New Books in Economics

For decades, a secret army of tax attorneys, accountants and wealth managers has been developing into the shadowy Wealth Defense Industry. These ‘agents of inequality’ are paid millions to hide trillions for the richest 0.01%. In The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions (Polity, 2021), inequality expert Chuck Collins, who himself inherited a fortune, interviews the leading players and gives a unique insider account of how this industry is doing everything it can to create and entrench hereditary dynasties of wealth and power. He exposes the inner workings of these “agents of inequality”, showing how they deploy anonymous shell companies, family offices, offshore accounts, opaque trusts, and sham transactions to ensure the world’s richest pay next to no tax. He ends by outlining a robust set of policies that democratic nations can implement to shut down the Wealth Defense Industry for good. This shocking exposé of the insidious machinery of inequality is essential reading for anyone wanting the inside story of our age of plutocratic plunder and stashed cash.Stephen Pimpare is director of the Public Service & Nonprofit Leadership program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

Veronique Ozkaya shares her teenage experience working in the family business, why she wanted to get away from her hometown, her brief career as a diplomat, and rapid rise to a leading position in the translation industry. Veronique shares her insights into gender diversity (or its absence) in the industry, and her approach to leadership.The NBN Entrepreneurship and Leadership podcast aims to educate and entertain, sharing insights based on the personal stories of our carefully selected guests in the atmosphere of an informal conversation in a bar or over a cup of coffee.About our guestVeronique is a seasoned international leader with experience building and strengthening the sales and marketing functions for organizations with high growth ambitions. Extensive experience in Localization – helping industry leaders grow market share in international markets with services such as translation, internationalization, software development, engineering, and testing. Fluent in French, English, Turkish, and functional in German. Your hosts, Kimon and Richard, together with Veronique, are all shareholders in Argos Multilingual, the company which Veronique leads.Veronique on LinkedinAbout the NBNThe New Books Network was founded in 2007 as a podcast interviewing the authors of academic books, and has grown to the largest author interview podcast in the world publishing 12 podcasts a day in more than 90 specialist areas, with over a million downloads a month. Read about the founder Marshall Poe and the NBN here. In recent years it has expanded beyond its “author interview origins”. Historically NBN only did audio recordings. E&L is the first NBN podcast distributed on Youtube.About Kimon Fountoukidis Twitter LinkedinKimon is the founder of both Argos Multilingual and PMR. Both companies were founded in the mid 90s with zero capital and both have gone on to become market leaders in their respective sectors. Kimon was born in New York and moved to Krakow, Poland in 1993. Listen to his story here,About Richard Lucas Twitter LinkedinRichard is a business and social entrepreneur who founded or invested in more than 30 businesses, including investments in Argos Multilingual, PMR and, in 2020, the New Books Network. Richard has been a TEDx event organiser, supports the pro-entrepreneurship ecosystem, and leads entrepreneurship workshops at all levels: from pre- to business schools. Richard was born in Oxford and moved to Poland in 1991. Read more here. Listen to his story in an autobiographical TEDx talk here, Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

Today I talked to David G. White, Jr. about his book Disrupting Corporate Culture: How Cognitive Science Alters Accepted Beliefs About Culture and Culture Change and Its Impact on Leaders and Change Agents (Routledge, 2021).David G. White, Jr. is a cognitive anthropologist working with organizations on culture, change, and leadership issues. He’s the co-founder of Ontos Global, a boutique consulting firm. David previously held leadership roles at Microsoft, Mercer, and IBM, and he is also a professional jazz musician with 7 CDs to his credit.This episode challenges myths that hinder true culture change at companies, such as Culture Starts at the Top and Culture Is What We Say We Care About. Instead, David argues that new neural pathways form in the brain based on tangible, physical practices that change. So leaders spouting off about “shared values” (talking the talk) won’t be nearly as productive as investigating a company’s dominant logic and how that may serve or hinter the company’s prospects. In other words, David argues that culture is shaped by tasks and the basic operating assumptions that underlie them.Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of eight books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. (https://www.sensorylogic.com). To check out his related “Dan Hill’s EQ Spotlight” blog, visit https://emotionswizard.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

