New Books In Economics

An event-by-event look at how institutionalized racism harms the health of African Americans in the twenty-first century A crucial component of anti-Black racism is the unconscionable disparity in health outcomes between Black and white Americans.  Sickening: Anti-Black Racism and Health Disparities in the United States (U Minnesota Press, 2021) examines this institutionalized inequality through dramatic, concrete events from the past two decades, revealing how unequal living conditions and inadequate medical care have become routine. From the spike in chronic disease after Hurricane Katrina to the lack of protection for Black residents during the Flint water crisis--and even the life-threatening childbirth experience for tennis star Serena Williams--author Anne Pollock takes readers on a journey through the diversity of anti-Black racism operating in healthcare. She goes beneath the surface to deconstruct the structures that make these events possible, including mass incarceration, police brutality, and the

Today I talked to Soo Bong Peer about her new book The Essential Diversity Mindset: How to Cultivate a More Inclusive Culture and Environment (Career Press, 2021) In 1967, bans on interracial marriages were finally declared unconstitutional in America. Only a decade earlier than that, merely 4% of Americans endorsed them. Today, the figure is 87% approval. So clearly, progress has been made in a country whose citizens are often multiracial as well as in interracial marriages and relationships. How can the momentum to accepting people as they are and not by dividing us based on race, gender and sexual orientation be reignited in these divisive times? Soo Bong Peer’s suggestions are of both a personal and systemic nature, ranging from practicing greater empathy to having leaders seek to be more open to dialogue with employees with distinctly different perspectives and experiences from theirs. One idea, inspired by this book: to cite Roger Ebert, movies “are like a machine that generates empathy.” So instead of

Neoclassical economic theory shows that under the right conditions, prices alone can guide markets to efficient outcomes. But what if it it’s hard to find the right price? In many important markets, a buyer’s willingness to pay for one good (say, the right to use a certain part of the radio spectrum range in San Francisco) will depend on the price of another complementary good (the right to use that same spectrum in Los Angeles). The number of possible combinations can rapidly become incalculably complex. Such complex markets require new collaborations between economists and computer scientists to create designs that are both incentive compatible and computationally tractable. In Discovering Prices: Auction Design in Markets with Complex Constraints (Columbia UP, 2017), 2020 Economics Nobel Memorial Prize winner Paul Milgrom discusses some of the new economics theory he has developed to help address these challenging contexts, in which neither unfettered market forces nor top-down planning will work well. In

In Who Gets What — and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design (Mariner Books, 2015), Nobel Memorial Prize Winner Alvin Roth explains his pioneering work in the study of matching markets such as kidney exchange, marriage, job placements for new doctors and new professors, and enrollments in schools or colleges. In these markets, “buyers” and “sellers” must each chose the other, and getting the prices right is only a small part of what makes for a successful transaction, if cash is even involved at all. Roth’s work has led the way in taking microeconomics outside the halls of academic theory to become a practical “engineering” tool for policymakers and businesses. In our interview, we range far beyond the examples from the book to discuss the implications of his work for the design of tech’s market-making “platform” businesses like Airbnb, Amazon, Lyft, or Uber, the challenges he faces when countries or people view some kinds of transactions as “repugnant” or morally unacceptable, and the reaso

Today I talked to Martin Reeves and Jack Fuller about their new book The Imagination Machine: How to Spark New Ideas and Create Your Company’s Future (Harvard Business Review Press, 2021).  Since the 1990s, the fade rate (i.e., the inability of companies to stay out ahead of their closest rivals) has gone from sustaining a lead on average for 10 years to now merely a single year. So focusing on offer innovation alone won’t suffice. A company that will survive and thrive must re-imagine really every aspect of the company’s culture and operations to succeed. That move requires an open mind and an inquisitive spirit not averse to surprise but, instead, welcoming of them. Who better than these two authors to take on that task? Reeves is in his own words a “failed” musician and biologist turned businessperson, and Fuller likewise prefers to go “inside” people and organizations to understand how their minds and even their very “souls” perform. This is an episode devoted, in short, to how can a company re-humanize i

This is a book about the American Dream: how to understand this central principle of American public philosophy, the ways in which it is threatened by a number of winner-take-all economic trends, and how to make it a reality for workers and their families in the 21st century. Integrating political philosophy and the history of political thought with recent work in economics, political science, and sociology, Joshua Preiss' book Just Work for All: The American Dream in the 21st Century (Taylor & Francis, 2020) calls for renewed political and policy commitment to "just work." Such a commitment is essential to combat the negative moral externalities of an economy where the fruits of growth are increasingly claimed by a relatively small portion of the population: slower growth, rising inequality, declining absolute mobility, dying communities, the erosion of social solidarity, lack of faith in political leaders and institutions, exploding debt, ethnic and nationalist backlash, widespread hopelessness, and the rap

