Debunking Economics (Digital Edition - Revised, Expanded and Integrated): The Naked Emperor Dethroned?

The presentation here is quite accessible to the interested non-specialist reader - in fact this has been a central shaping of the book throughout. It is a launch pad, should the reader wish to take the journey, to a greater understanding of the world around us. Feb 26, Hadrian added it Shelves: This deserves a longer and more in-depth review than I can provide right now or perhaps ever. Safe to say that Keen is vicious in his aim to dethrone neoclassical economics - anything they produce is either nonsensical, absurd, or that the author should be institutionalized his words.

His reasoning is equally savage, however, and that is where this book should be studied. More comments should follow after I finish up a few projects elsewhere and complete J R. Mar 19, Munthir Mahir rated it liked it. First off I stopped reading past chapter 9. This book covers a subject that is huge a whole social science field and that is the problem. The book is one too many things; it talks to too many audiences about too many topics using too many tools.

It reads like a textbook, scientific paper, dissertation and a non-fiction book all at once. It certainly requires great concentration to follow the ancillary comments and supplements. It is not organized in a manner that is easy to follow because of t First off I stopped reading past chapter 9.

It is not organized in a manner that is easy to follow because of the way the author chose to structure his arguments and the methodology he employed. I felt at several points the author fell into the same mistakes he be littles his opponents for. Both sides of the battles still rely on theoretical concoctions that they both still can't reliably test empirically. The first 9 chapters should give any reader the jest of the contested economic topics, beyond that it starts to be philosophical, argumentative and opinionated.

This book could have been more accessible to more people if it was designed and structured in a manner that relates and compares the theoretical contests to everyday economic transactions; such as, a small business' demand and supply realities, tax and interest impacts on consumers and businesses, consumption behaviors, etc. May 21, Petter Nordal rated it it was amazing. Every adult living in a democracy should read this book.

The next time someone tells you that rewards for the rich are the way to fix the economy, ask them what the relationship is between private debt and the supply curve. If they cannot answer they will likely tell you that private debt is not an important factor in a capitalist economy--insane as that sounds then you can whip out some Keen and leave them backpedaling.

Even if they do answer, you will be prepared to pummel their simplistic, Every adult living in a democracy should read this book. Even if they do answer, you will be prepared to pummel their simplistic, static and imaginary-world arguments into the ground.

We constantly hear that the economic choices for our economies are lamentably going to result in some short term pain in order to provide long-term stability, and it is simply too bad that some people are going to get rich off these measures while ordinary people are going to face unemployment, poverty and uncertainty. It's just the way things have to be, we read. This book proves such neoclassical hogwash to be unscientific, illogical and completely at odds with reality. Keen, though at times a challenge to follow, brings together different disciplines to critique the lunacy of neoliberal economics.

He knows economics better than nonprofessionals, he knows economic history better than most historians. He knows, applies and explains advanced mathematics. He brings philosophy and history of ideas to bear on the problem. In short, he is able to look at economic processes as they actually happen in the real world, using the tools that educated people have available to us.

I read Marx in and, though I'm no Marxist, I've found that a Marxist economic analysis serves far better than the Wall Street Journal or Planet Money for explaining what is happening. This is the first book since I read Alexander Berkman in that has added to my understanding of Marx and given me better tools to analyze and understand economics. Feb 16, Grig O' rated it really liked it Shelves: While Keen's intent to present complex facets of economics in layman terms is certainly laudable, his efforts to bypass mathematical formulas at all costs by use of textual, tabular and graphic illustration even if that occasionally means spelling out formulas in sentence form sometimes go too far.

There's quite a bit of redundancy between chapters, as well as less-than-perfect mixes of the first edition and the revised , post-crash one 5 stars for content, 3 stars for presentation. There's quite a bit of redundancy between chapters, as well as less-than-perfect mixes of the first edition and the revised , post-crash one.

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Considering the massive scope of this book covering pretty much all aspects of economics except world trade it's inevitable that some parts become somewhat of a trudge. On the bright side, there are many enlightening passages and interesting anecdotes I had no idea about. Keen points out moments in history where ideology influenced political economy, both to the right did you know Keynes included Marx's M-C-M' circuit in an early draft of his General Theory, even though publicly he denied having read Marx and to the left Marx's early draft of Capital where he considers machinery as a source of value - which would have annulled the inevitability of socialism.

Finally, here's my favourite quote - Keynes' take on politicians from his General Theory book: Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back' BOOM. Mar 21, Gregg Wingo rated it it was amazing. This book is a fantastic critique of the neoclassical synthesis and an exploration into the world of heterodox economics. Keen bravely attacks static economics at its mathematical roots and assumptions, revives Marx' theory of value and crowns him the greatest of Classical economists, defends Keynes against his opponents and heirs, and introduces the elegance and irrationality of dynamic analysis into the inherent instability of the market.

The author succeeds in trashing the NeoLiberal argument This book is a fantastic critique of the neoclassical synthesis and an exploration into the world of heterodox economics. The author succeeds in trashing the NeoLiberal argument of supremacy of free markets by discrediting the equilibrium assumption of Walrasian markets and other restrictions of the Sonnenschein-Mantel-Debreu conditions.

Keen's basic position is a Marx-Keynes-Schumpeter-Sraffa-Minsky synthesis that firmly holds that markets are inherently unstable due to the complex nature of the dynamics of capitalists and financial capital. While exploding Marx' labor theory of value, Steve Keen lauds Marx' theory of value and his dynamic perspective on the nature of economics.

He integrates this dynamism into the creative nature of Schumpeter's entrepreneurs and the speculation of financial markets so that the nature of the business cycle becomes clearly not balanced to any stable point derived from Minsky's legacy. Having read both the first and second edition I would strongly recommend referencing the graphics from the first edition and now available online in order to provide a nonnarrative basis for analyzing Keen's work.

This is a book that any serious student of economics and the Great Recession needs to read immediately. Dec 27, Tadas Talaikis rated it it was amazing Shelves: This is excellent read and hard work for the brain. Highly complex, it is hard to abstract into one sentence, but I think more appropriate would be following: Economists of all persuasions are therefore liable to hang on to beliefs that they argue are scientific, but which in the end are ideological. Jul 01, Samson added it Shelves: I have to confess that I glaze over parts of the book because the material is just over my head.

Not having taken even basic Economics courses, things like demand curves, supply curves, indifference curves etc. Having said that, I still got some good insights from the author's narrative: And both , IMHO, are due to timing. Neoclassical economics penetrated mainstream in the 50's and 60's. At that time, computing power did not allow complex models, which real-life economics actually needed.

Also, that time period saw the height of the cold war. It was politically and ideologically unacceptable, as much as it is now, in the West to admit that the Capitalist system is inherently unstable especially when it came from Karl Marx! Thanks to this book, I can now kind of explain why every time I hear some mainstream economist or central banker speaks e. Kuroda from BOJ , I couldn't help but wonder whether they actually live in the real world?! Now I know that they actually live in their own neoclassical, over-simplistic and wrong economical models!

I shall refrain from rating this book since I am in no position to critique its claims. Mar 07, Ryan Melena rated it really liked it. Debunking Economics offered an excellent and thorough dressing down of modern neoclassical economics. The author does so using the very same tools and mathematics that neoclassical economists hold up as proof of the correctness of their theories.

He shows that more so than a science, and despite its own claims to the contrary, modern neoclassical economics operates as an ideology or even a religion that refuses to acknowledge its own shortcomings and inconsistencies. In addition to his fierce Debunking Economics offered an excellent and thorough dressing down of modern neoclassical economics. In addition to his fierce condemnation of neoclassical economics and its many follies, Keen provides an exciting snapshot of the alternative economic schools of thought that are beginning to emerge and how each compares to the neoclassical mainstream.

Mar 03, Muhammad al-Khwarizmi rated it really liked it Shelves: Keen is brilliant but there are two problems with this book on my end: The result is often a confusing, hard and overly verbose slog. As much as I don't like pages and pages of equations like you see in some texts, I see what he's doing sometimes and wish he would just fill it in in a box set apart from the rest of the material. He has supplemental Keen is brilliant but there are two problems with this book on my end: He has supplemental data on his website but that doesn't fix everything.

I wish Keen were more accessible in the regards I mentioned; I have called it quits about midway through. May 19, Miguel Buddle rated it really liked it. It would have helped to have more of a grounding in economics at even the undergrad level, but slow consumption and re-reading make this possible because of Keen's clear language. My basic takeaway is that all of those things that seem a bit ridiculous about economics perfectly rational consumers, assumed equilibrium are actually, provably ridiculous.

The why and how was definitely the interesting part here.

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Jan 13, Justin rated it it was amazing Shelves: A manifestly important book. If, like me, you sat in undergrad economics classes thinking or even saying 'but Eagerly await his next book. Jun 17, Karl H. Debunking Economics is a non-Marxist, non-neoclassical portrait of the field of economics.

It attempts to explain why economics is a field filled with unproven and erroneous assumptions.

While his prediction of the present economic crisis is impressive, I feel the rest of the work is merely okay. The style of Debunking Economics alternates in feel between an off-handed chumminess and the dryness of an economic textbook. The introductions and conclusions are too familiar in tone to feel impartial Debunking Economics is a non-Marxist, non-neoclassical portrait of the field of economics.

The introductions and conclusions are too familiar in tone to feel impartial. At one point, he exhorts us to pour a cup of coffee, because the next chapter will be boring. None of the other chapters were any less or more boring though. The actual meat of the arguments is fairly technical.

There are still tons of graphs, charts, jargon, technical arguments, and, yes, equations.

Debunking Economics - Revised and Expanded Edition: The Naked Emperor Dethroned? by Steve Keen

They are phrased in word format, which if anything is even more confusing and tedious than reading a bunch of variables. I guess they seemed plausible where I understood them but not everything was completely persuasive. The average household with 2. Another critique argues that neoclassical models of supply have marginal costs increasing as more and more units are produced. Keen argues that in fact, marginal costs remain constant or decrease past a certain point, and assuming you could sell widgets at a constant price, you would produce an infinite number of them.

Therefore production is only limited by marketing. After all, at some point you must buy a limited resource that simply exists land, raw resources, etc. Each new widget you produce must have these inputs and therefore each new widget made increases the demand for these inputs and consequently the price. In addition, I found many of its arguments to be not quite as clear cut as the author presents them.

Mar 29, Elinor Hurst rated it really liked it. This book was not an easy read, but it gets four stars from me as in many ways I found it an utter eye opener. Steve Keen analyses and documents in methodical detail the flaws in neoclassical economics. While there are many other books that have done this before, his is the only one that I am aware of that takes the economic academic profession head on, and plays them at their own game.

He exposes their flawed thinking and gross mathematical incompetence, which to anyone who has studied mathemati This book was not an easy read, but it gets four stars from me as in many ways I found it an utter eye opener. He exposes their flawed thinking and gross mathematical incompetence, which to anyone who has studied mathematics and science at tertiary level is deeply shocking.

I would personally call it corruption, but Keen gives them the benefit of the doubt and prefers to put it down to ideological zeal and a closed shop academic culture. Certainly it is a brave book. I am highly impressed with Keen's trail blazing work in bringing the science of complexity into economic modelling, and his efforts to bring monetary factors into those models. It is absolutely appalling that mainstream economists so resolutely ignore the impact of money and debt in their economic theories.

Apparently Keen is planning to write another book on Finance and Economic Breakdown, which I greatly look forward to reading. In fact, governments have a role to play in regulating finance and ameliorating economic crises by appropriate spending and intervention. The Rudd government interventions to address the GFC come out much better in this analysis than the US "quantitative easing" of gifts to the banks. To me it is blindingly obvious that an economy needs to be modelled as a complex, non-equilibrium system: Physicists, biologists and other scientists have been aware of the difficulties of modelling these types of nonlinear systems for decades, or more.

