Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist

by Kate Raworth

Overview

A Financial Times "Best Book of 2017: Economics”

800-CEO-Read“Best Business Book of 2017: Current Events & Public Affairs”

Economics is the mother tongue of public policy. It dominates our decision-making for the future, guides multi-billion-dollar investments, and shapes our responses to climate change, inequality, and other environmental and social challenges that define our times.

Pity then, or more like disaster, that its fundamental ideas are centuries out of date yet are still taught in college courses worldwide and still used to address critical issues in government and business alike.

That’s why it is time, says renegade economist Kate Raworth, to revise our economic thinking for the 21^st century. In Doughnut Economics, she sets out seven key ways to fundamentally reframe our understanding of what economics is and does. Along the way, she points out how we can break our addiction to growth; redesign money, finance, and business to be in service to people; and create economies that are regenerative and distributive by design.

Named after the now-iconic “doughnut” image that Raworth first drew to depict a sweet spot of human prosperity (an image that appealed to the Occupy Movement, the United Nations, eco-activists, and business leaders alike), Doughnut Economics offers a radically new compass for guiding global development, government policy, and corporate strategy, and sets new standards for what economic success looks like.

Raworth handpicks the best emergent ideas—from ecological, behavioral, feminist, and institutional economics to complexity thinking and Earth-systems science—to address this question: How can we turn economies that need to grow, whether or not they make us thrive, into economies that make us thrive, whether or not they grow?

Simple, playful, and eloquent, Doughnut Economics offers game-changing analysis and inspiration for a new generation of economic thinkers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781603586740
Publisher:	Chelsea Green Publishing
Publication date:	03/22/2017
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Kate Raworth is a renegade economist focused on exploring the economic mindset needed to address the 21st century’s social and ecological challenges. She is a senior visiting research associate and advisory board member at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute and teaches in its masters program for Environmental Change and Management. She is also senior associate of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership and a member of the Club of Rome. Over the past 20 years Raworth has been a senior researcher at Oxfam, a co-author of UNDP’s annual Human Development Reports and a fellow of the Overseas Development Institute, working in the villages of Zanzibar. She is also on the advisory board of the Stockholm School of Economics’ Global Challenges Programme and Anglia Ruskin University’s Global Resource Observatory. Kate lives in Oxford, England.

Table of Contents

Who Wants to be an Economist? 1

1 Change the Goal: from GDP to the Doughnut 27

2 See the Big Picture: from self-contained market to embedded economy 53

3 Nurture Human Nature: from rational economic man to social adaptable humans 81

4 Get Savvy with Systems: from mechanical equilibrium to dynamic complexity 111

5 Design to Distribute: from 'growth will even it up again' to distributive by design 139

6 Create to Regenerate: from 'growth will clean it up again to regenerative by design 175

7 Be Agnostic about Growth: from growth addicted to growth agnostic 207

We Are All Economists Now 243

Acknowledgements 251

Appendix: The Doughnut and Its Data 254

Notes 259

Bibliography 286

Image Credits 297

Index 298

Editorial Reviews

03/13/2017
This sharp, insightful call for a shift in thinking from economist Raworth posits that a long-overdue intellectual revolution has finally begun. According to her, the established model of economic thought no longer satisfies economics students, who are calling out for change; the education they’re receiving is out of pace with current economic realities. To formulate a better model, Raworth reversed the way she’d previously looked at economics. Rather than relying on established truisms, she laid out long-term goals for humankind and worked to figure out how economic thinking would allow us to achieve them. The result is a diagram consisting of a series of rings around a hollow center—the titular doughnut. Raworth places a “safe and just space for humanity” in a ring between a social foundation and an ecological ceiling, leaving human deprivation and planetary degradation, respectively, in the doughnut “hole” and outside the doughnut. The plan to move forward consists of seven ideas, such as shifting the goal of economists from addressing financial to humanitarian concerns, recognizing ecology as a significant factor in economic growth, responsibly redistributing wealth, and so on. This is a highly optimistic look at the global economy, and Raworth’s energetic, layperson-friendly writing makes her concept accessible as well as intriguing. (May)

Publishers Weekly

Publishers Weekly-

"This sharp, insightful call for a shift in thinking from economist Raworth posits that a long-overdue intellectual revolution has finally begun. According to her, the established model of economic thought no longer satisfies economics students, who are calling out for change; the education they’re receiving is out of pace with current economic realities. To formulate a better model, Raworth reversed the way she’d previously looked at economics. Rather than relying on established truisms, she laid out long-term goals for humankind and worked to figure out how economic thinking would allow us to achieve them. The result is a diagram consisting of a series of rings around a hollow center—the titular doughnut. Raworth places a 'safe and just space for humanity' in a ring between a social foundation and an ecological ceiling, leaving human deprivation and planetary degradation, respectively, in the doughnut ‘hole' and outside the doughnut. The plan to move forward consists of seven ideas, such as shifting the goal of economists from addressing financial to humanitarian concerns, recognizing ecology as a significant factor in economic growth, responsibly redistributing wealth, and so on. This is a highly optimistic look at the global economy, and Raworth’s energetic, layperson-friendly writing makes her concept accessible as well as intriguing.”

“I read this book with the excitement that the people of his day must have read John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory. It is brilliant, thrilling, and revolutionary. Drawing on a deep well of learning, wisdom, and deep thinking, Kate Raworth has comprehensively reframed and redrawn economics. It is entirely accessible, even for people with no knowledge of the subject. I believe that Doughnut Economics will change the world.”—George Monbiot, author; columnist at The Guardian

“This is truly the book we’ve all been waiting for. Kate Raworth provides the antidote to neoliberal economics with her radical and ambitious vision of an economy in service to life. Given the current state of the world, we need Doughnut Economics now more than ever.”—L. Hunter Lovins, president and founder, Natural Capitalism Solutions

“What if it were possible to live well without trashing the planet? Doughnut Economics succinctly captures this tantalising possibility and takes up its challenge. Brimming with creativity, Raworth reclaims economics from the dust of academia and puts it to the service of a better world.”—Tim Jackson, author of Prosperity without Growth

“Can anyone seriously suppose that today’s economic orthodoxies are going to bring the world back from the brink of chaos? We need to fundamentally rethink the way we create and distribute wealth, and Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics provides an inspiring primer as to how we must now set about that challenge. I hope it ushers in a period of intense debate about the kind of economy we now so urgently need.”—Jonathon Porritt, author of The World We Made;founding director, Forum forthe Future

“Not long ago, well-known development economist Kate Raworth’s Doughnut graphic became an overnight sensation. Now this marvelous book clearly and succinctly explains her re-envisioning of the economy. On a bookshelf crowded with attempts to reframe economic thinking and the way forward, this book stands out—brilliantly.”—Juliet Schor, author ofPlentitude

“Economics rightly is under the microscope. Kate Raworth’s insightful Doughnut is what every budding economist shouldsee when they first peer down the lens.”—John Fullerton, founder and president, Capital Institute

From the Publisher