Komlos, John, Foundations of real-world economics: what every economics student needs to know, 3rd edition, 2023, Routledge, New York and London, 420 pp., £ 39.99 (Paperback)

Abstract

Following the global financial crisis in 2007–2008, students in many countries started protesting at the way economics was taught in university classrooms. Their main concerns included the “dominance of narrow free-market theories”; the ignorance of “evidence from other disciplines” (Inman 2014); and the inability of the economics science to explain and predict real-world phenomena, such as the financial meltdown. Not least in response to this, many economics departments have expanded their curricula beyond the traditional neoclassical orthodoxy (The Economist 2021). Newer approaches to economics and relevant topics have been added, including behavioural and information economics, institutional economics, inequality and poverty, financial crises, climate change and sustainability, to name a few. Concepts such as GDP or economic growth are nowadays discussed more critically, highlighting their limitations and presenting alternative indicators or views. Concomitantly, economics textbooks – for instance, the bestselling ones by Mankiw and Talyor (2023) or Krugman and Wells (2021) – have been revised to cover the greater width of themes and approaches.