New Books In Economics

In early twentieth-century China, Chen Diexian (1879–1940) was a maverick entrepreneur—at once a prolific man of letters and captain of industry, a magazine editor and cosmetics magnate. He tinkered with chemistry in his private studio, used local cuttlefish to source magnesium carbonate, and published manufacturing tips in how-to columns. In a rapidly changing society, Chen copied foreign technologies and translated manufacturing processes from abroad to produce adaptations of global commodities that bested foreign brands. Engaging in the worlds of journalism, industry, and commerce, he drew on literati practices associated with late-imperial elites but deployed them in novel ways within a culture of educated tinkering that generated industrial innovation. Through the lens of Chen’s career, Eugenia Lean explores how unlikely individuals devised unconventional, homegrown approaches to industry and science in early twentieth-century China. She contends that Chen’s activities exemplify “vernacular industrialism

Dismal spending on government health services is often considered a necessary consequence of a low per-capita GDP, but are poor patients in poor countries really fated to be denied the fruits of modern medicine? In many countries, officials speak of proper health care as a luxury, and convincing politicians to ensure citizens have access to quality health services is a constant struggle. Yet, in many of the poorest nations, health care has long received a tiny share of public spending. Colonial and postcolonial governments alike have used political, rhetorical, and even martial campaigns to rebuff demands by patients and health professionals for improved medical provision, even when more funds were available. No More to Spend: Neglect and the Construction of Scarcity in Malawi's History of Health Care (Oxford University Press, 2020) challenges the inevitability of inadequate social services in twentieth-century Africa, focusing on the political history of Malawi. Using the stories of doctors, patients, and p

Warning: Economics. In this episode, we begin with Eisler’s testimony before the skeptical Senators of the Committee on Banking and Currency in Washington, D.C. on January 20, 1934, in which he proposed that the nation adopt a dual currency system to control inflation and end the Great Depression. I (a non-economist) talk about what this means with noted economist Miles Kimball, who has recently brought renewed attention to Eisler’s plan in his own work. We also learn about Eisler’s theory of who actually wrote what we call the Gospel of John, talk with Steven Wasserstrom about Eisler’s brief involvement with Carl Jung and the Eranos Conference, and interpret a “dream poem” that Eisler recorded at his mother’s house in 1936. Guests: Guests: Miles Kimball (The University of Colorado-Boulder), Steven Wasserstrom (Reed College). Voice of Robert Eisler: Caleb Crawford Additional voices: Brian Evans Music: “Shibbolet Baseda,” recorded by Elyakum Shapirra and His Israeli Orchestra. Funding provided by the Ohio Univ

Why do some countries pass legislation regulating carbon or protecting the environment while others do not? In his new book Carbon Captured: How Business and Labor Control Climate Politics (MIT Press, 2020), Matto Mildenberger (Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of California, Santa Barbara) uses a comparative analysis of Norway, Australia, and the United States to explain differences in climate policy-making . Mildenberger concludes that despite variation in policy preferences and governmental systems, business and labor interests have infiltrated the policy-making process to prevent governments from combating climate change with legislation. Mildenberger argues that carbon polluters capture governments through “double representation” because carbon polluters are represented regardless of what political coalition holds power. On the left, polluters are represented by labor unions who fear that increased regulations mean a decrease in jobs. On the right, polluters are represented by corporat

Integration has been a key theme across the general management, organizational behavior, supply chain management, strategy, information systems and the environmental management literature for decades. Sustainability continues to be, at the “top of the agenda” in the C-suite. Despite this, specialists in academia and organizations lack the peripheral vision to understand the power of a more integrated approach that will empower functional groups to become best-in-class without forcing trade-offs that pull down other groups connected to overall operations. Integrated Management is the key driver of innovation and profitability in progressive companies. It reduces risks while pursuing new opportunities, and the checks and balances for prudent management are baked in the strategy for modern go-to-market synergy and growth. What can be done, then, by individuals, functions, organizations, value chains, and even whole cities to integrate and align sustainability? In his book Integrated Management: How Sustainabilit

