New Books In Economics

George Brock approached his book about newspapers and journalism in the digital age unwilling to write another gloom-and-doom narrative about the death or decline of the industry. When he studied the historical development of journalism and current trends, he found the industry is what is always has been: volatile, evolving, and vital to society’s well being. Out of Print: Newspapers, Journalism and the Business of News in the Digital Age (Kogan Page, 2013) is an important look at the industrial, economic, and pragmatic realities of a shifting industry. Using modern case studies, including the phone-hacking scandal that brought down Great Britain’s News of the World, as well as historical research and recent data, Brock examines where journalism was, is and will be. Brock, head of City University London’s prestigious graduate school of journalism, has produced a work that transcends academia without sacrificing methodology or theory. “Because journalism lives on the frontier between de

Over the last several podcasts, authors (Stedman Jones, Buchman, and Tienken) have repeatedly evoked neoliberalism. A new book helps to place this term and its meaning in American political history into better context. Michael Lind, the author of Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States (Harper, 2012), has written a sweeping economic and political history of the United States. He is cofounder of the New American Foundation and policy director of the foundation’s Economic Growth Program. Lind argues that the important divide in the economic intellectual history of the country is between the “developmental tradition” of Hamilton and the “producerist vision” of Jefferson. Major social, political, and economic eras have been defined by competing arguments and victories along that age old argument. Lind takes us up through the present and calls on the Next Social Contract to adjust to the new economic realities of the 21st century. Lind brings a journalist’s sty

In the “Great Recession,” millions lost their jobs, retirement savings, and even their houses. The entire middle class was shaken. Yet almost no one has been brought to justice. Quite the opposite: the big banks and investment houses–the places where the perpetrators most likely work and worked–were bailed out by the federal government under the banner of being “too big to fail.” Perhaps it’s the case that we will never know enough about what happened to indict anyone, or at least anyone in the upper reaches of the financial industry. But does that mean we don’t, in a general way, know who was responsible? Not according to Hedrick Smith. In his new book Who Stole the American Dream? (Random House, 2012), the veteran reporter digs deep into American political and economic history to find out who we should blame for this colossal economic meltdown. What he found is surprising. The roots of the crisis go back farther than most people–experts included–t

When you buy a stock, you’re buying a piece of a company. The funny thing is that most people who own stocks either don’t know that or, if they do, don’t act like owners. They could care less about the business itself. They don’t care whether it turns a profit, how big that profit is, or whether they are going to get a cut of the profit. All they care about is the stock price: up = good; down = bad. According to portfolio manager Daniel Peris, this narrow-minded focus on stock price is a real problem both for companies and the folks like you and me who invest in them. What everyone should be paying attention to, says Peris, is how much companies pay out in dividends to investors. In The Strategic Dividend Investor: Why Slow and Steady Wins the Race(McGrawHill, 2011), Peris lays out the case to investors, urging them to invest in companies that distribute dividends regularly. In The Dividend Imperative: How Dividends Can Narrow the Gap between Main Street and Wall Street (McGrawHill, 20

When I was an undergraduate, I was taught that merchants in early modern Western Europe were “proto-capitalists.” I was never quite sure what that meant. If it meant they traded property for money, yes. But that would make everyone who traded things for money over the past, say, 5,000 years, a “proto-capitalist.” If it meant that they thought of their property as capital to be used for maximizing profit, then no. As Martha C. Howell points out in her excellent Commerce Before Capitalism in Europe, 1300-1600 (Cambridge UP, 2010), early modern merchants–at least in the Low Countries–didn’t really think of their property as “capital” at all, and they certainly didn’t use it exclusively for the maximization of profit. Their idea of property was, according to Howell, as much medieval as modern. Essentially, they adapted received (medieval) categories of property to novel commercial conditions. The result was a unique hybrid of the old and new. In hindsig

Americans seem to be more concerned about economic inequality today than they have been in living memory. The Occupy Movement (“We are the 99%”) is only the most visible sign of this growing unease. But what are the dimensions of inequality in the United States? How have they changed over the past century? Are we living in a new Gilded Age in which the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer? In his “book” (it’s really an innovative website) Growing Apart: A Political History of American Inequality (Institute for Policy Studies, 2013), Colin Gordon sets out to answer these questions. Using an interesting array of charts, graphs, and videos, Gordon tells the story of inequality in the U.S. in modern times. Gordon shows that in recent decades the poor have been getting relatively poorer and the rich have been getting relatively richer. The “gap”–already considerable–is growing. In this interview we discuss growing inequality and the rea

I’m Al Emid and I’m back here on New Books Network after a long absence. I had a good excuse though – I was finishing up the book entitled Investing in Frontier Markets, to be released this Fall by John Wiley & Sons and co-authored with Gavin Graham. Barring unforeseen circumstances I will be back here regularly with reviews of timely books in the investing and business categories, which I’ve covered for years as a journalist. And in the business news category, firings, layoffs and forced resignations have occurred frequently for the past five years. Anyone who has recently lost what seemed like a secure job can be forgiven for wondering where he or she went wrong – but in many cases the fault did not lay with the terminated employee. And we can understand how any individual who has fulltime employment might wonder how long that will last. In the past year, blue-chip employers have terminated thousands of employees: 2400 at Dow Chemical, 5400 at American Express, over 4300 at

It’s a classic historical question: Why the West and not the Rest? Answers abound. So is there anything new to say about it? According to Prasannan Parthasarathi, there certainly is. He doesn’t go so far as to say that other proposed explanations are flat out wrong, it’s just that they don’t really focus on the narrow forces that, well, forced English business men to innovate in the 18th century. In Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not: Global Economic Divergence, 1600-1850 (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Parthasarathi says that those forces were economic. English textile merchants were getting trounced by imported Indian cotton. They found that they couldn’t produce cotton goods in the same way the Indians did for all kinds of reasons. So, they had to create a new, more efficient, production process. They did. According to Parthasarath, the “Industrial Revolution” was born out of economic competition and innovation (with, of course, a helping hand from the sta

Daniel Stedman Jones is the author of Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics (Princeton University Press, 2012). The book tells a portion of the intellectual history of neoliberalism through a focus on the period of the 1950s through the 1980s. Stedman Jones tracks the development of a set of ideas by Karl Popper, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and later Milton Friedman, George Stigler, and James Buchanan, first in Europe and then in the United States. This intellectual movement soon becomes a transatlantic political movement, as the leaders of the neoliberal agenda sought to influence policy makers in the UK and US. Policy making in the late 1970s and early 1980s, particularly deregulation and other market-based reforms, reflected the success of the “masters of the universe” to move beyond the academy. The book ends with a reflection on the legacy of neoliberalism in current times. Scholars in political science, public policy, history, and economics wou

Why do we work so hard, and should we? These are the questions that Robert and Edward Skidelsky explore in their thought provoking book How Much is Enough?: Money and the Good Life (Other Press, 2012). Their answer to the first question is (to put it in my own words) that we don’t know any better. Our competitive capitalist culture has taught us to work hard so we can earn more. Further, it has taught us that earning more will be “happier.” It won’t, say the Skidelskys. Their answer to the second question is “no,” full stop. What we should do instead is take advantage of our remarkable wealth, work less,  and live the good life. What is the “good life?” Listen in and find out.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Below the Line: Producers and Production Studies in the New Television Economy (Duke University Press, 2011), Vicki Mayer provides a major theoretical contribution to media production studies. The book self-consciously challenges the idea of the “TV producer” that industry figures and scholars alike often assume. Mayer traces how the “TV producer” category came to be associated with–indeed defined by–creativity and professionalism. Below the Line upends this definition, through four empirical case studies of largely invisible television production: (1) television set assemblers in Brazil, (2) soft-core video cameramen in New Orleans, (3) reality TV casters, and (4) local cable television citizen regulators. The book weaves a theoretical thread through these ethnographic portraits that are themselves framed by political economic analysis of the industry and the broader economy. What once seemed stable–the idea that TV producers are above-the-line creative profession

If it doesn’t spread, it’s dead This is the unifying idea of Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green’s new book, Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture (New York University Press, 2013) Those six words – If it doesn’t spread, it’s dead – appear on the back cover, on the inside jacket, and in the very first paragraph of the book’s introduction. The authors focus on the new currencies of media, including user engagement and the rapid flow of information, while debunking the terms we’ve all learned to know and dread, such as “viral” and “Web 2.0.” Jenkins, Ford, and Green set an ambitious agenda, targeting not one but three audiences: media scholars, communication professionals, and those who create and share media and are interested in learning how media are changing because of it. “Perhaps the most impactful aspect of a spreadable media environment,” the authors write, “is the way in w

There were always and will always be orphans. The question is what to do with them. In his terrific new book The Charleston Orphan House: Children’s Lives in the First Public Orphanage in America (University of Chicago Press, 2013), economic historian John E. Murray tells us how one Southern American city did it in the 18th and 19th centuries. Charleston was a city divided between free whites and enslaved African Americans. The whites felt insecure and, according to Murray, this is one of the reasons they founded and funded America’s first public orphanage. The white-only institution not only helped indigent parents and their children, but it also brought the city’s white population together in a way no other body did. It was an expression of civic humanity, but it was also an expression of white unity against the black masses. Listen to John tell the tale.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gene Cooper‘s new book is a multi-sited ethnographic study of market and temple fairs in the region of Jinhua, a city on the east coast of China and the home of Hengdian, “China’s Hollywood.” The Market and Temple Fairs of Rural China: Red Fire (Routledge, 2013) weaves together historical and ethnographic methodologies in a spirited account of the genealogies and contemporary practices of a variety of forms of performance at these local gatherings. After providing an extended background of the region, its religious institutions and perspectives, and on the history of temple fairs in general in Part 1 of the book, Part 2 moves into the economic, cultural, religious, and political dimensions that contribute to the “red fire” of temple fairs in Jinhua today. Cooper shows how the local fair can serve both as a Bakhtinian carnivalesque atmosphere (replete with elements of freak show and circus) and a site of everyday forms of resistance. The book also features a wonderfully deta

