Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science pdfdrive com

Decade of Reform. Policymakers were a lot more confident that they knew how
to fix the world in 1990 than they are today. Harvard development economist
Dani Rodrik describes the tone of the report, which seems to incorporate
William Easterly’s skepticism without abandoning Jeffrey Sach’s resolve:
“There are no confident assertions here of what works and what doesn’t—and no
blueprints for policymakers to adopt. The emphasis is on the need for humility,
for policy diversity, for selective and modest reforms, and for
experimentation.”
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Last, much of the world is poor because the rich countries have not tried very
hard to make it otherwise. I realize that pointing out the failure of development
aid and then arguing for more of it is like Yogi Berra criticizing a restaurant for
having bad food and small portions. Still, things become better when there is an
overwhelming political will to make them better. That is bigger than economics.

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Epilogue
Life in 2050: eight questions
E
conomics can help us to understand and improve an imperfect world. In the
end, though, it is just a set of tools. We must decide how to use them. Economics
does not foreordain the future any more than the laws of physics made it
inevitable that we would explore the moon. Physics made it possible; humans
chose to do it—in large part by devoting resources that might have been spent
elsewhere. John F. Kennedy did not alter the laws of physics when he declared
that the United States would put a man on the moon; he merely set a goal that
required good science to get there. Economics is no different. If we are to make
the best use of these tools, we ought to think about where we are trying to go.
We must decide what our priorities are, what trade-offs we are willing to make,
what outcomes we are or are not willing to accept. To paraphrase economic
historian and Nobel laureate Robert Fogel, we must first define the “good life”
before economics can help us get there. Here are eight questions worth
pondering about life in 2050, not for the sake of predicting the future, but
because the decisions that we make now will affect how we live then.