Hedging America

BOOK REVIEW - Robert M. Solow
John Cassidy, How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 390 pp., $28

The subtitle of John Cassidy’s book illustrates the problem. Most market failures--they occur every day--are not even nearly calamities. They start with the existence of partial monopoly power in this or that industry, with the result that the...