The Princeton Encyclopedia of the World Economy has just been published, following closely on the heels of the second edition of the New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics last year. As an Enlightenment junkie, and therefore a fan of the original Encyclopedie of Diderot et al, I was intrigued by this rebirth of the concept of the large scale reference work. This week I spoke to Peter Dougherty, the esteemed head of Princeton University Press (and author of that fine book Who's Afraid of Adam Smith) about the motivation for the encyclopedia, and the economics of publishing this kind of work. Next week I'll be talking to Professors Steven Durlauf and Lawrence Blume, editors of the Palgrave Dictionary of Economics.

The two publishers' strategies are somewhat different. The New Palgrave Dictionary, published by Palgrave Macmillan, costs £1,710 in hardback and is obviously meant to be accessed mainly online. The Princeton Encyclopedia, edited by Kenneth Reinert & Ramkishen Rajan, is a physical book (in two volumes) priced at $250/£150, with online availability to follow in future. I asked Peter Dougherty why he'd chosen this approach at a time when so many publishers see reference works as increasingly online-only, with readers accessing only small parts at a time. He told me that Princeton has been expanding the number of reference books in its portfolio and with this new title is drawing on the lessons of the hugely successful Princeton Companion to Mathematics, which has sold more than 10,000 copies in a $99 hardback. He said: “We live in parallel literary universes. Reference book publishing is migrating to the web, but there is still a strong ad vigorous market for this kind of physical book.” In time, Princeton will look for an online partnership for the title, possibly a library aggregator, but after building a constituency.

The Encyclopedia itself is edited by economists but includes material drawn from other social sciences. It's aimed at students as well as scholars. Peter Dougherty describes the Encylopedia or Companion approach as adding another tool to the toolbox of the Press's list. In its currently strong fields such as economics or in fields such as the ancient world where it is building up the list, these reference books extend the range of approaches from the specialised scholarly monograph to the large-scale reference works which address a field in a scholarly way at a high level of generality. He told me: “With these kinds of reference books, we can plot out the definition of entire fields and give scholars around the world a language to work in.” It took no small effort to create the Encyclopedia of the World Economy – the two editors and associate editors Amy Jocelyn Glass and Lewis Davis spent three and a half years working on it, and there are getting on for 1,500 pages (compared with about 7,500 for the mammoth New Palgrave Dictionary), covering all aspects of international economics – trade, finance, development – as well as other social science approaches to the world economy. Peter told me that it may be a sign of success that the A-H volume (but weirdly not the second volume) was stolen from the Princeton University Press display stand at the AEA annual meetings. It looks well worth those working or teaching in the field getting their hands on a licit copy to see for themselves.

As a final note, the kind of reference book I would love to see revived is the reader. I have on my desk for reference right now the 1969 Penguin reader in International Finance edited by Richard Cooper (in a fragile state). The span of articles runs from David Hume on the price-specie flow mechanism in 1759 to Harry Johnson in the international monetary system in 1967. There is nothing that seems irrelevant even now – the passage of time doesn't matter to a collection of classic articles. Readers of this kind also give their editor an opportunity to shape a field. I'd love the Bob Shiller reader on behavioral finance, or the Abhijit Banerjee reader on development, or the Paul Krugman/Tony Venables reader on economic geography, and would buy every one as a reference book to pass on to my son, who starts his university degree next year. I'm sure they'd still be on his shelves in 30 years' time.

Textbooks and edited volumes make up the bulk of the Routledge list, and so I don't often look at the catalogue in detail as the reviews section in The Business Economist focuses on non-technical, non-textbook good reads rather than those aimed at the academic and student markets. (Clearly the readership of the journal consists of people who work outside the academic world, and price comes into it too, as pricing strategy for academic/student titles counts on a much lower price elasticity of demand.) So it was interesting to bring a new perspective to it this time.
Routledge has substantial numbers of new and backlist titles on Asian economies and on development. Also quite a few on heterodox economics – I'm very sceptical of those which seem to bring the inanities of 'critical theory' to economics but am rather taken by the look of a History of Heterodox Economics by Frederick Lee, out in February, and also a recent book called Leading Contemporary Economists edited by Steven Pressman. Other highlights are The Macroeconomics of Global Imbalances, with essays by luminaries such as Richard Portes, Charles Wyplosz and Dr Doom himself Nouriel Roubini; a reissue in March of Ragnar Frisch on econometrics, which looks a must – the catalogue describes it as an evergreen warning for those “lost in the thick mist of formal technique twiddling”; and a number of new and forthcoming titles on central banking and financial markets, very timely, although one wonders how much they've been overtaken by the extraordinary events of the winter of 2008/09. Last but not least, a number of new textbooks on behavioural and experimental economics, a real sign of the times in the subject. I liked the look of a how-to book, Experiments in Economics by Ananish Chauduri.
The catalogue is online at http://www.routledge.com/economics

