Book Details

Why do certain ideas gain currency in economics while others fall by the wayside?Paul Krugman argues that the unwillingness of mainstream economists to think about what they couldnot formalize led them to ignore ideas that turn out, in retrospect, to have been very goodones.Krugman examines the course of economic geography and development theory to shed light on thenature of economic inquiry. He traces how development theory lost its huge initial influence andvirtually disappeared from economic discourse after it became clear that many of the theory's maininsights could not be clearly modeled. Economic geography seems to have fared even worse, aseconomists shied away from grappling with questions about space -- such as the size, location, oreven existence of cities -- because the "terrain was seen as unsuitable for the tools athand."Krugman's book, however, is not a call to abandon economic modeling. He concludes with areminder of why insisting on the use of models may be right, even when these sometimes leadeconomists to overlook good ideas. He also recaps the discussion of development and economicgeography with a commentary on recent developments in those fields and areas where further inquirylooks most promising.The Ohlin Lectures