Book

Power and Inequality

A Reformist Perspective

• Author(s): Alessandro Roncaglia
• ISBN: 978-1-00-937052-3

• January 2024

Power is a broad and complex concept that cuts across all fields in the humanities and social sciences. Written by a leading historian of economic thought, Power and Inequality presents a wide-ranging and multi-disciplinary analysis of power as an economic and social issue. Its aim is not to formulate a new abstract theory of power but rather to illustrate the different ways in which power is used to exacerbate social and economic inequality. Issues such as division of labour and its evolution, different forms of capitalism up to the money-manager economy, the role of networks (from the family to masonic lodges and the mafia), the state and the international arena, culture and the role of the masses are considered. The analysis of these elements, causing inequalities of various kinds, is a prerequisite for devising progressive policy strategies aiming at a reduction of inequalities through a strategy of reforms.

==> Provides readers with a wide-ranging view of the constraints and possibilities of action for reducing inequalities

==> Introduces the topic step-by-step using ordinary-language explanations and references to real-world issues making the theory accessible to readers without specialized training in economics, sociology or politics

==> Includes inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary perspectives, showing how different disciplines can interact

Lynn Parramore's interview with Alessandro Roncaglia

Book

Money and Empire

Charles P. Kindleberger and the Dollar System

• Author(s): Perry G. Mehrling
• ISBN: 9781009178518

• October 2022

Charles Kindleberger ranks as one of the twentieth century’s best-known and most influential international economists. This book traces the evolution of his thinking in the context of a ‘key-currency’ approach to the rise of the dollar system, here revealed as the indispensable framework for global economic development since World War II. Unlike most of his colleagues, Kindleberger was deeply interested in history, and his economics brimmed with real people and institutional details. His research at the New York Fed and BIS during the Great Depression, his wartime intelligence work, and his role in administering the Marshall Plan gave him deep insight into how the international financial system really operated. A biography of both the dollar and a man, this book is also the story of the development of ideas about how money works. It throws a revealing light on the underlying economic forces and political obstacles shaping our globalized world.

- Provides a history of international finance as a set of evolving institutions and evolving theories about how the system works

- Provides a practitioner’s eye view of central banking (1936–1942), war and reconstruction (1942–1948), contrasting with the more common top-down history

- Provides a key-currency account of the rise of the dollar system, contrasting with the more common myth of multilateralism at Bretton Woods

About the Author

Perry G. Mehrling is professor of economics at Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. He was professor of economics at Barnard College in New York City for 30 years. There, he taught courses on the economics of money and banking, the history of money and finance, and the financial dimensions of the U.S. retirement, health, and education systems. His most recent book is The New Lombard Street: How the Fed became the dealer of last resort (Princeton 2011). His best-known book Fischer Black and the Revolutionary Idea of Finance (Wiley 2005, 2012) has recently been released in a revised paperback edition. Currently, Prof. Mehrling directs the educational initiatives of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, one of which is his course Economics of Money and Banking, available on Coursera at www.coursera.org/course/money.

Book

Never Together

The Economic History of a Segregated America

• Author(s): Peter Temin
• ISBN: 9781316516744

• April 2022 (USA)

In November 2020, The New York Times asked fifteen of its columnists to “explain what the past four years have cost America.” Not one of the columnists focused on President Trump’s racism. This book seeks to redress this imbalance and bring Black Americans’ role in our economy to the forefront.

While all humans were created equal, economic history in the United States tells a different story. Reconstruction lasted for only a decade, and Jim Crow laws replaced it. The Civil Rights Movement lasted through the 1960s, yet decayed under President Nixon. The United States has been declining in the Social Product Index, where it now is the lowest of the G7 and 26th in the world.

For health and happiness, Temin argues that we need lasting integration efforts that allow Black Americans equal opportunity. This book convincingly integrates Black and white activities into an inclusive economic history of America.

