When Vladimir Putin first took power in 1999, he was a little-known figure ruling a country that was reeling from a decade and a half of crisis. In the years since, he has reestablished Russia as a great power. How did he do it? What principles have guided Putin's economic policies? What patterns can be discerned? In this new analysis of Putin's Russia, Chris Miller examines its economic policy and the tools Russia's elite have used to achieve its goals. Miller argues that despite Russia's corruption, cronyism, and overdependence on oil as an economic driver, Putin's economic strategy has been surprisingly successful.
Explaining the economic policies that underwrote Putin's two-decades-long rule, Miller shows how, at every juncture, Putinomics has served Putin's needs by guaranteeing economic stability and supporting his accumulation of power. Even in the face of Western financial sanctions and low oil prices, Putin has never been more relevant on the world stage.

Winner of the 2011 Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Best Business Book of the Year Award
Billions of government dollars, and thousands of charitable organizations and NGOs, are dedicated to helping the world's poor. But much of their work is based on assumptions that are untested generalizations at best, harmful misperceptions at worst.
Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo have pioneered the use of randomized control trials in development economics. Work based on these principles, supervised by the Poverty Action Lab, is being carried out in dozens of countries. Drawing on this and their 15 years of research from Chile to India, Kenya to Indonesia, they have identified wholly new aspects of the behavior of poor people, their needs, and the way that aid or financial investment can affect their lives. Their work defies certain presumptions: that microfinance is a cure-all, that schooling equals learning, that poverty at the level of 99 cents a day is just a more extreme version of the experience any of us have when our income falls uncomfortably low.
This important book illuminates how the poor live, and offers all of us an opportunity to think of a world beyond poverty.
Learn more at www.pooreconomics.com

It may be hard to believe in an era of Walmart, Citizens United, and the Koch brothers, but corporations are on the decline. The number of American companies listed on the stock market dropped by half between 1996 and 2012. In recent years we've seen some of the most storied corporations go bankrupt (General Motors, Chrysler, Eastman Kodak) or disappear entirely (Bethlehem Steel, Lehman Brothers, Borders).
Gerald Davis argues this is a root cause of the income inequality and social instability we face today. Corporations were once an integral part of building the middle class. He points out that in their heyday they offered millions of people lifetime employment, a stable career path, health insurance, and retirement pensions. They were like small private welfare states.
The businesses that are replacing them will not fill the same role. For one thing, they employ far fewer people the combined global workforces of Facebook, Yelp, Zynga, LinkedIn, Zillow, Tableau, Zulily, and Box are smaller than the number of people who lost their jobs when Circuit City was liquidated in 2009. And in the sharing economy, companies have no obligation to most of the people who work for them at the end of 2014 Uber had over 160,000 driver-partners in the United States but recognized only about 2,000 people as actual employees.
Davis tracks the rise of the large American corporation and the economic, social, and technological developments that have led to its decline. The future could see either increasing economic polarization, as careers turn into jobs and jobs turn into tasks, or a more democratic economy built from the grass roots. It's up to us.

NEW YORK TIMES AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER • From two winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, “who have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for a country’s prosperity”

“A wildly ambitious work that hopscotches through history and around the world to answer the very big question of why some countries get rich and others don’t.”—The New York Times

FINALIST: Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Financial Times, The Economist, BusinessWeek, Bloomberg, The Christian Science Monitor, The Plain Dealer

Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, or geography that determines prosperity or poverty? As Why Nations Failshows, none of these factors is either definitive or destiny.
 
Drawing on fifteen years of original research, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is our man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or the lack of it). Korea, to take just one example, is a remarkably homogenous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created those two different institutional trajectories. Acemoglu and Robinson marshal extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, the Soviet Union, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, among them:
 
• Will China’s economy continue to grow at such a high speed and ultimately overwhelm the West?
 
• Are America’s best days behind it? Are we creating a vicious cycle that enriches and empowers a small minority?

“This book will change the way people think about the wealth and poverty of nations . . . as ambitious as Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel.”—BusinessWeek

《非理性繁荣》书名取自美国联邦准备理事会理事主席葛林史班 1996 年底在华府希尔顿饭店演讲中，谈到当时美国金融资产价格泡沫时所引用的一句名言。从那时起，许多学者、专家都注意到美国股市因投机风气过盛而引发的投资泡沫现象。

