New Books in Finance
Episodes
Tyler Cowen, "Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero" (St. Martins, 2019)
01 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
You mean big business is good, contributes to our general welfare, and is not generally guilty--with notable exceptions--of all of the charges made ag...
Brandon K. Winford, "John Hervey Wheeler, Black Banking, and the Economic Struggle for Civil Rights" (UP Kentucky, 2019)
19 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
John Hervey Wheeler (1908–1978) was one of the civil rights movement's most influential leaders. In articulating a bold vision of regional prosperit...
Howard Friedman, "Ultimate Price: The Value We Place on Life" (U California Press, 2020)
30 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Howard Friedman's new book Ultimate Price: The Value We Place on Life (University of California Press, 2020) should be required reading for anyone sit...
Leslie M. Harris, "Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies" (U Georgia Press, 2019)
28 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies (University of Georgia Press, 2019), edited by Leslie M. Harris, James T. Campbell, and Alfred L. B...
Thomas Piketty, "Capital and Ideology" (Harvard UP, 2020)
21 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It seems easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism; perhaps that...
Katharina Pistor, "The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality" (Princeton UP, 2019)
02 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
"Most lawyers, most actors, most soldiers and sailors, most athletes, most doctors, and most diplomats feel a certain solidarity in the face of outsid...
Matt Cook, "Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy" (MIT Press, 2020)
30 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Paradox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick. A magician's purpose is to create the appearance of impossibility, to pull a rabbit from an empty hat....
Amr Khafagy, "The Economics of Financial Cooperatives" (Routledge, 2019)
17 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
I spoke with Dr. Amr Khafagy about his recent book The Economics of Financial Cooperatives (Routledge, 2019). Amr is Research Assistant at the Country...
Megan T. Neely and Ken Hou-Lin, "Divested: Inequality in the Age of Finance" (Oxford UP, 2020)
11 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Megan Tobias Neely and Ken Hou-Lin's new book Divested: Inequality in the Age of Finance (Oxford University Press, 2020) explores the rise of finance ...
Phillipa Chong, “Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times” (Princeton UP, 2020)
25 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How does the world of book reviews work? In Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton University Press, 2020), Philli...
Peter J. Boettke, "F. A. Hayek: Economics, Political Economy and Social Philosophy" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)
10 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Today I spoke with professor Peter J. Boettke the author of a great new book on Friedrich August von Hayek. Dr. Boettke is University Professor of Eco...
Jodie Adams Kirshner, "Broke: Hardship and Resilience in a City of Broken Promise" (St. Martin's Press, 2019)
07 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book Broke: Hardship and Resilience in a City of Broken Promise (St. Martin's Press, 2019), Jodie Adams Kirshner tells the story of the peo...
K. Linder et al., "Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers" (Stylus Publishing, 2020)
30 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
If you’re a grad student facing the ugly reality of finding a tenure-track job, you could easily be forgiven for thinking about a career change. How...
Daniel Peris on Goetzmann's "Money Changes Everything" (Princeton UP, 2016)
20 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Think that Wall Street has nothing to do with the real economy? You are probably not alone in that regard. But it turns out, you are wrong. As William...
Daniel T. Kirsch, "Sold My Soul for a Student Loan" (ABC-CLIO, 2019)
05 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
With free college in the national conversation, there’s been no better time for Daniel T. Kirsch’s new book Sold My Soul for a Student Loan: Highe...
Alberto Cairo, "How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information" (Norton, 2019)
03 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if we don’t understand what we’re looking at? Social media has made charts, i...
Richard Robb, "Willful: How We Choose What We Do" (Yale UP, 2019)
18 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Tired of the mechanical, narrowly rational human behavior of the Chicago school, but not exactly comforted by the emphasis on irrational activity in b...
Kathryn Conrad on University Press Publishing
03 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
As you may know, university presses publish a lot of good books. In fact, they publish thousands of them every year. They are different from most trad...
Howard Kunreuther, "The Future of Risk Management" (U Penn Press, 2019)
29 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Whether man-made or naturally occurring, large-scale disasters can cause fatalities and injuries, devastate property and communities, savage the envir...
Daniel Peris on Robert Shiller's "Narrative Economics" (Princeton UP, 2019)
14 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Culture matters. And a key element of culture is storytelling. These maxims can be accepted as given, except in modern economics, where the mechanisti...
Lawrence Glickman, "Free Enterprise: An American History" (Yale UP, 2019)
13 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
“Free enterprise” is an everyday phrase that connotes an American common sense. It appears everywhere from political speeches to pop culture. And ...
James C. W. Ahiakpor, "Macroeconomics without the Errors of Keynes" (Routledge, 2019)
13 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
I spoke with James C. W. Ahiakpor, he is Professor Emeritus, Department of Economics, at California State University, East Bay, USA. We discussed his ...
David Bahnsen, "The Case for Dividend Growth: Investing in a Post-Crisis World" (Post Hill Press, 2019)
14 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Dividend investors are a small but dedicated band. Ten years into a stock market rally led by no or low-dividend paying companies, they still argue in...
Philip Grant, "Chains of Finance: How Investment Management is Shaped" (Oxford UP, 2017)
09 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The authors of Chains of Finance: How Investment Management is Shaped (Oxford University Press, 2017) make points that professionals already know and ...
Sarah L. Quinn, "American Bonds: How Credit Markets Shaped a Nation" (Princeton UP, 2019)
06 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Federal housing finance policy and mortgage-backed securities have gained widespread attention in recent years because of the 2008 financial crisis, b...
Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra, “Automating Finance: Infrastructures, Engineers, and the Making of Electronic Markets” (Cambridge UP, 2019)
22 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
How are markets made? In Automating Finance: Infrastructures, Engineers, and the Making of Electronic Markets (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Juan...
Robert Atkinson and Michael Lind, "Big is Beautiful: Debunking the Myth of Small Business" (MIT Press, 2018)
19 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Small is beautiful, right? Isn't that what we've all been taught? From Jeffersonian politics to the hallowed family farm, from craft breweries to tech...
Ekaterina Svetlova, "Financial Models and Society: Villains or Scapegoats" (Elgar, 2018)
16 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The machines have taken over.... For many operating in investment management, it can certainly seem that way: factor investing, algorithmic investing,...
Tobias Straumann, "1931: Debt, Crisis, and the Rise of Hitler" (Oxford UP, 2019)
27 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
What can we learn from the financial crisis that brought Hitler to power? How did diplomatic deadlock fuel the rise of authoritarianism? Tobias Straum...
Francesca Trivellato, "The Promise and Peril of Credit" (Princeton UP, 2019)
07 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 1647, the French author Étienne Cleirac asserted in his book Les us, et coustumes de la mer that the credit instruments known as bills of exchange...
David Colander and Craig Freedman, "Where Economics Went Wrong: Chicago's Abandonment of Classical Liberalism" (Princeton UP, 2018)
11 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
If you are reading this, you have probably run into the "Chicago" model at some point or another, in terms of public policy, orthodox modern finance, ...
Daromir Rudnyckyj, "Beyond Debt: Islamic Experiments in Global Finance" (U Chicago Press, 2018)
24 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Recent economic crises have made the centrality of debt, and the instability it creates, increasingly apparent. In Beyond Debt: Islamic Experiments in...
Kathleen Day, "Broken Bargain: Bankers, Bailouts, and the Struggle to Tame Wall Street" (Yale UP, 2019)
11 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Think that today's debates about the role of the Federal Reserve Bank, financial regulation, "too big to fail", etc. are new? Think again. Who shoul...
Hassan Malik, "Bankers and Bolsheviks: International Finance and the Russian Revolution" (Princeton UP, 2018)
03 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Lumbering late Tsarist Russia and international finance? Is there anything there? The Bolsheviks and finance? How can there be anything there? It...
Ian D. Gow and Stuart Kells, "The Big Four: The Curious Past and Perilous Future of the Global Accounting Monopoly" (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2018)
17 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
You mean accounting has a history? Yes, it does, and it should matter to you, because the accounting profession, and the audit function that it serv...
Sohini Kar, "Financializing Poverty: Labor and Risk in Indian Microfinance" (Stanford UP, 2018)
28 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Is microfinance the magic bullet that will end global poverty or is it yet another a form of predatory lending to the poor? In her new book Financiali...
Gary Saul Morson and Morton Schapiro, “Cents and Sensibility: What Economics Can Learn from the Humanities” (Princeton UP, 2017)
02 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The vast chasm between classical economics and the humanities is widely known and accepted. They are profoundly different disciplines with little to s...
Dirk H. Ehnts, “Modern Monetary Theory and European Macroeconomics” (Routledge, 2017)
23 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today we spoke with with Dirk H. Ehnts to talk about his new book Modern Monetary Theory and European Macroeconomics (Routledge, 2017). This is a very...
Mihir A. Desai, “The Wisdom of Finance: Discovering Humanity in the World of Risk and Return” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017)
24 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In his engaging and original book The Wisdom of Finance: Discovering Humanity in the World of Risk and Return (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017), Harva...
Daniel Peris, “Getting Back to Business: Why Modern Portfolio Theory Fails Investors and How You Can Bring Common Sense to Your Portfolio” (McGraw-Hill, 2018)
15 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Of what use is history, particularly for economists and people in finance? If you’ve ever wondered about this, you should read Daniel Peris‘s book...
Ilene Grabel, “When Things Don’t Fall Apart: Global Financial Governance and Developmental Finance in an Age of Productive Incoherence” (MIT Press, 2017)
07 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
We spoke with Ilene Grabel, Professor at the University of Denver and Co-director of the MA program in Global Finance, Trade & Economic Integration at...
Ben Clift, “The IMF and the Politics of Austerity in the Wake of the Global Financial Crisis by Ben Clift” (Oxford UP, 2018)
15 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
I was joined in Oxford by Ben Clift, Professor of Political Economy, Deputy Head of Department and Director of Research at the Department of Politics ...
Nathan Marcus, “Austrian Reconstruction and the Collapse of Global Finance, 1921-1931” (Harvard UP, 2018)
08 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Austrian Reconstruction and the Collapse of Global Finance, 1921–1931 (Harvard University Press, 2018), Nathan Marcus, analyzes the events that t...
What Money Can’t Buy with Michael Sandel
26 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Michael Sandel is Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard University. Sandel is an internationally renowned political philosoph...
Inequality and Democracy with Tommie Shelby
30 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Tommie Shelby is Caldwell Titcomb Professor of African and African-American Studies, and Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University. His research ...
Pasquale Tridico, “Inequality in Financial Capitalism” (Routledge, 2017)
29 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
I was joined by Pasquale Tridico, Professor of Political Economy at Roma Tre University in Italy. His latest book, Inequality in Financial Capitalism,...
Aled Davies, “The City of London and Social Democracy: The Political Economy of Finance in Post-war Britain” (Oxford UP, 2017)
12 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In the decades following the end of the Second World War, the British economy evolved from a manufacturing-based economy to one driven by service indu...
Clea Bourne, “Trust, Power and Public Relations in Financial Markets” (Routledge, 2017)
02 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Almost 10 years after the great financial crisis, how has the finance industry regained its preeminent social position? In Trust, Power and Public Rel...
Marc-William Palen, “The ‘Conspiracy’ of Free Trade: The Anglo-American Struggle over Empire and Economic Globalization, 1846-1896” (Cambridge UP, 2016)
30 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Accounts of late-nineteenth-century US expansionism commonly refer to an open-door empire and an imperialism spurred by belief in free trade. In his n...
Lawrence Jacobs and Desmond King, “Fed Power: How Finance Wins” (Oxford UP, 2016)
27 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Lawrence Jacobs and Desmond King are the authors of Fed Power: How Finance Wins (Oxford UP, 2016). Jacobs is the Walter F. and Joan Mondale Chair for ...
Leigh Claire La Berge, “Scandals and Abstraction: Financial Fiction of the Long 1980s” (Oxford UP, 2014)
27 Jan 2016
Contributed by Lukas
What stories do we tell about finance? How does financial print culture shape our lives? Our guest today explores the narratives we have been told, an...
Brett Scott, “The Heretic’s Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money” (Pluto Press, 2013)
19 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Brett Scott is the author of The Heretic’s Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money (Pluto Press, 2013). Scott is a journalist, urban de...
Daniel Peris, “The Dividend Imperative” (McGrawHill, 2013)
26 Jul 2013
Contributed by Lukas
When you buy a stock, you’re buying a piece of a company. The funny thing is that most people who own stocks either don’t know that or, if they do...
Simon Johnson, “13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown” (Pantheon, 2010)
23 Sep 2011
Contributed by Lukas
[Re-posted with permission from Jenny Attiyeh’s ThoughtCast] Simon Johnson, the Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT’s Sloan School of Management,...