Economics (ECON): Books to Borrow & E-books

Economics is a huge subject, and this book is the perfect place to start. The text, complete with case studies and key facts, forms a course which will take you from beginner or intermediate level to being a competent economist. Designed especially for undergraduates, it includes features such as questions that may come up in exams, quotes from leading theorists that you can use in your essays, and case studies providing real-life examples.

In 21st-century America, the top 0.1 percent of the wealth distribution have walked away with the big prizes, while the bottom 90 percent have lost ground. What's left of the American Dream has taken refuge in the 9.9 percent that lie just below the tip of extreme wealth. Collectively, the members of this group control more than half of the wealth in the country, and they are doing whatever it takes to hang on to their piece of the action in an increasingly unjust system. They log insane hours at the office and then turn their leisure time into an excuse for more career-building, even as they rely on an underpaid servant class to power their economic success and satisfy their personal needs. They have segregated themselves into zip codes designed to exclude as many people as possible. They have made fitness a national obsession, even as swaths of the population lose healthcare and grow sicker. They have created an unprecedented demand for admission to elite schools and helped to fuel the dramatic cost of higher education. They channel their political energy into symbolic conflicts over identity in order to avoid acknowledging the economic roots of their privilege. And they have created an ethos of "merit" to justify their advantages. "They" are all around us. In fact, they are us -- or what we are supposed to want to be. In this book, author Matthew Stewart argues that a new aristocracy is emerging in American society and it is repeating the mistakes of history. It is entrenching inequality, warping our culture, eroding democracy, and transforming an abundant economy into a source of misery. He calls for a re-grounding of American culture and politics on a foundation closer to the original promise of America.

Studies indicate that income inequality is increasing, with wealthy Americans controlling a greater share of the wealth while incomes for most Americans have changed little compared to the increasing cost of living. This issue of the "Reference Shelf" series takes a close look at the factors affecting income inequality in the United States. Articles featured in this issue examine topics such as the minimum wage, wealth inequality, tax loopholes, corporate taxation, and the ways in which healthcare, childcare, and food expenses prevent Americans from advancing in the economic spectrum.

Why are humans the only species to have escaped -- only very recently -- the subsistence trap, allowing us to enjoy a standard of living that vastly exceeds all others? And why have we progressed so unequally around the world, resulting in the great disparities between nations that exist today? Immense in scope and packed with astounding connections, author Oded Galor's gripping narrative explains how technology, population size, and adaptation led to a stunning 'phase change' in the human story a mere 200 years ago. By tracing that same journey back in time and peeling away the layers of influence -- colonialism, political institutions, societal structure, culture -- he arrives at an explanation of inequality's ultimate causes: those ancestral populations that enjoyed fruitful geographical characteristics and rich diversity were set on the path to prosperity, while those that lacked it were disadvantaged in ways still echoed today. As we face ecological crisis across the globe, this book provides urgent truths and enduring relevance, with lessons that are both hopeful and profound: gender equality, investment in education, and balancing diversity with social cohesion are the keys not only to our species' thriving, but to its survival.

Poverty is a serious problem in the United States, more so than commonly imagined, and more so than in other industrialized nations. Most Americans adhere to an individualistic perspective: they believe poverty is largely the result of people being deficient in intelligence, determination, education, and other personal traits. This book challenges this viewpoint, arguing that poverty arises from the workings of four key structural systems -- the economic, the political, the cultural, and the social -- and ten obstacles to economic justice, including unaffordable housing, inaccessible health care, and racial and gender discrimination. Author Edward Royce argues that a renewed war on poverty can be successful, but only through a popular movement to bring about significant change in the workings of American economic, political, and cultural institutions.

Having spent his career studying the racialization, policing, and criminalization of HIV, author Steven Thrasher has come to understand a deeper truth at the heart of our society: that there are vast inequalities in who is able to survive viruses, and that the ways in which viruses spread, kill, and take their toll are much more dependent on social structures than they are on biology alone. Told through the heart-rending stories of friends, activists, and teachers navigating the novel coronavirus, HIV, and other viruses, Dr. Thrasher brings the reader with him as he delves into the viral underclass and lays bare its inner workings. In the tradition of Isabel Wilkerson's "Caste" and Michelle Alexander's "The New Jim Crow," this book helps us understand the world more deeply by showing the fraught relationship between privilege and survival.

Universal Basic Income (UBI) is one of the most hotly-debated ideas in development and social protection. Drawing from global evidence and experiences, this volume provides a compass to help navigate key issues and trade-offs, as well as offering new data and insights to better inform choices around the appropriateness and feasibility of UBI in different contexts.

Including 34 chapters written by academics and experts in the field of international political economy, this book examines the history of economic imperialism from the early modern age to the present. The text demonstrates the persistence of economic imperialism in today's post-colonial world, and the enduring control wielded by great powers even after the end of formal empire.

In 2023, the United States had the highest level of income and wealth inequality of all the developed nations of the world, with the bottom 50 percent of workers controlling only two percent of the nation's wealth overall. While wealth inequality has been a core political and economic issue in America from the very beginning, each generation also grapples with emerging ideas about how to address this perennial economic justice issue and, in 2023, as inflation and rising costs of living brought this issue to a head again, economists, politicians, and American citizens were increasingly asking if radical solutions might we warranted in order to expand access to the American Dream. This volume of the 'Reference Shelf' series introduces the idea of wealth distribution through tax restructuring, regulations on corporate profits, minimum wage laws, and more radical potential solutions like the establishment of a universal basic income. Articles from American periodicals, blogs, and magazines introduce readers to the various aspects of this debate, and will tie the income inequality debate of the 2020s to the historic American struggle for economic equity.