How do you value something? It seems simple enough. Since the beginning of commerce thousands of years ago, people have been asserting the value of enterprises. Yet, the math and specific logic of that exercise is only about a century old. For thirty of those years, Tim Koller and his colleagues at McKinsey, the consultancy, have been in the forefront of how to think about value and how to measure it. The first edition of Valuation: Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies (Wiley) came out in 1990; this is the seventh iteration, so Koller has been through numerous ups and downs. His calm and cool reasoning should be required reading for all business managers and investors.  Daniel Peris is Senior Vice President at Federated Investors in Pittsburgh. Trained as a historian of modern Russia, he is the author most recently of Getting Back to Business: Why Modern Portfolio Theory Fails Investors. You can follow him on Twitter @HistoryInvestor or at http://www.strategicdividendinvestor.com Learn more about you

How does avoidance of conflict ultimately create more conflict in the workplace? Today I talked to Caroline Stokes, author of Elephants Before Unicorns: Emotionally Intelligent HR Strategies to Save Your Company (Entrepreneur Press, 2019) Stokes is the CEO of FORWARD, and the podcast host of The Emotionally Intelligent Recruiter. She is an award-winning leadership coach and thinker, partnering with global leaders throughout their career and leadership cycle. Topics covered in this episode include: • The emotions that inadvertently inspire the behavior of both push-over and bully bosses, and the likely emotional responses of their direct reports. • How the risk of employee disengagement can get short-circuited before it happens. • What are steps that can ensure a better on-boarding experience for the new employee, including CEO’s (whose turn-over rate is 50% within the first 18 months on the job). Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of eight books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. To check out his “Faces of the Week” blo

Today I spoke with Professor Peter J. Boettke, co-author of Public Governance and the Classical-Liberal Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2019) with Paul Dragos Aligica and Vlad Tarko. Dr Boettke is University Professor of Economics and Philosophy, Director of the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, at George Mason University, USA. In our conversation we defined the disciplines of Public Choice and Public Administration and we named the key actors of a very long intellectual debate. We discussed the practical relevance (for policymakers and taxpayers) of this debate in economics and we also addressed contemporary issues such as the management of the Covid-19 crisis and the institutional architecture of police forces in the USA. The book is divided into three parts: Part I: A Distinctive Perspective on Governance: The Building Blocks; Part II: Public Choice and Public Administration: The Confluence; Part III: Framing the Applied Level: Themes, Issue Areas, and Cas

What does it take for a company’s culture to enable ongoing growth? Today I talked to Charlene Li, author of The Disruption Mindset: Why Some Organizations Transform While Others Fail (IdeaPress, 2019). Li is the author of six books, including the New York Times bestseller, Open Leadership, and is also the co-author of Groundswell. She is the Founder and Senior Fellow at Altimeter, a research and consulting firm, as well as a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School. Topics covered in this episode include: Five kinds of employees, and how that that model feeds into the four archetypes of disruptive leaders: steadfast managers, realist optimists, worried skeptics, and agent provocateurs. How mid-size companies can avoid the “permafrost” layer that limits the flexibility of larger companies. How is the challenge of being a disruptive leader different if you’re female or a minority member versus being a white male? Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of eight books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. (http

Keynes was not only an economist but the preeminent anti-authoritarian thinker of the 20th century, one who devoted his life to the belief that art and ideas could conquer war and deprivation. As a moral philosopher, political theorist, and statesman, Keynes led an extraordinary life that took him from intimate turn-of-the-century parties in London's Bloomsbury art scene to the fevered negotiations in Paris that shaped the Treaty of Versailles, from stock market crashes on two continents to diplomatic breakthroughs in the mountains of New Hampshire to wartime ballet openings at London's extravagant Covent Garden. Along the way, he reinvented Enlightenment liberalism to meet the harrowing crises of the 20th century and, in the United States, his ideas became both the foundation of a burgeoning economics profession and a flash point in the broader political struggle of the Cold War. Part biography and part intellectual history, Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes (Random House,

