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Niall Kishtainy's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Niall Kishtainy recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Niall Kishtainy's favorite book recommendations of all time.

1
In Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy, S. M. Amadae tells the remarkable story of how rational choice theory rose from obscurity to become the intellectual bulwark of capitalist democracy. Amadae roots Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy in the turbulent post-World War II era, showing how rational choice theory grew out of the RAND Corporation's efforts to develop a "science" of military and policy decisionmaking. But while the first generation of rational choice theorists—William Riker, Kenneth Arrow, and James Buchanan—were committed to constructing a "scientific" approach to... more
Recommended by Niall Kishtainy, and 1 others.

Niall KishtainyIt’s a really fascinating story and it’s not very well known, particularly by economists who use these tools all the time. (Source)

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2
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall we have been told that no alternative to Western capitalism is possible or desirable. This book challenges this view with two arguments. First, the above premise ignores the enormous variety within capitalism itself. Second, there are enormous forces of transformation within contemporary capitalisms, associated with moves towards a more knowledge-intensive economy. These forces challenge the traditional bases of contract and employment, and could lead to a quite different socio-economic system. Without proposing a static blueprint, this book explores this... more
Recommended by Niall Kishtainy, and 1 others.

Niall KishtainyHe sets out a possible future that is neither socialist nor capitalist, but some other thing, a different kind of system. He calls it the ‘epsilon scenario.’ (Source)

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3
At the onset of the Great Recession, as house prices sank and joblessness soared, many commentators concluded that the economic convictions behind the disaster would now be consigned to history. Yet in the harsh light of a new day, attacks against government intervention and the global drive for austerity are as strong as ever. Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste is the definitive account of the wreckage of what passes for economic thought, and how neoliberal ideas were used to solve the very crisis they had created. Now updated with a new afterword, Philip Mirowski’s sharp and... more
Recommended by Niall Kishtainy, and 1 others.

Niall KishtainyThe book is about the financial crisis, but it’s also a history of neoliberalism and how these two connect together. (Source)

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4

Red Plenty

"Spufford cunningly maps out a literary genre of his own . . . Freewheeling and fabulous." --The Times (London)

Strange as it may seem, the gray, oppressive USSR was founded on a fairy tale. It was built on the twentieth-century magic called "the planned economy," which was going to gush forth an abundance of good things that the lands of capitalism could never match. And just for a little while, in the heady years of the late 1950s, the magic seemed to be working. Red Plenty is about that moment in history, and how it came, and how it went away; about the...
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Recommended by Niall Kishtainy, and 1 others.

Niall KishtainyWhich side was going to win? Socialism or capitalism? He’s taken that episode in history, those few years, and created this incredible narrative. (Source)

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5

The World in the Model

During the last two centuries, the way economic science is done has changed radically: it has become a social science based on mathematical models in place of words. This book describes and analyses that change - both historically and philosophically - using a series of case studies to illuminate the nature and the implications of these changes. In format, it offers a tourist guide to economics by focusing chapters on specific models, explaining how economists create them and how they reason with them. It is not a technical book; it is written for the intelligent person who wants to... more
Recommended by Niall Kishtainy, and 1 others.

Niall KishtainyIf you think of the starting point of modern economics as, say, Adam Smith, what she’s really trying to explain is how we got from him…to today’s economics, which is these tightly specified models. (Source)

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