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WORK TITLE: What Would the Great Economists Do?
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S): Yi-Chuang, Linda
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://lindayueh.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
Dual British and American citizenship.
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1977, in Taipei, Taiwan; immigrated to the United States.
Yale University, B.A.; Harvard University, M.P.P.; New York University, J.D.; St. Edmund Hall, Oxford University, D.Phil.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Broadcaster, economist, and author. Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, New York, NY, attorney; BBC News, contributing editor and chief business correspondent, 2013-2015; Bloomberg Television, economics editor.
Rentokil Initial, non-executive director; JP Morgan Asian Investment Trust, non-executive director; Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust, non-executive director; Peking University, visiting professor; London Business School, adjunct professor; China Growth Centre, director; British Chambers of Commerce, adviser; World Economic Forum, adviser; Asian Development Bank, adviser; European Commission, adviser; World Bank, adviser; London First, co-chair; Centre for Economic Performance, policy committee. Has appeared on radio programs, including Radio 4 Today, Business Daily on BBC World Service, and Radio 4 Analysis. Has also appeared on television programs, including Working Lives; Next Billionaires, and The New Middle Class. Also former host of Talking Business with Linda Yueh.
MEMBER:Global Cities Business Alliance, London & Partners (board member), Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (advisory board), Coutts Foundation (external trustee), Royal Commonwealth Society (chair), Malaria No More UK (trustee).
AWARDS:
St. Edmund Hall economics fellow; Royal Society of Arts fellow.
WRITINGS
Also coauthor of Macroeconomics.
SIDELIGHTS
Linda Yueh’s expertise lies predominantly within economics. She holds numerous academic positions, including one with Oxford University’s China Growth Centre, where she serves as their director; a St. Edmund Hall economics fellowship; and a position with the London Business School, where she holds adjunct professorship. In addition to her work in academia, Yueh is also notably involved in broadcast journalism. She was the host of her own BBC News program, Talking Business with Linda Yueh, and has also made appearances on Radio 4 Today and Radio 4 Analysis, among other radio shows. She has also worked with Bloomberg Television as their economics editor. Yueh has authored several books throughout the course of her career, all of which relate to her subject of expertise.
China's Growth and What Would the Great Economists Do?
China’s Growth: The Making of an Economic Superpower is one of Yueh’s earliest books. It essentially documents China’s economic journey and how it obtained the success it enjoys today. According to Yueh’s research, much of China’s economic success stems from a mixture of obtaining the resources for their industries to produce and work far more effectively, as well as the boom in technology, more people available to work, and the gaining of capital. Yueh takes the time to explain in detail the various aspects that led China to gain its economic strength. In addition to delving into what led China to gain its economic boost, Yueh also looks at the various strategies China can undertake in order to maintain its success for the long term. Choice reviewer C.A. Haulman remarked: “This excellent work also offers a road map for how China’s exceptional record can be sustained.”
What Would the Great Economists Do? How Twelve Brilliant Minds Would Solve Today’s Biggest Problems is meant to help introduce readers to the ideas of numerous economists that have maintained notable influence within modern society. Every chapter focuses on a specific economist, detailing the events of their lives. Furthermore, each economist featured within the book has their own distinct ideas about how to manage large economies. Yueh also delves considerably into the ideas and theories of each economist, many of which came to inform contemporary economic ideas and practices up to the 21st century. Yueh also takes a magnifying lens to how the economist’s theories would apply to the modern world—namely by taking a current issue within the world economy and explaining how the economist would arrive at a solution to the problem. Yueh concludes the book by exploring how the economists profiled within the book would interpret many of the political issues that developed across the world within recent years. “This book is readable, informative, and thought-provoking, and deserves a place in all libraries,” remarked Booklist contributor, David Tyckoson. A writer in an issue of Kirkus Reviews called the book “[a] pleasure for the fiscally minded and a good introduction to applied economics for readers with a smattering of theory.” New Statesman reviewer Felix Martin said: “The achievements of modern, scientific economics are significant, and the reader who wants a slick and well-curated tour of its current policy recommendations will profit greatly from Yueh’s enjoyable and up-to-date book.” One Publishers Weekly writer expressed that the book is “[a]n appealing thought experiment.”
The Great Economists
The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today is similar to What Would the Great Economists Do? in terms of subject matter. It serves as a timeline of world economics, viewed through the lens of theorists throughout history. The book is designed for laymen to understand and gain further insight into how and why the world economy has developed into what we know it to be today. In an interview featured on the website for the London School Economics and Political Science, Yueh told interviewer Artemis Photiadou more about the book and its purpose. “I was interested in finding ways to address our biggest economic challenges, such as why are wages so low?” she explained. “Learning the lessons from history and from the ideas of the great economic thinkers seemed like a good way to start.”
The Great Economists follows a specific structure. First, Yueh introduces a specific economist, discussing their lives and careers. From there, Yueh touches upon the individual’s theories and the impact these individuals have left upon modern society. Some economics included within the book include Milton Friedman and Adam Smith. Many of the chapters also feature hypothetical conversations with the economists to further illustrate their points of view on economic development, as well as how they would tackle certain problems. “The style is engaging and takes the readers through key elements of the economic challenges we currently face, with the support of data and international comparisons,” remarked Angela Gallo, a writer on the FT Adviser website. “Readers will certainly enjoy learning about the economists, as many of them lived quite unconventional lives.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, May 15, 2018, David Tyckoson, review of What Would the Great Economists Do? How Twelve Brilliant Minds Would Solve Today’s Biggest Problems, p. 6.
