Summer reading ctd.

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I’m looking forward to having a couple of weeks in a place with no internet or 3G signal, and am piling up books to take. This includes a selection of detective fiction, this year:

[amazon_image id=”0552778362″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Linda, As in the Linda Murder: Bäckström 1[/amazon_image] [amazon_image id=”0755370007″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Vanished (Nick Heller 1)[/amazon_image] [amazon_image id=”1471137066″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Leaving Berlin[/amazon_image] [amazon_image id=”1782062084″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Extraordinary People: An Enzo Macleod Investigation (The Enzo Files)[/amazon_image]

Some serious fiction/non-fiction:

[amazon_image id=”0747596484″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: or the Murder at Road Hill House[/amazon_image] [amazon_image id=”1784700762″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Ghettoside: Investigating a Homicide Epidemic[/amazon_image] [amazon_image id=”0571275974″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]A Strangeness in My Mind[/amazon_image] [amazon_image id=”0099771810″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]American Pastoral[/amazon_image]

A couple of forthcoming economics books, Brook Harrington’s [amazon_link id=”0674743806″ target=”_blank” ]Capital Without Borders[/amazon_link], and Ryan Avent’s [amazon_link id=”0241201039″ target=”_blank” ]The Wealth of Humans[/amazon_link].

[amazon_image id=”0674743806″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Capital Without Borders: Wealth Managers and the One Percent[/amazon_image] [amazon_image id=”0241201039″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Wealth of Humans: Work and its Absence in the Twenty-first Century[/amazon_image]

I will need a couple of others just in case – suggestions welcome.

Of the books I’ve read recently, if anybody wants recommendations, Sam Bowles, [amazon_link id=”B01EUYN5GM” target=”_blank” ]The Moral Economy[/amazon_link] and two books on GDP, Phillip Lepenies [amazon_link id=”B01EB74DFU” target=”_blank” ]The Power of a Single Number[/amazon_link] and Ehsan Masood’s [amazon_link id=”1681771373″ target=”_blank” ]The Great Invention[/amazon_link] are all good reads. I enjoyed [amazon_link id=”1782111239″ target=”_blank” ]The Lonely City[/amazon_link] by Olivia Laing and [amazon_link id=”0553418084″ target=”_blank” ]Street of Eternal Happiness[/amazon_link] by Rob Schmitz. Francis Spufford’s [amazon_link id=”0571225195″ target=”_blank” ]Golden Hill[/amazon_link] is a terrific novel. And yesterday I pointed to my two recommendations for Nature’s summer reading section but all of the books nominated there are great.

[amazon_image id=”0300163800″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Moral Economy: Why Good Incentives are No Substitute for Good Citizens (Castle Lectures Series)[/amazon_image] [amazon_image id=”0231175108″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Power of a Single Number: A Political History of GDP[/amazon_image] [amazon_image id=”1681771373″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Great Invention: The Story of GDP and the Making (and Unmaking) of the Modern World[/amazon_image]

[amazon_image id=”B014RK0QF2″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone[/amazon_image]  [amazon_image id=”1444791052″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Street of Eternal Happiness: Big City Dreams Along a Shanghai Road[/amazon_image] [amazon_image id=”B01FQVWXPW” link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Golden Hill[/amazon_image]

Summer reading – a prelude

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It’s summer reading lists season & I think I’ll do one here at the weekend for all the saddo folks who (like me) will be taking some economics books away for the summer. Meanwhile, here’s the one from Nature which includes my recommendations: Robert Gordon’s [amazon_link id=”0691147728″ target=”_blank” ]The Rise and Fall of American Growth[/amazon_link], not because I agree with it (I don’t), but because it’s asking the right questions in a compelling way; and James Bessen’s [amazon_link id=”0300195664″ target=”_blank” ]Learning By Doing[/amazon_link], essentially about the same questions (and I do agree with it).

[amazon_image id=”0691147728″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World)[/amazon_image]  [amazon_image id=”0300195664″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Learning by Doing: The Real Connection Between Innovation, Wages, and Wealth[/amazon_image]

I’ve been thinking a lot about productivity and GDP measurement, and am doing a paper on why the effect of digital is far more pervasive than much of this work recognises. Just recently I re-read after a very long time a 1994 AER paper by Zvi Griliches, Productivity, R&D and the Data Constraint. Zvi was one of my econometrics teachers when I was at Harvard, and a lovely man although terrifyingly clever (at least to a not very confident PhD student). The paper concludes:

“Knowledge is not like a stock of ore sitting there waiting to be mined. It is an extremely heterogeneous assortment of information in continuous flux. Only a small part of it is in use to someone at a particular point in time, and it takes effort and resources to access, retrieve and adapt it to one’s own use. Thus models of externalities must perforce be models of interaction between different actors in the economy. … Our measurement frameworks are not set up to record detailed origin and destination data for commodity flows and less so for information flows.”