You wouldn’t know from the 2012 president race but the United States remains engaged in a fairly bloody conflict in Afghanistan. In addition to boots on the ground, we deploy scores of drones in Pakistan, Yemen and the Horn of Africa to keep Al Qaeda and its affiliates at bay. In the post-9/11 world does the US have any other option aside from semi-permanent war against non-state actors that operate in developing and/or failed states? Dr. Rachel Kleinfeld thinks American policymakers have viable options, alternatives and policies that can address the national security challenges of the 21st century. In Let There Be Light: Electrifying the Developing World With Markets and Distributed Energy, co-authored with Drew Sloan, (Truman National Security Institute, 2012), they reveal that “energy,” or the lack thereof, keeps many nations mired in poverty. To jump start-developing economies, Kleinfeld offers some relatively doable innovations to make energy plentiful. In so doing, failed states could

What did money mean to the people of medieval Japan? In Coins, Trade, and the State: Economic Growth in Early Medieval Japan (Harvard University Asia Center, 2011), Ethan Segal takes readers through a fascinating exploration of the politics, society, and culture of pre-1600 Japan. One of the wonderful things about this book is the extent to which Ethan Segal very carefully contextualizes early medieval Japan within a broader global history, situating this economic history in a network of relations with the Mongols and China. East Asianists, take note: Segal’s work is of great interest to those working beyond the field of economic history, and speaks to the history of foreign policy and relations, ideas of virtue, and social history as well. Written in a very fluid and accessible style, Coins, Trade, and the State is an excellent read for anyone interested in cultures of exchange and their histories.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Many of us in the western world don’t rely on bills and coins as much as we used to, yet the idea of cash money is still an ever-present constant in our minds. How often have you stopped to consider the idea of what “money” actually is on a larger scale, or where our changing habits could lead us? In his book The End of Money – Counterfeiters, Preachers, Techies, Dreamers, and the Coming Cashless Society (Da Capo Press, 2012), David Wolman examines our commitment to cash, its advantages and drawbacks, how it facilitates crime and poverty, even its health and environmental issues. With an engaging and accessible style he prompts us to rethink the notion of money, how it works, and what forms it could take in the future. Wolman starts with a short history of cash, beginning with the official introduction of paper money to the Chinese monetary system in the 13th century and Marco Polo’s reaction to it 100 years later. Next we follow him around the globe to get a cross-cultural pictu

Have you ever illegally downloaded a song from the internet? How about illicitly burned copies of a CD? Made a “party tape?” Bought a bootleg album? You may have done these things, but have you purchased a bootlegged song-sheet? In Pop Song Piracy: Disobedient Music Distribution Since 1929 (University of Chicago, 2011) Barry Kernfeld fills us in on the history of disobedient music reproduction and distribution since, well, before the advent of recording technology. Along the way he discusses the above mentioned disobedient distribution techniques along with a few others: fake books, music photocopying, and pirate radio round out the book. Kernfeld suggests that the history of pop music piracy is never ending, with battles of different types of disobedience taking similar forms: the music “monopolists” (song owners) attempting to enact prohibitions on illegal production and distribution, the failed containment of said production and distribution systems and, finally, the assimilation of

Helen Tilley‘s new book Africa as a Living Laboratory: Empire, Development, and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge, 1870-1950 (University of Chicago Press, 2011) uncovers the surprising relationships that developed between science and empire as Britain attempted to fulfill its imperial projects in Africa. Focused primarily on Britain’s colonial dependencies, Tilley shows how the weakness of the empire and the complexity of Africa and of Africans transformed field studies into social and scientific laboratories conducting not merely scientific experiments but also experiments in epistemology, governance and disciplinary methods and aims. Tilley shows how what she calls “vernacular knowledge” circulated and affected metropolitan decision making, how understandings of ecology and complexity seemed to produce both epistemic and imperial humility and how some scientists were ambivalent about their participation research in states that were founded on white rule. Development, under all of i

[Re-posted with permission from Jenny Attiyeh’s ThoughtCast] Simon Johnson, the Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, is an outspoken critic of the US government response to the financial crisis. Now he takes on the “too big to fail” banks which continue to threaten our economy.  In his latest book, called 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown (Pantheon, 2010), which he co-wrote with James Kwak, Simon argues that if the biggest banks aren’t cut down to size, it’s only a matter of time before we face another financial crisis. And once again, the government – aka the taxpayers – will be obliged to step in and bail out these behemoths. In Simon’s words, if they’re too big to fail — they’re too big to exist! Simon Johnson is also a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.  And he’s the co