Economics and Society - All titles

The Approaching Great Transformation is about the coming shift in how we act and think economically as the era of cheap oil comes to an end. It provides inspiration for those engaged in the ongoing global effort to move away from our dependency on fossil fuels and ceaseless growth, and towards a more sustainable, stable, and just system.

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.

This important book looks beyond the Millennium Development Goals to highlight 12 major public policy conversations about the continent post-2015, arguing that Africa as a continent must work on developing a society that is socially, economically and politically inclusive.

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.

A Sharing Economy proposes radical new ways to close the UK’s growing income gap and spread social opportunities. A new social wealth fund would boost economic and social investment and simultaneously strengthen the public finances and offer a powerful antidote to austerity.

Explains the challenges that collective welfare faces, and explores the complexities involved in delivering it, including debates about who benefits from welfare and how and where it is delivered.

This revised edition uses extensive updated research and survey evidence to challenge the view of 'skivers versus strivers', showing how much our lives vary not just as we age, but from week-to-week and year-to-year.

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.

This book presents a comprehensive exploration of the state of infrastructure in Africa and provides an integrated analysis of the challenges the sector faces, based on extensive fieldwork across the continent, providing an important resource for researchers, students, policymakers and NGOs.

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.