Finished Microeconomics
What an extraordinary read. The shortest way of summarizing Bowles’s book is that it was a synthesis, and a deepening, of every behavioral-economics work I’ve read before now, with substantially more theoretical support; it supersedes all those earlier works. It embeds all of them in a rich economic structure that nearly takes institutions as a given and works within that structure; it only avoids completely taking institutions as given because it knows that so many of its readers are used to an economic framework that ignores them.
I’ve already said most of what I want to say about this book. I’ll just reiterate that it should be required reading for anyone steeped in the standard economic orthodoxy. In particular, Bowles should write a version of this book aimed at Econ 101 students, to keep their minds more open than those classes tend to. College students with an introductory econ education are frightfully likely to become Objectivists; avoiding this outcome would start us down the road to a social optimum.
It sounds to me reading this like you really want to go to Economics grad school. Surely that’s the natural place for someone who likes to think at such a broad level about economics.
Comment by Dylan Thurston — January 1, 1970 @ 8:00 am
I thought grad school was for deep thinking, not broad thinking. :-)
I’m leaning toward computer-science grad school right now. My employer might also pay for at least some of that.
Comment by Steve Laniel — January 1, 1970 @ 8:00 am