Choice, March, 2011, C.A. Haulman, review of The Economy of China, p. 1345; December, 2013, C.A. Haulman, review of China’s Growth: The Making of an Economic Superpower, p. 695.
Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 2018, review of What Would the Great Economists Do?.
New Statesman, March 16, 2018, Felix Martin, “How Economics Shifted Shape: In an Age of Science and Statistics, we can still learn from history’s great thinkers,” review of The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today, p. 40+.
Publishers Weekly, March 12, 2018, review of What Would the Great Economists Do?, p. 50.
Reference & Research Book News, May, 2010, review of The Law and Economics of Globalisation: New Challenges for a World in Flux; November, 2010, review of The Economy of China; June, 2013, review of China and Globalization: Critical Concepts in Economics.
ONLINE
BBC, http://www.bbc.co.uk/ (August 7, 2018), author profile.
FT Adviser, https://www.ftadviser.com/ (April 25, 2018), Angela Gallo, review of The Great Economists.
Linda Yueh website, http://lindayueh.com (August 7, 2018), author profile.
London Business School website, https://www.london.edu/ (August 7, 2018), author profile.
London School Economics and Political Science website, http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/ (April 12, 2018), Artemis Photiadou, “Linda Yueh: History’s ‘greatest economists’ and how their ideas can help us today,” author interview.
Linda Yueh
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Linda Yueh
Yueh in 2017
Born
1977 (age 40–41)
Taipei, Taiwan
Education
Yale University (BA)
Harvard University (MPP)
New York University (JD)
St Edmund Hall, Oxford (DPhil)
Occupation
Broadcaster, author and economist
Linda Yueh is a British/American economist, broadcaster, and author, born in Taiwan and of dual British and American citizenship.[1] Yueh is an Adjunct Professor of Economics at London Business School,[2] and a Fellow in Economics at St Edmund Hall, Oxford University[3] – where she is director of the China Growth Centre (CGC).[4] She was also a Visiting Professor at Peking University and associated with both the Centre for Economic Performance and IDEAS research centres at the London School of Economics (LSE).[5] She is a TV and radio presenter, including for BBC programmes such as Radio 4 Analysis, Business Daily on BBC World Service, and Radio 4 Today programme.[6][7] From 2013 to 2015, she was Chief Business Correspondent and a Contributing Editor for BBC News when she hosted Talking Business with Linda Yueh,[8] as well as former Economics Editor at Bloomberg Television.
Contents [hide]
1
Background
2
Career
3
Academia
4
Books
5
References
6
External links
Background[edit]
Yueh was born in Taipei and immigrated to the United States when she was five years old. She has a BA from Yale University, a Master of Public Policy from Harvard University, a JD from New York University School of Law and a D.Phil in Economics and MA from St Edmund Hall, Oxford.[2]
Career[edit]
She has been a corporate lawyer at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison resident in New York City, Beijing and Hong Kong.[6]
She was previously a non-executive director of two FTSE-listed companies, a board member of London & Partners, the official promotion agency of London, and an adviser to the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC).
She is an External Trustee of the Coutts Foundation and also on the advisory board of OMFIF, where she is regularly involved in meetings regarding the world's financial and monetary system.
Academia[edit]
She has had several dozen scholarly articles published[9] during a career where she has taught at not only Oxford University and the London Business School, but also the London School of Economics and Political Science and Peking University where she holds a visiting professorship in economics.
Books[edit]
The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today. Viking. /What Would the Great Economists Do? How Twelve Brilliant Minds Would Solve Today's Biggest Problems. Picador.
China's Growth: The Making of an Economic Superpower. Oxford University Press.
The Economy of China. Edward Elgar Publishing.
China and Globalisation: Critical Concepts in Globalisation. Routledge. (editor).
Enterprising China: Business, Economic, and Legal Developments since 1979. Oxford University Press.
The Law and Economics of Globalisation. Edward Elgar Publishing. (editor).
Macroeconomics. Cengage Learning. (co-author).
The Future of Asian Trade and Growth: Economic Development with the Emergence of China. Routledge. (editor).
Globalisation and Economic Growth in China. Routledge. (co-editor).
Bio
Linda Yueh is an economist, broadcaster, and author.
Dr. Yueh is Fellow in Economics at St Edmund Hall, Oxford University, and Adjunct Professor of Economics at London Business School. She is also Visiting Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science's (LSE) foreign policy think tank, the IDEAS research centre, and was Visiting Professor of Economics at Peking University.
She is a TV and radio presenter, including for BBC Radio 4 and the World Service, as well as having fronted BBC TV series, such as The New Middle Class, Next Billionaires, and Working Lives.
Dr. Yueh is Chair of the Royal Commonwealth Society and a Non-Executive Director of Rentokil Initial as well as Trustee of the Coutts Foundation and Malaria No More UK. She serves on the Policy Committee of the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) at the London School of Economics, and on the Advisory Board of The Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF). She is a Fellow (FRSA) of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA).
She is a widely published author and Editor of the Routledge Economic Growth and Development book series. Her latest book, The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today was published by Viking/ Penguin Random House, and What Would the Great Economists Do? How Twelve Brilliant Minds Would Solve Today's Biggest Problems by Picador/ Macmillan in the U.S. She is represented by Janklow & Nesbit.
Previously, she was Chief Business Correspondent for BBC News and host of Talking Business with Linda Yueh for BBC World TV and BBC News Channel based in Singapore. She had been Economics Editor and anchor at Bloomberg TV in London. Previously, she was an attorney at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in New York.