Civilising money

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I’m enjoying William Goetzmann’s [amazon_link id=”0691143781″ target=”_blank” ]Money Changes Everything: How Finance Made Civilization Possible[/amazon_link]. So far I’ve gone through pre-history and early Chinese financial innovation and am embarking on mediaeval and early modern Europe. The book’s general theme is that financial innovations enabled civilisation to progress, starting with the origins of writing in ancient Mesopotamia because of the need to record financial transactions including the payment of tribute to the temple. It is stuffed full of the kinds of new information I love to accumulate. For example, in 386 BCE a group of Athenian grain traders were put on trial for price fixing and hoarding. They faced the death penalty, rather stiffer than the fines facing cartels these days. Who knew the Athenians had competition policy?

[amazon_image id=”B017MVYMSA” link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Money Changes Everything: How Finance Made Civilization Possible[/amazon_image]

The book argues that ancient Greece also originated the mentality that wealth could be intangible, abstract. Finance was decoupled from physical assets such as land or grain. What’s more, because hundreds of Athenian citizens acted as jurors in trials, often concerning financial matters such as compound interest or cost-benefit calculations, financial literacy was widespread: “Athenian numeracy was not simply a skill required for a successful business. It was a trait on which the democratic process fundamentally relied. …. The monetization of Athens was not only important to the emergence of democracy, it was also a factor in the development of Greek philosophy. … Monetization led to abstract thought.”

Sadly, we now seem to have the financialization without the widespread numeracy and capacty for abstract thought. Seems like the ancient Greeks were ahead of 21st century democracies on that front. For new technologies – including financial innovations – to bring progress, surely they need to be widely understood. A populace that doesn’t understand can’t ensure they share in the benefits.

The moral consequences of economic decline?

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In his FT column today, the ever-thoughtful Tim Harford has written about the dangers of moving into a zero-sum world, with the economy heading into a post-Brexit recesssion and in a political atmosphere which is already a game of grievances and blame. The column cites a wonderful book, Benjamin Friedman’s (2005) [amazon_link id=”1400095719″ target=”_blank” ]The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth[/amazon_link]. I’m biased, as Ben was my thesis adviser, but I do believe it to be a truly important book, especially for anyone also concerned about sustainability.

The book asks whether economists are right to care about economic growth, and finds the affirmative answer in political economy and the inter-relationship between growth and institutions. I wrote briefly about the book in 2012, worrying then about the rise of political extremism. Looking at the book again today, I am struck by its warning about the adverse consequences of withdrawing the state from social support, and its concern about the distribution of the benefits of economic growth. This now looks very prescient.

“Broadly distributed economic growth creates the private attitudes and public institutions that foster, not undermine, a society’s moral qualities,” Ben writes. “At the outset of the twenty first century, America’s problem is not unemployment. It is the slow pace of advance in the living standards or the majority of the nation’s citizens.” Rising living standards – for all – make societies more open and democratic. Unfortunately we in the UK seem likely to be testing what happens when living standards are falling, and the already-have-nots find they have even less.

[amazon_image id=”1400095719″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth[/amazon_image]

Transport policy? It would be a good idea

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It’s always a pleasure when a new Perspectives title arrives in hard copy, and this morning it was [amazon_link id=”1907994599″ target=”_blank” ]Travel Fast or Smart? A manifesto for an intelligent transport policy[/amazon_link] by David Metz – not quite out yet but [amazon_link id=”1907994599″ target=”_blank” ]available for pre-order[/amazon_link].

A Perspective on transport policy

A Perspective on transport policy

As he begins: “Britain does not have a coherent transport policy. And conventional transport economics has reached a dead end.” The essence of his plea is for joining up of planning transport investments with thinking about the geography of economic development, which sounds obvious but has never been done. A big part of the reason, David argues, is that the value of a transport investment is calculated in isolation largely on the basis of supposed savings in travel time. “But these time savings are not real. What is real and readily observed are the changes in how land is used and valued when transport investments make such land more accessible – which the economists disregard.”

So – I would say this – an excellent and concise demolition of the policy vacuum and a set of principles for a different approach. Worth reading alongside our previous title, Christian Wolmar’s [amazon_link id=”1907994564″ target=”_blank” ]Are Trams Socialist?[/amazon_link]

[amazon_image id=”1907994564″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Are Trams Socialist?: Why Britain Has No Transport Policy (Perspectives)[/amazon_image]

Interestingly, I just recently took part in a workshop on infrastructure investment in Manchester, organised by my colleague Graham Winch over at the business school. Among both academics and practitioners, there was a consensus that current appraisal methods are wholly inadequate – they are designed for marginal changes and don’t take account of system effects, non-linearities or spillovers –  and this needs to be a big part of the research agenda.