Friday, January 11, 2008

Blogs and Books

A lot of economists write on blogs to share their ideas and express their opinion on many current issues. The most famous are probabbly Mankiw (very conservative but very intelligent and insightful), Rodrik (good selection of topics but, according to me, he never has anything interesting or insightful to say) and Krugman (he writes more about US politics now).

Others that I like are Vox, Freakonomics and The Economist's Free Exchange. Right now they're mentionning how economics books are a complete disaster in France and Germany. It is actually from this Foreign Policy article by Stefan Theil:

“Economic growth imposes a hectic form of life, producing overwork, stress, nervous depression, cardiovascular disease and, according to some, even the development of cancer,” asserts the three-volume Histoire du XXe siècle, a set of texts memorized by countless French high school students as they prepare for entrance exams to Sciences Po and other prestigious French universities. The past 20 years have “doubled wealth, doubled unemployment, poverty, and exclusion, whose ill effects constitute the background for a profound social malaise,” the text continues. Because the 21st century begins with “an awareness of the limits to growth and the risks posed to humanity [by economic growth],” any future prosperity “depends on the regulation of capitalism on a planetary scale.” Capitalism itself is described at various points in the text as “brutal,” “savage,” “neoliberal,” and “American.” This agitprop was published in 2005, not in 1972. "



This is so scary. How can they invent this pop social science based on false facts and no scientific rigor at all. It's not even teaching economics, it's like just facts about the economy. This is crap, big time.

And while I'm at it, I had the misforture of studying in the French system before entering University, and I hated what I thought was economics. Being completly disoriented I ended up doing a Bachelor in Business after a disastrous year in engineering and then I discovered how interesting and insightful economics really was. Especially with some classes such as the history of economic thought with this book.

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