Edible Economics: A Hungry Economist Explains the World by Ha-Joon Chang
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I agree with some of his points: that culture is not a determinant, but can itself be determined; hard-work and productivity are two different things, the latter more important; the importance of technology overcoming the scarcity of resources; his critique of the patent system, and so on. The policy prescriptions are also absolutely valid and are themselves consensus (which might make his supposed opposition to the economic mainstream more tenuous, but regardless). My issues are with his assertions vis-a-vis free-trade, which are really the crux of this book:

Chang is really, really wishy-washy on the topic. When he criticizes cultural determinism, he is flat-out (as he should be, because he’s right). But obviously, he finds it harder to go against the economic consensus on the benefits of free trade; every chapter on free trade, therefore, has a disclaimer at the end essentially arguing he doesn’t oppose free trade, but sees situational advantages in protectionism. Essentially, he says that protectionism can be useful: but only if the government is harsh on the protected industries, the protected industries are themselves proactive, and so on. He also acknowledges that, for the half-dozen countries successful which successfully employed protectionism, basically every other third-world country (including mine) let it destroy their economy. His criticisms of free-trade, on the other hand, are mostly historical: free-trade and the slave trade; how free-trade was used by colonists, and so on. These aren’t critiques of the idea, but more genealogical — and untenable, in my opinion. Basically, you could come out of this book seeing free-trade as more useful than protectionism (which, in consensus, it is), because he basically makes a weak case.

Cut out the chapters on trade, and it’s a good book.

View all my reviews