Today I talked to Maya Hu-Chan about her new book Saving Face: How to Preserve Dignity and Build Trust (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2020) There are so many sayings that involve the face, but perhaps none is more central to at least Asian culture than “saving face.” That’s because it represents retaining one’s dignity versus being embarrassed or humiliated in front of others. In truth, though, everyone wants nothing more than to be appreciated, as the psychologist William James recognized long ago. In this episode, Maya Hu-Chan puts “faces” into a business context for listeners. In a meeting between Western versus Eastern executives, for instance, how will a long silence be handled? Odds are usually that it’s the Americans who will jump in first, breaking the silence. Given more than 20 years of international business experience, Hu-Chan takes listeners through why regional, company and individual personality differences matter so much. Are you a high-context or low-context person? It’s time to find out by tak

Actuarial thinking is everywhere in contemporary America, an often unnoticed byproduct of the postwar insurance industry’s political and economic influence. Calculations of risk permeate our institutions, influencing how we understand and manage crime, education, medicine, finance, and other social issues. In Insurance Era: Risk, Governance, and the Privatization of Security in Postwar America (The University of Chicago Press, 2021), Caley Horan charts the social and economic power of private insurers since 1945, arguing that these institutions’ actuarial practices played a crucial and unexplored role in insinuating the social, political, and economic frameworks of neoliberalism into everyday life. Through a careful analysis of insurance marketing, consumption, investment, and regulation, Horan asserts that postwar America’s obsession with safety and security fueled the exponential expansion of the insurance industry and the growing importance of risk management in other fields. Horan shows that the rise and

How can ideas from sociology help us understand history and economics? In Trade and Nation: How Companies and Politics Reshaped Economic Thought (Columbia UP, 2021), Emily Erikson, Associate Professor of Sociology at Yale and Academic Director of the Fox International Fellowship, explores the major shift, which occurred during the seventeenth century, in the history and philosophy of economics. The book combines computational methods from sociology with a detailed and close engagement with historical sources and the philosophy of economics. It demonstrates how a key set of merchants proved highly influential in setting the terms of economics, in the context of the specific conditions and institutional settings in England during the period. The book also offers comparative analysis, adding depth to the numerous methods of testing its core hypothesis about what really drove the changes in economics. Clearly written, and deeply engaging, the book is essential reading for scholars in economics and the social scie

Saving the World at Business School (Part 2) is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Andy Hoffman, Holcim Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and School of Environment and Sustainability. This extensive conversation starts with inspiring insights into how Andy Hoffman became interested in environmental issues when he declined acceptances from graduate school at Harvard and Berkeley and instead worked as a carpenter for several years in Nantucket. Topics include the notions of ‘environmental sustainability’ and ‘big business’ which sometimes seem as incompatible as oil and water and ways to make a synthesis a reality by seriously reconsidering the way we currently conduct public policy and even some deep aspects of our current societal values. Howard Burton is the founder of the Ideas Roadshow, Ideas on Film and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at howard@ideasroadshow.com. Learn more about your ad choices

To envision and create the futures we want, society needs an appropriate understanding of the likely impact of alternative actions. Data models and visualizations offer a way to understand and intelligently manage complex, interlinked systems in science and technology, education, and policymaking. Atlas of Forecasts: Modeling and Mapping Desirable Futures (MIT Press, 2021), from the creator of Atlas of Science and Atlas of Knowledge, shows how we can use data to predict, communicate, and ultimately attain desirable futures. Using advanced data visualizations to introduce different types of computational models, Atlas of Forecasts demonstrates how models can inform effective decision-making in education, science, technology, and policymaking. The models and maps presented aim to help anyone understand key processes and outcomes of complex systems dynamics, including which human skills are needed in an artificial intelligence–empowered economy; what progress in science and technology is likely to be made; and h

Saving the World at Business School (Part 1) is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Andy Hoffman, Holcim Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and School of Environment and Sustainability. This extensive conversation starts with inspiring insights into how Andy Hoffman became interested in environmental issues when he declined acceptances from graduate school at Harvard and Berkeley and instead worked as a carpenter for several years in Nantucket. Topics include the notions of ‘environmental sustainability’ and ‘big business’ which sometimes seem as incompatible as oil and water and ways to make a synthesis a reality by seriously reconsidering the way we currently conduct public policy and even some deep aspects of our current societal values. Howard Burton is the founder of the Ideas Roadshow, Ideas on Film and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at howard@ideasroadshow.com. Learn more about your ad choices

Howard speaks to Juha Kaakinen, CEO of Y-Foundation, a global leader in implementing the "Housing First principle" and a clear example of how genuine progress can be made in concretely addressing homelessness. Howard Burton is the founder of Ideas Roadshow, Ideas on Film and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at howard@ideasroadshow.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

Our current food system has decimated rural communities and confined the choices of urban consumers. Even while America continues to ramp up farm production to astounding levels, net farm income is now lower than at the onset of the Great Depression, and one out of every eight Americans faces hunger. But a healthier and more equitable food system is possible. In Building Community Food Webs (Island Press, 2021), Ken Meter shows how grassroots food and farming leaders across the U.S. are tackling these challenges by constructing civic networks. Overturning extractive economic structures, these inspired leaders are engaging low-income residents, farmers, and local organizations in their quest to build stronger communities.. Ken Meter is one of the most experienced food system analysts in the U.S., holding over 50 years of experience in community capacity building. Meter is co–author of a toolkit for measuring economic impacts of local food development and co-editor of Sustainable Food System Assessment: Lessons

