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Book SynopsisIn the wake of the global financial crisis that began in 2007, faith in the rationality of markets has lost ground to a new faith in their irrationality. This title shows how the failure to abandon this assumption hinders our understanding of how markets work, why price swings help allocate capital to worthy companies.
Trade ReviewFinalist for the 2011 Paul A. Samuelson Award, TIAA-CREF One of Financial Times (FT.com) non-fiction favourites commended by Martin Wolf, Financial Times chief economics commentator, for 2011 "The debate over how to re-regulate [markets and banks] to avoid another financial crisis is urgent and it cannot conclude without resolving the problem that economics' most basic assumption is flawed. [Beyond Mechanical Markets is one] of the most interesting contributions [to] find a new way to model markets."--John Authers, Financial Times "[Beyond Mechanical Markets] marshals a powerful argument that's bolstered by empirical reality: the eternal failures of mechanical forecasting; the sheer difficulty of beating the market with consistency; the unforeseeable ways that history unfolds... [It's approach] seeks to reach beneficial outcomes through flexible, empirical response to [changing] conditions."--Robert Teitelman, Huffington Post "[A] groundbreaking look at how to tame asset booms and busts... [O]f all the books I've read on the crisis that began in 2007, this one comes closest to laying foundation for a more pragmatic and genuinely useful school of economics."--James Pressley, Bloomberg News "[Beyond Mechanical Markets points to] a new international order [that] can save lives and stop currencies collapsing."--Anatole Kaletsky, The Times "[Beyond Mechanical Markets]'s criticisms are potent and its suggestions intriguing. It would be a pity if they were ignored by economists too busy working on their next theory of everything."--Keyur Patel, Financial World "The argument of this original and important book is that ... economic models still used by central banks and others are seriously misleading and basically useless in dealing with a real world in which individuals are making imperfect and unpredictable interpretations of economic events... The authors' practical recommendations for policy are interesting and they can hardly be accused of a lack of boldness."--Graham Bannock, Central Banking.com "In their provocative and fascinating new book ... Frydman and Goldberg's achievement ... as in their earlier work, is to enlarge the economist's toolkit and to show that there is something useful to be said about uncertainty after all."--Kevin D. Hoover, Journal of Economic Methodology
Table of Contents*FrontMatter, pg. i*Contents, pg. vii*Acknowledgments, pg. xiii*What Went Wrong and What We Can Do about It, pg. 1*1. The Invention of Mechanical Markets, pg. 21*2.The Folly of Fully Predetermined History, pg. 41*3. The Orwellian World of "Rational Expectations", pg. 55*4.The Figment of the "Rational Market", pg. 71*5. Castles in the Air: The Efficient Market Hypothesis, pg. 81*6.The Fable of Price Swings as Bubbles, pg. 103*7. Keynes and Fundamentals, pg. 117*8. Speculation and the Allocative Performance of Financial Markets, pg. 149*9. Fundamentals and Psychology in Price Swings, pg. 163*10. Bounded Instability: Linking Risk and Asset-Price Swings, pg. 175*11. Contingency and Markets, pg. 195*12. Restoring the Market-State Balance, pg. 217*Epilogue, pg. 249*References, pg. 257*Index, pg. 273
