How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities - Hardcover

John Cassidy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1846143004 ISBN 13: 9781846143007

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2009

Synopsis

Why are financial markets and housing markets so prone to bubbles? Why doesn't rising prosperity make people happier? Why do many people contribute generously to charity but fail to save for their own retirement? What is the economic answer to global warming? These questions all involve behaviour that many would regard as irrational - and market outcomes that are far from ideal.

Standard economics has been dominated by rational choice models, which regard the free market as a giant super-computer that magically coordinates the activities of consumers and firms, to the benefit of all. Using fascinating new insights from behavioural economics, and vivid contemporary and historical examples, Cassidy shows how people's myopia, gullibility, copycat behaviour, overconfidence, loss aversion, and sense of altruism and fairness all help us understand the world in ways that rational choice economics does not.

This is the book that both explains the current moment and explains past and future such moments. We will continue to get things wrong. But at least now we will be having the right conversation.

About this title

Review:

A very good history of economic thought (Economist)

How Markets Fail offers a brilliant intellectual framework . . . fine work (New York Times)

A powerful argument . . . Cassidy makes a compelling case that a return to hands-off economics would be a disaster (BusinessWeek)

An essential, grittily intellectual, yet compelling guide to the financial debacle of 2009 (Geordie Greig, Evening Standard)

This book is a well constructed, thoughtful and cogent account of how capitalism evolved to its current form (Telegraph Books of the Year recommendation)

John Cassidy ... describe[s] that mix of insight and madness that brought the world's system to its knees (FT, Book of the Year recommendation)

Anyone who enjoys a good read can safely embark on this tour with Cassidy as their guide . . . Like his colleague Malcolm Gladwell [at the New Yorker], Cassidy is able to lead us with beguiling lucidity through unfamiliar territory (New Statesman)

About the Author:

John Cassidy has covered economics and finance at The New Yorker magazine since 1995, writing on topics ranging from Alan Greenspan to the Iraqi oil industry and English journalism. He is also now a Contributing Editor at Portfolio where he writes the monthly Economics column.

Two of his articles have been nominated for National Magazine Awards: an essay on Karl Marx, which appeared in October, 1997, and an account of the death of the British weapons scientist David Kelly, which was published in December, 2003. He has previously written for Sunday Times in as well as the New York Post, where he edited the Business section and then served as the deputy editor.

In 2002, Cassidy published his first book, Dot.Con. He lives in New York.

About this edition

• Publisher: Allen Lane
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1846143004
• ISBN 13: 9781846143007
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 400