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GOAT: Who is the Greatest Economist of all Time and Why Does it Matter?
Do you yearn for something more than a book? And yet still love books? How about a book you can query, and it will answer away to your heart’s content? How about a book that will create its own content, on demand, or allow you to rewrite it? A book that will tell you why it is (sometimes) wrong?
349 pages, ebook
Published October 23, 2023
About the author
Tyler Cowen
97 books755 followersTyler Cowen (born January 21, 1962) occupies the Holbert C. Harris Chair of economics as a professor at George Mason University and is co-author, with Alex Tabarrok, of the popular economics blog Marginal Revolution. He currently writes the "Economic Scene" column for the New York Times and writes for such magazines as The New Republic and The Wilson Quarterly.
Cowen's primary research interest is the economics of culture. He has written books on fame (What Price Fame?), art (In Praise of Commercial Culture), and cultural trade (Creative Destruction: How Globalization is Changing the World's Cultures). In Markets and Cultural Voices, he relays how globalization is changing the world of three Mexican amate painters. Cowen argues that free markets change culture for the better, allowing them to evolve into something more people want. Other books include Public Goods and Market Failures, The Theory of Market Failure, Explorations in the New Monetary Economics, Risk and Business Cycles, Economic Welfare, and New Theories of Market Failure.
Cowen's primary research interest is the economics of culture. He has written books on fame (What Price Fame?), art (In Praise of Commercial Culture), and cultural trade (Creative Destruction: How Globalization is Changing the World's Cultures). In Markets and Cultural Voices, he relays how globalization is changing the world of three Mexican amate painters. Cowen argues that free markets change culture for the better, allowing them to evolve into something more people want. Other books include Public Goods and Market Failures, The Theory of Market Failure, Explorations in the New Monetary Economics, Risk and Business Cycles, Economic Welfare, and New Theories of Market Failure.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
November 8, 2023
This is a "generative book" by the economist and blogger Tyler Cowen. I am not capable of evaluating it as a new idea as I did not make use of the GPT-4 chatbot or the other AI tools. I have not had particularly great experiences using ChatGPT and I didn't quite see the point. (Clearly I missed the point.) So I'm evaluating this as a book.
I am very familiar with Cowen's writing style as a subscriber to Marginal Revolution for some years. Though I don't align with his politics a lot of the time (and even more so with his co-blogger) I find the blog useful and full of information. But I don't love Cowen as a writer and I find that to be one of my biggest problems with this book. Cowen regularly veers between assuming too much knowledge on the part of the reader and assuming little knowledge. He does this when he blogs and he does it in this book. If I concentrated enough, I'm sure I'd find the patter there but I don't care enough so I haven't. It's a quirk I don't love and I think it effects the quality of his writing. (I also think he likes being coy a little too much when he blogs and that does come across occasionally in this book.)
Perhaps a more fundamental problem is I don't think he ever quite makes the case for why this "GOAT" conversation matters. I know why it matters to him, and I know why he thinks it matters to people who care about this kind of question, but I really don't know why the rest of us should care. I don't think he makes that point well. I spent a decade of my life going back and reading older writers from the past to learn where ideas come from and I learned that, mostly, I didn't actually need to be doing that to think about the world today. If I was working in a particular academic discipline, that would be another story but I'm not.
I find the whole approach quite idiosyncratic, which is to be expected given it was inspired by The Big Book of Basketball. But I don't mind it. It's certainly accessible and one way of surveying the people Cowen thinks are the greatest economists of all time.
I really like how much time and credit he gives to Mill. Mill is extremely underrated in general and Cowen's defense of him here is right up my alley. I do think he does a good job of giving these guys their due. Certainly better than some would have done.
But the structure itself is odd. He claims you can read the chapters in any order but I read them in the order of the PDF and found the middle diversion into less quality candidates oddly located. Whatever the thought-process was behind that decision, I couldn't figure it out.
And that brings me to the final complaint, which is one I suspect he isn't worried about given how he wants readers to use this with GPT-4 LLMs. But this book just doesn't feel fully edited. I have never read his other books but I suspect they are in better shape than this, with fewer typos and more overall structural coherence. There are acknowledgements that imply this wasn't just his own work but, reading it, it often feels like it's a brain dump with a little bit of organization thrown in.
I'd read The Worldly Philosophers instead if you're looking for a good introduction to major economists of the past. (Though you'd have to find something else to read about Friedman and Hayek.)
