The Economy of Love and Fear: A Preface to Grants Economics
Author: Kenneth Ewart, Boulding
List Price: $3.95
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ISBN: 0534002927
Publisher: Wadsworth Publishing (January, 1999)
Sales Rank: 1,354,060
Average Customer Rating: 3 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 3 out of 5
A book worth your time
Boulding's analysis here is a good complement to an economics college education. When I finished my undergraduate degree in economics, I read further into theorists such as Friedman, Krugman, Lansburg, and Frank. This book deserves a place on the shelf among that class. Boulding's book intrigued me because it attempts to explain how the market exchange analysis is not perfectly applicable to human relationships. If you are familiar with economics and its basic assumptions about human behavior, that people are rational and self-interested, this is a good book to read for an alternative view on utility-maximizing behavior on the part of people. More than once you will have to pause and reflect on what Boudling says. Unfortunately, the book is not the most exciting to read at all, but generally it keeps you engaged. It also does not appear that the subject he was wishing to advance, grants economics, was accepted by the academic community, which is a bummer.
Here is a bit of it: when the Fed lowers interest rates and the price level increases, the Fed's act serves to reallocate money between creditors and debtors. That is, debtors gain and creditors lose. If the loss in real purchasing power incurred by inflation is less than what debtor's gain in being relieved of their obligations, is that a grant from the Fed to debtors? A cool puzzle.
Read Friedman before you ever read this, though. Robert H. Frank is my second-favorite writer. Alan Blinder third.
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