Good Economics for Hard Times

The winners of the Nobel Prize show how economics, when done right, can help us solve the thorniest social and political problems of our day.

Figuring out how to deal with today's critical economic problems is perhaps the great challenge of our time. Much greater than space travel or perhaps even the next revolutionary medical breakthrough, what is at stake is the whole idea of the good life as we have known it.

Immigration and inequality, globalization and technological disruption, slowing growth and accelerating climate change--these are sources of great anxiety across the world, from New Delhi and Dakar to Paris and Washington, DC. The resources to address these challenges are there--what we lack are ideas that will help us jump the wall of disagreement and distrust that divides us. If we succeed, history will remember our era with gratitude; if we fail, the potential losses are incalculable.

In this revolutionary book, renowned MIT economists Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo take on this challenge, building on cutting-edge research in economics explained with lucidity and grace. Original, provocative, and urgent, Good Economics for Hard Times makes a persuasive case for an intelligent interventionism and a society built on compassion and respect. It is an extraordinary achievement, one that shines a light to help us appreciate and understand our precariously balanced world.

ISBN-13: 9781610399500

Media Type: Hardcover

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Publication Date: 11-12-2019

Pages: 432

Product Dimensions: 5.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.50(d)

Abhijit Banerjee is the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a co-founder and co-director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). In 2011, he was named one of Foreign Policy magazine's top 100 global thinkers. Banerjee served on the U.N. Secretary-General's High-level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Esther Duflo is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics in the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a co-founder and co-director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). Duflo is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science, and has received numerous academic honors and prizes including the Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences (2015), the Infosys Prize (2014), the Dan David Prize (2013), a John Bates Clark Medal (2010), and a MacArthur "Genius Grant" Fellowship (2009). Duflo is a member of the President's Global Development Council and a Founding Editor of the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, and is currently the editor of the American Economic Review. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

Preface to the Paperback Edition ix

Preface xxi

1 MEGA: Make Economics Great Again 1

2 From the Mouth of the Shark 10

3 The Pains from Trade 51

4 Likes, Wants, and Needs 98

5 The End of Growth? 146

6 In Hot Water 208

7 Player Piano 227

8 Legit.gov 263

9 Cash and Care 277

Conclusion: Good and Bad Economics 323

Notes 327

Acknowledgments 385

Index 387

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