混迹金融界多年，看够虚拟数字和裁员后，柯纳希望能亲身体验活生生的世界贸易。于是，他卖掉房子，放弃高薪工作与城市生活。
怀揣2.5万英镑，他从摩洛哥的马拉喀什出发，在苏丹参与骆驼交易、用赞比亚咖啡换南非红酒、把辣椒卖给印度人、到中亚当马贩子、丝绸之路押宝和田玉、巴西伐木头……他用最古老的方式做生意，与最厉害的商贩杀价，时而亏得一塌糊涂，时而赚得盆满钵满。5个月后，他奇迹般地穿越金融风暴，收获5万英镑，同时也收获了不少宝贵的生意经与满坑满谷的好玩故事。
而这场本为逐利开启的旅程，越接近尾声，越让人领悟到生活的真相……
这是一场史无前例、新鲜有趣的“环球买卖之旅”，它带领我们见识世界上一个个生机盎然的市场，分享做生意的各种秘诀，体验经济背后纷繁复杂的人类故事。

威廉·伯恩斯坦William J. Bernstein
最初，经济学只是威廉·伯恩斯坦的一个业余爱好。他本是哲学与医学的双料博士、神经病学专家，不过他却对储蓄、投资和资源配置的过程产生了浓厚的兴趣。
他决定与人们分享他学到的知识，因此，他建立了efficientfrontier.com这个网站，如今，网站已经成为深受独立投资者喜爱的论坛。除了经典之作《繁荣的背后》，他还写过若干本关于投资的著作，大受欢迎：《投资的四大支柱》（The Four Pillars of Investing）、《聪明地配置资产》（The Intelligent Asset Allocator）、《伟大的交易》(A Splendid Exchange)、《投资者宣言》（The Investor's Manifesto，中文简体版已有机械工业出版社出版）。

如果你只有十几岁，阅读这本书会让你从童话般的寓言故事中获得经济学的启蒙教育！
如果你是二十几岁，阅读这本书可以让你再度温习一遍你在大学经济学课堂里让你迷糊的经济学天书，不过，这一次保证你再也不会迷糊了！
如果你是三十几岁到五十几岁，这本书可以纠正你思维中所滞留的的所有有偏差的经济学常识，经济学家已经把你的大脑固化了，现在该是你清醒的时候了！
如果你已经退休了，没关系，这本书既可以让你衡量你以前的经济学人生是否完美，也可以让你在孙辈面前有了培养他们智慧人生的最佳读物。
不信，你就试试看……
如何对经济领域的各种细节和现象进行整体性分析，这是一项艰巨的任务——特别是在很多专家似乎不可能承担这项任务时，它便显得尤为艰巨。但是，当你开始切实接触到经济学的基本要素时，就会发现这项任务比你想象的容易得多。《经济为什么会崩溃》一书运用插图、幽默口吻以及讲故事的平实手法，将经济学从高不可攀的架子上取下来，放回到厨房的餐桌上，它本就该属于那个地方。
这个关于鱼、渔网、存钱、借钱的故事揭露了全球经济对话中暗藏的众多漏洞。希夫兄弟以机智幽默的手法阐释了经济增长的根源、贸易、储蓄及风险三者的重要性，滞涨的根源、利率的影响及政府的刺激机制、消费信贷的破坏性本质等问题。两位作者还谈及其他许多经济原则问题，这些问题经常被讨论，却常常被误解。
这究竟是一本什么样的书？竟然能激起这么多人的阅读狂潮？想弄明白，还是翻开读一读吧！

本书是我国长期从事苏-俄经济问题研究的著名学者陆南泉教授的最新专著，较系统与详细地论述了苏联经济体制改革与俄罗斯经济体制转轨的历史进程，并在此基础上对一系列有关经济体制改革的重大问题提出了看法。
本书是国内外第一部研究历史跨度长达90年的关于苏联经济体制改革史的论著。该书对研究苏一俄问题、经济体制改革、科学社会主义与国际共运的学者都有重要的参考价值。

The mass industrial democracy that is the modern United States bears little resemblance to the simple agrarian republic that gave it birth. The market revolution is the reason for this dramatic - and ironic - metamorphosis. The resulting tangled frameworks of democracy and capitalism still dominate the world as it responds to the panic of 2008. Early Americans experienced what we now call 'modernization'. The exhilaration - and pain - they endured have been repeated in nearly every part of the globe. Born of freedom and ambition, the market revolution in America fed on democracy and individualism even while it generated inequality, dependency, and unimagined wealth and power. John Lauritz Larson explores the lure of market capitalism and the beginnings of industrialization in the United States. His research combines an appreciation for enterprise and innovation with recognition of negative and unanticipated consequences of the transition to capitalism and relates economic change directly to American freedom and self-determination, links that remain entirely relevant today.

