The purpose of this book is to call for a wholesale rethinking of the way that markets treat both the labour and natural resources on which we all depend. It reveals how economic analysis justifies self-defeating policies that encourage wanton use of the environment and callous abuse of the least advantaged labourers. From Adam Smith to the present day, economic theory has short-changed the workers most crucial to the functioning of human life and offered skewed views of scarcity and extraction. Perelman will show how this approach has produced a discipline in which its followers' models and representations of the world around them are so removed from reality that continuing to abide by them would jeopardize both human capabilities and nature itself.

Outlines hundreds of examples of perverse subsidies that are granted at the expense of the environment. Addresses the implications of perverse subsidies in six leading sectors and shows how these subsidies undercut economies and environments alike.

Much of the global economy depends on large scale government intervention in the form of subsidies, many of which are perverse in that they damage economies and environments. This study offers a view of subsidies world-wide with focus on the extent, causes and consequences of perverse subsidies.

This book argues that the right-wing revolution in the United States has created deepening inequality and will lead to economic catastrophe. The author makes the case that over the past three decades the rich have confiscated wealth and income from the poor and middle class to a far greater extent than many realize, and he explores in detail important but commonly unmeasured dimensions of inequality. He also takes aim at the economics profession, criticising the analytical blinders that leave economists incapable of seeing the coming crisis.

Most economic theory assumes a pure capitalism of perfect competition. This book is a penetrating critique of the rhetoric and practice of conventional economic theory. It explores how even in the United States—the most capitalist of countries—the market has always been subject to numerous constraints. Perelman examines the way in which these constraints have been defended by such figures as Henry Ford, J. P. Morgan, and Herbert Hoover, and were indeed essential to the expansion of U.S. capitalism. In the process, he rediscovers the critical element in conservative thought—the “forgotten traditions of railroad economics”—that has been lost in the neoliberal present. This important and original historical reconstruction points the way to a discipline of economics freed from the mythology of the market.

This book explores the life and work of Austrian-British economist, political economist, and social philosopher, Friedrich Hayek. Set within a context of the recent financial crisis, alongside the renewed interest in Hayek and the Hayek-Keynes debate, the book introduces the main themes of Hayek’s thought. These include the division of knowledge, the importance of rules, the problems with planning and economic management, and the role of constitutional constraints in enabling the emergence of unplanned order in the market by limiting the perverse incentives and distortions in information often associated with political discretion. Key to understanding Hayek's development as a thinker is his emphasis on the knowledge problem that economic decision makers face and how alternative institutional arrangements either hinder or assist them in overcoming that epistemic dilemma. Hayek saw order emerging from individual action and responsibility under the appropriate institutional order that itself emerges from actors discovering new and better ways to coordinate their behavior. This book will be of interest to all those keen to gain a deeper understanding of this great 20th century thinker in economics.

Government subsidies have contributed to China's success as manufacturer and exporter in capital-intensive industries. China's state-capitalist regime uses subsidies to stabilize and create common understandings of markets among governments and firms.

The industrialized world has long been rocked by economic crises, often caused by policy makers who are guided by ideology rather than cold, hard analysis. WRONG examines the worst economic policy blunders of the last 250 years, providing a valuable guide book for policy makers... and the citizens who elect them.

The 2008 financial crisis, the rise of Trumpism and the other populist movements which have followed in their wake have grown out of the frustrations of those hurt by the economic policies advocated by conventional economists for generations. Despite this, textbooks continue to praise conventional policies such as deregulation and hyperglobalization. This textbook demonstrates how misleading it can be to apply oversimplified models of perfect competition to the real world. The math works well on college blackboards but not so well on the Main Streets of America. This volume explores the realities of oligopolies, the real impact of the minimum wage, the double-edged sword of free trade, and other ways in which powerful institutions cause distortions in the mainstream models. Bringing together the work of key scholars, such as Kahneman, Minsky, and Schumpeter, this book demonstrates how we should take into account the inefficiencies that arise due to asymmetric information, mental biases, unequal distribution of wealth and power, and the manipulation of demand. This textbook offers students a valuable introductory text with insights into the workings of real markets not just imaginary ones formulated by blackboard economists. A must-have for students studying the principles of economics as well as micro- and macroeconomics, this textbook redresses the existing imbalance in economic teaching. Instead of clinging to an ideology that only enriched the 1%, Komlos sketches the outline of a capitalism with a human face, an economy in which people live contented lives with dignity instead of focusing on GNP.