What I enjoyed most about The Economists' Hour is its ability to connect complex economic theories with real-world consequences. Appelbaum expertly critiques the impact of these policies, raising important questions about inequality, financial crises, and government intervention. For anyone interested in how economic ideologies influence modern business and policy-making, this book is a must-read. It’s not just an economic history—it’s a guide to understanding the forces still at play today, and how they shape the decisions we make in business and government.

as part of a larger project to educate oneself on how the current capitalist system has been created and keeps itself going, this is a good addition. however, it ultimately offers little in the way of innovative thinking

This book provides a good history of the evolution of economics as a science through the 20th century, but it's significantly marred by the author's clearly evident belief that following the advice and guidance of economists has been an unmitigated disaster for the United States, and I'm just not buying it.

Mr. Appelbaum suggests, with a small bit of anecdotal support and no details, that what the United States absolutely positively needs right this minute is more regulation. It's easy to point to flaws or shortcomings in an existing system, but much harder to propose a better alternative, and here the author doesn't even try. There's no real consideration given to the idea that, although the American "free market" is flawed (and not always operating as a truly free market), it still might be one of the best options.

I think it's worth remembering Churchill's quote about democracy: "Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." Perhaps the same is true of a free market.

4.5 "insightful, vigorous, enlightening" stars !!!

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and Little, Brown and Company for an e-copy in exchange for my honest review. An even warmer thank you to my sweet partner who spent hours explaining the basics of economics to me over and over and over again so that I could understand more clearly what lay within this book.

I do not have the kind of mind or intellect to give this book a fair shake. I do not have any background in economical theory and I understood perhaps only half of this book and even that is iffy.
I had to keep asking my partner the same questions over and over again and at best the concepts only partially set in.

Despite this, however, I learned an awful lot about American economic policy and history, the rise of Economics as a force to be reckoned with, the use of Economics to predominately assist the wealthy and to a lesser degree the upper middle classes. How Economics appears to be more of a pseudo science masquerading as truth and can be used to manipulate hither dither. That economics purports to helping society but in fact assists the wealthy in getting not just a huge piece of the pie but all of it...leaving a piece of fruit for the dwindling middle classes and crumbs for the working class which gobble it up before the poor of other countries might get a morsel.

I learned about economic crashes, economic theories, how Greenspan was good friends with Ayn Rand, how economic crimes go mostly unpunished, how economies developed or imploded in Chile,
China, Iceland, Taiwan. How American government tamper all over the world for their own advantage. I learned and learned and learned some more...and understood just a little but enough to confirm my intuitions that as a species we are pretty awful and selfish...that is universal and the bigger your wallet the more likely you are to be despicable !

Not an easy read, but an enlightening one. Thanks so much Mr. Appelbaum !

A book about how the religion of markets failed to deliver on its promises. (Which might have been predictable, if you really understand economics.) Appelbaum shows how the single-minded embrace of markets came at the expense of economic equality, democratic health, and has long-term implications.

Recommended for anyone with an interest in understanding American economic ideology.

As someone with limited exposure to economic history and ideas I found most of this book fascinating. There were periods I found it quite hard to follow, but that is mostly due to my lack of background knowledge on many of the topics. It is endlessly surprising how much one individual can impact the world, yet time and time again many of the biggest changes in the world stem from one human. This was an excellent account of the history of free market economics. I would have loved a clearer conclusion by the author - it felt as though he wanted to make the conclusions hard to parce out. Thanks to netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

It’s not that everything was perfect before American politicians began paying attention to economists, but things sure were different. Between 1969 and 2008, author Binyamin Appelbaum argues that economists rose from the deepest depths of academia to rest in positions like secretary of the treasury and chairs of the Federal Reserve and, more broadly, as policymakers. From deregulation to antitrust to conscription, economists have spent fifty years with their fingerprints on everything. So how did it happen and, better yet, what’s been the result of this economist-driven revolution?

Appelbaum has crafted one of the most readable economic histories imaginable. While detailing the major players behind the current free-market economy and its gradual evolution could easily be dry, he avoids this by exploring its practical application to everyday life across the decades. For example, Milton Friedman and his University of Chicago gang share a bulk of Appelbaum’s focus, and Friedman’s theories led to him pushing for an end to the military draft in the U.S.—a major plus. Yet this same worldview led to the deregulation of financial institutions, eventually resulting in the subprime mortgage crises—a major yikes. Similar anecdotes, both positive and negative, are peppered throughout the book and break up some of the more detail-dense topics.

