2B RED: From down home🍋
Reviews of books by New Zealand authors
In selecting books to include in this column, 2B RED strives to highlight the interesting, the accessible, those bearing on current issues, and sometimes the quirky. Of course, like most things in life there are trade-offs at times. An additional criterion is that from time to time some coverage should be given to books by New Zealand authors. So this edition of 2B RED will do just that – with some recent ones, some older ones, many but not all with economics as their central theme. As New Zealand books have been included in earlier columns from time to time, you may wish to check earlier editions of 2B RED before expressing your concern that this post doesn’t mention your favourite books and authors.
The Black Death and the rise of Europe
Our first entry The World the Plague Made: The Black Death and the Rise of Europe (Princeton University Press, 2022) is from leading New Zealand economic historian Jamie Belich, until recently at Oxford University. Perhaps he is most well-known at home for his books and TV series challenging conventional views of the Māori Wars, “New Zealand's civil wars” as he referred to them. In his recent book he challenges the "pessimists" view that the Black Death left Europe devastated and impoverished for decades after the initial pandemic in the mid fourteenth century.
(I have had a long standing interest in the plague ever since the first question on an examination paper for admission to my doctoral programme was: Analyse the economic consequences of the plague. I struggled with the answers to a couple of other questions, but a good answer to this got me through.)
The central thesis of the book is encapsulated in its title, namely that the impact of the plague had far-reaching consequences and shaped the history of Europe for centuries. In particular, the more immediate consequence (from 1350 to 1500) was an economic boom, which the author argues could be regarded as a "golden age".
This "optimists" view rests on the simple and now obvious fact that the plague killed an estimated 50% of the population; but the non-human capital of societies was untouched. The lands, the farms and their livestock, the roads, ports, ships – in short, the infrastructural capital of society — was still there. So the simple arithmetic follows that per-capita wealth doubled. The story that Belich tells stems from this fact.
The shortage of labour lead to a significant rise in real wages and disposable incomes, which benefitted a wide swath of society from landless peasants and labourers, to petty traders and merchants. Concomitant with the rise in incomes was an expansion in aggregate demand especially for "luxury" items like spices, sugar and fine textiles hitherto unattainable for all but a few. This in turn lead to innovations in labour saving technology, to greater use of waterpower, to increased international trade, to bigger and faster ships, and to institutional changes in finance and business. By the 1700s, when the population numbers eventually recovered, the expansion ran out of steam. But the aftermath of the plague had already shaped much of Europe.
In an effort to assign causality to the plague in underpinning and moulding so much of society, economies and technology, the author at times needs to draw a long bow. But he is careful to distinguish between examples where he finds solid documented evidence and those where he suspects it was the plague that "caused" what followed.
A study of this nature always demands that we consider the counterfactual; namely how, in what ways, and at what speed would Europe have developed without the plague? There are never easy answers to these questions. One might try and extrapolate from the pre-plague economic growth rates; or one might compare the performance of “similar" economies escaped the plague. Both have their challenges and limitations.
In a lecture at Balliol College in 2024 the author indirectly addressed the counterfactual, hinting that absent the plague, there would have been some expansion but "I doubt Europe would have expanded and developed so much without the Blank Death's terrible pruning."
In addition to the central theme, the book contains an enormous amount of associated history reflecting a huge amount of research (and resulting in 640 pages).
Careless people
Our next New Zealander has been making headlines of late: Sarah Wynn-Williams author of Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism (Flatiron Books, 2025). Wynn-Williams was born in Christchurch and graduated with a Masters degree in Law from Victoria University.
She has had what has to be called a "stellar" career: at only 45 years old she has worked on international security, international law, and human rights at the United Nations General Assembly; served as the Chief Negotiator for the United Nations on biosafety liability; practiced law at Mallesons, Stephen, Jacques law firm in Sydney; been seconded to Niue’s Attorney General’s Office to work on counterterrorism measures and human rights issues; managed the political affairs and government relations office at the New Zealand embassy in Washington, DC; been appointed as an adjunct law lecturer at Victoria University; and most recently, Sarah been Head of Relations with the World Bank and IMF for Oxfam International.
Of particular interest here is that part of her career at Facebook (now renamed as Meta). After leaving the NZ Embassy position, she joined Facebook in 2011 (after pitching for a job which they created for her) and became the Director of Global Public Policy. In this role she made countless trips (in the CEO's private jet) to many countries "selling" Facebook, or more often than not negotiating to minimise government regulations that constrained Facebook or even in some cases threatened to shut it down. In 2017 she was fired. What happened in the intervening years is documented in a tell-all book.
