In the Long Run We Are All Dead

No one grows up dreaming of becoming an economist. Until the late nineteenth century, economics couldn't even be studied at university and was the preserve of polymathic figures whose radical curiosity drew them to a discipline that was little understood and often derided. Each of the thirteen chapters of this book tells the story of just such a figure. Each of their extraordinary lives is worthy of fiction, and the manner of their deaths, oddly, often illuminate their work. In the Long Run We're All Dead**xA0;tells us about the lives of these great economists and how they developed the theories for which they became famous, explaining these often-complex ideas - of Utilitarianism, of Social Costs, and the Endowment Effect, to name just a few - in a style that is engaging, irreverent, and comic. Everything Björn Frank tells us about these lives is true, but this is also a book of imaginative speculation that considers how economists' principles might be applied to problems of today and of the future.