A fantastic book on evolutionary game theory. Very clearly presented, with great visualizations and examples. A clear recommendation for anyone intereA fantastic book on evolutionary game theory. Very clearly presented, with great visualizations and examples. A clear recommendation for anyone interested in the relationship between strategic behavior and social outcomes....more
Possibly the best companion to an introductory economics course I've ever seen.Possibly the best companion to an introductory economics course I've ever seen....more
Before talking about the central idea here I have to say I really appreciate this book providing in the middle chapters an ACTUAL critique of modern eBefore talking about the central idea here I have to say I really appreciate this book providing in the middle chapters an ACTUAL critique of modern economics. Don't get me wrong - I've seen plenty of critiques of economics as a field. But almost without exception those critiques seem to have little idea of what modern economics actually is or does. Typically this takes the form of confusing economics for capitalism, focusing on one tiny problem and pretending it invalidates the entire field, or, most commonly, critiquing economics as it was 20 (30, 40, 70, 100) years ago and ignoring the fact that their complaints have been well-addressed in the meantime. But nope! This book knows exactly what goes on in modern economics and can identify an actual major systemic problem with the field relating to the simplicity of its modeling, the lack of attention to feedback mechanisms like endogenous tastes, and difficulty in dealing with more than one thing at a time. Plus the book provides a nice compact history of postwar economic approaches. I'd quibble with them trotting out the worn half-truth that economics only cares about material welfare, but you could really do worse for a short broad-scope survey of the field of academic economics.
So, then, complexity. This book focuses on an emerging complexity science that uses new tools to study people in ways that allow for complex interactions between different systems, path-dependence, and high levels of nonlinearity in analysis. Both of these are very difficult to account for in standard analysis. Despite the fact that everyone knows they're important, we sort of leave them as caveats to any results we come up with, or for "later work." Here's the later work! This sort of work allows for things like emergent behavior and lock-in equilibria. There's a lot to think about here, and the book managed to address things I've been thinking about for a long time. More than once I went into my "projects to work on someday" file to delete or edit project plans, finding out that they'd already been done!
This is really fascinating stuff, and I think it's not just a great idea but actually going to form the future of social science. Work is already heading in this direction in paying greater attention to these effects, even if the actual tools they talk about aren't always the way it's done. Definitely a worthy read if you want to think about social behavior on a deep and comprehensive level without falling into the trap of thinking that "it's complicated" is a conclusion rather than a starting point (looking at you, low-end sociology papers). There's no reason to be limited by the traditional approaches to these problems.
The book's not perfect, of course. I could have done with far more examples of this kind of research in action. Or examples of policies. The authors repeatedly talk about for-benefit (social enterprise) institutions as the complexity policy killer app but they don't make clear what exactly is holding them back from being a much bigger force than they are other than the social norm of profit-driven institutions (and how do you build a choice ecostructure to encourage that to change, exactly?), the long-run examples they come up with depressingly turned into for-profit over time (AT&T, hospitals), and the laser focus on the idea leads to the impression that there's a lack of good implementation ideas when you check inside the box which I suspect is not true. In general the book casts a very wide and optimistic net for what can change within the complexity frame. That may be the best rhetorical approach but sometimes it does get a little silly - I seriously doubt that a complexity frame will have much effect on confused or illogical political disputes, for example. Along those lines I'm not sure I buy the long laundry list of ideas and thinkers that get claimed by the "complexity frame" - Smith, Mill, Hayek, Keynes, Kahneman, etc. may have all been thinkers who allowed for complexity but it's hard to put them all in the same "frame" without pulling the teeth from the concept.
But that's just me being nitpicky. That's all about the text specifically; the ideas here are very solid and this is a book that can really make you think in new ways. A strong recommendation....more
Rebecca Spang knocks it out of the park again. This is a fascinating study of French currency in the prelude, duration, and aftermath of the French reRebecca Spang knocks it out of the park again. This is a fascinating study of French currency in the prelude, duration, and aftermath of the French revolution. It focuses on money-as-object, unusual given the tendency of a lot of financial history to forget that the physical form that money takes is important. This take is particularly useful in France in this era, where many, many different kinds of money were running around all at once. Backed, unbacked, backed by different things, colloquial, governmental, and so on. Exchange rates between theoretically convertible currencies never were quite able to stick. Definitely a recommendation....more
A very good book on moral "reasoning" and evolutionary development, the ways moral foundations and types can be defined, and how they relate to politiA very good book on moral "reasoning" and evolutionary development, the ways moral foundations and types can be defined, and how they relate to political reasoning and group formation.
Well written and well supported. I wish I had the capacity to evaluate its less established arguments (mostly the ones relating to the evolutionary process, its speed and the level at which it operated). But I more or less buy what goes on here. A worthy read....more
A fantastic work. Thorough, measured, and complex. A rough read but very much worth it. You won't find many works in economics that are really willingA fantastic work. Thorough, measured, and complex. A rough read but very much worth it. You won't find many works in economics that are really willing to face up to the complexity of the topic at hand (rather than pointing out that complexity makes other explanations wrong and favoring their own panacea). Definitely worth the read....more
Thoroughly readable, accessible, and important. The best book I've read on the American economy in some time, and far clearer than other contenders liThoroughly readable, accessible, and important. The best book I've read on the American economy in some time, and far clearer than other contenders like Goldin & Katz. Manages to rigorously tame and put into perspective the thousands upon thousands of "common-sense" arguments about the direction of inequality, labor, innovation, gentrification, and immigration. Read it....more
This is a very interesting book. The analysis does dip towards speculation at times, and he has a strange idea about what "big data" is (the Dale & KrThis is a very interesting book. The analysis does dip towards speculation at times, and he has a strange idea about what "big data" is (the Dale & Krueger studies? old people's memories? huh??) but this is more about exploring what basic facts you can see inside an entirely new and fascinating data source than it is about the actual analysis of those facts. And when he can produce some credible results (I have long been a fan of his J Pub article on Obama and racial slurs, which is covered here) it's always compelling.
As a sidenote, surprising how many technical terms he managed to sneak in here without really explaining them, things like "confidence interval." I certainly appreciated the approach for my purposes but a casual reader may have to look some things up. I'm surprised the editor okayed it!...more
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