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Thinking like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in U.S. Public Policy
The story of how economic reasoning came to dominate Washington between the 1960s and 1980s--and why it continues to constrain progressive ambitions today
For decades, Democratic politicians have frustrated progressives by tinkering around the margins of policy while shying away from truly ambitious change. What happened to bold political vision on the left, and what shrunk the very horizons of possibility? In Thinking like an Economist, Elizabeth Popp Berman tells the story of how a distinctive way of thinking--an "economic style of reasoning"--became dominant in Washington between the 1960s and the 1980s and how it continues to dramatically narrow debates over public policy today.
Introduced by liberal technocrats who hoped to improve government, this way of thinking was grounded in economics but also transformed law and policy. At its core was an economic understanding of efficiency, and its advocates often found themselves allied with Republicans and in conflict with liberal Democrats who argued for rights, equality, and limits on corporate power. By the Carter administration, economic reasoning had spread throughout government policy and laws affecting poverty, healthcare, antitrust, transportation, and the environment. Fearing waste and overspending, liberals reined in their ambitions for decades to come, even as Reagan and his Republican successors argued for economic efficiency only when it helped their own goals.
A compelling account that illuminates what brought American politics to its current state, Thinking like an Economist also offers critical lessons for the future. With the political left resurgent today, Democrats seem poised to break with the past--but doing so will require abandoning the shibboleth of economic efficiency and successfully advocating new ways of thinking about policy.
For decades, Democratic politicians have frustrated progressives by tinkering around the margins of policy while shying away from truly ambitious change. What happened to bold political vision on the left, and what shrunk the very horizons of possibility? In Thinking like an Economist, Elizabeth Popp Berman tells the story of how a distinctive way of thinking--an "economic style of reasoning"--became dominant in Washington between the 1960s and the 1980s and how it continues to dramatically narrow debates over public policy today.
Introduced by liberal technocrats who hoped to improve government, this way of thinking was grounded in economics but also transformed law and policy. At its core was an economic understanding of efficiency, and its advocates often found themselves allied with Republicans and in conflict with liberal Democrats who argued for rights, equality, and limits on corporate power. By the Carter administration, economic reasoning had spread throughout government policy and laws affecting poverty, healthcare, antitrust, transportation, and the environment. Fearing waste and overspending, liberals reined in their ambitions for decades to come, even as Reagan and his Republican successors argued for economic efficiency only when it helped their own goals.
A compelling account that illuminates what brought American politics to its current state, Thinking like an Economist also offers critical lessons for the future. With the political left resurgent today, Democrats seem poised to break with the past--but doing so will require abandoning the shibboleth of economic efficiency and successfully advocating new ways of thinking about policy.
344 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
February 19, 2023
Few books change my thinking the way Elizabeth Popp Berman's has. I was broadly sympathetic to her broader premise of a shift in the way policy is conducted in the neoliberal era, but framing it as a question of economic reasoning and how it ingratiated itself into the mainstream of policy circles was truly winning. The research is meticulous and the way the frame can be applied to social regulation and market governance is truly original. Great work.
April 9, 2022
A cliché reflecting the sometimes adversarial view by sociologists of economists and their outsized role in public debates is the lament that there is a Council of Economic Advisors but no Council of Sociological Advisors. This book is, in essence, an attempt to treat the question of why that is as not just rhetorical, with detailed historical study of how economics and economists began to take roles in an expanding variety of government agencies and legal processes in the US, and what kind of decisions and actions they took in those roles. Unlike most earlier discussion of the topic, which concentrates on macroeconomics and limits attention to publicly prominent figures and grand intellectual debates, the focus is particularly on microeconomics and its place in government agencies in administration of issues like social services, environmental and safety regulation, and antitrust.
