Böcker av Edmund Phelps

This book charts the fall of productivity growth and the rise of inequality within global economies and societies. Set out through a series of economic models, the impact of falling rates of productivity growth, particularly in the USA, are examined in relation to lowering interest rates, the lifting of the stock market, and an increasingly unequal distribution of wealth. The economic impact of COVID-19, including the increased tendency to work from home and renewed public debt pressures, are contextualised within broader issues of wage suppression and discontent within the labor force to highlight how average workers have been left behind. The rise of China and the geopolitical tensions that it has created is also discussed.This book sets out the macro and microeconomic innovations that can create a revival in productivity growth in the coming years. It will be relevant to students and researchers interested in global economic trends and the political economy.

Nobel Laureate Edmund Phelps argues that the high level of innovation in the West was not a result of scientific discoveries plus entrepreneurship. Rather, modern values-particularly the individualism and self-expression prevailing among the people-fueled the dynamism needed for widespread innovation.

Dissatisfied with explanations of the business cycle provided by Keynesian, monetarist, New Keynesian, and real business cycle schools, Phelps has developed from existing modern and classical strains a radical theory to account for long periods of unemployment that have dogged the economies of the U.S. and Western Europe since the early 1970s.

Since the 1970s a gulf has opened between the pay of low-paid workers and that of the middle class, resulting in the departure or frustration of much of the labor force. For Phelps, this is a failure of political economy whose widespread effects are undermining the free-enterprise system. He proposes a novel solution.