I have always been curious about why societies develop, which is why I was drawn to the social sciences as a student. I first encountered attempts to explain development in economics, but found that mainstream models were too neat and abstract to account for my everyday observations. Why are there no entrepreneurs in the models, and why do most economists assume that property rights are unambiguous? I eventually discovered that non-mainstream economic theories and some of the other social sciences are more concerned with reality. Eventually I developed an eclectic framework with a focus on entrepreneurship, institutions, and spatial agglomerations as factors that shape socio-economic development.
I wrote...
Property Rights, Consumption and the Market Process
I wrote this book because I wanted to combine theories that help explain the role of both entrepreneurs and consumers in a dynamic economy. The key idea is that entrepreneurs create new property rights from pre-existing resources, and that both entrepreneurs and the consumers that they target are constantly learning new things about the world around them. The result is an increasingly complex economy as a result of the ever-increasing division of knowledge. My starting point was Yoram Barzel’s economic theory of property rights, but I made it more dynamic by including ideas such as Knightian uncertainty and various Austrian, evolutionary, and institutional theories from economics as well as political science.
No author has had a greater impact on my thinking about entrepreneurship than Frank Knight.
He explained that entrepreneurs do not maximize anything, since the future is uncertain in a non-probabilistic sense. Instead they exercise judgment while facing an unknown future.
This book is divided into three parts. The first two parts read like a conventional economics textbook, but the third part is phenomenal. He explains why risk and uncertainty are different, which is a lesson that many economists and other social scientists still disregard.
Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit is a groundbreaking work of economic theory, distinguishing between risk, which is by nature measurable and quantifiable, and uncertainty, which can be neither be measured nor quantified.
We begin with an analysis of the functions of profit, risk and uncertainty in the economy. Frank H. Knight introduces his work with a discussion on profit and how there are conflicts about its nature between various economic theorists. As the title implies, the author's chief concern is the interplay between making a profit, incurring risk, and determining if there is uncertainty.
This is the book that made me question what I had learned in urban economics as a Ph.D. student.
Cities are not neatly divided into homogeneous districts. Instead, cities are always changing and the most creative and productive areas tend to be diversified rather than specialized, since diversity begets creativity and innovation.
Jacobs argued that there are four design principles that cultivate dynamism: mixed primary uses, a high population density, a mixture of new and old buildings, and short blocks.
In this classic text, Jane Jacobs set out to produce an attack on current city planning and rebuilding and to introduce new principles by which these should be governed. The result is one of the most stimulating books on cities ever written.
Throughout the post-war period, planners temperamentally unsympathetic to cities have been let loose on our urban environment. Inspired by the ideals of the Garden City or Le Corbusier's Radiant City, they have dreamt up ambitious projects based on self-contained neighbourhoods, super-blocks, rigid 'scientific' plans and endless acres of grass. Yet they seldom stop to look at what actually…
I make use of the basic concepts that Barzel introduced in this book, but deviate more from conventional neoclassical economics.
Economic property rights are about effective control over resources, and not necessarily about legal rights. A key insight is that a resource consists of an open-ended number of attributes and therefore that control over a resource can become more complex as the number of attributes increases.
There is also a tendency for control to change hands as market participants discover more valuable uses of resources.
This is a study of the way individuals organise the use of resources in order to maximise the value of their economic rights over these resources. Property rights and all forms of organisation result from people's deliberate actions. In the tradition of Coase, this study offers a unified theoretical structure to deal with exchange, rights formation and organisation which traditional economic theory assumes away. A person's economic property rights over an asset are defined here as the person's ability to gain from the asset by direct consumption or by exchange. It is prohibitively costly to measure accurately all assets' attributes;…
This is the first book I read about the role of entrepreneurs in the economy. I have mixed feelings about it.
It’s filled with insights but it is also deeply flawed. Entrepreneurs drive economic development and engage in “creative destruction.” The market is about change rather than equilibrium. These are both great insights.
But history has refuted Schumpeter’s Nietzschean view that entrepreneurship is confined to “captains of industry” with unusual personality traits, and his attempts to explain business cycles is unpersuasive.
Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950) is one of the most fascinating and influential economists of the twentieth century, renowned for his brilliant and unorthodox insights into the nature of capitalism. His students include leading economists such as Paul Samuelson, Robert Solow and the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan.
The Theory of Economic Development is one of Schumpeter's most important books and the one that made him famous. He poses a fundamental question: why does economic development proceed cyclically rather than evenly? Turning prevailing economic theory, which approached economics as equilibrium, on its head, Schumpeter argues it is because economics…
This is the second book that I read about entrepreneurship. It’s also my second favorite book on economics.
Unlike Schumpeter, Kirzner does not assume that entrepreneurship is an unusual activity. Most people are entrepreneurial at some point. Successful entrepreneurship means being alert to profit opportunities that others have not noticed.
The underlying message is that there is such a thing as a free lunch. Kirzner views the market as a process rather than an equilibrium state. It is a superb book for understanding why mainstream neoclassical economics is unrealistic, but it does not address uncertainty.
Stressing verbal logic rather than mathematics, Israel M. Kirzner provides at once a thorough critique of contemporary price theory, an essay on the theory of entrepreneurship, and an essay on the theory of competition. Competition and Entrepreneurship offers a new appraisal of quality competition, of selling effort, and of the fundamental weaknesses of contemporary welfare economics.
Kirzner's book establishes a theory of the market and the price system which differs from orthodox price theory. He sees orthodox price theory as explaining the configuration of prices and quantities that satisfied the conditions for equilibrium. Mr. Kirzner argues that "it is more…
As a trauma therapist and dedicated researcher, I love uncovering valuable insights within lesser-known books. There are hidden gems, free from the pressure of commercial success, crafted by authors deeply committed to research, understanding, and the art of writing itself. Their dedication resonates with me, as I believe in the profound value of information and the power of critical thinking. Through my own book, Traumatization and Its Aftermath, I aim to emphasize that psychological concepts often lose their depth in translation and my mission is spreading awareness and fostering a deeper understanding of trauma and its intricate facets. With that idea in mind, I chose these five titles.
A fresh take on the difference between trauma and hardship in order to help accurately spot the difference and avoid over-generalizations.
The book integrates the latest findings in brain science, child development, psycho-social context, theory, and clinical experiences to make the case that trauma is much more than a cluster of symptoms to be tamed, but instead best understood as development gone off course, away from growth and towards (only) survival.
This book prompts a profound shift in perception, inviting to view trauma as an intricate and diverse experience, a point of view that ultimately leads to sharper treatment and, hopefully, more healing. It encourages a transition from asking, "What happened to you?" to the deeper question, "What is your relationship with what happened to you?"
Traumatization and Its Aftermath: A Systemic Approach to Understanding and Treating Trauma Disorders
The book is comprehensive, bold, and practical-a much-needed resource for the assessment and treatment of trauma. Instead of the traditional focus on the overall importance of healing, Traumatization and its Aftermath decodes why some people don't heal as easily as others, analyzes the various failures of diagnosis, and explains how to make therapeutic interventions truly effective.
This book offers a systemic deep dive into traumatization that clarifies myths and misinformation about the entire spectrum of trauma and provides both clinicians and non-clinicians with the right level of validation, preventive measures, conceptualization methodology, assessment tools, and healing facts that have not…
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