A rough summary of the narrative for government programs is that an economic style of policy analysis focused on quantitative evaluation of programs in terms of costs and benefits was developed at the Rand Corporation for military planning in the 1950s, spread to the Defense Department in the Kennedy administration, and to policy offices throughout the executive branch during the Johnson administration, from which over time, economic considerations and styles of reasoning began to set the terms of policy debates from the Nixon through Carter eras. In parallel, certain economic views on market regulation by economists studying Industrial Organization spread from academia to think tanks, parts of the antitrust executive establishment, to legal academia as "law and economics" and eventually brought the perspective of economists through courts and legislation into antitrust law. The role of Democrats and liberals, who applied economic reasoning in the service of goals of more effective and efficient government, in driving this process is heavily stressed, emphasizing a counterpoint to existing narratives which equate economics with a certain kind of market fundamentalism that was always a distinctively minority viewpoint in the profession and was mostly absent from the early stages of the processes that brought economics to be a major player inside government.
Beyond the historical narrative, the book has an explicitly political argument, that the forms of reasoning brought by economists, emphasizing quantitative analysis and tradeoffs of cost and benefit, crowded out other forms of policy argument, especially those based on rights or values but also those based on kinds of costs and benefits not easily quantified, especially using the economic tools of the time, and so ended up constraining particularly policy makers on the left. Brought to contemporary debates, this at times in the book shades into treating economics as a synecdoche for the policy views of Clintonite center-left in the Democratic party and the constraints as acting specifically to exclude those further left. While this is substantially less inaccurate than earlier critiques which treated economics as a synecdoche for the Reagan and Thatcher right (surveys of US economists suggest that a very large majority are Democrats, and as Popp-Berman points out, the Reagan administration fired large numbers of economists and shrank their role in policy), this squashing down of the diverse views of the contemporary profession in the service of relitigating the 2016 Democratic primary is at best only partly served by the account of an earlier generation of Democratic economists.
More interestingly, the discussion of the more general limits of the microeconomic style of policy analysis as carried out in practice in the domains studied here does raise important questions about the practical effects of such reasoning. While an early chapter does review several of the (not all mutually compatible) definitions of efficiency used in economics, in practice, many of the later discussions of arguments made by economists are less clear about which definition is being used, in part reflecting what to later economists would be considered muddled views by economists of the time on these issues[^1]. Further, neglect of measurement issues and political economy considerations may have lead to systematically biased assessment of costs and benefits. Most paradoxically, and new to me, the hostility to deontological reasoning and "rights" embedded into many economic assessments due to the inability to quantify values and make tradeoffs, may fail to account for the practical implementation of what counts as a "right" in the US legal system which creates a mechanism for parties to resolve disputes based on interpretation of rights. In practice, it is argued, economic arguments for accounting for tradeoffs may have been interpreted by courts as creating a right for certain costs to be accounted for, leading to conditional implementation of such considerations which may have substantially different effects than systematic disinterested implementation of such criteria.
None of this is necessarily to say what the counterfactual where economists had not taken such a role in policymaking and implementation would have been. Perhaps, as the author intimates, it would have led to fewer barriers to policies advocated by the left on more universal grounds, such as universal healthcare or stricter environmental regulation based on ideas of universal rights to health or a view of pollution as a moral crime instead of merely a cost. I am a little more agnostic, as deontological arguments (among others made based on forms of reasoning less emphasized in economics) seem to span a fairly wide swathe of the political spectrum. But the call for humility regarding the practical consequences of applied consequentialism is well-taken. Regardless of one's views on the political implications, the practical history here provides a useful context for understanding what economists actually have done in government, which has previously been conspicuously absent from debates on its' role.
[^1]: I will spare the technical critique of the literal incoherence of Kaldor-Hicks criterion or the widespread misapplication of quasilinearity assumptions, mostly to avoid hyperventilating, but suffice to say that writing criteria of this nature into law may be far from advisable even on purely economic grounds.
