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Why Economies Rise or Fall cover art

Why Economies Rise or Fall

By: Peter Rodriguez, The Great Courses
Narrated by: Peter Rodriguez
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Publisher's Summary

How can a nation create the conditions for economic growth and prosperity? And what, once these conditions are achieved, can it do to sustain this progress? Discover the answers (which may surprise you) in these 24 lectures that guide you through a stimulating and, above all, accessible examination of what economists know and don't know about the elusive search for economic prosperity.

Here, you'll learn how countries as widely different as the United States and Vietnam have grown their economies; how countries like China and India were able to recover from economic reverses; and, most important, why the critical test of any economic policy is its ability to productively alter human behavior for everyone's ultimate benefit. By looking at economic growth as the result of incentivizing such productive behavior - "making productivity more profitable than all the alternatives" - Professor Rodriguez clears up an often-shrouded economic landscape. The result is a lecture series that brings the economic strategies chosen by nations down to street level by adding a newfound clarity to key issues: Why economies succeed or fail; how economic bubbles are created, why they burst, and how nations recover from them; the challenges posed by globalization; and more.

By the end of the last lecture, you'll understand as never before both the benefits granted and the costs extracted by the "instant economy" that technology and globalization have brought us. You'll grasp what China's expected economic dominance may soon mean. And you'll have a new appreciation of the juggling act policymakers perform as they try to heed history's latest lesson in achieving national growth and maximum human happiness.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©2010 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2010 The Great Courses

What listeners say about Why Economies Rise or Fall

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Complete logical inconsistency

I feel like I dropped 30 points of IQ listening to this. And I really tried. All the way to the end.

He contradicts himself all throughout, in a bid to “explore” different aspects of economics, but takes NO TIME in the beginning to define any of the fundamental elements, like; what is economics the study of? What is money? How did it emerge?

There’s no discussion of human action, Private property rights, the principles of capital & capitalism or any of those core ideas.

He even says crap like savers & investors are on opposite sides of the spectrum when it comes to analysing the benefits of an economic approach 🤦🏽‍♂️

Wow. This is embarrassing.
Don’t waste your time.
Go read some Rothbard, Mises or Hayek.
Don’t lower your IQ or waste your precious time with this.

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Very interesting and honest.

The prof obviously loves economics and this fact translates through his lectures in his passionate delivery and honesty regarding his own assumptions on the theories of economics.

It's quite enjoyable (even to the partially interested) and was over before I knew it. I actually wanted it to keep going but that's just me. I personally liked his investigation into the problems of morality, immorality and rationality and irrationality and how they affect economics.

The prof needs more dynamic examples and analogies in my opinion, a small drawback in comparison to the wealth of basic knowledge gained in these lectures.

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lacking depth

Not entirely without interest, but way too much waffle for me - and lacking any attempt to get to root causes. For a robust, well researched and credible theory on the root causes of national wealth, I suggest "Why Nations Fail" by Acemogu and Robinson. For a good account of global capital flows and global imbalances, I suggest "The Great Rebalancing" by Pettis.

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highly recommended

Very enlightening and informative. the lectures are easy to listen to and follow a logical format. up to date information that touches on important issues for today. provides understanding, background and context for what we observe in economies around the world today. recommend this series and lecturer highly.

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