The Evolution of American Capitalism

Date: 27‑08‑2021

Source: Project Syndicate by William H. Janeway

William H. Janeway, a special limited partner at the private‑equity firm Warburg Pincus, is an affiliated lecturer in economics at the University of Cambridge and author of Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy.

 Although the American economic system has undergone significant change since colonial times, there are identifiable threads running through the centuries‑long narrative. Chief among these are the themes of „liquidity“ and state action – both of which can either be a blessing or a curse.

Jonathan Levy, Ages of American Capitalism: A History of the United States, Random House, 2021.

CAMBRIDGE – Jonathan Levy, a historian at the University of Chicago, is a leader in the burgeoning movement to place capitalism at the core of the American experience. His major new work provides a framework for reading American history over 400 years and a set of themes for explicating its conflicts and crises. Ages of American Capitalism is an outstanding work of scholarship and storytelling.

The “new history of capitalism” has been motivated in good part by the 2008 global financial crisis. The crisis demonstrated the impact that financial events could have on the real economy, thereby exploding the prevailing macroeconomic doctrine that treated such events as literally inconceivable. Levy is one of a number of generally younger historians whose work is available to enrich the ongoing construction of a macroeconomics that integrates the behavior of financial markets and institutions.