A rough summary of the narrative for government programs is that an economic style of policy analysis focused on quantitative evaluation of programs in terms of costs and benefits was developed at the Rand Corporation for military planning in the 1950s, spread to the Defense Department in the Kennedy administration, and to policy offices throughout the executive branch during the Johnson administration, from which over time, economic considerations and styles of reasoning began to set the terms of policy debates from the Nixon through Carter eras. In parallel, certain economic views on market regulation by economists studying Industrial Organization spread from academia to think tanks, parts of the antitrust executive establishment, to legal academia as "law and economics" and eventually brought the perspective of economists through courts and legislation into antitrust law. The role of Democrats and liberals, who applied economic reasoning in the service of goals of more effective and efficient government, in driving this process is heavily stressed, emphasizing a counterpoint to existing narratives which equate economics with a certain kind of market fundamentalism that was always a distinctively minority viewpoint in the profession and was mostly absent from the early stages of the processes that brought economics to be a major player inside government.
Beyond the historical narrative, the book has an explicitly political argument, that the forms of reasoning brought by economists, emphasizing quantitative analysis and tradeoffs of cost and benefit, crowded out other forms of policy argument, especially those based on rights or values but also those based on kinds of costs and benefits not easily quantified, especially using the economic tools of the time, and so ended up constraining particularly policy makers on the left. Brought to contemporary debates, this at times in the book shades into treating economics as a synecdoche for the policy views of Clintonite center-left in the Democratic party and the constraints as acting specifically to exclude those further left. While this is substantially less inaccurate than earlier critiques which treated economics as a synecdoche for the Reagan and Thatcher right (surveys of US economists suggest that a very large majority are Democrats, and as Popp-Berman points out, the Reagan administration fired large numbers of economists and shrank their role in policy), this squashing down of the diverse views of the contemporary profession in the service of relitigating the 2016 Democratic primary is at best only partly served by the account of an earlier generation of Democratic economists.
More interestingly, the discussion of the more general limits of the microeconomic style of policy analysis as carried out in practice in the domains studied here does raise important questions about the practical effects of such reasoning. While an early chapter does review several of the (not all mutually compatible) definitions of efficiency used in economics, in practice, many of the later discussions of arguments made by economists are less clear about which definition is being used, in part reflecting what to later economists would be considered muddled views by economists of the time on these issues[^1]. Further, neglect of measurement issues and political economy considerations may have lead to systematically biased assessment of costs and benefits. Most paradoxically, and new to me, the hostility to deontological reasoning and "rights" embedded into many economic assessments due to the inability to quantify values and make tradeoffs, may fail to account for the practical implementation of what counts as a "right" in the US legal system which creates a mechanism for parties to resolve disputes based on interpretation of rights. In practice, it is argued, economic arguments for accounting for tradeoffs may have been interpreted by courts as creating a right for certain costs to be accounted for, leading to conditional implementation of such considerations which may have substantially different effects than systematic disinterested implementation of such criteria.
None of this is necessarily to say what the counterfactual where economists had not taken such a role in policymaking and implementation would have been. Perhaps, as the author intimates, it would have led to fewer barriers to policies advocated by the left on more universal grounds, such as universal healthcare or stricter environmental regulation based on ideas of universal rights to health or a view of pollution as a moral crime instead of merely a cost. I am a little more agnostic, as deontological arguments (among others made based on forms of reasoning less emphasized in economics) seem to span a fairly wide swathe of the political spectrum. But the call for humility regarding the practical consequences of applied consequentialism is well-taken. Regardless of one's views on the political implications, the practical history here provides a useful context for understanding what economists actually have done in government, which has previously been conspicuously absent from debates on its' role.
[^1]: I will spare the technical critique of the literal incoherence of Kaldor-Hicks criterion or the widespread misapplication of quasilinearity assumptions, mostly to avoid hyperventilating, but suffice to say that writing criteria of this nature into law may be far from advisable even on purely economic grounds.
July 21, 2023
The topic is interesting, sure, but not worthy of a book. Everything one needs to know about this topic could be written in a short essay. This was very dry reading but the content partly made up for it. 2.5-3 stars.
April 11, 2022
I like Elizabeth Popp Berman’s “Thinking Like an Economist.” It is a good book.
