Here are 100 books that A History of Balance, 1250–1375 fans have personally recommended if you like
A History of Balance, 1250–1375.
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I’m fascinated by systems of thought and very interested in understanding how we can improve our ability to create a better society for all. I think the past makes a good laboratory for investigating these kinds of questions. I got interested in early modern economic theory while researching the English East India Company for my dissertation in the sociology department of Columbia University, which was a great place for historical and computational sociology. I now teach economic sociology and theory as a professor at Yale University, another institution with amazing strengths in history, data science, and computational methods.
This book is a classic and a pleasure to read. If you like Natalie Zemon Davis, you will like Joyce Appleby. It is a terrific introduction to the fascinating world of early modern economic thought and solidifies the importance of mercantilist thought in the era of power and plenty and ships of the line.
I’m fascinated by systems of thought and very interested in understanding how we can improve our ability to create a better society for all. I think the past makes a good laboratory for investigating these kinds of questions. I got interested in early modern economic theory while researching the English East India Company for my dissertation in the sociology department of Columbia University, which was a great place for historical and computational sociology. I now teach economic sociology and theory as a professor at Yale University, another institution with amazing strengths in history, data science, and computational methods.
Tribe is a master of his subject, and this book has the feel of a magnum opus. It is densely packed and full of interesting tidbits, and you will be amazed at just how recent economics really is. The added bonus is all the insight into the development of the modern research university. I am in the middle of this book as it just came out, but the scale of the contribution (large) is already clear.
An accessible account of the role of the modern university in the creation of economics
During the late nineteenth century concerns about international commercial rivalry were often expressed in terms of national provision for training and education, and the role of universities in such provision. It was in this context that the modern university discipline of economics emerged. The first undergraduate economics program was inaugurated in Cambridge in 1903; but this was merely a starting point.
Constructing Economic Science charts the path through commercial education to the discipline of economics and the creation of an economics curriculum that could then…
I’m fascinated by systems of thought and very interested in understanding how we can improve our ability to create a better society for all. I think the past makes a good laboratory for investigating these kinds of questions. I got interested in early modern economic theory while researching the English East India Company for my dissertation in the sociology department of Columbia University, which was a great place for historical and computational sociology. I now teach economic sociology and theory as a professor at Yale University, another institution with amazing strengths in history, data science, and computational methods.
This is a serious scholarly investigation of the origin and eventual triumph of the efficient market hypothesis. Polillo is very smart and the theoretical sophistication high. It combines a thorough history with some extremely interesting ideas about thought, culture, and social processes fleshed out with several different methods of analysis and interpretation.
The Ascent of Market Efficiency weaves together historical narrative and quantitative bibliometric data to detail the path financial economists took in order to form one of the central theories of financial economics-the influential efficient-market hypothesis-which states that the behavior of financial markets is unpredictable.
As the notorious quip goes, a blindfolded monkey would do better than a group of experts in selecting a portfolio of securities, simply by throwing darts at the financial pages of a newspaper. How did such a hypothesis come to be so influential in the field of financial economics? How did financial economists turn a lack…
I’m fascinated by systems of thought and very interested in understanding how we can improve our ability to create a better society for all. I think the past makes a good laboratory for investigating these kinds of questions. I got interested in early modern economic theory while researching the English East India Company for my dissertation in the sociology department of Columbia University, which was a great place for historical and computational sociology. I now teach economic sociology and theory as a professor at Yale University, another institution with amazing strengths in history, data science, and computational methods.
This is a detailed and rigorous history of the relationship between economic thought and state policy in twentieth-century US history. Berman ultimately concludes that economic theory has negatively impacted the democratic party. I disagree and would say that economic theory has given the party new tools with which to govern more judiciously. Either way the institutional story about the increasing influence of economics is fascinating and compelling.
The story of how economic reasoning came to dominate Washington between the 1960s and 1980s-and why it continues to constrain progressive ambitions today
For decades, Democratic politicians have frustrated progressives by tinkering around the margins of policy while shying away from truly ambitious change. What happened to bold political vision on the left, and what shrunk the very horizons of possibility? In Thinking like an Economist, Elizabeth Popp Berman tells the story of how a distinctive way of thinking-an "economic style of reasoning"-became dominant in Washington between the 1960s and the 1980s and how it continues to dramatically narrow debates…
When I became a minimalist, I found that having less made my household chores so much easier. Before then, I thought I was a loser who lets dirty dishes and laundry pile up. But when my environment changed, what I had believed was my personality also shifted. Once my apartment was tidy, it became a habit to do the dishes right away and vacuum the floor before going out, and my life became consistently enjoyable. But other habits were harder nuts to crack, like quitting drinking or exercising regularly. In Hello, Habits I write about my journey of acquiring these habits through a process of trial and error.
