Our Dollar, Your Problem: An Insider’s View of Seven Turbulent Decades of Global Finance, and the Road Ahead
by Kenneth Rogoff · 27 Feb 2025 · 330pp · 127,791 words
a very convenient situation for policymakers and politicians; over time the idea has been embraced by many in the economics profession. In his widely celebrated “secular stagnation” speech at an IMF panel session in Washington in 2013, Larry Summers argued that the very low real interest rates reflected a new era of
…
insufficient aggregate demand and a general belief that the age of strong growth was over for a long time to come. The idea of secular stagnation dates back to another Harvard professor, Alvin Hansen, who crafted the idea during the Great Depression of the 1930s.11 Until Summers, though, no one
…
, though no one will remember) and tried to push back, arguing that economic forces would eventually push the real interest rate to be positive, so secular stagnation could not hold indefinitely. For what it is worth, I noted in my remarks that a major part of the drop in real interest rates
…
to be a legacy of the 2008–2009 financial crisis that spooked investors, consumers, and regulators, and it should not be expected to last indefinitely. Secular stagnation did not last forever after the Great Depression, why should it now? An influential book by Robert J. Gordon strongly seconded the “lower forever” view
…
highly economically important inventions included the railroad, the internal-combustion engine, running water, and the television.12 If Gordon’s thesis was correct, this time secular stagnation was here to stay. I would sometimes try out Gordon’s ideas on my older colleagues in the sciences, both at Harvard and at MIT
…
to walk out of—which was quite theatric. The outcome looked to be close, though I never found out who actually won. My view that secular stagnation was a post-crisis phase, not a permanent fixture, was indeed pretty far outside the consensus. That became acutely apparent when, after stepping down as
…
’s short-term policy rate reached 5.5 percent. Despite my views being so far outside the professional consensus, I kept making the point that secular stagnation is not forever in my talks and writings. No one wanted to hear it; too many people were deeply intellectually invested in the view that
…
be in favor of “austerity.” For example, at a conference in London in November 2016, I remarked, “In nine years, nobody will be talking about secular stagnation.” Why not ten years? I explained to the audience that I had already been making the point for a year, including in a debate before
…
“Chatham House rules,” under which ideas can later be shared but not attributed to any specific individual. Admittedly, no one else was really arguing with secular stagnation at the time, and of course now I am extremely grateful that someone put my prediction in the record. For years, faith in low interest
…
same chance.21 “Almost everyone expected interest rates to be low forever,” the Economist observed in November 2023.22 In a 2019 article entitled “On Secular Stagnation in the Industrialized World,” Łukasz Rachel and Lawrence Summers showed that real interest rates had been in steady decline for more than three decades. They
…
past hundred years. Second, the figures make clear that real interest rates are extremely volatile, and on balance, when big shocks happen, such as the “secular stagnation” plunge after the global financial crisis, they tend to die out over time. In particular, the post-1980 fall in real rates that Rachel and
…
than it would otherwise. Before I close this chapter and turn to future risks, it is useful to touch on one further topic. If not secular stagnation, what explains the cycle of crises the world has found itself in over the past three decades? An alternative view is that the world has
…
China itself. Some of the policies a government should want to follow to counter the debt supercycle are not so different from those for combating secular stagnation—for example, implementing stimulus policies such as large-scale transfers to individuals or spending on infrastructure, partly financed by debt and partly financed by progressive
…
global financial crisis should always have been viewed as a temporary deviation from much longer-term trends. Ex-post rationales for “lower forever,” such as secular stagnation (permanently lower growth) and adverse demographics, have important elements of truth, but were vastly overblown, especially by those wanting to believe that outsized deficits can
…
48 people. Alisha Rahaman Sarkar, “Highway Collapse in China Kills at Least 48 People,” Independent (London), May 2, 2024. 5. Kenneth Rogoff, “Debt Supercycle, Not Secular Stagnation,” in Progress and Confusion: The State of Macroeconomic Policy, ed. Olivier Blanchard et al. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2016): 19–28. 6. Edward Glaeser et
…
Blunder in Treasury History,” Market Watch, October 30, 2023. 22. “Higher for Longer,” Economist, November 4, 2023, 16. 23. Łukasz Rachel and Lawrence Summers, “On Secular Stagnation in the Industrialized World,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 2019, no. 1, 1–76. 24. For a discussion of some leading theories on why interest
…
interest rates and slow growth in Japan might have spilled over into the United States was made by Gauti Eggertsson, Neil Mehrotra, and Lawrence Summers, “Secular Stagnation in the Open Economy,” American Economic Review 106, no. 5 (May 2015): 503–507. This, of course, was also the point of Bernanke’s “global
…
parity (PPP), 7, 38, 50, 67, 307 n.1 Putin, Vladimir (President, Russian Federation), 22, 24, 118 Queen’s Gambit, The, 58, 260 Rachel, Lukasz: “Secular Stagnation in the Industrialized World,” 270, 275 Rajan, Raghuram (Governor, Reserve Bank of India), 24, 229 Ramaswamy, Vivek, 258 ransomware, 193 Reagan, Ronald (President, United States
…
(Finance Minister, Germany), 57, 58 schilling (Austria), 299 n.6 Schmelzing, Paul, 274, 275, 276 SDR (special drawing right), 175–80 Sea Hawk, The, 3 secular stagnation, 266–68, 275, 343 Serbia, 15 Shleifer, Andrei, 99, 226 Silicon Valley Bank, 202 Singapore, 31, 37, 97, 159, 205, 235. See also Monetary Authority
…
n.5 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 238 Sturzenegger, Federico, 224–25 Sufi, Amir, 281 Summers, Larry (Treasury Secretary, United States), 57–58, 133, 266 “Secular Stagnation in the Industrialized World,” 270, 275 Sveriges Riksbank (Sweden), 123–24, 322 n.9 Sweden, 46, 286 Riksbank, 123–24, 322 n.9 financial crisis
Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
by Steven Pinker · 13 Feb 2018 · 1,034pp · 241,773 words
would require more than a century to double.8 Some economists fear that low rates of growth are the new normal. According to “the new secular stagnation hypothesis” analyzed by Lawrence Summers, even those paltry rates can be maintained (in conjunction with low unemployment) only if central banks set interest rates at
…
zero or negative values, which could lead to financial instability and other problems.9 In a period of rising income inequality, secular stagnation could leave a majority of people with static or falling incomes for the foreseeable future. If economies stop growing, things could get ugly. No one
…
means that in each of those fifty-one years (including the last six), the world got richer than it was the year before.13 Also, secular stagnation is largely a first-world problem. Though it’s a tremendous challenge to get the most highly developed countries to become even more highly developed
…
. 61. Declining Ginis for quality of life: Deaton 2013; Rijpma 2014, p. 264; Roser 2016a, 2016n; Roser & Ortiz-Ospina 2016a; Veenhoven 2010. 62. Inequality and secular stagnation: Summers 2016. 63. The economist Douglas Irwin (2016) notes that 45 million Americans live below the poverty line, 135,000 Americans are employed by the
