I’m not professionally qualified to judge the technical merits of George Akerlof and Robert Shiller’s Animal Spirits; Robert Solow, who is, calls it “an important – maybe even a decisive – contribution at a difficult juncture in macroeconomic theory.” In any case, if you don’t believe that a treatise on applied behavioral macroeconomics could make compelling reading, I suggest taking a look.
My favorite metaphor so far: Akerlof and Shiller compare socialist or dirigiste economic policy to a repressive parenting and Reaganite or Thatcherite laisser-faire to permissive parenting, and suggest that entrepreneurs, like teenagers, need to be given both considerable freedom to experiment and appropriate limits.
