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Economics: The User's Guide (2014)

by Ha-Joon Chang(Favorite Author)

4.15 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1620408120 (ISBN13: 9781620408124)

languge

English

genre

Food & Cookbooks

publisher

Bloomsbury Press

review 1: This book helps you structure your understanding and interpretation of economics. I appreciated the way the author emphasized teaching you *how* to think not *what* to think. His overview of the many schools of economics and comparing and contrasting them was especially useful. For instance, I had often lumped the neo-classical and Austrian schools together but now recognize that I am drawn to the way the Austrian school emphasizes the uncertainty and complexity of the economy whereas neo-classicalists oversimplify things. At the same time, the Austrian school overlooks other dimensions of economic activity (the role of technology and productivity gains, labor, and trade, for example), so you can turn to other schools (Schumpeterian, development economics) to analyze those... more dimensions. Instead of picking one school and ignoring the rest, you can pick and choose from each to best analyze and understand complex human behavior.
review 2: I really wanted to like this, but I felt like looking at economics this way was more disjointed than helpful. Instead of presenting a textbook approach to economics, Ha-Joon Chang tackles it more conversationally. After digging into the history of economic thought he explores a variety of current events and shows their ties to economics. Readers may take away a greater appreciation for what economics can tell us, but they probably won't get an understanding of how to "do" economics. less

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