"In this ... book--part exposé, part user's manual--the ... columnist from the Financial Times demystifies the ways in which money works in the world. From why the coffee in your cup costs so much to why efficiency is not necessarily the answer to ensuring a fair society, from improving health care to curing crosstown traffic--all the dirty little secrets of dollars and cents are ... revealed by 'The Undercover Economist'."--Cover.

"Economists have long based their forecasts on financial aggregates such as price-earnings ratios, asset prices, and exchange rate fluctuations, and used them to produce statistically informed speculations about the future--with limited success. Robert Shiller employs such aggregates in his own forecasts, but has famously complemented them with observations about the influence of mass psychology on certain events. This approach has come to be known...

Niall Ferguson tells the human story behind the evolution of money, from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia to the latest Wall Street upheavals. The author shows that finance is, in fact, the foundation of human progress.

Today, in the midst of a new economic crisis and severe political discord, the nature of capitalism in the United States is at a crossroads. Since the market crash and Great Recession of 2008, historian Jonathan Levy has been teaching a course to help his students understand everything that had happened to reach that disaster and the current state of the economy, but in doing so he discovered something more fundamental about American history. Now,...

Why are some nations rich and others poor? Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of the right policies? Simply, no. None of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it). Based on fifteen years of original research, Acemoglu and Robinson marshall historical evidence from the...

"As the great Austrian writer Stefan Zweig confided in his autobiography, written in exile, 'I have a pretty thorough knowledge of history, but never, to my recollection, has it produced such madness in such gigantic proportions.' He was referring to the situation in Germany in 1923. It was a 'year of lunacy,' defined by hyperinflation, a political system on the verge of collapse, and separatist movements that threatened Germany's territorial integrity....

"Whether you're saving enough pennies for a pizza party or a are already flush with cash, everyone needs to be smart with money. No matter where you live in the world, it affects pretty much everything in your day-to-day life. Find out why it pays to learn about money now, plus how to use your creativity and smarts to turn your dimes into dollars!"--

"A noted Dutch journalist and economist proposes an outline for a new worldwide Utopia, with central tenets including a shortened work week, a guaranteed basic income for all, wealth redistribution, and open borders everywhere"--