Professor Yueh has advised the World Bank, European Commission, Asian Development Bank, World Economic Forum in Davos, among others. She was Non-Executive Director of the FTSE-listed companies, JPMorgan Asian Investment Trust and Baillie Gifford's Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust. She was previously Co-Chair of the Global Cities Business Alliance (GCBA) of London First; Board Member of London & Partners; and adviser to the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC).
Linda Yueh
Adjunct Professor of Economics
BA (Yale), MPP (Harvard), JD (NYU, School of Law), DPhil (Oxford)
Linda Yueh is Adjunct Professor of Economics at the London Business School; Fellow in Economics at St Edmund Hall, Oxford University; and Visiting Senior Fellow at the IDEAS research centre, the foreign policy think tank of the London School of Economics and Political Science. She was Visiting Professor of Economics at Peking University.
Adjunct Professor Yueh serves on the supervisory Policy Committee of the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) at LSE, and on the Advisory Board of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF). She is Chair of the Royal Commonwealth Society and a Trustee of the Coutts Foundation and Malaria No More UK. She is a Non-Executive Director of the FTSE 100 company, Rentokil Initial, and was a NED of JPMorgan Asian Investment Trust and Bailie Gifford's Scottish Mortgage. She was Co-Chair of the Global Cities Business Alliance (GCBA) and a Board member of London & Partners – the official promotion agency for London.
She has been an advisor to the World Bank, the European Commission, the Asian Development Bank, the World Economic Forum at Davos, and the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), among others. She was previously Chief Business Correspondent for the BBC and hosted ‘Talking Business with Linda Yueh’, as well as the former Economics Editor at Bloomberg TV. Prior to that, she was a corporate lawyer based in New York.
Dr Yueh is the author of several books, including: The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today, What Would the Great Economists Do? How Twelve Brilliant Minds Would Solve Today’s Biggest Problems (US), China's Growth: The Making of an Economic Superpower and Enterprising China: Business, Economic, and Legal Development since 1979. Her textbook, Macroeconomics, written with Graeme Chamberlin, is a recommended text of the UK Government Economic Service. She is also the Editor of the Routledge Economic Growth and Development book series.
Linda Yueh
Linda Yueh is the Chief Business Correspondent for the BBC.
In addition to her own show, Linda is also a presenter of other programmes such as the New Global Middle Class special series and the flagship Working Lives for BBC World News. She is also an occasional presenter of the popular Business Daily on the World Service and can be heard presenting business on the Today programme on Radio 4.
During her career, she has interviewed numerous newsmakers ranging from CEOs to Nobel Laureates to global policymakers. They include: World Bank president Jim Yong Kim, IMF managing director Christine Lagarde, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Nobel Prize winning economists Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, as well as the central bank governors and finance ministers of Austria, Bangladesh, France, Germany, Greece, India, Ireland, Italy, Peru, Sweden, Turkey, UK plus European officials such as Jose Manuel Barroso, Olli Rehn, and Klaus Regling. Linda has interviewed the chief executives and chairmen of Coca-Cola, BHP Biliton, UBS, Standard Chartered, Renault-Nissan, SABMIller, SAP, Boston Consulting Group, PIMCO, McKinsey & Company, PwC, Infosys, ZTE, Aberdeen Asset Management, among many others. Leading figures in sport, philanthropy and fashion have also appeared on Talking Business, including the most successful sailor in Olympic history Sir Ben Ainslie, Oscar-winning actor and co-founder of water.org Matt Damon, and top designers Anya Hindmarch and Tom Ford.
Linda has reported on global business and economic stories from around the world, including the US, China, Japan, Germany, Turkey, India, Switzerland, Myanmar/Burma, Australia, Indonesia, Vietnam, South Korea, Ireland, Austria, Belgium, Monaco, and the UK.
She has the dubious distinction of having covered every monthly European Central Bank news conference for longer and with far more enthusiasm than she is willing to admit to.
Prior to the BBC, she was economics editor for Bloomberg Television and hosted a variety of programmes.
Her career started as a corporate lawyer with the New York firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.
Linda has advised the World Bank, European Commission, Asian Development Bank and World Economic Forum, among many others.
She was also non-executive director of the FTSE-listed companies JPMorgan Asian Investment Trust and Baillie Gifford's Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust, a board member of London & Partners (the official promotion agency of London) and had been an advisor to the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC).
She is the author of several books, including a trilogy of sorts on China - "China's Growth: The Making of an Economic Superpower", "Enterprising China: Business, Economic, and Legal Development Since 1979" and the award-winning "The Economy of China".
She is also the co-author of Macroeconomics - a recommended textbook of the UK Government Economic Service - along with being the editor of four books on topics ranging from globalisation to economic law.
She has maintained her academic links and is a fellow in economics at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford, adjunct professor of economics at the London Business School, and visiting professor of economics at Peking University. She serves on the Policy Committee of the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) and is an associate of the IDEAS: International Affairs, Diplomacy & Strategy research centre, both at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Linda holds degrees from Yale, Harvard, New York, and Oxford Universities. She earned her PhD (DPhil) in economics from Oxford University.
Linda Yueh: History’s ‘greatest economists’ and how their ideas can help us today
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How can the ideas of history’s greatest economists – from Adam Smith and David Ricardo through Joan Robinson and Milton Friedman to Douglass North and Robert Solow – help us think about the biggest economic challenges of our time? Linda Yueh‘s new book seeks to answer this question through studying 12 economists whose thinking has changed the world. She discusses her work with Artemis Photiadou.