I say that because her book made me change a structural paradigm I have in my head. Prior to reading this text, I had in my mind that everything went wrong when the business right took the Powell Memo, the libertarian right took Goldwaterism, and the religious right rose post Roe and it was all thrown into a mixer during the Reagan revolution. You can all sorts of well-being charts that dog-leg sometime between 1973 and 1981 or so.
Elizabeth Popp Berman’s introduces the idea that part of the change has to be seen as the takeover of economic reasoning of a cost-benefit or structuralist model into how policy was set over an idea of doing the right thing because they were the right thing based on “commitments to universality, rights, and equality” (99). Basically, it is the triumph of the consequentialists over the deontologists. She does note the basic issues where my priors lay, noting that there was a lot of political issues entangled in the rise of the right as you can’t separate the economic from the political (140).
The thing that really makes the book stand out is her use of and grasp of history – and that she shows that the institutionalization of the economic shift to efficiency wasn’t just dominated by one party. Embracing this move was a bipartisan approach from Kennedy though Clinton and beyond. If there’s a weakness to the text it is that she drops most of the history after Reagan, but we live in the world of the shift she outlines so including the new Democrats in depth might be beating too much of a dead horse. The bipartisan embrace means that this move is also internalized to the point where you don’t have to make the argument for efficiency anymore, but instead if you desire broad based policy you have to argue from that point and anticipate these sorts of objections about how you are going to pay for that if you want to do something because it needs to be done. The present gets little notice but there is mention of the Neo-Brandeisians (though exemplars like Tim Wu and Lina Khan aren’t mentioned by name) and an acknowledgement that there is a whole realm of policy argument to the left of the economic efficiency argument and that there is a possibility, at least in antitrust, that there is more than a very narrow understanding of what consumer welfare means under the Sherman Act.
Ultimately though, for me it circles back to the many-headed policy demon that was already in my priors. Instead of completely reframing the challenge, it is a drawing of a different sort of structural barrier to any real positive change for a broad base of people.
I say that because her book made me change a structural paradigm I have in my head. Prior to reading this text, I had in my mind that everything went wrong when the business right took the Powell Memo, the libertarian right took Goldwaterism, and the religious right rose post Roe and it was all thrown into a mixer during the Reagan revolution. You can all sorts of well-being charts that dog-leg sometime between 1973 and 1981 or so.
Elizabeth Popp Berman’s introduces the idea that part of the change has to be seen as the takeover of economic reasoning of a cost-benefit or structuralist model into how policy was set over an idea of doing the right thing because they were the right thing based on “commitments to universality, rights, and equality” (99). Basically, it is the triumph of the consequentialists over the deontologists. She does note the basic issues where my priors lay, noting that there was a lot of political issues entangled in the rise of the right as you can’t separate the economic from the political (140).
The thing that really makes the book stand out is her use of and grasp of history – and that she shows that the institutionalization of the economic shift to efficiency wasn’t just dominated by one party. Embracing this move was a bipartisan approach from Kennedy though Clinton and beyond. If there’s a weakness to the text it is that she drops most of the history after Reagan, but we live in the world of the shift she outlines so including the new Democrats in depth might be beating too much of a dead horse. The bipartisan embrace means that this move is also internalized to the point where you don’t have to make the argument for efficiency anymore, but instead if you desire broad based policy you have to argue from that point and anticipate these sorts of objections about how you are going to pay for that if you want to do something because it needs to be done. The present gets little notice but there is mention of the Neo-Brandeisians (though exemplars like Tim Wu and Lina Khan aren’t mentioned by name) and an acknowledgement that there is a whole realm of policy argument to the left of the economic efficiency argument and that there is a possibility, at least in antitrust, that there is more than a very narrow understanding of what consumer welfare means under the Sherman Act.
Ultimately though, for me it circles back to the many-headed policy demon that was already in my priors. Instead of completely reframing the challenge, it is a drawing of a different sort of structural barrier to any real positive change for a broad base of people.
August 20, 2022
A fascinating but dry read on the ideology of “efficiency and choice” came to override larger social justice goals like equality in public policy.