Since Appelbaum’s focus on the historical aspects at the beginning of the book shows off the breadth of his research, there’s an added sense of authority when he reaches his later criticisms. He takes issue with the idea that free-market-focused economists manufacture riches to anyone beyond the ruling class, instead pointing to their deficiencies as the catalyst for the Great Recession. In this instance, it’s a measured, focused rebuttal to this way of governing, but Appelbaum’s delivery can veer from patient to sharp and, frankly, funny depending on how absurd he finds each proposal.

With carefully researched analysis and an easy style, The Economists’ Hour provides something Appelbaum might argue many economists don’t: accessibility.

I enjoyed this book and its focus on American economics. This book was well written and interesting. I felt the book had too much for an anti free market / pro excessive regulation sentiment to be able to give it 5 stars out of 5 but I did enjoy reading this book. I would recommend this book to anyone looking to learn about economics and its history. I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an unbiased review. I give this book 3.5 stars out of 5.

This book is unusual- it's a balanced polemic. It covers evenhandedly the rise of economics (and specifically free-market rational choice economics) as an influencer of public policy both in the USA and internationally. In fact, for the first half of the book I thought this was just going to be a history of free market economics and the ways it was better than the previous system which featured more government control and direction. And I think this beginning strengthens the criticism at the end. It's clear that markets do solve some problems that can't be easily solvable otherwise. But Applebaum does a good job of showing the ways that faith in markets have led to poor results - especially how the losers in the global economy keep losing. A few thought provoking quotes:

“'The argument was always that the winners could compensate the losers,' said economist Joseph Stiglitz. 'But the winners never do.'”

“During its investigation [of amino acid price fixing], the FBI discovered...a cartel fixing the price of citric acid...that led to another cartel...to fix the prices of a wide range of food additives...Stigler’s 1964 paper had popularized the view that collusion was rare and unstable. The Reagan administration had embraced that premise...Now the real world was intruding.”

“Some took the view that trade, like cost-benefit analysis, was justified because government could compensate the losers. Others went so far as to say the government should compensate the losers. But Seventy-Five years after the United States embarked on its effort to encourage foreign trade, the reality is that the government has made little effort to do so.”

“In financial markets, one of the most consequential shifts was the demise of the idea that a banker had to act in a client’s interests....John Reed, the former head of Citicorp, has argued that the integration of Wall Street trading firms and commercial banks replaced a cultural emphasis on long term relationships with a focus on short-term profit taking. The rewards for misbehavior have also multiplied.”

“Financial crises have a long history of corroding faith in liberal democracy. A study of financial crises in developed nations since 1870 found far-right political parties often are the beneficiaries, winning popular support by blaming immigrants and minorities for the loss of prosperity.”

After reviewing the advance copy from Netgalley, I bought a paper copy for myself. I am also considering using it as part of a sophomore reading group at the business college in which I teach.

The Economists' Hour is an engaging look at decades of decisions economists have made on taxes, regulation, public spending, and policy. He calls the four particular decades from 1969 to 2008 "The Economists' Hour" due to how much influence economists had on the direction this country has had. Appelbaum takes us on a thoughtful and thorough tour of the historical implications of several of these decisions, broken down chapter by chapter.

I especially enjoyed the last couple chapters when he delves into how economists helped and hurt other countries as well. Readers are able to see how Chile, Taiwan, and Iceland each mapped out different routes to prosperity, with varying results.

Overall, this was a very educational read. I'd heard a lot of this history before, of course, but not all put together like this so I could easily see the connections of how each policy affected the next. I would definitely recommend this comprehensive book for anyone interested in why and how our economy looks the way it does today.

The Economist's Hour: The Rise of a Discipline, the Failures of Globalization, and the Road to Nationalism by Binyamin Appelbaum is the study of post World War II economics centered on the United States. Appelbaum is the lead writer on business and economics for the Editorial Board of The New York Times. He joined the board in March 2019. He was previously a Washington correspondent for the Times, covering the Federal Reserve and other aspects of economic policy.

For most of the history of the United States, economists had little to do with the practical aspects of economic policy. Hidden away in basements and never in positions of power, in fact, in 1972 George Schultz became the first economist to serve as the Secretary of the Treasury. The recovery of Europe and Japan (and Asia in general) from World War II ended the US reign as the global producer and with it an economic turndown. Economic battles began to emerge as Keynesian policy began to show cracks and fail.

Appelbaum examines several areas of the economy or economic issues in this book. One of the first issues addressed in this book is the draft. Today the all volunteer military is easily seen as superior to conscription. Life in the military is hard enough with people who want to be there, let alone people put there against their will. The question becomes, is it more cost effective? That became the struggle.

