Thinking Like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in U.S. Public Policy, by Elizabeth Popp Berman, is a thought-provoking book about the expansion of economic thinking into government policy analysis in the United States. By “thinking like an economist,” Berman is careful to explain that she is not referring to any or all economics but rather to a postwar neoclassical economics focused on efficiency, incentives, and benefit-cost logic, particularly as applied to microeconomic questions such as welfare, education, the environment, and antitrust. Furthermore, she is more interested in governance and the technique of policymaking than in specific policy options. Yet she argues forcefully that economic logic, when incorporated into these processes, inexorably privileges the instrumental goal of efficiency over other ends, such as rights, universalism, and equity. It thus systematically biases policy analysis toward some options over others.
The book has much to offer to a wide range of...
