Macroeconomics

Of all the Economics textbooks I've ever used (and there have been many!) this has to be the worst. The content is watered down, inaccurate, and vague. Instead of laying a fundamental basis for further economic study, this textbook presents a wishy-washy definition-oriented primer to econo-speak, nothing more. Simplification _is_ to be expected in an intro text, but simplification taken as fact is misleading, and ignoring some topics (utility, for example) while explaining others without any context (business cycles, for example) is just counterproductive! Perhaps Parkin should've spent less time making this book pretty, left out the color tables, and inserted some real content!

I am a student in college who has purchased and read Boyes/Melvin's Microeconmics, Fourth Edition. I regard the book to be of inferior quality and sloppy. Although I can understand the concepts coming from the text, the writing itself is inherently poor. There are many examples of the authors misusing words, mispelling words, and making the text generally more complicated than it needs to be. To professors looking for a microeconomics textbook, please look elsewhere, for I am not the only student who has encountered these problems at my school. Thankyou.

When the ECB's Chief Economist, Otmar Issing, wrote a book on the Bank's monetary policy, he made no mention at all of the policy's impact on jobs or industry. He larded the book with praise for the monetarist economist Milton Friedman, whose well-known and disastrous impact on Chile's economy was, oddly, not referred to in the book.
Thatcher's monetarist fallacy was that the battle against inflation was the overriding economic aim, because low or zero inflation would produce higher growth. But in the real world, other things being equal, low inflation was not the cause of high growth but the effect of low growth, and high inflation was not the cause of low growth but the effect of high growth. Monetarism's battle against inflation was a policy of deflation, forcing unemployment and low wages on the working class. So, just as Thatcher therefore became the deadly enemy of the working class, so now joining the euro has become the main threat to us.

This is the book that chased Professor Slawson out of economics. It was universally panned when it came out, and today, from the vantage point of 20 years later, we know with certainty why. Inflation, which struck terror into the hearts of millions during the 1970's, could only be cured by draconian wage and price controls, Slawson told us. Of course, from the perspective of 20 years, we can now say that this was not needed at all. More disturbing is how the author wants to use taxation in an almost punitive way. For example, Slawson would virtually abolish all inherited wealth because he believes it's unfair to have money if you don't work. Yet, earlier in the book, he quotes Studs Terkel in Working, and tells us most people hate their jobs. So I guess Slawson wants everyone to be miserable. Everyone must work in miserable jobs. And what about the family farm or the family business? Why should the taxman take away the inherited family farm? All I can figure is Slawson must not have any kids because no father could wish such a future on his children.

This book is a kind of technical theory of why Northern countries control all the wealth. I would recommend the book "Guns, Germs and Steel" if you want to really examine the subject of civilization.