Showing titles in Theory

As one of the first titles in Atlantic Monthly Press' "Books That Changed the World" series, America's most provocative satirist, P.J. O'Rourke, reads from Adam Smith's revolutionary The Wealth of Nations - so you don't have to. Recognized almost instantly on its publication in 1776 as the fundamental work of economics, The Wealth of Nations was also recognized as really long: the original edition totaled over 900 pages in two volumes.

Inventing the Future is a bold new manifesto for life after capitalism. Against the confused understanding of our high-tech world by both the right and the left, this book claims that the emancipatory and future-oriented possibilities of our society can be reclaimed. Instead of running from a complex future, Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams demand a postcapitalist economy capable of advancing standards, liberating humanity from work and developing technologies that expand our freedoms.

Succinct, accessible, and authoritative, Thomas Piketty’s The Economics of Inequality is the ideal place to start for those who want to understand the fundamental issues at the heart of one the most pressing concerns in contemporary economics and politics. This work now appears in English for the first time.

Nobel prize-winner F. A. Hayek is one of the great thinkers of the 20th century, but up to now there has been no book for the non-specialist that describes his ideas and explains their significance. Eamonn Butler's clear, systematic, perceptive study fills this gap. Starting with a short survey of Hayek's life, Dr. Butler goes on to analyze all the main elements in his thought under six basic headings: Understanding How Society Works; The Market Process; Hayek's Critique of Socialism; Criticism of Social Justice; The Institutions of a Liberal Order; and The Constitution of a Liberal State.

The Economics of Belonging argues that we should step back and take a fresh look at the root causes of our current challenges. In this original, engaging book, Martin Sandbu argues that economics remains at the heart of our widening inequality and it is only by focusing on the right policies that we can address it. He proposes a detailed, radical plan for creating a just economy where everyone can belong. Sandbu demonstrates that the rising numbers of the left behind are not due to globalization gone too far.

What is economic growth? And why, historically, has it occurred in only a few places? Previous efforts to answer these questions have focused on institutions, geography, finances, and psychology. But according to MIT's anti-disciplinarian César Hidalgo, understanding the nature of economic growth demands transcending the social sciences and including the natural sciences of information, networks, and complexity. To understand the growth of economies, Hidalgo argues, we first need to understand the growth of order.

This is the cut-to-the-chase quality that makes economics not only applicable to the interpretation of law, but beneficial to its crafting. Drawing on numerous commonsense examples, in addition to his extensive knowledge of Chicago-school economics, David D. Friedman offers a spirited defense of the economic view of law. He clarifies the relationship between law and economics in clear prose that is friendly to students, lawyers, and lay listeners without sacrificing the intellectual heft of the ideas presented.

After years of ill health, capitalism is now in a critical condition. Growth has given way to stagnation; inequality is leading to instability; and confidence in the money economy has all but evaporated. In How Will Capitalism End?, the acclaimed analyst of contemporary politics and economics Wolfgang Streeck argues the world is about to change.

It has long been recognized that most standard of living increases are associated with advances in technology, not the accumulation of capital. Yet it has also become clear that what truly separates developed from less developed countries is not just a gap in resources or output but a gap in knowledge. In fact the pace at which developing countries grow is largely determined by the pace at which they close that gap. Therefore, how countries learn and become more productive is key to understanding how they grow and develop, especially over the long term.

Identity Economics bridges a critical gap in the social sciences. It brings identity and norms to economics. People’s notions of what is proper, and what is forbidden, and for whom, are fundamental to how hard they work, and how they learn, spend, and save. Thus people’s identity—their conception of who they are, and of who they choose to be—may be the most important factor affecting their economic lives.

Inequality, social immobility, and political polarization are only a few crucial phenomena driven by the inevitability of social structures. Social structures determine who has power and influence, account for why people fail to assimilate basic facts, and enlarge our understanding of patterns of contagion - from the spread of disease to financial crises. Despite their primary role in shaping our lives, human networks are often overlooked when we try to account for our most important political and economic practices.

Like F.A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises moved beyond economics in his later years to address questions regarding the foundation of all social science. But unlike Hayek's attempts, Mises' writings on these matters have received less attention than they deserve. Theory and History, writes Rothbard in his introduction, "remains by far the most neglected masterwork of Mises". Here Mises defends his all-important idea of methodological dualism: one approach to the hard sciences and another for the social sciences.

Praxeology, the science of human action, is a lens through which truthfulness of the world is revealed. Truth goggles, if you will. Praxeology teaches us that everything going on in our society is rooted in the wills and desires of individuals. Starting from an irrefutable set of statements about human beings, we can come to conclusions about human behavior that are true regardless of what any political ideology might assert.

Milton Friedman, père du courant monétariste et fondateur de l'école de Chicago, y défend la liberté économique comme condition nécessaire à toute liberté politique. Il y présente sa propre vision du libéralisme et son analyse pointue est encore et toujours d'actualité.

The greatest challenges facing humankind, according to Deirdre Nansen McCloskey, are poverty and tyranny, both of which hold people back. Arguing for a return to true liberal values, this engaging and accessible book develops, defends, and demonstrates how embracing the ideas first espoused by 18th-century philosophers like Locke, Smith, Voltaire, and Wollstonecraft is good for everyone. In McCloskey's view, liberalism leads to equality, but equality does not necessarily lead to liberalism - and the fixation of the left on inequality is counterproductive.

Thorstein Bunde Veblen (1857-1929) was an economist, sociologist, and critic of capitalism. In The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), Veblen coined the concepts of “conspicuous consumption” and “conspicuous leisure”. His emphasis on conspicuous consumption greatly influenced economists who engaged in critiques of capitalism and technological determinism. In The Theory of Business Enterprise (1904) Veblen looks at the growing corporate domination of culture and the economy, arguing that business interests do not coincide with that of the community.

After the global financial panic and recession of 2007–2009, you don’t have to be president or a hedge fund manager to know that “It’s the economy, stupid.” Yet while the economy dominates the headlines, how it works and who influences it remain a mystery to most people. In The Little Book of Economics, Greg Ip, an award-winning journalist renowned for making complex economics easy to understand, walks you through how the economy really works.

The roads we drive on; the pipes that supply our drinking water; the farmland that provides our food; energy systems for electricity and heat; hospitals, schools, and the homes in which many of us live—all now swell asset managers' bulging investment portfolios. As the owners of more and more of the basic building blocks of everyday life, asset managers shape the lives of each and every one of us in profound and disturbing ways. In this eye-opening follow-up to Rentier Capitalism, Brett Christophers peels back the veil on "asset manager society."

Milton Friedman on Economics: Selected Papers collects a variety of Friedman's papers on topics in economics that were originally published in the Journal of Political Economy. Opening with Friedman's 1977 Nobel Lecture, the volume spans nearly the whole of his career, incorporating papers from as early as 1948 and as late as 1990. An excellent introduction to Friedman's economic thought, Milton Friedman will be essential for anyone tracing the course of twentieth-century economics and politics.

In explaining how economic thinking is indispensable to tackling these huge problems, this book is a sure-footed guide, spanning Aristotle’s ideas about restraining consumption, Adam Smith’s thinking about the importance of moral character for sustained economic development, and Esther Duflo’s ongoing work to help the world’s poorest communities lift themselves out of poverty.