A someone in a human services field, it is very telling how we are taught to idealize economic rationality and subject everything to “evaluation.” I definitely see the connection between these imperatives and the larger neoliberal shift the book describes.
A someone in a human services field, it is very telling how we are taught to idealize economic rationality and subject everything to “evaluation.” I definitely see the connection between these imperatives and the larger neoliberal shift the book describes.
October 1, 2022
This book had been high on my list since it came out earlier this year and it's definitely necessary reading. It first offers an interesting history on economics as a discipline--I have always just assumed that economics departments have always been dominated by annoying reductionists, but the author shows how economists used to be focused on different questions and areas of consideration and, when they were involved in public policy, they offered different kinds of expertise.
Separate from how economists have evolved, though, the book offers an alternate explanation for the rightward turn of American politics in the 70s that focuses less on a conservative tide that Democrats were forced to adapt to and more on how some generally pro-government liberals wanted to increase efficiency in government, without foreseeing how the economic style of reasoning sacrifices most other priorities, including any kind of values central to policy preferences on the left.
The most important takeaway from the book, aside from the excellent account she gives of the institutionalization of the economic style of reasoning in regulatory agencies, court decisions, think tanks, and academia, is the story of the economic style of reasoning largely establishing itself during LBJ's administration with the help of ~liberal~ economists, resulting in that style of reasoning mostly supporting great outcomes for Republicans, yet Democrats still stuck to the style religiously, while Republicans starting with Reagan successfully exploited it, using it when it helped their political interests and evading it when it didn't.
Separate from how economists have evolved, though, the book offers an alternate explanation for the rightward turn of American politics in the 70s that focuses less on a conservative tide that Democrats were forced to adapt to and more on how some generally pro-government liberals wanted to increase efficiency in government, without foreseeing how the economic style of reasoning sacrifices most other priorities, including any kind of values central to policy preferences on the left.
The most important takeaway from the book, aside from the excellent account she gives of the institutionalization of the economic style of reasoning in regulatory agencies, court decisions, think tanks, and academia, is the story of the economic style of reasoning largely establishing itself during LBJ's administration with the help of ~liberal~ economists, resulting in that style of reasoning mostly supporting great outcomes for Republicans, yet Democrats still stuck to the style religiously, while Republicans starting with Reagan successfully exploited it, using it when it helped their political interests and evading it when it didn't.
January 22, 2023
This is a very insightful book that argues against an economic style of considering efficiency as the sine qua non of policy making. The author does a nice job demonstrating how Democrats supported Republican ideas that regulations should be based on either cost:benefit analysis or whether a regulation is cost-effective. As a result, other values like justice, equity and equality get overlooked and sustain the status quo as it pertains to reduced opportunities for political power in marginalized groups of people like the poor or minorities.
My main criticism of the book is that it is woodenly written and lists government agencies, think tanks and people associated with them as if she was reading off a plaque listing directors and their years of service. Here is a typical paragraph:
“At a handful of agencies— the damning 1969 report on PPBS specifically pointed to HEW, USDA, and the OEO as exceptions to the rule….Howard Hjort, who led its PPBS effort, benefited from the strong support of Secretary Orville Freeman, and even the USDA’s budget office—often the group most most threatened by the implementation of PPBS…”
Take a hefty dose of caffeine to stay awake through the turgid prose. It’s unfortunate because the premise and analysis of the book is very compelling.
My main criticism of the book is that it is woodenly written and lists government agencies, think tanks and people associated with them as if she was reading off a plaque listing directors and their years of service. Here is a typical paragraph:
“At a handful of agencies— the damning 1969 report on PPBS specifically pointed to HEW, USDA, and the OEO as exceptions to the rule….Howard Hjort, who led its PPBS effort, benefited from the strong support of Secretary Orville Freeman, and even the USDA’s budget office—often the group most most threatened by the implementation of PPBS…”
Take a hefty dose of caffeine to stay awake through the turgid prose. It’s unfortunate because the premise and analysis of the book is very compelling.
