Here’s Hamish McRae:
Our chief economic storyteller turns his talents to the big picture of recession – and recovery
Tim Harford is trying to do for macro-economics what he – and a handful of others – have sought to do for micro-economics. That is to de-mystify the subject, explaining in simple language what we know and don’t know about the way the world economy works.
And:
The meat of the book is how to deal with recessions, the central question facing the Western world now. But there are also nice diversions into the baby-sitting co-op that workers on Capitol Hill in Washington founded, Henry Ford’s doubling of his workers’ wages in Detroit, and why cigarettes were a currency in Germany in PoW camps.
And:
Economists will continue to attract opprobium. Indeed, by their wild assertions they bring a lot of it on themselves. But maybe, thanks to people such as Harford, the profession will gain a better-informed audience, and a more perceptive one for its real shortcomings.
The Undercover Economist Strikes Back is out on Thursday.