Knowledge that Transforms

Shulamit Kahn of Boston University reviews “Disparate Measures: The Intersectional Economics of Women in STEM Work” by Mary A. Armstrong and Susan L. Averett. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Examines the economic promises of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields and the viability of those promises, focusing on women from historically disadvantaged populations who work in STEM occupations.”

Catherine Louise Kling of Cornell University reviews “Pricing the Priceless: A History of Environmental Economics” by H. Spencer Banzhaf. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Explores how economists have thought about the tension between delighting in the wilderness as it is encountered and also taming it and making it useful, focusing primarily on applied economics in the United States between the 1940s and 1980s.”

Andrew Samwick of Dartmouth College and NBER reviews “Work, Retire, Repeat: The Uncertainty of Retirement in the New Economy” by Teresa Ghilarducci. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Explores the implications of compelling older people to work longer, presenting a pro-worker alternative that, instead of cutting pensions and forcing work on elders, enforces anti-age-discrimination laws, institutes effective job training, and pays for good pensions and more Social Security benefits.”

Editor's Note Our policy is to annotate all English-language books on economics and related subjects that are sent to us. A very small number of foreign-language books are called to our attention and annotated by our consulting editors or others. Our staff does not monitor and order books published; therefore, if an annotation of a book does not appear six months after the publication date, please write to us or the publisher concerning the book.

Marie Connolly of Universite du Quebec a Montreal reviews “Streaming Music, Streaming Capital” by Eric Drott. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Explores how the change in recorded music's commercial circulation from digital downloads to cloud-based streaming has transformed the conventions, practices, and discourses that shape both music and streaming, detailing how the ascendancy of digital platforms represents a response to the crises that have afflicted the capitalist world system since the 1970s and have intensified since the financial crisis of 2008.”

Rakesh Vohra of University of Pennsylvania reviews “The Everything Token: How NFTs and Web3 Will Transform the Way We Buy, Sell, and Create” by Steve Kaczynski and Scott Duke Kominers. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Explores how non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are changing the way that business is done, demonstrating the role and inevitability of NFT technology in everyday life.”

We synthesize the literature on economic epidemiology, the interdisciplinary field that draws on the ideas and methods of economics to analyze individual behavior, aggregate disease dynamics, and public policy during infectious disease epidemics. We cover the main models of individual behavior during epidemics, related econometric evidence, and models of disease dynamics appropriate for the analysis of a range of infectious diseases. We outline modeling approaches to a range of control measures including non-pharmaceutical interventions such as stay-at-home mandates, quarantines, and sheltering, and pharmaceutical interventions such as vaccines and treatment. Last, we characterize different types of externalities and heterogeneities and discuss the targeting and implementation of policies through restrictions and incentives. (JEL D62, D91, H51, I12, I18)

This article reviews the theory of imperfectly competitive financial markets, with special attention to recent contributions and rapidly growing areas of research. We highlight the methodological advances that have led to a unified analytic framework for static, dynamic, centralized, and decentralized markets. Accounting for imperfect competition has not only reshaped our understanding of financial market data but also underscored the importance of market structure, motivated novel policy tools and objectives, and opened new avenues for market design. We identify areas where new models and techniques could enable further progress on equilibrium and market design analyses for markets with large players. (JEL D43, D47, D53, G10)

This paper provides analytic guides to recent literature on China’s macroeconomic development, emphasizing the critical role of the gradualist reform approach. Our analysis suggests that from 1978 to 1997, the gradualist approach contributed to China’s aggregate total factor productivity and economic growth primarily through policies that facilitated the reallocation of surplus labor from agriculture to nonagricultural sectors. Since 1998, the government’s focus shifted, with various reforms encouraging large enterprises, whether state owned or privately owned, to enter capital-intensive sectors, making capital deepening the main driver of economic growth. While this strategy sustained China’s GDP growth, it also increased trade tensions with global partners, created barriers to transitioning to a consumption-led economy, and threatened China’s long-term financial stability, casting long shadows over the Chinese economy. (JEL E23, F14, L16, O11, O47, P21, P24)