One of the most enduring ideas in economics is that unemployment is both unavoidable and necessary for the smooth functioning of the economy. This assumption has provided cover for the devastating social and economic costs of job insecurity. It is also false. In this The Case for a Job Guarantee (Polity, 2020), Pavlina R. Tcherneva challenges us to imagine a world where the phantom of unemployment is banished and anyone who seeks decent, living-wage work can find it - guaranteed. This is the aim of the Job Guarantee proposal: to provide a voluntary employment opportunity in public service to anyone who needs it. Tcherneva enumerates the many advantages of the Job Guarantee over the status quo and proposes a blueprint for its implementation within the wider context of the need for a Green New Deal. Pavlina Tcherneva is Associate Professor at Bard College and Research Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute. Stephen Pimpare is Senior Lecturer in the Politics & Society Program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey Sc

Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America (Liveright, 2020) by Marcia Chatelain is a fascinating examination of the relationship between the fast-food industry, Black business owners, and the communities where they set up franchises after the Holy Week Uprisings of 1968. Using McDonalds as a “prism” to study the expansion of the fast-food industry and the effects of Black capitalism, Franchise tells a complex origins story about Black franchisees and their reception in Black communities across the nation in Atlanta, Chicago, Portland, Cleveland, and Los Angeles after the classical phase of the Civil Rights Movement. Chatelain ultimately exposes the limits of Black entrepreneurship to supplant state responsibility to create socially and economically reparative conditions in Black communities, while demonstrating how a range of progressive Black politicians and activists came to support Black entrepreneurship as a solution to widespread federal and municipal disinvestment from Black communities. As Black fr

How are we going to address inequality and put the economy on a sounder footing? Today I talked to Eric Lonergan and Mark Blyth about their new book Angrynomics (Agenda Publishing/Columbia University Press, 2020). Lonergan is an economist and macro fund manager in London whose writings often appear in The Financial Times. Blyth is a political economist at Brown University who received his PhD in political science from Columbia University. Topics covered in this episode include: --An exploration of how the emotions of anger, fear and disgust animate both the long-term economic stresses in society and those brought on by the Covid-19 crisis. --What the differences are between moral outrage versus tribal outrage. --Descriptions of three, potentially viable and game-changing solutions, including among them a “data dividend” and the creation of national wealth funds like those in Norway and beyond. Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of eight books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. (https://www.sensorylogic.com). To check ou

In this episode (# 2), we discuss Eisler’s early years as a member of the Jewish bourgeoisie in turn-of-the-century Vienna with historian Steven Beller. We also hear from the closest living relative of Robert Eisler, his grand-nephew Richard Regen. Philosopher Tom Hurka provides some background for understanding the arguments Eisler is making in Studies in Value Theory, especially his critiques of hedonism and aesthetic philosophy. Finally, we look at the events surrounding Eisler’s dramatic arrest and trial for attempted art theft in Udine in 1907 and discuss its short- and long-term consequences. Voice of Robert Eisler: Caleb Crawford Additional voices: Brian Evans Editing and engineering: March Washelesky Music: “Shibbolet Baseda,” recorded by Elyakum Shapirra and his Israeli Orchestra. Guests: Steven Beller (independent scholar), Tom Hurka (Chancellor Henry N. R. Jackman Distinguished Professor of Philosophical Studies at the University of Toronto), Richard Regen (grand-nephew of Robert and Lili Eisler).

Alberto Harambour's new book Soberanías Fronterizas. Estados y capital en la colonización de Patagonia (Argentina y Chile, 1840s-1920s) (Universidad Austral de Chile, 2019) examines the explosion of foreign-owned sheep farming, the fitful expansion of Argentine and Chilean sovereignty, and the violence of primitive accumulation and genocide in southern Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. Soberanías Fronterizas wrestles with the multiple and competing sovereignties articulated during the Age of Empire, Latin America’s export boom, and the dispossession of autonomous indigenous peoples through settler colonialism. It asks how, over the course of less than a century, this vast territory described by Europeans and outsiders as inhospitable, unknowable, and uninhabited, came to be a wildly profitable export enclave. Harambous uncovers how foreign (predominantly British) capital came into possession of millions of hectares of land for sheep raising, effectively establishing sovereign control at the expense of the indig

