Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economists

by C.J. Polychroniou (Editor)

Overview

Twenty-four economists discuss how they promote egalitarianism, democracy and ecological sanity through research, activism, and policy engagement

Economics and the Left presents interviews with twenty-four leading progressive economists. All of these practitioners of the “dismal science” are dedicated to both interpreting the world and changing it for the better. The result is a combustible brew of ideas and reflections on major historical events, including the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on the global economy.

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, Léonce Ndikumana, Ozlem Onaran, Robert Pollin, Malcolm Sawyer, Juliet Schor, Anwar Shaikh, William Spriggs, Fiona Tregenna and Thomas Weisskopf.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781839763816
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	03/08/2022
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	432
File size:	667 KB

About the Author

C. J. Polychroniou is a political economist. He is author or editor of several books, including Marxist Perspectives on Imperialism, Perspectives and Issues in International Political Economy and Socialism: Crisis and Renewal.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Michael Ash 5

Nelson Barbosa 24

James K. Boyce 41

Ha-Joon Chang 58

Jane D'Arista 83

Diane Elson 96

Gerald Epstein 116

Nancy Folbre 132

James K. Galbraith 140

Teresa Ghilarducci 149

Jayati Ghosh 173

Ilene Grabel 189

Costas Lapavitsas 215

Zhongjin Li 227

William Milberg 243

Léonce Ndikumana 266

Özlem Onaran 282

Robert Pollin 301

Malcolm Sawyer 327

Juliet Schor 343

Anwar Shaikh 356

William Spriggs 368

Fiona Tregenna 381

Thomas Weisskopf 397

Index 411

Editorial Reviews

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.”
—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

From the Publisher