Customer Reviews

Essentials of Economics

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3 star:		(1)
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Krugman, who is popularly known for his recent New York Times op-eds castigating both Bush and Obama, which are collected in several books of his,The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008, Peddling Prosperity: Economic Sense and Nonsense in an Age of Diminished Expectations, The Conscience of a Liberal is a Nobel Prize-winning economist, noted for his work in international trade. His colleagues claim that his structural intuitions and proofs are beautiful.

Krugman says that he worked harder on this book than any other book that he wrote, making last-minute corrections and additions during his trip to receive the Nobel Prize. He made an effort to make every definition and explanation as lucid as possible.

A valuable feature of this book is that he and his partner/ co-author decided to include a section on the business cycle, while most other books available (prior to the recent credit crunch) eliminated discussion of the business cycle, thinking it to be eliminated by clever government fine-tuning of the economy. Once the book appeared, in the midst of the credit-collapse, this section became extremely relevant.

This is the most lucid and up-to-date introductory economics text presently available.

I used this book for a graduate level economics basics class. This author really knows what he is doing. This book is loaded with information and presented in a compelling and understandable way. I love this book.

There ain't no way of getting around this: it's an introductory economics textbook. This means the language is more simplistic than a scholarly work and the coverage of topics is less dense. Malthus, for instance, only gets a small text box, and there is no mention of the neo-Malthusians. It contains all the standard topics of an introductory economics textbook (argh, even the dreaded Supply and Demand model). Those expecting (or dreading) a long rant on Keynes will be disappointed, he's mentioned only three times in the entire book, a total of about six sentences. Malthus gets more ink than Keynes does.

I enjoyed my time with this book. Though simple and easy to follow, the text goes into greater detail and handles more topics than I expected from my long-ago Econ 101 class. I had never heard of Deadweight Loss before; nor had I ever encountered a basic discussion of oligopolies and monopolies. There's even a chapter on the Federal Reserve system. I'll admit I slept through some of my Econ 101 lectures, but I didn't sleep through THAT many lectures. If your exposure to economics occurred about fifteen or twenty years ago, you'll be deeply surprised at the things you never heard of before. Jobless recoveries get a brief mention, and the book even dips a toe into economic aggregates and macroeconomic theory.

I highly recommend this for college classes on the subject or for self-study. However....it's an economics textbook, not for casual reading.

"The reason the economy sucks is due to government not spending enough of your money" - that's what these authors actually think! This passes for logic these days?

Instead, check out books by Tom Woods, Robert Murphy, or Peter Schiff. The history that you'll learn is fascinating by itself, and coupled with sound economics it all comes together and simply makes more intuitive sense than these so-called experts who were caught *completely* off guard by recent financial events.

Go look up some of the alternative viewpoints written by people who *predicted* our financial disaster, before you fall for this rubbish and get yourself into an intellectual sink hole like Krugman has. He's so far invested in his flawed fundamentals that his career would be ruined if he ever backtracks, so he'd never admit a mistake even if he knew he made one. How can we trust someone like that?

No way this book is worth that outrageous college-textbook inflated price--I wouldn't want it for free! (Too much ink to use as fireplace kindling.) Go visit the economists over at the Mises Institute, mises.org: lots of MUCH cheaper books listed there (or here on Amazon, too), written by people more interested in teaching sound economics than they are in making a few bucks.

This is a beautiful production, well written. I got it to compare with Free Market economics (mises.org).

I have just started on it and the first example of a "market failure" is road congestion. Too many people trying to go the same way at the same time. Since the roads ways are mapped out by government bureaucrats, paid for with tax dollars and managed by a local government agency, I can not see where the market is involved at all. This appears to me to be a failure to properly price the cost of using the road. Roads are made a common area by government, free to be used at no additional charge. So everyone rushes to use it at the favorite time. Free Market operators of a road would charge more for its use at peak times. People who value the access more highly would get to use it. People who value it less would find another way or reschedule so that they go at off peak times when the toll is less.

This is typical of the author and others with his love of government and scorn for freedom. That is, he blames freedom for the problems caused by government intervention and, on the other hand, gives credit to government for the blessings of Liberty. Balance this text by reading "Man, Economy and State" by Murray Rothbard.