New Economics Books Tackle China, Wheat, Equality, and the Dollar

IMF Blog, August 25, 2022

Source details

Canonical URL: New Economics Books Tackle China, Wheat, Equality, and the Dollar

Publication date: August 25, 2022
Theme: A selection of recent economics books reviewed in the IMF’s Finance & Development magazine, addressing long-term questions about lives and livelihoods amid war, inflation, debt, and fragmentation.
Curator: Jeff Kearns

A Brief History of Equality (Thomas Piketty)
- Societies have moved toward measurable improvements in the quality of life and fairer distribution of income and assets.
- Policy proposals include: significantly steeper income tax rates on high earners, a global wealth tax on the well-off, basic income programs, and cancellation of debts.

Oceans of Grain: How American Wheat Remade the World (Scott Reynolds Nelson)
- Argues wheat plays a key role in the rise and fall of empires.
- Presents a financial history emphasizing international commodity markets increasingly bound together by wheat.

The United States vs. China: The Quest for Global Economic Leadership (C. Fred Bergsten)
- Contends the United States will inevitably have to share global economic leadership with China.
- Rejects containment or persuading China to adopt Western views; focuses on the shape of shared leadership.

The Global Currency Power of the US Dollar: Problems and Prospects (Anthony Elson)
- Documents the US dollar’s predominant role in the global financial system and its spillover effects for US monetary policy.
- Traces widespread dollar use for trade and financial flows to the emergence of the United States as the world’s largest economy after World War II.

Career and Family: Women’s Century-Long Journey Toward Equity (Claudia Goldin)
- Finds US women have made extraordinary gains in the world of work over the past century.
- Notes most no longer need choose between having a child or a job; women’s college enrollment and graduation rates outstrip men’s; opportunities have expanded toward careers.

Three Days at Camp David: How a Secret Meeting in 1971 Transformed the Global Economy (Jeffrey E. Garten)
- Details President Richard Nixon’s 1971 decision to close the “gold window.”
- Chronicles how Nixon reframed the action from a mea culpa to a triumphant fresh start appealing to domestic audiences.

Harry White and the American Creed (James M. Boughton)
- Biographical corrective highlighting Harry Dexter White’s role in creating the modern global economy and his relative lack of credit compared with John Maynard Keynes.

Cogs and Monsters: What Economics Is, and What It Should Be (Diane Coyle)
- Examines how crises from the global financial crisis to the pandemic have fueled skepticism about capitalism and economics.
- Diagnoses problems in the profession: entrenched networks blocking fresh ideas, an aggressive debating culture, and a lack of gender and racial diversity.

Monetary Policy in Times of Crisis: A Tale of Two Decades of the European Central Bank (Massimo Rostagno et al., ECB officials)
- Analyzes challenges faced by the ECB in its first two crisis-prone decades and its handling of a monetary union in formation.
- Notes behind-the-scenes early push for creation of the European Stability Mechanism, which made the (never used) Outright Monetary Transaction tool effective in resolving the euro area crisis.
- References President Mario Draghi’s 2012 “whatever it takes” dictum addressing the existential threat to the euro.

The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution Is Transforming Currencies and Finance (Eswar Prasad)
- Argues current digital innovations in finance may presage even more dramatic changes to money, with broad social, economic, and political implications.

Where Credit Is Due: How Africa’s Debt Can Be a Benefit, Not a Burden (Gregory Smith)
- Proposes “borrowing with purpose”: link public borrowing to clear development strategies, improve coordination among official creditors, promote more responsible private creditor behavior, and ensure flexibility by international “umpires and architects.”
- Devotes a chapter to China’s lending to Africa: scale, terms, nature, purposes, risks, and decades of debt relief.

Tumultuous Times: Central Banking in an Era of Crisis (Masaaki Shirakawa)
- Recounts four decades at the Bank of Japan: economic miracle, bubble, burst, and lost decades.
- Argues the first goal of the central bank is financial stability, even before price stability, challenging the conventional primacy of price stability for monetary policy.

Crises as catalysts for rethinking economic institutions and policies:
- Global financial crisis, pandemic, war, inflation, debt, and fragmentation prompt examination of long-term structures and policy responses.
Distribution and equity:
- Multiple authors focus on inequality and gender equity, advocating fiscal progressivity, wealth taxes, basic income, debt cancellation, and policies that expand career opportunities for women.
Global leadership and currency dynamics:
- Scholarship emphasizes evolving US-China leadership dynamics and the enduring global currency dominance of the US dollar, with historical roots and contemporary spillovers for policy.
Financial stability and central banking:
- Central bank mandates and priorities are questioned; some argue for prioritizing financial stability alongside or before price stability.
Technological transformation of money:
- Digital innovation could fundamentally reshape currencies and finance, with major social and political consequences.
Debt and development:
- Advocacy for purposeful borrowing and creditor coordination to make debt a tool for development rather than a burden.

IMF blog: New Economics Books Tackle China, Wheat, Equality, and the Dollar — August 25, 2022