This link goes to the Kindle version, which will set you back $4 (or is it free?), plus your time. Paperback version will be available soon.
As of this moment, the Amazon site calls me the “editor” of the book rather than the author. That will be corrected eventually.
The main point of the book is that you need to keep in mind the overwhelming complexity of specialization in a modern economy. Non-economists miss it when they use simple intuition. And academic economists tend to miss it when they build their “models,” particularly of the GDP factory.
Any reader of this blog will be able to follow the book. But what I really want is for everyone who is about to start graduate school in economics to read this book. I want to say to such students, “Don’t get too suckered in by what your professors are going to be showing you about how to do economics. Don’t let them lead you to forget about specialization and trade.”
Bought it!
Congratulations, Arnold! I hope it is widely read.
I bought one too — not only because I want to read it, but also as thanks for the blogging.
Congratulations!! I’ll look for it when the hard copy comes out.
I got it! Won’t read it for a week tho, on my train trip to see an NGO which works with Roma (Gypsies) in Slovakia.
I think there’s another factor about “economic laws” — if there is some way of expressing the “law” such that it allows those who know about the law to take decisions that result in above average investment returns, those who know will make those decisions. In making those different decisions, their behavior is changing the environment where the “law” was in effect.
Decision actionable economic “laws” become self-nullifying.
Science is based on understanding an environment so as to control the result. Economics never allows enough general control.
Finally, the book looks terrific.
Can you send me instructions / requirements on how I could translate it into Slovak? My idea is to publish it in duo-language format, one page English, one page Slovak, so it would be a good purchase for Business English learners.
(At work, my work hobby is to create an AI to become an English Language teacher). You have my email address.
Just finished the epub. Great job. Undergrads should read it too, it’s perfectly accessible to anyone at that level. Before I get ahead of myself, if you’d like more extensive comments just let me know.