Escolhas felizes: 3 livros recomendados

ISI Announces 2006 Templeton Enterprise Award Winners

1st Place - The Church and the Market (Lexington Books, 2005), Thomas E. Woods Jr., senior fellow in history, The Ludwig von Mises Institute.

2nd Place - Cowboy Capitalism (CATO Books, 2004), Olaf Gersemann, foreign news editor, the Financial Times Deutschland

3rd Place- The Ethics of the Market (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), John Meadowcroft, professor of public policy, King's College, London.

Três excelentes escolhas, das quais me sinto próximo, ainda que por razões diferentes.

No caso do The Church and the Market, pelo tratamento de um tema que me é especialmente caro: a relação entre catolicismo e economia de mercado, e por Woods o fazer partindo de uma posição solidamente (e saudavelmente) austríaca.

No que diz respeito ao Cowboy Capitalism, por me interessar particularmente este tipo de estudo comparativo de modelos económicos e sociais (ainda que os prefira feitos de forma mais sistemática) e por ter (premonitoriamente, como é óbvio) publicado uma recensão do livro no nº 25 da revista Nova Cidadania.

Finalmente, no caso do The Ethics of the Market - o meu preferido neste conjunto de três excelentes livros - por ter (também premonitoriamente) publicado uma pequena recensão (disponível aqui) no nº 15 da revista Atlântico e por estar convencido de que o autor - John Meadowcroft - será a breve prazo um dos académicos liberais de referência a nível mundial.

The Church and the Market

Filling a lapse in the debate on the role of religious thought in economic theory, The Church and the Market A Catholic Defense of the Free Economy, informed by the history of Catholic economic thought, shows that the long-seen contradiction between Catholic faith and support for the market economy does not exist.

Cowboy Capitalism

Europeans believe that, while the U.S. economy may create more growth, they have it better when it comes to job security, income equality, and other factors. Gersemann, a German reporter went to America, and found that the greater market freedoms in America create a more flexible, adaptable, and prosperous system than the declining welfare states of "old Europe." This book presents statistical data in extensive yet accessible charts and graphs.

The Ethics of the Market

The "Ethics of the Market" makes a distinctive contribution to the literature on the morality of the market by synthesizing the work of a number of liberal scholars into a systematic defence of the free market on ethical grounds. This defence addresses questions of social justice, the moral pre-requisites of a market economy, the nature of the needs that the market satisfies and the appropriate boundaries that should be placed around the operation of the market.

(anteriormente publicado n'O Insurgente)