European University Institute Library

The third pillar, how markets and the state leave the community behind, Raghuram Rajan

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

index present

non fiction

The third pillar

bibliography

1145988323

Raghuram Rajan

how markets and the state leave the community behind

In The Third Pillar, Raghuram Rajan, offers up a magnificent big-picture framework for understanding how three key forces -- the economy, society, and the state -- interact, why things begin to break down, and how we can find our way back to a more secure and stable plane. The 'third pillar' of the title is society. Economists all too often understand their field as the relationship between the market and government, and leave social issues for other people. That's not just myopic, Rajan argues; it's dangerous. All economics is actually socioeconomics -- all markets are embedded in a web of human relations, values and norms. As he shows, throughout history, technological innovations have ripped the market out of old webs and led to violent backlashes, and to what we now call populism. Eventually, a new equilibrium is reached, but it can be ugly and messy, especially if done wrong. Right now, we're doing it wrong. As markets scale up, government scales up with it, concentrating economic and political power in flourishing central hubs and leaving the periphery to decompose, figuratively and even literally. Instead, Rajan offers a way to rethink the relationship between the market and civil society and argues for a return to strengthening and empowering local communities as an antidote to growing despair and unrest. --, Provided by publisher

adult