This year’s Festival of Economics in Bristol ended yesterday and was another great success. The thing that most delights me, as the programmer, is the engagement of the (large) audiences with the issues debated by the panels. The aim of the Festival is to ensure there is a forum for debate between economists – and other social scientists and practitioners – and members of the public. We are in extraordinary times and it is essential to have a public space for discussion. In our small way, and with huge thanks to the organisers of the Festival of Ideas and all the sponsors, we achieved that again.

A while before the Festival I blogged about the books by contributors. This is an update about the books they variously mentioned in their talks.

Bridget Rosewell cited Kurt Vonnegut’s [amazon_link id=”0385333781″ target=”_blank” ]Player Piano[/amazon_link] on the fear of technological unemployment. Gavin Kelly referred to [amazon_link id=”0521379172″ target=”_blank” ]John Stuart Mill[/amazon_link]’s assessment of the Industrial Revolution (it had had no impact, he said in 1870 – the point being that in the previous 70 years real wages had risen by just 0.4% a year, whereas they trebled between 1870 and 1950). I referred to Brynjolfsson and McAfee’s [amazon_link id=”0393239357″ target=”_blank” ]The Second Machine Age[/amazon_link]. Adair Turner quoted statistics from Thomas Piketty’s [amazon_link id=”067443000X” target=”_blank” ]Capital in the 21st Century[/amazon_link]. Nigel Dodd referred to Keith Hart’s [amazon_link id=”1861972083″ target=”_blank” ]The Memory Bank[/amazon_link]. An audience member quoted Francis Fukuyama,[amazon_link id=”1846682576″ target=”_blank” ]The Origins of Political Order[/amazon_link].

[amazon_image id=”0385333781″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Player Piano[/amazon_image]

There are lots of tweets under #economicsfest, and when the videos are online I’ll add the link here. Next year’s Festival of Economics will take place from 12-14 November. Ideas for subjects are welcome!