On Tuesday Radio 4 will be broadcasting a programme, Teaching Economics After the Crash. (It goes out Tuesday December 2 just after 8pm, and I presume a podcast afterwards.) I took part, and the presenter, Aditya Chakrabortty of The Guardian asked all the participants to nominate two must-read economics books for the programme website. The whole set of selections adds up to an interesting reading list.

Mine were John McMillan’s [amazon_link id=”0393323714″ target=”_blank” ]Reinventing the Bazaar: A Natural History of Markets[/amazon_link], and Thomas Schelling’s [amazon_link id=”0393329461″ target=”_blank” ]Micromotives and Macrobehavior[/amazon_link].

[amazon_image id=”0393323714″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Reinventing the Bazaar: A Natural History of Markets[/amazon_image]   [amazon_image id=”0393329461″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Micromotives and Macrobehavior[/amazon_image]

The cast list makes the programme’s conclusions pretty clear: it won’t give a positive verdict about modern economics! Wendy Carlin, Danny Quah and I seem on the face of it to be the hardline mainstream voices, which is bizarre. You could only think that of us if you had only spoken to heterodox economists about the state of play. I’m sure it will be an interesting and thought-provoking programme – after all, The Guardian has been campaigning on this issue – but it certainly isn’t going to be a descriptive portrait of the complete state of opinion in economics.