J. Bradford DeLong

From one of the world’s leading economists, a grand narrative of the century that made us richer than ever, yet left us unsatisfied Before 1870, humanity lived in dire poverty, with a slow crawl of invention offset by a growing population. Then came a great shift: invention sprinted forward, doubling our technological capabilities each generation and utterly transforming the economy again and again. Our ancestors would have presumed we would have used such powers to build utopia. But it was not so. When 1870÷2010 ended, the world instead saw global warming; economic depression, uncertainty, and inequality; and broad rejection of the status quo. Economist Brad DeLong’s Slouching Towards Utopia tells the story of how this unprecedented explosion of material wealth occurred, how it transformed the globe—and why it failed to deliver us to utopia. Of remarkable breadth and ambition, it uncovers the last century to have been less a march of progress than a slouch in the right direction.

An Economic History of the Twentieth Century

Slouching Towards Utopia

Heather Boushey

Marshall Steinbaum

Are Thomas Piketty’s analyses of inequality on target? Where should researchers go from here in exploring the ideas he pushed to the forefront of global conversation? In After Piketty, a cast of economists and other social scientists tackle these questions in dialogue with Piketty, in what is sure to be a much-debated book in its own right.

The Agenda for Economics and Inequality

After Piketty

El capital en el siglo XXI de Thomas Piketty es el libro sobre economía de más éxito de la historia reciente. Su detallada explicación del aumento de la desigualdad en las últimas décadas suscitó un encendido debate político que aún hoy continúa y que probablemente marcará el futuro inmediato. Pero, ¿son ciertos los análisis de Piketty?, ¿acierta en su percepción de la desigualdad y los objetivos de crecimiento? Y, si es así, ¿cómo debería desarrollarse la investigación económica a partir de sus estudios? ¿Cómo debemos plantear el debate actual? Debatiendo con Piketty reúne un plantel inmejorable de economistas para responder a estas preguntas y sopesar las consecuencias sociales, políticas y económicas de sus respuestas. ¿Qué implicaciones de género tienen? ¿Cuál será el impacto de la desigualdad en el trabajo, la escasez de recursos y la tecnología? ¿Debatimos lo suficiente sobre la pobreza, la esclavitud y la compleja naturaleza del capital? ¿Cuál es el camino para seguir avanzando en igualdad? Los premios Nobel Paul Krugman y Robert Solow, economistas mundialmente reconocidos como Branko Milanovic o los editores de este libro, J. Bradford DeLong, Heather Boushey y Marshall Steinbaum además del propio Piketty, entre otros, abordan los que quizá sean los temas de índole económica más importantes de nuestra época.

La agenda para la economía y la desigualdad

Debatiendo con Piketty

Stephen S. Cohen

“an excellent new book” — Paul Krugman, The New York Times History, not ideology, holds the key to growth. Brilliantly written and argued, Concrete Economics shows how government has repeatedly reshaped the American economy ever since Alexander Hamilton’s first, foundational redesign. This book does not rehash the sturdy and long-accepted arguments that to thrive, entrepreneurial economies need a broad range of freedoms. Instead, Steve Cohen and Brad DeLong remedy our national amnesia about how our economy has actually grown and the role government has played in redesigning and reinvigorating it throughout our history. The government not only sets the ground rules for entrepreneurial activity but directs the surges of energy that mark a vibrant economy. This is as true for present-day Silicon Valley as it was for New England manufacturing at the dawn of the nineteenth century. The authors’ argument is not one based on abstract ideas, arcane discoveries, or complex correlations. Instead it is based on the facts—facts that were once well known but that have been obscured in a fog of ideology—of how the US economy benefited from a pragmatic government approach to succeed so brilliantly. Understanding how our economy has grown in the past provides a blueprint for how we might again redesign and reinvigorate it today, for such a redesign is sorely needed.

The Hamilton Approach to Economic Growth and Policy

Concrete Economics

Stephen S Cohen

At the end of World War II, the United States had all the money -- and all the power. Now, America finds itself cash poor, and to a great extent power follows money. In The End of Influence, renowned economic analysts Stephen S. Cohen and J. Bradford DeLong explore the grave consequences this loss will have for America's place in the world. America, Cohen and DeLong argue, will no longer be the world's hyperpower. It will no longer wield soft cultural power or dictate a monolithic foreign policy. More damaging, though, is the blow to the world's ability to innovate economically, financially, and politically. Cohen and DeLong also explore American's complicated relationship with China, the misunderstood role of sovereign wealth funds, and the return of state-led capitalism. An essential read for anyone interested in how global economics and finance interact with national policy, The End of Influence explains the far-reaching and potentially long-lasting but little-noted consequences of our great fiscal crisis.

J. Bradford DeLong

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