A review. Ran Abramitzky, THE MYSTERY OF THE KIBBUTZ.
Raj Chetty, Al Roth and Emmanuel Saez are a stellar group. The unlikely trio together with Zvi Eckstein fill the back-page cover quotes with gushing praise. This book is apparently a “fascinating and rich analysis”, a “fascinating, important book infused with both deep personal insight and incisive economic analysis” and a “brilliant economic analysis”.
Writing quotes for book covers is a tricky business. Weighing up whether to describe a book as an insightful analysis or an analysis filled with insight is a challenge. More difficult, I imagine, is asking your mates to write you one for your brand new book that took 15 years to write. Ran has absolutely succeeded on that challenge. Al, Raj and Emmanuel are rockstars. No doubt about it. Fortunately for Ran, they were all working at his university department just as he finished the book. Of course, you can’t have a book by a Stanford economics professor with quotes from three other Stanford economics professors on the back. Ran is a clever guy. He knows this. Al Roth is the “winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics”, Emmanuel Saez of the “University of California, Berkely” conveniently took up his new post as the book went to print, and Raj Chetty, of Harvard fame and glory, is oddly listed at “Stanford University”. It would have been too much to obscure all three you see, much better to keep one in the…
