Cohen & DeLong, Concrete Economics (2016)

Stephen S. Cohen and J. Bradford DeLong.
Concrete Economics: The Hamilton Approach to Economic Growth and Policy.
Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business Review Press, 2016.

Book information: Publisher; Book Info at Bradford-DeLong.com; Google Books; Amazon.com.

Books at Brad DeLong's blog "Grasping Reality..."

Book excerpt: Stephen S. Cohen and J. Bradford DeLong, "Why Hamilton — Not Jefferson — Is the Father of the American Economy," Fortune, 16 February 2016.

Cohen and DeLong are also the authors of:
The End of Influence: What Happens When Other Countries Have the Money, New York: Basic Books (Perseus Books Group), 2010.
[Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com; Amazon.com, paperback; Book Info at DeLong's blog.]
My post on The End of Influence is here.

Author information: J. Bradford DeLong

• J. Bradford DeLong, Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley.
• J. Bradford DeLong (b. 1960), Wikipedia.
• Grasping Reality . . ., Brad DeLong's blog.
• Brad DeLong, Washington Center for Equitable Growth.
• J. Bradford DeLong, Project Syndicate.
  A recent article at Project Syndicate:
  Debunking America’s Populist Narrative, 31 March 2016.
  This article seems to me a less than adequate defense for free trade/globalization and its effects on the U.S. economy. Check the comments to this article; even Jeffrey D. Sachs criticizes it.
• The Economists' Voice, Edited by Joseph E. Stiglitz, Aaron S. Edlin, and J. Bradford DeLong.

Lectures and Interviews: J. Bradford DeLong

• J. Bradford DeLong and Harry Kreisler, "Economics, Politics and Public Discourse," Conversations with History, University of California, Berkeley, 05 October 2007.
  J. Bradford DeLong interview at the Conversations with History website.
• J. Bradford DeLong, "Macroeconomic Policy: When Bubbles Matter," 24th Annual Henry George Lecture, Economics and Finance Department, The University of Scranton, Pennsylvania, 22 September 2009.
  Henry George Program, Economics and Finance Department, The University of Scranton.
• Brad DeLong and Oscar Landerretche, "The Politics of Inequality," Center for Latin American Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 15 October 2012.
  YouTube playlist for the lecture series "Inequality: A Dialogue for the Americas."
• J. Bradford DeLong, "The Great Depression and the Great Recession in the North Atlantic," Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, California, 04 May 2015.
• Jeffrey Vitter, Tim Kane, Brad DeLong, Donna Ginther, "Inequality, Prosperity, Growth, and Well-Being in America," Kansas Economic Policy Conference Luncheon Panel, University of Kansas, 22 October 2015.

You can find more talks by DeLong on YouTube. I limited this list to those that seem more pertinent to the U.S. economy.

Author information: Stephen S. Cohen

• Stephen S. Cohen, Professor Emeritus of City & Regional Planning, University of California, Berkeley.
• The Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy.
• Stephen S. Cohen and Harry Kreisler, "What Happens When Other Countries Have the Money," Conversations with History, University of California, Berkeley, 14 January 2010.
  Stephen S. Cohen interview at the Conversations with History website.
• Stephen S. Cohen, Modern Capitalist Planning: The French Model, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969; Harvard University Press, 1969; University of California Press, 1977.
  [Google Books;
  Amazon.com.]

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Cohen & DeLong's thesis is that the U.S. government's economic policy, the political economy of the United States, changed around 1980. Before that time the government, and the national political culture generally, supported and implemented policies promoting the concrete, practical, pragmatic, non-ideological, economic development of the United States. After that time the government pursued the abstract, ideological policies of deregulation, free markets, and free trade, while ignoring the adverse consequences of those policies on the U.S. economy and society. Some practical deregulation began in the late 1970s which deregulated commercial passenger airline fares, trucking, and oil prices. However after 1980 the idea of deregulation was extended to financial services which promptly resulted in the Savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and the outsized growth of financial services as a fraction of the U.S. economy (see the work of Thomas Philippon). Continuing financial deregulation throughout the 1980s and 1990s directly contributed to the Financial crisis of 2007–08. Cohen & DeLong survey the economic history of the United States to show how pragmatic interventions by the government promoted the nation's economic development, from Alexander Hamilton to 19th century railroads, land grant colleges, homesteading for settlement of territories for agricultural development, to 20th century policies including New Deal era construction of dams and post offices, Eisenhower era construction of interstate highways, and, often military-related, technology development (for example, communications and electronics technologies at Bell Labs and the military aviation spinoff of commercial aircraft at Boeing). The economic development ideas formerly used by the U.S. have been practiced in East Asia with great success; Cohen & DeLong discuss the cases of Japan and China; the brevity of their book prevents them from discussing the similar successes of (South) Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and other nations. These are large topics briefly summarized by Cohen & DeLong in Concrete Economics, so I list some references from the book below.

