SINGAPORE: Workers’ Party MP Jamus Lim wears many hats—politician, Economics professor, husband, father, son, brother—and now he can add one more… as the best-selling author on Amazon!
His book, Asian Economies: History, Institutions, and Structures, was published on March 21 and has been designated a Best Seller on Amazon.sg
It’s listed as number 2 in Books, number 1 in History of Economics, number 1 in Economic Systems, and number 1 in International Business & Investing.
Amazon Best Sellers Rank, or BSR, is based, as the name indicates, on sales and is updated frequently “to reflect recent and historical sales of every item sold on Amazon.”
Assoc Prof Lim’s book, published in 2009, is currently a runner-up to The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness by Morgan Housel.
Aside from the WP MP’s book, the only other work by a Singaporean author on the top ten bestsellers list is The Woke Salaryman’s Crash Course on Capitalism & Money: Lessons from the World’s Most Expensive City.
Based on the popular personal finance blog, it was published on Feb 6, 2024, and is currently fifth on the top 10 bestsellers list.
Before his current stint as Associate Professor of Economics at ESSEC Business School, he was the Chief Economist at Thirdrock Group and the Lead Economist at the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.
Assoc Prof Lim was also with the World Bank from 2007 to 2014, where he focused on long-term macroeconomic projections and served on its Development Prospects Group.
He obtained his Bachelor of Business degree in economics from the University of Southern Queensland and his Master of Science in economics from the London School of Economics.
Later, he obtained a Master of Arts in politics, a PhD in international economics, and then a Master of Liberal Arts degree in history from Harvard Extension School.
However, he could not find a single text that covered all the countries he wanted his students to learn about.
“I’ve since filled the gap by writing the book that I wanted to read.
It fills all the niches that I found nagging: a clear Asian perspective, a strong empirical bent (but informed by the latest theory), an approach that takes history, geography, politics, and institutions seriously, and attention to prospects, not just retrospect,” he wrote. /TISG