Economics: Making Sense of the Modern Economy

How the world economy evolves and how the market economy behaves are something this book can offer us to understand.

I have no formal economics background and have often wondered how dangerous the US trade deficit is, what are the real benefits and risks of globalization, the US versus the Eurozone versus Japan, and what role central banks and interest rates play in the global economy. It is often difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff in any attempt to understand these issues, it seems as if there is an economic pundit or expert on TV or the internet who will support virtually any position. This book, published by the Economist magazine, is an easy to read discussion of virtually every major economic issue of importance today. This book is not an economics primer, per se, so if that is what you are looking for, buy a textbook. It is, however, a primer about a wide range of topics in economics of particular importance in the modern world economy. This book is divided up into four major sections: The New Liberalism (the case for globalization), the lopsided world economy, the arteries of capitalism, and Wordly philosophy. Each of these major sections contains several smaller monographs about specific issues such as growth and China, the US trade imbalance, the case for globalization, finance, banking, and many others. Each of these monographs is short, focused, and only loosely tied with the other monographs, making this an easy read. The level of this book is about that of the Economist magazine itself, if you like their weekly publication, you will probably like this. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who wants to better understand the global economy.

Having no formal background in economics, I never thought that I would enjoy reading this book so much. I enjoy reading the Economist magazine, but I found this book even more enjoyable. The "real world" examples really delivered the points in a clear and relevant manner. I found that I could read large chunks of this book at a time without getting bored. I am planning on reading this book again so as to glean further pieces of information on the second pass.