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Truth About Markets: Why Some Countries Are Rich And Others Remain Poor Paperback – International Edition, June 1, 2004

by John Kay (Author)

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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.

Print length

496 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Penguin UK
Publication date

June 1, 2004
Dimensions

7.8 x 5.08 x 1.17 inches
ISBN-10

9780140296723
ISBN-13

978-0140296723
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

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.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0140296727
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin UK; New Ed edition (June 1, 2004)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 496 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780140296723
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0140296723
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.8 x 5.08 x 1.17 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,884,961 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,683 in International Economics (Books)
- #6,563 in Systems & Planning

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4 out of 5

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Raymond Hoche-Mong

Making Economics understandable

Reviewed in the United States on October 16, 2016

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The best and most clear treatise for one interested in understanding what economics and its value does for humanity. Well written, direct, and
easy to absorb, especially for a discipline, a subject, as complex and any. If you are curious and also puzzled by economics read this work by Dr. Kay.

One person found this helpful

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Michael Emmett Brady

Capitalism requires much more than just "free"markets

Reviewed in the United States on June 9, 2005

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Kay shows that successful capitalistic development over time requires much more than just free markets.Free markets are a necessary,but not sufficient,condition for success.Additional requirements are the provision of significant amounts of public goods and infrastructure(health,education,transportation,communication),the rule of law,legal institutions,and the existence of social,political,and cultural institutions that minimize economic and political corruption.Kay's correct analysis is marred by his ignorance of three important side issues.First,he claims that Keynes provided no mathematical model of his theory of effective demand in the General Theory(Kay,p.179).Keynes's mathematical model is presented in chapters 19-21 of the GT.Keynes presented the major result on pp.261-262 TWICE-Full employment requires that the marginal propensity to spend equals 1.Keynes then presents the technical analysis in the appendix to chapter 19,chapter 20 and chapter 21.The formal result is that w/p=mpl/(mpc+mpi),where mpc is the marginal propensity to consume,mpi is the marginal propensity to invest,and mpl is the marginal product of labor in the aggregate.Unless mpc +mpi=1,labor,as a whole,will be unable to reduce the unemployment rate by cutting their money wage.Second,Kay apears not to understand the difference between uncertainty and risk.He mistakenly associates uncertainty with the work of Allais and Kahneman and Tversky.Uncertainty analysis requires theincorporation of Ellsberg's analysis.Ellsberg appears nowhere in this book.Finally,Kay appears to be completely ignorant of the nearly 50 years of work by Benoit Mandelbrot demonstrating that the foundations for the Black-Scholes equation and the Efficient Market Hypothesis,the existence of a stable normal probability distribution,does not exist.Overwhelming statistical evidence has demonstrated that the relevant probability distributions for price movements in all financial markets are NOT normally distributed.I recommend that Kay seriously consider reading Mandelbrot's 2004 book,"The (Mis)Behavior of Markets"and then revising his book.

4 people found this helpful

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George Benaroya

A good review of economic prosperity in different countries, with interesting examples of things that work/ do not work

Reviewed in the United States on July 6, 2013

Good summary of what the UK earns and spends
One factor that the book does not look at extensively is the difference that good management (of a country) makes. There are, however, some facts provided when looking at the natural resources per head and the economic development of Argentina, New Zealand and Brunei

One person found this helpful

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Matzbravo

How to perceive reality

Reviewed in the United States on October 20, 2013

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Line after line of trenchant, lucid insights into the nature of markets and human behavior.

Mr. Kay shows why humility, doubt and experimentation should be the main tools for approaching economic problems.

Read his regular columns, too, in the Financial Times if you want to be wiser.

2 people found this helpful

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David Tonghou

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on February 7, 2018

Excellent!

Not NEW as stated in condition description

Reviewed in the United States on June 12, 2023

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Just one photo of several pages that were underlined by previous readers….so the book was NOT in NEW condition

Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2007

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This book offers an explanation of why some countries did not experience large economic growth since the end of WWII, with an emphasis on South India, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Latin America. The author provides two reasons. First, some countries such as India and Eastern Europe decidedly went the route of central planning, a system that could never master the coordination and communication aspects that free markets naturally achieve. Others such as sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America tried free markets, but did not have the political and social institutions to make it work.

Specifically, the author argues that disciplined pluralism is the key to a successful economy, and free markets are the best starting point to get there. Pluralism means that individuals and units of individuals have choices for nearly all their economic decisions, such as what food to grow, what job to take, where to live, where to invest in, etc, etc... Disciplined means that these choices are offered and made in a common framework that everyone mostly adheres to without second thoughts or asking questions. Not enough discipline or not enough pluralism and free markets can degenerate into either monopolies or anarchy.

The author supports his arguments by looking at the history of nations, states, cities and companies throughout the past 200 years from various places in Western civilization. In doing so, the author also highlights major achievements in economic thought and how they have reflected, interpreted, or sometimes guided the actions of individuals and nations. So the book is two-fold; it serves as a history of economics and a history of economic theory. All in all, a good book and great reading.

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Jose J_D

Ilustrativo

Reviewed in Spain on October 29, 2018

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El libro proporciona una visión general de los modelos económicos y de la historia de la economía. Su lectura es bastante amena e ilustrativa, aunque puede resultar algo confuso en algunos apartados. Por supuesto, no da una respuesta simple a la pregunta que afirma responder en el título, salvo decir que la respuesta es muy complicada y depende de muchos factores. En general, es un buen libro, pero yo prefiero los últimos libros del mismo autor en los que explica estas ideas con mayor claridad y concisión.

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Russell

Bizarre

Reviewed in Australia on July 16, 2020

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I only got through about 15 percent of this book before I gave up. It starts by going through some data establishing that some countries are indeed rich and some poor. Fair enough. I thought then it would outline a hypothesis as to why this was so and then argue the case. Not so. Seemed to flit around a number of economic concepts and make a number of trite and, to my view at least, poorly substantiated observations about them. The treatment of some items I found bizarre. For instance, in talking about how economic systems allocate goods it uses a Van Gogh painting and the soccer World cup hosting as examples.
I gave up when it it identified the socialist/communist dictum of "from each according to his ability to each according to his need" as the objective of ALL economic systems. Well yes, if you want to live in poverty.

Athan

An impassioned plea for moderation

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 29, 2016

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This future classic was completed in 2002, following the collapse of the Internet stock market bubble and the Enron / WorldCom scandals.

John Kay can be forgiven if he erroneously thought that “The Truth About Markets” would be some sort of epitaph for the failed “market fundamentalism” / “shareholder value” / “greed is good” era. We now know that, alas, he was at best delivering a palate-cleanser of the kind you get served at fancy restaurants after the appetizers.

He perhaps did not fully realise that the widespread direct and indirect ownership of assets had by the turn of the century turned asset prices into a primary target of government policy, and that all asset prices (stocks, bonds, housing, collectibles), by dint of having embedded themselves into the balance sheet of the banking system and the entitlements of an ageing population, would become the object of unprecedented support from central banks and policymakers, alongside Wall Street, the City and the CEOs he blames for their ascent.

Regardless, this book has stood the test of time.

There is a rich literature, chiefly academic literature, which seeks to explain that the most important differentiator between successful and unsuccessful states lies in the existence of robust, pluralistic institutions (some official and some unofficial) that serve to support the functioning of markets and societies. This literature is often convincing, but is usually very narrowly focused and quite often attempts to explain too wide a range of developments along simple axes. Acemoglu and Robinson, for example, wrote a 500 page book about the interplay between inclusive versus extractive political institutions and inclusive versus extractive economic institutions. My favorite Mancur Olson has written extensively on this topic too: he differentiates between spontaneous markets and markets that are fostered by governments, the latter being the ones that make countries rich. And so on. These, otherwise fantastic, contributions, are mere models, however.

John Kay goes one further than these pioneers, in that he dares to make some enemies:

First, he adopts the language of the statists, to unmask the “democratically elected,” state-appointed experts who are meant to take consideration of the long term consequences of their decisions and are meant to internalize the externalities of markets. In truth, he says, they are guaranteed to fail, because once the decision has been made about the best possible plan, centrally-planned systems inherently do not accept criticism. Any failure is attributed to the insufficient implementation of the plan, rather than the plan the experts designed. Democracy is not a sufficient condition for economic success. Direct democracy, in that it undermines specialization, even less so. More to the point, a democratic mandate for a policy does not make it good economic policy. Both the UK and the French approach to energy generation are considered here as examples of how not to do business and they provide truly illuminating “proof by contradiction” of the author’s view.

