The best books about economic planning

FDR transformed the presidency into an institution of domestic and international leadership, providing a model against which every successor was measured. My book is unique in focusing on the leadership skills he displayed as domestic reformer in the 1930s and as wartime commander-in-chief. It explains how he enhanced the presidency’s governing capacity, promoted a constitutional revolution, forged a new intimacy between Americans and their president through his genius for political communication, and transformed the Democrats from minority to majority party. It further demonstrates his strategic and organizational leadership during America’s greatest foreign war, his role in holding together the US-UK-Soviet Grand Alliance, and his pioneering development of the national-security presidency. Given this range of accomplishments, FDR merits recognition as America’s greatest president.

Today’s libertarians argue that freedom is best promoted by crippling the capacity of the state. It is a dangerous delusion. I show how Hayek’s sensible critique of socialist central planning degenerated into the dangerous fantasies of Rothbard, Nozick, Rand, and Koch. Climate change denial has its roots in bad philosophy. This book aims to be the antidote for anyone who feels drawn to that philosophy.

The North Korean famine was a train wreck of unbelievable proportions, resulting not only in starvation and death but a massive refugee outflow and heartbreaking human rights abuses. But refugees were also fonts of information, as a flood of memoirs demonstrated. Our approach was to survey refugees in a more systematic fashion, in effect polling them on everything from their views of the regime and interactions with the security apparatus to household finances and aspirations beyond North Korea. We show that in the aftermath of the famine, households engaged in entrepreneurial activity, moved around the country, and even engaged in trade with China. Although the future of North Korea does not look bright at the moment, much more is going on below the surface than you might think including a thriving market economy. 

Imagine a single corporation that makes everything from the salt on your table to the car you drive to the software on your computer. Now imagine it has been around for over a century and a half, playing a major role in world historical events from the rise and fall of colonialism to the world wars and the emergence of neoliberal globalization. My book is the first full-length academic study of Tata, a large, diversified corporate group in India that fits this description, based on original archival research. Tata spun textiles, forged steel, built dams, pioneered air travel, and channeled expert knowledge in engineering, medicine, and atomic science. It survived challenges from workers fighting for their rights and politicians trying to curb its power.  

In the seventeenth century, English economic theorists lost interest in the moral status of exchange and became increasingly concerned with the roots of national prosperity. This shift marked the origins of classical political economy and provided the foundation for the contemporary discipline of economics. The seventeenth-century revolution in economic thought fundamentally reshaped the way economic processes have been interpreted and understood. In Trade and Nation, Emily Erikson brings together historical, comparative, and computational methods to explain the institutional forces that brought about this transformation.

Companies are increasingly facing intense pressures to address stakeholder demands from every direction: consumers want socially responsible products; employees want meaningful work; investors now screen on environmental, social, and governance criteria; “clicktivists” create social media storms over company missteps. CEOs now realize that their companies must be social as well as commercial actors, but stakeholder pressures often create trade-offs with demands to deliver financial performance to shareholders. How can companies respond while avoiding simple “greenwashing” or “pinkwashing”?

In The 360° Corporation, I argue that the shared-value mindset may actually get in the way of progress and I show—in practical steps—how trade-offs, rather than being confusing or problematic, can actually be the source of organizational resilience and transformation. 

Imagine a single corporation that makes everything from the salt on your table to the car you drive to the software on your computer. Now imagine it has been around for over a century and a half, playing a major role in world historical events from the rise and fall of colonialism to the world wars and the emergence of neoliberal globalization. My book is the first full-length academic study of Tata, a large, diversified corporate group in India that fits this description, based on original archival research. Tata spun textiles, forged steel, built dams, pioneered air travel, and channeled expert knowledge in engineering, medicine, and atomic science. It survived challenges from workers fighting for their rights and politicians trying to curb its power.  

Demography—the number of births and deaths and movement of people in and out of countries and regions—has shaped world history, it is shaping the present, and it will shape the future. If you want to know what the world will look like, you need to understand how collapsing infant mortality is boosting the numbers of people in much of the globe, while elsewhere, populations are retreating in the face of sustained low fertility rates. The book shows why and where populations are aging rapidly and why it matters. An understanding of the patterns of the population will transform and enrich how you see the world.

In my book, I dissect the Algerian regime's survival strategies, the pillars of its longevity, and how this country, which is perceived as the North Korea of North Africa, consolidated authoritarianism throughout the years. I identify Algeria's regime as semi-authoritarian, mixing elements of democracy, and authoritarianism. My book is based on evidence from fieldwork research in Algeria. It is a sober and calm analysis, of what the regime is and not how it should be, meaning my analysis is far from the premise of a trend toward democratization. My book is a must-read for anyone wanting to understand how Algeria works and how authoritarianism persists.

The Hourglass Socioeconomic series is a true scientific approach to how money governs the world and what can be done within an applicable socioeconomic system to find an equilibrium factoring all variables. The slow build up from Volume 1 meets a head in Volume 3 when theoretical physics is added both mathematically as well as allegorically to define static moments from the history of the world melting into the status quo in today’s timeline. From introduction in Volume 1 to the what, to the how in Volume 2, to the because in Volume 3, and ending with the why in Volume 4, readers can expect their interpretation of the mechanics of society to evolve one word at a time.