Economics: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

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Economic Writing on the Pressing Problems of the Day: The Roles of Moral Intuition and Methodological Confusion," Colonialism/imperialism is directly mentioned once: Why didn’t the poor world take advantage of their resource endowments to enrich themselves in the same way? Achieving sustainable population: Fertility decline in many developing countries follows modern contraception, not economic growth," Michelle Baddeley, Professor in Economics and Associate Dean (Research and Development), University of Technology Sydney Economics has the capacity to offer us deep insights into some of the most formidable problems of life, and offer solutions to them too. Combining a global approach with examples from everyday life, Partha Dasgupta reveals the connections between economics, politics, and development, and shows how these interactions create the world we live in today.So... is liberal economics even meant to answer the question of global inequality, or is it designed to obscure not only the answers but how we frame the question?

As for calling this an 'economics' book, I really think that is open to interpretation. It was abundantly clear to me that the author had an agenda when writing this book and was not shy about it. I don't necessarily agree or disagree with her viewpoints, but books that are supposed to be references to technical subjects like economics shouldn't have the facts clouded with opinion and rhetoric. The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World I probably would not have been as disappointed with this book as I was had the title not included such misleading words as "Introduction" and "Economics". It’s difficult to explain how limited liberal economics is when you do not have the words to describe the real world. Here are some words:The Very Short Introductions series of Oxford University Press provides succinct introductions to more subjects than a person can reasonably hope to know. Parath Dasgupta offers a brief, pointed look at Economics in this 2007 volume in the series. Dasgupta is the Frank Ramsey Professor of Economics at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. Dasgupta was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his work in economics and has written many important books and studies. Perilous Passage: Mankind and the Global Ascendancy of Capital: an Indian economist, sharing Dasgupta’s famous economist father’s name, in a majestic work of political economy/history wp2016_17.rdf, Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze per l'Economia e l'Impresa. Admittedly, the Classical liberal economists (Adam Smith/David Ricardo etc.) did try to understand their world from their ivory towers, thus their theories featured: Compares the lives of two children in the Developed and Developing Worlds, and uses this as a key to uncover the processes that shape our lives and our futures.

Introduces key economic factors and concepts such as individual choices, national policies, efficiency, equity, development, sustainability, dynamic equilibrium, property rights, markets, and public goods. Yes, sarcasm; the world is reduced to a poorly-lit alley and the author only examines what is under the street light: economic growth (GDP), standard of living (HDI), demography ( population growth, ugh...), trust (how to model it), communities, markets (including the central planning vs. free market "debate", market failures, etc.), institutions (in particular science and technology), households and firms (including property rights, risk), modelling sustainable economic development, modelling social wellbeing, and even the game theory of voting (framed as if this is an adequate intro to “democracy”, how liberal reformist can we get?!). Up-to-date and progressive, this short book is written by an internationally recognized authority in the field. Middle-class behaviour can also be the trigger for change”: Ah, yes, “middle-class”, the only class vocalized by liberals to justify inequality (i.e. there is still social mobility if you earn it, thus capitalism remains a meritocracy). Nothing about power (esp. political bargaining power). Yes, we get the vague history of Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. As in, that stuff that happened a long, long time ago, but there is no modern history because we now have the science of (liberal) economics and political "independence"/ "democracy"!

A little learning is a dangerous thing"; and a "very short introduction" does not have to be easy. Dasgupta's book is not written "for dummies" and it does not present its subject in the manner of an introductory textbook. Instead, Dasgupta offers the lay reader an example of how economists define problems and issues and try to solve them. In other words, the book offers the reader an example of how to "think like an economist". This gives the book a dense character. Dasgupta develops his own way of approaching and his position of questions of economics, neither of which might be fully shared by all members of his profession. Class (i.e. class analysis) remain forever opaque in (modern) liberal economics (remember, this was actually foundational to the Classical liberals), with 2 inconsequential mentions: Ah yes, all the poor need to do is “do business” and this magically produces wealth which magically distributes to the poor to uplift their standard of living. Because Western Europe just did business for 300 years (1500-1800) before their domestic (yes, let's not even consider the colonies/slaves) masses recovered enough from the capitalist Enclosures to actually improve their standard of living (which it turns out was mostly from collective action to build social Commons, esp. public health/sanitation): Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World