BiblioVault - Books about Political Economy

Unbound

How Inequality Constricts Our Economy and What We Can Do about It

Heather Boushey

Harvard University Press, 2019

A Financial Times Book of the Year

“The strongest documentation I have seen for the many ways in which inequality is harmful to economic growth.”
—Jason Furman

“A timely and very useful guide…Boushey assimilates a great deal of recent economic research and argues that it amounts to a paradigm shift.”
—New Yorker

Do we have to choose between equality and prosperity? Decisions made over the past fifty years have created underlying fragilities in our society that make our economy less effective in good times and less resilient to shocks, such as today’s coronavirus pandemic. Many think tackling inequality would require such heavy-handed interference that it would stifle economic growth. But a careful look at the data suggests nothing could be further from the truth—and that reducing inequality is in fact key to delivering future prosperity.

Presenting cutting-edge economics with verve, Heather Boushey shows how rising inequality is a drain on talent, ideas, and innovation, leading to a concentration of capital and a damaging under-investment in schools, infrastructure, and other public goods. We know inequality is fueling social unrest. Boushey shows persuasively that it is also a serious drag on growth.

“In this outstanding book, Heather Boushey…shows that, beyond a point, inequality damages the economy by limiting the quantity and quality of human capital and skills, blocking access to opportunity, underfunding public services, facilitating predatory rent-seeking, weakening aggregate demand, and increasing reliance on unsustainable credit.”
—Martin Wolf, Financial Times

“Think rising levels of inequality are just an inevitable outcome of our market-driven economy? Then you should read Boushey’s well-argued, well-documented explanation of why you’re wrong.”
—David Rotman, MIT Technology Review

[more]

Understanding ALBA

Progress, Problems, and Prospects of Alternative Regionalism in Latin America and the Caribbean

Edited by Asa K. Cusack

University of London Press, 2018

This collection analyses the impact and influence of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), whose vision of alternative regionalism has spearheaded Latin America and the Caribbean’s collective challenge to neoliberal globalisation in the twenty-first century. The volume’s comprehensive coverage incorporates insights from the domestic level in Nicaragua, the Anglophone Caribbean, and especially Venezuela, while also exploring ALBA’s key regional economic and social-policy initiatives and its place in the wider international relations of Latin American and the Caribbean. Moving beyond normative debates about the project’s desirability and descriptive accounts of its initiatives, this volume provides critical analyses that consider equally ALBA’s progress, problems, and prospects. In tackling many of the key questions about the past and future of ALBA it reveals a frequently misunderstood organisation whose impacts have been significant but whose failings also jeopardise the project’s long-term sustainability. This timely volume helps us to understand the dynamics shaping the region at a time when its global relevance has never been greater.

[more]

Unequal Partnerships

The Political Economy of Urban Redevelopment in Postwar America

Edited by Gregory Squires

Rutgers University Press, 1989

Unequal Partnerships explores urban development in American cities since World War II. Gregory D. Squires and other contributors examine what has long been a highly inequitable and destructive process of urban development. They look at the political and social assumptions and interests shaping redevelopment, the social and economic costs of development for the vast majority of urban residents, and alternative approaches emerging.The book begins with an overview of the ideological forces that have shaped urban economic development in the United States from the urban renewal days of the 1950s and 1960s through the celebration of public-private partnerships in the 1980s. Subsequent chapters examine specific cities in light of the consequences of development initiatives. These cities include those in declining rustbelt regions that are struggling with the consequences of deindustrialization (Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, and Milwaukee), as well as growing cities in the sunbelt (Louisville, New Orleans, Houston, and Sacramento). The book concludes with a discussion of promising policy alternatives.

[more]

United States Oil Policy, 1890-1964

Business and Government in Twentieth Century America

Gerald D. Nash

University of Pittsburgh Press, 1968

Gerald D. Nash offers a balanced survey on American oil policies over a seventy-five year span, and places in historical perspective the controversies of government- business relations that have resulted from oil depletion and surplus allowances. Focusing on a single industry, Nash provides a valuable study on the government's role in private economic activity. He concludes that Americans have given the government great power in regulating the nation's industries, and in particular, as they relate to defense considerations, and the laws of supply and demand within American borders, and internationally.

[more]

U.S. International Economic Strategy in a Turbulent World

Strategic Rethink

Howard J. Shatz

RAND Corporation, 2016

This report presents strategic choices America faces regarding the international economy over the term of the next U.S. administration, focusing on policy choices in the areas of maintaining and improving the rules-based international economic system; working with China and better integrating it into the existing system; supporting economic growth of allies and partners; and using sanctions to change unwanted behavior and counter adversaries.

[more]