The jostling between market and state, and the territory that each occupies, lies at the heart of political discourse. It's the major fault line around which political parties form and debates rage. Despite their uneasy relationship, they generally make available all that we need, be it food, a home, healthcare, employment, or education, at varying - and often questionable - quality and cost. The demarcation between the two, rarely ever static, differs widely across states, and speaks to the values of the society in question.

The US economy is improving, so we are told. With the financial crash receding into the distance, almost out of sight, things are looking up, the future is finally brightening. Unemployment reached a 50-year low in 2019, falling to 3.5%, while US employers have added almost 5 million jobs in just two years. These are ‘the best economic numbers our country has ever experienced’, the President declared at Davos, with characteristic humility.

The topic of economics is rich with great writing, and many books have been published over the years which tackle economic issues for a popular audience. Here is our list of ten of the best books in the area of economics. Many of the books here are bestsellers, but we have included a few lesser-known titles that have had an important impact on how the public perceives economics. Some titles, too, are interdisciplinary, combining science, psychology and economics to explain history and human processes; others are narratives of events.

As has been recently been documented on INOMICS, students across the world are facing a mental health crisis of unprecedented proportions. We had columnist James Matthew Alston investigate the phenomenon, looking particularly at university responses, and it's fair to say his conclusions made for tough reading.

Dating in academia is riddled with potholes, the most immediate of which is do not stray far from your academic discipline. Curious indeed considering that the academic world is meant to be populated by an abundance of young and energetic minds from a variety of different cultures, races and ethnicities, all of whom are hungry for new information and experiences. One would think that such an environment would provide the perfect dating terrain, right? Wrong!

The holidays are coming up soon, with Christmas just around the corner. If you want to avoid last-minute panicked present-buying, you had better get to planning the gifts you'll be giving. And what if you have an economist in your life? What would be the perfect gift for them? We're here to help your Christmas gift woes with some fun suggestions for the 10 best gift ideas for an economist. Happy holidays!

Esther Duflo is something of a rarity in her field, and not just for being the youngest ever recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics, or the second only female winner. Her pioneering research also sets her apart. Eschewing the grand theory model favoured by her contemporaries, Duflo has carved out her own academic path, pursuing a rigorous analysis of - in her own words - ‘the pieces that comprise the whole’.

Inequality is rampant, we hardly need telling. Rarely does the print media pass up an opportunity to remind us. We stand inundated by an endless stream of statistics – on scales barely fathomable – each one more depressing than the last. For instance, it’s widely known that: ‘8% of humanity takes home 50% of global income’; that ‘the top 1% own 45% of the world’s wealth’; and how could we forget that ‘the 26 richest people on earth had the same net worth as the poorest half’.

Kapitalismus oder Sozialismus? Francis Fukuyamas Ausrufung der liberalen Demokratie zur höchsten Entwicklungsform eines Staatsgebildes hat sich bislang noch nicht eindeutig bestätigt. Die uralte Frage "Kapitalismus oder Sozialismus?" hat wieder an Bedeutung gewonnen. In einem auf der ganzen Welt erkennbaren Muster stehen Politiker vor einer Wahl - eine ungewöhnliche Sache in der modernen Politik -, die man grob so beschreiben kann: Willst du mehr Kapitalismus oder möchtest du ein wenig Sozialismus ausprobieren? Das klingt einfach, aber die Frage ist in der Tat vielschichtig.

Capitalism or socialism? With Francis Fukuyama’s proclamations of history ending looking increasingly premature, this age-old question has found renewed salience. In a pattern seen across the world, people are being faced with a distinct choice - an unusual thing in modern politics - which can crudely be reduced to: do you want more capitalism or would you like to try a bit of socialism? Simple sounding it may be, but the question is, in fact, a tough one. One must actually grasp what is meant by each term.

It's important to keep your finger on the pulse of the latest updates in your field. Otherwise your knowledge could be out of date and your research won't be be topically informed. The finance journals listed here are some of the best in the English-speaking world, offering the latest insights into finance, economics, accounting and business. If you're studying or working in the field of finance, here's our list of the top finance journals you should be reading.

Economists, so the story goes, had successfully grasped the essence of human behaviour: rational, and, therefore, highly predictable. With this discovery, an age-old question whose answer for millennia had eluded humanity was finally laid to rest. Where philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists had failed, economists had struck gold. They had cracked it. As a result, imperfect theories - as economic theories inherently are - started to be treated as laws of nature, like facts, and confidence among economists erred towards hubris.

