Eminently suited to classroom use as well as individual study, Roger Myerson's introductory text provides a clear and thorough examination of the models, solution concepts, results, and methodological principles of noncooperative and cooperative game theory. Myerson introduces, clarifies, and synthesizes the extraordinary advances made in the subject over the past fifteen years, presents an overview of decision theory, and comprehensively reviews the development of the fundamental models: games in extensive form and strategic form, and Bayesian games with incomplete information.

Game Theory will be useful for students at the graduate level in economics, political science, operations research, and applied mathematics. Everyone who uses game theory in research will find this book essential.

Two leading social scientists examine the gender wealth gap in countries with officially egalitarian property law, showing how legal professionals—wittingly and unwittingly—help rich families and men maintain their privilege.

In many countries, property law grants equal rights to men and women. Why, then, do women still accumulate less wealth than men? Combining quantitative, ethnographic, and archival research, The Gender of Capital explains how and why, in every class of society, women are economically disadvantaged with respect to their husbands, fathers, and brothers. The reasons lie with the unfair economic arrangements that play out in divorce proceedings, estate planning, and other crucial situations where law and family life intersect.

Céline Bessière and Sibylle Gollac argue that, whatever the law intends, too many outcomes are imprinted with unthought sexism. In private decisions, old habits die hard: families continue to allocate resources disproportionately to benefit boys and men. Meanwhile, the legal profession remains in thrall to assumptions that reinforce gender inequality. Bessière and Gollac marshal a range of economic data documenting these biases. They also examine scores of family histories and interview family members, lawyers, and notaries to identify the accounting tricks that tip the scales in favor of men.

Women across the class spectrum—from poor single mothers to MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos—can face systematic economic disadvantages in divorce cases. The same is true in matters of inheritance and succession in family-owned businesses. Moreover, these disadvantages perpetuate broader social disparities beyond gender inequality. As Bessière and Gollac make clear, the appropriation of capital by men has helped to secure the rigid hierarchies of contemporary class society itself.

Andreu Mas-Colell revolutionized our understanding of competitive markets, price formation, and the behavior of market participants. General Equilibrium and Game Theory offers readers a compendium of his most important scholarly contributions, gathering in a single volume the groundbreaking papers that have solidified his standing as one of the preeminent economic theorists of our time.

Built upon the foundations of neoclassical economics, Mas-Colell’s work is distinguished by a mathematical and analytical elegance that brings theory closer to real-world situations. He overturns the standard assumption of general equilibrium theory—that markets are perfectly competitive and their participants are perfectly rational—and concludes that neither the law of supply and demand nor the existence of equilibrium prices depends on the rationality of agents. Similarly, Mas-Colell (working with Sergiu Hart) challenges classical game theory’s reliance on rational behavior, demonstrating that adaptation and learning shape the dynamics of repeated games.

Addressing central questions of finance, trade, industrial organization, and welfare economics, Mas-Colell shows the surprising power and versatility of differentiability and linear-space mathematical techniques, and he emphasizes the fruitfulness of cooperative game-theory approaches, such as Shapley value theory and the Bargaining Set, for understanding competition and distribution. General Equilibrium and Game Theory is a signal contribution to economic theory and an invaluable resource for anyone wishing to study the craft of a master of economic modeling.

Perhaps the most important economic development of recent years has been the integration process engaged in by European countries. Today other groups of countries throughout the world either contemplate or have already undertaken similar courses of action. Although professional economists have already devoted much attention to the subject, considerable work remains to be done. The present study represents an attempt to advance our scientific knowledge in this direction.

This work is entirely theoretical and fully deductive. Its contribution lies both in the method used and in the conclusions reached. In contrast to most previous studies of customs unions and economic integration, exclusive use is made of general-equilibrium analysis. Because interpretation of mathematical results bearing on comparative statistics of suboptimal situations was found impossible, the author has depended wholly upon geometry. While the geometrical method does not allow inclusion of large numbers of variables, it often leads to, or at least intuitively suggests, important generalizations.

The findings, summarized in 107 points at the end of the study, can be classified in two distinct categories. On the one hand, a number of results are derived concerning the trade effects of international discrimination and customs unions—that is, the effects on the volumes of exports and imports and on relative international values. On the other hand, the more important portions of this work study the effects of customs unions on the welfare of the union, the welfare of the rest of the world, and the global efficiency of resource allocation in the world as a whole. Inter-country welfare comparisons and the use of cardinal utility indexes are entirely avoided. Rather, the author uses the concept of ordinal utility, and makes extensive use of utility-possibility analysis. With respect to the latter, the study of customs unions actually suggests a new method applicable to a wide range of other suboptimal situations in general equilibrium.

