Scott Duke Kominers, Columnist

Must-Reads for 2017: Grappling With Backlash

The challenge to experts, economics and other big ideas.

December 12, 2017 at 5:00 PM UTC

Scott Duke Kominers is the MBA Class of 1960 Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and a faculty affiliate of the Harvard University department of economics.

There will always be a Twain section.
Photographer: Francois Guillot/AFP/Getty Images

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We’re living in a time of backlash against expert consensus in general, and against economic principles in particular. I thus spent much of this year reflecting on the purpose of economics in society – and on the role of ideas, more broadly.

Here are five books that shaped my thinking.