Recently Mentioned Books

The author is Michael Pettis and the subtitle is Trade, Conflict, and the Perilous Road Ahead for the World Economy .

Addendum : If you’d like to read another point of view, there is George Church and Ed Regis, Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves .

Ronald I. McKinnon, The Unloved Dollar Standard: From Bretton Woods to the Rise of China .

5. Ian W. McLean, Why Australia Prospered: The Shifting Sources of Economic Growth .  The writing is not exciting, but nonetheless an interesting look at the longer-run history of Australian prosperity.  I had not known that the nation was the wealthiest in per capita terms for part of the late 19th century and then underwent considerable stagnation in the first half of the 20th century.

4. Franklin E. Zimring, The City that Became Safe: New York’s Lessons for Urban Crime and its Control .  A useful and engaging survey of some of what we know about urban crime, and it knows not to reach too far.  Police crackdowns on open-air drug markets is one factor which receives some credit.

3. Zareer Masani, Macaulay: Pioneer of India’s Modernization .  A good profile to read for understanding how the earlier UK, in its colonial empire, arrived at the point it is at.

2. Janan Ganesh, George Osborne: Austerity Chancellor .  A good profile to read for understanding how the modern UK arrived at the point it is at.

1. Amy Willentz, Farewell, Fred Voodoo: A Letter from Haiti, and Jonathan M. Katz, The Big Truck that Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster .  Two excellent recent memoirs on what has been happening in Haiti post-earthquake.  My main complaint is that both books are marred by the same mistake in economics, namely starting with “small amounts of foreign investment haven’t done Haiti much good,” and moving to “Haiti should not be focusing on foreign investment.”  Wit...

1. Amy Willentz, Farewell, Fred Voodoo: A Letter from Haiti, and Jonathan M. Katz, The Big Truck that Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster .  Two excellent recent memoirs on what has been happening in Haiti post-earthquake.  My main complaint is that both books are marred by the same mistake in economics, namely starting with “small amounts of foreign investment haven’t done Haiti much good,” and moving to “Haiti should not be focusing on foreign investment.”  Wit...

The strange and indeed unjustified senior status of derivatives contracts remains an under-discussed area for financial reform.  Here is a relevant Bolton and Oehmke paper (pdf).  The Blinder book you can buy here .

That is the new book by Erik Angner , with very good exercises and problem sets, and it appears to be very useful indeed.  Here is the book’s home page .  Here is Angner’s home page .

Daniel C. Dennett, Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking .

Ray Fisman and Tim Sullivan, The Org: The Underlying Logic of the Office .

Eldar Shafir, editor, The Behavioral Foundations of Public Policy .

That is from the new and quite interesting Planet of Cities , by Shlomo Angel.  My takeaway is that the Avent-Yglesias push for greater urban density, which I sympathize with, is unlikely to happen on a significant scale.  If you are looking for hopeful signs, there is this:

That is the new book by David Goldhill and the subtitle is How American Health Care Killed My Father — and How We Can Fix It .  I don’t actually like that subtitle, but still this is the best popular health care book from recent times.  It has a crystal clear account of what has gone wrong and how to fix it, with the author settling upon a version of the Singaporean system.  I would describe Goldhill as a market-friendly Democrat who is skeptical about ACA and for the right reasons.

Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star .

Enrique Vila-Matas, Bartleby & Co.

His Better than Plowing is one of the underrated autobiographies of economics.

1. Writer : Miguel Ángel Asturias.  I don’t see why he isn’t a bigger deal with U.S. readers, given that he won a Nobel Prize for literature.  His Hombres de maíz is a beautiful book.  There is also Francisco Goldman .

Tim is a frequent (unofficial) member of the GMU lunch crew, and you can buy his book here .  Here is Tim’s Wikipedia page .

That is the new book by Anat Admati and Martin Hellwig and the subtitle is What’s Wrong with Banking and What to Do about it .  Here is their bottom line:

The author is Jared Diamond and the subtitle is What We Can Learn from Traditional Societies?

4. The next Cass Sunstein book: Simpler: The Future of Government .

The authors are John Mackey (the John Mackey) and Raj Sisodia and the subtitle is Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business .