New Books in Economics

What’s going on in the Chinese economy? China reported GDP growth of just 4.3% last quarter. Consumption is sluggish, exports are booming, electronics manufacturers and chipmakers are reporting huge profits as car sales slump.

Joe Ngai and Nick Leung dive into the Chinese economy in their latest book The Next China Is Still China: An Insider's Playbook for Winning in the New Era (Scribner, 2026), which came out earlier this year. The book is motivated by a question many executives asked amid new U.S. tariffs and COVID-driven supply shocks: Is there another economy that can replace China’s massive consumer market and deep manufacturing base? The answer: No.

Joe Ngai is a McKinsey senior partner and chairman of the firm’s offices in Greater China. Frequently seen on media such as CNBC and Bloomberg, he has been named one of Forbes China’s 100 Most Influential Chinese Leaders, and he has also appeared on Bloomberg Businessweek China’s “Person of the Year 2025” list.

Nick Leung is a McKinsey senior partner and member of McKinsey’s global board of directors. He is also a lead-director of the McKinsey Global Institute, the firm’s independent research arm, where he directs research on macroeconomics, global trade, and geopolitics.

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.
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In Oklahoma, one out of every six residents is poor. One in five children lives in poverty and faces food insecurity. In Hungry Oklahoma: Confronting Poverty and Food Insecurity (U Oklahoma Press, 2026), native son and sociologist Robert Lee Maril follows in the tradition of the national bestsellers Nickel and Dimed and Evicted to illuminate the lived experience of poverty and food insecurity in communities across the state.

Maril's account is immediately personal. He begins with "guests," as shoppers are called by volunteers, waiting in line in the sweltering heat one summer for "Thy Will Be Done," a food pantry, to open. Unable to afford air conditioning, some guests don't buy foods that would spoil on the counter. One woman, Norma, carefully places only canned vegetables in her cart. When she returns to her twenty-year-old pickup, in the truck bed are lawn chairs, blankets, and pans-everything she owns. "The landlord told us this morning we was homeless," Norma says. "I'm not thinking straight."

Drawing on interviews and participant-observation data from his volunteer work at a food pantry, as well as census and sociological data, Maril documents in rich ethnographic detail the status of poverty and low-wage workers in the state today and within historical context. He explores how institutions-such as faith-based organizations, government, and food pantries-structure and shape experiences of poverty. While Maril celebrates the nonprofit and faith-based efforts that make a difference, this book also is critical of conditions and stereotypes that have entrenched poverty in the state.

Hungry Oklahoma ultimately suggests that persistent and pervasive poverty can be eliminated. Its moving accounts of real Oklahomans and their experiences make it a clarion call for not only those interested in policy issues but all Oklahomans who want a better today and tomorrow for those who call the state home.
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Authoritarian Markets explores the political foundations of China's banking boom and its far-reaching impact on the Chinese economy.

In
1978 China had no commercial banks. Today it commands the world's
largest banking system, with assets equal to 40 percent of global GDP.
In Authoritarian Markets: The Politics of China's Banking Explosion
(Cornell University Press, 2026), Dr. Adam Y. Liu argues that this rise
was not the product of market reforms but of political bargains and
bureaucratic mobilization.

In
the 1990s, Beijing issued bank licenses as bargaining chips—securing
cooperation from local governments as it pushed through painful reforms.
The result was a sprawling, competitive banking market built not in spite of authoritarian rule but because of it.

Drawing
on interviews, spatial data, census records, surveys, and experiments,
Dr. Liu reveals how local state banks became both engines of China's
growth and incubators of its current economic risks. Eye-opening and
persuasive, Authoritarian Markets offers fresh insight into the political logic of market development in China and authoritarian states worldwide.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. 
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Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Lana Swartz, Associate Professor of Media Studies and Shannon Mid-Career at the University of Virginia, where she runs the Digital Cultures and Economies Lab. Swartz is a creative and wide-ranging thinker and researcher. The pair focuses on Swartz's book, New Money: How Payment Became social media, and talks about her recent work on youth money cultures and on the rich business and media dimensions of contemporary nail artists and salons.
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Just how much damage is sport doing to the planet? In Global Sports Go Green—Or Do They? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026) Toby Miller, Profesor Distinguido at the Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico and Joan Pedro Carañana, Associate Professor of Journalism at Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
examine the ecological impact of major sporting events. Using case
studies of The World Cup, The Olympics, The America’s Cup and Formula
One, the book demonstrates the vast range of economic, social, cultural
and climate impacts of these mega-events. Offering a wide ranging and
compelling critique, along with consideration of resistance to carbon
sports, the book is essential reading for everyone with interested in
whether global sporting spectacles can really be sustainable.
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