New Books in Economics

Investigative reporter Zeke Faux explores the world of cryptocurrency, uncovering scams, overnight billionaires, and the impact of crypto on countries like El Salvador and the Philippines. Faux's quest leads him to a luxury resort in the Bahamas, an elite party headlined by Snoop Dogg, and even Cambodia. He delves into the mystery of Tether, encounters eccentric billionaires, and examines the role of hype and acceptability in the crypto world.

Luke Froeb, chief economist at the FTC and DOJ antitrust division, discusses his career in economics, the decision-making process in merger cases, the history of Chicago School consumer welfare standard, the rise of the New Brandeisians, and the challenges in measuring consumer welfare impacts in antitrust economics.

Adam Smith wrote that, “Political economy belongs to no nation; it is of no country: it is the science of the rules for the production, the accumulation, the distribution, and the consumption of wealth.”However Adam Smith regarded the science of political economy, in practical terms, one is quite hard pressed to find a case where governments—be it an empire, republic, or nation—were completely left out of the picture. At least, that is how it’s been historically.Questions about how people and other types of entities organize and generate capital, AND the role that governments play in all of this, fill libraries. The ramifications of the dynamics and rules surrounding money have proved so consequential—and increasingly so, in our increasingly technologized world—that it is no surprise that historians have devoted much energy to the study of political economy. Political economy, in the broadest terms, is the subject of our conversation today. Today on History Ex we put two recent books that bring important perspectives to these questions in conversation with each other.In this conversation Philip Stern and Quinn Slobodian discuss:• Empire, Incorporated. The Corporations That Built British Colonialism (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press in 2023), by Philip J. Stern.• Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy (Metropolitan Books, 2023), by Quinn Slobodian.The periods of time being studied are centuries apart and marked by much innovation. Our authors find points of convergence as well as divergence in aims, methods, and outcomes of the people at the center of their books. Stern and Slobodian discuss methodologies and chronologies, the ideologies that animated their actors, how memory and history were mobilized in promoting various visions; they probe the historian’s perennial challenges of disentangling ideologies from interest, explain how similar actions in different historical contexts can demand different interpretations; and more.Philip Stern is an associate professor of History at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. His work focuses on various aspects of the legal, political, intellectual, and business histories that shaped the British Empire. He is also the author of The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India (Oxford University Press, 2011) and many other scholarly works.Quinn Slobodian is a professor of the history at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. He is also the author of the award-winning Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism (Harvard University Press, 2018), which has been translated into six languages, and a frequent contributor to the Guardian, New Statesman, The New York, Times, Foreign Policy, Dissent and the Nation.Erika Monahan is the author of The Merchants of Siberia: Trade in Early Modern Eurasia (Cornell UP, 2016) and a 2023-2024 Alexander von Humboldt Fellow. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

Author Gerard McCarthy discusses his book 'Outsourcing the Polity: Non-State Welfare, Inequality, and Resistance in Myanmar'. Topics include the failure of Myanmar's NLD government to break with military dictatorship, the impact of welfare capitalism on social justice programs, and the role of state and non-state actors in social governance. The podcast also explores the concept of a moral economy of reciprocity, the author's field work in Myanmar, and the preference for non-state welfare during natural disasters.

Luke Moffett, professor and author of Reparations and War: Finding Balance in Repairing the Past, discusses the history, challenges, and practicalities of implementing reparations after war. He shares personal experiences from growing up in Northern Ireland, emphasizes the limitations and complexities of reparations, and explores the theoretical aspects of the topic. Moffett also examines the feasibility of implementing reparations in Ukraine and expresses ongoing passion for exploring how to address ongoing conflicts.

John Taylor, Professor of Economics at Stanford University and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, discusses his interest in economics, his contributions to monetary economics including the Taylor Rule, views on monetary policy in the US, Europe, and Japan, fiscal policy, and economic growth.

Maitrayee Deka, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Essex, discusses her new book exploring Delhi's bazaars and the role of tinkers in the modern global economy, driving globalization from below. Topics include the historical roots of bazaars, mass production in global bazaars, gender dynamics, and the outlook of different age groups in the bazaar.

Explore the controversies surrounding Milton Friedman and the economics department at the University of Chicago. Discover the process of hiring economists and the contrasting opinions on different candidates. Dive into archival research for economic history and the influence of faculty members. Uncover the historical connection between economic growth, military strength, and government incentives. Reflect on the impact of government incentives on economic growth and technological development, including the influence of Milton Friedman on the Chicago school of economics.

Author Philipp Stelzel discusses his book 'The Faculty Lounge: A Cocktail Guide for Academics'. He shares how the book came to be during the COVID lockdown, the role of the German Studies Association, and the rise of cocktail culture in Germany. The speaker also addresses controversy surrounding shaking fruit juice cocktails.

Recent scholarship in organisation studies has begun to address how organisations perceive and use their history. However, how organisations preserve and access their history, and how this affects how they are able to use their history is less researched. This thesis investigates how Barclays Group Archives (BGA) contribute to Barclays PLC delivering its strategic objectives. It asks, how does BGA, as a specific unit of the organisation, facilitate the delivery of Barclays PLC's strategic objectives? The researcher was embedded in the archives, enabling the gathering of observational data on how BGA operate as well as a unique level of access to archival organisational records. These were used to target and gain access to Barclays PLC employees to conduct interviews to ascertain how they used BGA's resources and what benefits they felt BGA brought. Using interviews, observation, and other qualitative research methods, Ian Jones introduces archival science theory to the study of how organisations can benefit from using their history, introducing the archival science ideas of authenticity, reliability, usability, and integrity to inform the research on organisational memory and use of the past strategies. The thesis focuses on the period between 2012 and 2015, a time when Barclays PLC made extensive use of their past in an attempt to manage and recover from the various scandals. It argues that BGA, and the archivists in particular, are integral to Barclays PLC's use of the past strategies, enabling Barclays PLC to bolster their claims to be returning to a historically 'authentic' corporate culture that would inform the organisation's strategies and behaviour going forward. Additionally, the archivists themselves act as the link between the information in the archives that forms part of Barclays PLC's organisational memory, enabling users to utilise this information and transforming the static memory held into the archives into dynamic memory that is then utilised by employees. The thesis highlights the importance of how organisations access the historical information that they use to inform their historical narratives, and the importance of the individuals that act as the link between those who are using the past in some way, and the repositories of historical information. The research findings presented in this thesis will be of interest to organisation studies scholars interested in how managers use history as well as to researchers who study corporate archives.Winner of the Coleman Prize in 2022, this research tells of the potential uses of the past as a source of competitive advantage as well as document the relationship between the Corporate Archives and Head Office in a mayor, long-lived British bank.This thesis is available open access here. Bernardo Batiz-Lazo is currently straddling between Newcastle and Mexico City. You can find him on twitter on issues related to business history of banking, fintech, payments and other musings. Not always in that order. @BatizLazo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics