New Ideas from Dead Economists: An Introduction to Modern Economic Thought
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- ISBN13: 9780452288447
- Condition: USED – VERY GOOD
- Notes:
Product Description
The classic introduction to economic thought, now updated in time for the publication of New Thoughts from Dead CEOs
This entertaining and accessible introduction to the fantastic economic thinkers throughout history— Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, and more—shows how their thoughts still apply to our modern world. In this revised edition, renowned economist Todd Buchholz offers an insightful and informed perspective on key economic issues in the new millennium: increasing demand for energy, the rise of China, international trade, aging populations, health care, and the effects of global warming. New Thoughts from Dead Economists is a fascinating guide to understanding both the evolution of economic theory and our complex contemporary economy.Amazon.com Review
Over 150 years ago, Scottish essayist Thomas Carlyle dubbed economics the “dismal science.” But it certainly doesn’t seem that way in the skillful hands of Todd G. Buchholz, leader of New Thoughts from Dead Economists. In this revised edition of a book first published in 1989, economics is accessible, significant, and fascinating. It’s even fun–for example, when he uses the cast of Gilligan’s Island and Henny Youngman jokes to clarify complex economic theories. “Why not have the last laugh on Carlyle by using the dead economists themselves to back their terrible reputations and to teach the lessons they left to us?”
Buchholz surveys and critiques economic thought from Adam Smith’s invisible hand of the 18th century to the depression-fighting thoughts of the Keynesians and money-supply concepts of the 20th-century monetarists. He also relates classic economic principles to such modern-day events as the fall of communism, the Asian financial meltdown, and global warming. Buchholz includes plenty of anecdotes about the lives of the fantastic economists: Karl Marx, for instance, was an unkempt slob; David Ricardo, the early-19th-century English politician and economist, was among the rare economists to get rich trading stocks; and Maynard Keynes was so homely his friends called him “Snout.” Here’s a lively and authoritative read for persons interested in the past, present, and future of economics. –Dan Ring
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The book is so dull that I have to place my first review on Amazon.com. I don’t know economics. I’m expecting thoughts from the legendary economists and how to apply their thoughts in the 21st century. I’m not interested in the their lives, their childhood, their education, their friends, their abilities, etc.
For example, “Marshall also realized that facts teach nothing by themselves”. I’m not interested in how he teaches, I’m interested in what he teaches. I’m already bored to death before the leader place some economic thoughts at the end of each chapter.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
I was forced to read much of this for an economics class and establish it shallow, regularly infuriatingly so. The leader swallows whole the complacent platitudes of modern economics and never, ever seriously examines his assumptions. Perhaps most irritatingly, it sometimes seems as though Buchholz has never read some of these economists first hand; he really mangles Adam Smith, and presents a distorted view of a man whose thought was much richer than anything here.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
A fantastic book for non-economists (like me). If you have a problem with this book, you are barking up the incorrect tree–read a monograph.
Also check out this book, older but also along the same vignette style:
The Worldly Philosophers : The Lives, Times, and Thoughts of the Fantastic Economic Thinkers by Robert L. Heilbroner
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
Buchholz(B)has written an above average book on the history of economic thought.His treatment of Adam Smith,Thomas Malthus and John Maynard Keynes is,sorry to say,not more than average.First,Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments is simply left hanging in the air.B doesn’t connect the two books.Smith spent over 50 pages of the The Wealth of Nations arguing for universal education and religious instruction.The private sector economic choice makers in Smith’s model are not atheistic libertarians who judge in the Invisible Hand.They are a mixture of highly moral judeo-christian-deist citizens for whom the ten commandments is a guiding light.Second,the conflict between the inductive empiricism of Thomas Malthus and the a priori,deductive rationalism of David Ricardo is not sufficiently highlighted.Malthus was a thinker seeking to run in the real world while Ricardo was most at ease in his theoretical ivory tower.Finally,B had a chance to write about some of the most powerful thoughts developed by J M Keynes in the A Treatise on Probability(1921)and the All-purpose Theory(1936;GT) that have been submerged for up to eighty years.B could have written about Keynes’s interval estimate approach to probability,Keynes’s specification of an pointer to measure ambiguity(uncertainty or weight of the evidence)some 40-50 years before Ellsberg,Keynes’s choice rule c(conventional coefficient of weight and risk)that incorporated certainty,reflection,translation and inclination reversal effects some fifty years before Slovic and Lichtenstein or Kahneman and Tversky published their work or gone to pp.55-56,ft.2 or pp.283-285 of the GT and integrated Keynes’s derivatives(take the anti derivative)to derive in clearcut fashion Keynes’s aggregate supply function Z(Z would turn out to be equal to P+wN,where P equals expected profit,w the money wage and N equals aggregate employment)that no economist has successfully derived in the last 65-70 years.Sorry to say,B does not list a single new thought from a dead economist that is also right.The title is thus to some extent misleading.B should have titled his book”New Applications of Some Ancient Thoughts of Dead Economists”.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
Feldstein has done an brilliant job in giving a lively account of economic history. By using plain everyday examples he guides the reader through the most influential thoughts of the fantastic minds of the western tradition. Everyone even with just a small interest in economics should read this book.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5