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      • Annual Conference
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        • Rybczynski Prize Terms & Conditions
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  • What's on
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Reading Room
  • Book reviews
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Book reviews

Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy

Reviewer: Matthew Whittaker, Chief Economist, Resolution Foundation

Inequality is a choice. The United States bills itself as the land of opportunity, a place where anyone can achieve success and a better life through hard work and determination. But the facts tell a different story-the U.S. today lags behind most other developed nations in measures of inequality and economic mobility. In this book, Stiglitz suggests a whole menu of policy changes to move the US toward a more widely shared prosperity.

Success and Luck

Reviewer: Matthew Whittaker, Chief Economist, Resolution Foundation

From New York Times bestselling author and economics columnist Robert Frank, a compelling book that explains why the rich underestimate the importance of luck in their success, why that hurts everyone, and what we can do about it.

China's Next Strategic Advantage

Reviewer: Sunil Krishnan, Head of Global Asset Allocation, Hermes Investment Management

The history-making development of the Chinese economy has entered a new phase. China is moving aggressively from a strategy of imitation to one of innovation. Driven both by domestic needs and by global ambition, China is establishing itself at the forefront of technological innovation. Experts George Yip and Bruce McKern explain this epic transformation and propose strategies for both Western and Chinese companies.

Guide to Country Risk

Reviewer: Mary Davies, Director, EEconomic Policy Associates

Country risk explains the things that can go wrong when business is conducted across borders.

The Remaking of the Mining Industry

Reviewer: Dr Diane Coyle OBE, Director, Enlightenment Economics

The industrialisation of China prompted the biggest commodity boom of modern times. Soaring prices gave rise to talk of a commodity super cycle and induced a wave of resource nationalism. The author, who was chief economist at two of the world's largest mining companies, describes how this resulted in a transformation of the global mining industry.

Phishing for Phools: the economics of manipulation and deception

Reviewer: Dame Kate Barker, Chairman, Society of Business Economists

Ever since Adam Smith, the central teaching of economics has been that free markets provide us with material well-being, as if by an invisible hand. In Phishing for Phools, Nobel Prize-winning economists George Akerlof and Robert Shiller deliver a fundamental challenge to this insight, arguing that markets harm as well as help us. As long as there is profit to be made, sellers will systematically exploit our psychological weaknesses and our ignorance through manipulation and deception. Rather than being essentially benign and always creating the greater good, markets are inherently filled with tricks and traps and will "phish" us as "phools."

The Courage to Act

Reviewer: Ian Harwood, Independent Consultant

In 2006, Ben S. Bernanke was appointed chair of the Federal Reserve, capping a meteoric trajectory from a rural South Carolina childhood to professorships at Stanford and Princeton, to public service in Washington's halls of power. There would be no time to celebrate, however-the burst of the housing bubble in 2007 set off a domino effect that would bring the global financial system to the brink of meltdown. In The Courage to Act, Ben Bernanke pulls back the curtain on the tireless and ultimately successful efforts to prevent a mass economic failure.

Between Debt and the Devil: Money, Credit and Fixing Global Finance

Reviewer: Ian Mulheirn, Director of Consulting, Oxford Economics

Adair Turner became chairman of Britain’s Financial Services Authority just as the global financial crisis struck in 2008, and he played a leading role in redesigning global financial regulation. In this eye-opening book, he sets the record straight about what really caused the crisis. It didn’t happen because banks are too big to fail—our addiction to private debt is to blame.

The Silo Effect

Reviewer: Bronwyn Curtis OBE

In The Silo Effect, Gillian Tett uses an anthropological lens to explore how individuals, teams and whole organisations often work in silos of thought, process and product. With examples drawn from a range of fascinating areas - the New York Fire Department and Facebook to the Bank of England and Sony - these narratives illustrate not just how foolishly people can behave when they are mastered by silos but also how the brightest institutions and individuals can master them.

The Evolution of Everything

Reviewer: Bridget Rosewell, Volterra Partners

The New York Times bestselling author of The Rational Optimist and Genome returns with a fascinating argument for evolution that definitively dispels a dangerous, widespread myth: that we can command and control our world. Human society evolves. Change in technology, language, morality, and society is incremental, inexorable, gradual, and spontaneous.

The Price of Oil

Reviewer: David Humphreys, Principal, Daiecon Advisors

Drawing on their extensive knowledge of the oil industry, Roberto F. Aguilera and Marian Radetzki provide an in-depth examination of the price of the world's most important commodity. They argue that although oil has experienced an extraordinary price increase over the past few decades, we have now reached a turning point where scarcity, uncertain supply and high prices will be replaced by abundance, undisturbed availability and suppressed price levels.

