Some years ago, The Economist carried a lead editorial, ‘The puzzling failure of economics’. The frank admission was provoked by the publication of a new edition of Paul Samuelson’s Economist. The editorial concluded that it ‘is not a failure of economics, in fact, but of modern [neo-classical] economics’.


The authors argue there is nothing puzzling about this failure. They document how the integrity of economics as a discipline was deliberately compromised towards the end of the 19th century. The tool for this strategy became new-classical economics. Classical economists like Adam Smith had described wealth as the product of three factors – land, labour and capital, whereas the new theorists reduced these to two, labour and capital, treating land as capital.

The effect, the authors reveal, was to deprive professional economists of the ability to diagnose problems, forecast important trends and prescribe solutions. Neo-classical economics condemns the post-industrial economy to protracted periods of economic failure.

The contributors are … in tune with the increasing realization by economists of the importance of the property market to the macroeconomy.