Thread by @AbhasKJha

Economist Bob Lucas said“Once you start thinking about (growth), it’s hard to think about anything else.” Here is my list of 20 favorite books on the global economy, why some nations are rich, others not. Suggestions, criticisms welcome #EconTwitter #HistoryTwitter #PolicyTwitter

1.The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics by @bill_easterly. An ex-@WorldBank economist asks the question what causes the growth and what traps countries into poverty?
amazon.com/Elusive-Quest-…

2.The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 by Paul Kennedy. Great power ascendency [inevitably?] leads to military overstretch and decline
amazon.com/Rise-Fall-Grea…

3.The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World—and Globalization Began by @VHansenYear1000. In 1000, for the first time in world history an object or a message could travel all the way around the world. Globalization has been there since 1000.
amazon.com/Year-1000-Expl…

4.Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
by @DrDaronAcemoglu and James A. Robinson. It is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or the lack of it).
amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fa…

5.Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages by @CarlotaPrzPerez. Historically technological revolutions arrive with remarkable regularity, and that economies react to them in predictable phases.
amazon.com/Technological-…

6.Exploring the Black Box: Technology, Economics, and History First Edition by Nathan Rosenberg Technological progress is usually an incremental process rather than big breakthroughs.
amazon.com/Exploring-Blac…

7.Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy: Reconfiguring the Three-Player Game between Markets, Speculators and the State by @billjaneway The “Three-Player Game” necessary to fuel innovation: the state, financial capitalism, the market economy
amazon.com/Doing-Capitali…

8.The Power of Creative Destruction: Economic Upheaval and the Wealth of Nations by Philippe Aghion, Céline Antonin, Simon Bunel: What drives economic growth and a blueprint for prosperity under capitalism.
amazon.com/Power-Creative…

9.The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy by Ken Pomeranz. Why did sustained industrial growth begin in Northwest Europe, despite surprising similarities between advanced areas of Europe and East Asia?
amazon.com/Great-Divergen…

10.How China Escaped the Poverty Trap by @YuenYuenAng. What drove China's great transformation was not centralized authoritarian control, but top-down directions from Beijing paired with bottom-up improvisation among local officials.
amazon.com/Escaped-Povert…

11.China's Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know® by @arkroeber. A concise, comprehensive introduction to the most astonishing economic growth story of the last three decades.
amazon.com/Chinas-Economy…

12.How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate by @IsabellaMWeber . The debate that shaped the remaking of China’s economic system and the intellectual foundations of state-market relations in reform-era China amazon.com/How-China-Esca…

13.The Great Rebalancing by @MichaelXPettis . The implications of the relationship between savings, investment & trade at a global level are counterintuitive & so much of what we think about trade & capital flows is wrong amazon.com/Great-Rebalanc…

14.How Asia Works: Success and Failure In the World's Most Dynamic Region by Joe Studwell. Analyses the East Asian miracle through the prism of three main areas: land policy, manufacturing, and finance.
amazon.com/How-Asia-Works…

15.The Second Machine Age by @ErikBryn, @AMcAfee . The automation of cognitive tasks that make humans and software-driven machines substitutes, rather than complements has huge implications for the economy and policy.
amazon.com/Second-Machine…

16.The Race between Education and Technology by @PikaGoldin, @LKatz42. A careful analysis of the race between technological change, education, and inequality.
amazon.com/Race-between-E…

17.Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World by @Adam_Tooze. The best account of the 2008 global financial crisis, connecting the subprime crisis to the American banking crisis to the European debt crisis to the crisis of liberalism
amazon.com/Crashed-Decade…

18.Energy and Civilization: A History by Vaclav Smil. How energy has shaped society throughout history, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization.
amazon.com/Energy-Civiliz…

19.The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy by @MazzucatoM. The dangers of financialization and measuring true value creation
amazon.com/Value-Everythi…

20.Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier by Edward Glaeser. The Harvard economist celebrates the city as one of the greatest inventions of mankind.
amazon.com/Triumph-City-G…