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New Books in Economics

New Books in Economics

By: Marshall Poe
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 Interviews with Economists about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economicsNew Books Network Science Social Sciences
Episodes
  • Quinn Slobodian and Philip J. Stern on Political Economy

    Quinn Slobodian and Philip J. Stern on Political Economy
    Jun 5 2025
    • Philip J. Stern, Empire, Incorporated. The Corporations That Built British Colonialism (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press in 2023), by. • Quinn Slobodian, Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy (Penguin, 2023). Adam Smith wrote that, “Political economy belongs to no nation; it is of no country: it is the science of the rules for the production, the accumulation, the distribution, and the consumption of wealth.” However Adam Smith regarded the science of political economy, in practical terms, one is quite hard pressed to find a case where governments—be it an empire, republic, or nation—were completely left out of the picture. At least, that is how it’s been historically. Questions about how people and other types of entities organize and generate capital, AND the role that governments play in all of this, fill libraries. The ramifications of the dynamics and rules surrounding money have proved so consequential—and increasingly so, in our increasingly technologized world—that it is no surprise that historians have devoted much energy to the study of political economy. Political economy, in the broadest terms, is the subject of our conversation today. Today on History Ex we put two recent books that bring important perspectives to these questions in conversation with each other. Today’s books both deal with entrepreneurial endeavors, usually “abroad”, or beyond the Metropole. While Philip Stern’s examination of early modern British corporations explains the myriad ways private initiatives sought government legitimacy and became entangled in the business of governance during the age of empires, Quinn Slobodian trenchantly reveals how some entrepreneurs and ideologues seek to escape governments in the age of nation-states. Our authors find points of convergence as well as divergence in aims, methods, and outcomes of the people at the center of their books. Stern and Slobodian discuss methodologies and chronologies, the ideologies that animated their actors, how memory and history were mobilized in promoting various visions; they probe the historian’s perennial challenges of disentangling ideologies from interest, explain how similar actions in different historical contexts can demand different interpretations; and more. Listen in! Philip Stern is an associate professor of History at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. His work focuses on various aspects of the legal, political, intellectual, and business histories that shaped the British Empire. He is also the author of The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India (Oxford University Press, 2011) and many other scholarly works. Quinn Slobodian is a professor of the history at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. He is also the author of the award-winning Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism (Harvard University Press, 2018), which has been translated into six languages, and a frequent contributor to the Guardian, New Statesman, The New York, Times, Foreign Policy, Dissent and the Nation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics
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    1 hr and 4 mins
  • Robert Chernomas, Gregory Chernomas, and Ian Hudson, "The American Gene: Unnatural Selection Along Class, Race, and Gender Lines" (Routledge, 2025)

    Robert Chernomas, Gregory Chernomas, and Ian Hudson, "The American Gene: Unnatural Selection Along Class, Race, and Gender Lines" (Routledge, 2025)
    Jun 2 2025
    Biological justification for all forms of inequality has a long history, with the claim that particular groups suffer disproportionately from inherited flaws of ability and character used to explain a remarkably wide variety of inequalities. Providing an important critique of that biodeterminist history and how the Human Genome Project has inspired some contemporary scientists and economists to follow a similar path of ascribing socioeconomic outcomes to genetic inheritance, The American Gene: Unnatural Selection Along Class, Race, and Gender Lines (Routledge, 2025) details new research that suggests that the social and economic environment can affect how genes express themselves in specific human traits and social outcomes. Using the three cases of the American white working class, Black Americans and American women, the authors demonstrate that relying on nature as an explanation is seriously flawed - showing that the socioeconomic inheritance created by the conditions in which these populations worked and lived offer a far better explanation than nature for the stratified results. This book is the story of an American history rife with unnecessary misery and the waste of human potential, along with the liberating effect of understanding the degree to which its citizens are the product of social inheritance and the potential power of a nurturing economy and society that equality promises. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics
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    27 mins
  • John Horn, "Inside the Competitor's Mindset: How to Predict Their Next Move and Position Yourself for Success" (MIT Press, 2023)

    John Horn, "Inside the Competitor's Mindset: How to Predict Their Next Move and Position Yourself for Success" (MIT Press, 2023)
    Jun 1 2025
    Inside the Competitor's Mindset: How to Predict Their Next Move and Position Yourself for Success (MIT Press, 2023) offers a roadmap to help leaders predict, understand, and react to their competitors’ moves. It is a valuable tool to help companies stay ahead of their competitors when the competition is intensifying. To make the right choice when a competitor is working hard to prevent it is difficult. This book demystifies the process. For organizations developing systematic tools to effectively predict competitor behavior, this book provides a powerful, fact-based approach to building insight into A must-read for anyone seeking to better understand their competitors. This book shares proven methods for thinking like the competition and understand why they act the way they do. The keys are cognitive empathy and an approach that focuses on why competitors behave as they do. The book presents a systematic approach to competitive intelligence that starts with frameworks that get inside a competitor’s mindset, predict their reactions and assess their actions. The book stresses the importance of collecting forward-looking, predictive data; explains how to use war games, Black Hat exercises, mock negotiations, and premortems to build competitive insight; and makes the case for creating a dedicated competitive insight function within the organization. Reading this book will enable you to anticipate how competitors will react to moves you make. It ingeniously applies lessons from archaeologists, paleontologists, NICU nurses, and homicide detectives to better gather and analyze information when it is not possible to ask direct questions; Alfred Marcus, Edson Spencer Professor of Strategy and Technology University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics
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    1 hr and 45 mins
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