The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today is available to buy here.
What was your main aim in writing this book and how did you choose which individuals to include?
I was interested in finding ways to address our biggest economic challenges, such as why are wages so low? Learning the lessons from history and from the ideas of the great economic thinkers seemed like a good way to start. I also enjoy biographies, so this book offered a chance to write about the lives of some of the most influential people over the past two centuries. Although they were all successful in shaping the world around them, it was intriguing how many of them were critical of their productivity and not doing more!
Did studying economists from different schools of thought make you rethink any of your own assumptions about how the economy works?
Especially because my work is based on data, my empirical research including my Macroeconomics textbook (co-authored with Graeme Chamberlin) embody quite a lot of the ‘new neoclassical synthesis’ that characterises macroeconomics today. In other words, the work of many academic economists draws from the most pertinent parts of New Keynesianism, New Classical Economics, and Monetarists. Even Marxist thinking has come back in some fashion, though my work in my previous books (e.g., China’s Growth) had shown how little of the communist approach to economics exists even in the most successful country to have adopted it.
Over the past decade the economics profession has been criticised for a perceived collective failure to identify the systemic weaknesses that led to the 2008 financial crisis. Do you feel that that critique is fair, and does it tell a story about the decline of the discipline from when it was defined by these ‘great economists’?
It’s a fair critique and strongly suggests that there are lessons to be learned from the 2008 crisis. There is a shift in the economics profession towards more empirical analysis, coupled with a push for greater engagement with the ‘real world’, both of which would help. Indeed, the Great Economists that I write about actively engaged with the big issues of the day even if the answers were imperfect. Today’s academic economists tend to have a narrower focus, so there are fewer generalists than before. Generalists are the ones who would be well placed to spot links between the financial markets and economic forecasting since they would be working on the big economic picture, rather than the current divide between those who work on financial economics and the forecasters.
When it comes to responses to the financial crisis, would any of the individuals in the book have supported the British government’s decision to pursue austerity?
I have a chapter dedicated to this very question. The chapter starts with the austerity debate during the 1930s when the Keynesian revolution took off and goes through the later critiques of Keynesianism by other great economists from the other side of spectrum who were opposed to government deficit spending. I then discuss the current austerity debate and how these decisions will affect our future economic growth.
One of the key themes in policy debates since the recession is the ‘left behind’. Is there one particular economist whose thinking could help the losers of globalisation?
Paul Samuelson, who I write about in the chapter on globalisation, is best placed to help us think about how to help those who have been left behind. America’s first Nobel Laureate developed the theory of factor price equalisation that showed how globalisation depresses the wages of workers in the sectors opened up to trade in rich countries. He was a generalist like the others, so he also wrote about how to fashion optimal economic policy to address this issue, which requires adopting the stance of an ethical observer. Akin to John Rawls’ ‘veil of ignorance,’ Samuelson’s idea is for policymakers to position themselves on a policy without knowing how they would be affected. But, he also pointed out how difficult it is to get policymakers to act sometimes. An advisor to US Presidents, he observed: “I can’t think of a President who has been over-burdened by a knowledge of economics.”
Considering the years you cover, it was almost inevitable that the ‘great economists’ would be white and all but one would be male. Would you say there is diversity in who influences economic thinking today, or are 21st century ‘great economists’ still white men?
The Great Economists of an earlier vintage who wrote the models that define the profession were indeed working at a time when there were numerous barriers for women and little diversity. But, their ideas have been modified by a more diverse set of economists. Even among the Greats in my book, I include the Cambridge economist Joan Robinson who further developed Keynesianism by establishing the new field of imperfect competition in the 1930s. I also write about Arthur Lewis from St Lucia whose work on development (Lewis model) was recognised with the award of the highest prize in economics, the Nobel Prize, in 1979. But, I also write about the persistent gender imbalance in the subject. Of the more than 50,000 academic and research economists whose work is listed in RePEc, less than one-fifth are women. But seeing the interesting research being done in economics, I’m confident that the 21st great economists would be a more diverse mix.
_________
Note: Linda was speaking at an LSE IDEAS event in April 2018; a podcast is available here.
About the Author
Linda Yueh (@lindayueh) is a Fellow in Economics at St Edmund Hall, Oxford University, Adjunct Professor of Economics at London Business School, and a Visiting Senior Fellow at LSE IDEAS.
What Would the Great Economists Do? How Twelve Brilliant Minds Would Solve Today's Biggest Problems
David Tyckoson
Booklist. 114.18 (May 15, 2018): p6.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
* What Would the Great Economists Do? How Twelve Brilliant Minds Would Solve Today's Biggest Problems.
By Linda Yueh.
June 2018.352p. Picador, $28 (9781250180537); e-book, $14.99 (9781250180551). 330.
Few economics books are able to address major problems, present leading and sometimes conflicting theories, and be accessible to the casual reader. Yueh (China's Growth, 2013) takes current issues affecting today's global economy and attacks them through the eyes of a dozen leading economists, from the historic (Adam Smith) to the modern-day (Robert Solow), clearly applying their work to modern problems. Each chapter presents the ideas of one leading economist, with a lengthy biography that discusses both his or her personal and professional path. It then applies his or her theories to a single contemporary issue. The economists selected cover a wide range of economic and political philosophies, from John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman to Karl Marx and Joan Robinson. Issues presented are equally wide ranging, from financial crises and government regulation to wage earnings and growth rates. A final chapter addresses globalization and current reactions to it, including Brexit and Trumpism; Yueh surmises how all 12 economists would respond to this topic and introduces yet another great economist's ideas, those of Paul Samuelson. This book is readable, informative, and thought-provoking, and deserves a place in all libraries.--David Tyckoson
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Tyckoson, David. "What Would the Great Economists Do? How Twelve Brilliant Minds Would Solve Today's Biggest Problems." Booklist, 15 May 2018, p. 6. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A541400727/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=ca029373. Accessed 28 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A541400727
Yueh, Linda: WHAT WOULD THE GREAT ECONOMISTS DO?
