New Books In Economics

Investable! When Pandemic Risk Meets Speculative Finance (MIT Press, 2025) by Dr. Susan Erikson presents a critical and sobering look at how international bankers and investors turn pandemics into investment opportunities, and what we stand to lose when we rely on “innovative finance.” In a world increasingly defined by crisis, bankers and investors behind the scenes turn catastrophes like pandemics into financial securities that can be bought and sold. Offering new insights into how the excesses of capitalism shape pandemic preparedness, Investable! is an ethnography of World Bank bonds designed to solve a big-ticket global health problem by getting international investors to gamble on future crises. In this first book-length treatment of pandemic bonds, award-winning medical anthropologist Dr. Erikson explains how we got here and asks who should hold the responsibility for the terrible things that happen to people, at a time when pandemics are turned into casinos.Dr. Erikson, who traveled over 300,000 mile

This is the second episode of Cited Podcast’s new season, Green Dreams. Green Dreams tells stories of radical environmental thinkers and their dreams for our green future. Should we make those dreams reality, or are they actually nightmares? For the rest of the episodes, visit the series page, and subscribe today (Apple, Spotify, RSS). An Albertan oil man and a socialist policy wonk from Saskatchewan banded together to think up “eco-development,” a precursor to today’s sustainable development. This unlikely duo forged a global consensus at the United Nations, effectively codifying the reigning orthodoxy of liberal environmental governance. They told us that capitalism and sustainability are indeed compatible. Might that be the most utopian of all green dreams? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

Crusading for Globalization: US Multinationals and Their Opponents Since 1945 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025) tells the story of an extraordinarily influential group of business executives at the helms of the largest US multinational corporations and their quest to drive globalization forward over the last eight decades. Janick Marina Schaufelbuehl argues that the spectacular expansion of international investment, trade, and production after 1945 cannot be understood without considering the role played by these corporate globalizers and the organization they created, the US Council (today’s United States Council for International Business). By shaping governmental policy through their congressional lobbying and close connections to successive presidential administrations, US Council members, including executives from General Electric, Coca Cola, and IBM, among others, consistently fought for ever more market deregulation, culminating in the creation of the World Trade Organization in 1995. Crusading

Why Americans favor progressive taxation in principle but not in practice Most Americans support progressive taxation in principle, and want the rich to pay more. But the specific tax policies that most favor are more regressive than progressive. What is behind such a disconnect? In Taxation and Resentment: Race, Party, and Class in American Tax Attitudes (Princeton UP, 2025), Andrea Louise Campbell examines public opinion on taxation, exploring why what Americans favor in principle differs from what they accept in practice. Campbell shows that since the federal income tax began a century ago, the rich have fought for lower taxes through reduced rates and a complicated system of tax breaks. The resulting complexity leaves the public confused about who benefits from the convoluted tax code, and leads to tax preferences that are driven by factors other than principles or interests. Campbell argues that tax attitudes vary little by income, or by party, as some Democrats, more Republicans, and even more indepe

The triumphant globalization that began in the 1990s has given way to a world riven by conflict, populism, and economic nationalism. In The World's Worst Bet: How the Globalization Gamble Went Wrong (And What Would Make It Right), (PublicAffairs, 2025) David J. Lynch offers a trenchant, fast-paced narrative of the rise and fall of the greatest engine of prosperity the world has ever known. Lynch explains what went right, what went wrong, and what needs to change to preserve the benefits of global integration and to build prosperity for all Americans. Lynch brings a deep understanding of the forces affecting Americans’ lives to his portrayal of a fascinating cast of characters: presidents and policymakers; factory workers whose anger over lost jobs reshaped a nation’s politics; and the anti-globalization warriors of the right and left. Their stories show how the United States made a bad bet on globalization, gambling that it could enjoy its benefits while ignoring its costs: dislocated workers, vulnerable s

Inequality in the workplace impacts all areas of our lives, from health and self-development to economic security and family life. But, despite the world's richest countries' long-avowed commitments to gender equality, there is still so much to fix - and so much we don't see.With perceptive and razor-sharp insight, in Patriarchy Inc.: What We Get Wrong About Gender Equality – and Why Men Still Win at Work (W.W. Norton, 2025) award-winning author Cordelia Fine reveals how the status quo - Patriarchy Inc. - is harming us all, in our working lives and beyond. Drawing on social and cultural history, examples from hunter-forager societies to high finance and the latest thinking in evolutionary science, she dismantles the existing, inadequate visions for gender equality and charts an inspiring path towards a fairer and freer society Cordelia Fine is a Canadian-born British philosopher of science, psychologist, and writer. She is a full professor in the History and Philosophy of Science programme at the University

Why do Americans eat so much beef? In Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America (Princeton University Press, 2019), the historian Joshua Specht provides a history that shows how our diets and consumer choices remain rooted in nineteenth century enterprises. A century and half ago, he writes, the colonialism and appropriation of indigenous lands enabled the expansion of western ranch outfits. These corporate ranchers controlled loose commodity chains, until powerful corporate meat packers in Chicago seized the economic order through the tools of modern capitalism (scientific management, standardization, labor suppression). These capitalists expanded the supply chains to far-flung consumers in New York and around the globe. But as meat became a staple of the American diet, and measure of progress, consumers cared more about the price and taste than the violence to people, animals, and environment behind the scenes. “America made modern beef” Specht writes, “at the same time that bee

