Product Description
By focusing on the human side as well as the intellectual dimensions of how economists work and think, this collection of interviews with top economists of the 20th century becomes a startling and lively introduction to the modern world of macroeconomics.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 5 reviews)

What's Inside An Economist's Mind? by Prakash Loungani

4 Stars
August 25, 2008
This book can make you fall in love with economics all over again. A collection of interviews with sixteen eminent economists, it presents the attractive face of the field--one rediscovers an economics concerned with improving the human condition by putting to good use tools borrowed from disciplines as diverse as mathematics and psychology. The book is a labor of love for William Barnett, the editor of the journal Macroeconomic Dynamics in which these interviews originally appeared between 1997 and 2005. Though the interviews were aimed at professional macroeconomists, much of the book is of broader interest. That's because these eminent economists, interviewed by their peers, are often able to describe their complicated work in simple terms, with modesty and humor, and enriched with anecdotes from their lives. Link to full review: http://www.imf.org/external/np/vc/2008/072508.htm

Overpraised, but good by JJ vd Weele (Firenze, Italy)

4 Stars
July 06, 2008
"Inside the economist's mind" is not a title that will attract readers without some background in economics, nor should it. This collection of interviews is by economists and for economists: there is a fair amount of economic jargon used that will make the book hard to read for laypeople. Having said that, most of the interviews are entertaining for economists. Getting an author's personal view on well-known ideas makes those ideas come alive, and it is interesting to read about the career paths and choices of famous academics. The selection of people is impressive, although in my personal view (as a micro-economist) there is an overrepresentation of macro-economists, and within this category an exaggerated interest for the rational expectations `revolution' and monetary policy. For those with other interests, treasures are more limited. There is a great and provocative interview with Robert Aumann that ranges from the existence of God to the foundations of game theory. The interview with János Kornai is great because having started his career on the other side of the iron curtain, he has a different perspective on the discipline. This is welcome, because it turns out that top-economists are a rather incestuous bunch, mostly bred within the top 10 or so departments in the US. This generates a lot of uninteresting institutional insider talk, the summit of which is reached in the useless last chapter in where James Tobin and Bob Shiller argue about the existence or not of a `Yale school' in economic thought, as if anyone cares. Some reviews talk about the `astonishing revelations' or the 'fabulous storytellers' in this book. Don't get your hopes up, it's still economics, unless they refer to the fact that Cass once said "[...]" to his head of department. The reviewer who calls this "A Beautiful Mind scaled up 16 times" must have read a different book (or did not read ABM). I would recommend getting this book from the library. Although interesting and occasionally entertaining, there is not too much here that you want to keep for reference. Still, 4 stars for the Aumann interview.

Essential Reading for Economists by Stephen Kibsella (Limerick, Ireland)

5 Stars
January 21, 2007
This is a collection of interviews commissioned for a journal, Macroeconomic Dynamics. The idea is to gauge the position of the profession by asking the people who invented large swathes of the theory their motivations for doings what they did, when they did it, and how they did it. Readers find eccentric and irascible characters behind some of the major innovations in economic science. I loved this book, and read it cover to cover in a day. The book purports (pg. xi) to "contain[] unique insights into the thinking of some of the world's most important economists, whose work contributed to the evolution of modern economic thought", and indeed it does. Scientific biography is a passion of mine, ever since reading Richard Feynman's writings on his life and work. Looking at the path integral method as an undergraduate, you can see how he came up with it (if, in fairness, I didn't really understand it), how startlingly original he was in doing his physics, because that's how he lived his life---he followed different paths as he felt he needed to, and arrived at different destinations that others because of his personality. So it's great that William Barnett, the editor of Macroeconomic Dynamics, and the co-editor of this book, decided to ask these men these questions. In future editions of this book and the further volumes to come, I'd love to see a focus on the characters behind different approaches to economics and their reasons for taking contrarian positions to the mainstream---Foley, Nell, Solow and Velupillai (my thesis advisor, in full disclosure), as well as more traditional mainstays of the profession. A focus on economists regarded primariy as great teachers would be great as well, not just the theoretical giants. The book is a very rare thing---an economic page-turner, like The Worldly Philosopher, Adam's Fallacy, and Freakonomics. The personalities behind the science's blleding edge make for compelling reading.