Some references in Concrete Economics:

Introduction
• Thomas Philippon, Stern School of Business, New York University.
  Cohen & DeLong say that Thomas Philippon is "the economist who has done the most to count and track the hypertrophy of the American finance sector."
  
  • Thomas Philippon, "Finance versus Wal-Mart: Why Are Financial Services So Expensive," in Rethinking the Financial Crisis (pages 235-246), edited by Alan S. Blinder, Andrew W. Loh and Robert M. Solow. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2012.
    [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]
  • Thomas Philippon and Ariell Reshef, "Wages and Human Capital in the U.S. Financial Industry: 1909-2006," Quarterly Journal of Economics, November 2012.
  • Thomas Philippon and Ariell Reshef, "An International Look at the Growth of Modern Finance," Journal of Economic Perspectives, Volume 27, Number 2, Spring 2013.
  • Thomas Philippon, "Has the US Finance Industry Become Less Efficient?" American Economic Review, April 2015.
• Ralph E. Gomory and William J. Baumol, Global Trade and Conflicting National Interests, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2001.
  [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]
Chapter 1
• John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688-1783, London: Century Hutchinson, 1989; Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1990; Abingdon: Routledge, 2014.
  [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com; Amazon.co.UK.]
• Alexander Hamilton, "Report to the House of Representatives on Manufactures," 05 December 1791.
  • Alexander Hamilton (1755 or 1757 – 1804), Wikipedia.
  • Report on Manufactures, Wikipedia.
  • Report on Manufactures, 1913 (Google Books).
  • John C. Hamilton, editor. The Works of Alexander Hamilton, Volume 3. New York: John F. Trow, Printer, 1850.
    [Archive.org.]
    This volume contains Hamilton's reports: on "Public Credit" (pages 1-46); on "Operations of the Act Laying Duties on Imports" (pages 54-80); on a "National Bank" (pages 106-146); "On The Establishment of a Mint" (pages 149-188); and on "Manufactures" (pages 192-284).
  • Alexander Hamilton, Writings, Edited by Joanne B. Freeman, No. 129, Library of America Series, New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2001.
    [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]
• Paul Bairoch, Economics and World History: Myths and Paradoxes, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993.
  [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]
Chapter 2
• Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War, New York: Oxford University Press, 1970, 1995.
  [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]
Chapter 3
• Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties, New York: The Free Press, 1962; second edition, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1988, 2000.
  [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]
• Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States, New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
  [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]
• Steven Solomon, Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2010.
  [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]
• Jon Gertner, The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation, New York: Penguin Press, 2012; Penguin Books, 2013.
  [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]
• Vernon W. Ruttan, Is War Necessary for Economic Growth?: Military Procurement and Technology Development, New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
  [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]
• John A. Alic and others, Beyond Spinoff: Military and Commercial Technologies in a Changing World, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1992.
  [Google Books; Amazon.com.]
Chapter 4
• James Fallows, Looking at the Sun: The Rise of the New East Asian Economic and Political System, New York: Pantheon Books, 1994; New York: Vintage Books, 1995.
  [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]
• Carlos F. Diaz Alejandro, Essays on the Economic History of the Argentine Republic, Economic Growth Center, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1970.
  [Google Books; Amazon.com.]
• Barry Naughton, Growing Out of the Plan: Chinese Economic Reform, 1978-1993, Cambridge University Press, 1995.
  [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]
Chapter 5
• George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller, Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception, Princeton University Press, 2015.
  [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]
• Hyman Minsky, Stabilizing an Unstable Economy, Yale University Press, 1986; McGraw-Hill, 2008.
  [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]
• Simon Johnson, "The Quiet Coup," The Atlantic, May 2009.
• William K. Black, The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005; updated edition, 2013.
  [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]

