Download or read book What s Wrong with Economics written by Robert Skidelsky and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A passionate and informed critique of mainstream economics from one of the leading economic thinkers of our time This insightful book looks at how mainstream economics’ quest for scientific certainty has led to a narrowing of vision and a convergence on an orthodoxy that is unhealthy for the field, not to mention the societies which base policy decisions on the advice of flawed economic models. Noted economic thinker Robert Skidelsky explains the circumstances that have brought about this constriction and proposes an approach to economics which includes philosophy, history, sociology, and politics. Skidelsky’s clearly written and compelling critique takes aim at the way that economics is taught in today’s universities, where a focus on modelling leaves students ill-equipped to grapple with what is important and true about human life. He argues for a return to the ideal set out by John Maynard Keynes that the economist must be a “mathematician, historian, statesman, [and] philosopher” in equal measure.
Download or read book A Guide to What s Wrong with Economics written by Edward Fullbrook and published by Anthem Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During a time of accelerating momentum for radical change in the study of economics, 'A Guide to What's Wrong with Economics' comprehensively re-examines the shortcomings of neoclassical economics and considers a number of alternative formulations.
Download or read book Economyths written by David Orrell and published by Icon Books Ltd. This book was released on 2010-05-06 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the inability of wealth to make us happier, to our catastrophic blindness to the credit crunch, "Economyths" reveals ten ways in which economics has failed us all. Forecasters predicted a prosperous year in 2008 for financial markets - in one influential survey the average prediction was for an eleven per cent gain. But by the end of the year, the Standard and Poor's 500 index - a key economic barometer - was down 38 per cent, and major economies were plunging into recession. Even the Queen asked - Why did no one see it coming? An even bigger casualty was the credibility of economics, which for decades has claimed that the economy is a rational, stable, efficient machine, governed by well-understood laws. Mathematician David Orrell traces the history of this idea from its roots in ancient Greece to the financial centres of London and New York, shows how it is mistaken, and proposes new alternatives. "Economyths" explains how the economy is the result of complex and unpredictable processes; how risk models go astray; why the economy is not rational or fair; why no woman (until 2009) had ever won the Nobel Prize for economics; why financial crashes are less Black Swans than part of the landscape; and, finally, how new ideas in mathematics, psychology, and environmentalism are helping to reinvent economics.
Download or read book Cogs and Monsters written by Diane Coyle and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How economics needs to change to keep pace with the twenty-first century and the digital economy Digital technology, big data, big tech, machine learning, and AI are revolutionizing both the tools of economics and the phenomena it seeks to measure, understand, and shape. In Cogs and Monsters, Diane Coyle explores the enormous problems—but also opportunities—facing economics today and examines what it must do to help policymakers solve the world’s crises, from pandemic recovery and inequality to slow growth and the climate emergency. Mainstream economics, Coyle says, still assumes people are “cogs”—self-interested, calculating, independent agents interacting in defined contexts. But the digital economy is much more characterized by “monsters”—untethered, snowballing, and socially influenced unknowns. What is worse, by treating people as cogs, economics is creating its own monsters, leaving itself without the tools to understand the new problems it faces. In response, Coyle asks whether economic individualism is still valid in the digital economy, whether we need to measure growth and progress in new ways, and whether economics can ever be objective, since it influences what it analyzes. Just as important, the discipline needs to correct its striking lack of diversity and inclusion if it is to be able to offer new solutions to new problems. Filled with original insights, Cogs and Monsters offers a road map for how economics can adapt to the rewiring of society, including by digital technologies, and realize its potential to play a hugely positive role in the twenty-first century.
Download or read book Debunking Economics written by Steve Keen and published by Zed Books. This book was released on 2001-07-28 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the score card for economics at the start of the new millennium? While there are many different schools of economic thought, it is the neo-classical school, with its alleged understanding and simplistic advocacy of the market, that has become equated in the public mind with economics. This book shows that virtually every aspect of conventional neo-classical economics' thinking is intellectually unsound. Steve Keen draws on an impressive array of advanced critical thinking. He constitutes a profound critique of the principle concepts, theories, and methodologies of the mainstream discipline. Keen raises grave doubts about economics' pretensions to established scientific status and its reliability as a guide to understanding the real world of economic life and its policy-making.
