Political Economist

This book is about the U.S economy in 1990s, what the author calls “the age of diminished expectation.” Paul Krugman, a professor of economics at Princeton University and New York Times columnist, aims to deal with main economic problems and successes of the current U.S. economy.

In order to present the reasons for economic success and follies, he traces back to the early 1930. Unlike the age of welfare, current U.S economy is characterized by the slowdown of labor productivity since 1980s, increasing income gap among social classes and the fear of rapid inflation. Thus, according to Krugman, without the turnaround of productivity growth, the contemporary pressing issues in the U.S economy such as trade and budget deficit, financial market volatility cannot be solved.

This book is composed of 5 chapters, dealing with the roots of economic welfare after the 2nd world war, current economic problems such as twin deficit and inflation. While analyzing these issues, he also introduces how the U.S government and the Fed have adopted economic and public policies to deal with the problems not only arising from domestic market but also from international financial market.