Reviews for Recent Developments in Law and Economics

The average rating for Recent Developments in Law and Economics based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-06-17 00:00:00 David Stoll The author likes: globalization, Bill Clinton, Alan Greenspan, entrepreneurs, capitalism, risk-takers, wealth, free trade. The author dislikes: China, bureaucrats, politics, class warfare, high taxes, over-regulation. The author tolerates as inevitable: "creative destruction" of certain kinds of jobs, economic bubbles bursting, unpredictability of the globalized economy. these positions are elaborated at length in a retrospective of the 2007-2008 credit crisis, with a large dose of "my analyses of the situation were correct" and an even larger dose of "I am personally familiar with and greatly respected by many very famous and powerful people" as side dishes. He says in the acknowledgements that the columnist Robert Novak encouraged him to include more personal anecdotes. Mr. Novak did him no favor then, as the book could have been improved and seriously condensed had an editor chopped out every story with the structure "I was having dinner with Larry Summers/Ronald Reagan/the prime minister of Japan/Hillary Rodham Clinton/whomever and I made the following pithy and prescient comment....."

Review # 2 was written on 2011-09-29 00:00:00 Jay Ellison I read this book hoping to find some insights or predictions about where the current economic mess is headed, internationally and domestically. What I got was a windy and frequently opaque description of past international and domestic financial crises, padded by a series of self-serving and egotistical, self-serving anecdotes and name-dropping taken from Mr. Smick's career as an economic consultant. For the most part, I was unable to follow the logic in his explanations of international credit and the interplay of interest rates and rates of exchange. Perhaps they are obvious to him, but I doubt if most readers will follow them. He simply states what happened, but fails to clearly explain why. Very disappointing; I'll have to look elsewhere for enlightenment.