Getting It Right: Markets and Choices in a Free Society [Hardcover]

Robert J. Barro (Author)

Book Description

Series: Inside Technology | Publication Date: April 11, 1996

Since 1991, Robert Barro has been a contributor to the "Wall Street Journal" and other popular financial media. "Getting it Right" brings together, updates and expands upon these writings that show Barro's agility in applying economic understanding to a wide array of social issues. Barro, a "conservative who takes no prisoners", and a self described libertarian, believes that most governments have gone much too far in their spending, taxation and regulation. The dominant theme in these wide-ranging essays is the importance of institutions that ensure property rights and free markets. The discussion deals especially with the appropriate range of government: which areas represent useful public policy and which are unnecessary interference. The first section of the book considers these questions in the context of the determinants of long-run economic growth. In addition to basic economics, Barro assesses related political topics, such as the role of public institutions, the optimal size of countries, and the consequences of default on foreign debt. The second section deals with the proper role and form of monetary policy. Barro argues that government should provide markets with a stable nominal framework and then stay out of the way to best allow for price stability. Writings in the third section cover fiscal and other macroeconomic policies. Topics include the distorting influences of taxation, especially taxes in capital income; infrastructure investment and other government spending; and the consequences of public debt and budget deficits. In a final section, Barro looks at more micro issues such as cartels, tax amnesties, school choice, privatization, cigarette-smoking regulation, endangered species regulation, the market for baseball players, and term limits for politicians.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Barro is one of a handful of contemporary economists with a trulyoriginal mind and a means of communicating subtle ideas to motivatednon-economists. Barro is a provocateur par excellence, a conservativewho takes no prisoners." Peter Passell, The New York Times

"Robert Barro's Getting It Right is economic analysis at itsbest. His discussions of economic growth and macroeconomic issuesare clear and persuasive. I strongly recommend this book toeveryone with an interest in contemporary economic questions." Gary S. Becker, University of Chicago

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Robert J. Barro is Robert C. Waggoner Professor of Economics at Harvard University and a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

About Robert Barro:
"He has changed the way economists think about everything from the long-run effects of government deficits to the forces that favor economic growth."
--Sylvia Nasar, New York Times

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (April 11, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 026202408X
• ISBN-13: 978-0262024082
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,219,981 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Quick insights from a free-marketeer, November 30, 1997

By 

[e-mail] (Austin, Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Getting It Right: Markets and Choices in a Free Society (Paperback)

Barro writes a mixture of essays with a smattering of his macroeconomics textbook, Macroeconomics, thrown in for good measure. The essays are clear and worth reading, whatever your ideological persuassion. If you have ever read Paul Krugman's Pop Internationalism, you will recognize and appreciate the candor with which economic giants "dumb down" arcane empirical research into understandable prose. Good stuff.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great for developing intuitions about macroeconomics, June 1, 2003

By 

Craig Matteson (Saline, MI) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Getting It Right: Markets and Choices in a Free Society (Paperback)

Robert Barro is a treasure. He is one of the very few people writing on macroeconomics who is actually qualified to do so. When you add to that his ability to make complicated concepts accessible to lay readers you realize how valuable he really is.

This is a short book that in four chapters that are fashioned from columns that Barro wrote for the Wall Street Journal. However, the book does NOT read like a bunch of columns stitched together. It reads like a well-formed book.

The four chapters are 1) Economic Growth, 2) Monetary and Financial Policy, 3) Fiscal and Other Macroeconomic Policies, and 4) The Power of Economic Reasoning.

There is a lot to think about in these 175 pages. It doesn't take long to ready, but you won't want to dash through this. This is the kind of writing that you want to think about and linger over, not because it is difficult, but because it seriously challenges many of our present society's basic operating assumptions. I can't follow Barro all the way down the path he has taken, but I sure like most of it.

Reading this book is also a good way to introduce yourself to macroeconomic thinking and how it differs from microeconomics. It isn't a formal introduction, but the concepts are presented in such a clear manner that they can be grasped with just a little consideration of what the author is presenting.

Of course, there is a lot of serious study to do for the student who wants to understand macroeconomics in a serious way. But this book can help the everyday person develop some good intuitions about fundamental macroeconomic principles.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Clear Economics from a Leading Scholar, March 18, 2001

By 

Michael J Edelman (Huntington Woods, MI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Getting It Right: Markets and Choices in a Free Society (Paperback)

Most people distrust economists, and given what passes for an economist in the public eye, it's not surprising. The newspapers are full of hacks and mediocre economists like Paul Krugman passing off political opinion as economic wisdom. For that matter, most of what is presented as economic knowledge is political opinion. Most competant economists, whatever thier philisophical stance, pretty much agree among themselves as to the basic dynamics of the economy; it's the policy choices that divide them. Yet few economic writers in the public eye make this clear. They're more likely to present one side of a political argument and call it economic truth. Or they present a simple appear to ignorance that devalues their own profession: "As is obvious to the simplest reader..." To the public, economists are people who can't agree among themselves, can't predict where the market is going and certainly don't seem to be able to give the government any good advice. What use are they?

And then along comes someone like Barro. Here's a modern economist who is conversant with the latest theoretical models and yet who still has a good intuitive understanding of the basics of supply and demand. Barro doesn't have to throw up a smokescreen of buzzwords to intimidate the reader. He can walk you through an argument in a way that makes makes complex questions clear. In this volume he considers a number of contemporary issues, analyzes the underlying economic issues, and unlike most of his contempraries, presents a wealth of historical data to illustrate his points. And if that weren't enough, he analyzes both sides of an issue honestly.

Barro covers most of the contemporary economic issues that fill newspaper columns these days. Growth, monetary and fiscal policy, balance of trade, the role of the fed, the effects of regulation... it's all here. This isn't light reading, but it's nothing that a reasonably intelligent person can't follow. Plus, it's well written and downright entertaining. You can't ask for more.