Leading economists address the ongoing challenges to economics in theory and practice in a time of political and economic crises.
More than a decade of financial crises, sovereign debt problems, political conflict, and rising xenophobia and protectionism has left the global economy unsettled and the ability of economics as a discipline to account for episodes of volatility uncertain. In this book, leading economists consider the state of their discipline in a world of ongoing economic and political crises.
The book begins with three sweeping essays by Nobel laureates Kenneth Arrow (in one of his last published works), Amartya Sen, and Joseph Stiglitz that offer a summary of the theoretical foundations of modern economics―the twin pillars of general equilibrium theory and welfare economics. Contributors then turn to macroeconomic stabilization and growth and, finally, new areas of research that depart from traditional theory, methodology, and concerns: climate change, behavioral economics, and evolutionary game theory. The 2019 Nobel Prize laureates, Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer, contribute a paper on the use of randomized control trials indevelopment economics.
Contributors
Philippe Aghion, Ingela Alger, Kenneth Arrow, Abhijit Banerjee, Kaushik Basu, Lawrence Blume, Guillermo Calvo, Francesco Caselli, Asli Demirgüç-Kunt, Shantayanan Devarajan, Esther Duflo, Samuel Fankhauser, James Foster, Varun Gauri, Xavier Gine, Gäel Giraud, Gita Gopinath, Robert Hockett, Karla Hoff, Ravi Kanbur, Aart Kraay, Michael Kremer, David McKenzie, Célestin Monga, Maurice Obstfeld, Hamid Rashid, Martin Ravallion, Amartya Sen, Luis Servén, Hyun Song Shin, Nicholas Stern, Joseph Stiglitz, Cass Sunstein, Michael Toman, Jörgen Weibull
Kaushik Basu is C. Marks Professor of International Studies at Cornell University and former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist at the World Bank. He is the author of
An Economist in the Real World (MIT Press).
Philippe Aghion is a Professor at the College de France and at the London School of Economics. Aghion is coauthor (with Peter Howitt) of
Endogenous Growth Theory (MIT Press).
David Rosenblatt is Regional Economic Adviser, Caribbean Country Department, Inter-American Development Bank.
Kenneth J. Arrow, who was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1972, is Joan Kenny Professor of Economics and Professor of Operations Research at Stanford University.
Claudia Sepúlveda is Lead Economist in the Development Economics Vice Presidency at the World Bank.