So why has economics, the so-called "dismal science", been protected - or blind - to these insights? Can it not be that there are class interests involved? Keen tiptoes around this issue somewhat, but this is understandable considering his desire for academic credibility. He is passionate about doing justice to a "real" economics, but careful to avoid potential claims of bias or polemic in his writing. Keynes' reputation has been resurrected by this book as well. I was very interested to read of the way this great economist's ideas had been distorted and misrepresented to suit a neoclassical economst's view of the world.

As a non-economist myself who is nevertheless mathematically literate, I would have appreciated equations and diagrams being fully included in the book. It suffered from a lack of clarity as a result, and while I read every word of the book, I had to skim over some parts without a full understanding. I did check the web links provided, but the PDF with the diagrams was not clearly linked to the book's sections, and the debunking economics website was a subscription website with rather unaffordable rates. Overall, highly recommended to anyone wanting to better understand the economic forces at play in the world today.

Be prepared for some intellectual work though. It took me quite a few weeks to get through this book, and at times it gave me a headache, but I'm really glad I made the effort. Sep 14, tom bomp rated it it was ok Shelves: Not very clear or convincing. Constantly feel like I need a glossary uses "marginal productivity", "marginal product of labour" and "marginal revenue product" near interchangeably for example. No idea what makes each different. I fully admit this is at least partially my own fault - it would be ridiculous to expect to understand a huge amount of economics just reading straight through.

But I felt it could have been made easier. I felt often like I could see how a neoclassical economist would r Not very clear or convincing. I felt often like I could see how a neoclassical economist would rebut what's being said, although obviously not the details. I'm no friend of neoclassical economics but he seems to sell it a bit short - teaching ridiculously simplistic assumptions to undergrads and then teaching stuff closer to reality later is sadly pretty typical.

He shows that the basis of neoclassical economics is crap but a lot of what he says is "right" feels remarkably similar.

1. Des Jésuites (French Edition)!
2. Shelter (The Heights)!
3. Save a Spaniel.
4. Debunking Economics (Digital Edition--Revised, Expanded and Integrated).
5. Debunking Economics (Digital Edition - Revised, Expanded and Integrated)?
6. Supply Chain Management - Überblick über das Konzept und seine Ziele (German Edition).

A lot of the time it didn't feel like it was hitting the right mark between "teaching neoclassical economics and showing the problems" and "sketching out an alternative". Why is it taken as a given that capital makes a profit in and of itself? It's just stated with no evidence chapter 7, while explaining Sraffa.

Coming from a Marxist perspective it feels pretty pathetic. He apparently knows a lot about Marx but he makes a few criticisms which are just absurd - for example, the idea he quotes of a "commodity residue", which should somehow "prove" the labour theory of value is incorrect by showing that there's always a commodity that labour has to work with. This ignores that capitalism is presented by Marx as historical therefore not everything previously made has been a capitalist commodity for a start.

This article gives a lot of criticism of this particular section. He thinks science can be non-ideological but economics isn't and seems to think that the reason for this has nothing to do with the role of economics or anything, just that economists are stubborn or something. Really it's not my ideological problems that are frustrating me, it's just that I'm not really building up a super clear picture either of neoclassical economics or his alternative because it's tough going with little help from the text in terms of either a glossary, summaries of concepts or anything like that.

I don't know if I'm expecting too much but I guess it's important to point out that if you're looking for an intro to economics combined with a criticism of it you'll have a lot of trouble most likely. Aug 23, Patrick rated it liked it. A review of Debunking Economics: The basic message Keen is trying to send is a vitally important one: Neoclassical economics is failing. Models based around rational agents and static equilibrium simply fail to represent the real world, and and as a result give policymakers a false sense of security against economic crisis. The way Keen delivers this message is by avalanche: Page after page, chapter after chapter, he tears apart neoclassical economics piece by piece.

His goal, indeed, is not to show that the theory is wrong—refuting even a few assumptions or equations would do that—but rather to show that it is rotten to the core, that virtually every assumption and every equation is defective. And this, I think, is Keen's greatest failing. Some of the walls he tries to tear down are stronger than he imagines them to be, and this draws attention away from the very real gaps in the walls of the citadel.

