Book recommendations (listed by topic/region):
Behavioral Economics/Market Design –
Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics by
Richard H. Thaler
Who Gets What — and Why: The New Economics of
Matchmaking and Market Design by Alvin E. Roth
Labor Market and Technology –
The New Geography of Jobs by Enrico Moretti
Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a
Jobless Future by Martin Ford
Inequality/Economic Mobility –
Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas
Piketty
Inequality: What Can Be Done? by Anthony B.
Atkinson
The Globalization of Inequality by François
Bourguignon
Financial Crises –
The Shifts and the Shocks: What We’ve Learned-and Have
Still to Learn-from the Financial Crisis by Martin Wolf
Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World by
Michael Lewis
Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, The Great
Recession, and the Uses-and Misuses-of History by Barry
Eichengreen
The Road to Recovery: How and Why Economic Policy Must
Change by Andrew Smithers
Asia –
How Asia Works by by Joe Studwell
Indonesia, Etc.: Exploring the Improbable Nation by
Elizabeth Pisani
India: A Portrait by Patrick French
Reimagining India: Unlocking the Potential of Asia's
Next Superpower by McKinsey & Company Inc.
Unbalanced: The Codependency of America and China by
Stephen Roach
Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China by
Ezra F. Vogel
Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West by
Peter Hessler [China]
River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze by Peter
Hessler [China]
Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in
the New China by Evan Osnos
Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival by
David Pilling
Africa –
The Fortunes of Africa: A 5000-Year History of Wealth,
Greed, and Endeavor by Martin Meredith
The Looting Machine by Tom Burgis
Toxic Aid: Economic Collapse and Recovery in Tanzania by
Sebastian Edwards
The Bright
Continent: Breaking Rules and Making Change in Modern Africa by Dayo
Olopade
The Lion Awakes:
Adventures in Africa's Economic Miracle by Ashish J. Thakkar
Latin America –
Left Behind: Latin America and the False Promise of
Populism by Sebastian Edwards
Brazil: The Troubled Rise of a Global Power by
Michael Reid
The Accidental President of Brazil: A Memoir by
Fernando Henrique Cardoso
History/Political Economy/International Affairs/Development
Economics –
The Prize: The Epic
Quest for Oil, Money & Power by Daniel Yergin
The Fourth
Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State by John Micklethwait
and Adrian Wooldridge
Political Order and
Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of
Democracy by Francis Fukuyama
The China Model:
Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy by Daniel A. Bell
The Dictator's
Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics by Bruce
Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith
Currency Politics:
The Political Economy of Exchange Rate Policy by Jeffry A. Frieden
The Tragedy of
Great Power Politics by John J. Mearsheimer
Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and
the Making of the Modern Middle East by Scott Anderson
Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World
War by Raghu Karnad
The Raj at War: A People’s History of India’s Second
World War by Yasmin Khan
Midnight’s Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India’s
Partition by Nisid Hajari
Empire of Cotton: A Global History by Sven
Beckert
State, Economy and the Great Divergence: Great Britain
and China, 1680s-1850s by Peer Vries
How Does My Country Grow?: Economic Advice Through
Story-Telling by Brian Pinto
Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from
Atoms to Economies by Cesar Hidalgo
The Idealist:
Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty by Nina Munk
Global Capitalism:
Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century by Jeffry A. Frieden
Geek Heresy:
Rescuing Social Change from the Cult of Technology by Kentaro Toyama
The Age of Sustainable
Development by Jeffrey D. Sachs