Kirkus Reviews. (May 1, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Yueh, Linda WHAT WOULD THE GREAT ECONOMISTS DO? Picador (Adult Nonfiction) $28.00 6, 5 ISBN: 978-1-250-18053-7
Invisible hand, meet trickle-down: a lightly learned but deep-reaching look at classic economic problems through the lens of classical economics.
Business schools across the land teach a set of canonical precepts: The free market is good and self-correcting, corporations have the sole duty of maximizing return for shareholders, and commerce is indifferent to larger matters of ethics. But are all those points true? Also, are they useful in addressing obdurate problems that seem custom-coined for our time, such as, in the face of economy-must-grow models, the future seems the province of low productivity and lower expansion? Enter BBC broadcaster and Oxford economist Yueh (China's Growth: The Making of an Economic Superpower, 2013, etc.), who turns to Robert Solow, "the author of the workhorse of economic growth models," for guidance. She also goes against Solow and on to the ground of endogenous growth theory but returns with a humane prescription: Just as Solow located growth in, among other things, how workers are treated, maybe we can learn to retool. (Yueh adds that Solow, still at work in his 90s, also counsels relaxing some: "learning to adjust, to adapt, is not a bad thing for economists to learn".) And what of quantitative easing in recessive economies? Well, throw Keynes into the mix, then see what Milton Friedman would say about whether increasing the monetary supply is the right thing to do. Concludes Yueh, with sidestepping befitting a careful economist, "it's fair to say the jury is largely still out." The author, who once ran for Congress as a kind of made-for-TV thought experiment, has solid, interesting things to say about globalization, human capital, and kindred matters and a correct sense for which economist to bring to the problem at hand, whether Paul Samuelson ("the last of the great general economists") or Alfred Marshall, the anti-socialist who still supported redistribution--with qualifications.
A pleasure for the fiscally minded and a good introduction to applied economics for readers with a smattering of theory.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Yueh, Linda: WHAT WOULD THE GREAT ECONOMISTS DO?" Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A536570992/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c0183037. Accessed 28 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A536570992
How economics shifted shape: In an age of science and statistics, we can still learn from history's great thinkers
Felix Martin
New Statesman. 147.5410 (Mar. 16, 2018): p40+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 New Statesman, Ltd.
http://www.newstatesman.com/
Full Text:
The Great Economists:
How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today
Linda Yueh
Viking, 368pp. 20 [pounds sterling]
Is economics a science? It's an old question--and in my view, not a terribly useful one. Yet there is a reason why it never stops being asked. Physicists have discovered the universal laws governing energy and motion, and as a result can tell us with scarcely credible precision how to land a man on the moon. Economists, by contrast, can't even agree on why the last financial crisis happened, let alone what we should do to prevent the next one--and that's despite the fact that we wrote the rules of finance ourselves. Real sciences make progress. Economics, on the other hand, seems to go round and round in circles.
Needless to say, this embarrassing situation irritates economists more than anyone else. As a result, over the past several decades mainstream economics has attempted to assimilate itself ever more closely to the culture and methods of the natural sciences. These days, self-respecting economists express their theories as mathematical models, rather than in words. Advanced statistical techniques are deployed to test hypotheses and so resolve the answers to empirical questions. If possible, experiments are designed and conducted. A few avant-garde researchers have even gone so far as to rebrand their research groups as "labs".
Whether these developments represent a long-overdue reform of the methodology of economics, or just the symptoms of a chronic inferiority complex, they have certainly dealt a mortal blow to one formerly central area of the economics curriculum: the history of economic thought. If economics is a science, there is as little point in reading the economists of prior ages as there is in engaging with Aristotle on biology or mugging up on the theory of phlogiston.
The publication of Linda Yueh's The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today is therefore a fascinating event for anyone interested in economics. For this is a book which, as it title suggests, champions the value of studying the leading economic thinkers of the past.
It sounds like swimming against the tide of history. Is it really possible to reclaim a role for the scientifically backward theorising of a canon of Dead White Men (and, to Yueh's credit, one Dead White Woman)? Well, there can hardly be anyone better qualified to try. As an Oxford don and a professor at London Business School, Yueh undoubtedly knows her stuff; and as a former chief business correspondent for the BBC and economics editor at Bloomberg TV, she is a well-known and skilful communicator.
The challenge Professor Yueh has set herself is even bigger than it first appears, however. For looming like Muhammad Ali in his pomp over any modern attempt at an overview of history's great economists is a classic so enduringly popular as to make most challengers throw in the towel before the starting bell: Robert Heilbroner's The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers.
I first read this multimillion best-seller, published in 1953, 25 years ago. There can hardly be an economist in the English-speaking world who wasn't assigned it as the first text on their undergraduate reading list--and for not a few of them, I suspect, it is about the only thing they can remember from their course. And with good reason: for Heilbroner--a student of Joseph Schumpeter at Harvard who later became a professor at the New School for Social Research in New York--was a talented writer in command of his subject matter and with a gift for leavening abstract ideas with earthy biography. Yet the real reason that The Worldly Philosophers has reigned for so long as the heavyweight champion of the genre is that it is organised around a clear and compelling vision of what, historically speaking, economics actually is.