Tessa explains why Olio’s mission of cutting unnecessary food waste is so important, and how her own distress at food waste led to the breakthrough insight that there had to be a better way of dealing with unwanted food. She shares her personal journey, and sets out the exciting road map ahead for Olio.Tessa Clarke is the Co Founder & CEO of Olio Linkedin Olio is a free app that connects users with unwanted food (households or local businesses) with neighbours living nearby who would like it. OLIO has over 2.5 million users who have together shared 7 million portions of food. 50,000 volunteers who are spreading the word in their local communities.Download the App and more information here https://olioex.comTwitter https://twitter.com/olio_exFacebook https://www.facebook.com/olioapp/Instagram https://www.instagram.com/olio.app/Linked https://www.linkedin.com/company/olio-the-food-sharing-revolutionThe NBN Entrepreneurship and Leadership podcast aims to educate and entertain, sharing insights based on the personal stories of our carefully selected guests in the atmosphere of an informal conversation in a bar or over a cup of coffee.About the NBNThe New Books Network was founded in 2007 as a podcast interviewing the authors of academic books, and has grown to the largest author interview podcast in the world publishing 12 podcasts a day in more than 90 specialist areas, with over a million downloads a month. Read about the founder Marshall Poe and the NBN here. In recent years it has expanded beyond its “author interview origins”. Historically NBN only did audio recordings. E&L is the first NBN podcast distributed on Youtube.About Kimon Fountoukidis Twitter LinkedinKimon is the founder of both Argos Multilingual and PMR. Both companies were founded in the mid 90s with zero capital and both have gone on to become market leaders in their respective sectors. Kimon was born in New York and moved to Krakow, Poland in 1993. Listen to his story here,About Richard Lucas Twitter LinkedinRichard is a business and social entrepreneur who founded or invested in more than 30 businesses, including investments in Argos Multilingual, PMR and, in 2020, the New Books Network. Richard has been a TEDx event organiser, supports the pro-entrepreneurship ecosystem, and leads entrepreneurship workshops at all levels: from pre- to business schools. Richard was born in Oxford and moved to Poland in 1991. Read more here. Listen to his story in an autobiographical TEDx talk here, Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

Life expectancy in the United States has recently fallen for three years in a row—a reversal not seen since 1918 or in any other wealthy nation in modern times. In the past two decades, deaths of despair from suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholism have risen dramatically, and now claim hundreds of thousands of American lives each year—and they’re still rising. Anne Case and Angus Deaton, known for first sounding the alarm about deaths of despair, explain the overwhelming surge in these deaths and shed light on the social and economic forces that are making life harder for the working class. They demonstrate why, for those who used to prosper in America, capitalism is no longer delivering.Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism (Princeton University Press, 2020) paints a troubling portrait of the American dream in decline. For the white working class, today’s America has become a land of broken families and few prospects. As the college educated become healthier and wealthier, adults without a degree are literally dying from pain and despair. In this critically important book, Case and Deaton tie the crisis to the weakening position of labor, the growing power of corporations, and, above all, to a rapacious health-care sector that redistributes working-class wages into the pockets of the wealthy. Capitalism, which over two centuries lifted countless people out of poverty, is now destroying the lives of blue-collar America.This book charts a way forward, providing solutions that can rein in capitalism’s excesses and make it work for everyone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

How did telecommunications shape Victorian London? In Serving a Wired World London's Telecommunications Workers and the Making of an Information Capital Katie Hindmarch-Watson, an Assistant Professor in history at Johns Hopkins University, tells the history of London through the lenses of technology, gender, class, and sexuality. The book offers a rethinking of liberal subjectivity and the city at the end of the nineteenth century, showing how the Victorian obsessions with privacy and respectability intersected with technology to create the urban and social fabric of London. The book also draws on queer history, demonstrating the importance of sex scandals in the Victorian and Edwardian eras for understanding urban, technology, and gender histories. A fascinating read, the book will be an essential text across the humanities and social sciences. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

How does individual religious liberty apply to religiously affiliated groups? Edward A. David investigates the polarized ways legal theorists seek to understand group ontology in A Christian Approach to Corporate Religious Theory (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020). David surveys the merits and pitfalls of prevailing approaches from within and without the Christian tradition. Many legal theorists are deeply skeptical of corporate group ontology, especially as religious groups have sometimes tended to conflate churches proper with religiously affiliated organizations in ways that can set uncomfortable precedents. This book offers a novel way forward that suggests a retrieval of Saint Thomas Aquinas's theory of coordinated group activity to provide a more salient moral framework to evaluate the liberties and limits of religious groups. You can follow Edward David's work on his website or on Twitter (@edwardinoxford)Ryan David Shelton (@ryoldfashioned) is a social historian of British and American Protestantism and a PhD researcher at Queen’s University Belfast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

