A British author gets it. An economics Nobel laureate doesn’t.
What Happened to Liberal Democracy?: Remaking a Politics of Shared Prosperity - FROM THE WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN ECONOMICS
'Timely ... an important call to arms' FINANCIAL TIMES'A must-read' THOMAS PIKETTY, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century'A thoughtful solution to the most important question of modern democracy' JARED DIAMOND, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel'Brilliant and insightful a tour de force' STEVEN LEVITT, author of FreakonomicsFrom its inception, liberalism offered a glittering promise of shared prosperity, equality, democratic values and the free pursuit of knowledge. At first, it flourished. And then it faltered. Once a tantalising beacon of hope, it began to erode and decay at the hands of elitism, intolerance and rising autocracy. One could say that liberalism is broken. So what comes next? Nobel prize-winning co-author of Why Nations Fail Daron Acemoglu charts the rise and fall of liberal democracy, and offers hope for a way forward: a new theory that lays the groundwork for how we can - and must - remake liberalism before it's too late.
Andy Burnham's crusade against neoliberalism
Unproductive, indebted and internationally uncompetitive, Britain is caught in a savage economic bind
Trapped inside the Blair Rich Project
The media coverage of Tony Blair's essay on what the UK government should do treats him as a statesman rather than the salesman he really is...
The Nobel for Econsplaining
Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson won a prize for applying economics to the very things economics is inherently bad at figuring out
John Maynard Keynes: the cultured economist who governments turn to in a crisis
A new play about the art-loving Bloomsbury Group member speaks of the enduring battle of ideas with his free-market rival Friedrich Hayek
The Triumph of Broken Promises — Harvard University Press
A powerful case that the economic shocks of the 1970s hastened both the end of the Cold War and the rise of neoliberalism by forcing governments to impose austerity on their own people.Why did the Cold War come to a peaceful end? And why did neoliberal economics sweep across the world in the late twentieth century? In this pathbreaking study, Fritz Bartel argues that the answer to these questions is one and the same. The Cold War began as a competition between capitalist and communist governments to expand their social contracts as they raced to deliver their people a better life. But the economic shocks of the 1970s made promises of better living untenable on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Energy and financial markets placed immense pressure on governments to discipline their social contracts. Rather than make promises, political leaders were forced to break them.In a sweeping narrative, The Triumph of Broken Promises tells the story of how the pressure to break promises spurred the end of the Cold War. In the West, neoliberalism provided Western leaders like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher with the political and ideological tools to shut down industries, impose austerity, and favor the interests of capital over labor. But in Eastern Europe, revolutionaries like Lech Walesa in Poland resisted any attempt at imposing market discipline. Mikhail Gorbachev tried in vain to reform the Soviet system, but the necessary changes ultimately presented too great a challenge.Faced with imposing economic discipline antithetical to communist ideals, Soviet-style governments found their legitimacy irreparably damaged. But in the West, politicians could promote austerity as an antidote to the excesses of ideological opponents, setting the stage for the rise of the neoliberal global economy.
Book review: Elinor Ostrom’s Rules for Radicals, by Derek Wall
Elinor Ostrom was the first and so far the only woman to win the Nobel prize for economics*. She received the award in 2009 for her work on the commons. Ostrom died three years later, leaving behin…
Can these radical institutional reforms get capitalism & democracy working better?
Freewheeling economist Glen Weyl is on a warpath to reform liberal democratic institutions in order to save them.
This year’s Nobel prizes prompt soul-searching among economists
The rise of randomised controlled trials looks to some like a retreat from the biggest questions
Thomas Piketty's Capital: everything you need to know about the surprise bestseller
The radical economist's book Capital in the Twenty-First century has angered the right with its powerful argument about wealth, democracy and why capitalism will always create inequality, says Paul Mason
Liberalism Did Not Fail, Conservatism Did
We are moving from an ideologically multipolar world, to a bipolar one.
Power: A Primer for Perplexed Economists
Let's Assume an Unfettered Marketplace of Ideas! Or Actually, Let's Not.
On the Ersatz Nobel: The Old Monetary Policy is Dying, and The New Monetary Policy Struggles to be Born
Yesterday the Nobel Prize fake Nobel Prize the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel was again awarded. For the unique and bizarre history of this prize, see the piece I wrote five years ago pointing out that this prize was a form of “central bank
Misbehaving: the making of behavioral economics
Nobel laureate Richard H. Thaler has spent his career s…
Maurice Allais, premier prix Nobel d’économie français
En 1998, le jury du Nobel a récompensé l’économiste Maurice Allais. Une première alors pour un français qui se présentait comme un « socialiste concurrentiel ». Que reste-t-il de cette œuvre riche ?
AI as the new avatar of American capitalism
Why "AI populism" is just "populism"