I am very familiar with Cowen's writing style as a subscriber to Marginal Revolution for some years. Though I don't align with his politics a lot of the time (and even more so with his co-blogger) I find the blog useful and full of information. But I don't love Cowen as a writer and I find that to be one of my biggest problems with this book. Cowen regularly veers between assuming too much knowledge on the part of the reader and assuming little knowledge. He does this when he blogs and he does it in this book. If I concentrated enough, I'm sure I'd find the patter there but I don't care enough so I haven't. It's a quirk I don't love and I think it effects the quality of his writing. (I also think he likes being coy a little too much when he blogs and that does come across occasionally in this book.)
Perhaps a more fundamental problem is I don't think he ever quite makes the case for why this "GOAT" conversation matters. I know why it matters to him, and I know why he thinks it matters to people who care about this kind of question, but I really don't know why the rest of us should care. I don't think he makes that point well. I spent a decade of my life going back and reading older writers from the past to learn where ideas come from and I learned that, mostly, I didn't actually need to be doing that to think about the world today. If I was working in a particular academic discipline, that would be another story but I'm not.
I find the whole approach quite idiosyncratic, which is to be expected given it was inspired by The Big Book of Basketball. But I don't mind it. It's certainly accessible and one way of surveying the people Cowen thinks are the greatest economists of all time.
I really like how much time and credit he gives to Mill. Mill is extremely underrated in general and Cowen's defense of him here is right up my alley. I do think he does a good job of giving these guys their due. Certainly better than some would have done.
But the structure itself is odd. He claims you can read the chapters in any order but I read them in the order of the PDF and found the middle diversion into less quality candidates oddly located. Whatever the thought-process was behind that decision, I couldn't figure it out.
And that brings me to the final complaint, which is one I suspect he isn't worried about given how he wants readers to use this with GPT-4 LLMs. But this book just doesn't feel fully edited. I have never read his other books but I suspect they are in better shape than this, with fewer typos and more overall structural coherence. There are acknowledgements that imply this wasn't just his own work but, reading it, it often feels like it's a brain dump with a little bit of organization thrown in.
I'd read The Worldly Philosophers instead if you're looking for a good introduction to major economists of the past. (Though you'd have to find something else to read about Friedman and Hayek.)
December 7, 2023
Original book about the evolution of economics within social sciences, and the main personalities since Adam Smith. Importantly this is not a book about the main contributions (e.g Cournot or von Neumann almost don’t get mentioned), but rather on people that changed the course of economics.
The focus on clear-cut categories was a good idea, except maybe for the micro-macro requirement which doesn’t seem fair. It does come up, for example, when discussing why Keynes’ macro wasn’t great (for its lack of micro-discipline) but that wouldn’t have required the breadth of micro and macro (topics) as such. This comes up when discussing Arrow.
Wonderfully written. Casual even when making deep and subtle points made it easy to follow. The retrospective account of Mill as someone deeply aware of causal inference difficulties was very interesting and I will definitely be reading Mill in the near future.
On the drawback side, the “who would we cancel today and why?” Detour seemed unnecessary. This is attenuated when TC presents these as red flags for thought flaws, rather than moralistic critiques. But there were other more concise ways to phrase those red flags.
I’m not so sure about his prediction that broad economists who tackle big societal challenges are a thing of the past, which is the final argument in the book. What about Acemoglu, Piketty, or Rodrik? Whatever their flaws when stepping into this arena, they act as if they have something to say to an audience beyond the top 5 readership.
The focus on clear-cut categories was a good idea, except maybe for the micro-macro requirement which doesn’t seem fair. It does come up, for example, when discussing why Keynes’ macro wasn’t great (for its lack of micro-discipline) but that wouldn’t have required the breadth of micro and macro (topics) as such. This comes up when discussing Arrow.
Wonderfully written. Casual even when making deep and subtle points made it easy to follow. The retrospective account of Mill as someone deeply aware of causal inference difficulties was very interesting and I will definitely be reading Mill in the near future.
On the drawback side, the “who would we cancel today and why?” Detour seemed unnecessary. This is attenuated when TC presents these as red flags for thought flaws, rather than moralistic critiques. But there were other more concise ways to phrase those red flags.
I’m not so sure about his prediction that broad economists who tackle big societal challenges are a thing of the past, which is the final argument in the book. What about Acemoglu, Piketty, or Rodrik? Whatever their flaws when stepping into this arena, they act as if they have something to say to an audience beyond the top 5 readership.
