Who Runs the Economy?

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xv

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2. Introduction

   • Robert Skidelsky, Nan Craig

   Pages 1-14

3. Economics and Power: Basic Models of the Relationship

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 15-15

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   2. Power and Economics

      • Steven Lukes, Jonathan Hearn

      Pages 17-29

   3. Economics as Superstructure

      • Norbert Häring, Lucas Zeise

      Pages 31-41

   4. Economics as Science

      • Nancy Cartwright, John Bryan Davis

      Pages 43-55

4. Case Studies

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 57-57

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   2. The Keynesian Revolution and the Theory of Countervailing Powers

      • Robert Skidelsky, Roger Backhouse

      Pages 59-71

   3. The Neoclassical Counter-Revolution and the Ascendancy of Business

      • Daniel Stedman Jones, Ben Jackson

      Pages 73-84

5. Applications to the Present

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 85-85

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   2. Economics and the Banks

      • Adair Turner

      Pages 87-99

   3. Financialization vs. Efficient Markets: Reframing the Economics and Politics of Finance

      • Thomas Palley

      Pages 101-119

   4. Power and Inequality

      • James K. Galbraith, Anthony Heath

      Pages 121-137

6. Back Matter

   Pages 139-146

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Since the financial crisis of 2008 and the following Great Recession, there has been surprisingly little change in the systems of ideas, institutions and policies which preceded the crash and helped bring it about. 'Mainstream' economics carries on much as it did before. Despite much discussion of what went wrong, very little has substantially changed. Perhaps the answer has something to do with power; a subject on which economics is unusually quiet. Whilst economics may be able to discuss bargaining power and market power, it fails to explore the reciprocal connections between economic ideas and politics: the political power of economic ideas on the one side, and the influence of power structures on economic thought on the other. This book explores how the supposedly neutral discipline of economics does not simply describe human behaviour, but in fact shapes it.

• Power
• Economics
• Financial crisis
• Recession
• Power structures

• University of Warwick, Warwickshire, United Kingdom

  Robert Skidelsky

• Centre for Global Studies, London, United Kingdom

  Nan Craig

Robert Skidelsky is Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at Warwick University, UK. His three-volume biography of John Maynard Keynes won five prizes and his book on the financial crisis, Keynes: The Return of the Master, was published in September 2010. He was made a member of the House of Lords in 1991, where he sits on the cross-benches, and was elected as a fellow of the British Academy in 1994. How Much is Enough? The Love of Money and the Case for the Good Life, co-written with his son Edward, was published in July 2012. His most recent publications were as author of Britain Since 1900: A Success Story? (2014) and as editor of The Essential Keynes (2015).

Nan Craig is Programme Director at the Centre for Global Studies, London, UK. She studied politics and international studies at the University of Warwick, UK, and global politics at the London School of Economics, UK.

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