In today’s ultra-polarized and highly partisan political environment, Welfare for the Rich: How Your Tax Dollars End Up in Millionaires' Pockets―And What You Can Do About It (Post Hill Press, 2020) is one of the rare books written to appeal to engaged and open-minded citizens from across the political spectrum. Welfare for the Rich is the first book to describe and analyze the many ways that federal and state governments provide handouts—subsidies, grants, tax credits, loan guarantees, price supports, and many other payouts—to millionaires, billionaires, and the companies they own and run. Welfare for millionaire farmers comes to more than $50 billion annually. Subsidies to giant corporations exceeds $100 billion. This shocking waste of taxpayer money is rigorously documented in Welfare for the Rich, along with the political action committees, and special interest groups that keep this distorted system going. Many journalists, scholars, and activists have focused on one or more of these dysfunctional programs

How is the retail sector going to be best able to survive the Amazon juggernaut? I address this question with B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore in a discussion of their book The Experience Economy: Competing for Customer Time, Attention, and Money (Harvard Business Review Press, 2020). Pine and Gilmore are the cofounders of Strategic Horizons, LLP. Besides their other books and activities, Pine is a Lecturer at Columbia University and Gilmore teaches at Case Western Reserve University. Topics covered in this episode include: --What have been the relevant emotions in play as the economy has evolved across the four stage of commodities, goods, services, and now experiences and transformations alike. --How is achieving “customer satisfaction” too limiting, and what’s the emotional storyline that, first, Walt Disney and now business leaders worldwide must embrace to survive and thrive. --How does the emotional labor of employees being “on stage” as part of an experience square with workers’ and customers’ de

The COVID-19 pandemic has unleashed a firehose of information (much of it wrong) and an avalanche of opinions (many of them ill-founded). Most of us are so distracted by the everyday awfulness that we don't see the broader issues in play. In this "hastily written" guide to the pandemic economy penned during self-isolation after a flight from Australia, economist Joshua Gans steps back from the short-term chaos to take a clear and systematic look at how economic choices are being made in response to COVID-19. Economics in the Age of COVID-19 (MIT Press , 2020) shows that containing the virus and pausing the economy—without letting businesses fail and people lose their jobs—are the necessary first steps. He outlines the phases of the pandemic economy - containment to reset to recovery and enhancement - and warns against thinking in terms of a “tradeoff” between public health and economic health. Once the virus is contained, we will need to innovate come together to protect ourselves from future pandemics. Tim J

Brian Greene is a Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Columbia University in the City of New York, where he is the Director of the Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics, and co-founder and chair of the World Science Festival. He is well known for his TV mini-series about string theory and the nature of reality, including the Elegant Universe, which tied in with his best-selling 2000 book of the same name. In this episode, we talk about his latest popular book Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe (Random House, 2020) Until the End of Time gives the reader a theory of everything, both in the sense of a “state of the academic union”, covering cosmology and evolution, consciousness and computation, and art and religion, and in the sense of showing us a way to apprehend the often existentially challenging subject matter. Greene uses evocative autobiographical vignettes in the book to personalize his famously lucid and accessible explanati

You mean big business is good, contributes to our general welfare, and is not generally guilty--with notable exceptions--of all of the charges made against it? That's the argument libertarian economist Tyler Cowen makes in his book Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero (St. Martins, 2019) Most NBN listeners will raise an eyebrow to that claim, but most of those same NBN listeners are up for a good back-and-forth on the virtues and demerits of our market system. And to that end, being familiar with Cowen's arguments--made in this book and his many other publications and platforms--is very useful. The shift in the reputational balance between government and big business as a result of the Covid-19 crisis is another reason to consider Cowen's argument. Daniel Peris is Senior Vice President at Federated Investors in Pittsburgh. Trained as a historian of modern Russia, he is the author most recently of Getting Back to Business: Why Modern Portfolio Theory Fails Investors. You can follow him on Twitt