Economics rules: why economics work, whe it falls, and how to tell the difference

Abstract

This book has its origins in a course I taught with Roberto Mangabeira Unger on political economy for several years at Harvard. In his inimitable fashion, Roberto pushed me to think hard about the strengths and weaknesses of economics and to articulate what I found useful in the economic method. The discipline had become sterile and stale, Roberto argued, because economics had given up on grand social theorizing in the style of Adam Smith and Karl Marx. I pointed out, in turn, that the strength of economics lay precisely in small-scale theorizing, the kind of contextual thinking that clari es cause and e ect and sheds light—even if partial—on social reality. A modest science practiced with humility, I argued, is more likely to be useful than a search for universal theories about how capitalist systems function or what determines wealth and poverty around the world. I don’t think I ever convinced him, but I hope he will nd that his arguments did have some impact.