When economists read literature or watch movies or television, we sometimes come across passages that illustrate economic principles. (We also come across passages that illustrate ignorance of economic principles. Novels can serve as models, as Tyler Cowen has observed, but they don’t have to be well-constructed models.) Sometimes the illustration is memorable enough that we remember to use it in class when we make the relevant point. The problem is that unless the work is a current bestseller or routinely assigned in a required English course, most of the students in the class will not have read the work in question and our illustration is unlikely to illuminate. But a remedy is close at hand.
The Literary Book of Economics: Including Readings from Literature and Drama on Economic Concepts, Issues, and Themes
Brand: Intercollegiate Studies Inst
450 pages
$7.67
In The Literary Book of Economics, Michael Watts of Purdue University, a major contributor to the profession’s ongoing discussion about how to teach economics, has pulled together more than 80 excerpts from a wide range of authors and genres. He has grouped them by economic content and written informative notes to accompany the excerpts. The book draws from classic authors such as Shakespeare, Milton, Twain, and Pope, more modern but well-established writers such as Steinbeck, Heller, Vonnegut, and Stoppard, and even from contemporary fiction such as Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. Fans of most genres (except science fiction and mysteries) will find some favorites.
Who might use this book? Certainly, teachers of the basic principles of economics. Watts has handled all the copyright issues involved in using excerpts, making the book a handy single-source, reasonably priced supplement for an economics course. Since economics texts, with a few notable exceptions, are generally not fun to read on their own, this book could provide an excellent addition to a basic principles course, as well as a good source for essay assignments for students.
A second possible set of readers would include those looking for a book in which to graze. The excerpts are meaty enough, and Watts’ introductory comments thorough enough, that a casual reader could while away time in waiting rooms or on airplanes by opening the book to random spots and reading. The excerpts are short enough that a reader could finish a few during the average plane flight. (This is not a book to read straight through. The stylistic shift from Henry Adams to Joseph Heller in the section on public choice, for example, requires a few moments’ pause before continuing.) Finally, this book would make a perfect gift for an aspiring writer who ought to be considering the economic implications of her writing.
Watts handles the mechanics of the book well. He provides an interesting introductory essay on the relationship between literature and economics, concluding essays on the use of literature by economists and vice versa, and concise introductions to each section and selection. The well-edited selections supply enough plot and character detail to allow even readers unfamiliar with the larger work to grasp the important points. The editorial selection is thoughtful, although most readers will surely think of a favorite that has been omitted. Watts hints that there may be a second edition with additional selections at some future date.
The larger question is whether literature, movies, television shows, and the like offer the opportunity to teach real economics. Based on the material in this book and my own file of references from my reading and viewing, I think the answer is emphatically yes. Such examples often teach economics better than do the more serious writing within the field. I’ll use one of Watts’ selections to illustrate this point. Ivan Doig’s Dancing at the Rascal Fair (1987) is one of my favorite books. Doig poignantly captures the experience of two friends who emigrate from Scotland to Montana in 1889, chronicling their departure from Scotland through their later travails as partners in sheep raising. Watts includes two selections from the book, one to illustrate supply and demand and the other to illustrate immigration. (There are also selections from two other books by Doig.)
The immigration passage offers over seven pages recounting the two Scotsmen’s decision to leave Scotland for America. “Immigrants have always faced high risks and costs,” Watts notes in his introduction to the excerpt, “accepting them either willingly or by necessity. Those concerns are undoubtedly most keenly felt at the start of the journey to a new country.” In the excerpt, the narrator of the book, Angus Alexander McCaskill, tells the story of his arrival with his friend, Robert Burns Barclay, at the steamer that will take them to America, and then describes his misgivings about ocean travel and his mixed feelings on leaving “the pinched old earth called Scotland.” Angus’ internal discourse probes for his motives and weighs the reasons for his actions. Doig sets against this internal dialogue both the events occurring around Angus and quotations from Crofutt’s Trans-Atlantic Emigrants’ Guide, on which Angus and Rob rely for information about Montana and the trip.