January 27, 2024
Excellent unintentional reminder of the numbing ivory-tower type of stupidity of even the best economists.
December 17, 2023
Cowen gives a great overview of economic thinkers, in his typical style. The addition of a GPT model trained on the book is an incredibly valuable resource, and it's something I'd love to see become a standard in non-fiction publishing. I'm not sure if some of the repetitions in the book were due to a lack of editing or in order to aid GPT, but either way it's something that can easily be improved in the future.
January 23, 2024
Tyler Cowen is never boring to read, and this book is no exception. As an interested outsider to the field, reading about the greatest of all time (GOAT) economist through Tyler’s perception was fun and enlightening. Basically, the book starts with relatively deeper looks at three top contenders for GOAT: Milton Friedman, John Maynard Keynes, and Friedrich Hayek. Tyler starts lays out his criteria for evaluating each candidate: originality, historical import, creator and carrier of important ideas, strong in theory and empirics, strong in micro and macro, and be “not too wrong” about substantive economic issues. After devoting full chapters to each of these top three, he spends the next chapter briefly summarizing runners-up, before spending time on less-often considered candidates.
Friedman: an obvious case for GOAT, Tyler carefully considers Friedman’s greatest strengths and weaknesses, from more well-known to relatively obscure. Tyler underlines Friedman’s extremely strong quantitative/statistical expertise, which helped him make many theoretical and empirical contributions including his “theory of permanent income” (suggesting that people “spend money at a level consistent with their expected long-term average income” [Investopedia]). Tyler also reveres Friedman’s ability to intelligently opine, contribute and remark on just about any economic problem. Friedman’s purported downsides were his lack of strong philosophical underpinnings (e.g., why should freedom be the paramount value against all others, like equality or a more foundational value of well-being?); lack of personal insight in his memoir (I don’t see how this can be weighed very highly); and his limited influence beyond the Chicago school of thought.
Keynes: Tyler highlights Keynes’ many macroeconomic contributions (e.g., when should government intervene) which serve the basis for GOAT contention. His lack of microeconomic rigor, errors in economic reasoning, and lack of empirical contributions are seen as his greatest weaknesses. Tyler also mentions Keynes’ pro-colonial views re: British rule of India and antisemitic views that tarnish his personal reputation, but, in my opinion, these shouldn’t significantly weigh negatively on Keynes’ GOAT contention. To me, Friedman and Hayek are clearly stronger candidates than Keynes despite his seminal contributions to macroeconomic thought.
Hayek: Tyler considers Hayek’s major strengths to be mostly a function of three works. Specifically, Hayek articulated better than anyone perhaps exactly why communism doesn’t work: they lack the market signals that mobilize decentralized knowledge. Less well-known are Hayek’s foreordained insights on the psychology of perception and decision-making as decentralized processes. On the weaknesses side, Tyler criticizes Hayek’s lack of formal training in certain areas he wrote about and his avoidance of using empirical predictions to back up his theoretical insights.
After discussing three big wigs, Tyler looks relatively less deeply at Paul Samuelson, Kenneth Arrow, Gary Becker, Joseph Schumpeter, and Alfred Marshall.
Then comes an extensive chapter on John Stuart Mill, in which Tyler largely praises Mill for his many intellectual contributions—arguably not in economics, which Tyler only acknowledges much later in the chapter. To me, as brilliant and often timeless as Mill’s intellectual contributions were, they seem to be more in the realm of moral and political philosophy, as well as the philosophy, methodology, and epistemology of science, rather than economics. So, I disagree with Tyler that Mill comes anywhere close to economic GOAT according to Tyler’s own criteria (especially strong empirics).
Then comes Malthus, which emphasizes many of the revelatory and groundbreaking insights Malthus contributed. Malthus also theorized a lot on sexual promiscuity as a vice that was likely to tear society apart in innumerable ways. This was obviously empirical wrong, which Tyler admits, but still insists that because “Malthus was the economist who thought through the implications of sex”, this “[s]urely… puts him in the running for GOAT.” I don’t see how that follows if his thoughts were so wildly wrong. Of course, most people know Malthus for his horribly wrong predictions about mass famine—that agricultural productivity would not be able to keep up with population increases. And, to me, this does disqualify him, but Tyler succeeds in highlighting the many good, fresh things Malthus had to say as well and thinks he’s very underrated.
