Ezra Klein asks me:
What do you think the best fiction books are for understanding economics? Left and right? From my perspective on the spectrum, I’d go with Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, but I’d be interested to hear your favorites…
Some will cite Harrison Bergeron, the Vonnegut anti-egalitarian short story. Others would nominate Ayn Rand, anarcho-capitalist science fiction, and of course there are the fictional-economic creations of Russ Roberts. But what are the Western classics that — policy polemics aside — teach one how to think like an economist?
My attention is usually drawn to 1660-1775 in British fiction, starting with Defoe and continuing through Swift, Boswell, and just about everyone else. To my eye they all thought like rational choice economists, albeit strange ones with a focus on approbation, self-deception, and the perverse social consequences of individual action (see my In Praise of Commercial Culture, the chapter on literature, for more detail). They are the true roots of Smith’s TMS. Dickens and Balzac are contenders, but I find them a bit too one-note, as is Harriet Martineau. Nonetheless the eighteenth century works remain ahead of their time and they certainly don’t teach basic economics or help one think much about policy.
What are your picks?
Dune!!!!
(of course as many times as I have read it might be a good indicator as to why it is NOT a good source to learn one ’bout ‘nomics)
But I stand by my vote.
What does The Grapes of Wrath teach about economics?
That’s true, I mean.
No,
“It is impossible to hedge against random catastrophes.”
“No one ever sees underpriced labor as an opportunity to hire.”
“All landowners and banks are guaranteed enormous profits.”
do not count as true.
Funny thing about the Grapes of Wrath – In one part of the book, Steinbeck writes about the horror of millions or oranges being destroyed while the Okies starve. Strangely, Steinbeck ascribes this to capitalism, when the causes was really FDR’s agricultural price support program.
So, I guess this means Ezra Klein should be inspired to hate FDR?
A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul
I loved Neal Stephenson’s “The Confusion”, Volume 2 in his Baroque cycle and clearly the best of the the 3, in my opinion. Stephenson conciously addresses the rise of currency in Europe, the rise of trade in England and Holland, and how trade-generated wealth befuddled the French, who believed that
that land was the beginning and end of wealth. Its a neat focus on the birth of concious thought about the overall worthiness of trade, of wealth creation and effects of currency. I also thought the plot was entertaining.
Those who have read Stephenson know that he meanders and digresses a lot, and you can expect him to cover much non-economic territory in this book, so maybe its not the best example for this post. But its a lot of fun. (I read the cycle in this order 2,3,1 and didn’t suffer for it.)
You can read more at stephenson’s webpage.
I don’t think there really are any. If you eliminate:
“Some will cite Harrison Bergeron, the Vonnegut anti-egalitarian short story. Others would nominate Ayn Rand, anarcho-capitalist science fiction, and of course there are the fictional-economic creations of Russ Roberts.”
… then there really isn’t anything left. Certainly there are works that contain economic insights, but they are always secondary. I can’t think of any that are advancing a viewpoint in the way that Grapes of Wrath does. I think it’s because books about systems/plans/theories working aren’t as popular as books about them failing. I personally find Grapes of Wrath (even having acted in the play myself!) to be painfully preachy.
A House for Mr Biswas. Naipual
The old man and the sea.Or dignity against welfare state
Animal Farm.
I also liked The Fatal Equilibrium and understand the other novels by “Marshall Jevons” are pretty good too.
The musical “Urinetown”
Perhaps I should elaborate a bit… It is a play about monopoly provision of a public good, marginal cost condition, regulatory capture, and the tragedy of the commons and ends with the line “Long Live Malthus!”
As mentioned above The The Literary Book of Economics has plenty of examples.
Not a novel (though she also wrote two), but the actress Lilli Palmer’s autobiography Change Lobsters and Dance is a fascinating story that contains a lot of economics lessons.
The daughter of a Jewish physician in Berlin who’d received the Iron Cross from the Kaiser for his work in a field hospital near Verdun (a fact which was later to save her from the Brownshirts), she fled Germany to Paris in the thirties.
She couldn’t get a work permit there, so she and her sister sang in the bars of seedy nightclubs/brothels where the police wouldn’t check permits (or were bribeable).
A chance meeting with a producer for Walt Disney led her to the English film industry, but when she was offered a role, found herself in a Catch 22 situation with the immigration department.
She married Rex Harrison, survived the Blitz (her infant son was saved by being behind a large rhododendron when a bomb exploded near their home), went to Hollywood where the couple discovered the joys of 90% marginal tax rates.
When I was 14 years old I fell in love with her when I saw her in this movie.
“Obelix and Co.” by Goscinny and Uderzo is a good introduction.
Pride and Prejudice. All the mating rituals, balls, social mores limiting relations between the sexes, prejudices, prices, etc. are largely organized around and motivated by the preservation, transmission, and seeking of wealth. Mr. Bennet is, in priniciple, much more intelligent and sensible than his ninny of a wife, but is a moral failure because he has retired from this game and thus doe not fulfill his responsibilities to his children.
It’s not a novel, but I’ve always been drawn to Mandeville’s “Fable of the Bees”.
Zola’s _The Ladies’ Paradise_ is the best and most balanced vision of commerce in action that I’ve read in a long time.
