Economics: The User’s Guide
Ha-Joon Chang / Current Affairs / Non-Fiction
UK Publisher
Allen Lane/Penguin (WEL)
US Publisher
Bloomsbury USA
Date Published
May 1st, 2014
Translations
Nieuw Amsterdam (Dutch)
Bookie (Korean)
Toyo Keizai (Japanese)
Random House Mondadori/Debate (Spanish),Il Saggiatore (Italian)
Ars Longa (complex Chinese)
Krytyka Polityczna (Polish)
Editura Polirom SA (Romanian)
SAY (Turkish)
Compendia Das Letras (Portuguese
Brazil)
Into Kustannus (Finnish)
Clube Do Autor (Portuguese)
Mann
Ivanov and Ferber (Russian)
Beijing Immaginist Times (simplified Chinese)
Openworlds (Thai)
Nash Format (Ukrainian)
Solum Bokvennen (Norwegian)
Abideen (Malay)
Omega Books
(Vietnamese)
Klim (Danish)
Madarat (Arabic)
Uzbek (Butikbooks)
From the international bestselling author, and one of the world’s most respected economists, comes an accessible guide to understanding economics.
Economics: The User’s Guide expertly takes readers through the history of economics, where all these theories come from, how (and if) they work, and what it all means for the 99%. Chang provides not just the tools for us to better understand our financial world, but also presents a vision for how economies can work for everyone, and not just the super-rich. From the Industrial Revolution to the Russian Revolution to capitalism and the “free market” as dogma to how we determine if an economy is healthy and the institutions created to measure this performance, Economics: The User’s Guide will be an engrossing and essential compendium of the forces shaping how people, nations, and global capitalism function.
Reviews
You could use it as a primer, a reference book, a brief history; it is all these things, but isn't contained by them. It reflects the urgent generosity of a thinker whose depth of understanding is matched by a desire to see us all understand. Ha-Joon Chang is himself the walking disproof of the neoclassical individual, the perfectly rational, perfectly selfish consumer; his wealth is in his knowledge, perceptiveness, insight and vision. And he can't give it away fast enough. It flies off him like the seeds of a dandelion.
Brilliant... Chang’s lightness of touch makes often dry subject matter very readable. The 2008 crash is mentioned again and again, to prove Chang’s point that the experts don’t always know best.
Economics for the 99 percent who don’t know moral hazard from opportunity cost: lively, intelligent and readily accessible.
- Kirkus
Chang writes with enough depth to provide insights for experts and enough breadth to reach the further shores of the discipline for the interested layman.