A brilliant title for a new book by Richard Bronk (Cambridge UP). It brings to mind Spandau Ballet rather than the usual dark suited economist. I shall immediately ditch my dull work outfits for same flouncy white shirts. Richard said in his note to me that he expected I'd disagree with his thesis, which is that the conventional perspective of economics – self-interested rational agents with independent preferences – must be supplemented with other perspectives, especially the imaginative. This argument is supported with historical chapters on the development of utilitarianism-based economics in conflict with the Romantic poets. In fact, I agreed with quite a lot of what he says: that neoclassical economic models should be supplemented with behavioural approaches and with sociological insight, and that we should be humbler about our ability to predict, for example. Where I differ is that he is eager to drop the need for modelling and for equilibrium, whereas for me these are the source of the analytical muscle of economics. If we see this as only one amongst several descriptive approaches, then we're doing history or sociology and not economics. ANyway, I'm meeting Richard face-to-face to have the debate, and will post a full review later. Watch this space.

Browsing through the catalogues reveals a fine crop of forthcoming titles pretty much across the board. At MIT Press, The Economics of Growth by Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt is out this month, which looks fantastically comprehensive and clear, and should appeal to applied economists as well as students – it includes an appendix on how to do the econometrics. March brings Inside the Fed by Stephen Axelrod, a timely memoir from a long-time Fed staffer. In April Africa's Turn? by Edward Miguel will be published, an essay expressing optimism about Africa's prospects, with some pessimistic responses from other experts. I noticed this particularly because the blurb mentions the impact of cellphones, and I know from my own long-standing consultancy work on the impact of mobiles in developing countries that the below-the-radar effect of the first access to communications is significant. In Kenya in particular mobiles are now also providing access to basic banking services for poor people, in an amazingly successful scheme called MPesa. Another tantalising prospect is Guns and Butter, on the economics of conflict, edited by Gregory Hess, out in June. (There are some interesting backlist titles on development on MIT Press's list as well, including The Elusive Quest for Growth by William Easterly.) In an area of special interest to me is Transforming Global Information and Communication Markets by Peter Cowhey and Jonathan Aronson, looking at the political economy of innovation, to quote the subtitle. That will be out in April. A title published last year which looks very relevant to our times is Revisiting Keynes, with a terrific list of contributors including Will Baumol, Gary Becker, Ben Friedman, Ed Phelps, Bob Solow and Joe Stiglitz. Finally, on light note, comes Parentonomics by new father Joshua Gans, billed as 'Dr Spock meets Freakonomics'. I like the idea of a new subgenre of comedy economics, if only we can carry it off. Will there be others following the trail blazed by the Stand Up Economist? (http://www.standupeconomist.com/)

The spring publishers' catalogues are arriving, so here's a preview of what new titles will be out during the next few months. I'll start with Princeton University Press, and will follow up with others during the next week or so.
There's bound to be a lot of interest in Animal Spirits by George (market for lemons) Akerlof and Robert (irrational exuberance) Shiller, which sounds like it could catch the spirit of the times. They promise a “robust, behaviourally-informed Keynesianism”. It's out in March. June will bring Portfolios of the Poor by Daryl Collins and others, which sounds fascinating – it describes how poor people live on less than $2 a day, and the authors all have extensive field experience. Also in June a book about the economics of pirates (the 18th century kind, not the Somali oil-tanker grabbing kind), The Invisible Hook by Peter T Leeson. Stefan Szymanski has Playbooks and Checkbooks on sport economics out in May. For those interested in the US education system and its funding, there is Schoolhouses, Courthouses and Statehouses by Eric Hanushek and Alfred Lindseth in July. And what looks like a landmark project, the Princeton Encyclopedia of the World Economy edited by Kenneth Reinert and Ramkishen Rajan, published this month.
Some recent titles are new in paperback: Greg Clark's A Farewell to Alms (history and development); Dani Rodrik's One Economics, Many Recipes (one size doesn't fit all in development); The Making of an Economist, Redux by David Colander (economics is becoming less remote from real life, honest); Code Red by David Dranove on the economics of healthcare; The Great Contraction by Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz (a timely reissue of their 1965 text on the Great Depression). And many others of interest.
It looks a strong list to me, even allowing for the fact that PUP has been wise enough to publish my own The Soulful Science (also out in a recent paperback). The recent strengths have been in the arease of development, institutions, and behavioural economics, I guess, but it's pretty wide-ranging. The catalogue is online at http://press.princeton.edu/catalogs/econ09text.pdf
I'll follow up with some others this week – MIT Press, Edward Elgar and Routledge already to hand so they'll be next, and I'll track down catalogues from the other university presses with strong economics lists. Without doing a detailed comparison of past and present catalogues, this is purely impressionistic, but I do think we're blessed with a very fruitful economics publishing scene at present, from the highbrow academic end of the spectrum all the way through to recent pop paperback hits thanks to stars like Tim Harford, Steven Levitt etc. This reinforces me in my view that the subject itself is going from strength to strength at the moment. Hooray!