The cost of human life is another issue for economists. There are the insurance aspects of that cost but it also plays a role in regulation. For example, if a safety feature on a car can save a certain amount of lives and costs a certain amount of dollars where does the cost in saved lives exceed the cost of the feature. Adding $50 to a cost of a car to save 1000 lives a year is easily worth it. Adding $1,000 to the cost of a car to save five lives a year would probably not be worth the cost.

The Economist's Hour gives the reader an easy to understand study of contemporary economics and its history. It is not a Friedman versus Marx book, but Friedman versus Keynes. It is a practical application of (capitalist) economics and history. -- from interest rates to antitrust. Appelbaum demonstrates to the reader the reach of economics in our everyday life and recent past.

This is an important book on two levels. First, it explains the various economic ideas most people do their best to avoid dealing with in a way accessible even for those of us whose eyes tend to glaze over at mere mention of the subject. Second, it provides information for those only just learning about the mess neoclassical/neoliberal economics has created—a field guide, if you will, to how we got here, and who drove the bus everyone except the 1% has been systematically thrown under.

It’s become common wisdom to blame the paralyzing level of wealth inequality on the Republican—i.e., “conservative”—party, in particular because of Grover Norquest’s infamous “Taxpayer Protection Pledge” that intended to “make the government small enough to drown in a bathtub”.

The man usually given credit for moving the US economy into neoliberalism is Milton Friedman. However, while he is unquestionably the progenitor of modern free-market capitalism, it was his colleague George Stigler who introduced the rabid anti-regulatory element that’s created the modern oligarchy, a position even Stigler’s most important apostle, Sam Peltzman, referred to as “propaganda”.

It was Stiglitz who tilled the soil in the hallowed halls of Congress and the Oval Office that left the federal, and later state, government amenable to the gospel message that competition is superior to regulation for controlling market behavior. The message took hold just as Ronald Reagan took office. The result, unfortunately, we saw too clearly in 2008*.

The problem with neoclassical/neoliberal economics, this excellent and easy-to-read history of the movement suggests, isn’t that the theory doesn’t work. On a limited level, it does. However, the moment it became married to politics, in a country where profit is sought at any cost, it became more like religious dogma, and so not subject to question. Academic certainty became academic arrogance as the Chicago School economists went from being high on ideas to being drunk on power, refusing to accept any data that refuted their fixed beliefs.

They had the right audience, given our culture defines success solely in terms of material wealth. As a result, the converts adhere to the basic tenets of neoliberalism—limit money, cut taxes and government spending to the bone, limit or preferably eliminate regulation, support free trade and unrestricted investment, limit inflation to no more than 2% by manipulating interest rates—despite there being no only no evidence such a system is sustainable but in the face of mounting evidence it’s driving us to disaster.

And why not? It’s a system that works perfectly from those in a position to benefit from it. It’s as though a gang of thieves announced stealing was the only way to run the economy then eliminated all the laws against stealing except the ones that prevent the majority of the non-thief population from doing so.

*For an excellent, if slightly more technical, analysis of how this happened, I recommend ECONned by Yves Smith.

Disclaimer: I received an advance review copy of The Economists’ Hour from the publisher, which I found very flattering since I hadn’t requested it. I’m pleased I can unequivocally recommend it.

The Economists' Hour is a history of how economists have gained primacy in policy-making in all three branches of government. From big business paying judges $1000 to go on a one-week Florida junket where they were taught regulations are bad and anti-trust laws are bad to the takeover of administrative positions, economic ideology has replaced political ideology. Of course, economists insist they are dealing in facts which is laughable when we learn such lovely things such as Milton Friedman announcing the results of his research before he began collecting data.

Since World War Two, economists associated with the University of Chicago, most notably Milton Friedman, have waged war on Keynes advocacy of government intervention. They have encouraged the business consolidation and the elimination of regulations, insisting the market will fix everything but stupidity. When their ideas result in disasters like the should-be-criminal predation that led to the crash in 2008, they say it’s stupidity, but now everyone has learned better and it won’t happen again, so regulation is not necessary. Yeah, right.

I learned a lot from this history. We all know the conventional narrative of how America lost manufacturing jobs to other countries. Big business loves to blame labor unions demands for wages and benefits, though they never note the growth in productivity of American workers outpaced their wages. Sometimes we are told that automation destroyed the jobs, however, in this book, we learn how anti-trust, monetary policy, and currency trading played significant roles as well

The Economists’ Hour is an excellent history. It has enough of the gossipy kind of details and snarky quotes from people who knew the people he is writing about to be fun while doing a great job of explaining and presenting economic history. I struggled at first because it seemed like such a huge book. I read and read and read and was only 10% of the way through. Finally, I checked and discovered about 40% of the book is footnotes. Then it seemed less daunting. I was making progress.

