I just finished reading The Price of Everything, a novel by the economist Russ Roberts, and it is an unusual and wildly enjoyable book.
Do not read it expecting to find a classic, well-made novel: in that regard, it is awkward and misshapen. But it has a different purpose.
As the subtitle promises, it is “a parable of possibility and prosperity,” which is to say a passionate argument in favor of using the economic approach to look at the world.
The main characters are a late-middle-aged economics professor at Stanford (a woman, as it happens, in a nice break with stereotype) and a student who is a Cuban immigrant, a tennis champ, and extraordinarily attuned to how the world works (or how he thinks it should work). Suffice it to say that the teacher does a lot of teaching and the student does a lot of learning in the course of the book.
The plot itself is rarely satisfying, but the lessons learned along the way are extremely well-drawn. There is the familiar but always charming tale of how no one person knows how to make a pencil, but how it somehow gets made. There is a compelling explanation for why it might be good for stores to raise prices on certain items — flashlights, say — during a storm. (A higher price acts as a brake for those who might be tempted to grab five flashlights they don’t need, which means that the store doesn’t run out for the people who really need one flashlight.)
Roberts has written two earlier economics-lesson novels, which I now look forward to reading.
To my mind, his writing bests the Marshall Jevons economics-lesson mysteries, and there’s a lot more economics to be learned along the way.
Although nothing, sadly, about financial-services meltdowns.
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The Marshall Jevons books are pretty strained; if anyone has read this book, I would be interested to know if it would be a productive side reader for a principles of economics class. Every couple of years a bit of econ fiction emerges (recently “Saving Adam Smith” which looked pretty bad), but I am looking for one that would be a good fit.
#5 – extremely excellent points.
In general: So basically this is a bad-plot, poorly-characterized, stilted piece of propaganda? If it was about the power of communism we’d probably laugh it off.
Russ Roberts is awesome!!!!
No Rothbard?
What bothers me about most business books and MBA programs is that they focus on costs and not the value contribution provided by service groups that are essential to the long term sustainability and profitability of business. It as if the hedonistic views of the 60s have penetrated our executive world and everything is now, now, now and thinking about tomorrow is deferred.
Perhaps you may enjoy reading the Council on Competitiveness recent report
http://www.compete.org/publications/detail/472/thrive
If we are going to have a tomorrow, we must make plans today.
Joel@Skilltv.net
BSK: Calm Down.
Henry David Thoreau knew how to make pencils, as did the rest of his family.
Sounds similar in approach to Goldratt’s classic (for production types) The Goal. Basically it is a bad novel/love story to motivate teaching of some ideas in manufacturing called Theory of Constraints.
Reading about ToC by itself is dry and lacks motivation. A narrative is a much better approach, even if it is not good writing and good plot.