How the Internet Became Commercial

Reviewer: Mark Cleary, Kinetic Economics

In less than a decade, the Internet went from being a series of loosely connected networks used by universities and the military to the powerful commercial engine it is today. This book describes how many of the key innovations that made this possible came from entrepreneurs and iconoclasts who were outside the mainstream–and how the commercialization of the Internet was by no means a foregone conclusion at its outset.

Remembering Inflation

Reviewer: Duncan Brown, UK Commission for Employment & Skills

Today's global economy, with most developed nations experiencing very low inflation, seems a world apart from the "Great Inflation" that spanned the late 1960s to early 1980s. Yet, in this book, Brigitte Granville makes the case that monetary economists and policymakers need to keep the lessons learned during that period very much in mind, lest we return to them by making the same mistakes we made in the past.

Government Paternalism: Nanny State or Helpful Friend?

Reviewer: Neil Reeder, Head and Heart Economics

Should governments save people from themselves? Do governments have the right to influence citizens' behavior related to smoking tobacco, eating too much, not saving enough, drinking alcohol, or taking marijuana–or does this create a nanny state, leading to infantilization, demotivation, and breaches in individual autonomy? Looking at examples from both sides of the Atlantic and around the world, Government Paternalism examines the justifications for, and the prevalence of, government involvement and considers when intervention might or might not be acceptable.

Post‑Capitalism: A guide to our future

Reviewer: Dr Rebecca Harding, Independent Consultant

From Paul Mason, the award-winning Channel 4 presenter, Postcapitalism is a guide to our era of seismic economic change, and how we can build a more equal society.

Classical Liberalism: A primer

Reviewer: Diane Coyle, Enlightenment Economics & University of Manchester

Classical liberalism is one of the most important political and social philosophies. Indeed, this set of ideas was crucial in bringing the modern world into existence.Yet despite its huge contribution, today classical liberalism is poorly understood and often misrepresented, its insights neglected in an era of pervasive state intervention. Eamonn Butler's primer is therefore extremely welcome.

Something Will Turn Up: Britain’s Economy, Past, Present and Future

Reviewer: Andrew Sentance, Senior Economic Adviser, PwC

Overcoming economic decline, inflation and mass unemployment have challenged successive Chancellors of the Exchequer. Britain's leading economic journalists explains why some of them have made a better fist of it than others.

The Lion Wakes – a Modern History of HSBC

Reviewer: Bill Allen, Economic Consultant

The Lion Wakes tells the modern story of HSBC, starting in the late 1970s, when the bank first broke out of the Asia-Pacific region with its purchase of Marine Midland Bank in the US. It follows HSBC's battle to purchase Midland Bank in1992, the subsequent move of head office from Hong Kong to London, and the string of acquisitions that brought the bank to its pre-eminent place in global finance today. Acclaimed historians Richard Roberts and David Kynaston chronicle the bank's struggles as well as its successes: the last part of the book deals with the ill-fated move into consumer finance in the US, as well as the financial crisis of 2008 and its effect on HSBC. Impeccably researched and generously illustrated from the HSBC archives, this is a valuable addition to global financial history.

Urban Economics and Urban Policy: Challenging Conventional Policy Wisdom

Reviewer: Neil Reeder, Director, Head and Heart Economics

In this bold, exciting and readable volume, Paul Cheshire, Max Nathan and Henry Overman illustrate the insights that recent economic research brings to our understanding of cities, and the lessons for urban policy-making. The authors present new evidence on the fundamental importance of cities to economic wellbeing and to the enrichment of our lives. They also argue that many policies have been trying to push water uphill and have done little to achieve their stated aims; or, worse, have had unintended and counterproductive consequences.

Hubris

Why Economists Failed to Predict the Crisis and How to Avoid the Next One

Reviewer: Christine Shields, Shields Economics

The failure of economists to anticipate the global financial crisis and mitigate the impact of the ensuing recession has spurred a public outcry. Economists are under fire, but questions concerning exactly how to redeem the discipline remain unanswered. In this provocative book, renowned economist Meghnad Desai investigates the evolution of economics and maps its trajectory against the occurrence of major political events to provide a definitive answer.

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Articles reflect the authors’ views which are not necessarily shared by the Society or the Editor. The Editor welcomes comments, ideas and articles on a wide range of applied economics topics and related issues of more general interest.

For Books and Reviews contact:
Ian Harwood
Book Reviews Editor, The Society of Professional Economists
harwoodfive@btinternet.com

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