Unlike Piketty's famous tome, this is proper textbook presenting a Unified Theory of every aspect of the Economy without any reliance on standard assumptions of Utility Maximization, Perfect Competition, Rational Expectations and so on. This book has two great strengths
1) Shaikh is a superb scholar of Classical and 'heterodox' Economics- his exposition is magisterial and not tendentious in any way.
2) Shaikh has embraced the methods of 'Econophysics' and produces compelling empirical evidence for some truly innovative, indeed revolutionary, insights and predictions.
Make no mistake- this is a path-breaking academic textbook but the author has worked very hard to express himself as clearly as possible so as to reach the intelligent layman who has no time for Academic point-scoring or Epistemological Methodenstreit.
Shaikh is a very very bright guy who could easily dazzle us with his literary skills and encyclopedic knowledge of fashionable things like 'chaos' and 'turbulence'. But he simply isn't interested in celebrity status.
He is a man of the Left- he volunteered to go teach in a school in Harlem in the late Sixties- and has been a Professor at the New School for many years. Yet he doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve or play the 'race' card. This is because his Theory is based on Reality and he wants us to use it to make things better.
It may be objected that Marxism, nowadays, is represented by the likes of Varoufakis. It is a pose, a gimmick, nothing more. Shaikh's empirical and original theoretical work already attracts attention and gets incorporated in the models of the truly smart. But Marxism isn't about being smart its about 'attitude' and being entitled enough to indulge in 'retro' histrionics- thus Shaikh's book can't become a best-seller like Piketty's. All this may be true. However, the fact is, whether you are a young person choosing a career or a middle aged man worried about your pension, or a retired person wondering how much you can afford to gift away to your children, we all need to have a better model of what is going to happen in the Economy. Shaikh's book helps us do this.
1) Shaikh is a superb scholar of Classical and 'heterodox' Economics- his exposition is magisterial and not tendentious in any way.
2) Shaikh has embraced the methods of 'Econophysics' and produces compelling empirical evidence for some truly innovative, indeed revolutionary, insights and predictions.
Make no mistake- this is a path-breaking academic textbook but the author has worked very hard to express himself as clearly as possible so as to reach the intelligent layman who has no time for Academic point-scoring or Epistemological Methodenstreit.
Shaikh is a very very bright guy who could easily dazzle us with his literary skills and encyclopedic knowledge of fashionable things like 'chaos' and 'turbulence'. But he simply isn't interested in celebrity status.
He is a man of the Left- he volunteered to go teach in a school in Harlem in the late Sixties- and has been a Professor at the New School for many years. Yet he doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve or play the 'race' card. This is because his Theory is based on Reality and he wants us to use it to make things better.
It may be objected that Marxism, nowadays, is represented by the likes of Varoufakis. It is a pose, a gimmick, nothing more. Shaikh's empirical and original theoretical work already attracts attention and gets incorporated in the models of the truly smart. But Marxism isn't about being smart its about 'attitude' and being entitled enough to indulge in 'retro' histrionics- thus Shaikh's book can't become a best-seller like Piketty's. All this may be true. However, the fact is, whether you are a young person choosing a career or a middle aged man worried about your pension, or a retired person wondering how much you can afford to gift away to your children, we all need to have a better model of what is going to happen in the Economy. Shaikh's book helps us do this.