And finally, Adam Smith: the pro case for Smith is easy: he was the founder of modern economic theory and was the first to explain the logic of the invisible hand of the market in his seminal “Wealth of Nations”. So, on Tyler’s criteria, Smith scores highly on just about all of them except empirics because, well, how could he?
Tyler summarizes his cases for and against by punting on declaring any single person the GOAT and instead lists each shortlist candidate’s greatest strength(s). Friedman was the best economist, Hayek wrote the all-time best economic paper, Keynes contributed the most in macroeconomic policy, Mill was the most comprehensive general thinker, Malthus was the most underrated, and Smith was the most original and fundamental.
Friedman: an obvious case for GOAT, Tyler carefully considers Friedman’s greatest strengths and weaknesses, from more well-known to relatively obscure. Tyler underlines Friedman’s extremely strong quantitative/statistical expertise, which helped him make many theoretical and empirical contributions including his “theory of permanent income” (suggesting that people “spend money at a level consistent with their expected long-term average income” [Investopedia]). Tyler also reveres Friedman’s ability to intelligently opine, contribute and remark on just about any economic problem. Friedman’s purported downsides were his lack of strong philosophical underpinnings (e.g., why should freedom be the paramount value against all others, like equality or a more foundational value of well-being?); lack of personal insight in his memoir (I don’t see how this can be weighed very highly); and his limited influence beyond the Chicago school of thought.
Keynes: Tyler highlights Keynes’ many macroeconomic contributions (e.g., when should government intervene) which serve the basis for GOAT contention. His lack of microeconomic rigor, errors in economic reasoning, and lack of empirical contributions are seen as his greatest weaknesses. Tyler also mentions Keynes’ pro-colonial views re: British rule of India and antisemitic views that tarnish his personal reputation, but, in my opinion, these shouldn’t significantly weigh negatively on Keynes’ GOAT contention. To me, Friedman and Hayek are clearly stronger candidates than Keynes despite his seminal contributions to macroeconomic thought.
Hayek: Tyler considers Hayek’s major strengths to be mostly a function of three works. Specifically, Hayek articulated better than anyone perhaps exactly why communism doesn’t work: they lack the market signals that mobilize decentralized knowledge. Less well-known are Hayek’s foreordained insights on the psychology of perception and decision-making as decentralized processes. On the weaknesses side, Tyler criticizes Hayek’s lack of formal training in certain areas he wrote about and his avoidance of using empirical predictions to back up his theoretical insights.
After discussing three big wigs, Tyler looks relatively less deeply at Paul Samuelson, Kenneth Arrow, Gary Becker, Joseph Schumpeter, and Alfred Marshall.
Then comes an extensive chapter on John Stuart Mill, in which Tyler largely praises Mill for his many intellectual contributions—arguably not in economics, which Tyler only acknowledges much later in the chapter. To me, as brilliant and often timeless as Mill’s intellectual contributions were, they seem to be more in the realm of moral and political philosophy, as well as the philosophy, methodology, and epistemology of science, rather than economics. So, I disagree with Tyler that Mill comes anywhere close to economic GOAT according to Tyler’s own criteria (especially strong empirics).
Then comes Malthus, which emphasizes many of the revelatory and groundbreaking insights Malthus contributed. Malthus also theorized a lot on sexual promiscuity as a vice that was likely to tear society apart in innumerable ways. This was obviously empirical wrong, which Tyler admits, but still insists that because “Malthus was the economist who thought through the implications of sex”, this “[s]urely… puts him in the running for GOAT.” I don’t see how that follows if his thoughts were so wildly wrong. Of course, most people know Malthus for his horribly wrong predictions about mass famine—that agricultural productivity would not be able to keep up with population increases. And, to me, this does disqualify him, but Tyler succeeds in highlighting the many good, fresh things Malthus had to say as well and thinks he’s very underrated.
And finally, Adam Smith: the pro case for Smith is easy: he was the founder of modern economic theory and was the first to explain the logic of the invisible hand of the market in his seminal “Wealth of Nations”. So, on Tyler’s criteria, Smith scores highly on just about all of them except empirics because, well, how could he?
Tyler summarizes his cases for and against by punting on declaring any single person the GOAT and instead lists each shortlist candidate’s greatest strength(s). Friedman was the best economist, Hayek wrote the all-time best economic paper, Keynes contributed the most in macroeconomic policy, Mill was the most comprehensive general thinker, Malthus was the most underrated, and Smith was the most original and fundamental.
