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Animal Spirits How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism

Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism

By George A Akerlof and Robert J Shiller

Acclaimed economists Akerlof and Shiller challenge the economic wisdom that got America into its current financial mess and put forward a bold new vision to transform and restore prosperity.

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Book Information

Publisher: Princeton University Press
Publish Date: 02/18/2009
Pages: 248
ISBN-13: 9780691142333
ISBN-10: 0691142335
Language: Eng

What We're Saying

December 04, 2009

Amazon does an interesting thing every year, putting their best selling books in each genre on the same page as their editors' pick so you can easily compare the two. I am sure that, were I an author, I'd hope to see my name on the bestsellers list. It would mean that I had not only done well financially for the year but, more importantly, that my book had made it into the hands of more readers—my ideas into the minds of more people. READ FULL DESCRIPTION

October 29, 2009

Season of the Lists

By Porchlight

It must be the season of the lists, yeah, because Publishers Weekly has announced their top 10 books of 2009. One business title made their list—Matthew B. Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work, released by penguin Press. READ FULL DESCRIPTION

August 12, 2009

The longlist for the 2009 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award has been announced. The press release states that "The award is designed to highlight the book that provides the most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues, including management, finance, and economics. " The books on the longlist are: Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism by George A Akerlof, Robert J Shiller Clever: Leading Your Smartest, Most Creative People by Rob Goffee, Gareth Jones Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson Good Value: Reflections on Money, Morality and an Uncertain World by Stephen Green House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street By William D Cohan (Cohan won the award two years ago for his first book, The Last Tycoons. READ FULL DESCRIPTION

Full Description

From acclaimed economists George Akerlof and Robert Shiller, the case for why government is needed to restore confidence in the economy The global financial crisis has made it painfully clear that powerful psychological forces are imperiling the wealth of nations today. From blind faith in ever-rising housing prices to plummeting confidence in capital markets, "animal spirits" are driving financial events worldwide. In this book, acclaimed economists George Akerlof and Robert Shiller challenge the economic wisdom that got us into this mess, and put forward a bold new vision that will transform economics and restore prosperity. Akerlof and Shiller reassert the necessity of an active government role in economic policymaking by recovering the idea of animal spirits, a term John Maynard Keynes used to describe the gloom and despondence that led to the Great Depression and the changing psychology that accompanied recovery. Like Keynes, Akerlof and Shiller know that managing these animal spirits requires the steady hand of government--simply allowing markets to work won't do it. In rebuilding the case for a more robust, behaviorally informed Keynesianism, they detail the most pervasive effects of animal spirits in contemporary economic life--such as confidence, fear, bad faith, corruption, a concern for fairness, and the stories we tell ourselves about our economic fortunes--and show how Reaganomics, Thatcherism, and the rational expectations revolution failed to account for them. Animal Spirits offers a road map for reversing the financial misfortunes besetting us today. Read it and learn how leaders can channel animal spirits--the powerful forces of human psychology that are afoot in the world economy today.

About the Authors


George A. Akerlof is Koshland Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and the 2001 Nobel Laureate in Economics.

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Robert J. Shiller is a Nobel Prize-winning economist, the author of the New York Times bestseller Irrational Exuberance, and the coauthor, with George A. Akerlof, of Phishing for Phools and Animal Spirits, among other books (all Princeton). He is Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University and a regular contributor to the New York Times.

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