Yet exuberant growth is stigmatized as immoral by some and bad public policy by others. And economists, surprisingly enough, are the biggest enemies of innovative,transformative growth. Mandel, a Ph.D. in economics himself, believes his colleagues in the dismal profession are a big part of the problem. Focusing on what he labels the single biggest failure in modern economics, Mandel blames New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, and Greg Mankiw, President Bush’s head of the Council of Economic Advisers, for misleading generations of students and slanting public policy against scientific innovation.

Michael J. Mandel, chief economist of BusinessWeek, is the country’s most passionate partisan for exuberant economic growth. In the mid-1990s, he was one of the first journalists to use the term "New Economy" to describe the fast-growing but volatile U.S. economy, supercharged by technology and finance. Mandel’s understanding of the true underpinnings of the 1990s economy led to his prescient warning that the Internet bubble was about to burst, which he predicted in his book The Coming Internet Depression.

Now Mandel is issuing another warning. Without exuberant, technology-driven growth, the U.S. economy

lack the firepower to solve its social problems. Without breakthrough innovations like the internal combustion engine or the Internet, the U.S. economy simply can’t create enough jobs or wealth to provide for its citizenry.

Yet exuberant growth is stigmatized as immoral by some and bad public policy by others. And economists, surprisingly enough, are the biggest enemies of innovative,transformative growth. Mandel, a Ph.D. in economics himself, believes his colleagues in the dismal profession are a big part of the problem. Focusing on what he labels the single biggest failure in modern economics, Mandel blames New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, and Greg Mankiw, President Bush’s head of the Council of Economic Advisers, for misleading generations of students and slanting public policy against scientific innovation.

Lively, opinionated, and controversial, Mandel’s thinking will serve as a rallying cry for the creation of a new political coalition dedicated to economic growth. He calls on Silicon Valley to take their case to Washington,and to shift the debate from arguing about trade and budget deficits to solutions, such as more support for research, start-ups, and workforce training. Mandel is sure to kick-start that debate.

        Acknowledgments

        Prologue

        Glossary of Key Concepts

Chapter 1:  IN DEFENSE OF EXUBERANCE

Chapter 2:  THE TWO TYPES OF GROWTH

Chapter 3:  HOW INNOVATION MATTERS

Chapter 4:  THE ECONOMIC ENEMIES OF GROWTH

Chapter 5:  DEFICIT HAWKS, LIBERALS, MORALISTS,

       AND ENVIRONMENTALISTS: MORE

       ENEMIES OF EXUBERANT GROWTH

Chapter 6:  THE NEXT BIG BREAKTHROUGH? BIOTECH,

       TELECOM, ENERGY, NANOTECHNOLOGY,

       AND SPACE

Chapter 7:  WHY FINANCE MATTERS

Chapter 8:  THE ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES

       OF BUBBLES

Chapter 9:  BUILDING A COALITION FOR

       EXUBERANT GROWTH

Chapter 10:  WILL THE EDUCATION BUBBLE BURST?

Chapter 11:  THE WORST-CASE SCENARIO

       CODA

       References and Notes

       Index