Jane Jacobs
14 May 2006
The Editor, The Economist
25 St James's Street
London SW1A 1HG
United Kingdom
SIR:
Three sincere - not Bronx! - cheers for your remembrance of Jane Jacobs (Obituary, May 13). She was indeed wise. Among my favorites of her insights appears in her book Cities and the Wealth of Nations, where she observed that national boundaries do not define economic boundaries: "Nations are political and military entities, and so are blocs of nations. But it doesn’t necessarily follow from this that they are also the basic, salient entities of economic life or that they are particularly useful for probing the mysteries of economic structure, the reasons for the rise and decline of wealth."*
If Ms. Jacobs ever is taken as seriously as she deserves to be taken, future generations will look back on our hysteria over national "trade imbalances" with the same bemusement that we look back on past generations' hysteria over witches, saloons, and rock'n'roll.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
* Jane Jacobs, Cities and the Wealth of Nations (New York: Vintage Books, 1984), p. 31.
The Editor, The Economist
25 St James's Street
London SW1A 1HG
United Kingdom
SIR:
Three sincere - not Bronx! - cheers for your remembrance of Jane Jacobs (Obituary, May 13). She was indeed wise. Among my favorites of her insights appears in her book Cities and the Wealth of Nations, where she observed that national boundaries do not define economic boundaries: "Nations are political and military entities, and so are blocs of nations. But it doesn’t necessarily follow from this that they are also the basic, salient entities of economic life or that they are particularly useful for probing the mysteries of economic structure, the reasons for the rise and decline of wealth."*
If Ms. Jacobs ever is taken as seriously as she deserves to be taken, future generations will look back on our hysteria over national "trade imbalances" with the same bemusement that we look back on past generations' hysteria over witches, saloons, and rock'n'roll.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
* Jane Jacobs, Cities and the Wealth of Nations (New York: Vintage Books, 1984), p. 31.
Posted by Don Boudreaux on
Monday February 26, 2007 at 2:08pm