What is the advantage of teaching about immigration by using the selection from Doig rather than simply relying on an economics text? One major difference between the novel excerpt and the textbook is that even the best textbook does not come close to matching Doig for sheer pleasure in the reading. Students studying economics with Doig and the textbook will have more fun than those studying it with only the textbook. When students enjoy a course, they put more effort into it and remember its insights better. That is a major benefit to Watts’ approach. My own experience as a student is consistent with this—the two courses I remember best from my undergraduate experience were history and economics courses which used novels as a major part of the reading.
Second, the novel offers students an intellectual puzzle that will stretch their minds. Reading a textbook, even one that is well-written and intellectually challenging, is not the same as reading a piece of literature. Understanding Angus and Rob’s decision to emigrate requires critical thinking, applying economic principles to a place where they are not on the surface, as they are in economics texts. What better training could there be for students to use economics in their lives after the class is over?
Third, literature offers an antidote to the specialized language and technical details that dominate much of modern economic writing. Ivan Doig probably did not set out to write a novel to illustrate economic principles but rather to write a novel with characters who rang true. In doing so, he wrote one in which the naturalness of economic principles is apparent. Too often we forget in the classroom—and so do not communicate to our students—that economics is ultimately about explaining human behavior. Mathematical formalities and specialized vocabularies have a role to play in economic theory, but they are merely means to an end: explaining individual human choices. Literary examples offer an alternative means for students (and others) to grasp some of the insights of economics.
For example, in one of the excerpts from Dancing at the Rascal Fair included in the book, Angus looks back at Scotland’s coast and muses that “it was as handsome a coast as could be fashioned. Moor and cliff and one entire ragged horizon of the Highlands mountains for emphasis, shore-tucked villages and the green exactness of fields for trim.” But he then immediately goes on:
And every last inch of it everlastingly owned by those higher than Angus McCaskill and Rob Barclay, I reminded myself. Those whose names began with Lord. Those who had the banks and mills. Those whitehanded men of money. Those who watched from their fat fields as the emigrant ships steamed past with us.
A textbook explanation of the decision to emigrate would speak in terms of Angus’ weighing of the costs and benefits of his position in Scotland, including his personal attachments to his home, against the uncertain prospects in Montana. The potential for advancement in Scotland was limited by the structure of landownership and the relatively static society; the rewards in Montana, while uncertain, were potentially greater because Angus could (and does, later in the book) invest in land and act like an entrepreneur, a career foreclosed in Scotland. All those insights, and much more, can be found in Doig’s writing. Pulling them out is likely to develop critical thinking by students in ways that reading a text (which they should certainly also do) will not by itself.
Finally, the most important reason to use literary examples in teaching economics to undergraduates is that most of them have had relatively little life experience. Understanding the economics of the decision to emigrate is easy for students when they or their parents have made that decision. Relatively few have, however. Angus’ experience can substitute for the direct experience students often lack because the power of Doig’s writing makes the experience real.
The danger of relying on excerpts is that they lack the full context of the book. Someone who reads the entire novel will understand Angus and Rob’s choice to emigrate far better than someone who reads only the excerpt. And, marvelous as Rascal Fair is, it does not make all the points necessary to an economic principles course; the teacher would need to assign multiple novels. The problem, however, is that assigning entire novels can quickly produce an excessive workload and students will react either by not doing the “extra” fiction reading or not reading it thoroughly enough. At least with respect to the works with which I was already familiar, I found that Watts has done a nice job of selecting enough text to capture the most important insights to be gained from the larger works without selecting so much that the book expanded beyond a manageable level. The result is a salutary reminder that economics is an arena of human dilemmas and human choices.
Andrew P. Morriss is Galen J. Roush Professor of Business Law and Regulation at Case Western Reserve University School of Law and Senior Associate, PERC—The Center for Free Market Environmentalism.
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