Economists dislike talking to people. They prefer a more "scientific" approach to research, such as number-crunching or abstract theorising. But that can be a weakness, as a new book by Truman Bewley, an economist at Yale University, makes clear. In "Why Wages Don't Fall During A Recession", published by Harvard University Press, he tackles one of the oldest, and most controversial, puzzles in economics: why nominal wages rarely fall (and real wages do not fall enough) when unemployment is high. But he does so in a novel way, through interviews with over 300 businessmen, union leaders, job recruiters and unemployment counsellors in the north-eastern United States during the early 1990s recession.
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