The book launch tour of Australia ended last week with a visit to the Melbourne Institute, where Deborah Cobb-Clark kindly hosted the last in our marathon-series of 5 launches. They all were a great success, with the publisher actually running out of books for the last one and thus having to scramble for extra copies.

What was memorable about the Canberra and Melbourne launches were that the hosts had read the book and prepared lengthy speeches on it, which of course was very flattering. Andrew Leigh, who hosted the Canberra launch, already put his verdict on his own website and Adrian Pagan, co-hosting in Melbourne, kindly gave me permission to let you see what he made of it in the pdf attached (Adrian Pagan on frijters book).

Of course, neither of these two eminent economists are uncritical praisers of the book I wrote with Gigi Foster, and both speeches draw attention to elements that raised their interest and doubts. Andrew Leigh, a politician now, notes how often we make the kind of strong statements that he can no longer make! Adrian Pagan likes the importance in our work of economic linkages in the explanation of recessions, but he is not quite yet ready to accept our theory of love without a bit more humming-and-ahing. Yet, both are very supportive and complementing, whilst giving their own unique view on the endeavour. Thank you both. We hope to get similar responses in our tour of the US and Europe later this year!

Author: paulfrijters

Professor of Wellbeing and Economics at the London School of Economics, Centre for Economic Performance View all posts by paulfrijters