Political Economy

This insightful and progressive book proposes a new moral approach to public policy to replace Third Way governments' failed attempts to reconcile global markets with ethically-informed public policies.

Why we can’t afford the rich exposes the unjust and dysfunctional mechanisms that allow the top 1% to siphon off wealth produced by others. With an updated Afterword, Andrew Sayer shows how the rich worldwide have increased their ability to hide their wealth, create indebtedness and expand their political influence.

Why we can’t afford the rich exposes the unjust and dysfunctional mechanisms that allow the top 1% to siphon off wealth produced by others. With an updated Afterword, Andrew Sayer shows how the rich worldwide have increased their ability to hide their wealth, create indebtedness and expand their political influence.

Written by an expert in political science and straddling finance, economics and political science, this entry-level summary demystifies global finance and puts the financial crisis in its historical context. It also outlines the policy responses of Western governments to the crash and the ensuing recession and turn to austerity.

We now enjoy the highest living standard in history yet spend more of our income on pointless luxury. Instead, we should tax more in order to invest much more in societal needs, which will in turn reinvigorate the economy and reduce economic inequality and environmental degradation.

A new technological revolution is needed, backed by political and cultural change to address Western economic stagnation. This means embracing the major disruption required to our companies and workforce to focus on embryonic technological sectors.

Academics from a range of disciplines and from a number of European and Latin American countries come together to question what it means to have a ‘sustainable society’ and to ask what role alternative social and solidarity economies can play.

Amid urgent debates around the function of welfare in the post-industrial 21st Century, and how we pay for it, David Byrne and Sally Ruane deploy the concepts and analytical tools of Marxist political economy to better understand recent developments, and the possibilities they present for social change.

After a meteoric rise, China's growth has come to a screeching halt. Salvatore Babones provides an up-to-date assessment of how China's economic problems are undermining its challenge to the Western-dominated world order. He tells how liberal individualism has become the leitmotif of American Tianxia.

In this ground-breaking book, Trebeck and Williams challenge us to make ourselves at home with economic wealth, to ensure that everyone is included. They explore the possibility of ‘Arrival’, urging us to move from enlarging the economy to improving it, and the benefits this would bring for all.

Mary Mellor examines money’s social, political and commercial histories to debunk longstanding myths such as money being in short supply and needing to come from somewhere. She sets out a new finance system, based on green and feminist concerns, to bring radical change for social good.