The longer she worked at Facebook the more disillusioned she became. Her disillusionment has two major strands: personal and corporate. On the personal side she documents a toxic work environment, very family-unfriendly with brutal working hours, "compensated" for by many benefits from free meals at work, transport from home and even laundry service – all designed to save time from the daily chores of life and consolidate the power of Facebook over employees. She was made to work during a brief maternity leave and was sending emails from her laptop when propped up in the delivery room minutes away from the birth of her first child. Sexual harassment was ever present, including insistence by one senior manager, Sheryl Sandberg (number 2 to CEO Mark Zuckerberg) that Sarah go to bed with her (the refusal was not career enhancing).
On the corporate side, she constantly raised concerns about Facebook's disregard for potential harms the platform might create and its arrogant and superior attitudes toward governments and even heads of state. She documents how in the lead up to the 2016 US presidential election, Facebook had a team embedded in the Trump campaign. A data base named Project Alamo was created with the individual profiles of 220 million people in the USA. It encompassed such things as gun registration, voter registration, credit card and shopping histories, websites visited, type of vehicle they owned and the last time they voted. Facebook used its algorithms to send targeted messages to individuals — many of the ads contained inflammatory misinformation that drove down the price of advertising. As a voter suppression tactic, they sent dark posts as targeted at three groups of Democrats: young women, blacks, and white liberals.
The author describes how many times over an extended period she considered resigning — sometimes arguing that she could not afford to, or to lose health insurance (a claim that did not ring very true, given the eye watering salaries they were paid).
Meta's poorly conceived attempt to gag the author and stop her promoting the book, as well as attempting to enforce a non-disparagement agreement and legal manoeuvres to shut her down (or up?) have done more to increase sales than the inherent literary quality of the book would ever have justified. But the book reveals the good, the bad and the ugly of corporate power – and that is a contribution.
A clash of cultures
Continuing the theme of New Zealand authors, but departing from the usual fare, I offer a novel (no, not economics per se!)
Lauren Keenan (Ngāti te Whiti o Te Ātiawa) has written a gripping piece of historical fiction, The Space Between (Penguin 2024). Set in Taranaki in 1860, its central theme is the clash of cultures between Māori and the settlers. There are two central characters: Frances, a 30 year old spinster who has migrated from London after her family fell on hard times; and Mataria, a Māori woman married to an Englishman, a fact which largely results in rejection by her own iwi.
Mataria is a former slave who impresses the reader with her dignity throughout the book: "Why should I swear allegiance to a queen I have never met?" and "why would I require a pass to walk on the land where my ancestors have been for generations?"
The juxtaposition of the two cultures is underscored by the literary technique of having Frances and Mataria tell their stories in alternating chapters. Neither woman feels fully comfortable and accepted by their own culture, and hence tend to fall in the space between.
This is a beautifully written book with deep insights into an aspect of New Zealand history. One can appreciate why in 2025 it has been awarded the New Zealand Booklovers' Award for the Best Adult Fiction.
Oil is a tranquilizer
Weshah Razzak has had a distinguished career as an economist, academic and consultant. Throughout his career he has published extensively. Few "retired" economists could match his recent research output. The following are three books he has published recently since leaving full time employment.
In Inflation Dynamic: Global Positive Economic Analysis (Routledge, 2023), Razzak analyses inflation using time series data for 42 countries from 1960. The work is based on clearly specified hypotheses and careful econometric testing. The influence of monetary policy such as inflation targeting (where New Zealand was a leader) is assessed. Theory and estimation of the Phillips Curve is addressed in detail. There have been a range of "newer" theories and models of inflation. The author considers twelve such theories, including the fiscal theory of the price level and Modern Monetary Theory. Readers will find this compendium of these alternative theories a valuable guide.
Razzak spent nearly a decade as an economic adviser in the Middle East; firstly at the Arab Planning Institute in Kuwait, and later at the Central Bank of Oman. The following two books reflect the depth of his experience and understanding of the economics and politics of the region.
The (uncontroversial, but nonetheless interesting to explore) central thesis of The Future of Economic Development in the Gulf Cooperation Council States: Evidence-Based Policy Analysis is that these oil-rich countries are facing a finite non-renewable resource, and will inevitably have to adjust their fiscal policies to achieve sustainable budget and current account balances; and perhaps more importantly institute changes in the structural and institutional settings.
In the final entry, OPEC’s Dilemma and the Future of Oil: Navigating the Path to Net Zero (Routledge, 2024), Razzak highlights the challenges for OPEC of a world moving to net emissions of zero by 2050. The oil sector in each of the producing countries is a state owned monopoly with strong entrenched interests. The author makes the case for a more competitive structure which could respond more effectively to changes in world markets.
Moving toward net zero will reduce global oil demand and depress prices. OPEC may cut production to hold up prices, but reduced output means a lower GDP for those countries. OPEC countries are well aware of the need to diversify their economies, but the ongoing dependence on oil tends to kill off the incentives for faster industrialisation and improved productivity in the non-oil sectors (shades of Dutch Disease). As Razzak says, "Oil is a tranquilizer especially when the price is high". Anyone with an interest in the future of fossil fuels, emission reduction, and climate change will benefit from this book.
By Grant Scobie
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