False Economy: A Surprising Economic History Of The World - Softcover

Beattie, Alan

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9780143169420: False Economy: A Surprising Economic History Of The World

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143169424 ISBN 13: 9780143169420

Publisher: Penguin Canada, 2010

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Throughout history, individual decisions have shaped the economic destinies of nations. No country's fate is determined simply by geography, history, religion, or natural resources. In False Economy, Alan Beattie tackles misconceptions about the modern world, looking back at history through economic binoculars, questioning various assumptions about Islam, Africa, corruption, government subsidies, and more. Wholly accessible, brilliantly argued, and full of surprises, it's not only a historical explanation of how the world got to its current point, but also a look at how our past affects our future.

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About the Author:

As world trade editor of the Financial Times, Alan Beattie writes about economic globalization, trade, development, and aid. Before joining the Financial Times he was an economist at the Bank of England. He holds degrees in history and economics from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge respectively.

From The Washington Post:

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Justin Moyer Pop social science -- think Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner's "Freakonomics" or Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point" -- is tricky. Authors risk sacrificing the intricacies of scholarship in the service of reader-friendly anecdotes. But Alan Beattie, the world-trade editor at the Financial Times and a former economist for the Bank of England, resists this kind of reduction in "False Economy," a thorough examination of economies from the age of empire to the age of the IMF. Standing proudly against psychology, dialectical materialism and inevitability, Beattie writes, "History is not determined by fate. . . . It is determined by people." He insists that it is not destiny but the right and wrong decisions by political leaders that cause societies to rise and fall. Beattie's analysis dazzles with particulars: He explains why Africa doesn't grow cocaine (poor infrastructure), why Peru grows most of the asparagus consumed in the United States (good lobbyists), and why pandas (whose diet is almost exclusively bamboo) and command economies (which can function only under inefficient bureaucracies) are endangered by inflexibility. A lover of Adam Smith's invisible hand, Beattie criticizes protectionist mollycoddling of inefficient industries. But despite his generally conservative outlook, his far-reaching history is grounded in a curiously Obama-esque, populist belief that open markets guided by modest, business-friendly policies can guide us through the current economic downturn -- that, as Shakespeare put it, "our remedies oft in ourselves do lie."
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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