《纸与铁》提出了全新的观点，以颇有影响力的汉堡工商界为切入点，分析了为通货膨胀政策辩护的那些理由存在的漏洞，指出通货膨胀严重危害了德国经济，侵蚀了资产阶级社会的根基，使魏玛共和国这个福利国家失信于民。此外，通货膨胀也没能使赔款减少。作者剖析了长期以来德国政治经济体系的弊端。不仅揭示了魏玛共和国的失败根源可以追溯到威廉德国时期，而且还为分析第三帝国的兴起提供了不同的视角。在《纸与铁》德国经济灾难和政治之间关系的生动阐述中，相信你一定会从一个全新的角度理解德国通胀。
1923年德国的恶性通货膨胀是历史上少数影响深远的经济事件之一，人们普遍认为它是导致希特勒发迹的根源。然而，近年来有很多历史学家认为，通货膨胀政策不但刺激了经济增长，而且还帮助德国减少了赔款，因此对于1918年以后的德国是利大于弊。当时的德国没有其他可行的替代方案。
海报：

见识一下“经济黑帮”吧。“他”是上下班高峰时间将座驾横放在纽约街头的联合国外交官，因为警察无法对其发号施令——他有外交豁免权；“他”是变戏法般将进口集装箱中的冻鸡变为火鸡而偷逃关税的走私犯；“他”是独裁者，是军阀，是寡廉鲜耻的官僚；“他”榨取了本该用于推动发展中国家经济发展的巨额援助款；“他”是精于算汁的欺世大盗，将偷盗和谋杀视为自己生意战略的一部分。而且，受各种不利条件的影响，你也有可能变身为“他”。
《经济黑帮》讲述的是一段进入经济发展阶段的神奇探险。得益于作者的天才探索，那些看上去无关紧要的事件，如纽约的违章停车和苏哈托的一次感冒，部成了理解这个世界到底如何运转的工具。很少有一本经济学著作能像本书一样这么有趣且如此重要。
菲斯曼和米格尔运用经济学理论深入探究这些“黑帮”的思维，而且提出能为世界贫困地区和人民带来改变的解决方案，包括提供资金援助以缓和干旱时期这些地区的暴力冲突，引导世界银行不再纠缠于最可能遭腐败侵蚀的援助项目以确保援助资金真正用在刀刃上。
跟着《经济黑帮》一起，在全球经济发展的“背阴面”来一次惊心动魄的探索之旅吧。

虽然全球经济空前繁荣，但仍有10亿人口被甩在了发展的行列之外，沦为全球经济社会中最底层的10亿人，而这其中有70%居住在撒哈拉以南的非洲国家，这些国家的经济长期陷入停顿或衰退，而且至今看不到改进的希望。这些人和这些国家对传统的经济发展模式方式提出了严峻的挑战，也构成了世界不稳定的因素。本书剖析了制约这些国家发展的各种陷阱——战乱陷阱、自然资源陷阱、恶邻环绕的内陆陷阱以及小国劣政的陷阱，提出了帮助这些国家摆脱困境的建议。随着中国经济的发展和壮大，在世界经济中的影响力不断增强，将越来越多地卷入到全球减贫事业当中，本书对于国人了解全球贫困状况、贫困的优抚机制以及当前国际上有关减贫的各种建议和措施，都是非常重要的指导意义。

《资本的秘密》讲述很多经济学家甚至社会学家都思考过这样一个问题，为什么资本主义经济模式在西方（比如美国，西欧甚至日本）都取得了极大的成就，而它在很多发展中国家却停滞不前，发展中国家面对资本市场，就像隔着一层透明玻璃，怎么都进不去，这是为什么？德·索托一语道破真相，因为多数发展中国家没有建立起把资产转换成为资本的机制，所以他们缺乏资本。

从eBay到股票市场，再到计划经济向市场经济的转型，约翰·麦克米兰引领我们进行一次市场之旅，领略以往我们并未留意的风光。从印度的骆驼贸易到每天2 000万美元荷兰鲜花市场，再到抗艾滋病药物的全球贸易等等，麦克米伦用这些例子向我们展示了各种各样的市场——小的和大的，简单的和复杂的，成功的和失败的，使我们将有机会看到，“是什么让市场发挥作用？它们有多么重要？我们能够做些什么来增进它们的作用？以及我们如何把它们应用到其他领域？”。他进一步把这些市场放到一起，来说明这些市场是如何整合起来形成全球经济的。
市场总是引发相互冲突的观点。批评家指责它们是剥削和贫困的根源。极端支持者则赞美它们是自由和繁荣的源泉。麦克米兰超越了意识形态，清楚地阐明了为什么市场既不是魔幻的也不是邪恶的，而是虽不完美但很重要的工具。它们可能会时常经历失败，但是它们是迄今为止我们所发现的能够提升我们生活水平的最佳途径。