Why How Economics?
Let me tell you about my book!
How Economics Can Save the World: Simple Ideas to Solve Our Biggest Problems started as a response to a literature protesting economics. You probably know what I’m talking about. A steady stream of books and op-ed pieces argue that the Economics Prize is not a real Nobel, that economics is not a real science, that economists are more like priests than scientists, and that economics is not only not the solution – it is the problem.
Economics has always been shadowed by a movement denouncing its practitioners, attacking its assumptions, rejecting its conclusions, and protesting its influence. Historian of economics William Oliver Coleman calls the movement anti-economics. Anti-economists don’t just disagree with specific theories or practices within economics. They want to dispense with the entire enterprise and start over again.
I confess that I get it. Economists are just so punchable. Not known for their modesty and humility, they seem to be asking to be taken down a notch.
But what used to be an innocent pastime for leftwing liberals took on a more ominous tone over the course of the last decade. With the rise of Trump, the reality of Brexit, populist politicians saying they’ve “had enough of experts” and announcing “a moratorium” on talking to them, anti-economics has come to look more like an expression of harmful science skepticism and fact resistance than a healthy and sound reaction to pretentious social scientists.
How Economics Can Save the World defends economics against its skeptics. It does not defend the economics profession, which is terrible in all sorts of ways, but the idea of economics as a science, and its ability to improve human well-being and the world in which we live.
The book shows what economics is by describing what it does. Over the course of some ten substantive chapters, it describes how actual, real-world economists struggle with challenges facing humankind – from the big to the small. It describes the economic way to end poverty and reduce inequality; improve parenting without harming yourself; address antisocial behavior; save lives; become happy, humble, and rich; build community and save resources; and more.
I hope to convince the reader that economics can fix the world in much the same way that medicine can heal the body – not magically and on its own, but when used wisely and judiciously, in combination with a decent ethics and aesthetics. In the process, the reader will be given a survey of the tools of economics and suggestions for how to apply them in their own lives.
Far from a defense of the orthodoxy, the book also describes ways in which economics can and should be improved – and how the community and other stakeholders can help make it better, more responsive to human needs.
I hope you’ll read it – especially if you’re skeptical. The book will be published in hardback, ebook, and audiobook versions on January 26, 2023.