Law and Development: Theory and Practice, 2nd edition (Routledge, 2021) examines the theory and practice of law and development. It introduces the General Theory of Law and Development, an innovative approach which explains the mechanisms by which law impacts development. This book analyzes the process of economic development in South Korea, South Africa, and the United States from legal and institutional perspectives. The book also explains why the concept of "development" is not only relevant to developing countries but to developed economies as well. The new edition includes five new chapters addressing the relationships between law and economic development in several key areas, including property rights, political governance, business transactions, state industrial promotion, and international trade and development. This interview covers the main themes of this book, covers some of his papers, the relationship of his work to other scholars, and serves as a foundation for understanding Dr. Lee’s work mor

For this episode of Liminal Library, I interviewed Dan Davies about The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions—and How the World Lost Its Mind (U Chicago Press, 2025). Davies examines how we've systematically engineered responsibility out of our institutions, creating a world where major decisions happen without clear human accountability. Davies draws on Stafford Beer's cybernetics to explain how modern organizations function as systems with their own patterns and responses. As he puts it, "the system is not conscious and so does not have incentives, but it has consistent patterns of response to stimuli." This isn't about individual moral failures – it's about the industrialization of decision-making itself. We've moved from Harry Truman's "The Buck Stops Here" to complex processes and standardized criteria that diffuse responsibility across multiple layers. When things go wrong – financial crises, environmental failures, social breakdowns – no single person can be held accountabl

What does it mean to supervise a bank? And why does it matter who holds that power? In this episode, Sean H. Vanatta joins us to explore the hidden machinery behind American finance, as told in his new book Private Finance, Public Power: A History of Bank Supervision in America (Princeton UP, 2025), co-authored with Peter Conti-Brown. Spanning nearly 150 years, the book traces the evolution of bank supervision from a patchwork of state-level oversight to a complex, layered system involving federal agencies, private actors, and political discretion. Sean takes us from the wildcat banks of the 1830s to the rise of the Federal Reserve, through crises, reforms, and the quiet work of bank examiners who shaped the rules behind the scenes. We discuss why supervision differs from regulation, how discretion has become central to managing financial risk, and what the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in 2023 reveals about the enduring tension between private profit and public responsibility. Along the way, Sean shares

Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 brought a tragic close to a thirty-year period of history that began with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reopening of Russia to the West after six decades of Soviet isolation. The opening lasted for three tumultuous decades and ended with a new closing, driven by the Ukrainian war, the imposition of Western sanctions, and the Russian responses to them. In Perfect Storm: Russia's Failed Economic Opening, the Hurricane of War and Sanctions, and the Uncertain Future (Oxford University Press, 2025), Russia analyst Thane Gustafson reinterprets the story of Russia's failed opening to the West, focusing on its economic, technological, and social aspects, and the role they played in its ultimate failure. These parallel events are essential for understanding what happened and what went wrong. Yet they have received much less attention than the military and geopolitical aspects of the current conflict. Gustafson tells the story of the West's entry into Russia, the arrival

On this episode of the Economic and Business History channel, I spoke with Dr. Victoria Basualdo and Dr. Marcelo Bucheli about their new edited book. Big Business and Dictatorships in Latin America: A Transnational History of Profits and Repression (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) is an edited volume that studies the relationship between big business and the Latin American dictatorial regimes during the Cold War. The first section provides a general background about the contemporary history of business corporations and dictatorships in the twentieth century at the international level. The second section comprises chapters that analyze five national cases (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, and Peru), as well as a comparative analysis of the banking sector in the Southern Cone (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay). The third section presents six case studies of large companies in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Central America. This book is crucial reading because it provides the first comprehensive analys

Uncertainties are everywhere. Whether it’s climate change, financial volatility, pandemic outbreaks or new technologies, we don’t know what the future will hold. For many contemporary challenges, navigating uncertainty – where we cannot predict what may happen – is essential and, as the book explores, this is much more than just managing risk. But how is this done, and what can we learn from different contexts about responding to and living with uncertainty? Indeed, what might it mean to live from uncertainty? Drawing on experiences from across the world, the chapters in Navigating Uncertainty: Radical Rethinking for a Turbulent World (Polity, 2024) explore finance and banking, technology regulation, critical infrastructures, pandemics, natural disasters and climate change. Each chapter contrasts an approach centred on risk and control, where we assume we know about and can manage the future, with one that is more flexible, responding to uncertainty.The book argues that we need to adjust our modernist, contr

Environmental sustainability policy has failed due to focusing on symptoms rather than the root cause problems. Through significant research and a detailed roadmap for how to achieve sustainability by 2050, Buffington provides a realistic, game changing path forward that is both good for the environment and the economy. Dr. Jack Buffington received a Ph.D. in Supply Chain Management from the Lulea University of Technology in Sweden, and a Post-Doctorate at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and now he is currently the Program Director/Professor for the Supply Chain Management program and the Denver Transportation Institute at the University of Denver. Jack has published over twenty peer-reviewed journal articles and seven books before this one. Jack’s current research efforts are focused on Africa, which he believes is the epicenter of where environmental innovation must be fostered. And he is also Sustainability Director at First Key Consulting, a global brewing consulting firm. Jack is coll

