corporations confer huge pensions on failed executives? Why don't firms require workers to buy their jobs? Landsburg explains why the obvious answers are wrong, reveals better answers, and illuminates the fundamental laws of human behavior along the way. This is a book of surprises: a guided tour of the familiar, filtered through a decidedly unfamiliar lens. This is economics for the sheer intellectual joy of it.

Download or read book Real Life Economics written by Paul Ekins and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-10-19 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The past fifty years have witnessed the triumph of an industrial development that has engendered great social and environmental costs. Conventional economics has too often either ignored these costs or failed to analyse them appropriately. This book constructs a framework within which the wider impacts of economic activity can be both understood and ameliorated. The framework places its emphasis on an in-depth understanding of real-life processes rather than on mathematical formalism, sressing the independence of the economy with the social, ecological and ethical dimensions of human life.

Download or read book The Economist s View of the World written by Steven E. Rhoads and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1985-05-23 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explains and assesses the ways in which micro, welfare and benefit-cost economists view the world of public policy. In general terms, microeconomic concepts and models can be seen to appear regularly in the work of political scientists, sociologists and psychologists. As a consequence, these and related concepts and models have now had sufficient time to influence strongly and to extend the range of policy options available to government departments. The central focus of this book is the 'cross-over' from economic modelling to policy implementation, which remains obscure and uncertain. The author outlines the importance of a wider knowledge of microeconomics for improving the effects and orientation of public policy. He also provides a critique of some basic economic assumptions, notably the 'consumer sovereignty principle'. Within this context the reader is in a better position to understand the 'marvellous insights and troubling blindnesses' of economists where often what is controversial politically is not so controversial among economists.

Download or read book Economics for Real People written by Gene Callahan and published by Ludwig von Mises Institute. This book was released on 2002 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Economists Hour written by Binyamin Appelbaum and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this "lively and entertaining" history of ideas (Liaquat Ahamed, The New Yorker), New York Times editorial writer Binyamin Appelbaum tells the story of the people who sparked four decades of economic revolution. Before the 1960s, American politicians had never paid much attention to economists. But as the post-World War II boom began to sputter, economists gained influence and power. In The Economists' Hour, Binyamin Appelbaum traces the rise of the economists, first in the United States and then around the globe, as their ideas reshaped the modern world, curbing government, unleashing corporations and hastening globalization. Some leading figures are relatively well-known, such as Milton Friedman, the elfin libertarian who had a greater influence on American life than any other economist of his generation, and Arthur Laffer, who sketched a curve on a cocktail napkin that helped to make tax cuts a staple of conservative economic policy. Others stayed out of the limelight, but left a lasting impact on modern life: Walter Oi, a blind economist who dictated to his wife and assistants some of the calculations that persuaded President Nixon to end military conscription; Alfred Kahn, who deregulated air travel and rejoiced in the crowded cabins on commercial flights as the proof of his success; and Thomas Schelling, who put a dollar value on human life. Their fundamental belief? That government should stop trying to manage the economy.Their guiding principle? That markets would deliver steady growth, and ensure that all Americans shared in the benefits. But the Economists' Hour failed to deliver on its promise of broad prosperity. And the single-minded embrace of markets has come at the expense of economic equality, the health of liberal democracy, and future generations. Timely, engaging and expertly researched, The Economists' Hour is a reckoning -- and a call for people to rewrite the rules of the market. A Wall Street Journal Business BestsellerWinner of the Porchlight Business Book Award in Narrative & Biography

Download or read book An Economist Walks into a Brothel written by Allison Schrager and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Financial Times Book of the Month pick for April! Is it worth swimming in shark-infested waters to surf a 50-foot, career-record wave? Is it riskier to make an action movie or a horror movie? Should sex workers forfeit 50 percent of their income for added security or take a chance and keep the extra money? Most people wouldn't expect an economist to have an answer to these questions--or to other questions of daily life, such as who to date or how early to leave for the airport. But those people haven't met Allison Schrager, an economist and award-winning journalist who has spent her career examining how people manage risk in their lives and careers. Whether we realize it or not, we all take risks large and small every day. Even the most cautious among us cannot opt out--the question is always which risks to take, not whether to take them at all. What most of us don't know is how to measure those risks and maximize the chances of getting what we want out of life. In An Economist Walks into a Brothel, Schrager equips readers with five principles for dealing with risk, principles used by some of the world's most interesting risk takers. For instance, she interviews a professional poker player about how to stay rational when the stakes are high, a paparazzo in Manhattan about how to spot different kinds of risk, horse breeders in Kentucky about how to diversify risk and minimize losses, and a war general who led troops in Iraq about how to prepare for what we don't see coming. When you start to look at risky decisions through Schrager's new framework, you can increase the upside to any situation and better mitigate the downside.

