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To understand how humans react and adjust to economic alter we need to study individuals who reside in harsh environments. From death-row prisoners trading in establishments where money is prohibited to flourishing business owners in the world’s largest refugee camp, in the unrealised potential of cities like Kinshasa to the hyper-modern economy of Estonia, every lifestyle within this book has been hit by a seismic surprise, violently broken or changed for some reason.

People living in these odd about Intense Economies: Success, Failure, Future – Lessons from the World’s Limits and marginal places are ignored by amount crunching economists and political pollsters alike. Science suggests this is a blunder. This publication tells the personal stories of humans living in extreme cases, and of the economic infrastructure they develop. Here, economies are not concerned with the familiar stock market crashes, housing crises, or banking scandals from the financial pages.

In his quest for a purer view of how economies succeed and fail, Richard Davies takes the reader from the beaten way to places where area of the economy continues to be repressed, taken out, destroyed or turbocharged. By travelling to each of them and discovering what life is actually like, Great Economies tells little stories that reveal today’s biggest financial questions.

(c) 2019, Richard David (P) 2019 Penguin Audio