With 1,762 large format pages, 166 contributors and costing £175, this is some heavyweight. And heavy! At three kilograms a volume it really is uncomfortable to handle, although the pages do lie flat when the volumes are open. The aim of the book is to provide the general reader ‐ a strong one, and one with access to a rich library ‐ with “insight into topics that are often accessible only to academicians and experts in the field”. I must say straight away that the editor and his army of contributors have supplied the information in a user‐friendly way. Each one of the 393 articles has the same format: they average four or five pages in length, each begins with a note of “the type of economics” and the “field of study” being presented, and provides a brief summary of the topic’s significance. Key terms are then listed and defined. The main text of each article is divided into an “Overview”, which introduces and defines the topic, an “Applications” section, which examines how the topic relates to real‐world economic phenomena or how it can be applied in theoretical discourse, and a “Context” section that places the topic in its social, theoretical and historical situation and explores its implications. A brief but helpfully annotated bibliography then directs the student reader to accessible sources and each article ends with references to other related articles in the Encyclopedia. The prose is commendably readable.
Welcome efforts have been made to help the user navigate a way through the work. Apart from the obvious alphabetical arrangement, each article has references to related articles, there is a detailed contents list, a classification of the entries by broad categories, and a comprehensive index that covers topics, people, terms and concepts. It even indexes a 500‐plus glossary. There is also a general bibliography of economic sources.
Such are the aims and the mechanics, what of the content? Forty‐eight articles cover economic theory, 31 put these in a historical context, eight essays cover specific economic systems, eight are on major historical events such as the Industrial Revolution, 33 essays look at how economists attempt to examine economic phenomena, 22 look at growth and development. (All this is cribbed from the introduction.) It goes on: monetary and fiscal theories (96 articles), trade and international aspects (36), industrial economics (40), corporate economics (21), welfare economics (25), labour economics and population (17), and so on. One difficulty I had was that many of the entry terms are unsought. Examples are: human capital, linear programming, political economy, barrier to entry, and absolute advantage.
Is it any good? Well, unless I missed any, all 166 contributors are American (apart from the compiler of the bibliography) and the subject matter is American biased ‐ US legislation and examples, for instance. The European Economic Community rates an article, but I searched the index in vain for the ECU, Lloyds and its Names, the Single Market, BCCI, Nick Leeson and Barings, and Council Tax. Privatization was in, but no UK references that I could see in the article. The orientation is clearly theoretical. So if theoretical economics with a US flavour is your scene, and you are strong and loaded, then this is an excellent work to flex your mind, shelves and biceps. Most of us, though, will probably want something a shade more practical and UK focused.