Download or read book Economics and Reality written by Tony Lawson and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses and critiques the current practice of economics.

Download or read book An Economist in the Real World written by Kaushik Basu and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2015-10-02 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Basu writes from a unique perspectiveneither that of the career bureaucrat nor that of the traditional researcher. Plunged into the deal-making, non-hypothetical world of policymaking, Basu suffers from a kind of culture shock and views himself at first as an anthropologist or scientist, gathering observations of unfamiliar phenomena. He addresses topics that range from the macroeconomicfiscal and monetary policiesto the granulardesigning grain auctions and policies to assure everyone has access to basic food. Basu writes about globalization and India's period of unprecedented growth, and he reports that at a dinner hosted by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, President Obama joked to him, {28}You should give this guy some tips.

Download or read book An Economist Gets Lunch written by Tyler Cowen and published by Plume. This book was released on 2013-02-26 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading economist, “who may very well turn out to be this decade’s Thomas Friedman” (Wall Street Journal), illuminates the state of American food today. Tyler Cowen, one of the most influential economists of the last decade, wants you to know that just about everything you’ve heard about how to get good food is wrong. Drawing on a provocative range of examples from around the globe, Cowen reveals why airplane food is bad, but airport food is improving, why restaurants full of happy, attractive people usually serve mediocre meals, and why American food has improved as Americans drink more wine. At a time when obesity is on the rise and forty-four million Americans receive food stamps, An Economist Gets Lunch will revolutionize the way we eat today—and show us how we’re going to feed the world tomorrow.

Download or read book The Economics of Global Turbulence written by Robert Brenner and published by Verso. This book was released on 2006-08-17 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A commanding survey of the world economy from 1950 to the present, from the author of the acclaimed The Boom and the Bubble.

Download or read book Foundations of Real World Economics written by John Komlos and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-03-20 with total page 591 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 2008 financial crisis, the rise of Trumpism, and the other populist movements which have followed in their wake have grown out of the frustrations of those hurt by the economic policies advocated by conventional economists for generations. Despite this, textbooks remain frozen in time, continuing to uphold traditional policies as though nothing has happened. Foundations of Real-World Economics demonstrates how misleading it can be to apply oversimplified models of perfect competition to the real world. The math works well on college blackboards but not so well on the Main Streets of America. This volume explores the realities of oligopolies, the real impact of the minimum wage, the double-edged sword of free trade, and other ways in which powerful institutions cause distortions in mainstream models. Bringing together the work of key scholars like Kahneman, Minsky, and Schumpeter, this textbook takes into consideration the inefficiencies that arise when the perfectly competitive model is applied to the real world dominated by multinational oligopolies. The third edition has been updated throughout, bringing in new material on the financial crises, the rise of populism, racism, inequality, climate change, and the Covid-19 pandemic. A must-have for students studying the principles of economics as well as micro- and macroeconomics, this textbook redresses the existing imbalance in economic teaching as John Komlos focuses on the paradigm of humanistic economics.

Download or read book Policymaker s Journal written by Kaushik Basu and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-07-06 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book charts the course of Kaushik Basu’s career over seven years, as he moved out of the cloisters of academe to the frenetic world of policymaking, first in India as Chief Economic Adviser to the Indian Government and after that as Chief Economist at the World Bank in Washington. The Indian years were a period of high inflation, growth challenges (as the global financial crisis arrived in India), and also a remarkable growth recovery story, with India moving past China’s GDP growth rate. There were corruption scandals breaking, causing widespread street protests, a lot of late-night decision-making, which one knew would rock the stock market the next day, and getting to know politicians who were outstanding as statesmen in the midst of all this, and also many who were not. The World Bank years weren’t that close to actual policymaking, but nevertheless breath-taking in their scope. They ranged from interacting with policymakers in tiny remote countries like Samoa to gigantic nations with comparable heft, such as China. It entailed sitting down with leading researchers to compute and announce global numbers on extreme poverty and rankings on how easy it is to do business in different countries (fully aware that there would be calls from irate finance ministers as soon as these were published). And there was the handling of politics within the World Bank, which could actually be as enjoyable as any global economic problem! This book is a revised version of the diary that Kaushik Basu kept for seven years. Revised because he often wrote the diary in a hurry at the day’s or even week’s end. He has now inserted some reflections in retrospect, without altering any descriptions of what actually happened.

Download or read book The Economist and the Real World written by Arnold C. Harberger and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: