Inequality: What Can Be Done?

Anthony B. Atkinson

2016 PROSE Award, Economics category, Association of American Publishers • 2015 Richard A. Lester Award for the Outstanding Book in Industrial Relations and Labor Economics, Princeton University • A Big Issue Best Book of 2015 • An Economist Best Economics and Business Book of 2015 • A Financial Times Best Economics Book of 2015

“[Atkinson] does not mind speaking uncomfortable truths. Among them: that the comfort and opportunity provided by wealth matter just as much as the consumption that wealth affords; that holding down a job may not be enough to provide most workers with a standard of living that keeps up with economic growth; and that economic power helps protect itself in subtle and pervasive ways which might well demand an interventionist government response. Sir Anthony’s answer might not be the right one. But if his book reminds the reader how far out of fashion the policies of the post-war decades have fallen, it also conveys how skewed the economy of today might look to an observer from the not so distant past—or, perhaps, from the not so distant future.”—The Economist

Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization

Branko Milanovic

2016 Bruno Kreisky Prize for Best Political Book, Karl-Renner-Institut • An Economist Best Book of 2016 • A Financial Times Best Economics Book of 2016 • A Livemint Best Book of 2016

“Branko Milanovic has written an outstanding book. Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization is informative, wide-ranging, scholarly, imaginative and commendably brief. As you would expect from one of the world’s leading experts on this topic, Milanovic has added significantly to important recent works by Thomas Piketty, Anthony Atkinson and François Bourguignon… Ever-rising inequality looks a highly unlikely combination with any genuine democracy. It is to the credit of Milanovic’s book that it brings out these dangers so clearly, along with the important global successes of the past few decades.”—Martin Wolf, Financial Times

A Century of Wealth in America

Edward N. Wolff

Understanding wealth—who has it, how they acquired it, how they preserve it—is crucial to addressing challenges facing the United States. Edward Wolff’s account of patterns in the accumulation and distribution of U.S. wealth since 1900 provides a sober bedrock of facts and analysis. It will become an indispensable resource for future public debate.

The Pricing of Progress: Economic Indicators and the Capitalization of American Life

Eli Cook

How did Americans come to quantify their society’s well-being in units of money? In our GDP-run world, prices are the measure of not only goods and commodities but our environment, communities, nation, even self-worth. Eli Cook shows how, and why, we moderns lost sight of earlier social and moral metrics that did not put a price on everyday life.

Is Capitalism Obsolete? A Journey through Alternative Economic Systems

Giacomo Corneo, translated by Daniel Steuer

Giacomo Corneo presents a refreshingly antidogmatic review of economic systems, in the form of a fictional argument between a daughter indignant about economic injustice and her father, an economics professor. They tour tried and proposed systems in which production and consumption obey noncapitalistic rules and test their economic feasibility.

Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy

Philippe Van Parijs and Yannick Vanderborght

A Times Higher Education Book of the Week, 2017

“Van Parijs and Vanderborght have done the discussion of a universal basic income a great service. They have set forth, clearly and comprehensively, what is probably the best case to be made today for this form of economic and social policy.”—Benjamin M. Friedman, The New York Review of Books

“Basic Income provides a rigorous analysis of the many arguments for and against a universal basic income, offering a road map for future researchers who wish to examine policy alternatives.”—Marc Levinson, The Wall Street Journal

After Piketty: The Agenda for Economics and Inequality

Edited by Heather Boushey, J. Bradford DeLong, and Marshall Steinbaum

“The book serves as a fantastic introduction to Piketty’s main argument in Capital [in the Twenty-First Century], and to some of the main criticisms, including doubt that his key equation—[r > g], showing that returns on capital grow faster than the economy—will hold true in the long run. It also contains thoughtful interventions in debates about the political economy of inequality.”—Aaron Reeves, Nature

The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalization

Richard Baldwin

An Economist Best Book of 2016 • A Financial Times Best Economics Book of 2016 • A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year, 2016 • A Five Books Best Book on Globalization, 2017

“[An] excellent book… Baldwin’s work seems likely to become a standard, perhaps indispensable, guide to understanding how globalization has got us here and where it is likely to take us next. There can be few more vital subjects today that will benefit from this sort of clear and comprehensive exposition.”—Alan Beattie, Financial Times

Capital without Borders: Wealth Managers and the One Percent

Brooke Harrington

“Brooke Harrington’s study of wealth management is one of those rare books where you just have to stand back in awe and wonder at the author’s achievement. In this intensely readable study, she offers a first-ever scholarly insight into a profession that was almost unknown a little over two decades ago… Harrington offers profound insights into the world of the professional people who dedicate their lives to meeting the perceived needs of the world’s ultra-wealthy. And, as she makes clear, the most apparently compelling of those needs is to avoid the rule of law… Don’t doubt the importance of this book’s messages: this is a significant and valuable case study at the current frontier of political economy.”—Richard J. Murphy, Times Higher Education

The Fissured Workplace: Why Work Became So Bad for So Many and What Can Be Done to Improve It

David Weil

“Authoritative… As inequality has drawn increased public debate, most recently thanks to Thomas Piketty’s influential work, the changing conditions of employment have gotten far too little attention. Work remains the prime source of income for most people. The fissuring of work, Weil finds, is one of the main factors in the widening gap between productivity and earnings because it allows corporations to batter down labor costs—people’s paychecks… [The Fissured Workplace] shed[s] important new light on the resurgence of the power of finance and its connection to the debasement of work and income distribution.”—Robert Kuttner, The New York Review of Books

How the Other Half Banks: Exclusion, Exploitation, and the Threat to Democracy

Mehrsa Baradaran

“An important voice… [Baradaran’s] excellent new book, How the Other Half Banks: Exclusion, Exploitation and the Threat to Democracy describes how, for decades, big banks have shed their social contract with the American public and transformed themselves into modern monstrosities which serve corporations and the wealthy and exploit or avoid the less affluent members of our society. Setting the stage with this historical context, Baradaran makes a compelling case for a postal banking system which would greatly benefit millions of struggling ‘unbanked’ Americans.”—Ralph Nader, The Huffington Post