## Economics Authors Confront Toughest Questions on Data, History, and Theory

_IMF Blog, August 21, 2024_

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## Bibliographic details
- Authors: The Editors
- Published: August 21, 2024

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### Overview
- Publication: The Editors, August 21, 2024.
- Theme: Recent books highlighted in IMF’s quarterly magazine, Finance & Development, offer fresh perspectives on climate, China, John Maynard Keynes, civil society’s role in tax policy, gender and economic equality, and rethinking growth.
- Framing: Beyond benchmark measures like employment, growth, and inflation, economics “encompasses the full spectrum of humanity” and is presented as a tool to improve people’s lives. Central bankers and interest-rate setters are noted as particularly attuned to the high stakes of economic policy.

### China and global trade
- Book: Made in China: When US-China Interests Converged to Transform Global Trade by Elizabeth O’Brien Ingleson.
- Key points:
  - Traces cultural, diplomatic, and economic factors that shaped China’s 1970s transformation and its relationship with the United States.
  - Explores why China converged with US capitalism and why American capitalists incorporated China into their vision of the future.

### Climate and human welfare
- Book: Slow Burn: The Hidden Costs of a Warming World by R. Jisung Park.
- Findings:
  - Documents how climate change affects human welfare and the global economy.
  - Links higher temperatures to outcomes in standardized testing, professional tennis, manufacturing, and crime rates.
  - Argues that “Hotter temperatures … may already be affecting companies’ bottom lines,” and that climate change can “significantly alter the economic playing field.”

### Civic actors and tax policy
- Book: A Taxing Journey: How Civic Actors Influence Tax Policy by Paolo de Renzio.
- Findings:
  - Shows how nongovernmental and civil society organizations influence tax reforms through case studies across countries at various stages of development.
  - Presents real-world examples, including:
    - Former public officials in Guatemala holding an opaque and ineffective tax administration to account.
    - A campaign for higher taxes on alcohol and tobacco in the Philippines.
  - Situates the book within a broader rethinking about tax policy.

### Gender, wealth, and social influence
- Book: Women Money Power: The Rise and Fall of Economic Equality by Josie Cox.
- Findings:
  - Weaves stories and statistics in an exploration of gender, wealth, and social influence.
  - Highlights longstanding structural and cultural barriers that hinder women’s economic advancement.

### Rethinking economic growth
- Book: Growth: A History and a Reckoning by Daniel Susskind.
- Argument:
  - Persuades readers that economic policy should broaden its focus from aiming primarily to boost economic growth to also considering the costs of such growth.
  - Positioned as part of a growing literature calling for policy attention beyond income.

### Keynes and historical impact
- Book: Keynes’s Economic Consequences of the Peace after 100 Years: Polemics and Policy (edited by Patricia Clavin, Giancarlo Corsetti, Maurice Obstfeld, and Adam Tooze).
- Findings:
  - Reexamines The Economic Consequences of the Peace by John Maynard Keynes, a volume noted for its lasting influence a century after publication.
  - Considers the 1919 book’s presaging of the wider and bloodier conflict that would engulf Europe two decades later.

### Publication note
- Readers are invited to subscribe to Finance & Development for “agenda-setting explorations of economic and financial issues.”

*Source: IMF blog post — Economics Authors Confront Toughest Questions on Data, History, and Theory, The Editors, August 21, 2024.*

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## References

- [Finance & Development](https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd)
- [Made in China: When US-China Interests Converged to Transform Global Trade](https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2024/03/Book-review-trading-partners-Obrien-Ingleson-Van-Heuvelen)
- [Slow Burn: The Hidden Costs of a Warming World](https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2024/03/Book-review-warmer-world-slower-growth-Simon-Black)
- [A Taxing Journey: How Civic Actors Influence Tax Policy](https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2024/03/Book-review-tax-matters-Paolo-Mauro)
- [Women Money Power: The Rise and Fall of Economic Equality](https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2024/06/Book-Reviews-Stepping-up-for-Equality-Lisa-Kolovich)
- [Growth: A History and a Reckoning](https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2024/06/Book-Reviews-High-Quality-Growth-Vivek-Arora)
- [Keynes’s Economic Consequences of the Peace after 100 Years: Polemics and Policy](https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2024/06/Book-Reviews-Lessons-from-Keynes-Douglas-A-Irwin)

_Source: https://www.imf.org/en/blogs/articles/2024/08/21/economics-authors-confront-toughest-questions-on-data-history-and-theory_