Economist in an Uncertain World


Book Description

Posits that an examination of Burns' tenure as the Chairman of the powerful Federal Reserve Board during most of the 1970s helps to explain the U.S. economy today.




Public Policy in an Uncertain World


Book Description

Manski argues that public policy is based on untrustworthy analysis. Failing to account for uncertainty in an uncertain world, policy analysis routinely misleads policy makers with expressions of certitude. Manski critiques the status quo and offers an innovation to improve both how policy research is conducted and how it is used by policy makers.




Pricing the Planet's Future


Book Description

Today, the judge, the citizen, the politician, and the entrepreneur are concerned with the sustainability of our development.




Managing Uncertainty


Book Description

Managing uncertainty has become a new business imperative. Technological discontinuities, regulatory upheavals, geopolitical shocks, abrupt shifts in consumer tastes or behavior, and many other factors have emerged or intensified in recent years and together conspire to undermine even the most carefully constructed business strategies. Managing Uncertainty: Strategies for Surviving and Thriving in Turbulent Times addresses these new challenges, assessing the sources of business turbulence, how to classify uncertainty, and the different ways in which uncertainty can be embraced to allow greater innovation and growth. Drawing on examples from around the world, the book presents the most recent ideas on what it means to manage uncertainty, from practitioners, academics, and consultants. Addresses the challenges of managing uncertainty in business Presents a step-by-step guide to managing business uncertainty Draws examples from major international companies, including Intel, Procter & Gamble, Siemens, Boeing, Quinetiq, Philips, China Telecom, Ford, Apple, Shell, Glaxo SmithKline and many more Written for business leaders and managers looking for new ways to ensure that their businesses continue to thrive in a world of increasing complexity, Managing Uncertainty presents new and innovative ideas about reducing risk by understanding difficult-to-predict shifts.




Uncertain Futures


Book Description

Uncertain Futures considers how economic actors visualize the future and decide how to act in conditions of radical uncertainty. It starts from the premise that dynamic capitalist economies are characterized by relentless innovation and novelty and hence exhibit an indeterminacy that cannot be reduced to measurable risk. The organizing question then becomes how economic actors form expectations and make decisions despite the uncertainty they face. This edited volume lays the foundations for a new model of economic reasoning by showing how, in conditions of uncertainty, economic actors combine calculation with imaginaries and narratives to form fictional expectations that coordinate action and provide the confidence to act. It draws on groundbreaking research in economic sociology, economics, anthropology, and psychology to present theoretically grounded empirical case studies. These demonstrate how grand narratives, central bank forward guidance, economic forecasts, finance models, business plans, visions of technological futures, and new era stories influence behaviour and become instruments of power in markets and societies. The market impact of shared calculative devices, social narratives, and contingent imaginaries underlines the rationale for a new form of narrative economics.




The Irrational Economist


Book Description

The authors explore how discoveries in decision sciences will enhance traditional ideas about economics and challenges the conventional wisdom about how to make the right decisions in an emerging new era, in a book that includes informative charts.




The Economist's View of the World


Book Description

This book explains and assesses the ways in which micro, welfare and benefit-cost economists view the world of public policy. In general terms, microeconomic concepts and models can be seen to appear regularly in the work of political scientists, sociologists and psychologists. As a consequence, these and related concepts and models have now had sufficient time to influence strongly and to extend the range of policy options available to government departments. The central focus of this book is the 'cross-over' from economic modelling to policy implementation, which remains obscure and uncertain. The author outlines the importance of a wider knowledge of microeconomics for improving the effects and orientation of public policy. He also provides a critique of some basic economic assumptions, notably the 'consumer sovereignty principle'. Within this context the reader is in a better position to understand the 'marvellous insights and troubling blindnesses' of economists where often what is controversial politically is not so controversial among economists.




The State of Economics, the State of the World


Book Description

Leading economists address the ongoing challenges to economics in theory and practice in a time of political and economic crises. More than a decade of financial crises, sovereign debt problems, political conflict, and rising xenophobia and protectionism has left the global economy unsettled and the ability of economics as a discipline to account for episodes of volatility uncertain. In this book, leading economists consider the state of their discipline in a world of ongoing economic and political crises. The book begins with three sweeping essays by Nobel laureates Kenneth Arrow (in one of his last published works), Amartya Sen, and Joseph Stiglitz that offer a summary of the theoretical foundations of modern economics—the twin pillars of general equilibrium theory and welfare economics. Contributors then turn to macroeconomic stabilization and growth and, finally, new areas of research that depart from traditional theory, methodology, and concerns: climate change, behavioral economics, and evolutionary game theory. The 2019 Nobel Prize laureates, Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer, contribute a paper on the use of randomized control trials indevelopment economics. Contributors Philippe Aghion, Ingela Alger, Kenneth Arrow, Abhijit Banerjee, Kaushik Basu, Lawrence Blume, Guillermo Calvo, Francesco Caselli, Asli Demirgüç-Kunt, Shantayanan Devarajan, Esther Duflo, Samuel Fankhauser, James Foster, Varun Gauri, Xavier Gine, Gäel Giraud, Gita Gopinath, Robert Hockett, Karla Hoff, Ravi Kanbur, Aart Kraay, Michael Kremer, David McKenzie, Célestin Monga, Maurice Obstfeld, Hamid Rashid, Martin Ravallion, Amartya Sen, Luis Servén, Hyun Song Shin, Nicholas Stern, Joseph Stiglitz, Cass Sunstein, Michael Toman, Jörgen Weibull




The Next Age of Uncertainty


Book Description

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 SHAUGHNESSY COHEN PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING • SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 DONNER PRIZE “The Next Age of Uncertainty combines invaluable historical insights with provocative reflections on the economy of the future—a must read.” —Thomas d’Aquino C.M., LL.D., founding CEO of the Business Council of Canada, and author of Private Power Public Purpose From the former Governor of the Bank of Canada, a far-seeing guide to the powerful economic forces that will shape the decades ahead. The economic ground is shifting beneath our feet. The world is becoming more volatile, and people are understandably worried about their financial futures. In this urgent and accessible guide to the crises and opportunities that lie ahead, economist and former Governor of the Bank of Canada Stephen Poloz maps out the powerful tectonic forces that are shaping our future and the ideas that will allow us to master them. These forces include an aging workforce, mounting debt, and rising income inequality. Technological advances, too, are adding to the pressure, putting people out of work, and climate change is forcing a transition to a lower-carbon economy. It is no surprise that people are feeling uncertain. The implications of these tectonic tensions will cascade throughout every dimension of our lives—the job market, the housing market, the investment climate, as well as government and central bank policy, and the role of the corporation within society. The pandemic has added momentum to many of them. Poloz skillfully argues that past crises, from the Victorian Depression in the late 1800s to the more recent downturn in 2008, give a hint of what is in store for us in the decades ahead. Unlike the purely destructive power of earthquakes, the upheaval that is sure to come in the decades ahead will offer unexpected opportunities for renewal and growth. Filled with takeaways for employers, investors, and policymakers, as well as families discussing jobs and mortgage renewals around the kitchen table, The Next Age of Uncertainty is an indispensable guide for those navigating the fault lines of the risky world ahead.




The Climate Casino


Book Description

Climate change is profoundly altering our world in ways that pose major risks to human societies and natural systems. We have entered the Climate Casino and are rolling the global-warming dice, warns economist William Nordhaus. But there is still time to turn around and walk back out of the casino, and in this essential book the author explains how.div /DIVdivBringing together all the important issues surrounding the climate debate, Nordhaus describes the science, economics, and politics involved—and the steps necessary to reduce the perils of global warming. Using language accessible to any concerned citizen and taking care to present different points of view fairly, he discusses the problem from start to finish: from the beginning, where warming originates in our personal energy use, to the end, where societies employ regulations or taxes or subsidies to slow the emissions of gases responsible for climate change./DIVdiv /DIVdivNordhaus offers a new analysis of why earlier policies, such as the Kyoto Protocol, failed to slow carbon dioxide emissions, how new approaches can succeed, and which policy tools will most effectively reduce emissions. In short, he clarifies a defining problem of our times and lays out the next critical steps for slowing the trajectory of global warming./DIV