Download or read book Where Economics Went Wrong written by David Colander and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-27 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How modern economics abandoned classical liberalism and lost its way Milton Friedman once predicted that advances in scientific economics would resolve debates about whether raising the minimum wage is good policy. Decades later, Friedman’s prediction has not come true. In Where Economics Went Wrong, David Colander and Craig Freedman argue that it never will. Why? Because economic policy, when done correctly, is an art and a craft. It is not, and cannot be, a science. The authors explain why classical liberal economists understood this essential difference, why modern economists abandoned it, and why now is the time for the profession to return to its classical liberal roots. Carefully distinguishing policy from science and theory, classical liberal economists emphasized values and context, treating economic policy analysis as a moral science where a dialogue of sensibilities and judgments allowed for the same scientific basis to arrive at a variety of policy recommendations. Using the University of Chicago—one of the last bastions of classical liberal economics—as a case study, Colander and Freedman examine how both the MIT and Chicago variants of modern economics eschewed classical liberalism in their attempt to make economic policy analysis a science. By examining the way in which the discipline managed to lose its bearings, the authors delve into such issues as the development of welfare economics in relation to economic science, alternative voices within the Chicago School, and exactly how Friedman got it wrong. Contending that the division between science and prescription needs to be restored, Where Economics Went Wrong makes the case for a more nuanced and self-aware policy analysis by economists.
Download or read book Rethinking Economics written by Liliann Fischer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-22 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economics is a broad and diverse discipline, but most economics textbooks only cover one way of thinking about the economy. This book provides an accessible introduction to nine different approaches to economics: from feminist to ecological and Marxist to behavioural. Each chapter is written by a leading expert in the field described and is intended to stand on its own as well as providing an ambitious survey that seeks to highlight the true diversity of economic thought. Students of economics around the world have begun to demand a more open economics education. This book represents a first step in creating the materials needed to introduce new and diverse ideas into the static world of undergraduate economics. This book will provide context for undergraduate students by placing the mainstream of economic thought side by side with more heterodox schools. This is in keeping with the Rethinking Economics campaign which argues that students are better served when they are presented with a spectrum of economic ideas rather than just the dominant paradigm. Rethinking Economics: An Introduction to Pluralist Economics is a great entry-level economics textbook for lecturers looking to introduce students to the broader range of ideas explored within the economics profession. It is also appropriate and accessible for people outside of academia who are interested in economics and economic theory.
Download or read book Why Nations Fail written by Daron Acemoglu and published by Crown Currency. This book was released on 2013-09-17 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER • From two winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, “who have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for a country’s prosperity” “A wildly ambitious work that hopscotches through history and around the world to answer the very big question of why some countries get rich and others don’t.”—The New York Times FINALIST: Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Financial Times, The Economist, BusinessWeek, Bloomberg, The Christian Science Monitor, The Plain Dealer Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, or geography that determines prosperity or poverty? As Why Nations Fail shows, none of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Drawing on fifteen years of original research, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is our man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or the lack of it). Korea, to take just one example, is a remarkably homogenous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created those two different institutional trajectories. Acemoglu and Robinson marshal extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, the Soviet Union, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, among them: • Will China’s economy continue to grow at such a high speed and ultimately overwhelm the West? • Are America’s best days behind it? Are we creating a vicious cycle that enriches and empowers a small minority? “This book will change the way people think about the wealth and poverty of nations . . . as ambitious as Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel.”—BusinessWeek
Download or read book Economyths written by David Orrell and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brand-new edition of economist David Orrell's acclaimed critique of what economics gets very wrong
Download or read book From Economics to Political Economy written by Tim B. Thornton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-07-22 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The discipline of economics has been increasingly criticized for its inability to illuminate the workings of the real world and to provide reliable policy guidance for the major economic and social challenges of our time. A central problem in contemporary economics, and a problem from which many of its other failings flow, is its lack of plurality. By a lack of plurality it is meant that contemporary economics lacks diversity in its methods, theories, epistemology and methodology. It is also meant that economics has become far less interdisciplinary. From Economics to Political Economy offers an explanation as to why economics has become so determinedly non-pluralistic, and also gives considerable attention to exploring and evaluating promising strategies for reform. These strategies include developing a pluralist economics under the label of ‘political economy’ within other social science departments (such as departments of politics). Along the way the reader will learn about the worldwide student movement seeking greater pluralism in economics, encounter some dramatic case studies in intellectual suppression, gain a fuller sense of the nature of contemporary economics and explore the relationship between economics and other social sciences. This book is of interest to any social scientist, particularly those with interests in economics and politics.