Hyperbolic discounting is a term used in behavioral economics to describe our tendency to overvalue immediate gratification while undervaluing future rewards. When asked to choose between getting (A) one apple a year from now or (B) two apples a year and a day from now, people pick (B). However, if the choice is between getting (A) one apple today or (B) two apples tomorrow, people find (A) more attractive. Why is it so difficult to acquire good habits, like going to bed early or getting important work done, instead of playing with our smartphone? The idea of hyperbolic discounting offers a brilliant explanation, shedding light on the troublesome natures we humans possess. Although that’s not the main focus of this book, it’s still an excellent, easy-to-read introduction to behavioral economics.
Could you lose weight if you put $20,000 at risk? Would you finally set up your billing software if it meant that your favorite charity would earn a new contribution? If you’ve ever tried to meet a goal and came up short, the problem may not have been that the goal was too difficult or that you lacked the discipline to succeed. From giving up cigarettes to increasing your productivity at work, you may simply have neglected to give yourself the proper incentives.
In Carrot and Sticks, Ian Ayres, the New York Times bestselling author of Super Crunchers, applies the…
What could be cooler to a kid growing up in the 1960s and 1970s than the Civil War? TV spoon-fed us westerns—Bonanza, F-Troop, The Lone Ranger, and The Wild, Wild West. Many of the stories were set during the Civil War or had characters molded by it. And then, somewhere in the mid-1960s, my parents took me to a civil war reenactment. Guns cracked. Cannons boomed, and men fell. I was hooked. I’ve devoured every Civil War book I could get my hands on for the past fifty years and watched every movie remotely connected to the subject. So, it’s only natural I wrote a book about it.
We often think about the Civil War in terms of battles, casualties, and fatalities, which isn’t surprising as war is always considered a bloody business sprinkled with death and destruction. However, many historians overlook that it wasn’t just bullets that won the war. Technological innovations changed the battlefield. For example, Samuel M. Pook teamed up with John Eads to design a new style of armored battleship—dubbed Pook’s Turtles. Just weeks after the gunboats were commissioned, they enabled Ulysses S. Grant and Admiral Andrew Hull Foote to take Forts Henry and Donelson. Later, the fleet assisted John Pope in taking Island 10 and again in the Vicksburg campaign.
Christopher Spencer developed a repeating rifle that fired seven balls in quick succession. Abraham Lincoln’s first test determined the gun was a dud. However, the second test went off without a hitch, and the war department ordered 2,000 Spencer Rifles. Many other…
Before the Civil War, America had undergone a technological revolution that made large-scale industry possible, yet, except for the expanding reach of railroads and telegraph lines, the country remained largely rural, with only pockets of small manufacturing. Then the war came and woke the sleeping giant. The Civil War created a wave of unprecedented industrial growth and development, producing a revolution in new structures, ideas, and inventions that sustained the struggle and reshaped America.
Energized by the country's dormant potential and wealth of natural resources, individuals of vision, organizational talent, and capital took advantage of the opportunity war provided. Their…
I’m an economics professor, but I also have a column in Australia’s leading financial newspaper so I really appreciate authors who can tackle complex topics in an accessible manner. I’m also both extremely interested in and do academic research on topics to do with technologies like two-sided platforms, cryptocurrencies, blockchain, and artificial intelligence. All these books made me think harder about the big issues in these areas, and how to combine rigorous research with what is actually happening—often at breakneck speed—in the real-world digital economy.
Many people have heard of Bitcoin’s “proof of work” (POW) consensus protocol which involves using huge amounts of energy to solve cryptographic problems. Some of us have also heard of “proof of stake”, an alternative to POW now used by the second largest cryptocurrency, Ether. What Joshua’s book taught me was the similarities and linkages between these two different ways of running a blockchain.
By focusing on the economics, not just the technology, of different consensus protocols, we learn about fundamental issues like the “cost of computational trust”, the future of consensus protocols, and indeed the future of cryptocurrencies.
Blockchain technologies have been rapidly adopted for the creation of cryptocurrencies and have been explored for a myriad of applications. While this is of important economic interest, the computer science behind how blockchains operate to provide security and provenance has been largely inaccessible to economists. This book is a bridge between the computer science and the economics of blockchains.