The book's underlying argument is that economics is nothing more nor less than the project of trying to understand, evaluate, and then control capitalism--the historically unprecedented system of organising society though the operation of markets and money that began to evolve in Europe in the late Middle Ages.
Before the capitalist revolution, there was no need for a discipline devoted to explaining why production, distribution and exchange are structured as they are, because, as Heilbroner says: "[who] would look for abstract laws of supply and demand, or cost, or value, when the explanation lay like an open book in the laws of the manor and the church and the city, along with the customs of a lifetime? Adam Smith might have been a great moral philosopher in that earlier age, but he could never have been a great economist; there would have been nothing for him to do."
Once capitalism began its relentless rise, however, people felt an imperative to clarify its unwritten rules, to pass judgement on whether they were good or bad, and to strive to rewrite its constitution accordingly. The project that answered that call was economics--an enterprise as value-laden and politically fraught as constitution writing always is. In Heilbroner's scheme, in other words, economics is unashamedly not a science--and, in striking contrast to the natural sciences, there is no real distinction between the history of economic thought and the history of the economy itself. The former is a reaction to the latter; and as economic thought began to pervade the modern mindset, the latter was just as often a reaction to the former.
Hence the plan of The Worldly Philosophers: a parallel history of the capitalist revolution and of the theories that have been developed to make sense of it. In Heilbroner's scheme, in order to understand the rules we live by today, we need to understand who invented them, and why. The history of economic thought is therefore one of the keystones of economics and economics itself is, to an important extent, intellectual history.
On the face of it, Yueh's book follows the format of The Worldly Philosophers. It too devotes a series of separate chapters to a pantheon of historical economic thinkers (and six of them--Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx, Alfred Marshall, John Maynard Keynes and Joseph Schumpeter--are covered by both books). It, too, aims to extract contemporary guidance from study of their theories. The resemblance is only superficial, however, because the conception of economics that underpins Heilbroner's work is not one that would be recognised by most economists today.
Heilbroner himself, in an epilogue to the 1999 edition of The Worldly Philosophers entitled "The End of the Worldly Philosophy?", explained that economics had even then almost completed its transition to a new sense of its essence and purpose. "The new vision," he wrote, "is Science; the disappearing one, Capitalism."
The Great Economists reflects this dramatic change in how economics conceives its methods and its aims. For Yueh, as for most contemporary practitioners, economics is not about reconstructing the historical mind-map of capitalism, but about the discovery of objective economic laws through the scientific study of the social world.
Her rationale for exploring the history of economic thought is accordingly quite different from Heilbroner's. It is not so much to understand the era in which the great economists lived, still less to grasp any role their theories may have played in shaping the conventions that govern the modern economy. It is rather because each of her subjects was the first to explain some fundamental economic principle or discover some economic law applicable to our contemporary dilemmas. It is in
this direct sense that their ideas can help us today.
One chapter, for example, recruits the 19th century English economist David Ricardo to help answer the timely question "Do trade deficits matter?" Ricardo was the first to formalise the principle of comparative advantage--the idea that all nations gain if each one specialises in producing the things at which it is relatively more efficient and then freely trades its output. The truth of this principle, Yueh explains, is more important than ever as the US seems headed for protectionism.
Another chapter summarises the life and work of Irving Fisher, the greatest American economist of the first half of the 20th century, in order to answer the question "Are we at risk of repeating the 1930s?" Fisher's most celebrated contribution was his book The Debt-Deflation Theory of Great Depressions, which explained how a recession-induced drop in prices can raise the real burden of debt, leading to further deflation and so yet heavier debt, in a vicious circle. That led him to advocate reflationary monetary policy as the correct response to debt crises--a conclusion which, as the past decade has shown, modern central bankers have taken warmly to heart.
Yueh acknowledges that the validity of such principles is not unchallenged today and she is scrupulous in stressing ongoing debates. Nevertheless, the general idea is that they represented major advances in our knowledge of how the economy works, and that these economists are, to paraphrase Newton, giants on whose shoulders modern economists stand.
Hence the plan of The Great Economists reflects a distinct conception of the purpose of studying the history of economic thought, and indeed of economics itself. In this view, the history of economic thought is primarily a pedagogical device a harmless cosmetic aid, as useful for adding some much-needed colour as, and no less scientific than, teaching physics by referring to Boyle's Law, or biology by studying Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. Economics itself, however, is definitely a science.
As I said, I don't think the question of whether economics is a science is a very useful one. The inconvenient truth is that in some respects it is, and in others it isn't. As a result, the different approaches to the history of economic thought taken by Yueh and Heilbroner both have their merits.
Nevertheless, if I was forced to recommend only one of them to a budding student of economics, I would have to plump for Heilbroner's classic. In my view, the challenges facing Western economies in the post-2008 era are existential, as well as normal --and over all of them hovers the master question that haunts the writings of every one of Heilbroner's worldly philosophers, from Smith to Schumpeter: whether or not capitalism is ultimately sustainable as a way of organising society.
The achievements of modern, scientific economics are significant, and the reader who wants a slick and well-curated tour of its current policy recommendations will profit greatly from Yueh's enjoyable and up-to-date book. But if you want to know whether capitalism can survive its current crisis, and what might replace it if it doesn't, then Heilbroner's study of those great thinkers, who explored these questions free from our contemporary prejudices and vested interests, remains the place to start.
