1. Francis Green (2025). Hard At Work. Job Quality, Wellbeing and the Global Economy. Oxford, Oxford University Press. https://academic.oup.com/book/61605. More than three billion people are hard at work across the globe. The contrast between good and bad jobs has huge implications for general wellbeing and health. Are the good ones expanding, or are bad jobs taking over? What, if any, are the signs of social progress in this part of our lives? This book first develops a framework for understanding the relationship between job quality and wellbeing, based on the capability approach. It considers the evidence for this relationship. It is explicitly multidisciplinary, drawing on economics, industrial relations, sociology, psychology, and related areas. After reviewing the drivers of change, the book presents detailed new findings about country-level trends in job quality in much of the developed world, focusing in turn on seven dimensions: earnings, job prospects, working time quality, autonomy and skill, the social environment, work intensity, and the physical environment. The book considers the future of jobs in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic and the AI revolution and reviews how much corporations, workers, and governments could make a difference.
  2. Green, F. and D. Kynaston (2019). Engines of Privilege: Britain’s Private School Problem. London, Bloomsbury. Audio: http://www.audible.co.uk/pd?asin=B07RH4QJ7Q&source_code=ASUOR22205151900EG. This book contends that there is an irrefutable link between Britain’s private schools and life’s gilded path. It contends that, in a society that mouths the virtues of equality of opportunity of fairness and of social cohesion, the educational apartheid separating private schools from our state schools deploys our national educational resources unfairly and inefficiently, blocks social mobility and reproduces privilege, and underpins a damaging democratic deficit.
  3. Green, F. (2013). Skills and Skilled Work. An Economic and Social Analysis. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Skill and skilled work are widely considered important for promoting both prosperity and social justice. But how do we define and understand skill? This book brings together multiple perspectives — economics, sociology, management, psychology, and political science — to present an original framework for understanding skills, skilled work, and surrounding policies. Focusing on common themes across countries, it establishes the concept and measurement of skill, and investigates the role of employers, workers, and other social actors. It considers a variety of skill problems and how a social response from the government can be framed.
  4. Green, F. (2006). Demanding Work. The Paradox of Job Quality in the Affluent Economy. Woodstock, Princeton University Press. This book is a formal account of changing job quality, using quantitative indicators drawn from surveys and administrative data. It was described by one major reviewer as ” arguably the best overall account available anywhere of the circumstances of jobs and workers across the developed world”.
  5. Ashton, D., F. Green, D. James and J. Sung (1999). Education and Training for Development in East Asia The Political Economy of Skill Formation in East Asian Newly Industrialised Economies. London and New York, Routledge. With the East Asian “miracle”, the Four Tiger economies of Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea experienced some of the fastest rates of economic growth ever achieved in the latter half of the twentieth century. This book provides a detailed analysis of the development of education and training systems in Asia, and the relationship with the process of economic growth.
  6. Ashton, D. and F. Green (1996). Education, Training and the Global Economy. Cheltenham, Edward Elgar. Across the industrialized and developing world, education and training are regarded as paramount to economic growth but this view is rarely questioned or analysed. This book is an in-depth multi-disciplinary investigation of the link between economies and education and training systems.
  7. Green, F. and B. Sutcliffe (1987). The Profit System. London, Penguin Books. This early book was was published in 1987. It is held by 189 libraries worldwide. An introduction to political economy, putting the understanding of capitalism at its centre, it is an alternative to conventional introductory economics textbooks.

Edited Books

  • Unequal Britain At Work. The Evolution and Distribution of Job Quality (with Alan Felstead and Duncan Gallie), Oxford University Press, 2015.
  • Recent Developments in the Economics of Training, editor. (Two volumes). Edward Elgar, 2007.
  • The Restructuring of the UK Economy, editor, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989.
  • Issues in Political Economy, co-edited with P. Nore, Macmillan, 1979.
  • Economics: An Anti-Text, co-edited with P. Nore, Macmillan, 1977. Translated editions in Chinese (in Taiwan), Greek, Portuguese and Italian.