WHAT WOULD THE GREAT ECONOMISTS DO?

Linda Yueh’s What Would the Great Economists Do? isn’t an economics textbook, but read it and you’ll wish it were what you used while learning about the subject.

The book’s conceit is simple: Yueh identifies a number of pressing economic questions—such as, “Should the economy be rebalanced?” or “Is inequality inevitable?”—and weighs in on the matter by using a specific economist’s contribution to the field as a point of departure. Thus, what feels like a thought experiment is at once a vehicle by which to learn about the work of a specific economist and apply the same to very real sociopolitical issues.

For this purpose, Yueh invokes the work of the following twelve economists in What Would the Great Economists Do?:


Adam Smith
David Ricardo
Karl Marx
Alfred Marshall
John Maynard Keynes
Irving Fisher
Joseph Shumpeter
Friedrich von Hayek
Joan Robinson
Milton Friedman
Douglass North
Robert Solow


The discussion in What Would the Great Economists Do? follows a straightforward template. Yueh poses a specific question or problem, often contextualizing this with reference to the economic situation in the United Kingdom or the United States in the aftermath of the 2008 Financial Meltdown. She then introduces one of the above economists, whose work was directly related to the issue at hand. After a brief biographical focus on the economist, there is a discussion of the economist’s contribution to the field, followed by how the latter might be applied to the question under scrutiny.

The treatment is exactly what one might expect from a basic course in economics, which lends the book a familiarity that makes it engaging to read. That Yueh includes biographical highlights about each economist is an added bonus, as such things are seldom discussed in your run of the mill economics course. While the book itself has a noticeably UK-centric bent, the presentation nonetheless is such that anyone from anywhere can easily pick up and follow along.

Although the chapters in What Would the Great Economists Do? are each organized around one of the aforementioned Great Economists, Yueh manages to also fit in Paul Samuelson’s contribution to the field as a sort of bonus. While critical readers will no doubt quibble about Yueh’s selection and omission of economists among the “greats,” there’s no doubt that Samuelson’s inclusion is most welcome, given that he quite literally wrote the textbook on modern economics.

A keen understanding of economics remains as relevant as ever, and What Would The Great Economists Do? is an excellent summary of core economic concepts and how these may be applied to our present-day realities.