This is the most holistic and credible history of how we got here from there in terms of growing inequality. It is nonpartisan and I get the impression that Appelbaum is not a pure advocate for either Friedman or Keynesian theories of economic policy. Instead, he seems to believe that what we really need is pragmatists, not ideologues, who can shift strategies depending on the current situation and reality. He notes the times that Friedman has been right and when the absolutists have been wrong.

If you don’t like where we are, it is smart to learn how we got here so we make the right choices in trying to change it. The Economists’ Hour will be invaluable in that pursuit.

I received an e-galley of The Economists’ Hour from the publisher through NetGalley.

The Economists’ Hour at Little, Brown and Company
Binyamin Appelbaum author site

As one who has no understanding of economic principles, especially on the national level, I really appreciated this book. I began to understand the influence economists have had on US economic policies. I appreciated the history of how economists began to influence governmental decisions. I also appreciate more the tough decisions government officials need to make to keep the economy running as they desire. Do you print money to stimulate job growth or not? Do you cut taxes to stimulate the economy and raise interest rates to control inflation? Do you cut spending? How are decisions made when they affect other nations as well?

I'm not sure of Appelbaum's political persuasion but it seems he highlights the failed actions of Republicans while pointing out the successful actions of Democrats. He notes the failure of the Reagan “supply-side” economics. The promised benefits did not materialize after the rich saw their tax rates decline considerably. As a result, “After-tax income inequality in the United States rose faster during the mid-1980s than during any other period in the postwar era.” (Loc 1996/9460) Clinton restored tax hikes. “Under Clinton, the economy boomed and deficits vanished.” (Loc 2038/9460) Bush's tax cuts failed too, Applebaum notes, and the US had to borrow from China.

This is a long book and it took this layperson (with respect to economic and governmental policies) a long time to get through it. I'm glad I did, however, as now I understand more how difficult the task is to make the most effective economic decisions.

I received a complimentary egalley of this book from the publisher. My comments are an honest and independent review.

I received a free copy for review from Netgalley.

This book focused on general ideas of what was happening in economic policy over the last century as well as its impact on the global politics as well as our own internal political process. It had an amazingly large amount of specific stories to give specifics of incidences and feel like the material actually mattered to you on an individual level. If economics wasn't interesting for you in college or high school, I'd give this a read- it breaks it into something less purely academic and much more approachable.

A profound analysis of economics and its role in politics. Everyone attempting to understand the present should dive into this historical explanation of the past . . . and what it means for our future.

The Economists' Hour by Binyamin Appelbaum

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher, via Netgalley, in exchange for potentially writing a review. My opinions are my own.

The "Economists' Hour" refers to the period from the late 1960s to late 2000s when the ideas of free-market economists like Milton Friedman influenced economic policy around the world to greater openness and less government regulation with mixed results. Positive examples include deregulation of the airlines leading to cheaper prices and millions more people traveling around the world than would have otherwise. Negative examples include a willful blind eye of regulators (because the market will regulate itself) on the shadow lending market that ended up creating the last housing crisis and recession (that led to the rise of right-wing populism around the world) that largely harmed the middle and lower classes.

I have long respected Binyamin Appelbaum's economics writing (we interacted on Twitter back during the financial crisis when I was teaching economics and before everyone used Twitter). 40% of this book is the author's footnotes and references, the breadth of reading and research is incredible. He claims in the Acknowledgments that his home library is the Library of Congress, hence he had materials available. I made dozens of highlights.

An eerily similar book is Yergin and Stanislaw's The Commanding Heights (2002), which was also made into a multi-part PBS documentary. That book includes different international perspectives but features many of the characters Appelbaum researches (like Milton Friedman and George Schultz) in their own words (curiously, Appelbaum quotes it only once but it appears some of his other sources are also quoting it as some of the direct quotes come straight from interviews on the documentary). The story is roughly the same, how market-oriented economists influenced the United States and other countries to deregulate, privatize, and think differently about monetary policy than they had in the years following the Great Depression and WWII. Appelbaum visits Chile and Taiwan whereas Yergin and Stanislaw focused on Bolivia, India, Poland, and Russia-- economies that Appelbaum ignores. It is as if he is trying to write a contrary perspective to their work without saying so. Appelbaum's perspective is similar to Joseph Stiglitz's in Globalization and its Discontents-- namely that the "Washington Consensus" prescribed policies to developing countries that ultimately harmed those countries, and countries who adopted contrary policies (regulating capital flows, industrial policy, etc.) fared better in the global financial crisis of the late 1990s.

