Dr Leverich: On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 8:33 AM, Dr. Brian Leverich <[email protected]> wrote: > > First, a brief introduction -- I'm a Harvard- and Stanford-trained > mathematical economist with a doctorate in Public Policy Analysis. > > And I'm modestly competent as a historian.
Welcome! The average level of learning is going up around here. It was enough to give pause before posting to this thread. Then I remembered that ignorance has never stopped me from shooting off my mouth before, so why start now? ;-) > When I've had occasion to look at Ferguson's forays into economics, > they seem almost embarrassingly incompetent. He has a truly > impressive ego and a lack of understanding to match. > > Most economists would say about the same -- Paul Krugman has a > notoriously low regard for Ferguson, and J. Bradford DeLong of > Berkeley famously observed that "Niall Ferguson does indeed know a > lot less than economists knew in the 1920s". I rather enjoyed reading "The Ascent of Money" -- as a layman I found it informative. I'd be interested to know which bits he got wrong. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a lot of material in this area aimed at the general reader. > Though I wouldn't begin to pass direct judgment on Ferguson as a > historian -- that's just a collateral field for me -- I would find > it very easy to believe that Mishra's criticisms of Ferguson's work > are richly deserved. I haven't read "Civilization", but I found "Empire" to be fairly slanted. While I don't believe imperialism was all bad, it's also wrong to imply that the good somehow justifies or outweighs the bad: Yay! We have an army of english speaking professionals to take on the world economy, so what if it cost us a few centuries of oppression!
