This book explores the causes and consequences of market failure in bridging societal differences to create a shared economy. It questions the current world order and evaluates socio-economic gains in reference to the social origins of the economic agents. With a need to counterbalance economic growth with social equality and environmental sustainability, the book proposes innovative approaches to address key questions on the contemporary global economy such as, "Is the Global socio-economic order supportive of the pursuit of rational and enlightened self -interest?", "Is it a unipolar power centre and neoliberal economic policy regime?", "Can the system reinvent itself?", etc. One approach encourages going back to the golden past and making things "great again", insisting that history has ended and the failures of old global institutions be blamed on the "Clash of Civilizations". Another approach advocates giving up the intellectual comfort zone of elegant but irrelevant neo-liberal explanations of global challenges and asking new questions that take academic debate to the public square. The book examines the internal challenges and contradictions that cause disintegration and proposes alternative ideas and practices in moving the global community beyond the free market regime. The book will appeal to students and academics of development studies, political economy, political science, sociology, as well as policymakers and public opinion makers interested in creating a new egalitarian global society.

This book explores the causes and consequences of market failure in bridging societal differences to create a shared economy. It questions the current world order and evaluates socio-economic gains in reference to the social origins of the economic agents. With a need to counterbalance economic growth with social equality and environmental sustainability, the book proposes innovative approaches to address key questions on the contemporary global economy such as, "Is the Global socio-economic order supportive of the pursuit of rational and enlightened self -interest?", "Is it a unipolar power centre and neoliberal economic policy regime?", "Can the system reinvent itself?", etc. One approach encourages going back to the golden past and making things "great again", insisting that history has ended and the failures of old global institutions be blamed on the "Clash of Civilizations". Another approach advocates giving up the intellectual comfort zone of elegant but irrelevant neo-liberal explanations of global challenges and asking new questions that take academic debate to the public square. The book examines the internal challenges and contradictions that cause disintegration and proposes alternative ideas and practices in moving the global community beyond the free market regime. The book will appeal to students and academics of development studies, political economy, political science, sociology, as well as policymakers and public opinion makers interested in creating a new egalitarian global society.

* Explains how the 2008 financial meltdown came about and how to revitalize global and domestic economies * Shows how capitalist economies developed and why the state matters in their functioning Free market purists claim that the state is an inefficient institution that does little for society beyond providing stability and protection. The activities related to distributing resources and economic growth, they say, are better left to the invisible hand of the marketplace. These notions now seem tragically misguided in the wake of the 2008 market collapse and bailout. Mark Martinez describes how the flawed myth of the "invisible hand" distorted our understanding of how modern capitalist markets developed and actually work. Martinez draws from history to illustrate that political processes and the state are not only instrumental in making capitalist markets work but that there would be no capitalist markets or wealth creation without state intervention. He brings his story up to the present day to show how the seeds of an unprecedented government intervention in the financial markets were sown in past actions. The Myth of the Free Market is a fascinating and accessible introduction to comparative economic systems as well as an incisive refutation of the standard mantras of neoclassical free market economic theory.

This is the first book to examine the central tenets of economics from a feminist point of view. In these original essays, the authors suggest that the discipline of economics could be improved by freeing itself from masculine biases. Beyond Economic Man raises questions about the discipline not because economics is too objective but because it is not objective enough. The contributors—nine economists, a sociologist, and a philosopher—discuss the extent to which gender has influenced both the range of subjects economists have studied and the way in which scholars have conducted their studies. They investigate, for example, how masculine concerns underlie economists' concentration on market as opposed to household activities and their emphasis on individual choice to the exclusion of social constraints on choice. This focus on masculine interests, the contributors contend, has biased the definition and boundaries of the discipline, its central assumptions, and its preferred rhetoric and methods. However, the aim of this book is not to reject current economic practices, but to broaden them, permitting a fuller understanding of economic phenomena. These essays examine current economic practices in the light of a feminist understanding of gender differences as socially constructed rather than based on essential male and female characteristics. The authors use this concept of gender, along with feminist readings of rhetoric and the history of science, as well as postmodernist theory and personal experience as economists, to analyze the boundaries, assumptions, and methods of neoclassical, socialist, and institutionalist economics. The contributors are Rebecca M. Blank, Paula England, Marianne A. Ferber, Nancy Folbre, Ann L. Jennings, Helen E. Longino, Donald N. McCloskey, Julie A. Nelson, Robert M. Solow, Diana Strassmann, and Rhonda M. Williams.

