Tiebout Model at Fifty Essays in Public Economics in Honor of Wallace Oates Book

When I was studying engineering at University one of the subjects we had to have an overview of was economics. I wanted the read this book because to me at the time the traditional macro economics theory just didn’t make sense – too many assumptions that were self evidently wrong, and I wanted a more up to date perspective. This book, I was pleased to discover, not only explained traditional economic theories in detail but also agreed that there are basic flaws in this traditional macro economic view. More interestingly, for me anyway, the book discusses much about complex adaptive systems in economics by comparing them to those in biological and social systems. The treatment of complex adaptive systems I found to be both fascinating and enlightening, probably more than the economics they were being used to illuminate. Certainly I could recommend this book for no other reason than the discussion of ‘Sugarscape’ which illustrated economics, evolution and complex adaptive systems in one very simple thought experiment and model.