Losing Ground

“Charles Murray took the economic concept of moral hazard – the concept that if you reward people for bad behaviour then they behave badly – and turned it into prose. Reading the book moved me a notch to the right. It posed a challenge to liberals – to get more rigorous in our analysis.” Read more...

The best books on Public Finance

Jonathan Gruber, Economist

“This book is not exactly social science: in many ways it is a work of imagination. It relies on what he calls his ‘thought experiments’, where he invites you to look at problems from very different angles and other people’s points of view. He suggests thoughts in your head that you can’t prove exactly but seem persuasive when he shows them to you. What he tried to show was that the intensification of welfare dependency was not a result of the economy malfunctioning and that, paradoxically, the solution to the problems of the extremes and very ugly forms of poverty that were becoming visible was not greater support from government but less. “ Read more...

David Frum recommends five Pioneering Conservative Books

David Frum, Political Commentator