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Economics Fiction

Finding way through...

It never ever occurred to me that one could write an entertaining fiction out of economics concepts. There's something so compelling about basic economics and the way it appeals to pragmatism and common sense that it'd be boring and mundane to package it into a story for the layman. Interesting conclusions of economics about reality is constantly featured in the popular economics books that are in the market nowadays but it's difficult to entertain people with economics in fiction.

Yet there are economics professors who manage the feat. I first stumbled on The Fatal Equilibrium by 'Marshall Jevons' because it was on my university course reading list but failed to find a copy of the book in Singapore so I set out to find out if 'Marshall Jevons' wrote something else. Eventually I discovered that happened to be the pseudonym of two economics professors, William Breit and Kenneth G. Elzinga who decided to collaborate on a series of detective novels that featured the use of economic reasoning to solve crimes. I laid my hands on a copy of 'Murder at the Margin' from the Central Public Library and went on to finish it within 3 days. It was an easy read for me and while it wasn't fast-paced, the fact that it was a mystery novel kept me reading on, though not with the same sort of enthusiasm reserved from the works of Dan Brown.

Eventually it was entertaining and a rather enjoyable read. The duo also wrote 'A Deadly Indifference', which at present, is the final work of economics fiction they've done together. Then I went on to discover that other works of economics fiction actually exists; including that of John Kenneth Galbraith, 'A Tenured Professor' which mocks more than it promotes Economics as it is. This novel deals much less with Economics concepts than those of Marshall Jevons. Russell Roberts also published another narrative that's more centered on economic concepts, titled 'The Invisible Heart'. The sample chapter offered does seem pretty interesting.

I always briefly considered I'd try and imagine how a Homo Economicus will function or think in our reality and write a book about it but then I thought it'd be too boring. A fiction work on economics should ideally be like these rather successful novels - a strong dose of cerebral stuff woven into reality.