Review on "The New Geography of Jobs" (by Enrico Moretti)

I found a nice review on the following book written by Aaron M. Renn in his blog:

The New Geography of Jobs by Enrico Moretti

Aaron spells out quite a few suggestions and cautions on the materials, yet his last paragraph below clearly indicates appreciation of what this new book achieved:

Despite a few things I thought could have been more developed or stronger, I think that, as a book making the case for the innovation economy and what it means, The New Geography of Jobs is a strong one, and I again would suggest it to people in cities that have not yet fully found their place in the new century.

Walsh 3rd

A leading advanced textbook in monetary economics has been revised and released last year.

Monetary Theory and Policy, Third Edition


The author describes the new edition, which seems to be an essential reference in the field, as follows:

This third edition reflects the latest advances in the field, incorporating new or expanded material on such topics as monetary search equilibria, sticky information, adaptive learning, state-contingent pricing models, and channel systems for implementing monetary policy. Much of the material on policy analysis has been reorganized to reflect the dominance of the new Keynesian approach. Monetary Theory and Policy continues to be the only comprehensive and up-to-date treatment of monetary economics, not only the leading text in the field but also the standard reference for academics and central bank researchers.

Descriptive and Normative Theories

A great introductory book on decision theory written by a leading authority, professor Itzhak GIlboa, came out recently:



Professor Ehud Kalai at Northwestern University describes this book as follows:

"This book is extremely effective for anyone who wants to acquire quick, basic understanding of old and new concepts of decision theory, with a minimum level of technical details."

In the first chapter, the author indeed effectively explains two essential notions in economics, "descriptive" (sometime called "positive") and "normative" theories:

A descriptive theory is meant to describe reality. For instance, the claim that demand curves slope down attempts to tell us something about the world. Importantly, it does not make a value judgement and takes no stand on whether this feature of the world is good or bad.

A normative theory is a recommendation to decision makers, a suggestion regarding how they should make decisions. For instance, the claim that we should reduce income inequality is a normative claim. Note that the word "normative" does not mean here "the norm in a given society" as it does in other social sciences. The term only says something about the type of interaction between the theorist and the decision maker, namely, that this is an instance in which the former is trying to convince the latter to behave in a certain way.

The author continues to document the role of each theory, which is also very intuitive:

In decision theory it is often the case that a principle can be interpreted either descriptively or normatively. Consider the theory that each economic agent maximizes a utility function. I may propose it as descriptive, namely, arguing that this is a good description of real economic agents. And I may promote it as normative, in which case my claim will be that you would be wise to become such an agent. As a descriptive theory, the principle is tested for its correspondence to reality. The better it fits the data, the more successful it is. As a normative one, the principle should not fit reality. In fact, there is no point in giving decision makers recommendations that they anyway follow. Rather, the test is whether the decision makers would like to follow the principle.

ES Monographs Online

If you are a member of the econometric society, you can download most of (perhaps all) the monograph series of ES published by the Cambridge University Press FOR FREE. The series covers representative books in advanced economic theory and econometrics such as:




Collective papers in the world congress are also included:


Please access the ES website here and log in. Then, you can jump to the publisher's website with an online access code to the book chapters.