America Beyond Capitalism is a book whose time has come. Gar Alperovitz's expert diagnosis of the long-term structural crisis of the American economic and political system is accompanied by detailed, practical answers to the problems we face as a society. Unlike many books that reserve a few pages of a concluding chapter to offer generalized, tentative solutions, Alperovitz marshals years of research into emerging "new economy" strategies to present a comprehensive picture of practical bottom-up efforts currently underway in thousands of communities across the United States. All democratize wealth and empower communities, not corporations: worker-ownership, cooperatives, community land trusts, social enterprises, along with many supporting municipal, state and longer term federal strategies as well. America Beyond Capitalism is a call to arms, an eminently practical roadmap for laying foundations to change a faltering system that increasingly fails to sustain the great American values of equality, liberty and meaningful democracy.

A provocative retelling of the workings of self-interest in contemporary market society, which claims the world increasingly belongs to passionates, obsessives, and fanatics: those who do things for their own sake, rather than as means to other ends. In our capitalist market society, we have come to accept that the way to get ahead is through strong will, grit, and naked ambition. This belief has served us well: it has contributed to making our affluent societies affluent. But does the premise still hold? As Krzysztof Pelc argues in Beyond Self-Interest, this default assumption no longer captures reality. There is a limit to the returns of calculation, planning, and resolve, and in a growing number of settings, this limit has been reached. The true idols of market society, he contends, are those who disavow their self-interest, or at least appear to do so: eco-conscious entrepreneurs, media moguls with a mission, and modern-day artisans catering to a well-educated and ever more socially conscious population of consumers. Increasingly, those who prosper do so by spurning prosperity, or by convincing others that they are instead pursuing purpose, passion, love of craft-anything but their own self-advancement. This is the paradox of intention, and it is increasingly defining our lives. Pelc tells the story of this paradox from its unlikely emergence among a group of British thinkers in the early 19th century to its development over the next two centuries, as it was successively picked up by philosophers, novelists, social scientists, and, ultimately, capitalists themselves. All of whom arrived at a common realization: the appearance of disinterest pays, but only if it is believable-which presents the self-interested among us with a tricky problem. Drawing on three centuries of thought about commercial society and the people living in it, this richly researched account of the cycles of capitalism does not naively suggest that we should reject the market. Rather, it calls on us to treat economic growth once more as its earliest theorists did: as a formidable tool of human development, instead of an end in itself.

From a MacArthur “Genius,” an intellectual history of the free market, from ancient Rome to the twenty-first century After two government bailouts of the US economy in less than twenty years, free market ideology is due for serious reappraisal. In Free Market, Jacob Soll details how we got to this current crisis, and how we can find our way out by looking to earlier iterations of free market thought. Contrary to popular narratives, early market theorists believed that states had an important role in building and maintaining free markets. But in the eighteenth century, thinkers insisted on free markets without state intervention, leading to a tradition of ideological brittleness. That tradition only calcified in the centuries that followed. Tracing the intellectual evolution of the free market from Cicero to Milton Friedman, Soll argues that we need to go back to the origins of free market ideology in order to truly understand it—and to develop new economic concepts to face today’s challenges.

* An international bestseller written by a world renowned futurist, economist, and consultant on sustainable development * Named as one of Future Survey’s Super 70 books * A concise reader for students of political science or the interested, globally motivated consumer Beyond Globalization is a provocative critique of globalization, which is creating a bubble economy at the cost of real, local enterprises and livelihoods. Henderson argues for a more holistic approach as a way of breaking out of the narrow prism of GDP measurements. She generates a panoramic vision of the changes required to reshape global economy toward social justice and sustainability at every level.

The world of trade is changing rapidly, from the 'rise of the South' to the growth of unconventional projects like fair trade and carbon trading. Beyond Free Trade advances alternative ways for understanding these new dynamics, based on historical, political, or sociological methods that go beyond the limitations of conventional trade economics.