Fans pick 100 books like Introduction to Economics

Steven Levitt, Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, has written a thoughtful book at the layperson level to help one understand how mathematical and economic tools provide insights into sensitive social issues from racism to abortion.

He delves into predicting the long-term consequences of short-term decisions. This book is not intended for the college classroom, and it is controversial, but I found it to be a fascinating read.

Even a professional economist is likely to find something surprising in this book. 

Editor John Siegfried has collected a dozen essays written by notable and award-winning economists explaining how economic research has improved our lives over the past two generations. Several of these essays do not focus on obvious examples but rather on those that are a step or two removed from what many laypersons would consider the domain of economics.

For example, Alvin Roth’s chapter on “deferred-acceptance theory” describes how economics improved the efficiency of educating doctors by better matching prospective medical residents with training hospitals. 

Other chapters explore how economic research helped eliminate the military draft and replace it with an all-volunteer armed service, how economists shaped the welfare-to-work reforms of the 1990s, and the impact of economic research on the allocation of the radio spectrum which was necessary to establish our modern cell phone networks.

This thin volume is subtitled 101 Lessons You Can Use Everyday and is jam-packed with simple-to-understand explanations about how economics can help you make better personal choices while also providing an understanding of the way the world works – or doesn’t work. 

Madariaga takes on important economics decisions like choosing a college or a career or getting married. He also tackles pervasive myths such as “economics is all about money” and “monopolies can charge any price they want and are always bad.” 

The most fun in this book are the thirty entries on economic riddles and mysteries, where Madariaga addresses topics ranging from why students get discount movie tickets to the intriguing question of why he voluntarily cut his salary in half to change careers. 

This book is for the modern economics student comfortable with seeing problems as a game to be solved. 

While still exploring many of the topics in my book, Grant uses game theory to illuminate the economics of social issues and how we should approach them. Game theory brings incentives and strategies to the forefront of analyzing possible solutions to the economic problems we face. This focus also forces us to be more thoughtful about why human beings behave the way they do.

Economic Analysis of Social Issues is not a gamification of economics, but how economic behavior can be seen through the lens of strategic games. 

In this slim book, Ken Arrow – Nobel laureate and “one of the transcendent minds in the history of economics” – reveals with extraordinary clarity many essential truths about how the world works and why.

The first of these four essays is among the most eloquent and succinct statement about the core conflicts humanity faces: between the individual and society, between freedoms and collective obligation, between compromise and commitment.

Given that context, Arrow builds a framework for understanding the nature of organizations: their purposes, processes, and the central role of information. The clarity with which Arrow has developed this economics of information – an asset intangible and unmeasurable – reveals his genius.

The inquiry closes by considering the role of authority and responsibility; but throughout there are gems of insights in nearly every paragraph. 

Joseph Femia has chosen 21 outstanding essays about Vilfredo Pareto, which are divided into three sections: Methodology, Social Theory, and Politics and Political Theory.

All 21 are important historical investigations of Pareto’s thinking. The best are two by Norberto Bobbio and those by James Lane and by A.J. Baker. Most importantly, Femia’s collection also contains S.E. Finer’s “Pareto and Pluto-democracy.”

As a philosopher who crosses several disciplines (sociology, economics, and theology), I really appreciated the way in which Pareto was shown in this book to transcend the boundaries between economics and sociology. There was no one except for Max Weber, who could move among disciplines as easily as Vilfredo Pareto. 

So many people miss the fact that economics is a social science; it is about us as people, and I love this book because it does not forget that, indeed, it reminds me that everyone is an amateur practicing economist.

I like this book because it applies economics to every day and not-so-everyday situations and explains how people can use economic ideas to practically make their lives better. It is one of the few books I have read that has changed a common activity I do: what I order at a restaurant.

American economics in the Progressive Era (usually dated from the later 1800s to World War I) is quite fascinating.

Mary Furner’s book is an excellent discussion of the developing American social sciences in this period.

American universities developed rapidly along with the professionalization of the social sciences. At the same time, rapid US industrialization created a raft of new economic and social problems that demanded a response.

This created a tension between the desire for professional “scientific” standing and the demand to respond to obvious social problems by advocating for particular policy responses.

Furner pays particular attention to the work and career of economist H. C. Adams, who was a teacher to a number of the later institutionalist group. In the institutionalist literature, this tension is expressed in the conjoined goals of “science and social control.” 

For institutionalists, the solution to this problem was found in the pragmatic and instrumental… show more.

This handbook, edited by three well-known Smith scholars, follows on from a conference organised for the 250th anniversary of the publication of Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments although it is not a proceedings volume.

The book has seven parts, each part featuring four chapters. These 28 chapters cover all bases, from an introductory outline of life, times, and legacy, over the importance of Smith’s unpublished work, the importance to Smith of rhetoric, ethics, aesthetics, theatre, and fashion, to Smith’s view on commerce and morality, his view on religion, and Smith’s legacy and influence, among many other topics.

Cohen offers a comprehensive sweep of the financial and non-financial consequences of criminal behavior, crime prevention, and society’s response to crime, public and private.  

Crime costs are far-reaching, including medical costs, lost wages, property damage, pain and suffering, and reduced quality of life for victims and the public at large, as well as public expenditures on police, courts, and prisons, and the costs borne by offenders and their families, who often suffer consequences apart from the punishments they receive for committing crime.