The death of economics

The world economy is in crisis. America faces crushing deficits in both the federal budget and the balance of trade. Unemployment in Western Europe rises towards the twenty-million mark. Vast tracts of the former Soviet empire are on the brink of economic collapse. In this grim context, the opinions of economic gurus increasingly dominate actions in business, politics, and international affairs. Yet orthodox economics seems powerless to help. Notoriously, economic forecasters failed to predict the Japanese recession, the depth of the collapse in the German economy, and the turmoil caused by the Exchange Rate Mechanism. In this insightful and sweeping critique, Paul Ormerod demonstrates how schools of economic thought, despite their many disagreements, share the same underlying defects - flaws that go far deeper than quibbles between theorists. Ormerod provides real answers and hard facts. What the world needs, he contends, is a radical new approach, drawing on ideas from other disciplines such as biology, physics, and the behavioral sciences.