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TIn this second podcast exploring the underlying assumptions of economics, Avner Offer explains how the post-war age of economic growth was built on American and European welfare states and social democracy. This settlement was challenged in the 1970s by a coalition of business, taxpayers, consumers, ideologists and social scientists. The result of this discontent was the intellectual and political dominance of market liberalism. In this conversation, Martin Daunton and Avner Offer explore how this shift came about, what role was played by the Nobel Prize in economics, and what explains the divide between the public and private sectors.

The key books we discuss are:

The Challenge of Affluence: Self Control and Well-Being in the United States and Britain since 1950, Oxford, 2006.
With Gabriel Soderberg, The Nobel Factor: The Prize in Economics, Social Democracy and the Market Turn Princeton and Oxford, 2016.
Understanding the Private-Pubic Divide: Markets, Governments and Time Horizons Cambridge 2022.

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