Behind the alarming headlines about job losses, bank bailouts, and corporate greed is a little-known story of bad ideas. For fifty years or more, economists have been busy developing elegant theories of how markets workâhow they facilitate innovation, wealth creation, and an efficient... read more
Introduction
PART ONE: UTOPIAN ECONOMICS
1. Warnings Ignored and the Conventional Wisdom
2. Adam Smith's Invisible Hand
3. Friedrich Hayek's Telecommunications System
4. The Perfect Markets of Lausanne
5. The Mathematics of Bliss
6. The Evangelist
7. The Coin-Tossing View of Finance
8. The Triumph of Utopian Economics
PART TWO: REALITY-BASED ECONOMICS
9. The Prof and the Polar Bears
10. A Taxonomy of Failure
11. The Prisoner's Dilemma and Rational Irrationality
12. Hidden Information and the Market for Lemons
13. Keynes's Beauty Contest
14. The Rational Herd
15. Psychology Returns to Economics
16. Hyman Minsky and Ponzi Finance
PART THREE: THE GREAT CRUNCH
17. Greenspan Shrugs
18. The Lure of Real Estate
19. The Subprime Chain
20. In the Alphabet Soup
21. A Matter of Incentives
22. London Bridge Is Falling Down
23. Socialism in Our Time
Conclusion
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
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