You’ve got to speculate to accumulate. We apply that notion to individuals in pursuit of wealth, but what about countries? The Debt of a Nation: Land and the Financing of the Canadian Settler State, 1820–73 (U of British Columbia Press, 2025) is the first comprehensive history of Canada’s nineteenth-century public debt. Beginning in the 1820s, loans gave British North American settler governments access to unprecedented amounts of capital at low interest rates. The credit for such loans derived from colonial appropriation of Indigenous territories, and this process essentially created a market value for stolen land. Dr. Angela Tozer explores the role of public debt financing in the consolidation of the Canadian settler state: Upper Canada’s first public debt, issued as securities on the London Stock Exchange; the unique government land tenure of Prince Edward Island and attendant impact on Mi’kmaw homelands; and the purchase of Rupert’s Land via a loan. She analyzes how an economic system centred on credit a

Command of Commerce: America's Enduring Economic Power Advantage over China (Oxford UP, 2025) provides a systematic reevaluation of the balance of economic power between the U.S. and China. The conventional wisdom is that China's economic power is very close to America's and that Washington cannot undertake a broad economic cutoff of China without hurting itself as much or more. This book demonstrates the conventional wisdom is wrong on both fronts. In peacetime, America's lead in economic power over China is more dramatic than commonly appreciated because the vast majority of the firms that drive global commerce, particularly in high-technology sectors, are based in the U.S. and its allies. China's economic capacity has also been overestimated because Beijing manipulates its economic data and because comparing China's uniquely structured economy with other leading economies is challenging. These facts are necessary to understand why Washington has been able to target and undermine individual Chinese companie

“Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning!” That legendary and apocryphal phrase, allegedly uttered by announcers during the 1977 World Series as flames rose above Yankee Stadium, seemed to encapsulate an entire era in this nation’s urban history. Across that decade, a wave of arson coursed through American cities, destroying entire neighborhoods home to poor communities of color. Yet as historian Bench Ansfield demonstrates in Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City (Norton, 2025), the vast majority of the fires were not set by residents, as is commonly assumed, but by landlords looking to collect insurance payouts. Driven by perverse incentives—new government-sponsored insurance combined with tanking property values—landlords hired “torches,” mostly Black and Brown youth, to set fires in the buildings, sometimes with people still living in them. Tens of thousands of families lost their homes to these blazes, yet for much of the 1970s, tenant vandalism and welfare fraud

Everything we do today is recorded as data that’s sold to the highest bidder. Plugging our personal data into impersonal algorithms has made government agencies more efficient and tech companies more profitable. But all this comes at a price. It’s easy to feel like an insignificant number in a world of number crunchers who care more about their bottom line than your humanity. It’s time to flip the equation, turning math into an empowering tool for the rest of us. In Robin Hood Math: Take Control of the Algorithms That Run Your Life (Penguin, 2025), award-winning mathematician Noah Giansiracusa explains how the tech giants and financial institutions use formulas to get ahead—and how anyone can use these same formulas in their everyday life. You’ll learn how to handle risk rationally, make better investments, take control of your social media, and reclaim agency over the decisions you make each day. In a society that all too often takes from the poor and gives to the rich, math can be a vital democratizing f

In Mirages of Reform: The Politics of Elite Protectionism in the Arab World (Cornell UP, 2025), Steve L. Monroe argues that geopolitics and social connections between state and capital underpin the Arab world's uneven trade policies. Despite decades of international pressure, neoliberal trade policy reform in the Arab world has been varied, selective, and often ineffective. Neoliberal trade policies have not deepened international trade in many of the region's markets. This book explains why. When the region's regimes have strong support from global powers and strong social connections to the industrial elite, they engage in extensive but deceptive trade policy reform. Behind an edifice of neoliberal trade policies, neopatrimonial forms of protectionism like tax evasion and noncompetitive procurement shield the socially connected from international competition and obstruct actual trade liberalization. Industrialists are less trustful of regime promises of neopatrimonial protectionism after reform when they

Capitalism is typically treated as a force for relentless commodification. Yet it consistently fails to place value on vital aspects of the nonhuman world, whether carbon emissions or entire ecosystems. In Free Gifts, Alyssa Battistoni explores capitalism’s persistent failure to value nature, arguing that the key question is not the moral issue of why some kinds of nature shouldn’t be commodified, but the economic puzzle of why they haven’t been. To understand contemporary ecological problems from biodiversity collapse to climate change, she contends, we have to understand how some things come to have value under capitalism—and how others do not. To help us do so, Battistoni recovers and reinterprets the idea of the free gift of nature used by classical economic thinkers to describe what we gratuitously obtain from the natural world, and builds on Karl Marx’s critique of political economy to show how capitalism fundamentally treats nature as free for the taking. This novel theory of capitalism’s relationship