How can exploitation and even class division occur in socialist societies? The question is not merely embarrassing for Marxists and socialists. It is also a deep puzzle for economic theorists. In this original and powerful work, John Roemer proposes a general theory of exploitation which provides a game theoretic framework for expressing any conception of exploitation—feudal, capitalist, or socialist—in a standardized and explicit way, thus permitting a clear comparison of different ethical conceptions. As well as applying the general theory to an analysis of socialist society, Roemer uses it to contrast Marxian and neoclassical conceptions of exploitation. By placing the Marxian conception of exploitation in the context of a more general theory, Roemer provides fresh insights into classical questions, and resolves several old problems in Marxian economics.

The book also contains a formal theory of class formation. Once the behavior and institutional specifications of an economy are given, classes emerge endogenously in the model. In a major theorem Roemer relates the two key characteristics of a person in a given economy: his class position and his status as exploiter or exploited. Finally, he shows that the general theory of exploitation can be viewed as the formal translation into economic language of the theory of historical materialism. In its mathematical power and precision, its skillful use of general equilibrium and game theory, the book will become an important bridge between Marxist and neoclassical economics.

Winner of the Bruno Kreisky Prize, Karl Renner Institut
A Financial Times Best Economics Book of the Year
An Economist Best Book of the Year
A Livemint Best Book of the Year


One of the world’s leading economists of inequality, Branko Milanovic presents a bold new account of the dynamics that drive inequality on a global scale. Drawing on vast data sets and cutting-edge research, he explains the benign and malign forces that make inequality rise and fall within and among nations. He also reveals who has been helped the most by globalization, who has been held back, and what policies might tilt the balance toward economic justice.

“The data [Milanovic] provides offer a clearer picture of great economic puzzles, and his bold theorizing chips away at tired economic orthodoxies.”
—The Economist

“Milanovic has written an outstanding book…Informative, wide-ranging, scholarly, imaginative and commendably brief. As you would expect from one of the world’s leading experts on this topic, Milanovic has added significantly to important recent works by Thomas Piketty, Anthony Atkinson and François Bourguignon…Ever-rising inequality looks a highly unlikely combination with any genuine democracy. It is to the credit of Milanovic’s book that it brings out these dangers so clearly, along with the important global successes of the past few decades.
—Martin Wolf, Financial Times

The redistribution of income has been a key element in Peruvian governmental policy. Both the Belaunde and Velasco regimes professed a deep concern with economic injustice, and they have been regarded as models of peaceful progress toward social justice. Despite its good intentions, Richard Webb shows, the government has had little impact on the rigid imbalance of wealth in Peru. The rich have continued to get richer faster than the poor have got less poor. Inequality has grown, and those most in need of improvement have benefited least. The tax structure has actually become more regressive. with taxes raised most on middle-income groups and least on the very rich.

Overall, the Peruvian government's economic policy has been mildly progressive, but not progressive enough to have an appreciable effect on the widespread poverty. What is needed, Webb argues, are movements of capital from the modern sector of the economy to the traditional sector to create new jobs for the poor. "Finally, substantial redistribution seems to require changes in attitude. The elimination of poverty must precede a concern for equity per se, and the needs of the very poor must acquire the status of rights rather than claims to compassion."

A classic in Mormon studies and western history, Great Basin Kingdom offers insights into the ‘underdeveloped' American economy, a comprehensive treatment of one of the few native American religious movements, and detailed, exciting stories from little-known phases of Mormon and American history.

This edition includes thirty new photographs and an introduction by Ronald W. Walker that provides a brief biography of Arrington, as well as the history of the work, its place in Mormon and western historiography, and its lasting impact.

For all the turmoil that roiled financial markets during the Great Recession and its aftermath, Wall Street forecasts once again turned bullish and corporate profitability soared to unprecedented heights. How does capitalism consistently generate profits despite its vulnerability to destabilizing events that can plunge the global economy into chaos? The Great Levelerelucidates the crucial but underappreciated role of the law in regulating capitalism’s rhythms of accumulation and growth.

