The Structure of a Modern Economy: The United States, 1929-1989.

• Author: Amos, Orley M., Jr.

Kenneth Boulding undertakes a relatively straightforward, yet by no means simple, task--to analyze the wealth of available data to provide a comprehensive, dynamic picture of the U. S. economy since the Great Depression. The Structure of a Modern Economy: The United States, 1929-1989, published in 1993 shortly after Professor Boulding's death, accomplishes this task in a refreshingly effective manner. The result is a primer on economics in general and the U. S. economy in particular that is informative to readers with all levels of economic expertise. The potentially tedious data analyses are continually spiced with useful analogies that serve as a reminder that economics is not isolated from the social, political, and ecological world. In fact, one strength of this work lies in the broad analytical brushstrokes that place many past, current, and potential policy issues into a relative context.

Yet this book is not without flaws. Perhaps the most troubling is theoretical perspective. Although Professor Boulding remains relatively objective in his treatment of many politically charged topics, including national defense expenditures, inflation, the federal deficit, and the size of the government, an underlying but unstated theory appears to drive his analysis. This is most problematic when correlations are characterized as cause and effect relationships. For example, he suggests that an increasing share of income from net interest causes a reduction in the share to profit. The theoretical underpinnings for this and similar relationships need to be explored more fully.

The book contains nine chapters, with the core analyses found in Chapters 2 through 7, and an appendix with 80 pages of tables. While these tables provide a wealth of data, most is obtained from the Economic Report of the President. The first chapter establishes an excellent contextual setting for this book, as well as the discipline of economics. It is a useful primer on economics for economists. In particular, Professor Boulding illustrates a knack for slicing through (often politicized) rhetoric to pinpoint the essence of an economic issue. Two of the more noteworthy points made in this chapter include the often erroneous use of the term consumption (we have ". . . an unfortunate tendency to think objects die as soon as they are purchased by a household") and that information is not conserved (". . . unlike materials and energy . . . information gained by the recipient is not...