Learning from Schelling's Strategy of Conflict

By Roger B. Myerson

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2009

Thomas Schelling's Strategy of Conflict is a masterpiece that should be recognized as one of the most important and influential books in social theory. This paper reviews some of the important ideas in Strategy of Conflict and consider...

A Review of Edward Luce's In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India

By Lant Pritchett

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2009

India poses a development puzzle on a grand scale. Sixty years of electoral democracy, thirty years of rapid growth, and a number of world class institutions (such as the Institutes of Technology or Election Commission) have led to talk of India as a s...

Finance and Politics: A Review Essay Based on Kenneth Dam's Analysis of Legal Traditions in The Law-Growth Nexus

By Mark J. Roe and Jordan I. Siegel

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2009

Strong financial markets are widely thought to propel economic development, with many in finance seeing legal tradition as fundamental to protecting investors sufficiently for finance to flourish. Kenneth Dam finds that the legal tradition view inaccura...

Schumpeter Redux: A Review of Raghuram G. Rajan and Luigi Zingales's Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists

By Richard Sylla

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2006

Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists is an ambitious probe into capitalism's past, present, and future. Whereas Joseph A. Schumpeter viewed capitalism as doomed because it was losing its political and social supports, Rajan and Zingales see i...

A Review of Steven Shavell's Foundations of Economic Analysis of Law

By Richard A. Posner

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2006

Steven Shavell's Foundations of Economic Analysis of Law (Harvard University Press, 2004) is a major theoretical contribution to "law and economics," the applied field of economics that studies the economic properties and consequences of legal ...

A Review of Peter Isard's Globalization and the International Financial System: What's Wrong and What Can be Done?

By Barry Eichengreen

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2006

Peter Isard's recent book (Globalization and the International Financial System: What's Wrong and What Can be Done?, Cambridge University Press, 2005) provides a thoughtful and balanced review of the scholarly literature on the past operation a...

Annotated Listing of New Books

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2006

JEL Classification System

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2006

The Big Push Déjà Vu: A Review of Jeffrey Sachs's The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

By William Easterly

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2006

Jeffrey Sachs's new book (The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time, Penguin Press: New York, 2005) advocates a "Big Push" featuring large increases in aid to finance a package of complementary investments in order to end world pove...

The Great Escape: A Review of Robert Fogel's The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700-2100

By Angus Deaton

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2006

In this essay, I review Robert Fogel's The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700–2100, which is concerned with the past, present, and future of human health. Fogel's work places great emphasis on nutrition, not only for the history of he...

The International Monetary Fund in a Time of Crisis: A Review of Stanley Fischer's IMF Essays from a Time of Crisis: The International Financial System, Stabilization, and Development

By Patrick Conway

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2006

Stanley Fischer was deputy managing director of the IMF from 1994 to 2001 and, perhaps more than any other individual, he personifies the international "rapid response" to financial crises in the 1990s. This book is a collection of essays written during h...

Constitutions, Politics, and Economics: A Review Essay on Persson and Tabellini's The Economic Effects of Constitutions

By Daron Acemoglu

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2005

In this essay, I review the new book by Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini, The Economic Effects of Constitutions, which investigates the policy and economic consequences of different forms of government and electoral rules. I also take advantag...

Are We Collapsing? A Review of Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

By Scott E. Page

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2005

Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (Viking Penguin, 2005), tells the dramatic decline of past civilizations—the Easter Islanders, the Anasazi in the Southwestern United States, the Mayans in Central America, the N...

Reviews of the 2005 Economic Report of the President

By Joseph Farrell, Jonathan Gruber, Robert E. Hall, Gordon H. Hanson, and Joel Slemrod

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2005

Getting the Properties Right to Secure Property Rights: Dixit's Lawlessness and Economics

By James E. Rauch

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2005

This is a review article of Lawlessness and Economics: Alternative Modes of Governance (Princeton University Press 2004) by Avinash K. Dixit.

Foundations of Human Sociality: A Review Essay

By Larry Samuelson

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2005

This is a review article of Foundations of Human Sociality: Economic Experiments and Ethnographic Evidence from Fifteen Small-Scale Societies (Oxford University Press 2004) edited by Joseph Henrich, Robert Boyd, Samuel Bowles, Colin Camerer, Erns...

A Review of Interest and Prices: Foundations of a Theory of Monetary Policy by Michael Woodford

By Edward J. Green

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2005

This is a review article of Interests and Prices: Foundations of a Theory of Monetary Policy (Princeton University Press 2003) by Michael Woodford.

Review of The New Financial Order by Shiller

By Stephen A. Ross

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2004

Review of Mokyr's Gifts of Athena

By Hal R. Varian

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2004

On The Politics of Property Rights by Haber, Razo, and Maurer

By Robert H. Bates

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2004

Stephen Haber et al. explore economic growth in key sectors of the Mexican economy, 1876-1929, an era of political instability and (1914-17) civil war. The authors demonstrate that economic growth continued amidst political instability and offer an explan...