Martin Wolf on the best economic books to read this summer
Stellar: A World Beyond Limits, and How to Get There by James Arbib and Tony Seba (Stellar)Imagine a world without scarcity. It is the one Karl Marx imagined, when private property and the state would wither away. Arbib and Seba update this prophecy to take account of two technological innovations of our era, in electricity generation and storage from solar, wind and batteries, and the combination of artificial intelligence with robots. In this world, they argue, the ills of “extractive” societies — scarcity, coercion, conflict, hierarchy and environmental collapses — will disappear. Is this a plausible future? I leave that question to people better qualified than I am. If it were, it would certainly revolutionise the world.Democracy for a Sustainable World: The Path from the Pnyx by James Bacchus (Cambridge)Bacchus has been a member of the US House of Representatives and twice chair of the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization in Geneva, an institution his own country has killed. He also aspires to create an ecologically sustainable and democratic world. His call is wonderfully idealistic: “Combining sortition [lotteries] with right representation, and using the tools of expertise, rules, and interaction” we can create a better and more democratic world. Yes, this is “unrealistic”. But must we resign ourselves to a world of dictatorships and narrow nationalism?Uncertainty and Enterprise: Venturing Beyond the Known by Amar Bhidé (Oxford)Over a long career, Bhidé, now at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, has focused on uncertainty and enterprise. But his aims are not metaphysical, but rather practical: “I aim to stimulate inquiry into neglected questions about the role of uncertainty in human affairs and improve our understanding of how to manage it. I do not offer grand theories or manifestos. Instead I propose some conjectures about the justification of imagined choices illustrated by applications in entrepreneurship.” The results of this inquiry are fascinating.King Dollar: The Past and Future of the World’s Dominant Currency by Paul Blustein (Yale)This excellent book, by one of the world’s leading economic journalists and authors, notes of the role of the dollar that “with great power comes great responsibility”. The first three words are the title of his first chapter, the second three the title of the last. In between, the author argues that “contra the doomsayers’ forecasts . . . the dollar’s global dominance is almost impregnable, and will remain so barring catastrophic mis-steps by the US government”. But, he adds, “the danger of such mis-steps is hardly trivial”. Amen!Capitalism and Its Critics: A Battle of Ideas in the Modern World by John Cassidy (Allen Lane/Farrar, Strauss and Giroux)Cassidy, a staff writer at The New Yorker, is a superb economic journalist. Here he views capitalism through the lenses of its critics over a quarter of a millennium. The latter go from Adam Smith, the Luddites, Thomas Carlyle and Karl Marx to Joseph Stiglitz and Thomas Piketty. The big conclusions are three: first, there are a great many critics with legitimate criticisms to make; second, capitalism works because the system has proved so adaptable; and, third, it is the worst possible system except for all the others that have been tried from time to time.Exile Economics: What Happens if Globalisation Fails by Ben Chu (Basic Books)Chu, a BBC journalist, has delivered a powerful attack on what he calls “exile economics”, by which he means the impulse to escape from cross-border economic entanglements that is sweeping across the world. At the heart of this book are demonstrations that self-sufficiency will not necessarily lead to greater security, that openness to trade has brought huge benefits, that imports are far from the main cause of shrinking employment in western manufacturing and that the big mistake was not helping people hit by such economic changes. There are far better alternatives to “exile”. He is so right.Crisis Cycle: Challenges, Evolution and Future of the Euro by John H Cochrane, Luis Garicano and Klaus Masuch (Princeton)What should be learnt from the series of crises and interventions in the Eurozone during the past two decades? This question is addressed by Cochrane of the Hoover Institution, Garicano of the LSE and Masuch, principal adviser at the European Central Bank. Their conclusion is that it needs substantial reforms. These, they argue, should include a credible system for restructuring sovereign debt, replacement of the ECB’s role as a fiscal backstop by an independent European fiscal institution, movement towards European bonds, and a banking union that at last breaks the “sovereign-bank” nexus. The Measure of Progress: Counting What Really Matters by Diane Coyle (Princeton)Coyle of Cambridge university asks whether we measure progress correctly. Her answer is no: we are precisely wrong, not roughly right, as we should be. Thus, we fail to measure improvements in medical treatments in national income, while we do measure many harmful activities. She also asks whether we could measure progress better. “Yes” is the answer. She suggests adding calculations of human, natural, social and intangible capital, as well as comprehensive measures of how time is used. This is an important book. How Countries Go Broke: The Big Cycle by Ray Dalio (Avid Reader)Dalio is one of the world’s most successful investors. In this book, the founder of Bridgewater argues “that there are big, long-term debt cycles that have unfailingly led to big debt bubbles and busts”. He also sets these cycles within those of “political and social harmony and conflict” and those of “geopolitical harmony and conflict”. These cycles are also influenced by “big acts of nature” and “big new technologies”. Combined, these forces make up “the Overall Big Cycle of peace and prosperity and conflict and depression”. No prizes for guessing where we are now headed.Inflation is About More than Money: Economics, Politics and the Social Fabric by Brian Griffiths (Centre for Enterprise, Markets and Ethics/Institute of Economic Affairs)People hate inflation. They are, as Griffiths, former economic adviser to Margaret Thatcher, argues, also right to do so. Some will argue that the post-pandemic upsurge in inflation hardly matters, since it was brought back to target rates within around three years. But, in those years, the price level jumped by close to 20 per cent in many high-income countries, when it was supposed to rise by about 6 per cent. Such unexpected jumps in prices impose economic costs. More importantly, people want their money to be trustworthy. Yet unexpected “inflation undermines that trust . . . Inflation is a deceit. It is no different from theft.” This is indeed fundamental.Summer Books 2025All this week, FT writers and critics share their favourites. Some highlights are:Monday: Business by Andrew HillTuesday: Environment by Pilita ClarkWednesday: Economics by Martin WolfThursday: Fiction by Maria CrawfordFriday: Politics by Gideon RachmanSaturday: Critics’ picksA Modern Economic History of Japan: Sho Ga Nai (It Is What It Is) by Russell Jones (London Publishing Partnership)Jones, a veteran professional macroeconomist, has had long experience of Japan. In this excellent book, he asks what happened to the “rising sun” of four decades ago? He notes, rightly, that a growth model built on high savings and heavy investment in a globally competitive manufacturing sector runs into diminishing returns. There are lessons in that for China. We can learn other lessons from Japan’s experience, not least that no growth model lasts forever, financial bubbles are dangerous and uncomfortable structural change can be very painful to implement.The Future Boardroom: How to Transform in Turbulent Times by Helle Bank Jorgensen (Barlow Books)Companies are arguably the world’s most important institution. While their focus is on their businesses, they also have huge social, political and ecological effects. The author has worked for years on improving the ability of boardrooms to oversee what their companies are doing. Today, some hope that the complexity she discusses can be wished away. Indeed, some governments are even trying to compel companies to ignore it. But it cannot be done: companies have responsibilities beyond maximising profit in the short run. Boards must recognise them.The World Under Capitalism: Observations on Economics, Politics, History, and Culture by Branko Milanovic (Polity)Milanovic is a renowned expert on global economic inequality. But in this collection of essays he shows that he is a wide-ranging intellectual with a fierce polemical bent. He is an egalitarian. But he is also brilliant at puncturing progressive fantasies. Among the most enjoyable essays in a collection full of them is his evisceration of the idea of “de-growth”. He argues, rightly, that this would mean keeping most of humanity in desperate poverty or requiring average standards of living in the world’s rich countries to be cut by about two-thirds. These are absurd fantasies. Peak Human: What We Can Learn from the Rise and Fall of Golden Ages by Johan Norberg (Atlantic Books)Norberg has been too pessimistic about the costs of tackling climate change. But the argument here is right: humanity is at its most successful when it is open to the world and new ideas. He gives examples of such periods, from Athens to the Anglosphere. The period since the second world war has borne witness to the power of openness. But now, “In a pattern that is familiar from the end of many golden ages, a series of crises . . . has replaced the confident exploratory mindset with a sense that the world is dangerous and that we need to protect ourselves from it.” And so we have Donald Trump!Our Dollar, Your Problem: An Insider’s View of Seven Turbulent Decades of Global Finance, and the Road Ahead by Kenneth Rogoff (Yale)In 2009, Harvard’s Rogoff published This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, co-authored with Harvard’s Carmen Reinhart. It was a warning that financial risks had not been tamed. In this brilliant book, Rogoff warns that the primacy of the dollar is at risk. The book is part history, part autobiography, part analysis and part warning or rather two warnings: first, the US “always looks out first and foremost for its own self-interests”; second, “delivering low inflation year in and year out in a world of burgeoning political and fiscal pressures is no simple task”. His conclusion? The hegemony of the dollar is at risk.Tell us what you thinkWill you be taking any of these books on your summer holiday this year? Which ones? And what titles have we missed? Let us know in the comments belowJoin our online book group on Facebook at FT Books Café More
