Innovation Nation: A Review of The Gridlock Economy and The Origin of Wealth

Robert Atkinson has written an excellent review of two of the most important books published in the last year.

The Gridlock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives - Michael Heller, 2008

The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics - Eric Beinhocker, 2007

"Neo-classical economics is bunk. Keynes is dead. What comes next?"
(click here to read the whole article - pdf)

Beinhocker's The Origin of Wealth is an excellent introduction to the emerging synthesis of Complexity Economics composed of evolutionary, behavioral, and ecological approaches to economics. My friend Gavin and I had largely gotten to the idea that the economy is an evolving system where production technologies reproduced under selection with the sloshing about of capital the means of keeping score but Beinhocker took it to the next level. å

Beinhocker, with lot of insights from the Santa Fe Institute (the only center investigating Complexity Economics in the U.S.), develops the structure of a complexity approach to economic behavior in thought provoking detail and many new insights. By the end we can begin to imagine what the shape of the new synthesis will look like. Though he gets slightly side tracked by his management consulting background in the last section, the final chapter begins to confront some of the larger conclusions of an evolving capitalism. A must read.

I have not read Gridlock Economy yet, but it is near the top of my list now. Judging by the number of time's The Origin of Wealth is seen in close proximity to it, I am sure it is well worth looking at. Check out the whole review above.

~SZ