Contemporary Economic Issues (1998)
Contemporary Economic Issues (1998). This is a remarkable The Teaching Company tour de force by Professor Timothy Taylor, Managing Editor of the American Economic Association’s Journal of Economic Perspectives since its inception in 1986. Whatever your concern, whether it might be Financing the Health-Care Industry, The Growing Inequality of Wages, Taking the Economics Out of Immigration, The Supply-Side Economics Movement, The Shaky Foundations of Social Security, Can Anything Be Done About International Financial Crashes?, China’s Economic Surge, or What Economists Know, and Don’t Know, About Economic Policy, Professor Taylor succinctly addresses the subject in 30 lucid minutes.
Taylor matches an extraordinary breadth of economic knowledge with a common-sense approach that renders him comprehensible to professional and amateur alike. Though these lectures were recorded in 1998, I find them refreshingly relevant nine years later. I doubt that this could be said about any other economist dealing with such a broad range of contemporary economic issues.
I strongly recommend Contemporary Economic Issues and A History of the U.S. Economy in the 20th Century for American historians, whether professors or students. Economics is the base root of the giant American oak that has spread its leaves so magnificently over more than two centuries. Unfortunately, economics gets short shrift in the telling of this story. (Available in video or audio)
