David Orrell. Writer and Mathematician
Economyths:
Ten Ways Economics Gets it Wrong
Coming: Summer 2010
From the inability of wealth to make us happier, to our catastrophic blindness to the credit crunch, Economyths reveals ten ways in which economics has failed us all.
Forecasters predicted a prosperous year in 2008 for financial markets - in one influential survey the average prediction was for an eleven percent gain. But by the end of the year, the Standard and Poor's 500 index - a key economic barometer - was down 38 percent, and major economies were plunging into recession. Even the Queen asked - "Why did no one see it coming?"
An even bigger casualty was the credibility of economics, which for decades has claimed that the economy is a rational, stable, efficient machine, governed by well-understood laws.
Mathematician David Orrell traces the history of this idea from its roots in ancient Greece to the financial centres of London and New York, shows how it is mistaken, and proposes new alternatives. Economyths explains how the economy is the result of complex and unpredictable processes; how risk models go astray; why the economy is not rational or fair; why financial crashes are less Black Swans than part of the landscape; and finally, how new ideas in mathematics, psychology, and environmentalism are helping to reinvent economics.
Reviews
“Der Autor seziert zehn grundlegende Missverständnisse ... Orrell schafft es, die Relevanz dieser Mythen überzeugend und auch für Laien nachvollziehbar zu erklären und in einen größeren Zusammenhang zu stellen.” (The author dissects ten fundamental misunderstandings ... He manages to convincingly explain the relevance of these myths and make them understandable, even for laymen, in a wider context.) Handelsblatt (advance preview)