Join Amazon Prime and ship Two-Day for free and Overnight for $3.99. Already a member? Sign in.
|
||||||||
Frequently Bought Together
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
Discover Your Inner Economist: Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Dentist by Tyler Cowen  (42)
|
The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It by Paul Collier  (41)
$18.48
|
Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, and the Economics of Growth and Prosperity by William J. Baumol (18)
$19.80
|
More Sex Is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics by Steven E. Landsburg (26)
$5.99
|
The Economic Naturalist: In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas by Robert Frank (24)
$10.85
|
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Caplan, an associate professor of economics, believes that empirical proof of voter irrationality is the key to a realistic picture of democracy and, thus, how to approach and improve it. Focusing on how voters are systematically mistaken in their grasp of economics-according to Caplan, the No. 1 area of concern among voters in most election years-he effectively refutes the "miracle" of aggregation, showing that an uninformed populace will often vote against measures that benefit the majority. Drawing extensively from the Survey of Americans and Economists on the Economy, Caplan discusses how rational consumers often make irrational voters, why it's in politicians' interest to foment that irrationality, what economists make of the (non) existence of systematic bias and how social science's "misguided insistence that every model be a 'story without fools,' " has led them to miss the crucial questions in politics, "where folly is central." Readers unfamiliar with economic theory and its attendant jargon may find themselves occasionally (but only momentarily) lost; otherwise the text is highly readable and Caplan's arguments are impressively original, shedding new light on an age-old political economy conundrum.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Christopher Hayes, In These Times
"Caplan's willingness to embrace the darkness, however, is what makes this book so important."
See all Editorial Reviews
Caplan, an associate professor of economics, believes that empirical proof of voter irrationality is the key to a realistic picture of democracy and, thus, how to approach and improve it. Focusing on how voters are systematically mistaken in their grasp of economics-according to Caplan, the No. 1 area of concern among voters in most election years-he effectively refutes the "miracle" of aggregation, showing that an uninformed populace will often vote against measures that benefit the majority. Drawing extensively from the Survey of Americans and Economists on the Economy, Caplan discusses how rational consumers often make irrational voters, why it's in politicians' interest to foment that irrationality, what economists make of the (non) existence of systematic bias and how social science's "misguided insistence that every model be a 'story without fools,' " has led them to miss the crucial questions in politics, "where folly is central." Readers unfamiliar with economic theory and its attendant jargon may find themselves occasionally (but only momentarily) lost; otherwise the text is highly readable and Caplan's arguments are impressively original, shedding new light on an age-old political economy conundrum.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Christopher Hayes, In These Times
"Caplan's willingness to embrace the darkness, however, is what makes this book so important."
See all Editorial Reviews
Product Details
|
