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Harvard Business Review Press
The following review appeared in the August 2016 issue of CHOICE. The review is for your internal use only. Please review our Permission and Reprints Guidelines or email permissions@ala-choice.org.
Social & Behavioral Sciences
Economics
Concrete economics reflects the pragmatic policies responsible for American economic development from independence through the 1960s. It is the embodiment of Alexander Hamilton’s very visible hand expanding the economic space necessary for markets to flourish. It is the antithesis of the free market ideology that has increasingly dominated American economic policy over the last half century. The authors note the irony of America’s economic competitors successfully adopting Hamiltonian policies as the American economy is hobbled by its newfound devotion to Smithian principles. Worse still, as America’s manufacturing sector succumbs to foreign competition, the dubious activities of the burgeoning financial sector have managed to appropriate the lion’s share of America’s corporate profits. In the global quest for economic growth, government policies strongly influence relative outcomes. Absent effective American involvement, the global economy becomes a creature of foreign governmental design. From Hamilton to Lincoln to FDR and Eisenhower, pragmatic governmental policies have successfully overcome America’s recurring economic dilemmas. In its current dilemma, America now requires another economic redesign. That redesign, the authors argue, should be the consequence of pragmatic policies, not laissez-faire theoretical abstractions.
--R. S. Hewett, Drake University