The Truth about Markets: Their Genius, Their Limits, Their Follies - Hardcover

Kay, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0713994894 ISBN 13: 9780713994896

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2003

Synopsis

It's the big question. We live, now more than ever before, in a world made of markets. How do they work? WHY do they work? Why are they better than alternative systems of organising economies? And why, sometimes, do they fail so catastrophically? This ambitious, brilliant, witty and completely accessible book, by one of Britain's leading economists, explains the big questions of contemporary economics better than any other modern book. Kay uses dazzling storytelling to show that markets cannot be detached from the societies in which they are based, and presents the best argued of any modern answers to the question posed by his title.

About this title

Review:

'[an] important new book...Kay makes an awful lot of sense about the limits of modern government' -- Martin Kettle, the Guardian

'an ambitious and brilliantly executed book...It is accessible and witty, and it sheds light on the way the world works' -- Richard Lambert, The Times

'one of the leading British economists of his generation' -- Hamish McRae, the Independent

'written with wit and subtlety...an important contribution to the post-1990s reassessment of capitalism' -- Martin Vander Weyer, the Telegraph

From the Author:

It is bad form in Britain for an author to comment on a review but the Kirkus review is seriously misleading. The reviewer says that 'John Kay has produced a spirited, informative and very readable justification for the American Business Model'. Flattering, in a way, but not true. The chapter on the American Business Model concludes that 'The ABM is deficient for its naive approach to issues of human motivation, its simplistic analysis of structures of property rights, its inability to maintain efficiency in the face of imperfect information, its misleading account of markets in risk, its glossing over of problems of cooperation and coordination, and its failure to describe the generation of the new knowledge on which its very success depends.

About this edition

• Publisher: Allen Lane
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0713994894
• ISBN 13: 9780713994896
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 496