"A truly excellent book that explains where our pandemic response went wrong, and how we can understand those failings using the tools of economics." —Tyler Cowen, Holbert L. Harris Chair of Economics at George Mason University and coauthor of the blog Marginal RevolutionHave you ever stopped to wonder why hand sanitizer was missing from your pharmacy for months after the COVID-19 pandemic hit? Why some employers and employees were arguing over workers bei...

Was inflation’s recent spike exacerbated by corporate greed? Do rent controls really help the needy? Are U.S. health care prices set in a Wild West marketplace? Do women get paid less than men for the same work, and do they pay more than men for the same products? The War on Prices is an eye-opening book that answers all these burning questions and more, as top economists debunk popular misconceptions about inflation, prices, and value.Market prices are under siege. The wa...

A leading economist's exploration of what our economic arrangements might look like if we applied basic principles without ideological blinders.There is nothing wrong with economics, Dean Baker contends, but economists routinely ignore their own principles when it comes to economic policy. What would policy look like if we took basic principles of mainstream economics seriously and applied them consistently? In the debate over regulation, for example, Baker—one of ...

A Wall Street Journal and National Bestseller!The man who predicted the worst economic crisis in US history shows you how to survive it.The current crisis is not like 2008 or even 1929. The New Depression that has emerged from the COVID pandemic is the worst economic crisis in U.S. history. Most fired employees will remain redundant. Bankruptcies will be common, and banks will buckle under the weig...

The global financial crisis has made it painfully clear that powerful psychological forces are imperiling the wealth of nations today. From blind faith in ever-rising housing prices to plummeting confidence in capital markets, "animal spirits" are driving financial events worldwide. In this book, acclaimed economists George Akerlof and Robert Shiller challenge the economic wisdom that got us into this mess, and put forward a bold new vision that will transform economics and restore prosper...

**Is Wall Street bad for Main Street America?"A well-told exploration of why our current economy is leaving too many behind." —The New York Times**In looking at the forces that shaped the 2016 presidential election, one thing is clear: much of the population believes that our economic system is rigged to enrich the privileged elites at the expense of hard-working Americans. This is a belief held equally on both sides of political spectrum, and it seems only to be g...

A NATIONAL BESTSELLERSHORTLISTED FOR THE BALSILLIE PRIZE FOR PUBLIC POLICYIt took the coronavirus pandemic to open our eyes to the deplorable state of so many of the nation's long-term care homes: the inhumane conditions, overworked and underpaid staff, and lack of oversight. In this timely new book, esteemed health reporter André Picard reveals the full extent of the crisis in eldercare, and offers an urgently needed prescription to...

Raghuram Rajan was one of the few economists who warned of the global financial crisis before it hit. Now, as the world struggles to recover, it's tempting to blame what happened on just a few greedy bankers who took irrational risks and left the rest of us to foot the bill. In Fault Lines, Rajan argues that serious flaws in the economy are also to blame, and warns that a potentially more devastating crisis awaits us if they aren't fixed.Rajan shows how the individual choi...

Why the free-market system encourages so much trickery even as it creates so much goodEver since Adam Smith, the central teaching of economics has been that free markets provide us with material well-being, as if by an invisible hand. In Phishing for Phools, Nobel Prize–winning economists George Akerlof and Robert Shiller deliver a fundamental challenge to this insight, arguing that markets harm as well as help us. As long as there is profit to be made, se...

Raghuram Rajan was one of the few economists who warned of the global financial crisis before it hit. Now, as the world struggles to recover, it's tempting to blame what happened on just a few greedy bankers who took irrational risks and left the rest of us to foot the bill. In Fault Lines , Rajan argues that serious flaws in the economy are also to blame, and warns that a potentially more devastating crisis awaits us if they aren't fixed. Rajan shows how the individual choices that collectiv...

Essays on the dangers of the wealth and income gap, collected by the New York Times–bestselling author of It's Even Worse Than You Think.This collection includes writings by a wide range of voices—including Adam Smith, Elizabeth Warren, Barbara Ehrenreich, Joseph E. Stiglitz, Studs Terkel, Paul Krugman, Barack Obama, and David Cay Johnston—illuminating the reality of economic inequality in America, where in spite of the fury that followed the 2008...

The forces behind an economic and political crisis in the makingA “problem of twelve” arises when a small number of institutions acquire the means to exert outsized influence over the politics and economy of a nation.The Big Four index funds of Vanguard, State Street, Fidelity, and BlackRock control more than twenty percent of the votes of S&P 500 companies—a concentration of power that’s unprecedented in America. Then there’s the rise of private equity fun...