Presidential Economics: The Making of Economic Policy From Roosevelt to Clinton [Paperback]

Herbert Stein (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1994

This book examines the events, policies, and personalities that have shaped our economy for a half century.

Product Details

• Paperback: 495 pages
• Publisher: Aei Press; 3rd Edition edition (January 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0844738514
• ISBN-13: 978-0844738512
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #216,080 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Useful and readable, a great classroom supplement., July 24, 2000

By 

C. N. Gomersall (Iowa, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Presidential Economics: The Making of Economic Policy From Roosevelt to Clinton (Paperback)

If there are any general readers left with an interest in economics, they will enjoy this accessible and informative book. I teach macroeconomics to undergraduates, and hope to find a way of using this book as an important supplement to conventional texts.

Stein gives us a history of fiscal and monetary policy from the Depression to the first Reagan term. The third edition claims to be updated to the start of the Clinton administration, but this simply means that Stein has added a few articles he'd written for the AEI or for the Wall Street Journal. Essentially, though, the book's story ends in about 1983, with most emphasis being given to the period from 1968. (Stein was at one point chairman of Nixon's Council of Economic Advisors.)

It sounds, then, as though "Presidential Economics" has two strikes against it. First, Stein refers to the Reagan administration in the present tense, whereas today's students are impatient with any material more than a couple of years old. It's actually one of my hidden agendas, though, to help students understand that the world hasn't always been as it is today, and that it may well change again tomorrow. Stein's book--indeed, almost any historical treatment--can be used to make this point.

The second apparent drawback (at least, to those who share my leftish tendencies) is that Stein is a firm believer in what he calls the "old-time [conservative] religion". Yet, perhaps because he is so frankly of the right--and, of course, because he writes so well--today's typically conservative student may well find compelling Stein's arguments against Reagan's "economics of joy". The argument against (certain forms of) supply-side, or perhaps monetarist, positions might be regarded with suspicion coming from someone with progressive pretensions (like me), whereas Stein is more likely to get away with it.

Stein's historical treatment allows the instructor to parachute in more technical material at will--the Phillips Curve, perhaps, or ye olde Keynesian Cross--either from a standard text or from the instructor's own notes. In this way the various macro models are given social, even institutional, life, and don't just follow one another as a series of abstractions (as in "if this is Chapter 17 it must be a New Classical position").

The data series used in the text generally end in 1983, but learning how to update them would, in any case, be a useful exercise for the class. I also plan on requiring students to dig up media commentary from, say, the fifties, to compare and contrast it with Stein's narrative. Students must learn that not everything can be found on the web.

I've been unable to find any more recent books that cover the last two, post-Stein, decades. I'd even settle for something less fluent and articulate than Stein, if only it wasn't polemic in a narrowly partisan kind of way. So far, though, I've been unable to find anything. (Does anyone have any ideas?) Thus, in putting some flesh on the bones of economic theory--even if, in doing so accessibly, it remains demanding, since economics is never, in that sense, an "easy read"--Stein's book continues to be relevant and useful, even vital.