After my last viewing of the page proofs for my Openness to Creative Destruction, formatting errors were introduced by Oxford University Press (OUP) into Table 7.1 and Table 7.2.
A PDF with corrected versions of the tables can be downloaded for free at:
https://www.artdiamond.com/DiamondPDFs/CorrectedPages_94_%20thru_96withHeading.pdf
Today, June 3, 2019, is the official release date of my book Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism.
A couple of weeks ago I heard a thoughtful presentation by Pete Boettke that contrasted the role of economist as scientist and as savior. He plausibly claimed that one of my mentors, George Stigler, defended the economist as scientist.
But as is true of many of us, Stigler was not always consistent. He sometimes said that whether you are a fireman or an incendiary, you need to know how fire works. And I generalize that if you want to be effective at saving the world, you need to know how the world works. Science as a method of tolerant inquiry, and not as a body of unquestionable doctrine, helps you to know how the world works.
So my immodest hope for Openness is both that it advances the science of economics, and that it helps to save the world.
PS: Openness can be purchased from Oxford University Press for 30% off using the discount code ASFLYQ6.
Adam Smith said that we seek security–more cautious than enterprising–because we suffer more in falling from a better to a worse situation than we ever enjoy in rising from a worse to better. Yet Smith provided opportunity for James Watt, an upstart 22 year-old mechanical genius that was denied him by the local corporations; thus launching a spectacular career of innovation. Others, from Tom Edison to Steve Jobs, followed. Diamond’s book is about our need to nourish and reduce the obstacles to that creative engine; to give freedom to the flower of innovation that we all be enriched.
Vernon Smith, Nobel Prize in Economics, received in 2002.
Vernon Smith’s advance praise is for:
Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming June 2019.
The text below is copied and pasted from an Oxford University Press promotional business card. The 30% discount code is: ASFLYQ6
Life improves under the economic system often called “entrepreneurial capitalism” or “creative destruction,” but more accurately called “innovative dynamism.” Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism shows how innovation occurs through the efforts of inventors and innovative entrepreneurs, how workers on balance benefit, and how good policies can encourage innovation.
The inventors and innovative entrepreneurs are often cognitively diverse outsiders with the courage and perseverance to see and pursue serendipitous discoveries or slow hunches. Arthur M. Diamond, Jr. shows how economies grow where innovative dynamism through leapfrog competition flourishes, as in the United States from roughly 1830-1930. Consumers vote with their feet for innovative new goods and for process innovations that reduce prices, benefiting ordinary citizens more than the privileged elites. Diamond highlights that because breakthrough inventions are costly and difficult, patents can be fair rewards for invention and can provide funding to enable future inventions. He argues that some fears about adverse effects on labor market are unjustified, since more and better new jobs are created than are destroyed, and that other fears can be mitigated by better policies. The steady growth in regulations, often defended on the basis of the precautionary principle, increases the costs to potential entrepreneurs and thus reduces innovation.
for more information, please visit global.oup.com/academic
US: JUNE 2019 | UK: AUGUST 2019
HARDBACK $99.00 | £64.00 PAPERBACK $34.95 | £22.99
Prometheus didn’t ask permission for Zeus to bring fire to the humans. It cost him dearly, as Zeus punished him in a rather vicious manner. But human beings were made infinitely better off with fire. Art Diamond relays this story to us precisely because he wants us to understand the great benefits that entrepreneurial innovation deliver for mankind, and yet how the true innovator is often despised and disrespected by the prevailing orthodox establishment. If Prometheus had to get permission before giving fire to man, then man would have never gotten the benefits of fire. Similarly, if our entrepreneurial innovators had to get permission prior to introducing their innovation, we would still be walking around or perhaps at best riding on the backs of beasts but I doubt we would have seen the benefits of automobiles, let alone planes, and we would very well not have modern conveniences such as indoor plumbing, let alone air travel, cell phones, and the world wide web.
Peter Boettke, Professor of Economics & Philosophy, George Mason University; Director F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center.
Boettke’s advance praise is for:
Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming June 2019.
Read this book and discover what matters most in economics–ideas and knowledge-how summarized in the word “innovation.” But to fuel innovation resources have to be released from their old incumbent uses and flow into the new. That is the destruction that creates.
Vernon Smith, Nobel Prize in Economics, received in 2002.
Vernon Smith’s advance praise is for:
Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming June 2019.
Openness to Creative Destruction is first and foremost a great read. Much of the book is devoted to skillfully chosen accounts of usually successful, but occasionally unsuccessful, entrepreneurs to illustrate the author’s arguments. At times these accounts made me feel like I was reading a series of short adventure stories. This use of examples to make the argument for the central role of the creative entrepreneur in generating innovation, and the benefits that can accrue to society from creative destruction, makes the book very accessible to the intelligent layman or beginning student, while its serious ideas will be of interest to professional economists and sophisticated policymakers. The theoretician of entrepreneurship or innovation will find it a one-stop source of real-world examples. I plan to make it required reading in my growth and industrial organization classes.
Luis Locay, Associate Professor of Economics, University of Miami.
Locay’s advance praise is for:
Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming June 2019.
The YouTube video above shares a story related to my book that is to appear on June 3, 2019:
Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.
Art revives the lost art of business history in the tradition of Alfred Chandler to write a definitive history of American entrepreneurship. He uses economic theories to organize his encyclopedic knowledge of entrepreneurial success stories. Unlike books by successful entrepreneurs which recount why they personally succeeded, Art looks for themes which are common to these success stories. He provides modest policy suggestions to improve the environment for these entrepreneurs to thrive.
Aloysius Siow, Professor of Economics, University of Toronto.
Siow’s advance praise is for:
Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming June 2019.
Diamond shows us that entrepreneurial innovation is not just the best way to make a better world. It is the only way. If we care about our fellow humans, then we had better do what we can to enable entrepreneurial innovation. Diamond shows with an unusual depth and breadth of scholarship that the most important thing we can do to promote innovation is to let entrepreneurs test their impossible ideas in the free market. Diamond’s book is a gem. Grab it, read it, learn from it.
Roger Koppl, Professor of Finance, Syracuse University. Author of Expert Failure and other works.
Koppl’s advance praise is for:
Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming June 2019.
Astoundingly rich in ideas and stories, Diamond’s sweet and beautiful book is more: an open-handed guide to what really matters in explaining, and sustaining, the Great Enrichment of 3,000 percent per person 1800 to the present. Diamond assuages the ancient fear of betterment, recently haunting us with spooks of AI and technological unemployment. He shows conclusively that an “innovative dynamism” enriches us all, materially and spiritually. The poor are bettered. The jobs are bettered. Read the book and be bettered, freed from specious and politically poisonous worries about economic change.
Deirdre McCloskey, UIC Distinguished Professor of Economics and of History Emerita. Author of Bourgeois Equality and many other works.
McCloskey’s advance praise is for:
Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming June 2019.
