CONSCIENCE OF A LIBERAL

The Conscience of a Liberal, Paul Krugman, Norton, 2007

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2007

This wholly original new work by the best-selling author of The Great Unraveling challenges America to reclaim the values that made it great. With this major new volume, Paul Krugman, today's most widely read economist, studies the past eighty years of American history, from the reforms that tamed the harsh inequality of the Gilded Age to the unraveling of that achievement and the reemergence of immense economic and political inequality since the 1970s. Seeking to understand both what happened to middle-class America and what it will take to achieve a "new New Deal," Krugman has created his finest book to date, a work that weaves together a nuanced account of three generations of history with sharp political, social, and economic analysis. This book, written with Krugman's trademark ability to explain complex issues simply, will transform the debate about American social policy in much the same way as did John Kenneth Galbraith's deeply influential book, The Affluent Society.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Economist and New York Times columnist Krugman's stimulating manifesto aims to galvanize today's progressives the way Barry Goldwater's The Conscience of a Conservative did right-wingers in 1964. Krugman's great theme is economic equality and the liberal politics that support it. America's post-war middle-class society was not the automatic product of a free-market economy, he writes, but was created... by the policies of the Roosevelt Administration. By strengthening labor unions and taxing the rich to fund redistributive programs like Social Security and Medicare, the New Deal consensus narrowed the income gap, lifted the working class out of poverty and made the economy boom. Things went awry, Krugman contends, with the Republican Party's takeover by movement conservatism, practicing a politics of deception [and] distraction to advance the interests of the wealthy. Conservative initiatives to cut taxes for the rich, dismantle social programs and demolish unions, he argues, have led to sharply rising inequality, with the incomes of the wealthiest soaring while those of most workers stagnate. Krugman's accessible, stylishly presented argument deftly combines economic data with social and political analysis; his account of the racial politics driving conservative successes is especially sharp. The result is a compelling historical defense of liberalism and a clarion call for Americans to retake control of their economic destiny. (Oct.)
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About the Author

Paul Krugman is the recipient of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics. He writes a twice-weekly op-ed column for the New York Times and a blog named for his 2007 book, The Conscience of a Liberal. He teaches economics at Princeton University.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_krugman

Published works

[edit] Academic books (authored or coauthored)

• The Spatial Economy – Cities, Regions and International Trade (July 1999), with Masahisa Fujita and Anthony Venables. MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-06204-6
• The Self Organizing Economy (February 1996), ISBN 1-55786-698-8
• EMU and the Regions (December 1995), with Guillermo de la Dehesa. ISBN 1-56708-038-3
• Development, Geography, and Economic Theory (Ohlin Lectures) (September 1995), ISBN 0-262-11203-5
• Foreign Direct Investment in the United States (3rd Edition) (February 1995), with Edward M. Graham. ISBN 0-88132-204-0
• World Savings Shortage (September 1994), ISBN 0-88132-161-3
• What Do We Need to Know About the International Monetary System? (Essays in International Finance, No 190 July 1993) ISBN 0-88165-097-8
• Currencies and Crises (June 1992), ISBN 0-262-11165-9
• Geography and Trade (Gaston Eyskens Lecture Series) (August 1991), ISBN 0-262-11159-4
• The Risks Facing the World Economy (July 1991), with Guillermo de la Dehesa and Charles Taylor. ISBN 1-56708-073-1
• Has the Adjustment Process Worked? (Policy Analyses in International Economics, 34) (June 1991), ISBN 0-88132-116-8
• Rethinking International Trade (April 1990), ISBN 0-262-11148-9
• Trade Policy and Market Structure (March 1989), with Elhanan Helpman. ISBN 0-262-08182-2
• Exchange-Rate Instability (Lionel Robbins Lectures) (November 1988), ISBN 0-262-11140-3
• Adjustment in the World Economy (August 1987) ISBN 1-56708-023-5
• Market Structure and Foreign Trade: Increasing Returns, Imperfect Competition, and the International Economy (May 1985), with Elhanan Helpman. ISBN 0-262-08150-4

[edit] Academic books (edited or coedited)

