The great economists : how their ideas can help us today
Linda Yueh
- Milton Keynes : Viking, an imprint of Penguin Books, c2018.
- 357 p. ; 24 cm.
Introduction: Great economists on our economic challenges -- 1. Adam Smith: should the government rebalance the economy? -- 2. David Ricardo: do trade deficits matter? -- 3. Karl Marx: can China become rich? -- 4. Alfred Marshall: is inequality inevitable? -- 5. Irving Fisher: are we at risk of repeating the 1930s? -- 6. John Maynard Keynes: to invest or not to invest? -- 7. Joseph Schumpeter: what drives innovation? -- 8. Friedrich Hayek: what can we learn from financial crises? -- 9. Joan Robinson: why are wages so low? -- 10. Milton Friedman: are central banks doing too much? -- 11. Douglass North: why are so few countries prosperous? -- 12. Robert Solow: do we face a slow-growth future? -- Epilogue: The future of globalization.
Since the days of Adam Smith, economists have grappled with a series of common problems - but often their ideas are hard to digest, even before we try to apply them to today's issues. Linda Yueh is renowned for her combination of erudition, as an accomplished economist herself, and accessibility, as a leading writer and broadcaster in this field. In The Great Economists, she explains the key thoughts of history's greatest economists, how our lives have been influenced by their ideas and how they could help us with the policy challenges that we face today. In the light of current economic problems, and particular growth, Yueh explores the thoughts of economists from Adam Smith and David Ricardo to recent academics Douglass North and Robert Solow. She asks, for example, what do the ideas of Karl Marx tell us about the likely future for the Chinese economy? How do the ideas of John Maynard Keynes, who argued for government spending to create full employment, help us think about state intervention? And with globalization in trouble, what can we learn about handling Brexit and Trumpism?