Finance and the Good Society

Translated from English by Yu. Kapturovsky; edited by T. Drobyshevskaya, A. Smirnov. – M.: Gaidar Institute Press, 2014. – 504 p. 

ISBN 978-5-93255-389-3 

The reputation of the financial industry after the 2008 financial crisis is worse than ever. Robert Shiller, professor of economics at Yale University and laureate of the I.M. Shiller Prize, is a leading economist at the University of California, Berkeley. Shiller, winner of the 2013 Alfred Nobel Prize in Economics, is one of the few people to have predicted both the stock market bubble of 2000 and the housing bubble that led to the 2008 crisis. Yet in this important and timely book, Shiller argues that we should not condemn finance, but rather make it work for the good of society. He shows that finance, far from being a parasite on society, is one of the most powerful tools we have for solving our common problems and increasing shared prosperity. We need more financial innovation, not less, and finance must play a greater role in helping society achieve its goals.