February 1, 2024
This is a book that is hard to evaluate. It should have two sets of ratings. The first is whether Cowen has proved a case for naming the Greatest Economist of All Time. He goes through some of the obvious suspects and concludes that the task is difficult. From my view he is way too kind to Thomas Malthus whose Second Treatise has influenced several generations of zero sum game advocates. IN addition the good reverend was a Eugenicist. But that profile fits some other people on the list including Keynes.
The criteria he uses includes a broad range of qualifications including some level of empirical work - which I think may be a bit unfair for economists like Adam Smith.
Cowen's prose is entertaining and I think in many cases it is very useful. His discussion of Mill was enlightening. But I think the quest here was too smart by a half.
But then there is a second part of this project which if you download the right version - it includes some AI features which I think are absolutely wonderful. As I was going through the book I could click on an author or term and AI would offer some comments about the issues involved in my highlight. Cowen argues that this is where academic publishing will go and I think he may be at the forefront.
I am a big fan of Cowen who is a prolific author in a wide range of fields and even thought I think his book (which paralleled Robert Gordon's discussions of the inevitability of economic stagnation) was mostly bunk and did not have an adequate appreciation of the dampening effects of regulatory systems - he is not afraid to throw out some challenging ideas. But for the rating system I would have rated the book as about a 1.5. (IN part because I think he is too kind to Malthus and Keynes).
But then there is his first attempt to make a book like this more interactive - and for that I would rate it a five. So on total this book is a three - well worth the time.
The criteria he uses includes a broad range of qualifications including some level of empirical work - which I think may be a bit unfair for economists like Adam Smith.
Cowen's prose is entertaining and I think in many cases it is very useful. His discussion of Mill was enlightening. But I think the quest here was too smart by a half.
But then there is a second part of this project which if you download the right version - it includes some AI features which I think are absolutely wonderful. As I was going through the book I could click on an author or term and AI would offer some comments about the issues involved in my highlight. Cowen argues that this is where academic publishing will go and I think he may be at the forefront.
I am a big fan of Cowen who is a prolific author in a wide range of fields and even thought I think his book (which paralleled Robert Gordon's discussions of the inevitability of economic stagnation) was mostly bunk and did not have an adequate appreciation of the dampening effects of regulatory systems - he is not afraid to throw out some challenging ideas. But for the rating system I would have rated the book as about a 1.5. (IN part because I think he is too kind to Malthus and Keynes).
But then there is his first attempt to make a book like this more interactive - and for that I would rate it a five. So on total this book is a three - well worth the time.
April 13, 2024
Muy entretenida e informativa exploración sobre quién podría ser considerado como el mejor economista de todos los tiempos. En este breve libro, el autor despliega su profundo conocimiento sobre la obra de los principales economistas de la historia así como el papel que jugaron en el desarrollo de la disciplina y su impacto en el mundo.
Basado en una serie de criterios (ciertamente idiosincráticos, aunque no por eso menos válidos) entre los que se incluye la variedad de temas que abordan en su obra (que sean tanto de micro como de macro), así como la originalidad y permanencia de sus ideas, el autor plantea y justifica una lista corta de candidatos a mejor economista de la historia. La lista está compuesta tanto por pensadores clásicos, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill y (sorpresivamente) Thomas Malthus, como por intelectuales contemporáneos, John Maynard Keynes, Friedrich Hayek y (por supuesto) Milton Friedman. Aunque el análisis de cada uno de ellos es fundamentalmente académico, se incluyen también notas sobre su historia personal y rasgos de personalidad (¿con quién de ellos sería más interesante platicar y mantener una amistad?).
La pregunta final del libro es sumamente provocadora, ¿será que el mejor economista de la historia es alguno de ellos o alguien que todavía está por nacer? La respuesta del autor refleja un cierto pesimismo sobre el estado actual de la ciencia económica que, en gran parte, se ha olvidado de las grandes cuestiones que afectan al hombre y a la sociedad y se preocupa más por análisis econométricos puntuales de temas interesantes sí, pero limitados y, podríamos decir, hasta intrascendentes.
