Social Limits to Growth
$34.75
- Paperback
258 pages
- Release Date
15 September 2025
Summary
Fred Hirsch’s Social Limits Growth is one of the sleeper hits of economics. Its brilliant and acute insights, informed by Hirsch’s experience as a journalist at The Economist before turning to academia, have become ever more relevant as liberal capitalism confronts challenges from austerity to the global race for scarce resources.
Hirsch makes the case for what he calls “positional goods”, which derive their value from being scarce in ways that can’t be relieved by t…
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781041109273 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 104110927X |
| Author: | Fred Hirsch |
| Publisher: | Taylor & Francis Ltd |
| Imprint: | Routledge |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Number of Pages: | 258 |
| Release Date: | 15 September 2025 |
| Weight: | 366g |
| Dimensions: | 22mm x 140mm x 216mm |
| Series: | Routledge Classics |
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Critics Review
‘Important books are rare. They are all the more welcome when they appear; and one need have no hesitation in naming as a classic Fred Hirsch’s new analysis of the inherent defects of the market economy as an instrument of human amelioration.’ - Peter Jay, The Times
‘An exceptionally interesting, original, and well-written book on one of the most important themes: what are the fruits of economic growth and why do they seem increasingly disappointing?’ - The Economic Journal
‘This highly original book makes a compelling argument that affluence, by creating a kind of congestion (much more than simple crowding), limits the welfare attainable by society as a whole.’ - Foreign Affairs
‘Important books are rare. They are all the more welcome when they appear; and one need have no hesitation in naming as a classic Fred Hirsch’s new analysis of the inherent defects of the market economy as an instrument of human amelioration.’ - Peter Jay, The Times
‘An exceptionally interesting, original, and well-written book on one of the most important themes: what are the fruits of economic growth and why do they seem increasingly disappointing?’ - The Economic Journal
‘This highly original book makes a compelling argument that affluence, by creating a kind of congestion (much more than simple crowding), limits the welfare attainable by society as a whole.’ - Foreign Affairs
Fred Hirsch
Fred Hirsch was an Austrian-born British economist and Professor of International Studies at the University of Warwick. Born in Vienna in 1934, after the Austrian Civil War, his family emigrated to Britain. Hirsch graduated at the London School of Economics in 1952 before working as a financial journalist on The Banker and The Economist, where he was financial editor from 1963–1966. He was a senior adviser to the International Monetary Fund from 1966 to 1972, before becoming a research fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, from 1972 to 1974. Already the author of several books, it was here that he started work on his best-known work, Social Limits to Growth (RKP, 1977). In 1975 he joined the University of Warwick as Professor of International Studies, where he worked until his death in 1978 at the age of forty-four.
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