Felix Martin is the author of "Money: the Unauthorised Biography" (Vintage)
Caption: Full Marx: Linda Yueh champions the value in studying the Dead White Hen of economics
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Martin, Felix. "How economics shifted shape: In an age of science and statistics, we can still learn from history's great thinkers." New Statesman, 16 Mar. 2018, p. 40+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A535420106/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=3763c13b. Accessed 28 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A535420106
What Would the Great Economists Do? How Twelve Brilliant Minds Would Solve Today's Biggest Problems
Publishers Weekly. 265.11 (Mar. 12, 2018): p50.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
What Would the Great Economists Do? How Twelve Brilliant Minds Would Solve Today's Biggest Problems
Linda Yueh. Picador, $28 (368p) ISBN 978-1250-18053-7
An appealing thought experiment--what if the great economic thinkers of the past took on today's most intractable problems--supplies the premise for this provocative work from economist Yueh (China's Growth). Unfortunately, Yueh's answers are less stirring than the question, principally because her subjects' work has already been absorbed into mainstream economic thinking. She devotes much of the book to profiles of her "great economists," among whom she includes Milton Friedman, John Maynard Keynes, Karl Marx, and Adam Smith, and while the compressed biographies are sometimes helpful with understanding their ideas, they more often distract from the book's exploration of contemporary issues like income inequality and the role of central banks. Elsewhere, Yueh is more on point, as in the chapter on Joan Robinson (an overlooked female economist), who studied why wages do not necessarily rise in economic recoveries. The epilogue addresses the future of globalization and invokes the thoughts of the greats (largely arguments for free trade), but feels tired and less than revelatory, suggesting that the modern world would be better served by looking for the next great economist than by looking to the past. (June)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"What Would the Great Economists Do? How Twelve Brilliant Minds Would Solve Today's Biggest Problems." Publishers Weekly, 12 Mar. 2018, p. 50. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A531285130/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d033a3e7. Accessed 28 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A531285130
Yueh, Linda. China's growth: the making of an economic superpower
C.A. Haulman
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 51.4 (Dec. 2013): p695.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Full Text:
Yueh, Linda. China's growth: the making of an economic superpower. Oxford, 2013. 349p bibl index ISBN 9780199205783, $45.00
51-2204
HC427
MARC
Drawing on a wealth of micro-level research, Yueh (Oxford Univ.) explains how, in 30 years, China became the world's second-largest economy. Providing an extensive overview of factors contributing to China's amazing progress, this excellent work also offers a road map for how China's exceptional record can be sustained. Analysis produced by new neoclassical, endogenous, and technology growth theories suggests about one-half the growth can be attributed to capital accumulation; when labor accumulation is added, 60-70 percent of the growth is explained. Factor reallocation and efficiency gains from sustained productivity improvements, mostly from joint ventures, explain the rest. Informal institutions played a critical role early but were replaced by formal legal reforms for foreign investment and private enterprises. Yueh states that continued progress fueled by research and development spending, as well as technology and innovation, will require more legal protection and clearly defined property rights, particularly in capital and labor markets. Entrepreneurs, social capital, privatization, and global integration complete the structural changes important to China's past growth and critical to its future. Finally, Yueh asserts that rebalancing the economy by switching to higher domestic consumption and reforming exchange and interest rates must be part of leading China to a more sustainable growth path. Summing Up: Highly recommended. *** All collections and leadership levels. --C. A. Haulman, emeritus, College of William and Mary
Haulman, C.A.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Haulman, C.A. "Yueh, Linda. China's growth: the making of an economic superpower." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Dec. 2013, p. 695. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A393972682/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=262f2e8a. Accessed 28 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A393972682
China and globalization; critical concepts in economics; 4v
Reference & Research Book News. 28.3 (June 2013):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 Ringgold, Inc.
http://www.ringgold.com/
Full Text:
9780415697866
China and globalization; critical concepts in economics; 4v.
Ed. by Linda Yueh.
Routledge
2013
1840 pages
$1295.00
Hardcover
Critical concepts in economics
HC427
Understanding how the world's second largest economy will interact with the world economy in the coming years is fundamental to analysis of the changing global system, states Yueh (economics, London Business School, UK) in her general introduction to this four-volume reference. She has assembled 70 previously published articles and book excerpts under the broad themes of globalization and Chinese growth, and China's external impact and future growth in a globalized world economy. The earliest is a 1994 article from Journal of Economic Perspectives, and there are a few more from the 1990s, but most of the selections are more recent, culminating in four published in 2011, and three in 2012. Subtopics include the role of the "open door" policy in China's transition, foreign direct investment and the spillovers on growth, financial liberalization and exchange rate policies to support development, and China as competitor and trading partner. Sources include World Economy, World Development, China Economic Review, and The International Review of Law and Economics, among others. The anthology is not indexed.