September 29, 2022
This is a great book - readable, well researched, with a tight thesis (a microeconomic-inspired approach to public policy has limited our ability to consider the full range of policy options that are possible) and broad policy sector applications. I would love if this was required reading for all MPP/MPA students, as a counterbalance to the economics-based classes that form the basis of these programs.
October 9, 2022
A good book, presenting an analysis of the transition of U.S. policy to an economic centric method in the late 20th century. The author, organizational and economic sociologist Elizabeth Popp Bergman, explains how an economic style of reasoning slowly came to dominant American government at all levels from the 1960s onwards. This reasoning, whose roots lie in the classical economic theories of efficiency and marginal utility, replaced the people centric policies that fueled the progressive era. Bergman explains how economic reasoning emerged from academia to influence politics, law, and the bureaucracy, with programmed budgets, market-centric policies, and margin-focused effects. This shift paralleled the transition from New Deal era government to the neoliberal order of the late 20th century. Though Bergman argues that the two movements are only slightly related, sharing academic roots but diverging in their goals. A great book for understanding the foundations of modern policy making. Highly recommended for anyone wanting to better understand the modern history of government programs.
July 5, 2022
An interesting and well researched read on how neoclassical, mainstream economic reasoning became the norm in US public policy, I enjoyed how the author traced how this occurred and explaining the conceit of appearing politically neutral, but actually containing values of its own such as choice, competition and efficiency, and how these conflicted with competing political claims grounded in values of rights, universalism and equity
The author also makes clear that internalising the economic style of cost effectiveness results in trating efficiency as self-evidently good, rather than itself a hoice that sometimes competes with other values such as equality or democracy
Highly recommended for anyone interested in the role of economics in US public policy and how its importance came to be
The author also makes clear that internalising the economic style of cost effectiveness results in trating efficiency as self-evidently good, rather than itself a hoice that sometimes competes with other values such as equality or democracy
Highly recommended for anyone interested in the role of economics in US public policy and how its importance came to be
June 10, 2022
Es un libro interesante que se enfoca en por qué hay un excesivo enfoque sobre eficiencia en Estados Unidos. El primer capítulo es muy bueno, y es el resumen del libro. Creo que el libro es solo para especialistas, ya que cuenta cada detalle, cada oficina y cada persona involucrada en los debates de política pública en EUA desde 1950 hasta la actualidad. También no es claro que en ciertas políticas la alternativa sea mejor. Primer capítulo excelente, todo lo demás demasiados detalles.
May 10, 2022
One of the most interesting books that I have read recently. It explains how the 'economic style of thinking' institutionalized in the American policymaking. So many negatives recent facts are explained from this minor detail that ,in reality, is very important. The micro-economic thinking is like virus, that has conquered the liberals educated people. It does not allow them to think big. The conservatives don't have problem to abandon it when it does not serve their interests. On the contrary the liberal are limited by this. I think ,in their effort , to show that are smarter and better than the 'fanatics' conservatives, are trapped. Who is the smarter ,I don't know. However, recently liberals are cynical like conservatives. The 'economic style of thinking' has become a way to find a job when at the same time they exhibit their virtue. Because of this , I think that this mindset will continue to be dominant. Meaning more inequality, more regulatory capture...But without tracking the problem, there would be no hope to abandon it. Congratulations to the writer for her contribution!
July 15, 2023
An insightful (if somewhat repetitive) analysis of how the turn of the century shift towards economic analysis (specifically allocative efficiency as a golden metric) became the predominant way of directing and assessing government function and performance. The main contribution is the (well supported) assertion that the liberal wing of the democratic party aided and abbetted the spread and hegemony of “economic style thinking”, which nuances the typical narrative highlighting the Chicago School and right wing takeover. Positions Reagan’s transformative time in the white house as almost conditional on the analytic infrastructure that liberals began building during Johnson’s administration. This reader’s interpretation of the book as repetitive should not detract from the depth of research undertaken by the author; it’s mainly a reflection on the structure of the book (which is highly conserved across the middle chapters).
