Understanding the Private–Public Divide

Avner Offer is Chichele Professor Emeritus of Economic History at Oxford University, Fellow of All Souls College and the British Academy. His books include The Challenge of Affluence: Self-Control and Well-Being in the United States and Britain Since 1950 (2006) and the co-authored The Nobel Factor: The Prize in Economics, Social Democracy, and the Market Turn (2016).

• Introduction; 1. Patient capital; 2. Corruption and integrity; 3. Plutocratic blowback; 4. Creating humans; 5. Exit from work; 6. Housing and democracy; 7. Climate change and time horizons; Conclusion.

'Family, school, railways? What do they have in common? They cannot be run well, or at all, as private for-profit enterprises and yet they are crucial for a good life. In this well-written and tightly argued book Avner Offer brings arguments to delineate the areas that naturally belong to the market and to the state. At the time when the neoliberal version of capitalism is widely questioned, this books proposes a new set of answers.' Branko Milanovic, author of Global Inequality and Capitalism, Alone.