The Truth About Markets : Why Some Countries are Rich and Others Remain Poor [Paperback]

'one of the leading British economists of his generation' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'an ambitious and brilliantly executed book...It is accessible and witty, and it sheds light on the way the world works' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'written with wit and subtlety...an important contribution to the post-1990s reassessment of capitalism' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'[an] important new book...Kay makes an awful lot of sense about the limits of modern government' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Capitalism faltered at the end of the 1990s as corporations were rocked by fraud, the stock-market bubble burst and the American business model – unfettered self-interest, privatization and low tax – faced a storm of protest. But what are the alternatives to the mantras of market fundamentalism?

Leading economist John Kay unravels the truth about markets, from Wall Street to Switzerland, from Russia to Mumbai, examining why some nations are rich and some poor, why ‘one-size-fits-all’ globalization hurts developing countries and why markets can work – but only in a humane social and cultural context. His answers offer a radical new blueprint for the future.

It is bad form in Britain for an author to comment on a review but the Kirkus review is seriously misleading. The reviewer says that 'John Kay has produced a spirited, informative and very readable justification for the American Business Model'. Flattering, in a way, but not true. The chapter on the American Business Model concludes that 'The ABM is deficient for its naive approach to issues of human motivation, its simplistic analysis of structures of property rights, its inability to maintain efficiency in the face of imperfect information, its misleading account of markets in risk, its glossing over of problems of cooperation and coordination, and its failure to describe the generation of the new knowledge on which its very success depends.

John Kay is one of Britain's leading economists. He was the first (controversial) head of the Oxford Said Business School and for many years headed Europe's largest private firm, providing economic advice to companies and governments. He has a regular column in the Financial Times.