Daedalus 139:4 (Fall 2010) - On the Financial Crisis and Economic Policy

by Luigi Zingales, Jeremy C. Stein, Benjamin M. Friedman

Dædalus was founded in 1955 as the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. It draws on the enormous intellectual capacity of the American Academy, whose members are among the nation's most prominent thinkers in the arts, sciences, and humanities. The theme for the Fall 2010 issue is "On the Financial Crisis and Economic Policy." M. Friedman & Robert M. SolowIs our financial system serving us well?Benjamin M. FriedmanThe bigger they are . . .Robert M. SolowLearning to live with not-so-efficient marketsLuigi ZingalesSecuritization, shadow banking & financial fragilityJeremy C. SteinHow to fix bankers’ payLucian A. BebchukPolitical on finance & its regulationNolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, Thomas Romer & Howard RosenthalLessons from the financial crisis for monetary policyC.A.E. GoodhartFiscal stimulusRobert E. HallHousing policy in the wake of the crashEdward L. GlaeserInternational financial regulation after the crisisBarry EichengreenThe Great Recession & the Great DepressionPeter TeminFrom the writings of Alexander HamiltonThe Codex Eats MePoem by Alice Notley

283 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 12, 2010

About the author

Luigi G. Zingales is a finance professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and the author of two widely-reviewed books. Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists (2003) is a study of "relationship capitalism". In A Capitalism for the People: Recapturing the Lost Genius of American Prosperity (2012), Zingales "suggests that channeling populist anger can reinvigorate the power of competition and reverse the movement toward a 'crony system'."
Zingales received a bachelor's degree in economics, from the Bocconi University in Milan. In 1992 he earned a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In the same year he joined the faculty of University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where he is the Robert C. McCormack Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance.Zingales also serves as a member of the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation. He was the winner of the 2003 Germán Bernácer Prize to the best European economist under 40 working in macro-finance.
In July 2012, Zingales took part in the 'No-Brainer Economic Platform' project of NPR's program Planet Money. He supported a six-part reform plan that involved eliminating all American income, corporate, and payroll taxes as well as the war on drugs and replacing the system with a broad consumption tax (including taxing formerly illegal substances).
In 2012, he was named by Foreign Policy magazine to its list of FP Top 100 Global Thinkers, "For reminding us what conservative economics used to look like."

Reviews

[m · Rating 2 out of 5]

2½ stars.

I've been reading Benjamin Friedman and Robert Solow for almost 30 years—Friedman's Day of Reckoning (1988) was one of the first economic policy books I ever read—so after rereading their essays in this collection I'm chagrined to think that I may have wasted years of my life reading their output with the never-fulfilled hopes of stumbling across some idea or line of thinking that vaguely resembled an insight or fresh take on things. I feel a little like Charles Swann:

To think that I've wasted years of my life, that I've longed to die, that I've experienced my greatest love, for a woman who didn't appeal to me, who wasn't even my type!

That said, I think Ed Glaeser's essay on housing policy is smart. Read it here:

http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/han...