Simon Johnson

History contains useful warnings and lessons and today’s economic policymakers would do well to heed them, says the IMF’s former chief economist, Simon Johnson. He recommends books showing why economic history matters.

The US, the UK and many other countries have become far less equal over the past 30 years. The MIT economics professor Daron Acemoglu recommends inequality books and reading because he says it’s important we understand how and why this happened, and what it means for our societies.

The author of “The End of History” says the financial crisis revealed a great deal about the nature of America’s political and economic system. The shame, he says, is that opportunities to change it are now being ignored.