How to be Human*: *Though an Economist

by Deirdre Nansen McCloskey

In this thoroughly engaging book Deirdre McCloskey puts the "dismal science" under the microscope. She offers advice to young economists, offering models from the old; and she lambastes the middle-aged who have allowed economics to become, as she puts it with characteristic verve, "a boys' game in a sandbox." McCloskey deploys her wit and style to serious to bring economics back to science.
Anyone can learn about the field of economics from How to Be Human . She can learn how economics works as a discipline and as a piece of sociology, who the heroes are and the villains, how a career in economics relates to matters of ethics and epistemology. She can learn what it is like to be a new woman in a boys' subject, a subject that avoids at all costs the word "love."
During the 1990s Deirdre McCloskey established herself as the main internal critic of the economic mainstream. Her quarterly columns in the Eastern Economic Journal, many of which are collected here, have become a handbook for reform. Trained in economics herself, she knows the normal science of the field from the she has done it as a distinguished economic historian; and has watched it work from the faculties of Chicago (for twelve years) and Iowa (for nineteen), and now at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Her criticism from the inside is that the two methods on which economics has depended since the 1940s--existence-theorem mathematics and significance-testing statistics--are nonsense. They have, she claims, nothing to do with economic science, and have massively diverted economists from finding out how the economy works.
McCloskey's book is written for anyone interested in economics, whether trained in it or not--anyone who cares about the economy but is not taken in by the boys' game.
Deirdre McCloskey is University Professor of the Human Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago.

Genres: Economics

304 pages, Paperback

First published November 10, 2000

About the author

Deirdre Nansen McCloskey has been distinguished professor of economics and history and professor of English and communications at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the author of numerous books, including Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World.

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very clever quotes and a very good and funny critique of economics and its methods

[Max Lauber · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not sure if 3 stars are appropriate considering my main criticism: While McCloskey is amusingly savage in her disparagement of shallow economic methods, there is absolutely no example of how to practice economics in an ethical sense. The reason 3 stars feel too low is that this is a collection of short, non-academic articles and columns, meaning that the genre isn't necessarily intended to carry economic substance. So: 4.5 stars for the inspiring rants and the ethical appeals of the texts, but only 2 for substance.

[Suzanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not the only one! Whether writing as Don or Deidre, McCloskey writes with a wit and clarity that is too often missing from other economists' work. Glad I finally got around to reading this one. I truly hope I see McCloskey win the Nobel Prize; she sees the big picture, as should the committee. Fabulous read for economists, non-economists can skip the overly-technical parts.

[Rubem Pimentel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting critic of the use in economy of statistical significance and excessive axiomatic theory (without a thorough empirical research). Unfortunately we seldom see her side when studying economics.