Stackelberg Follower comes across an introductory anthropology textbook whose authors are interested in writing about economic issues. Unfortunately, they’re not very good at it. He cites three glaring mistakes before giving up in dismay, and concludes:

Perhaps most tellingly, the references to
the chapter do not contain a single book that deals with economics as
economists know it.

This is an important part of an economist’s training (Stackelberg Follower is an undergraduate student in economics at the Memorial University of Newfoundland), and it can be a surprise to the best of us. Paul Krugman limits himself to the field of international economics in his essay "The illusion of conflict in international trade" (reprinted in Pop Internationalism), but the point appears to be a pretty general one:

The other thing these books have in common is a complete absence of anything that looks like the kind of international trade theory that academic economists teach. I don’t mean that these authors challenge the economist’s view. I mean that they write as if it did not exist.

It is important to be clear about the completeness with which academic economics is ignored. It is not a matter of a lack of familiarity with the latest wrinkles in research. Rather, nothing of international trade theory as economists know it … is in these books.