Economics in America

An Immigrant Economist Explores the Land of Inequality

By: Angus Deaton

Narrated by: Angus Deaton

This audiobook narrated by Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton shares candid reflections on the economist’s craft.

Features “Asides with Angus” as bonus material with stories and outtakes from Deaton’s recording sessions

When economist Angus Deaton immigrated to the United States from Britain in the early 1980s, he was awed by America’s strengths and shocked by the extraordinary gaps he witnessed between people. Economics in America explains in clear terms how the field of economics addresses the most pressing issues of our times—from poverty, retirement, and the minimum wage to the ravages of the nation’s uniquely disastrous health care system—and narrates Deaton’s own account of his experiences as a naturalized US citizen and academic economist.

Deaton is witty and he pulls no punches. In this incisive, candid, and funny book, he describes the everyday lives of working economists, recounting the triumphs as well as the disasters, and tells the inside story of the Nobel Prize in economics and the journey that led him to Stockholm to receive one. He discusses the ongoing tensions between economics and politics—and the extent to which economics has any content beyond the political prejudices of economists—and reflects on whether economists bear at least some responsibility for the growing despair and rising populism in America.

Blending rare personal insights with illuminating perspectives on the social challenges that confront us today, Deaton offers a disarmingly frank critique of his own profession while shining a light on his adopted country’s policy accomplishments and failures.

©2023 Angus Deaton (P)2023 Princeton University Press

A terrific read

I found this to be engaging and incredibly insightful. Highly recommend whether you are just entering the field of economics or are long in the tooth. Cheers

Perspective on interplay of economics and politics

This book provides good perspectives about the inextricable interplay between politics and economics. Some economic theories are not supported by the evidence, but appear to be held afloat more by political convictions of its proponents. The author also brings an international perspective to this, especially the differences between the Cambridge and Chicago schools of economics. The former more known for Keynesianism (government demand can stimulate growth), the latter more known for neoclassical theory (government interference impedes perfect market forces).

The author includes a fair amount of anecdotes over 2 decades, often related to his faculty colleagues or his personal experience of receiving the Nobel prize of Economics in 2015. It makes for more fun listening. I give him 4 stars for effort in narrating the book, but would have preferred the voice of a professional narrator. Sometimes the voice becomes monotonous and some of the British humor falls a bit flat for a US audience.

One minor, but astonishing detail is an uncaught mistake at the beginning of Chapter 5 Monetary Inequality: The author cites the net worth of the richest individuals like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos from the Forbes 100 list in 2022. He then goes on to say: "The median American household had a net worth of $121,700 - about one-thousandth of the net worth of Bill Gates, who is No. 3 on the Forbes list." It is actually one-millionth. While a factor of 1,000x richer than the median would be pretty large inequality, this is a thousand-fold error and Bill Gates is 1,000,000x richer than the median. Perhaps even a Nobel-laureate economist subconsciously thought that the inequality couldn't possibly be quite that large…