Pop Internationalism

The second book by Paul Krugman in the last few weeks (days really) I've gone through. I found the French title to be more explanatory if less catchy: Le mondialisation n'est pas capable. In any case, the book is simply a collection of essays and speeches that Krugman had written/given trying to dispel certain notions on trade policy in the (American) public and political arena. Even if some of content becomes slightly repetitive after the second or third essay (it a collection after all not a coherent body of work), I found the whole thing a very insightful and helpful read. It has already helped me twice these last days in arguments on trade policy with non-economists (even non-political scientists and it is not like I could even call myself an economist with producing inadvertent laughter within myself).

Krugman fears that public discourse has been decoupled from the scientific economic discourse and would like to try to refute some of the (economic) arguments put forth going against every economic theory or against empirical proof. I am not going to go into detail here, repeating his main arguments, but I most definitely can recommend at least one or two (or all) essays of this volume to most (non-economists) readers.