Some related books not mentioned in Concrete Economics:

• Barry Naughton, The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2007.
  [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]
  Cohen & DeLong cite an older work by Naughton but this newer book may be of greater interest to readers looking for an introductory survey on China's economic growth.
• Ha-Joon Chang, Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective, London: Anthem Press, 2002.
  [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]
• Ha-Joon Chang, The East Asian Development Experience: The Miracle, the Crisis and the Future, London: Zed Books, 2007.
  [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]
• Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism, London: Random House Business Books, 2007; New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2008.
  [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]
• Gerald F. Davis, Managed by the Markets: How Finance Re-Shaped America, Oxford University Press, 2009.
  [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]
  Davis offers an interpretation of the effects of growth of the financial sector on U.S. society, its effects on American culture. More solid and more instructive, in my opinion, are his chapters on the history of corporations (Chapter 3) and on the history of banking (Chapter 4) in the U.S. during the 20th century.
  My post on Managed by the Markets is here.
• Judith Stein, Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2010.
  [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]
  My post on Pivotal Decade is here.
• Jeff Madrick, Age of Greed: The Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America, 1970 to the Present, New York: Alfred A. Knopf (Penguin Random House LLC), 2011.
  [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]
  My post on Age of Greed is here.
  Madrick's Age of Greed is a more detailed history of the economic policies that allowed the growth of the financial sector in the U.S. economy since the 1970s (compared to the brief treatment of that history in Concrete Economics).
• Jeff Madrick, Seven Bad Ideas: How Mainstream Economists Have Damaged America and the World, New York: Alfred A. Knopf (Penguin Random House LLC), 2014.
  [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]
  In Seven Bad Ideas Madrick also reviews the economic history of the United States in which the federal government played a significant role in promoting the economic development of the country from its beginnings in various ways appropriate to each historical/technological epoch, contrary to what free market ideologues and the followers of Milton Friedman would tell you.
  
• From the document "The British Sociological Association and The Guardian: Sociologists on the causes of the financial crisis," British Sociological Association, 2012, I found this item and its description, which sounds similar to Cohen & DeLong's thesis in Concrete Economics:
  
  Jordan, Bill. (2010) What’s Wrong with Social Policy and How to Fix it, Polity Press. 
[“This books argues that the financial crash of 2008-9 has exposed the disastrous consequences of applying economic theory to the collective life of societies. In seeking to manage social relationships through incentives for individual gain, market-like menus of choices and business-style sets of interlocking contracts, the model adopted by the governments of the UK and USA has subverted the basis for social policy in mutuality and membership.” “Breaks important new theoretical ground for a social and community-nurturing vision in the new economic era.”]
  [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]

Book Reviews and other essays:

• James Fallows, "How America Can Rise Again," The Atlantic, January/February 2010.
• Darren Ingram, "Concrete Economics," Autamme blog, 22 January 2016.
• Edward Luce, "Is robust American growth a thing of the past?," Financial Times, 19 February 2016.
  Brad DeLong, "Ed Luce Says Some Very Nice Things About Steve Cohen's and My Forthcoming Concrete Economics," Grasping Reality ... blog, 21 February 2016.
• Justin Fox, "The U.S. Could Use a New Economic Strategy," BloombergView.com, 01 March 2016.
• Jen Werner, "For Economist J. Bradford DeLong, Government Is a Growth Engine," Institutional Investor, 02 March 2016.
• Brenda Jubin, "Cohen and DeLong, Concrete Economics," Reading the Markets blog, 02 March 2016.
• Simon Constable, "Alexander Hamilton As U.S. Economic Architect," Forbes, 15 March 2016.
  The reviewer Simon Constable is ideologically determined to misunderstand Cohen & DeLong's book and he misrepresents it.
• John Mason, "Where Did U.S. Economic Policy Go Wrong? The 1980s," TheStreet, 21 March 2016.

Some Wikipedia Articles:

• Economic history of the United States.
• Economy of the United States.
• Economic history of Japan.
• Economic history of China (1949–present).