Every economist should read A Capitalism for the People and ask their students to read it also. Since there is zero appeal to our consciences in most standard economics textbooks these days, Zingales’s book is a great complement.
Understanding how our emotions, beliefs, and limited understanding of complexity can influence whether capitalism flourishes or fails is just beginning. Few economists have tried to reinvent how to govern for the people in the context of the behavioral realities of the people. This great book by one of the people, Luigi Zingales, may be an important leap in the right direction.
The second is a review of a book previously discussed by ASET - Why Nations Fail and a review of Pillars of Prosperity and reads, in part
The two books covered in this review, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (Crown Business 2012) by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, and Pillars of Prosperity: The Political Economics of Development Clusters (Princeton University Press 2011) by Timothy Besley and Torsten Persson think big. They are written by distinguished academics concerned with the issue of national performance and how national institutions can explain why some nations perform much better than others. Pillars of Prosperity is written for graduate students, and uses a common formal model to explore the factors that they have identified as important for national performance.
Both reviews are in the current issue (March 2013) of the Journal of Economic Literature.
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