Bloomberg on the Economy by a reader

5 Stars
January 08, 2007
Thomas Keene has an Amazon Listmania List called "Book Reviews: Must Reads." It links to each of the books in Amazon that he recommends as a "must read," and there currently are eighteen of them on his list. But oddly the Amazon system does not provide reverse links from the Amazon page for each of the recommended books back to his review. He is the very influential Host of the radio program, "Bloomberg on the Economy." This book is on his list of "must reads." Here is his review: "Rules are meant to be broken. Samuelson & Barnett goes on the list without a complete read. Sixteen stunning interviews; the candor shocking. But then, this is Samuelson. Taylor interviews Friedman; Blanchard interviews Fischer. You get the must-read picture." Keene's rule that he says he is breaking is never to put a book on his "must read list" before he has finished reading the book. When he finishes reading this book, as I have, I am sure that he will not change his mind. I have only one criticism of the book. The stellar endorsement quotations that appear on the back cover are set in a rather small font on a black background. It would seem that the publisher could have found a way to make those quotations more inviting to read. But of course this is not a criticism of what is in the book.

An Early Review by Mindy

5 Stars
November 12, 2006
A review of this new book just appeared on the British blog, New Economist, in London. The first line of the review is "Published earlier this week, Inside the Economist's Mind: Conversations with Eminent Economists, has all the hallmarks of an economic bestseller." I have read the book, and indeed the New Economist is right. What most distinguishes this book is its "no holds barred" revelations and astonishing statements by many of the world's most famous "celebrity" economists, including eight Nobel Laureates, a former Federal Reserve Board chairman, the current Governor of the Bank of Israel, a former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, along with other economists of similar importance. This book is filled with inside information from those who know the truth, but had not previously revealed it. The book contains some unusual photos, such as photos of Franco Modigliani with the Kings of Sweden and Spain and Paul Samuelson with Bill Clinton.

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

	The Soulful Science: What Economists Really Do and Why It Matters by Diane Coyle (Author) To many, Thomas Carlyle's put-down of economics as "the dismal science" is as fitting now as it was 150 years ago. But Diane Coyle argues that economics today is more soulful than dismal, a more practical and human science than ever before. Building on the popularity of books such as Freakonomics that have applied economic thinking to the paradoxes of everyday life, The Soulful Science describes the remarkable creative renaissance in how economics is addressing the most fundamental...
	The Chicago School: How the University of Chicago Assembled the Thinkers Who Revolutionized Economics and Business by Johan Van Overtveldt (Author) A landmark: the first book to provide an in-depth history of the Chicago School of Economics, which sprang from the economics departments at the University of Chicago and its business school in the mid-twentieth century and went on to revolutionize how we think about economics and business. When Richard Nixon said "We are all Keynesians now" in 1971, few could have predicted that the next three decades would have resulted in a complete transformation of the global economic...
	Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction by Thomas K. McCraw (Author) Listen to a short interview with Thomas McCraw Host: Chris Gondek \| Producer: Heron & Crane Pan Am, Gimbel's, Pullman, Douglas Aircraft, Digital Equipment Corporation, British Leyland--all once as strong as dinosaurs, all now just as extinct. Destruction of businesses, fortunes, products, and careers is the price of progress toward a better material life. No one understood this bedrock economic principle better than Joseph A. Schumpeter. "Creative destruction," he said, is the...
	Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, and the Economics of Growth and Prosperity by William J. Baumol (Author), Professor Robert E. Litan (Author), Prof. Carl J. Schramm (Author) Imagine this: a mere century ago, the purchasing power of an average American was one-tenth of what it is today. But what will it take to sustain that growth through the next century? And what can be said about economic growth to aspiring nations seeking higher standards of living for their citizens? In this important book, William J. Baumol, Robert E. Litan, and Carl J. Schramm contend that the answers to these questions lie within capitalist economies, though many observers make the...
	Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism by George A. Akerlof (Author), Robert J. Shiller (Author) The global financial crisis has made it painfully clear that powerful psychological forces are imperiling the wealth of nations today. From blind faith in ever-rising housing prices to plummeting confidence in capital markets, "animal spirits" are driving financial events worldwide. In this book, acclaimed economists George Akerlof and Robert Shiller challenge the economic wisdom that got us into this mess, and put forward a bold new vision that will transform economics and restore...