Download or read book Ukraine written by Anders Aslund and published by Peterson Institute for International Economics. This book was released on 2015-04-17 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ukraine has been wracked by a year of unprecedented political, economic, and military turmoil. Russian military aggression in the east and a legacy of destructive policies and corruption have created an imminent existential crisis for this young democracy. Yet Ukraine also has a great opportunity to break out of economic underperformance. In this study, Anders Åslund, one of the world's leading experts on Ukraine, traces Ukraine's evolution as a market economy starting with the fall of communism and examines the economic impact of its recent difficulties. Åslund argues that Ukraine must undertake sweeping political, economic, social, and government reforms to achieve prosperity and independence. For its part, the West must abandon its hesitant approach and provide broad economic assistance to help Ukraine transform itself.
Download or read book Is Behavioral Economics Doomed written by David K. Levine and published by Open Book Publishers. This book was released on 2012 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, David K. Levine questions the idea that behavioral economics is the answer to economic problems. He explores the successes and failures of contemporary economics both inside and outside the laboratory, and asks whether popular behavioral theories of psychological biases are solutions to the failures. The book not only provides an overview of popular behavioral theories and their history, but also gives the reader the tools for scrutinizing them.
Download or read book What Is Wrong with Islamic Economics written by Muhammad Akram Khan and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ÔI read with great interest the current state of Islamic economics and finance as examined by Muhammad Akram Khan, who has given a fresh outlook for the readers to find out its limitations and to search for its solutions. Khan has read widely in the subject matter, and presented his views with reference to literature and thoughtful and logical arguments. While many may not agree with his arguments or will have a better explanation, I find his arguments at least worthy of examination to strengthen the arguments of those who might oppose him. Although Khan is critical of the subject matter, he is very sympathetic to the greater objectives of Islamic economics and provides his own prescriptions to achieve those objectives.Õ Ð M. Kabir Hassan, University of New Orleans, US ÔThis is a very thought provoking book coming at a crucial stage in the development of Islamic economics and finance. Although the reader may not agree with some of the conclusions reached, it is clearly a scholarly and extensively researched piece of work; it should be read by all serious students of the subject area. Amongst other things, it throws light on the reasons why the practical implementation of Islamic economics and finance, particularly in relation to the financial system and financial institutions, has not always conformed to the true theoretical foundations laid down by Islamic scholars.Õ Ð John Presley, Loughborough University, UK and recipient of Islamic Development Bank Prize in Islamic Finance, 2001Ð2002 ÔÒIslamic economic system is a type of capitalism with a spiritual dimensionÓ is a major conclusion of this book. I applaud this insight of Muhammad Akram Khan. The same can be perhaps said of Islamic finance, which, in its hurry to build viable and efficient financial institutions, has ignored the very same need to start with profits-and-risk-sharing principle and no-riba principles to build pricing models to anchor the new sub-discpline. The good news is that, in the course of time to come, AkramÕs advocacy may be realised since such serious works have already begun.Õ Ð Mohamed Ariff, University Putra Malaysia and Bond University, Australia ÔAlthough there are many books on Islamic economics, this critical, but sympathetic, account by Muhammad Akram Khan is worthy of attention. The author has clearly read widely on the subject and appreciates the limitations of much that he has read. Islamic economics is a work in progress and by focusing on its shortcomings, Khan challenges the assumptions of many working in the field. His discussion of methodology is insightful, and even the prohibition of riba, for many the defining characteristic of Islamic finance, is examined from a fresh perspective. While many will not agree with the analysis and the conclusions, even critics should be able to appreciate the strengths of the arguments made. In summary this is a worthwhile, and in many respects an innovative, survey of the state of Islamic economics and finance. It deserves to be widely read.Õ Ð Rodney Wilson, Durham University, UK What is Wrong with Islamic Economics? takes an objective look at the state of the art in Islamic economics and finance. It analyses reasons for perceived stagnation and also suggests a way forward. As well as probing various myths, the book presents several innovative ideas and a methodology for developing the subject on new foundations. It also highlights weaknesses in the conventional position on prohibition of interest, which has led Islamic banks devise a series of legal tricks. The author notes how the original aim of devising a new brand of banking has become less prominent whilst Islamic banks now position themselves more closely to conventional banks. The book also offers insights into how certain traditional thinking has seemingly ignored the egalitarian spirit of the law of zakah and created a scenario where zakah is not able to help the billions of poor people around the globe. This detailed book will appeal to students, professors, researchers, Islamic banks and finance houses, consulting companies, accounting firms, and regulatory bodies. Professional economists, libraries in research and training organizations, as well as anyone with a general interest in the topic will find much to interest them.
