Well, I picked up my textbooks for the new semester. Does anyone have any
idea what I should expect from the books/classes
Microeconomics by Jeffrey Perloff
The Economics of Women, Men, and Work by Blau, Ferber, and Winkler
The Economics of European Integration by Baldwin and Wyplosz
>From skimming through them, they are better than my books last year. I had
the Bade & Parkin Macro text which was filled with right wing nonsense
that has no justification in orthodox economics. I had the Krugman micro
book which was a little better, but I was surprised about how conservative
the economic analysis was (a section on price floors for wages with no
mention of monopsony or oligopsony) and there were irrelevant bits thrown
in to appease liberals like a box on "Rawlsian ethics."
The European Union book seems to have some nonsense ("A general feature of
European labour markets is that they tend to be inflexible. The worrisome
fact is that the three largest eurozone members- France, Germany and
Italy- are maong those where the labour markets are most rigid and
unsurprisingly, where unemployment is stubbornly high") and the class is
taught by Donald Bellante, whose webpage says "He also serves on the
Advisory Boards of the James Madison Institute and the Ludwig von Mises
Institute." Bellante's labor econ textbook is in fact used as a straight
man in Alan Manning's criticism of more traditional textbooks in Monopsony
in Motion.
However, The Perloff book seems to have 4 chapters at the end on the new
information economics stuff Stiglitz is famous for. The book on Economics
of Women even cites "Segmented Work, Divided Workers." Of course, it
doesn't endorse it (or criticize it) , there is just a paragraph saying
"and here is what radical economists think...."
Still, this appears to be a good sign compared to what I had last year.