The focus is on the value and the achievement of blockchain consensus; that is, how distributed and independent nodes are able to reach an agreement on what the current state of digital ledgers, that are the product of blockchains, are. The…
I am a Full Professor and Lab Director in Economics. My interest in this field began when I traveled abroad and observed the differences in prices, goods, and quality of life. In order to gain a deeper understanding, I decided to switch from my previous academic background in Engineering, Mathematics & Physics to Economics, Finance & Data Science. Today, I am dedicated to expanding my knowledge and sharing my insights through teaching, academic publications, and LinkedIn posts. According to the latest rankings, I am humbled to be among the top 3% most productive economists worldwide (IDEAS-RePec, 2023), as well as being ranked among the top 4% researchers in Financial Economics, and the top 5% in Econometrics (Researchgate, 2023).
Since my PhD was based on Schumpeter's work, I can confidently state that it is well worth exploring the fascinating world of Economics through one of history's greatest economists.
This masterpiece takes the reader on a journey through every corner of the subject, paying particular attention to even the smallest details. A unique and thought-provoking view of Economics is offered by Schumpeter in his over 1000 pages of brilliant insights.
This book distinguishes itself from others through its deep and unconventional interpretation of Economics. It is a must-read for anyone seeking a thorough understanding of Economics as Schumpeter provides fresh insights on various topics.
However, it would be much better if it covered more recent developments. Enjoy this tour of Economics with Schumpeter and you will never get bored!
At the time of his death in 1950, Joseph Schumpeter--one of the great economists of the first half of the 20th century--was working on his monumental History of Economic Analysis. A complete history of efforts to understand the subject of economics from ancient Greece to the present, this book is an important contribution to the history of ideas as well as to economics. Although never fully completed, it has gained recognition as a modern classic due to its broad scope and original examination of significant historical events. Complete with a new introduction by Mark Perlman, who outlines the structure of…
I became a behavioral economist in the 1970s, at the time modern behavioral economics came into existence. Much of my work has focused on the way in which the combination of emotions and deliberative thinking impact the way people make decisions about their economic lives. For over four decades, I have been identifying the fascinating ways in which this two system psychological approach influences the important questions of our day.
Keynes’ book is not just a classic, but to my mind is the finest book in economics written in the first half of the twentieth century. Although I studied the book as an undergraduate student, at the time I failed to appreciate what Keynes wrote about the role psychology played in economic decision making. It was only after becoming a behavioral economist myself, and re-reading the book, did I realize that Keynes was a stellar behavioral economist. Although many professionals learn about Keynes’s ideas from other sources, there is nothing like the original. In this work Keynes speaks to us about how human psychology impacts economic decisions and events. Those who read carefully will see that he writes about psychology, optimism, confidence, and sentiment – terms very much in vogue today among modern behavioral economists.
John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) is perhaps the foremost economic
thinker of the twentieth century. On economic theory, he ranks with Adam
Smith and Karl Marx; and his impact on how economics was practiced,
from the Great Depression to the 1970s, was unmatched.
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money was
first published in 1936. But its ideas had been forming for decades ? as
a student at Cambridge, Keynes had written to a friend of his love for
'Free Trade and free thought'. Keynes's limpid style, concise prose, and
vivid descriptions have helped to keep his ideas alive -…
My mother wanted me to be a physician, but as a child I was very squeamish about human biology and knew that wasn't for me. In college I was exposed to economics and found it, and the policy debates about national health insurance, fascinating. So, maybe with my mother’s wishes in the back of my mind, I became a health economist. I was privileged to direct a large randomized trial called the RAND Health Insurance Experiment, which varied the cost of medical care to families. This project lasted more than a decade and got me so deep into the economics of health and medical care that I became a professor of health policy and management.
Eminently readable, this is a classic book by the doyen of American health economics that explains in non-technical terms the economics of health and medical care. It has been updated with several essays that Fuchs has published in the almost five decades since the book was first published.
Since the first edition of Who Shall Live? (1974), over 100,000 students, teachers, physicians, and general readers from more than a dozen fields have found this book to be a reader-friendly, authoritative introduction to economic concepts applied to health and medical care.Health care is by far the largest industry in the United States. It is three times larger than education and five times as large as national defense. In 2001, Americans spent over $12,500 per person for hospitals, physicians, drugs and other health care services and goods. Other high-income democracies spend one third less, enjoy three more years of life…
