The Shifts and the Shocks

We have been inundated with books about 'the financial crisis'. Martin Wolf believes that too much has been said about the purely financial aspects of the economic crisis, important though they are. The actual underlying problem, as this radical new book argues, is that the world economy is unable to cope with the huge shifts it is undergoing: rapid economic integration; competition from billions of new workers; technological revolutions; and huge floods of capital across the world. With those shifts have come vast and largely unforeseen financial shocks. It is high time - indeed, past time - for our economics to keep pace with our economy. Now, with The Shifts and the Shocks, it has.

Martin Wolf is Chief Economics Commentator at the Financial Times. He has been visiting professor at Oxford and Nottingham universities, a fellow of the World Economic Forum in Davos, and a member of the UK's Vickers Commission on Banking, which reported in 2011. His books include Why Globalization Works and Fixing Global Finance. In 2000, he was awarded the CBE for services to financial journalism, and in 2012 he received the Ischia International Journalism Award.