New Books in Economics

Ilene Fischer is the founder and CEO of Sophia Network, where she guides executive leaders through the turbulence of disruptive change, mergers, reorganizations, and breakthrough innovations – applying her signature Innovation Ecosystems methodology to turn strategic vision into reality. Earlier in her career, she was a partner at Charlie Kiefer’s Innovation Associates and managing director at the Tom Peters Company, and has been an advocate for women’s causes in an array of fields.

“Innovation theatre” in which changes are promised without ever happening is Ilene’s bete noire. Give me a corporate culture steeped in fear, and you can be sure that vital experimentation won’t be valued. In this interview, she makes a strong case for constant iteration that cuts across departmental silos in order to keep pace with the nine disruptive factors she sees as happening simultaneously in the business world today. Is AI big? Yes. But so is what quantum computing makes possible. One of the biggest points she makes in this conversation is that companies are starved for multidisciplinary talent, and the talent they do manage is attract will leave promptly if not given a license to apply that talent and achieve results. Change starts with deep listening (no judging) and grows exponentially into a virtuous circle if done with respect; fail that test, and a vicious cycle will emerge instead.

Ilene's book Innovation Ecosystems: A Dynamic Blueprint for Organizational Success and Engagement is published by John Murray Press, a division of Hachette. The book will be released on October 20 and is available for preorder now.

Real Transformations: Business Change That Works from the Inside Out is co-hosted by Julie Anixter and Dan Hill, PhD, entrepreneurs with deep experience as corporate change agents, devoted to helping companies make continuous change work for everyone through clarity and connection. To learn about their keynote talks, workshops and labs, check out Real-Transformation.com.
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Sustainability has become a touchstone for development worldwide,
promising an antidote to environmental degradation and capitalism's
excess: waste. Refusing Sustainability: Race and Environmentalism in a Changing Europe (Stanford University Press, 2025)
presents a fundamentally different account of sustainability and waste
itself by uncovering the intersections of international environmental
reforms and racialized labor. In Bulgaria, Roma comprise the bulk of the
country's waste workers, while anti-Roma racism casts them as socially
disposable. Without their labor, however, the country cannot meet the
sustainability targets required by the European Union. Drawing on
fieldwork that spans twenty years, including eleven months working
alongside Romani women street sweepers, and years embedded in waste
organizations, political campaigns, Roma NGOs, and activist groups,
Elana Resnick examines the power hierarchies that shape both waste
management and European geopolitics.

Instead of focusing on only environmental harms or toxic distributions, Refusing Sustainability approaches
Romani life-worlds as spaces of creative production, and also tells
several larger stories: of postsocialist racial capitalism,
environmental progressivism, democratic failures, mutual aid, and the
power of women's friendships. Through these stories, Resnick illuminates
how ordinary people, racialized as discardable, resist systems that
simultaneously rely on and exclude them.
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Money is everywhere in our daily lives. It lurks in the swipe of a
card at the grocery store, in looming student-loan debts, in the prices
of things we want, and in our subconscious navigation of the modern
world. In this revelatory book, economists Mason and Jayadev explain how
and why money is so deeply misunderstood by the world it dominates—as
well as the dangerous social implications of this misunderstanding. Against Money (University of Chicago Press, 2026) tackles
the most dearly held “truths” of economics, arguing that the world of
money has never been an impartial representation of the world of things.
Instead, its existence in different forms—debt, capital, liquidity, and
interest—increasingly shapes events in the real world rather than just
reflecting them. Sometimes money enables new forms of cooperation; more
often it facilitates domination. Human existence is not just facilitated
by money but also governed by it.

J.W. Mason is an Associate Professor of Economics at John Jay
College, City University of New York and a Senior Fellow at the
Groundworks Collective. He was formerly the Policy Director for the New
York State Working Families Party. Arjun teaches Economics at the
University. Arjun Jayadev is Professor of Economics at Azim Premji
University in India.
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Tissa Richards is a leadership expert, keynote speaker, and the award-winning author of No Permission Needed and Rethinking Resilience: Fueling Your Competitive Advantage. Her mission is to help bold, high-capacity leaders become unshakable. A repeat tech founder and CEO who has raised millions in funding, Tissa advises a wide array of companies on innovation and performance.

In an era when trust is eroding, holding back and failing to communicate is a greater failing than ever. Rather than act like a turtle withdrawing into your shell, be bold: that’s the message here. The better route is to be in learning more, applying lessons learned from “failures” so that you can seize on the opportunities ahead. Most of all, remember that resiliency is a team sport; the lone hero won’t cut it in a world where exponential growth happens through the chemistry of a community that provides synergy. Case in point: Tissa mentions her interview with a former Executive at Campbell’s, whose Prickly Pear Council proved to be so successful in airing and resolving conflicts that eventually it no longer needed to exist.

Real Transformations: Business Change That Works from the Inside Out is co-hosted by Julie Anixter and Dan Hill, PhD, entrepreneurs with deep experience as corporate change agents, devoted to helping companies make continuous change work for everyone through clarity and connection. To learn about their keynote talks, workshops and labs, check out Real-Transformation.com.
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Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

Today I'm speaking with Mordecai Kurz, Joan Kenney Professor of Economics Emeritus at Stanford University. We are discussing his latest book, Private Power and Democracy's Decline: How to Make Capitalism Support Democracy (MIT Press, 2026). After its high-water mark several decades ago, democracy's status continues to slide globally. Capitalism and democracy, which once seemed to complement each other, now appear at odds. Free-market policies and monopolistic technologies have enriched many while driving inequalities that harm workers. Many have opined on how to fix the political and economic problems of our day, from an embrace of radical libertarian policy to socialist ownership of the means of production. Mordecai Kurz's extensive study of capitalism and democracy charts a path for balancing economic and political freedom. Since the days of Adam Smith, technology has changed rapidly, necessitating new formulations that take into account the private power centers that exercise control much like monarchies did in the Age of Enlightenment. Despite the imbalance, capitalism still remains a driver of technological progress and innovation. How can we make both capitalism and democracy work for the good of everyone? I'm happy today to get the chance to speak with such an illustrious scholar and to learn a bit more about how to understand this defining puzzle of our age.

Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.
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