The State of Economics, the State of the World by Kaushik Basu

The State of Economics, the State of the World by Kaushik Basu

Leading economists address the ongoing challenges to economics in theory and practice in a time of political and economic crises.

More than a decade of financial crises, sovereign debt problems, political conflict, and rising xenophobia and protectionism has left the global economy unsettled and the ability of economics as a discipline to account for episodes of volatility uncertain. In this book, leading economists consider the state of their discipline in a world of ongoing economic and political crises.

The book begins with three sweeping essays by Nobel laureates Kenneth Arrow (in one of his last published works), Amartya Sen, and Joseph Stiglitz that offer a summary of the theoretical foundations of modern economics--the twin pillars of general equilibrium theory and welfare economics. Contributors then turn to macroeconomic stabilization and growth and, finally, new areas of research that depart from traditional theory, methodology, and concerns: climate change, behavioral economics, and evolutionary game theory. The 2019 Nobel Prize laureates, Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer, contribute a paper on the use of randomized control trials indevelopment economics.

Contributors
Philippe Aghion, Ingela Alger, Kenneth Arrow, Abhijit Banerjee, Kaushik Basu, Lawrence Blume, Guillermo Calvo, Francesco Caselli, Asli Demirg -Kunt, Shantayanan Devarajan, Esther Duflo, Samuel Fankhauser, James Foster, Varun Gauri, Xavier Gine, G el Giraud, Gita Gopinath, Robert Hockett, Karla Hoff, Ravi Kanbur, Aart Kraay, Michael Kremer, David McKenzie, C lestin Monga, Maurice Obstfeld, Hamid Rashid, Martin Ravallion, Amartya Sen, Luis Serv n, Hyun Song Shin, Nicholas Stern, Joseph Stiglitz, Cass Sunstein, Michael Toman, J rgen Weibull

Kaushik Basu is Professor of Economics and C. Marks Professor of International Studies at Cornell University. He was formerly Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the World Bank and prior to that Chief Economic Adviser to the Indian Government. Professor Basu has published widely in several
fields, including development economics, game theory, welfare economics and law and economics. He has also published in the popular press, including the New York Times, BBC news online and the Indian Express. He has received honorary doctorates from several universities and IIT Bombay. In 2008 he
was awarded the Padma Bhushan by the President of India.