Download or read book Money and Government written by Robert Skidelsky and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-13 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critical examination of economics' past and future, and how it needs to change, by one of the most eminent political economists of our time The dominant view in economics is that money and government should play only minor roles in economic life. Economic outcomes, it is claimed, are best left to the "invisible hand" of the market. Yet these claims remain staunchly unsettled. The view taken in this important new book is that the omnipresence of uncertainty makes money and government essential features of any market economy. Since Adam Smith, classical economics has espoused non-intervention in markets. The Great Depression brought Keynesian economics to the fore; but stagflation in the 1970s brought a return to small-state orthodoxy. The 2008 global financial crash should have brought a reevaluation of that stance; instead the response has been punishing austerity and anemic recovery. This book aims to reintroduce Keynes’s central insights to a new generation of economists, and embolden them to return money and government to the starring roles in the economic drama that they deserve.
Download or read book Doughnut Economics written by Kate Raworth and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2018-03-08 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economics is the mother tongue of public policy. It dominates our decision-making for the future, guides multi-billion-dollar investments, and shapes our responses to climate change, inequality, and other environmental and social challenges that define our times. Pity then, or more like disaster, that its fundamental ideas are centuries out of date yet are still taught in college courses worldwide and still used to address critical issues in government and business alike. That’s why it is time, says renegade economist Kate Raworth, to revise our economic thinking for the 21st century. In Doughnut Economics, she sets out seven key ways to fundamentally reframe our understanding of what economics is and does. Along the way, she points out how we can break our addiction to growth; redesign money, finance, and business to be in service to people; and create economies that are regenerative and distributive by design. Named after the now-iconic “doughnut” image that Raworth first drew to depict a sweet spot of human prosperity (an image that appealed to the Occupy Movement, the United Nations, eco-activists, and business leaders alike), Doughnut Economics offers a radically new compass for guiding global development, government policy, and corporate strategy, and sets new standards for what economic success looks like. Raworth handpicks the best emergent ideas—from ecological, behavioral, feminist, and institutional economics to complexity thinking and Earth-systems science—to address this question: How can we turn economies that need to grow, whether or not they make us thrive, into economies that make us thrive, whether or not they grow? Simple, playful, and eloquent, Doughnut Economics offers game-changing analysis and inspiration for a new generation of economic thinkers.
Download or read book Good Economics for Hard Times written by Abhijit V. Banerjee and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2019-11-12 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The winners of the Nobel Prize show how economics, when done right, can help us solve the thorniest social and political problems of our day. Figuring out how to deal with today's critical economic problems is perhaps the great challenge of our time. Much greater than space travel or perhaps even the next revolutionary medical breakthrough, what is at stake is the whole idea of the good life as we have known it. Immigration and inequality, globalization and technological disruption, slowing growth and accelerating climate change--these are sources of great anxiety across the world, from New Delhi and Dakar to Paris and Washington, DC. The resources to address these challenges are there--what we lack are ideas that will help us jump the wall of disagreement and distrust that divides us. If we succeed, history will remember our era with gratitude; if we fail, the potential losses are incalculable. In this revolutionary book, renowned MIT economists Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo take on this challenge, building on cutting-edge research in economics explained with lucidity and grace. Original, provocative, and urgent, Good Economics for Hard Times makes a persuasive case for an intelligent interventionism and a society built on compassion and respect. It is an extraordinary achievement, one that shines a light to help us appreciate and understand our precariously balanced world.
Download or read book Economics Rules written by Dani Rodrik and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading economist trains a lens on his own discipline to uncover when it fails and when it works.
