TY - BOOK ID - 14253514 TI - Misfortunes of Prosperity : an Introduction to Modern Political Economy. AU - Cohen, Daniel. AU - Lindenfeld, Jacqueline. PY - 2015 SN - 0262032309 0262270587 0585020337 9780262270588 9780585020334 9780262032308 PB - Cambridge : MIT Press, DB - UniCat KW - Economic history KW - Keynesian economics. KW - Economics. KW - France KW - Economic conditions KW - Economic theory KW - Political economy KW - Post-Keynesian economics KW - Social sciences KW - Economic man KW - Schools of economics KW - ECONOMICS/Political Economy UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:14253514 AB - Elucidates the current debates on these and other questions in a fast-paced and incisive tour of the dominant ideas in political economy, summarizing historical and theoretical perspectives on the causes of economic growth in the United States, Western Europe, Japan and elsewhere as the twentieth-century draws to a close.Translated by Jacqueline Lindenfeld Are robust economic growth and tight social cohesion something of the past, or is contemporary stagnation simply part of a long economic cycle that is bound to bring brighter days? Should government step in to boost productivity and income, or does economic globalization necessitate a new laissez-faire model for the twenty-first century? The Misfortunes of Prosperity elucidates the current debates on these and other questions in a fast-paced and incisive tour of the dominant ideas in political economy, summarizing historical and theoretical perspectives on the causes of economic growth in the United States, Western Europe, Japan and elsewhere as the twentieth-century draws to a close. Daniel Cohen discusses the effects of the showdown of productivity in Europe and the United States and explains the origin of the apparent tradeoff between unemployment in Europe and wage inequalities in the United States. On questions of economic policy and the competing academic views (new classical and Keynesian) of the efficacy of government intervention, Cohen inverts the Keynesian belief that government intervention causes growth, and explains why waves of government interventions (including wars) usually follow upward economic trends (rather than create it). But he also advocates government discretion rather than government neutrality by showing the disastrous consequences of hands off approach to debt, inflation, and social security. ER -