Marooned in Realtime by Vinge
also has a great depiction of central planning vs. spontaneous order
Tyler, kindly delete that ridiculous comment, spasibo.
I haven’t read it, but Henry Hazlitt wrote a novel called Time Will Run Back.
From Hazlitt’s introduction: “If capitalism did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it–and its discovery would be rightly regarded as one of the great triumphs of the human mind. This is the theme of Time Will Run Back.”
Many female novelists deal directly with economics in their books, especially prior to the turn of the century. A typical conflict being, how can I get by without marrying so-and-so? Jean Rhys especially comes to mind as writer that explored the poverty single women faced due to limited employment for women (besides, naturally, the oldest profession.) Her characters are constantly looking for job opportunities rather than facing the humiliation of asking former lovers for handouts
Complete Yes Prime Minister by Jonathan Lynn and Antony Jay (Paperback – Jun 1, 1989)
A short story you can find in a few anthologies: “Witch’s Money” by John Collier. A wonderful read, and a lesson in an endogenous money supply shift.
“The visit of the old lady” from Friedriech Durenmatt
I think ‘Robinson Crusoe’ definitely highlights the concept of competing wants and needs.
Why hasn’t anyone mentioned Paul Samuelson’s Foundations of Economic Analysis?
“A fictional work where a money-hungry…
Wilhelm Meister .Goethe.
“What advantage does he derive from the system of bookkeeping by double-entry! It is among the finest inventions of the human mind”…
‘…shouldn’t we try to answer the question of what is it in economics that is useful to learn, and better learned through reading fiction…’
I don’t know about ‘better’ but it is interesting to have Shakespeare teach us about supply and demand almost two centuries before Adam Smith’s Diamonds and Water example. (Jessica is Shylok’s daughter):
* Jessica: I shall be saved by my husband; he hath made me a Christian.
* Launcelot Gobbo: Truly, the more to blame he: we were Christians enow before; e’en as many as could well live, one by another. This making Christians will raise the price of hogs: if we grow all to be pork-eaters, we shall not shortly have a rasher on the coals for money.
I’m surprised that none of you got it –
To understand economics, all you have to do is read “The Godfather” by Mario Puzo.
I’m not sure why you would read fiction if you wanted to learn about economics, it seems like a very roundabout way to learn about anything besides culture. My vote would be Ayn Rand for the right, Vonnegut for the left. I do agree with “streetwise” above, if you want know how economics, politics and geopolitics really work, read “The Godfather” and then “Confessions of an Economic Hitman”. For theory, some readable authors are John Kenneth Galbraith, John Ralston Saul, Michael Albert, Noam Chomsky, or even Milton Friedman. Ayn Rand also has some readable non-fiction which is fairly similar to the Ricardo, Mises, Hayek, Friedman free market crap spouted by Ronald Reagen and Margret Thatcher. The King of Crap though, disguised as an economics book but is really just a shopping catalog written by billionaire shopping center owner, Thomas Friedman, The World is Flat. This is an excellent paper from Yale, it’s only six pages long and I think sums things up quite nicely. http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/about/pdfs/outsourcing.pdf
I was just about to add The Goal but Jenny beat me to it. It’s pretty hokey but features some nice illustrations of how accounting practices can mask economic reality.
Ben: I seem to recall Valjean becomes rich from his factory producing glass pearls. Perhaps for trade with “primitive peoples”? That was what I thought when I read it 8long ago) at least, and I thought it odd that our hero was involved in such a deplorable business after his conversion.
It could be that glass pearls were in high demand by the wealthy, for all I know.
Balzac by far. I once created an index that highlights this:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Square/3472/balzacsworld2.html
The Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau(1819-23) being the best for economics.
Zola’s novel about the birth of department stores in Paris is pretty good too.
I assigned Murder at the Margin by “Marshall Jevons” for micro, A Tenured Professor by Galbraith for macro, and Player Piano by Vonnegut for comparative economic systems
Gaddis’s J R, if you really, really, really hate your students.
David Liss has written a couple of fun novels:”The Coffee Trader”, and “A Conspiracy of Paper”. Set in the 18th and 17th centuries, they are both what might be called economic historical novels.
Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South. She was writing about the Industrial Revolution (from its epicentre).
The Wire. All episodes. Economics is central to the story. It’s TV of course, not a novel, but the script is probably pretty good because the end product is exceptional so I’m going to insist that it counts anyway. Becker praised the Wire on his blog a couple of years ago.
A Man in Full
Bonfire of the Vanities
More pure capitalism than economics. The poor cousin, I guess.
The Great Gatsby
Voltaire’s Candide illustrates relative value and relative wealth, introduces some aspects of behavioral economics, and contrasts various political systems startng with absolute monarchy and ending with a self-governing commune.
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There are a few others on top of Henry Hazlitt and Russ Roberts who have wrote actual economics-themed fiction. I saw Fatal Equilibrium by Marshall Jevons (who has a few others on top of FE) mentioned above. There’s also “Saving Adam Smith” by Jonathan B. Wight and “The Flight of the Barbarous Relic” by George Ford Smith.
But no matter how many economics-themed books you read, nothing can surpass Atlas Shrugged.
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