Here are 100 books that The Economic Way of Thinking fans have personally recommended if you like
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When I was growing up, I saw family members and friends, who were otherwise smart people who could master other aspects of their lives, have difficulty with personal finance decisions and investing. When my dad was laid off during a recession, he had some retirement money distributed to him, and I got interested in investing as he researched and tried with difficulty to handle this money himself. In my young adult years, I was a sponge to learn as much as I could about personal finance.
I first read this book as required reading for a college course, and it greatly changed how I thought about investing.
Over the years, I’ve read updated editions, and it never gets stale and always includes new information and insights. But the foundational issues have stood the test of time and remain in the newest edition.
I also love this book because it introduced me at a young age to mutual funds and Vanguard.
Today's stock market is not for the faint hearted. At a time of frightening volatility, the answer is to turn to Burton G. Malkiel's advice in his reassuring, authoritative, gimmick-free and perennially best-selling guide to investing. Long established as the first book to purchase before starting a portfolio, A Random Walk Down Wall Street now features new material on "tax-loss harvesting"; the current bitcoin bubble and automated investment advisers; as well as a brand-new chapter on factor investing and risk parity. And as always, Malkiel's core insights-on stocks and bonds, as well as investment trusts, home ownership and tangible assets…
My entire career has been spent in finance. From life insurance to central banks, from stock exchanges to post-trade clearing and settlement, this is all I’ve ever done. My college degrees include BSBA in Business/Marketing, MBA in Management, and PhD in Economics. In addition to knowing what a lot of people know about finance, I also worked inside the “black box” of the Federal Reserve System and depository trust and clearing corporations (in 4 cities, on 2 continents). Therefore, I know more about the plumbing of stock market infrastructure than most people who have careers (and education) as long as mine.
I started working at Depository Trust Company in New York in September 1987 – a month later the “Black Monday” stock market crash happened! At the time, it was very difficult to see exactly what caused it. “When you are up to your neck in alligators, it is hard to remember why you drained the swamp!” This book explains how Wall Street banks hatched all those alligator eggs by hiring MIT math-whizz-kids and turning them loose without explaining the simplest thing about the stock market to them. One of the errors in their models was that they did not take bank holidays into account when calculating the time value of stocks and option prices.
Inside markets, innovation, and risk Why do markets keep crashing and why are financial crises greater than ever before? As the risk manager to some of the leading firms on Wall Street-from Morgan Stanley to Salomon and Citigroup-and a member of some of the world's largest hedge funds, from Moore Capital to Ziff Brothers and FrontPoint Partners, Rick Bookstaber has seen the ghost inside the machine and vividly shows us a world that is even riskier than we think. The very things done to make markets safer, have, in fact, created a world that is far more dangerous. From the…
My entire career has been spent in finance. From life insurance to central banks, from stock exchanges to post-trade clearing and settlement, this is all I’ve ever done. My college degrees include BSBA in Business/Marketing, MBA in Management, and PhD in Economics. In addition to knowing what a lot of people know about finance, I also worked inside the “black box” of the Federal Reserve System and depository trust and clearing corporations (in 4 cities, on 2 continents). Therefore, I know more about the plumbing of stock market infrastructure than most people who have careers (and education) as long as mine.
At New York University, I attended the Austrian Colloquium every week. I learned more about economics listening to Dr. Kirzner talk for 5 minutes than I did in any 2-hour class. Austrian economics is about human action – not unlike what you’ll find in The Economic Way of Thinking. The US stock market today seems to be drifting further and further away from Kirzner’s definition of a market: “Disequilibrium prices generate direct disappointment of plans… Such disappointment can be expected to alert entrepreneurs to the true temper of the market” and result in price discovery. Market makers and short sellers disrupt this process by altering the appearance of supply and demand for the shares of companies. This reason alone should call into question the stock exchange as a “marketplace.”
In the last hundred years or so, the neo-classical school has come to dominate microeconomic thinking. Economists concerned with competition have taken refuge in increasingly complex models which emphasize the end-state of competitive equilibrium. This paper presents, in non-technical terms, an 'Austrian' view of how a market economy works. The writer of this book follows in the Austrian tradition as he tries to crystallize the theory of entrepreneurial discovery and of its implications for economic understanding and policy.
My entire career has been spent in finance. From life insurance to central banks, from stock exchanges to post-trade clearing and settlement, this is all I’ve ever done. My college degrees include BSBA in Business/Marketing, MBA in Management, and PhD in Economics. In addition to knowing what a lot of people know about finance, I also worked inside the “black box” of the Federal Reserve System and depository trust and clearing corporations (in 4 cities, on 2 continents). Therefore, I know more about the plumbing of stock market infrastructure than most people who have careers (and education) as long as mine.
Co-author Ken Rogoff taught my PhD course in Global Economics while he was a visiting professor at NYU (from Princeton). We used Foundations of International Macroeconomics as our textbook; Ken was writing the book with Maurice Obstfeld. When I turned in a handful of pages to him with editorial corrections, he hired me to edit the rest of the book and a research paper for him! It caused quite a stir among my peers when Ken thanked me by name when the article was published (JEL, June 1996). This book traces eight hundred years of financial crises to demonstrate that they are, in fact, predictable. Economists and policymakers are taken by surprise only because they do not learn the lessons from one crisis to the next.
Throughout history, rich and poor countries alike have been lending, borrowing, crashing--and recovering--their way through an extraordinary range of financial crises. Each time, the experts have chimed, "this time is different"--claiming that the old rules of valuation no longer apply and that the new situation bears little similarity to past disasters. With this breakthrough study, leading economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff definitively prove them wrong. Covering sixty-six countries across five continents, This Time Is Different presents a comprehensive look at the varieties of financial crises, and guides us through eight astonishing centuries of government defaults, banking panics, and inflationary…
I was always interested in American history and studied at Brown University under an outstanding professor of American economic history, James Blaine Hedges. During my career at the mutual fund association I often approached issues from an historical perspective. For example: Why did Congress draft legislation in a particular way? How would past events likely affect a regulator’s decisions today? As a lawyer I had been trained to write carefully and precisely. As a lobbyist I learned the need to pre
The book does an outstanding job in describing the people and events that produced the October 1929 stock market crash in a highly entertaining style. Galbraith wrote more like a witty and insightful journalist than the award-winning economist that he was. This is a must-read for anyone who wants to learn about American financial history. The book is a model for writers who want to educate non-experts about public policy issues.
'One of the most engrossing books I have ever read' Daily Telegraph
John Kenneth Galbraith's now-classic account of the 1929 stock market collapse remains the definitive book on the most disastrous cycle of boom and bust in modern times.
Vividly depicting the causes, effects, aftermath and long-term consequences of financial meltdown, Galbraith also describes the people and the corporations who were affected by the catastrophe. With its depiction of the 'gold-rush fantasy' ingrained in America's psychology, The Great Crash 1929 remains a penetrating study of human greed and folly.
I am an academic researcher and an avid non-fiction reader. There are many popular books on science or music, but it’s much harder to find texts that manage to occupy the space between popular and professional writing. I’ve always been looking for this kind of book, whether on physics, music, AI, or math – even when I knew that as a non-pro, I wouldn’t be able to understand everything. In my new book I’ve been trying to accomplish something similar: A book that can intrigue readers who are not professional economic theorists, that they will find interesting even if they can’t follow everything.
I am an academic economist, but even more interested in intellectual debates. I discovered this book when I was a PhD student, and it has remained a favorite of mine.
In the 1970s, macroeconomics (not my field) underwent a revolution. The old guard was “Keynesian,” the new Turks were “new classical”. This book is a series of conversations from the early 1980s with the protagonists of this epic period, many future Nobel laureates.
The interviewer, Arjo Klamer, was interested in the rhetoric and culture of economics, and he constructed the interviews in a way that nicely brought out these elements. The interlocutors are brilliant, acerbic, and funny. If you think economics is dry or boring, you won’t think so after seeing how passionate these people are.
A collection of interviews with 11 of the nation's leading economic theorists providing an introduction to current issues in economic theory and to the ways in which economists think.
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).
I enjoyed reading this book as it provided a deep, and engaging overview of economic theory.
The authors manage to strike a balance between providing a high-level theoretical discussion and making the content accessible to a wider audience. One thing that stood out to me was the authors' emphasis on the diversity of the various schools of economic thought.
In their work, they avoid the common pitfall of suggesting that the history of Economics has “ended”, and instead observe the evolution of economic theory over time. Also, I appreciate the fact that they do not believe that theories in fashion today necessarily provide an adequate explanation for the functioning of the economy.
Overall, I recommend this book to anyone interested in gaining insight into Economics’ controversial development.
This book provides a comprehensive and analytical overview of the development of economic theory from its beginnings, at the end of the Middle Ages, up to contemporary contributions. Traditional theories are presented as living matter, and modern theories are presented as part of a historical process and not as established truths. In this way, the book avoids the dangerous dichotomy between pure historians of thought who dedicate themselves exclusively to studying facts, and pure theorists who are interested in the evolution of the logical structure of theories.
The second edition contains several changes and additions. The authors give due consideration…
When understanding the interactions in our economy, it is critical to recognize all participants in this complex system. I’m passionate about microeconomics because it provides me with a different perspective to examine the world around me. I use my microeconomic glasses and I enjoy rationalizing the daily interactions and predicting the potential outcomes.
This is a funny exploration of the popular TV series, showing how each episode is packed with microeconomics topics, including comparative advantage, demand and supply, costs, market imperfections, and government interventions.
It even includes several references to macroeconomics, including growth, labor markets, and inequality.
Readers can also consider other titles in this series, based on their taste of popular culture, including Superheroes and Economics, Seinfeld and Economics, and The Beatles and Economics, among others.
This book provides an in-depth look at the primary foundations of economics explored through the lens of the Pawnee Department of Parks and Recreation. Each episode of the hit television series, Parks and Recreation, includes material to help an eager learner understand the basics of one of the most fascinating fields of study.
Whether you've wondered how economists determine specialization or why fast-food restaurants continue to pop up around your neighborhood, the same situations have occurred in Pawnee. Each chapter highlights key scenes or major episodes that demonstrate how the characters experience economics in exactly the same way the rest…
I am associate professor at Prague University of Economics and Business.My passion is to discover blank spaces in the economy, for which standard mainstream economic models have not provided answers yet. I was usually fascinated by biased behavior of individuals, which might lead to substantial implications at aggregate level. This has led me to narrow my focus on behavioral macroeconomics with special emphasis on monetary theory and policy, vibrant field with a great potential. After all, experimental economics seems to be a wonderful tool to examine phenomena, which is hard to grasp or for which there is no available data, such as money illusion, coordination failure, bank runs or Modigliani-Cohn hypothesis.
This book is more scientific, but very interesting if you like to dig more into the depth of money illusion backed by its experimental investigation.
The old concept of money illusion is updated and transformed into its modern version, which is built on the principle of strategic complementarity. In this case, even a negligible individual money illusion suffered by only few agents might multiply effects of money illusion at the aggregate level due to a well-known mainstream concept called coordination failure. Modern money illusion might be responsible for substantial effects at the aggregate level.
For me, this book is very appealing, since the non-neutrality of money in the short run is explained in an alternative way, but it does not deny standard rational expectations theory.
In principle, money illusion could explain the inertial adjustment of prices after changes of monetary policy. Hence, money illusion could provide an explanation of monetary non-neutrality. However, this explanation has been thoroughly discredited in modern economics. As a consequence, economists have ever since the 1970s searched for alternative explanations for nominal rigidity. These explanations are all based on the assumption of fully rational economic agents, holding rational expectations. This book argues that money illusion has been prematurely dismissed as an explanation of monetary non-neutrality. Methods of experimental economics are used to investigate the real aggregate effects of money illusion. It…
When understanding the interactions in our economy, it is critical to recognize all participants in this complex system. I’m passionate about microeconomics because it provides me with a different perspective to examine the world around me. I use my microeconomic glasses and I enjoy rationalizing the daily interactions and predicting the potential outcomes.
This eBook, developed by faculty members from top institutions, is available for free from the developers’ website, offers several online resources, it's frequently updated, translated to several languages, and has been widely adopted in several countries.
The book includes both the usual topics for courses on introduction to microeconomics and introduction to macroeconomics, using a similar writing style as other introductory textbooks (assumes no mathematical background), thus being accessible to a wide range of students.
Unlike similar books, however, it structures topics differently: instead of presenting chapters according to the main tool or concept being introduced, chapters are presented according to real-world problems.
While this can help motivate each chapter, it may require some adapting from the instructor’s teaching style.
The only introductory economics text to equip students to address today's pressing problems by mastering the conceptual and quantitative tools of contemporary economics.
OUP has partnered with the international collaborative project of CORE researchers and teachers to bring students a book and learning system that complements and enhances CORE's open-access online e-book.
The Economy: - is a new approach that integrates recent developments in economics including contract theory, strategic interaction, behavioural economics and financial instability - Engages with issues students of economics care about, exploring inequality, climate change, economic instability, wealth creation and innovation, among other issues. - provides a…
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