About the Author

Peter Temin is the Elisha Gray II Professor Emeritus of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He received his B.A. from Swarthmore College in 1959 and his Ph.D. in Economics from MIT in 1964. Professor Temin was a Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University, 1962-65; the Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at Cambridge University, 1985-86; Head of the Economics Department at MIT, 1990-93; and President of the Economic History Association, 1995-96. Professor Temin’s most recent books are The Roman Market Economy (Princeton University Press, 2013), Prometheus Shackled: Goldsmith Banks and England’s Financial Revolution after 1700 (Oxford University Press, 2013, with Hans-Joachim Voth), The Leaderless Economy: Why the World Economic System Fell Apart and How to Fix It (Princeton University Press, 2013, with David Vines) Keynes: Useful Economics for the World Economy (MIT Press, 2014, with David Vines), and The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy (MIT Press, 2017).

Book

How Novelty and Narratives Drive the Stock Market

Black Swans, Animal Spirits and Scapegoats

• Author(s): Nicholas Mangee
• ISBN: 9781108974899

• eBook: Oct 14, 2021

  Hardback: Dec. 16, 2021

‘Animal spirits’ is a term that describes the instincts and emotions driving human behavior in economic settings. In recent years, this concept has been discussed in relation to the emerging field of narrative economics. When unscheduled events hit the stock market, from corporate scandals and technological breakthroughs to recessions and pandemics, relationships driving returns change in unforeseeable ways. To deal with uncertainty, investors engage in narratives which simplify the complexity of real-time, non-routine change. This book assesses the novelty-narrative hypothesis for the U.S. stock market by conducting a comprehensive investigation of unscheduled events using big data textual analysis of financial news. This important contribution to the field of narrative economics finds that major macro events and associated narratives spill over into the churning stream of corporate novelty and sub-narratives, spawning different forms of unforeseeable stock market instability.

About the Author

Nicholas Mangee is an associate professor of finance in the Parker College of Business at Georgia Southern University and a research associate for the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) program on Knightian Uncertainty Economics (KUE). My research focuses on testing the implications of macro-finance models based on KUE by investigating the relative roles and dynamics between market fundamentals, psychology, and social context in explaining instability in stock price fluctuations. I earned my doctoral degree at the University of New Hampshire. My research has received attention from financial press outlets such as The Economist and Bloomberg News and has been featured prominently in the book Beyond Mechanical Markets: Asset Price Swings, Risk, and the Role of the State - a 2011 finalist for the Paul Samuelson Prize.

Book

Macroeconomic Inequality from Reagan to Trump

Market Power, Wage Repression, Asset Price Inflation, and Industrial Decline

• Author(s): Lance Taylor
• ISBN: 9781108796101

• Date Published: August 2020

  Availability: Available

  Format: Paperback

For five decades, rising US income and wealth inequality has been driven by wage repression and production realignments benefitting the top one percent of households. In this inaugural book for Cambridge Studies in New Economic Thinking, Professor Lance Taylor takes an innovative approach to measuring inequality, providing the first and only full integration of distributional and macro level data for the US. While work by Thomas Piketty and colleagues pursues integration from the income side, Professor Taylor uses data of distributions by size of income and wealth combined with the cost and demand sides, flows of funds, and full balance sheet accounting of real capital and financial claims. This blends measures of inequality with national income and product accounts to show the relationship between productivity and wages at the industry sector level. Taylor assesses the scope and nature of various interventions to reduce income and wealth inequalities using his simulation model, disentangling wage growth and productivity while challenging mainstream models.

About the Authors

Lance Taylor, New School for Social Research, New York Lance Taylor is the Arnhold Professor Emeritus of International Cooperation and Development and was Director of the Center for Economic Policy Analysis at the New School for Social Research, New York.

Özlem Ömer is an assistant professor at Haci Bektas Veli University in Turkey. Her research interests include growth and inequality, distributive impacts of economic policies, forces and dynamics of structural change in developed and developing countries, financial crises and information theoretic approaches to modeling political economy. Her work combines theoretical, methodological, historical, structural and policy oriented aspects of macroeconomic issues by employing modern modeling techniques in her research.

America’s Dire Inequality Demands a New Conceptual Framework. This Economist Has One
Author interview by Lynn Parramore featuring Lance Taylor

Summary of the Book: “Macroeconomic Inequality from Reagan to Trump”, by Lance Taylor