Since its inception in the 1970s, microfinance has become the darling of development organisations the world over - the idea with the potential to save the planet’s poor. Pioneered by Bangladeshi social entrepreneur and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus, it provides the financially marginalized with banking services that, given their impoverishment, would otherwise be out of reach.

Halloween is probably one of the best occasions to demonstrate how seriously you take yourself (or not!) and how far your creativity can go to show it. If you think that Halloween is below your intellectual level, well, they say that even Paul Krugman threw one economics-themed party, where “two guests came as Asian tigers, several came as hedge funds, one woman came as capital, dressed as a column..."

In recent years, a crisis has enveloped university campuses across the world. Compared to any other generation of college students in history, current students experience more mental health issues than ever before. Some reports suggest that 35% of freshers in American universities experience anxiety disorders. Since the 1950s, rates of suicides on American campuses have tripled, and it’s now the second most common cause of death among students. Nearly 10% of students have considered suicide in the previous twelve months – a terrifying, appalling statistic.

This changed in 2018, in America, when the cause was reinvigorated by political upstart and now darling of the left, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. Since sensationally winning New York’s 14th congressional district, Cortez has helped drag green policy, and the GND in particular, to the centre of the race for the Democrat Presidential nomination, gaining it international exposure.

In 2018, United States President Donald Trump said his administration was putting more coal miners back into work, having previously rattled on about how important coal jobs were to the future of the US. Perhaps it should be no surprise that his words were empty. The Trump administration has added a negligible  2,000 coal mining jobs since it took control, and whatever bump in coal production 2018 saw was quick to fade away.

In the early hours of the 21st of August 1991, a putsch in the Soviet Union against Mikhail Gorbachev failed, leaving three men dead and the country in a state of shock. The coup had been staged by members of the Soviet government who had taken issue with Gorbachev’s liberalising, democratising reforms, which he had been slowly putting into place over the previous few years. Those who had planned the attack then fled, and were all taken into custody within three days.

Development aid: what is it good for? Well, according to much research the answer may well be absolutely nothing. In fact, it could be worse than nothing. When judged against its founding aim of ‘instigating economic development and alleviating poverty’, its record is so bad it appears that aid might actually hinder the achievement of its own stated goals. And the curious thing is its failure seems to be something of an open secret. Even to an untrained eye the big numbers pertaining to development aid don’t look right. Take Africa, for example.

Brexit may have created a great deal of anxiety and business uncertainty, yet the UK is enjoying a golden period of employment. With more people in jobs and less out of work jobseekers, the UK is experiencing record employment levels not seen for decades. Some of this achievement is down to a job boom in the north of England and in the two biggest Scottish cities.

A wise economist once said of new theories ‘if everybody likes your idea it means you’ve done nothing important’. Provocative? Yes, a little. Its sentiment though, rather than a clarion call for economists to adopt a wilfully antagonistic outlook, is better read as a request for bravery, for the courage to find answers to questions that may upset the status quo. Well, that is at least one possible interpretation…

Rising year on year, seemingly irrespective of company performance, US executive pay is eye-watering. For decades now, its increase - the small blip following the financial crisis aside - has been rapid. As their wallets have bulged, however, CEOs’ standing in the public eye, has fallen precipitously - plotted on a graph the relationship between the two would make a big X. And this is a significant shift.

As political footballs go, there are few as worn as ‘supply-side economics’. Squabbling over its merits – or lack thereof – has, for many a year, underpinned much political discourse; belief in, or rejection of, its principles helping demarcate Republican from Democrat, Tory from Labour, etc. It has operated under a number of guises; its tenets followed to varying degrees; and ever since its conception in the 1970s, it has been one of politics’ most volatile fault lines.

In any field, such inequity would be troubling, but because of the role economics plays in our society—how much it informs public policy—the problem it poses is especially disturbing. While in power, mostly male politicians refer to mostly male economists to legitimise their policy programmes; male priorities derived from male experience are, in effect, trumping their female counterparts. This collaboration serves to imbue patriarchy into the legislation that structures our daily lives, hindering the achievement of gender equality.

Sandwiched snugly between generations X and Z, Millennials, it's fair to say, have had it tough. Entering the workforce around the time of the Great Recession and now enduring the disorienting forces of the so-called fourth industrial revolution (also known as Industry 4.0), their world has been one of constant flux. History is accelerating faster than ever and technological progress in some areas is exponential, rapidly changing the face of work.