New Books in Economics

Interviews with Economists about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

Follow on

Episodes

Lauren E. Bridges on Fantasies and Realities of Digital Transformation and the Data Center Industry

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Lauren Bridges, Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia, about her work on the political, economic, and environmental politics of big data infrastructures. They focus on some of Bridges’ work on the disconnect between the promises made to localities around digital transformation and the realities of data center power demands and other material factors. They also discuss Bridges’ other projects, including “Geographies of Dig...

Apr 22, 2025•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 95

Saleem H. Ali, "Sustainability: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2024)

The growing concern about global environmental change and human impacts on the planet has led to the emergence of a broad field of study on the 'sustainability' of human societies. The term's common usage can be traced back to the advent of the Earth Summit in 1992 when 'sustainable development' was broadly embraced by the international community as an ostensibly win-win proposition for economic development, social inclusion, and ecological conservation. Yet both the natural science underpinning...

Apr 21, 2025•46 min•Ep. 29

Jennifer Clapp, "Titans of Industrial Agriculture: How a Few Giant Corporations Came to Dominate the Farm Sector and Why It Matters" (MIT Press, 2025)

Every year, hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of farm machinery, fertilizer, seeds, and pesticides are sold to farmers around the world. Although agricultural inputs are a huge sector of the global economy, the lion's share of that market is controlled by a relatively small number of very large transnational corporations. The high degree of concentration among these agribusiness titans is striking, considering that just a few hundred years ago agricultural inputs were not even marketed good...

Apr 19, 2025•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 128

China’s Trade War Strategy: How Xi Jinping Uses Autocracy, Fear, and Innovation to Compete with the West

Hosts Nina dos Santos and Owen Bennett-Jones analyze the global fallout after Donald Trump plunged America and the world into a trade war with China. David Rennie, The Economist’s geopolitics editor and former Beijing and Washington D.C. bureau chief, joins the podcast to unpack how Xi Jinping is playing the long game and playing to win. In this episode, we explore Xi’s high-stakes strategy in the global trade war. From embracing economic pain to fostering innovation under autocracy, China is ch...

Apr 18, 2025•48 min•Ep. 10

Stolen Fragments: Black Markets, Bad Faith, and the Illicit Trade in Ancient Artefacts

In 2012, Steve Green, billionaire and president of the Hobby Lobby chain of craft stores, announced a recent purchase of a Biblical artefact—a fragment of papyrus, just discovered, carrying lines from Paul's letter to the Romans, and dated to the second century CE. Noted scholar Roberta Mazza was stunned. When was this piece discovered, and how could Green acquire such a rare item? The answers, which Mazza spent the next ten years uncovering, came as a shock: the fragment had come from a famous ...

Apr 17, 2025•59 min•Ep. 262