([c] Book News, Inc., Portland, OR)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"China and globalization; critical concepts in economics; 4v." Reference & Research Book News, June 2013. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A332371230/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f881dd07. Accessed 28 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A332371230
Yueh, Linda. The economy of China
C.A. Haulman
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 48.7 (Mar. 2011): p1345.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2011 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Full Text:
48-3988 HC427 MARC
Yueh, Linda. The economy of China. E. Elgar, 2010. 249p bibl index ISBN 1845421949, $105.00; ISBN 9781845421946, $105.00
Chinas transformation from central planning to a more market-oriented economy first began with economic reforms in 1979. By examining the institutional reforms used to make the transition, Yueh (Univ. of Oxford, UK) provides a comprehensive and exceptionally insightful analysis of economic change in what has become the world's second biggest economy. By pursuing a policy of moving from "easy to hard" reforms, China began an incremental phasing in of market forces without at the same time fundamentally transforming the economy to private ownership. Yueh describes how the Chinese focus on informal institutions that incentivize economic activity led to exceptional economic growth. Early experiments with the agricultural sector and with township and village enterprises paved the way for later reforms in urban areas and with state-owned enterprises. The more successful enterprises became private, and China increasingly opened its economy with foreign joint ventures giving way to more wholly foreign-owned enterprises. The focus on education, innovation, entrepreneurial social networks, and a Chinese model of laws and markets was also critical. While continued rapid growth is not assured and much remains, particularly in the financial sector, the remarkable success so far bodes well for Chinas future and has critical implications for developed countries. Summing Up: Highly recommended. *** Upper-division undergraduates through professionals.--C. A. Haulman, College of William and Mary
Haulman, C.A.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Haulman, C.A. "Yueh, Linda. The economy of China." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Mar. 2011, p. 1345. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A252087789/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=9d33115c. Accessed 28 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A252087789
The economy of China
Reference & Research Book News. 25.4 (Nov. 2010):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2010 Ringgold, Inc.
http://www.ringgold.com/
Full Text:
9781845421946
The economy of China.
Yueh, Linda.
Edward Elgar Publishing
2010
249 pages
$105.00
Hardcover
HC427
This overview of major developments in China's economy over the past 30 years emphasizes the laws, policies, and institutional reforms that have fostered the country's transformation from a centrally planned economy to a more market-oriented economy. The book integrates discussion that will allow readers to better assess the country's prospects for continuing growth; for instance, the material on labor market reforms asks whether China has achieved enough productivity to sustain growth. The final chapter analyzes the ways in which China's opening has affected not only its own development but also how it has influenced the world in the last few decades. The audience for the book includes academic researchers and postgraduate students in economics, international business, and Chinese studies. Yueh is a fellow in economics at the University of Oxford, UK.
([c]2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The economy of China." Reference & Research Book News, Nov. 2010. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A241136818/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=765ae2ed. Accessed 28 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A241136818
The law and economics of globalisation; new challenges for a world in flux
Reference & Research Book News. 25.2 (May 2010):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2010 Ringgold, Inc.
http://www.ringgold.com/
Full Text:
9781845421953
The law and economics of globalisation; new challenges for a world in flux.
Ed. by Linda Yueh.
Edward Elgar Publishing
2009
342 pages
$160.00
Hardcover
HF1379
There was a time when the study of the law of international economics was done be analyzing the discrete legal systems within individual countries. That has changed with the development of more robust international trade, the rise of international trade agreements like NAFTA, the establishment of new governmental jurisdiction like the European Union, and the effects of international web-commerce. This book, from Oxford Fellow Linda Yueh, provides a detailed overview of these and other issues in flux in the new global economy. The contributors are legal and economic experts from the US and Europe. Extensive references make this a good starting point for more in-depth research.
([c]2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The law and economics of globalisation; new challenges for a world in flux." Reference & Research Book News, May 2010. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A225458812/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=4cc4f4ea. Accessed 28 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A225458812
Book Review April 25, 2018
Book Review: The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help us Today
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By Angela Gallo
Book review: The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help us Today by Linda Yueh.
Since the 2008 financial crisis, economists have been under the harsh spotlight of public scrutiny.
Even the Queen, who usually does not comment on public policy, spoke for many when she asked: "Why did nobody notice it?" during a visit to the London School of Economics.
This book, by Ms Yueh, can be viewed as an attempt to ask the greatest economists of the past to help us find a solution to the current economic challenges such as weak growth, deindustrialisation, large trade deficits and how to spur innovation, with a focus on UK economy but also the US and China.
For each of these challenges, Ms Yueh identifies an expert among the leading economists whose theories or ideas have shaped the way we think and are considered essential in our understanding of economics. The experts include everyone from Adam Smith to David Ricardo, Joan Robinson and Milton Friedman.
Each chapter is organised in a similar fashion. First, the great economist is presented with a short biography, then his or her main works and ideas are described in an easy-to-digest fashion.
Readers will certainly enjoy learning about the economists, as many of them lived quite unconventional lives.
Dr Angela Gallo
Second, the selected challenge is described in great detail together with the solution under discussion or already implemented, followed by their – often unsuccessful – outcomes.
Finally, a sort of impossible interview takes place, where the author’s exercise is to show what Adam Smith would have recommended in that particular situation.
The style is engaging and takes the readers through key elements of the economic challenges we currently face, with the support of data and international comparisons.
Readers will certainly enjoy learning about the economists, as many of them lived quite unconventional lives.
Nonetheless, sometimes the impossible interviews may seem to put the experts in an unfair position. Clearly, they do not provide us with a solution. The world in which they lived shaped their thoughts and ideas, but from those ideas many generations of economists have been able to extract the fundamental mechanisms and convert them into up-to-date policies.
Without taking into account this progression, those ideas may seem less powerful than they are, if not even useless.
This constant conversion is, in itself, one of the main challenges we currently face, as the complexity of modern economies, the speed of the digital revolution and radical changes in cultural and political values make us wonder whether we have lost our compass to navigate through economic challenges or we just need to learn how to navigate unexplored new routes.
Dr Angela Gallo is Marie Curie Research Fellow, Cass Business School. Reviewed by Penguin UK.