How to Be Human Though an Economist.

• Author: Lawson, Robert A.
• Position: Book Review

By Deirdre McCloskey Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000. Pp. 287. $65.00 cloth, $17.95 paper.

Most of the essays in How to Be Human Though an Economist were published originally in Deirdre McCloskey's regular column in the Eastern Economic Journal. The material is sophisticated and serious but not technical, and many noneconomists will be able to follow along without difficulty. In a short review, it is impossible to summarize all the essays. In general, the book has to do with the economics profession--what McCloskey thinks is wrong with it and how to fix it. Much of the material will be familiar to anyone who has read McCloskey's earlier books--The Rhetoric of Economics (1985), The Writing of Economics (1986), and The Vices of Economists; The Virtues of the Bourgeoisie (1997). The essays are grouped loosely around basic suggestions that sound like those in the latest self-help book: be yourself, be brave, be ethical, write better, read more.

A number of the essays discuss the lives of economists who McCloskey thinks have been themselves and who have been brave, ethical, well read, and so forth. Most of the featured economists are classical liberals--for example, Jim Buchanan, Armen Alchian, F. A. Hayek, and P. T. Bauer--but a fine essay is also devoted to Amartya Sen, no libertarian. McCloskey also speaks well of Robert Solow but is critical of George Stigler. How do you get on McCloskey's "A" list? Being smart is not enough. You need to care about the real world, and you need to want to tell your story to other people. That's it really. But it is remarkable how many economists don't actually care about the real world and have no interest in communicating what they know to others.

McCloskey includes in the collection a very favorable essay about feminist economist Barbara Bergmann, not because McCloskey likes her policies, but because Bergmann cares about the right things--children in poverty, for example. So what if her policy prescriptions are wrongheaded? At least she's an economist interested in the real world, not in some silly mathematical existence proof.

McCloskey criticizes the emphasis in economics on being "smart." Smart economists try to dazzle us with their conceptual insight and mathematical prowess. They don't read much outside their own area of expertise, and they certainly don't read history, philosophy, or classic literature. Often they are densely ignorant of the world, even of the economic events of the...