The book gets off to a very bad start with a lot of self-promotion on all the superior aspects of economists over other members of society. But this work dates from 2003, most economics books published after 2008 have a much more humble tone. Fortunately Naked Economics rapidly improves.

Midway through the book there is a discussion of efficient markets theory and the superiority of index funds over mutual funds or personal stock-picking/day-trading. But Wheelan and another economics book I've read recently which promotes index funds miss important aspects of their nature. Index funds are free riders on the informed stock picking happening in the background that is the pre-requisite of efficient markets theory. The dumbed down version of efficient markets theory says markets are efficient period, not that that they are efficient because there are many people working hard for their own benefit to make them efficient. It's the equivalent of political contexts where one takes for granted that the system self-corrects and getting oneself involved isn't necessary, even though the self-correction consists individuals getting involved.

Rarely any scheme that attempts to model the aggregate actions of others incorporates the effects of the adoption of the scheme on a large scale. If all stocks were picked in the fashion of index funds then the market would not be efficient at all- and there could be interesting scenarios to explore there. But the market wouldn't move instantly from efficient to un-efficient after passing some threshold of index funds vs. picked funds. We instead would see that mutual funds start to perform a little better than index funds, and there would be a movement back towards picked funds and the system balances out. As it stands now we're probably a long way from that cross-over point.

Elsewhere in the book there is a recurring and unresolved tension between representative government and free markets. Wheelan offers up some easy examples of what government should do and what free markets should, and what they shouldn't do, but there isn't an overall coherent structure that makes deciding the murkier cases easy. It's likely anyone with an extremely simple and dogmatic approach is probably going to do a lot of damage if given the opportunity to implement it.

A great celebration is made of the ability of markets to deliver on the preferences of individuals making transactions, but then Wheelan immediately disparages some applications of preferences- preferring not to buy products derived from inhumane working conditions is one of them, even if the alternative is giving the workers no work at all. Wheelan doesn't understand that the difference between harm caused by one's own action and the harm caused indirectly by inaction- all else being equal the former is much worse.

The arguments for free trade are interesting, but Wheelan doesn't recognise the work of preferences on a national scale. Free trade works great when paired with with free immigration (why should workers be tied to the countries of their birth like serfs?) and overarching institutions that protects certain values and rights- like for example the free trade and freedom of movement enjoyed by the inhabitants of the 50 United States. But I can see how pre-conditioning progress on one front of international relations on progress on every other would mean no progress at all.