Today I spoke with Michael Heller about the book he has just published with James Salzman. The title is Mine!: How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives (Doubleday, 2021)Michael Heller at Columbia University is Professor of Real Estate Law. Before joining Columbia Law in 2002, you taught at the University of Michigan, NYU, UCLA, and Yale Law Schools. Prior to entering academia, you worked at the World Bank on post-socialist legal transition and you even served as a law clerk at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. James Salzman is the Donald Bren Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law with joint appointments at the UCLA and UC Santa Barbara. He was formerly at Duke University. His book, Drinking Water: A History, was reviewed and praised in the New York Times and Washington Post.Ownership rules have been a key topic in economics and law since the establishment of the disciplines, with economics being much more junior than law. Recently Law and economics or economic analysis of law have become an important field.Ownership rules are a key issue for Marx, John R. Commons, Oliver E. Williamson, Henry Hanssman. The authors themselves are very erudite academics that have chosen to write a book based on their research but very accessible to everyone in the style of Freakonomics.The book is about 300 pages, 7 chapters and one epilogue. They reveal six simple stories everyone uses to claim everything. Owners choose the rule that steers us to do what they want. But we can pick a different rule. As Heller and Salzman show, ownership is always up for grabs.Ownership is not simple, natural. It is intrinsically controversial and linked to inequality. We started our conversation with children arguing for the ownership of a toy at the playground and we ended talking about the tax and ownership regime in South Dakota.“Mine” is one of the first words babies learn. By the time we grow up, the idea of ownership seems natural, whether we are buying a cup of coffee or a house. But who controls the space behind your airplane seat: you reclining or the squished laptop user behind you? Why does HBO look the other way when you illegally borrow a password to stream their shows? And after a snowstorm, why does a chair in the street hold your parking space in Chicago, but in New York you lose the space and the chair?This is a very nice book that many will enjoy reading and is advertised by a very cool website with videos that allow you to meet the authors: https://www.minethebook.com/videos/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

JeVon McCormick was born the son of a black pimp father and a white orphan mother. Hear how, as a nine year old, he critiqued the way his father managed prostitutes, to his rejection of concepts such as “hope” and “luck”. When he was in juvenile detention neither of his parents knew where he was. His journey from toughest of upbringings to fame and fortune is unforgettable and inspiring. Kimon and Richard never spoke to an entrepreneur with a history like his. We are sure you will find it as compelling as we did. The lessons that he shares from his journey about saving, adaptation, learning by doing, the power of asking questions, accountability, and responsibility can benefit entrepreneurs and leaders the world over. McCormick’s book I Got There: How a Mixed-Race Kid Overcame Racism, Poverty, and Abuse to Achieve the American Dream tells his story.About our guest JeVon McCormick is the son of a black pimp and a white mother, and was raised in the most dreadful conditions, three times jailed before he was an adult. His book, I Got There, tells the harrowing story of his struggle to succeed despite the over whelming odds stacked against him Today, he’s the CEO of a multi-million dollar publishing company that was recently ranked the #1 Top Company Culture inAmerica by Entrepreneur Magazine. JeVon is the President and CEO of Scribe Media, a publishing company that helps individuals from a variety of backgrounds write, publish, and market their books. Scribe Media has worked with more than 1700 authors, including members of The Nobel Peace Prize Committee, Nassim Taleb and David Goggins, whose blockbuster book Can’t Hurt Me has sold over 2 million copies. JeVon is an author and highly sought after keynote speaker, delivering the message that “Everyone Has A Story” to enthusiastic audiences across the country. JeVon is passionate about conscious entrepreneurship and creating opportunities for at-risk youth. He has mentored young men and women in the juvenile justice system, as well as those in lower economic communities. JeVon currently serves as a board member for Conscious Capitalism and the StartEdUp Foundation. His story and work have been featured on CNBC, and in Entrepreneur, Forbes, and Inc. magazines.https://scribemedia.com/https:... The NBN Entrepreneurship and Leadership podcast aims to educate and entertain, sharing insights based on the personal story of our carefully selected guests aiming for the atmosphere of an informal conversation in a bar or over a cup of coffee. Follow our channels on Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter.View the episode on Youtube here. You can listen to the episode on the NBN here.About Kimon Fountoukidis Twitter LinkedinKimon is the founder of both Argos Multilingual and PMR. Both companies were founded in the mid 90s with zero capital and both have gone on to become market leaders in their respective sectors. Kimon was born in New York and moved to Krakow, Poland in 1993. Listen to his story here.About Richard Lucas Twitter LinkedinRichard is a business and social entrepreneur who founded or invested in more than 30 businesses, including investments in Argos Multilingual, PMR and, in 2020, the New Books Network. Richard has been a TEDx event organiser, supports the pro-entrepreneurship ecosystem, and leads entrepreneurship workshops at all levels: from pre- to business schools. Richard was born in Oxford and moved to Poland in 1991. Read more here. Listen to his story in an autobiographical TEDx talk here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

In his book The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Healthcare in Rust Belt America (Harvard University Press, 2021), Gabriel Winant explains how the social reproductive labor sustaining the US's industrial economy was institutionalized in response to steelworker layoffs, aging, and sickness beginning in the 1960s. The result was a recomposition of the American working class, from a predominantly white male industrial one, to a meagerly paid and socially devalued pool of care workers comprised mostly of women, and especially women of color. Neoliberalism's insecure labor regime is not a reversion to an earlier period of inequality but a consequence of midcentury welfare policy, the partial security it offered and the race and gender hierarchies it remade.Patrick Reilly studies history at Vanderbilt University Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics