Raf Manji pointed out on the Facebook page for my book, The Economics of Enough, that the price for the Kindle version on Amazon UK is higher than the price of the hardback. As he added, “Go figure!” I haven't explored thoroughly enough to know if this anomaly is very common, but it is clear that retailers have not thought through e-book pricing.

This is especially strange for Amazon, which has built its business on setting low prices for books (which are price elastic), and then figuring out what price discrimination tactics work. Speed is one: a lesson promulgated first in Shapiro and Varian's Information Rules is that one thing you can certainly charge for online is getting something at once, or before everyone else. (Information Rules is one of my all-time business economics favourites.)

Price discrimination linked to time is a tactic that has long worked well in books – the hardback is a good example. People who want a book quickly will pay more. The price differential of a hardback exceeds the cost differential of hard covers.

However, the Kindle edition of a book seems never to be the first – indeed, it will be a week or so before mine is available.

The other issue is that e-books don't include any re-use or re-sale rights in the price. I can't borrow a book my husband downloads, whereas we have always shared physical copies. And I can't sell a download back on Amazon marketplace. I think this limitation lies behind the strong consumer instinct that e-book prices will have to be significantly lower than physical prices. Retailers have focused on the price of the devices, but overlook the effect of the price of the e-books.

I suspect part of the answer to the puzzle lies in rights clearances. This is still a thicket of nonsense for e-books, especially for a book like Enough which has pictures in it (yes!). It will have to be sorted out if retailers and publishers really want to drive these sales. Apart from anything else, they have to overcome the die-hard romanticism of hard-core book lovers and buyers.

Thanks to Professor Andre Fourcans of l'Essec business school, my French has been getting a bit of a brush up recently. He kindly sent me his recent book, Les secrets de la prosperite, and its prequel, l'Economie expliquee a ma fille. Until I started reading, it wasn't clear to me why he'd lighted on an Anglo-Saxon economist. But it quickly became clear that he and I share a passion for explaining the insights of economics in clear prose, for the benefit of all those souls who have not experienced the same professional formation.

I particularly liked the robust start to the book. There is a well known instance of a kindergarten starting to fine parents who were late picking up their offspring a small amount of money, to discourage a lack of punctuality. The move proved counterproductive, however. Parents lost their sense of guilt about being late because they were being charged; the fine felt like payment for extra service. I think I first came across this example in Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational; it has gained wide currency since. Michael Sandel has also cited it. Anti-economists love this kind of example – they think it disproves conventional economics.

Professor Fourcans dismisses this as nonsense. The kindergarten just got the level of the fine wrong, he says. If they had charged 50 euros instead of three for latecomers, they would have ensured punctuality.

A long section of the book concerns the economic arguments about environmental matters, pollution and climate change. I think this compares favourably with the similar section in Superfreakonomics – it's tryingless hard to grab attention. There is a section on long run growth and institutions. And finally La Fin de la Croissance? This question, after a discussion of the idea of limits to growth (or Enough?), he ends with a slightly tentative negative. As he ends, addressing the daughter who has been the designated audience for his books, the main purpose of economics is to teach enlightened scepticism.

So it's a book after my own heart and clear enough for a non-native speaker to follow. I don't know how well the book has done in France, especially as the logic of market discipline and neoclassical economics do not sit naturally with the French, but I found it an enjoyable read, very suitable for non-economists and students.

At last some serious scholarly attention is being paid to the role China is playing in the economies of Africa, getting past the cliches and myths. The Dragon's Gift: The real story of China in Africa by Deborah Brautigam is a detailed, thorough assessment of China's engagement around the continent and the impact of its investments and aid. It should be essential reading for anybody in the western aid community as well as other academics.

One of the key insights is that China's policies draw on their own recent experience as a recipient of aid and as a developing country. Chinese policymakers believe that their relationships with African governments can bring mutual benefits, an exchange of economic progress for natural resources, because that has been China's path. Their own economy has moved along a track from shipping coal and minerals abroad to basic manufacturing to higher value activities. With China's help and investment, they believe African economies can follow the same path. This is one reason so much of China's investment involves infrastructure projects. As a result, they see aid as a small part of a menu of means of engagement, extending through concessional loans to direct investment. All of these are aligned to the same mutually beneficial end. China's engagement in Africa is a strategic one, not an opportunistic resource-grab – at least in intention it is not remotely like the western colonial engagement with Africa.

Another lesson for me was the duration of China's relationships. It has been an aid donor and investor on a large scale since the 1970s. It's just that many of us have only noticed China in Africa recently. Between 1967 and 1976, aid accounted for 5% of Chinese government expenditure (although a large proportion of this went to Vietnam). (p41) But as long ago as 1984 China was the 8th largest donor in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to the OECD's DAC. (p54)

In addition to emphasising infrastructure, China has a heritage philosophy of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries and – perhaps notoriously – is therefore less likely to impose conditions on its projects. Brautigam explains exceptions to this as linked to individual African countries' attitudes to Taiwan. She also points out that China is clear African economies need to industrialise to develop – whereas “an increase in manufacturing is not part of the Millennium Development Goals.” (p191) I think the Chinese are right; for all the negative aspects of early-stage industrialisation, African countries need to go through it.

The question is whether Chinese investment can help create a self-sustaining industrial base in Africa. There are many examples where Chinese investors have found, just like their western counterparts, that factories and facilities left to Africans to run founder in corruption and ineptitude. The book gives many examples of projects where the Chinese have built the plant, trained the managers, left it to run – and had to return later to rescue it with Chinese supervisors once again. The next few years will reveal whether that is changing in any African countries – the outlook seems variable.

The Dragon's Gift is a sign that received western wisdom about China's role – that it's merely cynical and exploitative – is being challenged. Peter Gill's Famine and Foreigners also took a more informed and nuanced perspective on China in Africa. Brautigam cites a debate on the Zambian Economist blog about a 2008 Newsnight report that raised the same question. I haven't yet watched the recent BBC documentary, The Chinese are Coming, on the same subject. However,  The Dragon's Gift is by far the most thorough look at this subject so far. Parts of it are very detailed but the author flags them up for readers. Highly recommended for anyone interested in this subject.

Friday morning brought my first speaking engagement on my new book, The Economics of Enough, at the Institute for Public Policy Research. Ann Pettifor of the New Economics Foundation had been invited to comment on my book before we opened up for the general discussion, and she was as thought-provoking and full of insight as ever.

At one point, Ann noted that this year is the 75th anniversary of the publication of The General Theory, and – as a firm Keynesian – bemoaned the lack of attention being paid to this milestone (although I blogged about it recently). However, she went on to say that one of Keynes's writings she most admires is a less well known essay, National Self Sufficiency. As an environmental and development campaigner, Ann argued that developing countries need to focus more on growing and processing food for their own consumption, at a time when agricultural commodity prices are rocketing, and less on shipping cash crops (often by air) to western markets. Britain should be growing its own green beans, and Kenya growing staples its own people can eat.

I haven't read the 1933 essay for years, possibly decades, although I know it was popular with the anti-globalisation crowd in the 1990s, so turned back to it. Keynes writes that he – like all economists – sees the case for free trade as a moral as well as logical truth. But he adds:

“Looking again to-day at the statements of these fundamental truths
which
I then gave, I do not find myself disputing them. Yet the orientation
of my
mind is changed; and I share this change of mind with many others.”

And the famous passage is:

“But let goods be homespun whenever it is reasonably and conveniently
possible,
and, above all, let finance be primarily national.”

No wonder these words strike a chord again. But the thrust of the essay is to argue that policies need to be right for their times. Free trade was important to improve living standards for workers in the mid-nineteenth century and – Keynes argued – less international entanglement appropriate for the fraught 1930s. At the time he wrote, Keynes did not foresee the scope for further international specialisation that would come about because of information and communication technologies, and he did not foresee the growth of trade in services. It's a magnificent essay and I agree with much of his argument – for example:

“We destroy the beauty of the countryside because the unappropriated
splendours of nature have no economic value. We are capable of shutting
off the
sun and the stars because they do not pay a dividend.”

The conclusion I draw is that the problems of our own times demand their own solutions. Let us make sure we do price the splendours of nature, and let a minimum carbon price make shipping green beans by air freight too expensive. Let the US regulators ban the inclusion of staple foods in heavily-traded commodity indices so rich American investors are not causing starvation as crop prices soar. But nobody else should tell Kenyans they can't engage in trade.

Just in case UK readers of this blog have failed to notice, my new book The Economics of Enough is now available. Amazon and other websites are selling it – I think it will be a day or two before it gets to the real world stores. I'm doing my first talk about it today and will post the podcast link when available. US readers have to wait until next week, it seems.