Clik here to view.
Fear and loathing
Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class by Owen Jones deserves the praise it has earned from other reviewers. It paints a picture of class division in modern Britain that is over-simplified in...
View ArticleRegulatory capture. Or, how to fend off the lobbyists
A forthcoming book, Preventing Regulatory Capture: Special Interest Influence and How to Limit It edited by Dan Carpenter and David Moss, looks very timely. The draft chapters can be downloaded free...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Reading about Thatcherism
Charles Moore’s forthcoming The Life of Margaret Thatcher will no doubt be fascinating. I’m not an avid reader political biographies and memoirs, although there are a few absolutely outstanding ones –...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The robots are coming. Or are they?
This morning I warmed up for work by reading some intriguing articles that have been much linked-to in recent days: an interview with Jaron Lanier about his new book Who Owns The Future?; a Mother...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Predatory capitalism
Isn’t all capitalism predatory, some contemporary critics might well ask, looking at the post-crisis economic landscape? Geoff Mulgan, chief exec of NESTA, is more optimistic in his recent book The...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The humility of economists*
In the course of working on a forthcoming lecture, I’ve been dipping back into James Scott’s superb 1998 book Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. The...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The paradox of trust
I’m off early this morning to the OECD Forum – on Jobs, Equality, Trust – in Paris, taking part in two sessions. The organisers picked up on the themes of my book The Economics of Enough, especially...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Economists, spies and imperialists
Many of you will have noticed already that I’m an anorak about economics, and I’ve read a lot of books about economics, not to mention history and politics. So I started Benn Steil’s The Battle of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Economics vs politics
Malcolm Gladwell has written a very positive review of Jerry Adelman’s Albert Hirschman bio, Worldly Philosopher. The review also offers a superb thumbnail sketch of Hirschman’s character and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Positive, normative and provocative economics
Last night it was my privilege to give the annual Pro Bono Economics lecture. I’d be delighted to hear people’s comments on it. (It would be even more pleasing if you’d look at the website and consider...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Technocracy vs democracy
Ever since I read Daniel Bell’s The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, I’ve been struck by how prescient it was about the tension between technocracy and democracy. Bell argued that as societies become...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Political bubbles
The Adelman biography of Albert Hirschman, Worldly Philosopher, is great but too big to carry around so I’m reading it at home, and on the tube I’m reading Political Bubbles by Nolan McCarty, Keith...
View ArticleClik here to view.
La trahison des clercs
I’m about a third through Jeremy Adelman’s superb biography of Albert Hirschman, The Worldly Philosopher, and thoroughly enjoying it. We’ve got to the end of the second World War, by which time the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Worldly Philosopher
As I’ve already confessed, I’ve read very little by Albert Hirschman. By the time I was learning economics, he and the mainstream of the economics profession had moved quite far along divergent paths....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Economics and authoritarianism
After a two-week reading fest on holiday in the Italian countryside, I’m back with a fistful of reviews. As it was a holiday, the books I took with me were not as directly economics-related as my...
View ArticleClik here to view.
What works?
Towards the end of a holiday I always try to read something a bit more work-related to get myself ready for the return to normality. This year I ended with a pair of books which, by coincidence, shed...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Economists, doctors and quacks
The news of the death of Ronald Coase sent me to his key papers, of course (all listed here), but also to a collection of essays I hadn’t read before, Essays on Economics and Economists. He makes some...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Future democracy
Later today I’m speaking at Nesta’s FutureFest about future economic institutions, in what looks to be a terrific session, compered by Mark Stevenson, author of the excellent An Optimist’s Tour of the...
View ArticleIntegration of the social sciences
Yesterday I quoted the 1827 UCL prospectus definition of economics, with its emphasis on “accurate observation and precise language,” and capsule definition of ‘the science of political economy’ as,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Essays by the worldly philosopher
The Essential Hirschman edited by his prize-winning biographer Jeremy Adelman (Worldly Philosopher) is a collection of essays well worth reading by anbody who, like me, was not very familiar with...
View Article
