Good Economics for Hard Times

Very well done. I've read a LOT of economics in the past few years. These Nobel Prize winners wrote a wonderful study of Poverty economics - and they followed it up with this one. This discipline might actually become a science some day. They get behavioral economics - they understand about controlled experiments - and they are worried about our economic future - as well they might be. So they take the controversial economic decisions of our trying times, and explain the best research they have found - and point out how WRONG most of our government programs are. And how and why they are so blindly supported by the general public.. This is NOT rocket science - but it is advanced psychology. NOW - if we could just get this down to a 1 minute commercial for the super bowl - we might actually make some headway on getting the world's economy back on track. Well - at a minimum - you can help. Read it, refer it to friends - remember the stories and do not let those folk get away with their simplistic arguments. Thanks - we are all in this together and I'm counting on you. Thanks, Red Green.

This book stands as an academic investigation into many of the economic issues and concerns across the globe by the 2019 Nobel Prize winners for economics. As one would expect, it is not light reading and at times it requires slowing down to snail's pace to thoroughly grasp the implications of their writings. It takes on topics of immigration, wages, growth, the impact of policies, inequality, and most interestingly, how different countries have addressed their own economic agendas. The central question which kept showing up is why some economies succeed, and some don't. You can have two different countries, similar in many ways, but one makes it and the other fails. Why? The short answer, which I derived from the book, is that small differences in culture, finance, and institutions can be all the difference. Yes, a given policy can have an effect, but the outcome is not for certain. I often took notes along the way in reading this book and even used online sources to get for a better comprehension of some of the topics. If there is a criticism, it would be that it would have added better understanding if there were more illustrations in the way of graphs, connecting text with visual. I saw a YouTube video of the authors that had such graphs; it would have beneficial to the reader.

The concept of economics is always intimidating to me. So I’m really glad that I chose this book as one of the first in this field to read. I’m constantly moved by how humble the authors are despite being renowned economists. At the same time, they kept telling us throughout the book how good economics is really about being humble and curious. The writers’ take on immigration, people’s preferences, tax policies, global trade, and universal basic income make a lot of sense with abundant data/supporting research. I especially enjoyed the various social experiments which lead to those conclusions - they are so interesting and educational. Despite the book’s title placing economics front and center, it was a huge and welcome surprise to find that the authors talk a great deal about humanity and make it their primary concern for all issues. A good book expands your horizon and helps you become less biased. There’s a brilliant part that talks about how most Trump supporters wouldn’t like to be called racists; and calling them racists wouldn’t help with anything but instead just sow further division. Simple as that, but I don’t know why I didn’t see it before I read this book.

So worth reading! Well written, well conceived, excellent bibliography. A lightning speed review of development economics, poverty and its alleviation (or attempts to do so) some of the problems in the attempts, tempered with the understanding that we understand little, the humility to think we don't have all the answers, the hope that by trying what we know, and instituting on a large scale some of the solutions that have worked with randomized control trials, we can make the world a much better place. One where people are treated with dignity, one where happiness is provided a place in the sun, as much as is formal economic growth. Highly recommended.

I Liked this book very much. There are good ideas of how to try to improve our Economy and quality of life for everyone, and specially for the Poot people. The hard facts about how good is the immigration, and how to Transfer help to the Poor people in order to give them better opportunities…. This is a great book , although yo do not Enedina to agree with everything with the authors.

Banerjee and Duflo show how economists can improve the debate on divisive issues like immigration, trade, inequality, tribalism, and climate change. The many interesting examples in the book include: • How a volcanic eruption off the coast of Iceland, which randomly destroyed some homes while sparing others, created a natural experiment to study the benefits of migration. • How a study on the impact of banning employers from asking job applicants about criminal convictions actually increased racial discrimination in hiring. • Economists used randomized control trials to figure out that it was more effective to give insecticide-treated bed nets to poor families for free than to sell the nets to them at a low cost (so the families would value them) to prevent children from dying from malaria. • Participants who were paid to stop using Facebook for a month were happier and no more bored than before the experiment. • How bankers were found to be more likely to cheat at a dice game if they were encouraged to think of themselves as bankers than if they were encouraged to think of themselves as regular people. Note that one incorrect fact on page 103 deserves updating. The authors state: “Elinor Ostrom, the first (and so far the only) woman to receive the Nobel Prize in economics, …” Of course, the number of women Nobel laureates in economics has doubled since this book went to press.

