From The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell reviews Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman by Jeremy Adelman (and more by Robert Kuttner). Nicholas Wapshott on Robert Fogel and the economics of good health. Florian Mayneris interviews Esther Duflo on the principles of the experimental method. Daniel Kahneman explains his problem with people using the term “behavioral economics”. Douglas French on why political correctness and economics don’t mix. Daniel Altman on why macroeconomics is going nowhere. Is economics a form of brain damage? Richard Eskow on the trash-talking blood sport of economics. William K. Black on how elite economic hucksters drive America’s biggest fraud epidemics. Should we trust economists? They're fractious, frequently wrong, and have lost much of the public's faith — but their insights are still valuable, as long as you don't expect them to predict the future. And they say economics has nothing useful to teach us.
