In The Price of Fish, Michael Mainelli and Ian Harris examine in a unique way the world s most abiding and wicked problems sustainability, global warming, over-fishing, overpopulation, the pensions crisis; all of which are characterized by a set of messy, circular, aggressive and peculiarly long-term problems and go on to suggest that it is not the circumstances that are too complex, but our way of reading them that is too simple. Too simple and often wrong. The authors aim to blend four s...

Economists have a bad reputation. Not only do they assume that everyone is self-interested and amoral, they are almost always cheerleaders for the free market. As a result, most people who do not already share their beliefs ignore everything that economists have to say. This is a problem. Even among the highly educated, economics is a minefield of fallacies and errors. Among those who know little about the subject—a group that includes the average taxpayer and consumer, as well as most jou...

In February of 2008, amid the looming global financial crisis, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France asked Nobel Prize-winning economists Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, along with the distinguished French economist Jean Paul Fitoussi, to establish a commission of leading economists to study whether Gross Domestic Product (GDP)—the most widely used measure of economic activity—is a reliable indicator of economic and social progress. The Commission was given the further task of laying out an...

Financial collapses—whether of the junk bond market, the Internet bubble, or the highly leveraged housing market—are often explained as the inevitable result of market cycles: What goes up must come down. In Liquidated, Karen Ho punctures the aura of the abstract, all-powerful market to show how financial markets, and particularly booms and busts, are constructed. Through an in-depth investigation into the everyday experiences and ideologies of Wall Street investment bankers, Ho d...

From the inability of wealth to make us happier, to our catastrophic blindness to the credit crunch, "Economyths" reveals ten ways in which economics has failed us all. Forecasters predicted a prosperous year in 2008 for financial markets - in one influential survey the average prediction was for an eleven per cent gain. But by the end of the year, the Standard and Poor's 500 index - a key economic barometer - was down 38 per cent, and major economies were plunging into recession. Even the...

How ideas in complexity can be used to develop more effective public policyComplexity science—made possible by modern analytical and computational advances—is changing the way we think about social systems and social theory. Unfortunately, economists' policy models have not kept up and are stuck in either a market fundamentalist or government control narrative. While these standard narratives are useful in some cases, they are damaging in others, directing thinking...

Numbers dominate global politics and, as a result, our everyday lives. Credit ratings steer financial markets and can make or break the future of entire nations. GDP drives our economies. Stock market indices flood our media and national debates. Statistical calculations define how we deal with climate change, poverty and sustainability. But what is behind these numbers?In How Numbers Rule the World, Lorenzo Fioramonti reveals the hidden agendas underpinning the use of statistics a...

"Disequilibrium" is an essay at the intersection of economics, geopolitics, and political and environmental science: it connects the dots between various academic disciplines and does a great job at simplifying the increasing complexity of today's world. It contends that in the foreseeable future, our world will be lurching from one global crisis to the next as it becomes much more susceptible to shocks and surprises than just a few years ago. Consequently, we will all have the impression ...

Today more and more people want their investments to reflect their social, environmental and/or humanitarian values.This ground-breaking book explains how you can put your money where your heart is and still make healthy profits.The Ethical Investor covers all aspects of this complex topic. It includes: performance comparisons for ethical and mainstream managed funds approaches to screening investments discussion of the chief ethical issues, from animal rights to weapons manufacture a ques...

Mainstream economists completely failed to anticipate the financial market crash of 2007-8. They then called it an unforeseeable event. This is a clear admission that they don’t understand how economies work. Yet many non-mainstream, marginalised economists gave clear warning of the approaching crash. This book shows how mainstream economics has not one but many fundamental flaws. It is not a science, it is pseudo-science. It lacks scholarly rigour and integrity. Once you understand this, ...

Evolving Economics is an equally broad historical study of the emergence of neoliberal capitalism in the 20th century; it explores the crises of capitalism and culminates with a 100-year vision of the economy of a more sustainable, egalitarian, and libertarian civilization, one compatible with transformative possibilities glimpsed in Revolutions in Physics.

A fundamental and interesting approach of the structure of the economic evolution and the impact of money on people's behaviorWhat do shells, 3 tons stones, paper, gold and digital bits have in common?They all are, have been or will be currencies.What does money, debt or a gift have in common?They are all, explicitly or implicitly, a form of credit.What do families, communities and economic entities have in common?They are all bas...