As you might expect from the title, this is a book that brings together the various strands of thinking that make up the rather nebulous field of `new economics', and presents them all in one place. It's a useful introduction to the uninitiated, and a re-cap for those who have been following the movement since the days of E F Schumacher.
In a nutshell, new economics is an approach that "values real, rather than illusory wealth, and puts people and planet first." It is concerned with the health of communities and individuals, with equality and opportunity - the things that make our lives worth living - rather than economic activity and growth for its own sake.
David Boyle and Andrew Simms have based the chapters of The New Economics: A Bigger Picture around some of the paradoxes of modern economics. `Why did China pay for the Iraq war?' explores the problem of how new money is created through debt mechanisms. `Why are Cuban mechanics the best in the world?' looks at our consumption of natural resources and the fact that traditional economics makes it more expensive to fix things than to replace them. `Why do fewer people vote when there is a Wal-Mart nearby?' investigates big business and the erosion of community, something Simms has covered before in his book Tescopoly. It's a structure that keeps the book accessible and interesting - a challenge for any economics writer.
Thankfully, there are solutions to these paradoxes, and each chapter explains the distinctively 'new economics' responses to them. They range from quite simple and obvious reforms like bankruptcy measures for countries or controlling tax havens, through to radical ideas like Tradeable Energy Quotas, the citizen's income, or the `Terra' global currency. And it isn't all theory either - plenty of these ideas are tried and tested and underway, from community land trusts to social return on investment schemes.
If there's a weakness to the book, it's the timing of it. Written in the latter half of 2008, right after the collapse of the financial system, the authors somewhat underestimate the resilience of global capitalism. But that's a minor inconvenience in what is a great declaration that there is an alternative. As the authors say, "the struggle for the soul of economics is gathering pace."