Good Economics for For Hard Times looks at many of the issues consuming policy makers of today from an economist lens. It does not side with over simplified invisible hand ideas and instead focuses on many of the consequences of "market failures" that occur naturally and how they are occurring on a variety of scales in a variety of problems. The authors do not try to make all encompassing predictions but rather discuss several topics in some detail that are quite topical. For a general audience the book is both readable and informative though little/none of it is particularly revolutionary. The authors try to remind readers that there are no big picture solutions to the large issues we face, but with more disciplined economic reasoning we can at least face those problems with a better toolkit than our emotions. The author discusses many contentious issues including immigration, trade and growth. The authors start with two of the most charged issues of the day, namely the consequences of immigration to wages and the consequences of trade to employment opportunities. For the former, they give their arguments for the general economics consensus wisdom that immigration is a net positive and that immigrants contribute to society. They do cite those that disagree and their studies, namely the counterarguments of Borja, but then give further evidence to dispute him. From an economists lens they argue well but certainly the arguments that carry the day aren't based on reasoning. The authors also discuss trade policy and make the argument that if labor cannot frictionlessly move as a function of opportunity, classical capitalist arguments will fail in practice. The authors show that this is the case in the US and that the lack of labor mobility means that frictions of trade are real and require new policy thinking. The authors discuss big concepts like materialism and its use in framing economic goals via prioritizing GDP over other measures of wellness. The authors highlight that when policy is framed it is framed in terms of maximizing output and such a narrow goal is questionable. Distributional concerns about where wealth gets concentrated is not discussed enough and maximizing output without concern for distribution is something that should be reconsidered. The authors discuss Robert Gordon's concerns that growth is structurally lower than last century when several foundational technologies enabled decades long windows of productivity growth. They also discuss the statistical measurement of productivity growth coming from the internet and communications revolution and that part of it could be hard to measure but in all, it is less than last decade; though there are some reasons to believe that could change for the better in the coming decades. The consequences of the ICT revolution is also concerns about automation and its consequences. Here the authors give both pictures but highlight that there should be concerns and that concepts like living wage don't have the empirical support as leading to higher well-being that is touted by techno optimists who don't want to deal with the labor problem. Good Economics for Hard Times gives a readable economist overview of some of the problems faced today and the ways to think about them as well as the cost benefit we face. It is quite even handed and grounded in evidence rather than ideology. That being said, these topics are largely discussed more comprehensively in other books so discussions of Gordon's view on growth and discussions of the consequences of automation are largely overviews of the works of other people. The book is certainly well written and entirely comprehensible so for the interested reader it will have something to offer.

This is a book worthy of being a textbook in college. It is based upon a considerable number of scientifically conducted experiments in economics. Moreover, it covers a very broad range of economic issues germane to the United States in present and future planning. I will recommend it to legislators with whom I have contact. It should be required reading for them and/or their staff. We need legislators making decisions based upon scientific findings not just opinion.

Um dos melhores livros de economia que eu já li. Apesar de ser "didático", achei uma leitura difícil em inglês pela temática, termos etc. Aos leitores brasileiros, recomendo ler em português.

Me lo enviaron en una caja grande y suelto de esta forma me imagino que se estuvo deslizando a lo largo del viaje y llego ligeramente maltratado pero lo limpié y ya quedo bien.

Olduğu gibi, sarılmadan direk kutunun içine konulup gönderilmiş. Kenarları katlanmış, yırtılmış, hasar görmüş. Başka bir satıcıdan almanızı tavsiye ederim.

Good book

Mais à quoi cela sert il de gagner 0,2 ou 0,3% de croissance en plus par an (le troisième chapitre est sur la croissance), comme s'est vanté récemment le ministre français de l'économie en comparant le pays à l'Allemagne, quand une catastrophe non préparée fait baisser de 10% le PIB. A fortiori quand les 0,2% ou 0,3% de croissance ont été gagnés en faisant des économies sur le système de santé. Mis à part cette polémique, ce livre étudie en profondeur les mécanismes de croissance et les mécanismes de redistribution pour éviter l'extrème pauvreté. Ceci avec des exemples concrets principalement en Inde (l'un des auteurs est indien) et aux États Unis, et un peu aussi en France car Esther Duflo est notre prix Nobel d'ecomomie 2019