He also has this weird obsession with "what they originally meant"; he clearly knows a great deal about the history of economics and economists, and so I'm inclined to think he's basically right about what Keynes, Marx, Von Neumann, etc. These men were brilliant, and many of their insights are useful, but they were still wrong about a lot of things.

Even Darwin and Einstein made mistakes, and Marx was no Darwin. All the way throughout the book, Keen seems intent on showing that neoclassical economics is wrong, wrong, wrong, about everything, in every possible way. But this was not necessary; reversed stupidity is not intelligence. Neoclassical economics does not get everything wrong; in fact, it probably gets more things right than the general folk notions most people have about economics. I doubt most people realize that sales taxes create deadweight loss, for example, or that the money supply is largely created by bank loans and isn't backed by any commodity; yet these are things that neoclassicists definitely do understand quite well.

Neoclassical economics is wrong not at the core, but at the margins; but isn't it neoclassicists most of all who taught us that margins are everything? My complete review was too long for Goodreads and will be posted at pnrj. A crucial work for understanding the failures of neoclassical economics: For people, like me, who had almost given up entirely on the academic field of Economics because of ridiculous theories and poor teaching, there is fortunately still Steve Keen.

In this book, the Australian Keen shows the errors of the standard views of neoclassical orthodox economics. Not just some side aspects of the theory, but the actual core views of economics as it is taught in universities everywhere unravels befor A crucial work for understanding the failures of neoclassical economics: Not just some side aspects of the theory, but the actual core views of economics as it is taught in universities everywhere unravels before your eyes.

Keen masterfully applies both economic models and historical analysis to show that orthodox economists not only do not know what theories exist in their own field, but they also have no inkling of the history of economics and what this means for their approach. This, combined with a possibly even poorer understanding of the philosophy of science Keen uses Milton Friedman as the main example, but more could have been named , leads to a series of ridiculous assumptions and even more ridiculous results.

That the economists consistently ignore the way industrial managers and market analysts etc. The book is heavy reading for those with no knowledge of economics or maths, but certainly not impossible. A basic understanding of economics and mathematics as taught at high school level at least in The Netherlands goes a long way, and Keen fortunately writes well and attempts to avoid long mathematical proofs as much as possible.

The only downside to the book is that his treatment of alternative theories, especially the quite closely linked Austrian school of economics, is very short and vague. This leads to the impression that Keen knows what's wrong with neoclassics, but not what is to be done instead. Therefore, start by reading this book, but don't end there. From a review by Joe McCauley "This book provides a far more clear explanation of the ideas of standard economic theory neo-classical economics than do the standard texts compare with Samuelson, Mankiw, or Barro, e.

The book explains utility maximization, indifference curves, and the assumptions underlying the standard economic model that is used by the IMF, the World Bank and all major western governments. Keen uses simple language that even the lay person can follow. The text should be s From a review by Joe McCauley "This book provides a far more clear explanation of the ideas of standard economic theory neo-classical economics than do the standard texts compare with Samuelson, Mankiw, or Barro, e.

Essential for anyone who has ever doubted the advice or reasoning of economists, Debunking Economics provides a signpost to a better future. The History of a Dangerous Idea. Debt - Updated and Expanded. The Price of Inequality: This Time Is Different. A Wall Street Revolt. A Universe from Nothing. Thinking, Fast and Slow. The End of Alchemy: Money, Banking, and the Future of the Global Economy. The Death of Money. The Art of War. Adults in the Room. The Death of Expertise.

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Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. Procopius' History of the Wars, books 1 to 6. Weapons of Math Destruction. The New Case for Gold. The Value of Everything. The Bankers' New Clothes. The Battle of Bretton Woods.

Tragedy in the Commons. How Not to Be Wrong. The Road to Ruin. The Making of Behavioral Economics. No Is Not Enough. Thieves of Bay Street. Thank You for Arguing, Third Edition. The Complete Works of Franz Kafka. After the Music Stopped. A History of Ancient Rome. The Utopia of Rules.

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