The global economic crisis of 2008--2009 seemed a crisis not just of economic performance but also of the system's underlying political ideology and economic theory. But a second Great Depression was averted, and the radical shift to New Deal-like economic policies predicted by some never took place. Perhaps the correct response to the crisis is simply careful management of the macroeconomic challenges as we recover, combined with reform of financial regulation to prevent a recurrence. In Economics After the Crisis, Adair Turner offers a strong counterargument to this somewhat complacent view. The crisis of 2008--2009, he writes, should prompt a wide set of challenges to economic and political assumptions and to economic theory. Turner argues that the faults of theory and policy that led to the crisis were integral...