The opposite view, that markets alone provide the solution, because they represent the result of billions of decisions and billions of adaptations by billions of agents is also unmasked as naïve, among other things because a lot of the most important things in our lives you cannot necessarily buy or sell or insure against. Tradable markets are often a side-show in our life. You cannot buy and sell organs is what our society believes at the moment, for instance. The things we can trade, besides, can become casinos, like the market for foreign exchange which is 300 times larger than the needs that arise from international trade. Perhaps even more importantly, many markets by their very construction will never become perfectly competitive (for example, electricity distribution in a small country) and therefore a market solution may by construction be imperfect.

My favorite analogy, however (and in this case it does not suffer from the “fallacy of composition“ argument that undermines the “Schwabian wife” economics), is that the same way a teacher is fully expected to take his students’ interests in mind, all while he is earning the salary to pay for his own kids’ milk, a corporation must first have a duty to its customers, all while taking care of its employees and shareholders.

Care is additionally taken to tell you how we got here and how we get stuck in the ways we’re doing things: it’s because as economic agents we would be foolish to do anything other than to adapt to our immediate, narrow, environment. When in Rome, do as Romans do. So when in Greece, evade tax, when in Russia, bribe. When in the US, presumably, make a donation to the Clinton foundation (he does not actually say that in the book, I just thought I’d stir the pot)

And no, I have not succeeded in condensing a 300 page tome into 4 paragraphs, you’ll have to buy the book and read it yourself!

The best thing about the book, however, is that it succeeds in defining the terms of the debate.

John Kay recognizes that the answers to economic issues are a matter of taste. Market fundamentalists may prefer the lower overall growth / wealth that will ensue in the absence of government and redistributionists may prefer a lower growth / wealth if it is more equitably distributed. These are not differences that economics will ever resolve and economists should refrain from conflating this debate with economics.

If growth and prosperity is what you want, however, the argument is made very persuasively that it’s best to carve a course down the middle of the road. The lists of countries at the beginning of the book are provided as (very compelling) evidence and the rest of the book successfully explains why it's worth it to do the work, rather than default to a doctrinaire approach.

The book is not perfect. I really wish the author did not refer to the right-wing setup as the “ABM,” which stands for “American Business Model” because it not only dates the book, it actually turns it into a bit of a polemic. Also, the idea of “embedded markets,” which the author sets out as the nirvana we need to reach, is not fully developed. In choosing to explain his favorite set-up of “embedded markets” via the example of higher education, the author has actually made a poor choice (though obviously we have the benefit of 15 years of hindsight in observing US higher education is in crisis, rather than a role model “embedded market”). And, needless to say, in picking a “middle of the road” direction that is not “clear and simple” (yes, I’m quoting Mencken again) he is extremely unlikely to make a set of choices that will match any particular reader’s perfectly. I, for instance, take issue with his attitude toward the markets we are fortunate enough to be able to trade, to say nothing about his scorn for those who participate in them.

Regardless, it takes some doing to generate passion for the middle road.

It is this passion that elevates “The Truth about Markets,” a comprehensive, clear and detailed book, to the status of masterpiece.

5 people found this helpful

Jean Maurice Port

Bisschen reißerisch an manchen Ecken, aber lesenswert.

Reviewed in Germany on July 11, 2015

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Das Cover lässt selbst bei unverkennbar nunmehr in Stein gemeißeltem Desinteresse an Schuhen und Sandalen Rückschlüsse auf das inhaltliche Gewicht der in diesem Buch mit viel traurigem Trotz-Pathos geäußerten Vermutung zu (was so schier klingt, wie es sich liest!), man werde zur Not auch den letzten Scheißdreck unter die Leute bringen. Der Leser, der einem Satz wie dem zuvor irgendeine tiefere Bedeutung beimisst, kann auffallend häufig selbst auf einen Knopf reduzierte Fernbedienungen nicht mehr anwendungsgemäß bedienen.

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frank drennan

Normally I love John Kay's work

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 17, 2015

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Normally I love John Kay's work. This is a good book, but not a great book, spoilt a little by being longer than it needs to be. Nevertheless it touches on some important ideas and puts forward a cogent and persuasive explanation for the lack of economic progress in some parts of the developing world.

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