This book, in my opinion , is quite possibly one of the most important books of this decade. With increasingly polarising views among people belonging to opposing aisles in the political spectrum, it is gradually becoming more obvious how quick we are to judge a policy , be it economical or political at its face value. It is astounding to learn how little or how much a certain economically targeted strategy can shape a community or a country for that matter. This books covers a lot of topics ranging from Taxing the rich to how providing incentives to daily wage workers to move to more Urban location for better opportunities often work way differently than we can imagine. This book has certainly enlightened me and was far more interesting than i was expecting a book about Economics could be. Highly Recommended!! ( )

Clear, concise, well-balanced. ( )

I occasionally read books about economics because although I understand very liitle about it, it's a topic I find interesting. This was a good read mostly. It went on too much at certain points and as usual with economics books some went right over my head. ( )

For personal reasons, it was a fun read. My undergraduate degree is in economics, and I actually worked as an economist early in my career, but it's been a while. The book took me back to my academic roots...I hadn't seen the word "autarky" in print for decades!

More generally, I think the authors write well; they are slightly left-leaning and see a strong role for government, but that doesn't offend my particular sensibilities. I liked their description of several randomized controlled trials in economics -- I wasn't familiar with most of them. I liked the discussion of current issues, including migration and trade and income/wealth inequality. I liked the debunking of "truths" such as understanding what drives economic growth and that GDP is a good proxy for well-being. ( )

The authors are (generally) great economists, but this isn't a great book. Some chapters are very good, but for a book which talks about how there is a big gap between economists and the public, and tries to explain why, it misses large numbers of reasons -- essentially that factors other than economic utility maximization matter to many people. In the chapter on immigration, it focused entirely on the arguments for immigrants being (pretty clearly) good for society overall economically, and very good for the immigrants themselves, with the only economic argument being that gains are unequally distributed (and some people lose). Doesn't take into consideration the non-economic or indirect changes (such as political shifts) caused by immigration -- it could be quite reasonable for someone to accept $Nk less per capita GDP, and $Yk less annual personal income, if it preserves a political order for 20 years longer than otherwise.

Generally pretty leftist in both assumptions and goals, although probably technocratic or statist is the stronger bias.

The best parts of the book are descriptions of methodology, vs. specific arguments and conclusions. There is some good work in economics in finding suitable randomized. controlled trials and natural experiments. One of the more interesting areas is the analysis of means-tested, conditional cash transfers, and blanket/UBI type grants. ( )