Reading List
Robert J. Shiller
Economist and Professor at Yale · Yale University
Robert J. Shiller is an American economist at Yale who shared the 2013 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his empirical work on asset prices. His finding that stock markets are far more volatile than the dividends they represent became one of the foundations of behavioural finance.
Irrational Exuberance (2000) appeared weeks before the dot-com peak and argued that the market was a speculative bubble; its second edition, in 2005, said the same of American housing. He co-created the Case-Shiller index of house prices, and wrote Animal Spirits (2009) with George Akerlof and Narrative Economics (2019) on how stories move markets.
Winner-Take-All Politics
How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class
by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson
“If the technology is the same, why would there be a difference at the extreme high end? And they argue that the answer is really political. There have been political changes in the US that allow the extreme high end to garner more wealth. Ultimately, it represents a failure of our society to take account of the fact that the extreme high end can lobby and can organise for its own interests, and we’ve let it happen.” — via Interview, January 2018
Fault Lines
How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy
by Raghuram G. Rajan
“I admire this book because it’s not superficial. It goes for the ultimate causes of the economic crisis we’ve been through. Most people tend to focus in on something approximate.” — via Interview, January 2018
Nudge
Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness
by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein
“Cass Sunstein, one of the two authors, was in a high position in the Obama administration, and some of their proposals made it into legislation. I’m not a political scientist; government is imperfect, and it reflects special interests, but sometimes it triumphs. Sometimes it does work. You bring in experts and they point out that we need to put chlorine in the water supply, and we do it. It does work.” — via Interview, January 2018
The Passions and the Interests
Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph
by Albert Hirschman
“In medieval times, the dominant intellectual tradition was one of sin and the avoidance of sinful behaviour. Lust for power or wealth were unambiguously bad things. Even in a feudal society, such passions were acknowledged by society as, in some sense, legitimate, but the view didn’t have any authority. In the Renaissance, the authority of these self-denial concepts began to recede.” — via Interview, January 2018
