Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economists

Description

Economics and the Left presents interviews with 24 leading progressive economists, whose life work has been dedicated to both interpreting the world and changing it for the better. They all deploy the technical tools of their trade-the "dismal science"-in various ways. Much more importantly, they are all people dedicated to the principles of egalitarianism, democracy and ecological sanity. The result is a combustible brew of ideas, commitments and reflections on major historical events, including the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting global economic recession. Interviewed are: Michael Ash, Nelson Henrique Barbosa Filho, James K. Boyce, Ha-Joon Chang, Jane D'Arista, Diane Elson, Gerald Epstein, Nancy Folbre, James K. Galbraith, Teresa Ghilarducci, Jayati Ghosh, Ilene Grabel, Costas Lapavitsas, Zhongjin Li, William Milberg, Leonce Ndikumana, Ozlem Onaran, Robert Pollin, Malcolm Sawyer, Juliet Schor, Anwar Shaikh, William Spriggs, Fiona Tregenna, Thomas Weisskopf

Robert Pollin is Distinguished University Professor of Economics and Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He is also the founder and President of PEAR (Pollin Energy and Retrofits), a green energy company operating throughout the United States. He is the co-author of Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal. He was selected by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the '100 Leading Global Thinkers for 2013.'

Praise for Chomsky and Pollin: Climate Crisis and the Green New Deal, Verso, 2020: This book is a survival manual for civilization. I want everyone-yes, every person on the planet-to learn its message and to face the challenge it poses: 'What am I doing to help bring about a global Green New Deal in the early years of this decade?' For Americans, the first steps are clear: consign all climate deniers to permanent political oblivion and force all other policymakers to match fine words with deeds-i.e. commit to the Pollin-Chomsky global program for climate stabilization, a massive expansion of good jobs, and just transition. -- Daniel Ellsberg, author of The Doomsday Machine Praise for Chomsky and Pollin: Climate Crisis and the Green New Deal, Verso, 2020: The project that is the Green New Deal is enriched by the insights of two great minds: those of Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin. Both understand that the GND will fail if it does not protect the jobs and livelihoods of the working class. They explain how a transformation needed to restore the ecosystem can, and will transform the organizations and lives of working people worldwide-for the better. -- Ann Pettifor, author of The Case for The Green New Deal Praise for Chomsky and Pollin: Climate Crisis and the Green New Deal, Verso, 2020: Chomsky and Pollin argue it is possible to tackle climate collapse over the next 30 years. A capitalist system that fails to respond does not deserve to survive. * Irish Times * Praise for Chomsky and Pollin: Climate Crisis and the Green New Deal, Verso, 2020: Emphasizes the crisis our planet faces but also says 'there is a solution at hand.' * Irish Examiner * This fascinating collection of interviews with 24 leading progressive economists is profoundly entertaining, revealing, more directly than in their published work, how they came to believe what they believe. The lively interviews convey the infectious excitement of doing research on substantive questions of great social importance and a deep commitment to bringing about equitable and sustainable progress in a mixed economy. Each interviewee offers rare insights into their intellectual biographies and motivations that readers will find nowhere else. Each interview has important intellectual lessons to teach to anyone wishing to understand the world and to improve it. Unendingly gripping. -- Servaas Storm, Professor of Economics, Delft University of Technology As James Galbraith argues in this book, 'economics needs two things: glasnost and perestroika.' This book offers 'glasnost' to anyone interested in the work of some of the most remarkable economists working today, economists whose work is effectively censored by the orthodoxy of the profession. The women economists interviewed- including the remarkable Jane D'Arista - are testament to the need to restructure economics so that women's genius can finally be recognised and celebrated. -- Ann Pettifor, author of The Case for the Green New Deal Progressive economists, long voices in the wilderness, have had new influence lately, because the reality they have long described has become demonstrably evident, even to the orthodox. For an introduction to these prophetic voices, you can do no better than to read Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economics. -- Robert Kuttner, co-editor, The American Prospect This is a wonderful collection of interviews with a wide variety of inspiring progressive economists who do not only try to understand the world, but also to change it. I learned a lot from it, even about the economists I thought I knew quite well. Reading this book is an enriching and uplifting adventure! -- Irene van Staveren, Professor of Pluralist Development Economics, Erasmus University This collection of engaging, spirited interviews with economists who have put rigorous economic analysis to work for the common good belongs in the hands of every aspiring economics student. Their accounts of the winding paths that led them to economics are unsparingly honest and contain little-known details that illuminate how their early years influenced their later interests. These economists reject the mainstream, neoclassical framework but embrace economic modes of thinking inspired by a large number of writers- Marx among them - and the tools of rigorous economic analysis including statistics and econometrics. These are used to analyze how class and power, and for some the legacies of slavery and patriarchy, structure labor, commodity and financial markets and market outcomes - persistent wage disparities, unequal burdens of care, food and housing insecurity, environmental degradation, financial instability, and wealth inequality. Intellectually rigorous and morally passionate, their analyses lead to solutions that reside in collective action that respects individual rights, in regulation of markets, and - as the Covid-19 pandemic made clear - in the role of the state in the planning, administration, and allocation of key resources. -- Eileen Appelbaum, Co-director, Center for Economic and Policy Analysis Economics and the Left opens a unique window to the hearts and minds of 24 progressive economists -men and women- marked by an extraordinary combination of, on the one hand, brilliance in their academic contributions and of, on the other hand, a passionate commitment to apply their talents -through policy making and advising- to make a better, more equal and sustainable world. This work will be highly enjoyable reading by any economic practitioner, academic or student undergrad and graduate interested in what is -and what is not- the Left in Economics and also by anyone with avid curiosity on how the world economy works and how we can overcome its problems and challenges. -- Juan Carlos Moreno-Brid, Professor of Economics, National Autonomous University of Mexico