Book Reviews Archives - Page 3 of 10 - Centre for Enterprise Markets and Ethics

June 28, 2022

Richard Godden: “The Power of Creative Destruction” by P. Aghion et al.

French economist Philippe Aghion has long been associated with the model of growth through creative destruction – the so-called “Schumpeterian Paradigm”. In The Power of Creative Destruction he, together with his two French co-authors, seeks to summarise this paradigm and explain its implications. The authors believe, surely correctly, that “innovation and the diffusion of knowledge...

May 9, 2022

Richard Godden: “Winners and Losers” by Diana C. Mutz

Thomas Macaulay observed that “Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular.”. There is plenty of evidence to support this assertion but the reason for public hostility is less clear. What is it that impacts public opinion about trade and why is...

April 8, 2022

Andy Hartropp: “Business Ethics: An Economically Informed Perspective” by Christopher L. & Matthias U.

Some of the toughest and most complex challenges faced by businesses and corporations in today’s world involve ethics and morality. This is in part why the study of business ethics has now become central in MBA and other programmes. But the very complexity of these challenges, in an increasingly pluralized as well as globalized world,...

February 23, 2022

Richard Godden: “The Wealth of Religions” by R. M. McCleary and R. J. Barro

The Wealth of Religions is an unusual book. It is subtitled, “The Political Economy of Believing and Belonging” and its authors, one an economist and the other a moral philosopher (who, as it happens, are married to one another), seek to present a multidisciplinary approach to issues at the interface between religion and economics. They...

February 14, 2022

Andrei Rogobete: “Democratic Capitalism at a Crossroads: Technological Change and the Future of Politics” by Charles Boix

Charles Boix is Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at Princeton University. His primary research interests are in political economy and comparative politics, with a particular emphasis on empirical democratic theory. Previous notable publications include Political Parties, Growth and Equality (Cambridge University Press, 1998), Democracy and Redistribution (Cambridge University Press, 2003), and Political Order and...

November 9, 2021

Andrei Rogobete: “Humans as a Service” by Jeremias Prassl

Jeremias Prassl is a Fellow of Magdalen College and an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law at Oxford University. He advises public and private sector organisations on regulating the gig economy. In his book entitled Humans as a Service, Prassl re-evaluates the merits and pitfalls of the “gig economy” and seeks to discover ways...

October 4, 2021

Richard Godden: “Management as a Calling” by Andrew J. Hoffman

Management as a Calling is aimed primarily at business students but it has far wider relevance. Andrew Hoffman says that he wants “to personally challenge every business student, every business executive, and every business school professor to think about the system in which students are beginning their careers and to push back when it is...

September 13, 2021

Richard Turnbull: “Putting Purpose into Practice” Eds. Colin Mayer and Bruno Roche

This book is the product of an extensive research programme undertaken between Mars Catalyst, which is the internal think-tank of the Mars company, and the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford. Professor Colin Mayer is a leading voice in the debates around business purpose and has written and spoken extensively in the field....

August 19, 2021

Edward Carter: “Servant Leadership, Social Entrepreneurship and the Will to Serve” Eds. Luk Bouckaert & Steven C. van den Heuvel

This book is a collection of eighteen separate but thematically connected papers which were given at an international academic conference in Belgium in May 2018. The organising principle is an enquiry as to whether the ‘will to serve’ must always be ‘crowded out in the real economic arena of hard competition’ (page vi). The authors...

July 16, 2021

“Money and the Rule of Law” by Peter J. Boettke, Alexander William Salter and Daniel J. Smith

Is the delegation of monetary policy to independent central banks that are granted constrained discretion a good or a bad thing? Most non-specialists have probably never pondered this question and many that have done so have probably concluded that it is a good thing. But is it? Peter Boettke, Alexander Salter and Daniel Smith think...