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Two quite different books with similar titles bring economics to the subject of romance and the family. Russell Roberts continues his use of fiction to illustrate economics with The Invisible Heart: An Economic Romance. He first used this approach in 1994's The Choice: A Fable of Free Trade and Protectionism (updated in a revised edition in 2000). And in a work of nonfiction, The Invisible Heart: Economics and Family Values, University of Massachusetts professor and MacArthur Fellow Nancy Folbre writes about the failure of mainstream economics to address what she considers to be the important issues surrounding families today.
The Invisible Heart: An Economic Romance by Russell Roberts MIT Press, 2001 271 pp., $22.95, paper 
The Invisible Heart: Economics and Family Values by Nancy Folbre New Press, 2001 267 pp., $16.95, paper |
Roberts' The Invisible Heart has a difficult task. It needs to hold its own as a novel while imparting economic concepts. There is some tension between the two missions. Fiction thrives on plot and character; economics articles, on the other hand, typically emphasize mathematical modeling and statistical analysis of data. To resolve this conflict, Roberts turns to an older tradition of economics: plain writing and clear reasoning. Adam Smith wrote in this style in his masterwork The Wealth of Nations (1776), and even into the late 1940s this remained the approach of most economists. With the rise of formalism after World War II, however, the economics profession turned to less accessible forms of communication. Roberts revives the earlier approach, partially reconciling the gap in form between novels and economics.
As a novel, Roberts' The Invisible Heart is good but not great. His prose is spare, hisplot has a nice twist, and the story is for the most part believable. Roberts not only writes better than most economists, he writes better than many novelists. There are two main story lines, which ultimately converge. Sam Gordon and Laura Silver are two teachers at an exclusive private school in Washington, D.C. Sam teaches economics; Laura teaches literature. Polar opposites, they are inevitably attracted to each other, and their debates over economics, politics, literature, and everything else fill half the book.
Their courtship, both emotional and intellectual, is rocky: at one point, Sam gets into heated arguments with some of Laura's family and spoils a dinner party. Laura herself is no straw woman, put in the book merely to be enlightened by the all-knowing economist. She articulates intelligent objections to Sam's arguments and pushes him to explore the consequences of his views. Hence her eventual acceptance of the legitimacy of some of Sam's positions is persuasive.
The second plotline concerns a small regulatory agency looking into a potential scandal at a health care corporation. The characters here are less fully developed and the story less convincing. Indeed, I kept wondering why this seemingly unrelated story was included at all. There are great implicit economic lessons in the behavior of the agency, but they seemed unrelated to the story of Sam and Laura. When Roberts pulled the two plots together in a surprising and satisfying way, the purpose became clear. Without spoiling the plot twist for you, let me say it is well handledso that some of what I had supposed to be misjudgment turned out to be evidence of authorial cunning.
Folbre's The Invisible Heart is a very different book, and not just because it is not a novel. Whereas Roberts wants to takes lessons from cutting-edge economic analysis and present them lucidly and concretely for the general reader, Folbre doesn't think much of modern economic analysis, period. (She also doesn't think much of former Massachusetts Governor William Weld, Rush Limbaugh, her father's employer, Republicans, libertarians, conservatives, rich people, and a host of other unenlightened individuals and groups.) Folbre's arguments range across a variety of topics (globalization, feminism, housework, taxes, welfare, Social Security, socialism, corporations), but a brief summary of her general argument is contained in the following quote: "Economic theory offers us some indispensable tools for organizing our joint endeavors. That's why it's so important to get economics rightto ensure that it includes careful consideration of love, obligation and reciprocity, as well as self-interest."
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