Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations: A Story of Economic Discovery by David Warsh

From the Publisher

A stimulating and inviting tour of modern economics centered on the story of one of its most important breakthroughs. In 1980, the twenty-four-year-old graduate student Paul Romer tackled one of the oldest puzzles in economics. Eight years later he solved it. This book tells the story of what has come to be called the new growth theory: the paradox identified by Adam Smith more than two hundred years earlier, its disappearance and occasional resurfacing in the nineteenth century, the development of new technical tools in the twentieth century, and finally the student who could see further than his teachers.



Fascinating in its own right, new growth theory helps to explain dominant first-mover firms like IBM or Microsoft, underscores the value of intellectual property, and provides essential advice to those concerned with the expansion of the economy. Like James Gleick's Chaos or Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe, this revealing book takes us to the frontlines of scientific research; not since Robert Heilbroner's classic work The Worldly Philosophers have we had as attractive a glimpse of the essential science of economics.

The New York Times - Paul Krugman

I've never seen anyone write as well as Warsh about the social world of economic research, a world of brilliant, often eccentric people who bear no resemblance to the dreary suits you see discussing the economy on CNBC … If you like reading stories of high intellectual drama, if you want to know the origin of ideas that, as Keynes said, "are dangerous for good or evil," this book is for you.

Library Journal

Veteran business reporter Warsh takes on the world of economic scholarship to tell the story of how the growth of human knowledge finally became incorporated into mainstream economic theory. Warsh explains that economist Paul Romer's publication of a mathematical model of economic growth in his article "Endogenous Technological Change" 20 years ago was the spur that brought the economics of knowledge to the forefront after more than two centuries of being on the hazy periphery of the profession. Warsh makes a strong case for the importance of Romer's work in redefining the traditional economic factors of production from being land, labor, and capital to being people, ideas, and things. Nevertheless, it is hard to determine an audience for Warsh's book. While everyone would benefit from understanding these new ideas, Warsh's focus is on how Romer's insight came about and not on explaining it in detail. Warsh's lengthy examination of the scholarship trailing back to Adam Smith would be tedious for most readers. This limits the book's appeal to mainly academic libraries collecting in economics.-Lawrence R. Maxted, Gannon Univ., Erie, PA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

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• Table of Contents

Table of Contents