Basado en una serie de criterios (ciertamente idiosincráticos, aunque no por eso menos válidos) entre los que se incluye la variedad de temas que abordan en su obra (que sean tanto de micro como de macro), así como la originalidad y permanencia de sus ideas, el autor plantea y justifica una lista corta de candidatos a mejor economista de la historia. La lista está compuesta tanto por pensadores clásicos, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill y (sorpresivamente) Thomas Malthus, como por intelectuales contemporáneos, John Maynard Keynes, Friedrich Hayek y (por supuesto) Milton Friedman. Aunque el análisis de cada uno de ellos es fundamentalmente académico, se incluyen también notas sobre su historia personal y rasgos de personalidad (¿con quién de ellos sería más interesante platicar y mantener una amistad?).
La pregunta final del libro es sumamente provocadora, ¿será que el mejor economista de la historia es alguno de ellos o alguien que todavía está por nacer? La respuesta del autor refleja un cierto pesimismo sobre el estado actual de la ciencia económica que, en gran parte, se ha olvidado de las grandes cuestiones que afectan al hombre y a la sociedad y se preocupa más por análisis econométricos puntuales de temas interesantes sí, pero limitados y, podríamos decir, hasta intrascendentes.
May 9, 2024
Another solid book by Tyler Cowen. Tyler writes this book from the perspective of both a fan and a critic, evaluating who is the greatest economist of all time from a shortlist of candidates, which include Milton Friedman, John Maynard Keynes, Friedrich Hayek, John Stuart Mill, and Adam Smith, as well as some long-listed candidates (Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Alfred Marshall). In the intro, Cowen provides a list of criteria for grading the GOAT candidates, some of which are unconventional. For example, he asks whether the economists are "cancellable", what ideas they had about India, and what "chips off the workbench", or lesser-known works, the economists have. Perhaps most importantly, Cowen looks to whether the economists were not-too-wrong on major questions.
GOAT requires some basic familiarity with both the short-listed economists and their ideas. Cowen does not provide short bios, nor does he explain concepts like the permanent income hypothesis. He also assumes that the reader has some broad familiarity with economics generally. This helps to keep the book's length manageable, but does occasionally require having Wikipedia or a chatbot handy.
As is often the case with such rankings, results can be somewhat subjective. Cowen readily concedes this and is not shy about his free-market orientation. Nonetheless, he does ask the same questions of all of the short-listed candidates and engages in extensive research to support his answers. This makes for a fun and informative read. For those looking to better understand economic analysis and its best practitioners, GOAT is well worth the time.
GOAT requires some basic familiarity with both the short-listed economists and their ideas. Cowen does not provide short bios, nor does he explain concepts like the permanent income hypothesis. He also assumes that the reader has some broad familiarity with economics generally. This helps to keep the book's length manageable, but does occasionally require having Wikipedia or a chatbot handy.
As is often the case with such rankings, results can be somewhat subjective. Cowen readily concedes this and is not shy about his free-market orientation. Nonetheless, he does ask the same questions of all of the short-listed candidates and engages in extensive research to support his answers. This makes for a fun and informative read. For those looking to better understand economic analysis and its best practitioners, GOAT is well worth the time.
November 6, 2023
Tremendous survey written for a popular audience on the history of economic thought. Dare I say that it is even better than the book it is modeled after - Bill Simmon’s The Book of Basketball?? Not to mention available at a price an economist can appreciate (free!) and quite possibly the first book written with a built in ChatGPT?! Are you not intrigued??
December 18, 2023
Cowen's criteria to qualify as a contender for the GOAT economist title include broad intellectual interests and output. Today's economists are hypotheses testers almost exclusively, which is perfectly fine and necessary for society but disqualifies them from participating in Cowen's selection of the GOAT economist.
December 19, 2023
It's the first book to be published that includes a chatbot with it to answer any questions about the content. I assume in five years Audible and Apple Books (maybe 10 for Apple) will include this feature for every book, but I loved it! It's a short summary of the most important economists in the history. What's there not to like? Macro is always fun!
December 29, 2023
Silly title, and with all the usual Cowenisms (like excessive use of scare quotes). But, how often do you read essays from someone who has read all the most important thinkers in the history of economic thought, multiple times? An excellent complement to the recent Carter and Burns Keynes and Friedman (respectively) biographies.
March 25, 2024
This is the type of introduction to economic thought book that I have been looking for. Likely not a 5 star book for everyone but for where my knowledge of economic history is at it is great to hear an extremely knowledgeable economist opine on how ideas have aged and why a given persons works matters.
January 1, 2024
Fun because Cowen read a lot and have many opinions and cares about history of economics.
But needs editor, or at least corrector. Feels more like a draft than a finished book.
But needs editor, or at least corrector. Feels more like a draft than a finished book.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews