Accidental Theorist and Other Dispatches from the Dismal Science

It's 1999 and March. I'm in hospital with a very serious thrombosis in my right thigh. A friend turns up and gives me PK's latest - with a cheery smile. This'll cheer you up, Sunshine. This might be the last book I read and you bring me economics????Fortunately, he was right. I laughed a lot and cried at the foolishness of the carpet-baggers. I'd read a lot of PK's reviews in Slate before and it was lovely to have access to the best of them, here in a single cover. They range from rants on trade issues to a medley of observations on the Asian Financial Crisis. His piece entitled Bahtulism will remain a classic for years....just for the title. For me, what makes Krugman really great is not whether he's right or wrong, it's the fact that he can articulate his views quite beautifully and still explain where they are derived from. Many of academic peers are either good at being lurid pontificators (Hanke) or dry academics (Meltzer). Krugman is somewhere in the middle, except his economics is the witty, scarcastic kind. Imagine how good he'd be if he converted to the Gold Bug camp. Loonies with an articulate spokesman. Now that would be something special. Since I'm still alive and I laughed through most of the bad times in theatre, I'll have to give PK the five stars he's due.

Written for those with a basic understanding of economics, this book addresses many current issues. The short chapters make for quick reading, although I found the book hard to put down once I started reading. My main criticism of the book is the more or less unquestioning acceptance of globalization. As with globalizaton, one can make simple arguements that capitalism in general is a efficient system, so we should accept it, but "unfettered" capitalism or anything close to it was abondoned long ago. Similarly, I think most people today do not fear globalization, but instead fear "unfettered" globalization. I don't think Dr. Krugman really had much to say about the details of globalization, and the devil is in the details, as they say. I also question his prediction that education will be de-emphasized in the new century. If the past has been any indication, the advance of technology has required more education, not less. I agree with him that the jobs available will probably be more "vocational", but even these will require more training, because they will probably require use of high-tech equipment. Anyway, as society becomes more productive, more people will be freed to teach, discover and create knowledge, and creation of an enlightened public will help to make a better future. Dr. Krugman seems to have a rather "blue-collar, economic man" attitude about the future, that everyone will do what they can to make the most money they can. Despite my few criticisms, I highly recommend this book. He makes many points that are quite valid and useful in understanding current economic issues.

This book is a collection of short articles on various economics' topics, from jobs, to right-wing economics,globalization, speculation, the Asian economies' growth halt, currencies crisis, and others ... . It is very light and lively reading, an ideal trip companion, especially for financial districts' commuters. As it is often the case with Krugman's writings, it is illuminating - for unaware people at least - on certain topics. After Masterpiece (in my view) "Pop Internationalism", this book provides an additional antidote against "shibboleths", slogans that take the place of hard thinking.

It is an empirically measurable fact that management and economics are "hot" topics. Hot in the sense that a lot of people seem to be interested in them at this time; hot also in the sense that tempers tend to run amok during discussions touching these fields. Now, one would expect that, given high demand by the general public, supply would soar. And so it did in some sense: the number of "economics" and "management" books written every year is immense. Sadly, many such books -- as much commentary on those topics -- are to Economics (or management) what fad diet books are to nutrition.In such an environment, books like "The accidental theorist" by Paul Krugman, and last year's "The witch doctors", are refreshing and important. Refreshing because they use reasoning and logic rather than jargon and fallacies. Moreover, the expositive style of Krugman is enjoyable, and the choice of illustrative examples is inspired. In some ways it takes more sophistication to understand the relevance of "toy" models than the average reader will have; hence Paul quickly points out a real-world, large scale example.These books are also important because the fields are horribly misrepresented to the general public. Economics is a serious and technical subject, but one in which a handful of graphs and equations can point out the fallacies in good sounding text. Unfortunately, most "economics" best-selling books will present arguments that sound good, but have the misfortune of being completely and utterly wrong. Debunking books like those best sellers is a step on the way to relieving society of the floating nonsense.The book itself is a collection of essays. Most of these essays are available at Krugman's web page. Some are first time in print. Since readers can get a reasonable sample of what the book is like online, I will only point out a few favorites.In the title essay for the book, Krugman shows very clearly the power of a simple model ("Suppose that there are only two products in the world, hot-dogs and buns. Labor is the only input to production..."; paraphrased) to explain the effects of labor mobility and productivity changes. Then, after deriving some implications which debunk a common current myth about productivity effects, he removes the toy-nature of the model: substitute hot-dogs for services and buns for manufactures; see what happens? It describes the evolution of our society from industrial- to service- economy. Look at the data. Just as predicted from the hot-dog/bun model.What to solve the US trade deficit problem? Just secede NYC from the rest of the US. Oh, sounds ridiculous, you say? Then why a separate account for Hong-Kong relative to China?You can also find in the book an article about supply side (more precisely about some supply siders' lunacy and bad advice) which was meant for the Wall St. Journal, written by invitation. Alas, it was killed by the editor (himself a strong supply-sider). Guess what would have happene