The early chapter on the history of monetarism is quite good and Appelbaum finds some pretty obscure sources for quotes from Friedman and others. The birth and popularization of "supply-side economics" and tax policy is also good.

I do not agree with all of the author's opinions or conclusions, particularly when it comes to industrial policy. For example, Appelbaum decries the loss of jobs when Chile privatized its industries, but should Chilean taxpayers have propped up jobs that are inefficient? Who is to say whether Chile should have produced televisions or that South Korea should have produced steel? How is any dictator or politician or economist in a position to have that knowledge? (This is basically Hayek's critique of socialism and price controls.) This is the problem with protectionism and industrial policy--Taiwan was evidently careful to support "seedlings" without creating "greenhouses" but where does one draw the line? Taiwan's economic planner made a strategic and controversial choice to invest state funds into microprocessor research and manufacturing. Hindsight bias can say that was the correct call. I am reminded of the sum of what I learned in one of my grad school economic development courses comparing economic policy among Asian economies, taught by a disciple of Amartya Sen: "There are many recipes" and "it depends." One could argue that Chile suffered from the resource curse (ie: minerals) making it difficult to export anything else whereas Taiwan (and Hong Kong) benefited by having no such resources and being forced to innovate.

One area I have come to disagree with libertarians (and the author) on is in regards to antitrust and breaking up monopolies. Appelbaum documents how the University of Chicago ultimately influenced a host of people who radically transformed/weakened antitrust law in the belief that antitrust was not helping the consumer, but rather harming the consumer by punishing companies from being successful. That lower prices are never anticompetitive behavior, but rather signs of efficiency. Acemoğlu and Robinson's Why Nations Fail is the conclusive work showing that nations fail when exclusive economic structures (ie: monopolies) work to create exclusive political structures (rent-seeking behavior) and this drives away freedom, innovation, and economic growth. In the 1950s, Appelbaum writes, the the U.S. government forced IBM to divulge trade secrets about microchips so that other Western companies could also innovate and develop new technologies around it in competition with the Soviets. Now, America's largest firms spend a great deal of time and money patenting ideas and stifling competition and the government rarely gets involved in regulating predatory behavior. "The Federal Trade Commission...won 88 percent of its (antitrust) lawsuits during the first half of the 1970s. Between 1976 and 1981, the agency won 43 percent of the time." One wonders if Appelbaum may have found a reason for the great and mysterious U.S. productivity slowdown seen from the mid-1970s onward.

Appelbaum writes that the Economists' Hour ended sometime about the time the Bush Administration pushed through TARP and bought equity in the largest financial firms in order to stave off the downturn. Keynesian stimulus was back in vogue and behavioral economists, who argue that markets are irrational and prices are not always right, were finally ascendant. (The election of Donald Trump, who openly rejects free trade, tweets threateningly at the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and affects stock prices with every public comment, put the nail in the coffin.) He writes that his point is that "markets are constructed by people, for purposes chosen by people--and they can be changed and rebuilt by people." He's essentially arguing that economic policies may have led to overall economic growth and been beneficial to some, but the costs to others were too-often ignored, leading to our current peril. While markets are awesome, "(t)he willful indifference to the distribution of prosperity over the last half century is an important reason the very survival of liberal democracy is now being tested...our shared bonds will last longer if we can find ways to reduce the strain."

But this book, like the others Appelbaum dusted off at the Library of Congress, will soon be forgotten. The financial banks and political entities that worked so hard over the years to fund education and politicians that promote lax antitrust regulation, tax-friendly policies, and special investment vehicles are still alive and well-- as Appelbaum documents (ex: Art Laffer is still invited to speak to policymakers about tax policy). Zombies never die, history repeats itself, and "this time" is always "different." I give this book four stars out of five. Definitely read the footnotes for insight and the author's nuances.

I am not an economist or someone who reads about economics really ever. Still, I like to learn about new things. This was a fascinating book about the evolution of the field of economics since WWII.

Mr. Appelbaum, in his well-researched book, explained how the free-trade economic beliefs of Milton Friedman and others, gave rise to the Chicago School of Economics. More importantly, he explained his belief about how some of the theories believed by the free marketeers is wrong. One of the main beliefs so relied upon by the free marketeers was the belief that investors all had the same knowledge of what was behind a business, stock, or government action. He showed several times that this was not true. The author compared the philosophies of Chicago school economists with Keynes followers. The author did not provide a solid "how to improve" guide at the end but left it for our own conclusions. I think folks who like the bigger government will like this book more than free marketeers and smaller government types.