The brilliant creator of NPR's Planet Money podcast and award-winning New Yorker staff writer explains our current economy: laying out its internal logic and revealing the transformative hope it offers for millions of people to thrive as they never have before. Contrary to what you may have heard, the middle class is not dying and robots are not stealing our jobs. In fact, writes Adam Davidson—one of our leading public voices on economic issues—the twenty-first-century economic paradigm offers new ways of making money, fresh paths toward professional fulfillment, and unprecedented opportunities for curious, ambitious individuals to combine the things they love with their careers. Drawing on the stories of average people doing exactly this—an accountant overturning his industry, a sweatshop owner's daughter fighting for better working conditions, an Amish craftsman meeting the technological needs of Amish farmers—as well as the latest academic research, Davidson shows us how the twentieth-century economy of scale has given way in this century to an economy of passion. He makes clear, too, that though the adjustment has brought measures of dislocation, confusion, and even panic, these are most often the result of a lack of understanding. The Passion Economy delineates the ground rules of the new economy, and armed with these, we begin to see how we can succeed in it according to its own terms—intimacy, insight, attention, automation, and, of course, passion. An indispensable road map and a refreshingly optimistic take on our economic future.

A comprehensive, accessible guide to understanding today's global economy, from the author of the bestselling A Beginner's Guide to the World Economy. While reporting on today's world, business and mainstream media alike use terms and mention trends that even the savviest consumer may find baffling. In his latest book, Randy Charles Epping uses compelling narratives and insightful analogies to clearly and concisely explain the rapidly changing way business is done in the twenty-first century, without a single chart or graph. Epping defines key ideas and commonly used words and phrases like carbon footprint, WTO, economy of scale, NAFTA, and outsourcing. He also illustrates how central banks help navigate global crises and drive the global economy, discusses the benefits of Green Economics, shows how trade wars can be avoided, and explains the virtual economy, where multimillion dollar transactions take place in the blink of an eye. Complete with 89 easy-to-master tools for surviving and thriving in the new global marketplace and an extensive glossary, The 21st Century Economy: A Beginner's Guide is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the complex economy of the world in which we live.

This book is very timely for understanding the link between education and employment in a binary economy. The authors provide a lucid framework for technical professionals to become T-shaped systems thinkers, who can get in-depth as well as work on a wider bandwidth, as required. This is a practical road map for both professionals and policymakers committed to developing a critical skills infrastructure for the 21st century. This book has two interwoven parts. The first part tells us the story of what has happened to STEM work in the U.S. economy over the past few decades of relentless globalization and digitization of information. Refreshingly the authors stop short of making a prediction. Instead, they turn their attention to what can be done to energize and transform the work of STEM professionals to benefit the global economy as well as their own jobs and careers. The book is also full of insights for public policy officials, higher education leaders, and corporate training heads. It is a must read for senior managers of STEM companies and organizations.

Economics is the mother tongue of public policy. It dominates our decision-making for the future, guides multi-billion-dollar investments, and shapes our responses to climate change, inequality, and other environmental and social challenges that define our times. Pity then, or more like disaster, that its fundamental ideas are centuries out of date yet are still taught in college courses worldwide and still used to address critical issues in government and business alike. That’s why it is time, says renegade economist Kate Raworth, to revise our economic thinking for the 21st century. In Doughnut Economics, she sets out seven key ways to fundamentally reframe our understanding of what economics is and does. Along the way, she points out how we can break our addiction to growth; redesign money, finance, and business to be in service to people; and create economies that are regenerative and distributive by design. Named after the now-iconic “doughnut” image that Raworth first drew to depict a sweet spot of human prosperity (an image that appealed to the Occupy Movement, the United Nations, eco-activists, and business leaders alike), Doughnut Economics offers a radically new compass for guiding global development, government policy, and corporate strategy, and sets new standards for what economic success looks like. Raworth handpicks the best emergent ideas—from ecological, behavioral, feminist, and institutional economics to complexity thinking and Earth-systems science—to address this question: How can we turn economies that need to grow, whether or not they make us thrive, into economies that make us thrive, whether or not they grow? Simple, playful, and eloquent, Doughnut Economics offers game-changing analysis and inspiration for a new generation of economic thinkers.

Today's children will reach adulthood in an economic environment unlike anything the world has ever seen. The 21st century global economy is powered by an increasing rate of technological change as well as growing foreign competition; both are contributing to the high U.S. unemployment rate and stagnating American wages. How can we as parents prepare our children for success in this growing maelstrom that many are now calling "the new normal"? In "Thriving in the 21st Century: Preparing Our Children for the New Economic Reality," Barbara Frank demonstrates that we must move beyond the common wisdom of the 20th century that emphasized a college diploma and lifelong employment with a large company as the only way to success. Instead, we need to set our children on a new path, one that will help them not just survive, but thrive in the 21st century. In this book, you'll learn: The Seven Strengths your child will need to prosper in the 21st century, why they're needed and how you can develop them in your children The most efficient (and increasingly popular) way to give your child those Seven Strengths Why public education has failed to prepare our children for the 21st century How we can help our children become the lifelong learners needed in a rapidly changing global economy The surprising truth about today's colleges and universities How economic change is affecting a variety of career areas, and which of them are projected to grow dramatically in the coming years. This book is packed with ideas and resources for raising our children to become adults who respond proactively when faced with economic challenges, and who can prosper during times of great change. We can help our children reach young adulthood ready and able to tackle the future with all its challenges. And that, of course, is the key: we must prepare our children for the future...not the past.

What do Google, Snapchat, Tinder, Amazon, and Uber have in common, besides soaring market share? They're platforms - a new business model that has quietly become the only game in town, creating vast fortunes for its founders while dominating everyone's daily life. A platform, by definition, creates value by facilitating an exchange between two or more interdependent groups. So, rather that making things, they simply connect people. The Internet today is awash in platforms - Facebook is responsible for nearly 25 percent of total Web visits, and the Google platform crash in 2013 took about 40 percent of Internet traffic with it. Representing the ten most trafficked sites in the U.S., platforms are also prominent over the globe; in China, they hold the top eight spots in web traffic rankings. The advent of mobile computing and its ubiquitous connectivity have forever altered how we interact with each other, melding the digital and physical worlds and blurring distinctions between "offline" and "online." These platform giants are expanding their influence from the digital world to the whole economy. Yet, few people truly grasp the radical structural shifts of the last ten years. In Modern Monopolies, Alex Moazed and Nicholas L. Johnson tell the definitive story of what has changed, what it means for businesses today, and how managers, entrepreneurs, and business owners can adapt and thrive in this new era.

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