• Currency Crises (National Bureau of Economic Research Conference Report) (September 2000), ISBN 0-226-45462-2
• Trade with Japan : Has the Door Opened Wider? (National Bureau of Economic Research Project Report) (March 1995), ISBN 0-226-45459-2
• Empirical Studies of Strategic Trade Policy (National Bureau of Economic Research Project Report) (April 1994), co-edited with Alasdair Smith. ISBN 0-226-45460-6
• Exchange Rate Targets and Currency Bands (October 1991), co-edited with Marcus Miller. ISBN 0-521-41533-0
• Strategic Trade Policy and the New International Economics (January 1986), ISBN 0-262-11112-8

[edit] Economics textbooks

• Economics: European Edition (Spring 2007), with Robin Wells and Kathryn Graddy. ISBN 0-7167-9956-1
• Macroeconomics (February 2006), with Robin Wells. ISBN 0-7167-6763-5
• Economics, first edition (December 2005), with Robin Wells. ISBN 1-57259-150-1
• Economics, second edition (2009), with Robin Wells. ISBN 0-7167-7158-6
• Microeconomics (March 2004), with Robin Wells. ISBN 0-7167-5997-7
• International Economics: Theory and Policy, with Maurice Obstfeld. 7th Edition (2006), ISBN 0-321-29383-5; 1st Edition (1998), ISBN 0-673-52186-9

[edit] Books for a general audience

• The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 (December 2008) ISBN 0-393-07101-4
  • An updated version of his previous work.
• The Conscience of a Liberal (October 2007) ISBN 0-393-06069-1
• The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century (September 2003) ISBN 0-393-05850-6
  • A book of his The New York Times columns, many deal with the economic policies of the Bush administration or the economy in general.
• Fuzzy Math: The Essential Guide to the Bush Tax Plan (May 4, 2001) ISBN 0-393-05062-9
• The Return of Depression Economics (May 1999) ISBN 0-393-04839-X
  • Considers the long economic stagnation of Japan through the 1990s, the Asian financial crisis, and problems in Latin America.
  • The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 (December 2008) ISBN 0-393-07101-4
• The Accidental Theorist and Other Dispatches from the Dismal Science (May 1998) ISBN 0-393-04638-9
  • Essay collection, primarily from Krugman's writing for Slate.
• Pop Internationalism (March 1996) ISBN 0-262-11210-8
  • Essay collection, covering largely the same ground as Peddling Prosperity.
• Peddling Prosperity: Economic Sense and Nonsense in an Age of Diminished Expectations (April 1995) ISBN 0-393-31292-5
  • History of economic thought from the first rumblings of revolt against Keynesian economics to the present, for the layman.
• The Age of Diminished Expectations: U.S. Economic Policy in the 1990s (1990) ISBN 0-262-11156-X
  • A "briefing book" on the major policy issues around the economy.
  • Revised and Updated, January 1994, ISBN 0-262-61092-2
  • Third Edition, August 1997, ISBN 0-262-11224-8

[edit] Selected academic articles

• (1998) 'It's Baaack: Japan's Slump and the Return of the Liquidity Trap' Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 1998, pp. 137–205.
• (1996) 'Are currency crises self-fulfilling?' NBER Macroeconomics Annual 11, pp. 345–78.
• (1995) (with AJ Venables). "Globalization and the inequality of nations". Quarterly Journal of Economics 110 (4): 857–880. doi:10.2307/2946642. 
• (1991) 'Increasing returns and economic geography'. Journal of Political Economy 99, pp. 483–99.
• (1991) "Target zones and exchange rate dynamics". Quarterly Journal of Economics 106 (3): 669–82. doi:10.2307/2937922. 
• (1991) 'History versus expectations'. Quarterly Journal of Economics 106 (2), pp. 651–67.
• (1981) 'Intra-industry specialization and the gains from trade'. Journal of Political Economy 89, pp. 959–73.
• (1980) 'Scale economies, product differentiation, and the pattern of trade'. American Economic Review 70, pp. 950–59.
• (1979) 'A model of balance-of-payments crises'. Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking 11, pp. 311–25.
• (1979) 'Increasing returns, monopolistic competition, and international trade'. Journal of International Economics 9, pp. 469–79.