…
two periods are 3.3 percent and 1.7 percent, respectively. 8. Estimates are of Total Factor Productivity, taken from Gordon 2014, fig. 1. 9. Secular stagnation: Summers 2014b, 2016. For analysis and commentaries, see Teulings & Baldwin 2014. 10. No one knows: M. Levinson, “Every US President Promises to Boost Economic Growth
…
, & H. Thorisdottir, eds., Social and psychological bases of ideology and system justification. New York: Oxford University Press. Eichengreen, B. 2014. Secular stagnation: A review of the issues. In C. Teulings & R. Baldwin, eds., Secular stagnation: Facts, causes and cures. London: Centre for Economic Policy Research. Eisner, M. 2001. Modernization, self-control, and lethal violence
…
. 2016. The phylogenetic roots of human lethal violence. Nature, 538, 233–37. Gordon, R. J. 2014. The turtle’s progress: Secular stagnation meets the headwinds. In C. Teulings & R. Baldwin, eds., Secular stagnation: Facts, causes and cures. London: Centre for Economic Policy Research. Gordon, R. J. 2016. The rise and fall of American growth
…
, J. 2012. The enlightened economy: An economic history of Britain, 1700–1850. New Haven: Yale University Press. Mokyr, J. 2014. Secular stagnation? Not in your life. In C. Teulings & R. Baldwin, eds., Secular stagnation: Facts, causes and cures. London: Centre for Economic Policy Research. Montgomery, S. L., & Chirot, D. 2015. The shape of the
…
: A Journal of Ideas, 33. Summers, L. H. 2014b. Reflections on the “new secular stagnation hypothesis.” In C. Teulings & R. Baldwin, eds., Secular stagnation: Facts, causes, and cures. London: Centre for Economic Policy Research. Summers, L. H. 2016. The age of secular stagnation. Foreign Affairs, Feb. 15. Summers, L. H., & Balls, E. 2015. Report of the
…
, B. A., & Scoblic, J. P. 2017. Bringing probability judgments into policy debates via forecasting tournaments. Science, 355, 481–83. Teulings, C., & Baldwin, R., eds. 2014. Secular stagnation: Facts, causes and cures. London: Centre for Economic Policy Research. Thomas, C. D. Inheritors of the Earth: How nature is thriving in an age of
…
, 436, 489n70 period effect, 436–7 quality of life and, 438–9, 490n84 United States and, 436, 437–8, 439, 489n75 voter turnout and, 438 secular stagnation. See economic stagnation security dilemma (Hobbesian trap), 164, 173, 315 Seinfeld, Jerry, 374 Selin, Ivan, 148 Semmelweis, Ignaz, 63 Sen, Amartya, 245, 248, 264, 265
Capitalism Without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy
by Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake · 7 Nov 2017 · 346pp · 89,180 words
, we’ll look at how the shift to intangible investment helps us understand four issues of great concern to anyone who cares about the economy: secular stagnation, the long-run rise in inequality, the role of the financial system in supporting the nonfinancial economy, and the question of what sort of infrastructure
…
emerge from these characteristics. PART II The Consequences of the Rise of the Intangible Economy 5 Intangibles, Investment, Productivity, and Secular Stagnation This chapter looks at the role of intangibles in secular stagnation, the puzzling fall in investment and productivity growth seen in major economies in recent years. We argue that the increasing importance
…
an important role to play in this troubling phenomenon. One of the most troubling and widely talked about trends in economics at the moment is secular stagnation: the fact that business investment is stubbornly low despite every indication that it shouldn’t be. There have been a variety of explanations put forward
…
first of our chapters discussing the consequences of the rise in intangible investment. We will argue that at least part of the reason for the secular stagnation puzzle is the shift in the balance of business investment toward intangibles. Furthermore, we shall make that argument on the basis of the four characteristics
…
after the Great Recession, productivity slows down as reduced intangible growth throws off fewer spillovers. Secular Stagnation: The Symptoms Before we look at the link between secular stagnation and intangible investment, it is worth reviewing what secular stagnation actually consists of. Secular stagnation is characterized by a number of symptoms. The first is low investment. As figure 5
…
coincidence of very cheap borrowing and the apparent unwillingness of businesses to invest was what Larry Summers was talking about when he popularized the term “secular stagnation” in a 2013 lecture to the IMF.1 One immediate explanation for this weird mix of cheap money and low investment is simply that the
…
century, such as electricity, indoor plumbing, and the like, were part of “one big wave of innovation” that will not be repeated. This explanation for secular stagnation has proved controversial, not least because it turns out to be very difficult to measure whether technological progress has slowed down. A totally out-of
…
has seemed to some too much of a deus ex machina, and many of those interested in secular stagnation have looked around for other causes. And then there are three further symptoms associated with current-day secular stagnation, all of which demand explanation. The first is the fact that corporate profits in the United
…
—some firms have always done better than others—but that gap seems to have widened considerably, starting before the financial crisis. The final fact surrounding secular stagnation is that the sustained decrease in productivity growth that we have seen in developed countries does not seem to be driven solely by lower investment
…
weighting, after two brilliant papers that derived them by Evesy Domar and Charles Hulten [Domar 1961; Hulten 1978].) An Intangible Explanation A good explanation for secular stagnation should ideally explain the following four facts: 1. A fall in measured investment at the same time as a fall in interest rates 2. Strong
…
UK now exceeds tangible investment. Much of it is not included in national accounts—and, therefore, is not included in the figures used to demonstrate secular stagnation. So does investment seem low because we are simply not counting it right? Or to put it another way, could the world’s economy be
…
Intangible Growth? While the mismeasurement of intangible investment does not explain most of the investment problem, it may help account for one aspect of the secular stagnation puzzle: poor TFP performance in recent years. As figure 2.4 showed, intangible investment has grown steadily over the past decades in most countries. Further
…
governments learn to do a much better job of preventing rent-seeking and designing the institutions an intangible economy needs. Conclusion: An Intangible Role in Secular Stagnation Secular stagnation is clearly a complex phenomenon, with a wide range of possible causes. We have identified four possible ways that the long-term shift from tangible
…
been rising, shows that the investment drought is not as bad as it seems. It also marginally improves GDP growth. But the bulk of the secular stagnation problem remains. Second, it looks like the scalability of intangibles is allowing very large and very profitable firms to emerge. These firms may also be
…
is right. Thus if the omitted intangible investment grows faster than measured GDP growth, measured GDP growth is too low, which can look just like secular stagnation (in the sense of low growth). Figure 5.11 sets out the net effect on growth, for all eleven EU countries and the United States
…
-intensive economy because intangibles have different underlying characteristics. And we have used the logic of these underlying characteristics to try to understand slowing growth and secular stagnation, inequality, and the challenges to finance and public policy. Along the way, we’ve tried to illustrate these changes with a combination of real-world
…
spill over and exhibit synergies with other intangibles. 4. These characteristics have consequences for the economy. In particular, we argue that they contribute to: a. Secular stagnation. Investment appears too low since some is unrecorded; scalability of intangibles allows large and profitable firms to emerge, raising the productivity and profits gap between
…
Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” Chapter 5: Intangibles, Investment, Productivity, and Secular Stagnation 1. Published as Summers 2015. Summers developed his views further in a Keynote Address at the National Association for Business Economics Policy Conference, February 24
…
, and the Evolution of Concentration. MIT Press. Summers, Lawrence H. 2014. “U.S. Economic Prospects: Secular Stagnation, Hysteresis, and the Zero Lower Bound.” Business Economics 49 (2): 65–73. ———. 2015. “Have We Entered an Age of Secular Stagnation?” IMF Economic Review 63 (1): 277–80. ———. 2016. “Corporate Profits Are Near Record Highs. Here’s
…
.com/2016/03/30/corporate-profits-are-near-record-highs-heres-why-thats-a-problem/. Thwaites, Gregory. 2015. “Why Are Real Interest Rates So Low? Secular Stagnation and the Relative Price of Investment Goods.” Bank of England Staff Working Paper, No. 564. http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/research/Pages/workingpapers/2015/swp564
…
, 102–3; effects on income, wealth, and esteem inequality of, 129–40; emergent characteristics of, 86–88; equity markets and, 169–74; as explanation for secular stagnation, 101–16; financial architecture for, 218–21; the four S’s of, 8–10, 58, 61–63, 88; future challenges of measuring, 52–55; globalization
…
procurement and, 226–28; as real investment or not, 49–52; reasons for growth of investment in, 27–35; research on, 5–7; and secular stagnation (see under secular stagnation); solving underinvestment in, 221–30; steady growth of investment in, 23–27; types of, 21–22, 43–46; venture capital as well-suited for
…
, 231–34, 234–36; importance of, 3, 15; in intangibles, 3–5, 21–22, 49–52, 202–6, 239–42; measurement of, 36–43; and secular stagnation, 92–93 investors, choices for, 204–6 IPOs, 171–72 Israeli Statistical Bureau, 56 iTunes, 18 Jacobs, Jane, 138, 142 Jacobs spillovers, 138 Jaeger, Bastian
…
, 97–101, 103–7; and the ratchet effect, 195–96; total factor, 96, 98, 102, 107–9 profitability, 97–101, 103–7, 247n2 profits, and secular stagnation, 94–96 property rights, 153, 212 propositional knowledge, 64 public investment: challenges of, 231–34, 234–36; and public procurement, 226–28; in R&D
…
, 67–68; income inequality and, 133–34; and increased investment, 110; and intangibles, 65–67; secular stagnation and, 103–5 Schreyer, Paul, 40 Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 16 Science: The Endless Frontier (Bush), 232 Second Machine Age, 30 secular stagnation, 91, 116; explanation for, 101–16; and intangibles investment, 102–3; profits and productivity differences and
…
; contestedness and, 87; importance of, 77–79; and intangibles, 72–77, 109–16; Jacobs, 138; Marshall-Arrow-Romer, 62, 138; physical infrastructure and, 147–51; secular stagnation and, 103–4; slowing TFP growth and, 107–9; venture capital and, 178 Spotify, 18 Stack Overflow, 29 Stansted Airport, 1–2, 3–4 Starbucks
Stolen: How to Save the World From Financialisation
by Grace Blakeley · 9 Sep 2019 · 263pp · 80,594 words
Banking and Inter-Bank Lending Bailout Britain Transatlantic Banking Crisis or Structural Crisis of Financial Capitalism? Chapter Six The Post-Crisis World The Long Recovery Secular Stagnation or Crisis of Capitalism? Austerity Economics Property-Owning Oligarchy The Coming Crisis Chapter Seven The Way Forward Capital Democratic Socialism Socialising Finance Finance for the
…
little room for manoeuvre. Economists are at a loss to explain this ongoing malaise. Some have argued that we are living through an era of “secular stagnation” (where secular means long-term). Technological and demographic change mean that the Western world must accustom itself to much lower rates of growth than in
…
to non-financial corporations peaked at 73% of GDP in 2017 on the back of loose monetary policy, as described later in this chapter.18 Secular Stagnation or Crisis of Capitalism? These trends are puzzling to mainstream economists, who have come up with all sorts of theories in an attempt to explain
…
of the global North were suffering from a peculiar affliction, one not sensitive to traditional medicine — an affliction he termed “secular stagnation”.19 But whilst its symptoms are now more obvious, secular stagnation is not a new disease; it had been lurking in remission for decades. During the pre-crash period, unprecedented levels of
…
North have led to a fall in the working age population that is depressing long-term growth rates.22 But all those who support the secular stagnation hypothesis converge on one point: without extraordinary interventions from the state such as quantitative easing, many economies in the global North appear to have ground
…
halt. Today’s economists have all converged on one burning question: What is going on? Just like the theory of the great moderation itself, the secular stagnation hypothesis takes for granted many of the assumptions of neoclassical economics. Take the argument about wage stagnation. Neoclassical economists argue that workers are paid a
…
exports. Facing a highly uncompetitive exchange rate, the British and American trade deficits have risen to record heights. These political economic factors are what explains secular stagnation. The combination of a falling wage share of national income, a rising rentier share, and a private debt overhang has led to falling rates of
…
formation (% of GDP)’, World Bank National Accounts Data. 18 See, e.g., Teulings, C. and Baldwin, R. (2014) Secular Stagnation: Facts, Causes and Cures, London: CEPR Press 19 Rogoff, K. (2015) “Debt Supercycle Not Secular Stagnation”, in Blanchard, O., Rajan, R., Rogoff, K. and Summers, L. (eds.) Progress and Confusion: The State of Macroeconomic
…
(2019) “United States Investment: % of GDP”, CEIC. https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/united-states/investment--nominal-gdp 18 BIS (2019) 19 Summers, L. (2013) “Secular Stagnation”, Speech at the 14th Annual IMF Research Conference. Washington DC, November 14 20 Rogoff (2015) 21 Gordon, B. (2015) “The Turtle’s Progress
…
: Secular Stagnation Meets the Headwinds”, in Baldwin and Teulings (2015) 22 Baldwin and Teulings (2015) 23 Milanovic, B. (2015) “Bob Solow on Rents and Decoupling of Productivity
Money and Government: The Past and Future of Economics
by Robert Skidelsky · 13 Nov 2018
, and with it productivity growth. The finance sector was growing faster than the economy, and financiers were getting much richer than anyone else. Signs of ‘secular stagnation’ were not hard to see, after the event. I have singled out the stagnation of real earnings as the deep cause of the crisis, the
…
being about to ‘bury’ the capitalist West economically. In fact, the Soviet growth rates were also high during the ‘golden age’. There was talk of ‘secular stagnation’, never far from the surface of American discussions. Germany, whose growth record was exemplary, also succumbed to the fear of slow growth, following its first
…
same conclusion was drawn by ‘the new stagnation’ theorists. They were impressed by the fact that the upswing of 1958–60 had soon petered out. Secular stagnation was an old American obsession. The stagnationists claimed that what had made American capitalism so dynamic was its expanding frontier. With the ‘closing of the
…
up domestic economies to global competition. Higher unemployment simultaneously shifted income from wages to profits and brought down inflation, but at the cost of a secular stagnation. According to Palley, the collapse of the dotcom bubble in 2001 reflected deep-seated contradictions in the existing process of aggregate demand generation. He saw
…
between 2004 and 2006, this source of activity, too, was fatally damaged. Analysts are free to apportion the blame between a dearth of investment opportunities (‘secular stagnation), the quest for shortterm shareholder value, and favourable tax treatment of stock-options.17 Ironically, Chinese investors, who would have been willing to invest in
…
to regard the collapse of 2008–9 and subsequent events as merely a temporary halt on the continuing upward ascent. There is a whiff of ‘secular stagnation’ in the air, with a strong sense that bouts of temporary excitement will be followed by collapses. Make hay while the sun shines is what
…
a rich society. 27 369 A N e w M ac roe c onom ic s However, a more pessimistic view is taken by modern ‘secular stagnation’ theorists such as Paul Krugman and Larry Summers. 28 For Krugman, ‘persistent shortfalls in demand’ for new capital goods are to be explained by the
…
having what they want. Summers attaches particular importance to the ‘hysteresis’ produced by the collapse of 2008–9 (see p. 239). Thus the theory of secular stagnation is a contemporary version of under-consumption theory. Market optimists regard the problem as spurious: technology and globalization will keep growth in line with expanding
…
g r a p h y Galbraith, James K. (2014), ‘Kapital’ for the twenty-first century. Dissent. Spring. Galbraith, James K. (2017), Can Trump overcome secular stagnation? RealWorld Economics Review, 78, pp. 20–27. Galbraith, John K. (1952), American Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power. London: Harper Publications. Gårdlund, T. (1996), The
…
.html [Accessed 21 June 2017]. Krugman, P. (2013a), Bubbles, regulation and secular stagnation. New York Times, 25 September. Available at: https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/ 2013/09/25/bubbles-regulation-and-secular-stagnation/?_r=0 [Accessed 21 December 2017]. Krugman, P. (2013b), Secular stagnation, coalmines, bubbles, and Larry Summers. New York Times, 16 November. Available at
…
: https://krugman. blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/16/secular-stagnation-coalmines-bubblesand-larry-summers/?_r=3 [Accessed 21 December 2017]. Krugman, P. (2014), Nobody understands the liquidity trap, still. New York Times, 4 October. Krugman,
…
. Available at: http://larrysummers.com/imf-fourteenth-annual-researchconference-in-honor-of-stanley-fischer/ [Accessed 21 December 2017]. Summers, L. (2014), U. S. economic prospects: secular stagnation, hysteresis, and the zero lower bound. Business Economics, 49 (2), pp. 65–73. Taylor, J. B. (1993), Discretion versus policy rules in practice. CarnegieRochester Conference
…
), 248, 271–3, 272, 279, 284, 305 and quantity theory, 61 redistributive policies and total utility, 290–91 rekindled interest in issues of, 299 and ‘secular stagnation’ theorists, 370, 370 and social democratic consensus, 149, 293 standard of value as political question, 41, 43–4 theoretical case against redistribution, 292 see also
…
, Arthur, 15, 16 Schumpeter, Joseph, 11, 14, 71, 104, 139, 350 Schwartz, Anna, 105, 179, 256, 276 sciences, natural, 8, 10, 11–12, 201, 388 ‘secular stagnation’, 4, 149, 151, 304, 340, 348, 370 securitization, 5, 307–8, 309, 322–6, 327, 341, 362 and fraud, 328 role of CR As, 326
The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest
by Edward Chancellor · 15 Aug 2022 · 829pp · 187,394 words
Bull Cannot Stand Two Per Cent 6 Un Petit Coup de Whisky PART TWO How Low Rates Begot Lower Rates 7 Goodhart’s Law 8 Secular Stagnation 9 The Raven of Basel 10 Unnatural Selection 11 The Promoter’s Profit 12 A Big Fat Ugly Bubble 13 Your Mother Needs to Die
…
1868, differed greatly from those prevailing before the recent panic. Savings were growing unchecked. Goschen pointed to massive accumulations of gold in London and Paris. Secular stagnation was the order of the day: ‘trade is conducted from hand to mouth’ and the Court of Chancery was ‘blocked with the liquidation of companies
…
a policy that ensures price stability on account of potential collateral effects.’53 The ECB would pursue its target, let the consequences be damned. 8 Secular Stagnation Is the devil of excessive thriftiness a mere bogey, after all? Dennis Robertson, 1937 Within a year of Lehman’s bankruptcy in September 2008, the
…
-low interest rates. Larry Summers, a Harvard professor and former US Treasury Secretary, came up with an answer: the Western world, Summers said, suffered from ‘secular stagnation’. (Economists use the word ‘secular’ to describe a more or less permanent state of the world, as opposed to a cyclical event.) Summers’ thought wasn
…
. In his book The Bogey of Economic Maturity (1945), business economist George Terborgh railed against the notion of secular stagnation. Since a secular movement is by definition a long-term trend, Terborgh argued, the secular stagnation of the 1930s should have been evident for some years earlier. Yet the Roaring Twenties had been a
…
and survived into the second decade of the new millennium, witnessed a more than sixfold increase in America’s per capita GDP.8 Hansen’s secular stagnation claim is one of the worst forecasting errors ever made by an academic economist. Its resounding failure makes it all the more curious that the
…
excess of saving at a time of weak economic growth was said to explain the sharp decline in interest rates.fn2 As in the 1930s, secular stagnation narratives cropped up on both sides of the Atlantic. Researchers at the Bank of England argued that slowing population growth in the United Kingdom had
…
of the new millennium, the world’s population was rising at an annual rate of around 1 per cent.14 It seems implausible to ascribe ‘secular stagnation’ and the steep decline in interest rates to a gradual, multi-decade slowdown in the increase in the global population. If demographics couldn’t explain
…
growth’.23 If demographics, investment and savings cannot explain the torpor of Western economies and their low interest rates, some other explanation is called for. Secular stagnation narratives emphasize what economists consider ‘real’ factors (savings, population, investment, etc.) and overlook monetary and financial factors. Yet Hansen came up with his big idea
…
not long after the October 1929 Crash. In the 1934 paper in which he first mentions secular stagnation, Hansen states that in the previous decade the American economy had been ‘artificially stimulated by an overdose of easy credit … [and that] is the basic
…
depression.’24 Eighty years later, after another overdose of easy money, the US economy experienced another bout of indigestion. A few years after launching the secular stagnation debate, Larry Summers himself had second thoughts. Gone was his former concern with demographics or the cost of capital goods. Summers, once a favourite to
…
actually reduce aggregate demand while breeding financial instability, bank failure, “zombification” and reduced economic dynamism.’ The claim that ultra-low rates might be responsible for secular stagnation, rather than the other way round, was a radical thought. But Summers was not the first to entertain it. 9 The Raven of Basel The
…
part,’ said Fed Chairman Bernanke in 2013.5 The lowest interest rates in history and lacklustre economic growth were routinely ascribed by central bankers to secular stagnation. Economists at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel were an exception to this rule. As we have seen, the BIS’s chief economist William
…
later, White and Borio were vindicated. As head of the BIS’s Monetary and Economics Department from 2013, Borio provided a radically different account of secular stagnation to that of Summers. He took the unorthodox view of the BIS in a new direction and provided (by guiding the efforts of his research
…
bankers responded to economic stagnation after 2008 by pushing rates even lower. Thus, low rates begat low rates. Debt was the missing link in the secular stagnation narrative, said Borio. The path to ever lower rates traversed a mountain of debt. The BIS defined interest as the ‘price of leverage’. It was
…
financial panic was doused, but the world ended up with more debt, more bubbles, more zombies and more financial risk. Viewed from Borio’s perspective, secular stagnation was a monetary disease. For all his genius, Hume was mistaken – not completely mistaken, but he went too far in dismissing finance. Money is not
…
correct. The Fed’s extreme policy measures had ended the Great Recession but at the cost of creating a ‘false economy’. Even Larry Summers, the secular stagnation revivalist, admitted that America’s economy only expanded during periods when bubbles were inflating. Another New York billionaire, the hedge fund manager Paul Singer, asserted
…
the Dotcom, subprime and Eurozone variety), ‘flash crashes’ and abnormal economic outcomes – plunging productivity, rising inequality and extreme profitability. The conventional explanations that are provided – secular stagnation, demographic headwinds and technological change – are unconvincing. Like Truman, we feel that things are not right. In an unscripted moment in the show, Truman falls
…
the United States contributed to the nation’s financial instability,’ according to the French economist Thomas Piketty.31 Inequality features prominently in most accounts of secular stagnation.32 The rising gap between the top 1 per cent and the rest of the population is said to have contributed to the economic slowdown
…
to ‘Deaths of Despair’ among white working-class Americans, tens of thousands of whom were killing themselves with prescription painkillers.107 In the age of secular stagnation, opioids were the opium of the people.108 THE PITCHFORKS ARE COMING Surging inequality induced much handwringing from the Great and the Good. Pope Francis
…
quantitative easing worked in practice but not in theory. Central bankers denied that they were responsible for the collapse in long-term interest rates. One secular stagnation narrative that found favour among monetary policymakers was the claim that long-term rates had fallen because the demand for ‘risk-free’ bonds was outstripping
…
. Current Account Deficit’, speech at the Sandbridge Lecture, Virginia Association of Economists, 10 March 2005. Bernanke, Ben, ‘Why are Interest Rates So Low?, Part 2: Secular Stagnation’, Brookings, 31 March 2015. Bernard, H. and Bisignano, J., ‘Bubbles and Crashes: Hayek and Haberler Revisited’, Asset Price Bubbles: Implications for Monetary and Regulatory Policies
…
, Barry, Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, the Great Recession, and the Uses-and-Misuses of History (New York, 2015). Eichengreen, Barry, ‘Secular Stagnation: A Review of the Issues’, in Secular Stagnation, Facts, Causes and Cures, eds. C. Teulings and R. Baldwin (London, 2014). Eichengreen, Barry and Flandreau, Marc, The Gold Standard in Theory
…
, ‘Human Action: The Rate of Interest’, in The Pure Time-Preference Theory of Interest, ed. Jeffrey Herbener (Auburn, Ala., 2011). Mokyr, Joel, ‘Secular stagnation? Not in your life’, in Secular Stagnation, Facts, Causes and Cures, eds. C. Teulings and R. Baldwin (London, 2014). Monroe, Arthur E., Early Economic Thought: Selected Writings from Aristotle to
…
). Studwell, Joe, How Asia Works: Success and Failure in the World’s Most Dynamic Region (New York, 2013). Summers, Lawrence H., ‘U.S. Economic Prospects: Secular Stagnation, Hysteresis, and the Zero Lower Bound’, Business Economics, 49 (2), June 2014. Sun, Yan, Corruption and Market in Contemporary China (Ithaca, NY, 2018). Swetz, Frank
…
2015.) 53. Mario Draghi, ‘The European Central Bank’s Recent Monetary Policy Measures – Effectiveness and Challenges’, European Central Bank, 14 May 2015, p. 4. 8. SECULAR STAGNATION 1. Simon Ward, ‘Global Industrial Recovery Following “Zarnowitz” Script’, Money Moves Markets, 13 November 2009. 2. Lawrence H. Summers, ‘U.S. Economic Prospects
…
: Secular Stagnation, Hysteresis, and the Zero Lower Bound’, Business Economics, 49 (2), 5 June 2014. 3. The Fed’s balance sheet growth exceeded US nominal GDP growth
…
. Gordon, ‘Is U.S. Economic Growth Over? Faltering Innovation Confronts the Six Headwinds’, NBER Working Paper, August 2012, p. 14. 19. Joel Mokyr, ‘Secular Stagnation? Not in Your Life’, in Secular Stagnation, Facts, Causes and Cures, eds. C. Teulings and R. Baldwin (London, 2014). 20. William Bernstein, ‘The Paradox of Wealth’, Financial Analysts Journal
…
the new millennium, at 23–24 per cent of GDP. 23. Barry Eichengreen, ‘Secular Stagnation: A Review of the Issues’, in Secular Stagnation, Facts, Causes and Cures, eds. C. Teulings and R. Baldwin (London, 2014). 24. When Hansen elaborated his secular stagnation hypothesis towards the end of the 1930s his earlier comments on ‘easy credit’ were
…
The Works of Irving Fisher, vol. IX, ed. William Barber (London, 1997), p. 78. 47. Ben Bernanke, ‘Why Are Interest Rates So Low, Part 2: Secular Stagnation’, Brookings, 31 March 2015. 48. Axel Leijonhufvud, On Keynesian Economics and the Economics of Keynes: A Study in Monetary Theory (New York, 1968), p. 314
…
, 66, 70, 71–2, 75–6, 79, 80; policies in post-crisis decade, 151, 153, 174, 233, 235, 241, 293; and regulation, 232, 233; and secular stagnation narratives, 126, 205–6 Bank of France, 82, 83, 92, 93 Bank of Japan (BOJ), 105–8, 119, 122, 146, 192, 224, 241, 242, 244
…
ratio, 135; ‘evergreening’ of bad debts, 136, 145–6, 280; late payment penalties, 10, 14, 25; Lord King on (2019), 304; as missing link in secular stagnation narrative, 135–6, 138–9; mortgage equity withdrawal, 112–13, 191, 205; problem of compound interest, 8–9; Proudhon on, xvii, xviii; revival of subprime
…
Hansen on, 126; and interest, xxiv, 10, 12, 126–7, 131, 133; largest voting cohort as old, 211–12; life expectancy statistics, 198, 213; and secular stagnation argument, 125, 126, 129; student debt ‘bubble’, 212, 213; and ‘time preference’ theory, 29 Demosthenes, 18† Deng Xiaoping, 265, 266, 267 Denmark, 242, 244, 245
…
rates after a bubble, 114, 136, 138, 145–6; relation to interest rates, xxiv, xxv, 10, 12, 44, 89, 124–9, 141, 162, 237–8; secular stagnation concept, 77, 124–9, 131, 132–9, 151, 205–6; slow recovery from Great Recession, 124–5, 126–9, 131–2, 150–53, 298–9
…
Crash (October 1929) Great Fire of London (1666), 33 the ‘Great Moderation’, 112 Great Recession, 146, 152–3, 181–2, 206–17, 221–4; and secular stagnation argument, 124–5, 126–8, 131; slow recovery in developed world, 124–5, 126–9, 131–2, 150–53, 298–9, 304; and support for
…
benefitting from easy money, 12*, 44, 202–5, 205, 206–10, 211, 214–17, 237; as rising in post-crisis decade, 44, 206–17, and secular stagnation argument, 205–6; seventeenth century writers on, 34, 36; stress levels after 2008 crisis, 210–11; trickle-down effect, 55; unequal access to credit, xxii
…
, 220–34, 283, 285, 291–2; robber baron era in USA, 156–9, 203; and saving, 44, 77, 190–93, 194–9, 205–6; and secular stagnation narratives, 126–7, 129, 131, 132–9; seventeenth-century debates on, 34–44, 236†; trouble exiting from policy, xxi–xxii, 57–9, 60–61; ‘unicorns
…
deflation, 100; History of Economic Analysis, xviii; view of intellectuals, 297 Schwartz, Anna, 98, 99, 105, 116 Schwarzman, Steven, 207 Sears (department store), 169–70 secular stagnation, 77, 124–8, 131, 132–9, 151, 205–6 Sée, Henri Eugene, Modern Capitalism (1928), 28* Seneca the Younger, 20–21 Senior, Nassau, 188, 191
…
schools, healthcare, policing and business has produced a litany of errors. (See Jerry Muller, The Tyranny of Metrics (Princeton, 2018.)) fn12 See Chapter 15. 8: Secular Stagnation fn1 George Terborgh, The Bogey of Economic Maturity (Chicago, 1950). Terborgh notes (p. 63) that the act of saving is not independent of investment (the
…
, and make Ponzi financial structures more attractive as interest rates look low relative to expected growth rates.’ (See L. Summers, ‘Reflections on the New Secular Stagnation Hypothesis’, in Secular Stagnation, Facts, Causes and Cures, eds. C. Teulings and R. Baldwin (London, 2014), pp. 32–3.) fn8 According to Stein, ‘low interest rates increase the
The End of Alchemy: Money, Banking and the Future of the Global Economy
by Mervyn King · 3 Mar 2016 · 464pp · 139,088 words
six years after the end of the banking crisis, is the world recovery so slow? Some economists believe that we are experiencing what they call ‘secular stagnation’, a phrase coined by the American economist Alvin Hansen in his 1938 book Full Recovery or Stagnation?36 Today’s American economists, such as Ben
…
Summers, have been using the more modern literary form of blogging to debate the issue. But it is not exactly clear what they mean by secular stagnation. Does it refer to stagnation of supply or of demand, or indeed both? Growth today seems possible only if interest rates are much lower than
…
because demand is insufficient to maintain full employment. The reasoning is circular. Simply restating the phenomenon of secular stagnation in different words and pretending to have offered an explanation does not amount to a theory. Secular stagnation is an important description of the problems afflicting the world economy, but we need a new theory
…
downturns unaccompanied by such crises.2 But there is no unique pattern across different episodes. Diagnoses using expressions such as ‘balance sheet recession’, ‘headwinds’ and ‘secular stagnation’, which have all entered the currency of popular debate, are descriptions of symptoms, not causes.3 What are the underlying drivers of a prolonged period
…
trap of thinking that the future will generate fewer innovations than those we saw emerge in the past. When Alvin Hansen proposed the idea of ‘secular stagnation’ in the 1930s, he fell into just this trap. In fact the 1930s witnessed significant innovation, which was obscured by the dramatic macroeconomic consequences of
…
the Financial Stability Board. 34 World Bank Tables and author’s own calculations. 35 IMF World Economic Outlook Database, April 2015. 36 The discussion of secular stagnation was revived in an important contribution by Summers (2014). 37 King (2009). 2 GOOD AND EVIL: IN MONEY WE TRUST 1 Created as one element
…
reports). Lawrence Summers, the Harvard economist and former Treasury Secretary, argued at an International Monetary Fund conference on 16 November 2013 that an age of secular stagnation, in which the equilibrium interest rate was negative, might explain the lack of inflationary pressure before the crisis of 2008 and the lack of growth
…
. King’, Journal of Monetary Economics, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 159–62. —— (2014), ‘U.S. Economic Prospects: Secular Stagnation, Hysteresis, and the Zero Lower Bound’, Business Economics, Vol. 49, pp. 65–73. —— (2015), ‘Reflections on Secular Stagnation’, Speech at the Julius-Rabinowitz Center, Princeton University, 19 February 2015. Syed, Matthew (2011), Bounce: The Myth
…
Scholes, Myron, 120–1 Schumpeter, Joseph, 152 Schwartz, Anna, 192, 328 Scotland, 218, 243–7, 248 Second World War, 20, 21, 219, 242, 317, 342 secular stagnation theory, 44, 291–2, 355 Seneca, 123–4 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, 124 ‘shadow’ banking system, 107, 112–14, 256, 262, 274 Shiller, Robert
The State and the Stork: The Population Debate and Policy Making in US History
by Derek S. Hoff · 30 May 2012
stuck in quicksand. More happily, according to Keynes, because mass consumption would henceforth hold the key to prosperity in the industrialized nations, governments can cure “secular stagnation” (secular here means long-term) by increasing their direct spending in the economy, thereby propping up demand for goods and services and maintaining a floor
…
economics.9 When historians discuss 1930s population debates, they tend to focus on this pronatalist thread. In particular, they highlight the mid-1930s development of “secular stagnation” or “mature economy” doctrine.10 Proponents of stagnation theory, led by John Maynard Keynes and Harvard’s Alvin Hansen,11 claimed that a triumvirate of
…
of income and higher levels of personal consumption, most likely engineered through federal economic policy making. Well before Keynes and Hansen codified the doctrine of secular stagnation in the mid-1930s, a few theorists had articulated themes of economic exhaustion and debated the relative importance of slowing population growth. Importantly, they also
…
-Hansen doctrine of economic maturity. Generally, historians examining the decline of stagnation theory simply suggest that postwar prosperity and the Baby Boom rendered theories of secular stagnation moot.97 Or they emphasize conservative opposition to it, which was certainly important.98 For instance, financier Alexander Sachs, one of FDR’s economic advisers
…
recognition of the decreasing birthrate spread, however, the underconsumption and mature-economy theses fused. Five years before Keynes and Hansen formally constructed the theory of secular stagnation, FDR wed underconsumption and mature-economy ideas in a 1932 campaign speech: population depressed 97 As long as we had free land; as long as
…
employment by other means.”88 Minimization of the importance of population growth also emanated, ironically, from some theorists who, despite the obvious inaccuracy of 1930s secular-stagnation theory’s predictions of the end of economic growth, continued to believe that modern capitalism had run its course. After the war, those who diagnosed
…
secular stagnation in developed economies identified not a lack of exogenous variables necessary for economic growth (population growth, new lands, and new technologies) but endogenous, structural failings.
…
. 4–7. 11. An early critic of Keynes at the University of Minnesota but later his leading American disciple, Hansen was the formal theorist of secular stagnation. See Paul A. Samuelson, “Alvin Hansen as a Creative Economic Theorist,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 90 (February 1976): 24–31. 12. See note 17. 13
…
Economic Essays (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1952), originally a memo Harrod wrote in 1944 to the Royal Commission on Population. Finally, consult Larry Neal, “Is Secular Stagnation Just around the Corner? A Survey of the Influences of Slowing Population Growth upon Investment Demand,” in The Economic Consequences of Slowing Population Growth, ed
…
25. 4. U.S. Census Bureau, “State and County QuickFacts,” available online at www .quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html. 5. Larry Neal, “Is Secular Stagnation Just around the Corner? A Survey of the Influences of Slowing Population Growth upon Investment Demand,” in The Economic Consequences of Slowing Population Growth, ed
…
the Great Depression,” Southern Economic Journal 44 (January 1978): 432–56. Also see Serow and Espenshade, “Economics of Declining Population Growth,” 19. 67. Neal, “Is Secular Stagnation Just around the Corner?” 102. 68. Ibid., 104. 69. This position was richly ironic, given that Keynes’s first conservative opponents had scoffed at the
…
Scranton, William, 201 Scripps, Edward W., 63 Scripps Foundation for Research in Population Problems, Miami University, Ohio, 63, 64, 89 Second Continental Congress, 20–21 secular-stagnation theory. See KeynesHansen (mature-economy) doctrine Seligman, E. R. A., 55–56, 57 Senate Labor Committee Subcommittee on Employment and Manpower, 140 Senior, Nassau, 26
The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success
by Ross Douthat · 25 Feb 2020 · 324pp · 80,217 words
. What has changed, according to the less solutionist and more pessimistic analysis, is that we’ve entered an age of economic limits—an era of “secular stagnation,” as the chastened neoliberal Larry Summers wrote in 2013, in which “the presumption that normal economic and policy conditions will return at some point cannot
Rethinking Capitalism: Economics and Policy for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth
by Michael Jacobs and Mariana Mazzucato · 31 Jul 2016 · 370pp · 102,823 words
of productivity-enhancing innovation have also slowed down.17 All this has led some economists to ask whether Western capitalism has entered a period of ‘secular stagnation’, in which a structural weakness of investment and demand leaves positive interest rates no longer able to support full employment. While such a prospect should
…
://www.cepr.org/sites/default/files/policy_insights/PolicyInsight63.pdf (accessed 12 April 2016). 18 See for example L. H. Summers, ‘U.S. economic prospects: secular stagnation, hysteresis, and the zero lower bound’, Business Economics, vol. 49, no. 2, 2014, pp. 65–73, http://larrysummers.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/NABE
…
-speech-Lawrence-H.-Summers1.pdf (accessed 12 April 2016); C. Teulings and R. Baldwin (eds), Secular Stagnation: Facts, Causes and Cures, London, CEPR Press, 2014, http://voxeu.org/sites/default/files/Vox_secular_stagnation.pdf (accessed 12 April 2016). 19 Real median US household income in 2014 was $53,657 compared with
…
sectors. This is one factor generating concerns that the developed world has entered a period, not of sustained growth, but of ‘secular stagnation’.3 Some economists see the risk of secular stagnation as a quasi-inevitable consequence of demographic change and savings behaviour in high-income countries. This chapter will instead highlight its endogenous
…
_insights/PolicyInsight63.pdf (accessed 13 June 2015). 3 See for example C. Teulings and R. Baldwin, eds, Secular Stagnation: Facts, Causes and Cures, London, CEPR Press, 2014. Available at http://www.voxeu.org/content/secular-stagnation-facts-causes-and-cures (accessed 20 May 2015). 4 A public good is a good that is both
…
business in periods that are very similar to the present, when the recessions following major bubble collapses have led to widespread fears of joblessness and secular stagnation.10 It will argue that this pessimism is a recurrent phenomenon based on the stalling of innovation, after major bubble collapses, in spite of the
…
times. On the other hand, a recent view holds the prospect of a significant reduction in technology-driven growth in the West, using the term ‘secular stagnation’ originally coined in the 1930s.12 A closer analysis of past patterns of change reveals that these views are a simplification of the historical record
…
materials, electrical appliances and the personal automobile. At the time, assembly-line manufacturing and the mechanisation of agriculture generated the same fears of unemployment and ‘secular stagnation’ that globalisation, robotics and artificial intelligence do today.21 Yet the greatest boom in history was just around the corner—a great surge of consumer
…
and Credit in the Recovery Program (April), pp. 11–19, and in 2014 L. H. Summers’s ‘Reflections on the “new secular stagnation hypothesis”’, in C. Teulings and R. Baldwin, eds, Secular Stagnation: Facts, Causes and Cures, London, CEPR Press, pp. 27–38. 11 Brynjolfsson and McAfee, Race Against the Machine; E. Brynjolfsson and
The Wealth of Humans: Work, Power, and Status in the Twenty-First Century
by Ryan Avent · 20 Sep 2016 · 323pp · 90,868 words
Automation and the Future of Work
by Aaron Benanav · 3 Nov 2020 · 175pp · 45,815 words
On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything
by Nate Silver · 12 Aug 2024 · 848pp · 227,015 words
How Will Capitalism End?
by Wolfgang Streeck · 8 Nov 2016 · 424pp · 115,035 words
The Knowledge Economy
by Roberto Mangabeira Unger · 19 Mar 2019 · 268pp · 75,490 words
The Shifts and the Shocks: What We've Learned--And Have Still to Learn--From the Financial Crisis
by Martin Wolf · 24 Nov 2015 · 524pp · 143,993 words
The Scandal of Money
by George Gilder · 23 Feb 2016 · 209pp · 53,236 words
The Upside of Inequality
by Edward Conard · 1 Sep 2016 · 436pp · 98,538 words
The Only Game in Town: Central Banks, Instability, and Avoiding the Next Collapse
by Mohamed A. El-Erian · 26 Jan 2016 · 318pp · 77,223 words
Restarting the Future: How to Fix the Intangible Economy
by Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake · 4 Apr 2022 · 338pp · 85,566 words
What Would the Great Economists Do?: How Twelve Brilliant Minds Would Solve Today's Biggest Problems
by Linda Yueh · 4 Jun 2018 · 453pp · 117,893 words
Homeland: The War on Terror in American Life
by Richard Beck · 2 Sep 2024 · 715pp · 212,449 words
Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future
by Paul Mason · 29 Jul 2015 · 378pp · 110,518 words
Profiting Without Producing: How Finance Exploits Us All
by Costas Lapavitsas · 14 Aug 2013 · 554pp · 158,687 words
Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World
by Deirdre N. McCloskey · 15 Nov 2011 · 1,205pp · 308,891 words
Open: The Progressive Case for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital
by Kimberly Clausing · 4 Mar 2019 · 555pp · 80,635 words
Seven Crashes: The Economic Crises That Shaped Globalization
by Harold James · 15 Jan 2023 · 469pp · 137,880 words
Human Frontiers: The Future of Big Ideas in an Age of Small Thinking
by Michael Bhaskar · 2 Nov 2021
China's Future
by David Shambaugh · 11 Mar 2016 · 261pp · 57,595 words
Prosperity Without Growth: Foundations for the Economy of Tomorrow
by Tim Jackson · 8 Dec 2016 · 573pp · 115,489 words
People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent
by Joseph E. Stiglitz · 22 Apr 2019 · 462pp · 129,022 words
The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today
by Linda Yueh · 15 Mar 2018 · 374pp · 113,126 words
Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work
by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams · 1 Oct 2015 · 357pp · 95,986 words
The Rise and Fall of Nations: Forces of Change in the Post-Crisis World
by Ruchir Sharma · 5 Jun 2016 · 566pp · 163,322 words
The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan
by Sebastian Mallaby · 10 Oct 2016 · 1,242pp · 317,903 words
Money: 5,000 Years of Debt and Power
by Michel Aglietta · 23 Oct 2018 · 665pp · 146,542 words
The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World)
by Robert J. Gordon · 12 Jan 2016 · 1,104pp · 302,176 words
The End of Indexing: Six Structural Mega-Trends That Threaten Passive Investing
by Niels Jensen · 25 Mar 2018 · 205pp · 55,435 words
The Great Demographic Reversal: Ageing Societies, Waning Inequality, and an Inflation Revival
by Charles Goodhart and Manoj Pradhan · 8 Aug 2020 · 438pp · 84,256 words
Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World
by Adam Tooze · 31 Jul 2018 · 1,066pp · 273,703 words
The Great Surge: The Ascent of the Developing World
by Steven Radelet · 10 Nov 2015 · 437pp · 115,594 words
Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America
by Erik Baker · 13 Jan 2025 · 362pp · 132,186 words
The Glass Half-Empty: Debunking the Myth of Progress in the Twenty-First Century
by Rodrigo Aguilera · 10 Mar 2020 · 356pp · 106,161 words
The Age of Stagnation: Why Perpetual Growth Is Unattainable and the Global Economy Is in Peril
by Satyajit Das · 9 Feb 2016 · 327pp · 90,542 words
The New Urban Crisis: How Our Cities Are Increasing Inequality, Deepening Segregation, and Failing the Middle Class?and What We Can Do About It
by Richard Florida · 9 May 2016 · 356pp · 91,157 words
The Economics of Belonging: A Radical Plan to Win Back the Left Behind and Achieve Prosperity for All
by Martin Sandbu · 15 Jun 2020 · 322pp · 84,580 words
Rethinking the Economics of Land and Housing
by Josh Ryan-Collins, Toby Lloyd and Laurie Macfarlane · 28 Feb 2017 · 346pp · 90,371 words
Escape From Rome: The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity
by Walter Scheidel · 14 Oct 2019 · 1,014pp · 237,531 words
Capitalism in America: A History
by Adrian Wooldridge and Alan Greenspan · 15 Oct 2018 · 585pp · 151,239 words
The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It
by Yascha Mounk · 15 Feb 2018 · 497pp · 123,778 words
A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America
by Bruce Cannon Gibney · 7 Mar 2017 · 526pp · 160,601 words
The Corona Crash: How the Pandemic Will Change Capitalism
by Grace Blakeley · 14 Oct 2020 · 82pp · 24,150 words
Growth: A Reckoning
by Daniel Susskind · 16 Apr 2024 · 358pp · 109,930 words
Hubris: Why Economists Failed to Predict the Crisis and How to Avoid the Next One
by Meghnad Desai · 15 Feb 2015 · 270pp · 73,485 words
The Corruption of Capitalism: Why Rentiers Thrive and Work Does Not Pay
by Guy Standing · 13 Jul 2016 · 443pp · 98,113 words
The Innovation Illusion: How So Little Is Created by So Many Working So Hard
by Fredrik Erixon and Bjorn Weigel · 3 Oct 2016 · 504pp · 126,835 words
The Euro: How a Common Currency Threatens the Future of Europe
by Joseph E. Stiglitz and Alex Hyde-White · 24 Oct 2016 · 515pp · 142,354 words
Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century
by J. Bradford Delong · 6 Apr 2020 · 593pp · 183,240 words
Angrynomics
by Eric Lonergan and Mark Blyth · 15 Jun 2020 · 194pp · 56,074 words
The Euro and the Battle of Ideas
by Markus K. Brunnermeier, Harold James and Jean-Pierre Landau · 3 Aug 2016 · 586pp · 160,321 words
Arguing With Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future
by Paul Krugman · 28 Jan 2020 · 446pp · 117,660 words
The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them
by Joseph E. Stiglitz · 15 Mar 2015 · 409pp · 125,611 words
Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future
by Martin Ford · 4 May 2015 · 484pp · 104,873 words
The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America
by Gabriel Winant · 23 Mar 2021 · 563pp · 136,190 words
Termites of the State: Why Complexity Leads to Inequality
by Vito Tanzi · 28 Dec 2017
The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy
by Peter Temin · 17 Mar 2017 · 273pp · 87,159 words
Big Three in Economics: Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes
by Mark Skousen · 22 Dec 2006 · 330pp · 77,729 words
The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition
by Jonathan Tepper · 20 Nov 2018 · 417pp · 97,577 words
WTF?: What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us
by Tim O'Reilly · 9 Oct 2017 · 561pp · 157,589 words
Hedgehogging
by Barton Biggs · 3 Jan 2005
Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World
by Fareed Zakaria · 5 Oct 2020 · 289pp · 86,165 words
Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist
by Kate Raworth · 22 Mar 2017 · 403pp · 111,119 words
The Levelling: What’s Next After Globalization
by Michael O’sullivan · 28 May 2019 · 756pp · 120,818 words
The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation
by Carl Benedikt Frey · 17 Jun 2019 · 626pp · 167,836 words
The Tyranny of Nostalgia: Half a Century of British Economic Decline
by Russell Jones · 15 Jan 2023 · 463pp · 140,499 words
Shocks, Crises, and False Alarms: How to Assess True Macroeconomic Risk
by Philipp Carlsson-Szlezak and Paul Swartz · 8 Jul 2024 · 259pp · 89,637 words
One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger
by Matthew Yglesias · 14 Sep 2020
The Long Good Buy: Analysing Cycles in Markets
by Peter Oppenheimer · 3 May 2020 · 333pp · 76,990 words
More: The 10,000-Year Rise of the World Economy
by Philip Coggan · 6 Feb 2020 · 524pp · 155,947 words
Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral and Drive Major Economic Events
by Robert J. Shiller · 14 Oct 2019 · 611pp · 130,419 words
Limitless: The Federal Reserve Takes on a New Age of Crisis
by Jeanna Smialek · 27 Feb 2023 · 601pp · 135,202 words
Mastering the Market Cycle: Getting the Odds on Your Side
by Howard Marks · 30 Sep 2018 · 302pp · 84,428 words
Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy
by Jonathan Taplin · 17 Apr 2017 · 222pp · 70,132 words
India's Long Road
by Vijay Joshi · 21 Feb 2017
The Classical School
by Callum Williams · 19 May 2020 · 288pp · 89,781 words
Trillion Dollar Triage: How Jay Powell and the Fed Battled a President and a Pandemic---And Prevented Economic Disaster
by Nick Timiraos · 1 Mar 2022 · 357pp · 107,984 words
Fully Grown: Why a Stagnant Economy Is a Sign of Success
by Dietrich Vollrath · 6 Jan 2020 · 295pp · 90,821 words
Good Economics for Hard Times: Better Answers to Our Biggest Problems
by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo · 12 Nov 2019 · 470pp · 148,730 words
Capitalism and Freedom
by Milton Friedman · 1 Jan 1962 · 275pp · 77,955 words
The-General-Theory-of-Employment-Interest-and-Money
by John Maynard Keynes · 13 Jul 2018
Economic Dignity
by Gene Sperling · 14 Sep 2020 · 667pp · 149,811 words
The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality
by Katharina Pistor · 27 May 2019 · 316pp · 117,228 words
The Fourth Industrial Revolution
by Klaus Schwab · 11 Jan 2016 · 179pp · 43,441 words
Investing Amid Low Expected Returns: Making the Most When Markets Offer the Least
by Antti Ilmanen · 24 Feb 2022
Shutdown: How COVID Shook the World's Economy
by Adam Tooze · 15 Nov 2021 · 561pp · 138,158 words
Milton Friedman: A Biography
by Lanny Ebenstein · 23 Jan 2007 · 298pp · 95,668 words
The Startup Way: Making Entrepreneurship a Fundamental Discipline of Every Enterprise
by Eric Ries · 15 Mar 2017 · 406pp · 105,602 words
The Curse of Cash
by Kenneth S Rogoff · 29 Aug 2016 · 361pp · 97,787 words
Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy
by Philippe van Parijs and Yannick Vanderborght · 20 Mar 2017
The AI Economy: Work, Wealth and Welfare in the Robot Age
by Roger Bootle · 4 Sep 2019 · 374pp · 111,284 words
The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking
by Saifedean Ammous · 23 Mar 2018 · 571pp · 106,255 words
Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
by Jason Hickel · 12 Aug 2020 · 286pp · 87,168 words
The Great Reset: How the Post-Crash Economy Will Change the Way We Live and Work
by Richard Florida · 22 Apr 2010 · 265pp · 74,941 words
Security Analysis
by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd · 1 Jan 1962 · 1,042pp · 266,547 words
Men Without Work
by Nicholas Eberstadt · 4 Sep 2016 · 126pp · 37,081 words
The Production of Money: How to Break the Power of Banks
by Ann Pettifor · 27 Mar 2017 · 182pp · 53,802 words
Keeping at It: The Quest for Sound Money and Good Government
by Paul Volcker and Christine Harper · 30 Oct 2018 · 363pp · 98,024 words
Humans as a Service: The Promise and Perils of Work in the Gig Economy
by Jeremias Prassl · 7 May 2018 · 491pp · 77,650 words
Why Wall Street Matters
by William D. Cohan · 27 Feb 2017 · 113pp · 37,885 words
Alpha Trader
by Brent Donnelly · 11 May 2021
Brexit, No Exit: Why in the End Britain Won't Leave Europe
by Denis MacShane · 14 Jul 2017 · 308pp · 99,298 words
The Seventh Sense: Power, Fortune, and Survival in the Age of Networks
by Joshua Cooper Ramo · 16 May 2016 · 326pp · 103,170 words