Brett Christophers argues that capitalism requires a delicate balance between competition and monopoly. When monopolistic forces become dominant, antitrust law steps in to discourage the growth of giant corporations and restore competitiveness. When competitive forces become dominant, intellectual property law steps in to protect corporate assets and encourage investment. These two sets of laws—antitrust and intellectual property—have a pincer effect on corporate profitability, ensuring that markets become neither monopolistic, which would lead to rent-seeking and stagnation, nor overly competitive, which would drive down profits.

Christophers pursues these ideas through a close study of the historical development of American and British capitalist economies from the late nineteenth century to the present, tracing the relationship between monopoly and competition in each country and the evolution of legal mechanisms for keeping these forces in check. More than an illuminating study of the economic role of law, The Great Leveler is a bold and fresh dissection of the anatomy of modern capitalism.

A vivid account of the past, present, and future of economic growth, showing how and why we must continue to pursue it while responding to the challenges it creates.

Over the past two centuries, economic growth has freed billions from the struggle for subsistence and made our lives far healthier and longer. Yet prosperity has come at a price: environmental destruction, desolation of local cultures, the rise of vast inequalities and destabilizing technologies. Faced with such damage, many now claim that the only way forward is through “degrowth,” deliberately shrinking our economic footprint. But to abandon humanity’s progress would be folly. Instead, Daniel Susskind argues, we must keep growth but redirect it, making it better reflect what we truly value.

In a sweeping analysis full of historical insight, Susskind shows how policymaking came to revolve around a single-minded quest for greater GDP. This is a surprisingly recent development: economic growth was barely discussed until the second half of the twentieth century. And our understanding of what drives it is more recent still. Only lately have we come to see how humankind emerged from its millennia of stagnation: through the sustained discovery of powerful and productive new ideas.

This insight undermines the mantra that “we cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet,” for the world of ideas is infinitely vast. Yet growth’s critics are right to insist that we can no longer focus on its upsides alone. We must confront the tradeoffs, Susskind contends: sometimes, societies will have to deliberately pursue less growth for the sake of other goals. These will be moral decisions, not simply economic ones, demanding the engagement not just of politicians and experts but of all citizens.

A major revision of an established textbook on the theory, measurement, and history of economic growth, with new material on climate change, corporate capitalism, and innovation.

Authors Duncan Foley, Thomas Michl, and Daniele Tavani present Classical and Keynesian approaches to growth theory, in parallel with Neoclassical ones, and introduce students to advanced tools of intertemporal economic analysis through carefully developed treatments of land- and resource-limited growth. They cover corporate finance, the impact of government debt and social security systems, theories of endogenous technical change, and the implications of climate change. Without excessive formal complication, the models emphasize rigorous reasoning from basic economic principles and insights, and respond to students’ interest in the history and policy dilemmas of real-world economies.

In addition to carefully worked out examples showing how to use the analytical techniques presented, Growth and Distribution presents many problems suitable for inclusion in problem sets and examinations. Detailed answers to these problems are available. This second edition includes fresh data throughout and new chapters on climate change, corporate capitalism, models of wealth inequality, and technical change.

What determines the rate of growth, the distribution of income, and the structure of relative prices under capitalism? What, in short, makes capitalist economies tick? This watershed treatise analyzes the answers to these questions provided by three major theoretical traditions: neoclassical, neo-Marxian, and neo-Keynesian. Until now, the mutual criticism exchanged by partisans of the different traditions has focused disproportionately on the logical shortcomings of rival theories, or on such questions as whether or not input–output relationships can be described by a continuous-substitution production function.

In this book, these are at best secondary issues. The real distinguishing features of the theories, for Stephen Marglin, are their characterization of labor markets and capital accumulation. For clarity, Marglin first sets out the essential features of each theory in the context of a common production model with a single good and a fixed-coefficient technology. He then formalizes the different theories as alternative ways of closing the model. In subsequent chapters he examines the effects of relaxing key simplifying assumptions, in particular the characterization of technology and the homogeneity of output and capital. And although his primary emphasis is theoretical, he does not ignore the problem of empirically testing the theories. Finally, he synthesizes the insights of the neo-Marxian and neo-Keynesian models into a single model that transcends the shortcomings of each taken separately.

Marglin anticipates that partisans of the different traditions will agree on one point: each will allow that the book reveals the shortcomings of the other theories but will insist that it fails utterly to reflect the power and majesty of one’s own particular brand of truth. Growth, Distribution, and Prices will be controversial, but it will not be ignored.