We consider a firm with infrequent access to capital markets, continuous access to costly intermediary financing, and a cost of holding cash. In the optimal renegotiation-proof contract, the intermediary absorbs a share of cash-flow risk. This share increases as firm depletes its internal cash, suggesting an overlapping pecking order. If the firm runs out of cash, it liquidates if the cash-flow is too risky, otherwise the intermediary extends financing that resembles either private equity or collateralized debt. The model helps explain trends in financial intermediation, such as the rise of private equity and the use of collateralized debt.

What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories. In this work the author analyzes a unique collection of data from twenty countries, ranging as far back as the eighteenth century, to uncover key economic and social patterns. His findings transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality. He shows that modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have allowed us to avoid inequalities on the apocalyptic scale predicted by Karl Marx. But we have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality as much as we thought in the optimistic decades following World War II. The main driver of inequality--the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth--today threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values if political action is not taken. But economic trends are not acts of God. Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past, the author says, and may do so again. This original work reorients our understanding of economic history and confronts us with sobering lessons for today.

How finance is a mechanism of social and political domination The 2007–08 credit crisis and the long recession that followed brutally exposed the economic and social costs of financialization. Understanding what lay behind these events, the rise of “fictitious capital” and its opaque logic, is crucial to grasping the social and political conditions under which we live. Yet, for most people, the operations of the financial system remain shrouded in mystery. In this lucid and compelling book, economist Cédric Durand offers a concise and critical introduction to the world of finance, unveiling the truth behind the credit crunch. Fictitious Capital moves beyond moralizing tales about greedy bankers, short-sighted experts and compromised regulators to look at the big picture. Using comparative data covering the last four decades, Durand examines the relationship between trends such as the rise in private and public debt and the proliferation of financial products; norms such as our habitual assumptions about the production of value and financial stability; and the relationship of all this to political power. Fictitious Capital offers a stark warning about the direction that the international economy is taking. Durand argues that the accelerated expansion of financial operations is a sign of the declining power of the economies of the Global North. The City, Wall Street and other centres of the power of money, he suggests, may already be caked with the frosts of winter.

A New York Times Bestseller An NPR Best Book of the Year The epic successor to one of the most important books of the century: at once a retelling of global history, a scathing critique of contemporary politics, and a bold proposal for a new and fairer economic system. Thomas Piketty’s bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First Century galvanized global debate about inequality. In this audacious follow-up, Piketty challenges us to revolutionize how we think about politics, ideology, and history. He exposes the ideas that have sustained inequality for the past millennium, reveals why the shallow politics of right and left are failing us today, and outlines the structure of a fairer economic system. Our economy, Piketty observes, is not a natural fact. Markets, profits, and capital are all historical constructs that depend on choices. Piketty explores the material and ideological interactions of conflicting social groups that have given us slavery, serfdom, colonialism, communism, and hypercapitalism, shaping the lives of billions. He concludes that the great driver of human progress over the centuries has been the struggle for equality and education and not, as often argued, the assertion of property rights or the pursuit of stability. The new era of extreme inequality that has derailed that progress since the 1980s, he shows, is partly a reaction against communism, but it is also the fruit of ignorance, intellectual specialization, and our drift toward the dead-end politics of identity. Once we understand this, we can begin to envision a more balanced approach to economics and politics. Piketty argues for a new “participatory” socialism, a system founded on an ideology of equality, social property, education, and the sharing of knowledge and power. Capital and Ideology is destined to be one of the indispensable books of our time, a work that will not only help us understand the world, but that will change it.

Prominent economists including Nassau Senior, Eugene von Bӧhm-Bawerk, Gustav Cassel, Irving Fisher, Walter Eucken, and Robert Dorfman have recognized or toyed with the idea of waiting as a factor of production, but this concept has not yet been explored in its entirety until now. In this book, Leland B. Yeager and Steve H. Hanke dive into the economic theory behind waiting and contextualize its relevance to modern-day monetary policy. Capital, Interest, and Waiting challenges economists to reconsider capital theory. The arguments presented within the book embrace extant literature on capital theory, including the numerous controversies, puzzles, and debates crowding the subject. These debates range from the Cambridge controversies triggered by Joan Robinson’s work to the famous “reswitching” problem to a broader array of important problems in capital theory that were laid out by Walter Eucken, among others. Leland B. Yeager and Steve H. Hanke present, discuss, and resolve these many complexities of capital theory. Chapters break new ground again and again by demonstrating how waiting is a factor of production and interest is its price. Those who read this book will challenge long-held beliefs relevant to monetary economics and reconsider their approach to capital theory.

Technological progress has shifted scarcity for humanity. When we were foragers, food was scarce. During the agrarian age, it was land. Following the industrial revolution, capital became scarce. With digital technologies, scarcity is shifting once more. We need to figure out how to live in The World After Capital in which the only scarcity is our attention.