Few revolutions in economics have been as under-covered in general literature as the emergence and development of competition theory and policymaking. Political threats to break up the tech giants or restrain Russian gas pipelines make the headlines while academic lawyers churn out textbooks on 130 years of precedent and practicing lawyers test its limits. What has been missing is an up-to-date, general legislative and intellectual history of how and why politicians, lawyers, and economists in capitalist democracies decided they needed to step in and correct the market. Why did this happen first in the US in that crucial quarter-century preceding the first world war? The Foundations of Antitrust: Events, Ideas, and Doctrines by Gregory Werden (Carolina Academic Press, 2020) fills that gap, examines the overlaps between legal innovation and common law, and busts a few myths en route. From 1977 until his retirement in 2019, Gregory Werden worked in the Antitrust Division of the US Department of Justice – most r

Fair trade certified coffee is now commonly found on the supermarket shelves of the Global North, but the connections between the consumer and producer of fair trade coffee are far from simple. Lindsay Naylor’s book, Fair Trade Rebels: Coffee Production and Struggles for Autonomy in Chiapas (University of Minnesota Press, 2019), examines the contested politics of fair trade coffee production in the indigenous highlands of Mexico. Using theoretical approaches based in diverse economies scholarship and decolonial thinking, Naylor highlights the significance of the multiple, diverse economic practices and relations that campesinos/as use in their struggle to form more dignified livelihoods. While she critiques the narratives of economic development and problematic understandings of solidarity that underpin many fair trade discourses, Naylor’s empirically grounded research produces a nuanced analysis of the possibilities and limitations inherent in contemporary fair trade coffee production. Rather than understand

For three decades, Hans Gersbach has been using economic analysis and tools to explain and improve political behaviour. His academic career began just as history was supposed to be ending with the victory of liberal democracy. Today, as a string of books argue – most recently Twilight of Democracy by Anne Applebaum (Penguin, 2020) and Our Own Worst Enemy by Tom Nichols‎ (OUP USA, 2021) – things look rather different. Gersbach’s mission to optimise democracy and reduce the disenchantment that feeds extremism has never been more salient. His Redesigning Democracy: More Ideas for Better Rules (Springer, 2017) may be four years old but he has continued publishing papers developing the book’s ideas on political contracts, re-election thresholds, optimal term lengths, pendular voting, "Catenarian" fiscal discipline, and even incentive pay for policymakers. Another book is only a matter of time. Hans Gersbach holds the Chair of Macroeconomics, Innovation and Policy at ETH Zurich and previously taught at Heidelberg a

Moving Beyond Modern Portfolio Theory: Investing that Matters (Routledge, 2021) tells the story of how Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) revolutionized the investing world and the real economy, but is now showing its age. MPT has no mechanism to understand its impacts on the environmental, social and financial systems, nor any tools for investors to mitigate the havoc that systemic risks can wreck on their portfolios. It's time for MPT to evolve. The authors, Jon Lukomnik and James Hawley, propose a new imperative to improve finance's ability to fulfil its twin main purposes: providing adequate returns to individuals and directing capital to where it is needed in the economy. They show how some of the largest investors in the world focus not on picking stocks, but on mitigating systemic risks, such as climate change, so as to improve the risk/return profile of the market as a whole. The author's "Investing that matters" embraces MPT's focus on diversification and risk adjusted return, but understands them in the

Today I talked to Ann Latham about her new book The Power of Clarity: Unleash the True Potential of Workplace Productivity, Confidence, and Empowerment (Bloomsbury, 2021). On the factory floor, the processes have been honed for efficiency. Enter the company’s headquarters, however, and the office functions in a way that brings to mind two of Anne’s favorite terms: “kitchen sink syndrome” and “hand-me-down ambiguity.” In other words, things move slowly and endless reviews and overthinking or failing to think at all are the two modes that seem to predominate in the workplace. What’s the solution? Recognize that meetings need to make a difference to justify the 25% or more of people’s workdays that they swallow up. Who should be there? Those who can, should and will actually input on the decision to be made, and those who can authorize the decision. Everybody else, not so much. For anybody who can’t stand the quagmire at work, Ann’s your person. Ann Latham has consulted for major global companies like Boeing and

In the late nineteenth century, as much of the world adopted some variant of the gold standard, China remained the most populous country still using silver. Yet China had no unified national currency; there was not one monetary standard but many. Silver coins circulated alongside chunks of silver and every transaction became an "encounter of wits." China and the End of Global Silver, 1873–1937 (Cornell UP, 2020) focuses on how officials, policy makers, bankers, merchants, academics, and journalists in China and around the world answered a simple question: how should China change its monetary system? Far from a narrow, technical issue, Chinese monetary reform is a dramatic story full of political revolutions, economic depressions, chance, and contingency. As different governments in China attempted to create a unified monetary standard in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the United States, England, and Japan tried to shape the direction of Chinese monetary reform for their own benefit.  Austin