Customer Reviews

International Economics

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The book really brings an in depth analysis of the modern financial world, through a very simple and easy to access method of presentation. Good for students, interesting for any other reader...

This provides different kinds of examples as well as theories. It no doubt helps students learn about the real world. Particularly,the chapter on tariff policy is good enough to have a good grasp of the field.

I've found this book easy to follow, even if I'm not very good at Economics. Simple, with many examples and graphs. Case studies and good bibliography at the end of each chapter.

The picture shown for this product is of the correct book and edition, but the one that was mailed to me is the international edition...not the book pictured. International editions are usually at least slightly different than the normal version (pictured).

The author, Dominick Salvatore, is clearly an expert in the field. Unfortunately, his field appears to be Keynesian economics circa the 1960s, and is almost completely wrong, and at times, incoherently wrong. Imagine that in the 1940s to the 1970s, man's knowledge of chemistry was thrown out the window, and replaced with alchemy. This is what Keynesianism did to economics. I have only read the second half of the book, but it simply makes no sense. It rambles on and on about balance of payment "deficits," which are impossible, as the capital account and current account always will balance each other out. It is obsessed with "equilbria" and "disequilibria," based on a mythical "balance of payments" deficit and surplus, rendering such diversions meaningless. The text dumbly assumes that trade between a person across the street from you is completely different from a person across the world from you, and senselessly assumes that government intervention in the economy can achieve policy objective, contrary that the entire historical record indicates this is not the case. Reading this text, one feels like they are in a particularly blighted region of the 19th century, or in Soviet Russia. There is incredibly little of accurate knowledge in this horrifically bad text. Knowing what's in it might be good for passing an exam, but it doesn't teach anything useful beyond that, and unfortunately, it's over reliance on graphs, with mind numbing references to said graphs splattered across multiple pages, makes it very difficult to pull anything together. In summary, Salvatore is an expert in a discredited field, and I am sure if he put in the time and thought, the 10th or 11th edition could actually begin to approach a modern understanding of economics, instead of the dark ages of economics, and thereby become a useful education tool, as opposed to one of indoctrination of failed principles and concepts.

I don' t think it is any better than other texts and I just want to balance out the overall rating average by giving a low rating.