Economics in America: An Immigrant Economist Explores the Land of Inequality

by Angus Deaton

Overview

From the Nobel Prize–winning economist and New York Times bestselling coauthor of Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, candid reflections on the economist’s craft

When economist Angus Deaton immigrated to the United States from Britain in the early 1980s, he was awed by America’s strengths and shocked by the extraordinary gaps he witnessed between people. Economics in America explains in clear terms how the field of economics addresses the most pressing issues of our time—from poverty, retirement, and the minimum wage to the ravages of the nation’s uniquely disastrous health care system—and narrates Deaton’s account of his experiences as a naturalized US citizen and academic economist.

Deaton is witty and pulls no punches. In this incisive, candid, and funny book, he describes the everyday lives of working economists, recounting the triumphs as well as the disasters, and tells the inside story of the Nobel Prize in economics and the journey that led him to Stockholm to receive one. He discusses the ongoing tensions between economics and politics—and the extent to which economics has any content beyond the political prejudices of economists—and reflects on whether economists bear at least some responsibility for the growing despair and rising populism in America.

Blending rare personal insights with illuminating perspectives on the social challenges that confront us today, Deaton offers a disarmingly frank critique of his own profession while shining a light on his adopted country’s policy accomplishments and failures.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691247625
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	10/03/2023
Pages:	280
Sales rank:	34,511
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 5.70(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Angus Deaton, winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in economics, is the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs Emeritus and Senior Scholar at Princeton University. He is the author (with Anne Case) of the New York Times bestselling book Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism (Princeton).

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“If you would like to know more about economics, and what economists do, but the last thing you want to read is a dry economics text, then Angus Deaton’s often controversial but never dull Economics in America is the book you should read.”—Peter Singer, author of Ethics in the Real World

“How delightful to find a witty, thoughtful, and informative work that answers a question I once asked Angus Deaton and gives answers to so many more that I wish I had asked.”—Kwame Anthony Appiah, author of The Ethics of Identity and the weekly “Ethicist” column for the New York Times

“Angus Deaton’s beautiful mind and generous spirit are on full display in this insightful and charming book on the strengths and sins of economics. Covering topics ranging from poverty and health care to monetary policy and climate change, with characteristic brilliance and warmth, the great economist builds a powerful case for his discipline to return to its original calling: to promote human flourishing and justice.”—Matthew Desmond, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“Deaton presents a number of entertainingly written and sometimes ironic vignettes of life in America, telling stories ranging from the financial crisis to the cutthroat competition for the Nobel Prize. We get to know three Deatons in these pages: the top economist, the longtime resident and student of the United States, and the immigrant with the background and sensibility of Scotland, the country of his birth.”—Branko Milanovic, author of Worlds Apart: Measuring International and Global Inequality

“Economics in America is a masterful tour of key topics in economics by a wise, witty, and experienced guide. Human welfare, Deaton reminds us, is about more than money—it is about living a dignified life in a democratic society. Vivid in style and rich in examples, Deaton’s far-reaching humanistic take on economics—and economists—deserves a wide audience.”—Debra Satz, author of Why Some Things Should Not Be for Sale: The Moral Limits of Markets

Editorial Reviews

08/28/2023

Nobel Prize–winning British economist Deaton (The Great Escape) lambastes American economic injustice in these feisty missives. In “Adventures in American Healthcare,” he decries the country’s medical system as expensive, wasteful, cruelly exclusionary of people without insurance, and difficult to understand (he found it almost impossible to determine how much his hip replacement would cost because of opaque hospital pricing and byzantine insurance rules). Elsewhere, Deaton criticizes the Chicago school of market-oriented economists for obsessing over efficiency while neglecting inequality and discusses research disproving conservative economists’ contention that minimum wage increases raise unemployment. However, he often departs from liberal orthodoxy, arguing, for example, that foreign aid to poor nations is a waste of money that weakens their governments and that cigarette taxes are a form of paternalism that hurts people who have a right to enjoy a smoke. Deaton’s prose is lucid and tartly down-to-earth (the U.S. government works “to help rich predators make ordinary people poorer,” he writes), and he makes a convincing case that “economics should be about understanding the reasons for and doing away with the sordidness and joylessness that come with poverty and deprivation.” The result is a refreshing take on America’s economic discontents. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 07/01/2023

When Nobel Prize—winning economist Deaton (Princeton Univ.; coauthor, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism) immigrated to the United States in the early l980s, he was shocked by the high level of crime unconstrained by any political or legal intervention. Many Americans were working for minimum wage, health care cost up to 20 percent of their income, and they had no retirement plans or secure futures. In this book, the author shows how U.S. economic policies contribute to growing despair and rising populism and promote a wider gap between the country's wealthy and low-income earners. As the rich get richer, health and safety protections for impoverished people shrink, with even their small safety nets under threat. As a solution, Deaton proposes that members of Congress and other policymakers base their decisions on current and future empirical research that shows not only the causes of economic policies but also the effects that are devastating for too many. VERDICT This brilliant economics study will likely engage general readers and hold their attention to the end. Purchase for behavioral and social sciences collections.—Claude Ury

Library Journal

2023-06-29
A Nobel laureate reports on U.S. economic policy and the state of Anglo-American economics.

A professor of economics emeritus at Princeton and author of Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, Deaton gathers essays he wrote for Britain’s Royal Economic Society over the last 25 years. One set of essays addresses substantive concerns, including health care policy, inflation and its measurement, global poverty, pensions, wealth and income inequality, and class and generational social disparities. The author casts doubt on the magic of the “free” market and claims that economic thinking is helpful but insufficient given the extent to which it is ignored by policymakers and/or used simply to justify politically determined decisions. The other essays address the economic discipline: professional organizations, journals, core disagreements, and the Nobel Prize. Deaton boldly asks why economists fail to deliver economic policy that reduces inequalities. “We have certainly made too little progress on central policy questions that ought to be amenable to scientific inquiry,” he writes. Internal disagreements, a failure of economists to recognize the political nature of advice-giving, the resistance of elected officials to issues of inequality, and the privileging of capital over labor in conventional economic wisdom stifle economic advice. Deaton bemoans American capitalism with its “government-enabled rent seeking and the destruction supported by the ideology of market fundamentalism.” However, he refuses to abandon mainstream economics, noting that we “need to put the power of competition back in the service of the middle and working classes.” To do so, the discipline must reconnect with its “proper basis, which is the study of human welfare.” Written for non-economists to help them understand “how my profession works,” the book is insufficiently attentive to the differences among and within the field’s academic, policy, and business realms.

A self-proclaimed contrarian mixes praise with disappointment to prod his colleagues in a more progressive direction.

Kirkus Reviews

A Financial Times Best Book of the Year: Economics

"A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year"

From the Publisher