August 1, 2023
This is a book about economics theory and practice, but not really "dismal". The author takes a sociological tour through economics as practiced by government officials. She offers trenchant observations about how the profession unwittingly fell prey to its own style of thought and came to ignore any factor outside of "efficiency" in economic policy. That unthoughtful approach has saddled us with a set of policy requirements that fail to achieve larger aims of equity and justice.
Economists will have a hard time absorbing and accepting this exploration, partly because they are inside the tent and cannot see the larger picture. Some, however, may find meaning here in the author's careful recounting of how our situation came to be.
Economists will have a hard time absorbing and accepting this exploration, partly because they are inside the tent and cannot see the larger picture. Some, however, may find meaning here in the author's careful recounting of how our situation came to be.
April 19, 2023
Excellent historical account of how micro economics became the dominant style of analysis in US public policy. The main thesis is that this style of thinking was heavily biased toward efficiency, disregarding distributional and principled concerns. This resonates with my family experience and training. But my impression is that the author portrayed this separation in more stark terms than my experience.
Five stars anyway for the articulating this important bias (magnitude still debatable) in a clear way and providing an amazing historical account about behind the main policy agencies in the second half of the 20th century US.
Five stars anyway for the articulating this important bias (magnitude still debatable) in a clear way and providing an amazing historical account about behind the main policy agencies in the second half of the 20th century US.
November 15, 2022
Good, concise examination of modern American political history that answers how and why economic reasoning has become the dominant paradigm for analyzing policy. I took this not as an attack on economic reasoning as a general matter, but as a good reminder that the economic lens of efficiency is not the only way we should examine policy decisions. This central idea could have been delivered with even less pages, but I enjoyed the extensive historical detail (though reciting the names of every player was too granular for me to retain).
Read
June 6, 2022Hopefully the inexplicable addition of a slash "I/O" to abbreviate industrial organization is due to an overzealous copy editor (analogous to the dreaded "maximum likelihood estimator" to "most likely estimator" correction, or changing "if and only if" to "if") and will be corrected in the paperback edition.
They could have checked literally any department website!
They could have checked literally any department website!
October 30, 2022
Finishing this book was an example of the sunk cost fallacy. This is not for the dabbler in economics seeking an entertaining narrative. If you are interested in Elizabeth Popp Berman’s ideas then find one of the many podcasts she was on when she published the book. If you are a grad student looking to beef up your literature review, then this is the book for you.
June 2, 2023
Excellent history and a compelling argument for economics as a "style" and how it has taken a hold of politics and policy. Could be shorter and more concise. Many moments felt repetitive. But a minor criticism for a work that fills in a major gap in our understanding of the current political hegemony and its development.
August 21, 2022
With the kind of density to make a professor blush, but the acuity to bring an analyst a real spark of joy, Berman's Thinking like an Economist is damning, expansive, and provocative by turns. We've got ourselves a winner.
Read
September 11, 2022While mostly agreeing with the vast majority of this tome, the delivery was dreadfully dull. Many, many authors have taken similar material and presented it to readers in an engaging way so it would be very difficult to recommend anyone pick this one for these themes.
September 25, 2022
An amazingly thorough history of the thinking behind policymaking from the 1950s on that rewrites a lot of how we think about why certain discourses (cost-efficiency, competition, markets) dominate the way we think about social policy.
A must read for anyone who works in social policy.
A must read for anyone who works in social policy.
January 12, 2023
Audiobook. Dense. Very inside baseball/inside beltway reading about how the chicago school has stolen many rights and used cost benefit analysis to shrink down the goodness that government can do.
Not for everyone.
Not for everyone.
January 31, 2023
This is a book about how and why economic reasoning became institutionalized in the U.S. government and policy world. This is not a book about how to think like an economist. If that is what you are expecting, you will be disappointed.
January 1, 2024
Decent book chronicling the rise of economic style thinking during the Neoliberal period starting in the late 60's/early 70's. Focuses a lot on the left leaning and Democratic players that enabled this shift. Not quite as good as I would have hoped.
Read
May 23, 2023bleh
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews