The most recommended macroeconomics books

Who picked these books? Meet our 15 experts.

15 authors created a book list connected to macroeconomics, and here are their favorite macroeconomics books.
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Book cover of The Money Illusion: Market Monetarism, the Great Recession, and the Future of Monetary Policy

Helena Chytilová Author Of Economic Literacy and Money Illusion: An Experimental Perspective

From my list on economic reads about money illusion.

Why am I passionate about this?

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. 

Helena's book list on economic reads about money illusion

Helena Chytilová Why did Helena love this book?

I like this book especially due to its ability to illustrate money illusion in a very unconventional context.

Normally, money illusion means that people take nominal variables as proxy for real variables, which leads to suboptimal choice having real effects on the economy and affecting business cycle.

However, to my great surprise this book claims that even economic experts might suffer from some kind of money illusion, because they tend to misinterpret what is happening in the monetary system. This offers a very interesting explanation of recession and suggests that economists have not targeted adequate variables.

Unconventional suggestion to practice nominal GDP (gross domestic product) targeting instead of targeting the money supply is “outcome” of unique author´s vision called market monetarism. Inattention of policymakers to development of nominal GDP is blamed to be the direct cause of recession. 

By Scott Sumner,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Money Illusion as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The first book-length work on market monetarism, written by its leading scholar.

Is it possible that the consensus around what caused the 2008 Great Recession is almost entirely wrong? It's happened before. Just as Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz led the economics community in the 1960s to reevaluate its view of what caused the Great Depression, the same may be happening now to our understanding of the first economic crisis of the 21st century.

Foregoing the usual relitigating of problems such as housing markets and banking crises, renowned monetary economist Scott Sumner argues that the Great Recession came down to…


Book cover of Money Illusion and Strategic Complementarity as Causes of Monetary Non-Neutrality

Helena Chytilová Author Of Economic Literacy and Money Illusion: An Experimental Perspective

From my list on economic reads about money illusion.

Why am I passionate about this?

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. 

Helena's book list on economic reads about money illusion

Helena Chytilová Why did Helena love this book?

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.

By Jean-Robert Tyran,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Money Illusion and Strategic Complementarity as Causes of Monetary Non-Neutrality as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

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…


Book cover of Parks and Recreation and Economics

Ana Espinola-Arredondo Author Of Intermediate Microeconomic Theory: Tools and Step-by-Step Examples

From my list on getting into microeconomics.

Why am I passionate about this?

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.

Ana's book list on getting into microeconomics

Ana Espinola-Arredondo Why did Ana love this book?

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.

By Jadrian Wooten,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Parks and Recreation and Economics as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

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…


Book cover of The New Classical Macroeconomics

Sumru Altug Author Of Dynamic Macroeconomic Analysis: Theory and Policy in General Equilibrium

From my list on individual choices and aggregate phenomena.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was a very bright little girl growing up in Boston, Massachusetts in the mid-1960s. I passed the entrance exam for Girls’ Latin School in Boston without difficulty and set out for a lifelong journey through many great institutions of higher learning. By the time I was a university student, I knew I wanted to help solve social problems. So, I chose to become an economist. I’m a bit techy but I also have a passion for great writing and history. In recent years, my profession has allowed me to get to know Asia and its amazing cultures through my visits to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, China, India, and my current abode, Beirut!      

Sumru's book list on individual choices and aggregate phenomena

Sumru Altug Why did Sumru love this book?

This is a collected volume that Kevin Hoover of Duke University put together to provide a philosophical and methodological viewpoint on the empirical and quantitative research that was emerging from the Universities of Chicago, Minnesota, Carnegie-Mellon, Rochester in the 1970s and 1980s.

My own article, “Time-to-Build and Aggregate Fluctuations: Some New Evidence”, originally published in International Economic Review in 1989, was re-printed in this volume. Why was this article re-printed in this volume? It showed that a tightly-specified representative consumer model of aggregate fluctuations, regardless of the theoretical enhancements and econometric approach, could not explain series like aggregate output, consumption and investment jointly with aggregate hours.

While Kevin Hoover continued his methodological research on causality, micro-foundations of macroeconomics and the like, this research led me to delve into micro data models of consumption and labor supply with my co-author Robert Miller from CMU to model individual choices under aggregate shocks.     

By Kevin D. Hoover (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The New Classical Macroeconomics as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Over the past two decades the new classical macroeconomics has become the single most coherent school of macroeconomic thought. Always controversial, it has nonetheless captured centre-stage, and has become the standard by which competing schools of thought are judged. These volumes contain the most important and influential articles of the new classical school, as well as some important articles critical of new classical thinking. The volumes are arranged thematically, beginning with the rational expectations hypothesis and the application of general equilibrium to labour markets, and continuing with various new classical arguments for the ineffectiveness of government policy. The core of…


Book cover of Conversations With Economists: New Classical Economists and Opponents Speak Out on the Current Controversy in Macroeconomics

Ran Spiegler Author Of The Curious Culture of Economic Theory

From my list on scholarly and popular-science books that both pros and amateurs can enjoy.

Why am I passionate about this?

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.

Ran's book list on scholarly and popular-science books that both pros and amateurs can enjoy

Ran Spiegler Why did Ran love this book?

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.

By Arjo Klamer (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Conversations With Economists as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

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.


Book cover of Mass Flourishing: How Grassroots Innovation Created Jobs, Challenge, and Change

Robert Isaak Author Of Brave New World Economy: Global Finance Threatens Our Future

From my list on the world economy, finance trends, and options.

Why am I passionate about this?

Since completing my PhD in political economy (dissertation: ‘International Integration and Foreign Policy Decision-making’) I have gone deeper into economic origins of change (eg. Modern Inflation, coauthored with well-known economist Wilhelm Hankel in Bologna, Italy at Johns Hopkins SAIS) and find the interactions between economic, politics, and psychology fascinating—presenting an infinite number of ‘Sherlock Holmes-like puzzles’. We are all now confronted with political, economic, and psychological uncertainties, put on high speed due to the war in Ukraine and great power tensions. So it is time to learn about the origins of our problems and their trends in order to better cope and find a basis for individual, if not collective, peace.

Robert's book list on the world economy, finance trends, and options

Robert Isaak Why did Robert love this book?

I invited Edmund Phelps to speak at Pace University in New York the week before he received the Nobel Prize in Economics.

His thesis, captured in detail in this book, is that state welfare economies in Europe have become too disconnected from the prerequisites for the entrepreneurial economic growth and innovation necessary to create jobs and to pay for the social benefits. Given the huge debt overhang in most of these countries, not to mention developing countries, his controversial thesis then could not be more timely now!

All people need to be motivated to become entrepreneurial in order to provide human health, comfort, and self-actualization for themselves, their families, and fellow citizens. Have you been taught this at school?!!!

By Edmund S. Phelps,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Mass Flourishing as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this book, Nobel Prize-winning economist Edmund Phelps draws on a lifetime of thinking to make a sweeping new argument about what makes nations prosper--and why the sources of that prosperity are under threat today. Why did prosperity explode in some nations between the 1820s and 1960s, creating not just unprecedented material wealth but "flourishing"--meaningful work, self-expression, and personal growth for more people than ever before? Phelps makes the case that the wellspring of this flourishing was modern values such as the desire to create, explore, and meet challenges. These values fueled the grassroots dynamism that was necessary for widespread,…


Book cover of Modern Monetary Macroeconomics: A New Paradigm for Economic Policy

Alvaro Cencini Author Of Bernard Schmitt's Quantum Macroeconomic Analysis

From my list on monetary macroeconomics.

Why am I passionate about this?

The passionate teaching of Bernard Schmitt at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, kindled my interest in monetary macroeconomics. In Fribourg I wrote my doctoral dissertation while working as Schmitt’s research and teaching assistant. In 1978 I moved to London to conduct research at the LSE as a PhD student under the supervision of Meghnad Desai. I received my PhD in 1982. Back on the Continent, I continued my collaboration with Schmitt, which lasted until his death in 2014. My enthusiasm for research never failed and I hope to have conveyed it to some of my students at the Centre for Banking Studies in Lugano and at USI (Università della Svizzera Italiana).

Alvaro's book list on monetary macroeconomics

Alvaro Cencini Why did Alvaro love this book?

The book brings together a series of contributions to monetary macroeconomics as well as Bernard Schmitt’s last critique to relative price determination.

I recommend it to the reader interested in monetary theory because it gives an overview of the most challenging topics in this field, from money to financial crisis, passing through profit formation, inflation, and unemployment.

International issues are also considered, while a groundbreaking analysis of sovereign debt and interest payments is presented in what was to become Schmitt’s last contribution in English to international macroeconomics.

By Claude Gnos (editor), Sergio Rossi (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Modern Monetary Macroeconomics as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This timely book uses cutting-edge research to analyze the fundamental causes of economic and financial crises, and illustrates the macroeconomic foundations required for future economic policymaking in order to avoid these crises.

The expert contributors take a critical approach to monetary analysis, providing elements for a new paradigm of economic policymaking at both national and international levels. Major issues are explored, including: inflation, capital accumulation and involuntary unemployment, sovereign debts and interest payment, and the euro-area crisis.

Opening new lines of research in the economic and financial crises, this book will prove a fascinating read for academics, students and researchers…


Book cover of Economic Reform and Development in Vietnam

Tran Van Hoa Author Of Vietnam's Reforms and Economic Growth

From my list on Vietnam’s reforms and economic growth.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a professional economist and econometrician with over 50 years of teaching and research experience. I've published articles in more than 200 international publications and been on the senior teaching staff of top U.S. and Asian universities. In recent years, I have also been interested in serious scholarly studies on developing economies in Asia and as an economic consultant to several Asian government ministries.

Tran's book list on Vietnam’s reforms and economic growth

Tran Van Hoa Why did Tran love this book?

To me, the book represents a pioneering landmark work on Vietnam’s epoch-making macroeconomic policy.

It is a very early study by an internationally distinguished economist and ministerial official on Vietnam’s reforms and development. The book covers the major and important problems and issues that existed in the beginning of the Doi Moi opening up policy in 1987. Significantly, these problems and issues still persist today in policy analysis and contemporary scholarly studies.

Book cover of An Outline of the History of Economic Thought

Panayotis G. Michaelides Author Of History of Economic Ideas: From Adam Smith to Paul Krugman

From my list on the evolution of economics.

Why am I passionate about this?

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).

Panayotis' book list on the evolution of economics

Panayotis G. Michaelides Why did Panayotis love this book?

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.

By Ernesto Screpanti, Stefano Zamagni,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked An Outline of the History of Economic Thought as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

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…


Book cover of Macroeconomic Theory: Economic Theory, Econometrics and Mathematical Economics

Sumru Altug Author Of Dynamic Macroeconomic Analysis: Theory and Policy in General Equilibrium

From my list on individual choices and aggregate phenomena.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was a very bright little girl growing up in Boston, Massachusetts in the mid-1960s. I passed the entrance exam for Girls’ Latin School in Boston without difficulty and set out for a lifelong journey through many great institutions of higher learning. By the time I was a university student, I knew I wanted to help solve social problems. So, I chose to become an economist. I’m a bit techy but I also have a passion for great writing and history. In recent years, my profession has allowed me to get to know Asia and its amazing cultures through my visits to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, China, India, and my current abode, Beirut!      

Sumru's book list on individual choices and aggregate phenomena

Sumru Altug Why did Sumru love this book?

During my graduate school years at Carnegie-Mellon University, I was exposed to Thomas Sargent’s Macroeconomic Theory, which taught me how to work with difference equations.

More importantly, it inculcated the notion in me that economic theory and econometrics are inseparable notions. The approach that I attained from this book together with the courses that I took at Carnegie-Mellon’s Graduate School of Industrial Administration - GSIA as it was called then – have colored by my research outlook and my research itself over the years.

While Thomas Sargent produced many other graduate textbooks on macroeconomics in future years, I might say this was the most influential one (for me) in terms of the fluidity of its writing and its attempt to bridge macroeconomic theory and empirical research. 

By Thomas J. Sargent,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Macroeconomic Theory as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Macroeconomic Theory", in its first edition, was widely adopted for use as a graduate text; this updated and expanded version should find even greater popularity as a text and as a research reference. It has been substantially revised to include three entirely new chapters: The Consumption Function, Government Debt and Taxes, and Dynamic Optimal Taxation. Significant additions have been made to three of the original chapters dealing with difference equations, stochastic difference equations, and investment under uncertainty.


Book cover of The Money Illusion: Market Monetarism, the Great Recession, and the Future of Monetary Policy
Book cover of Money Illusion and Strategic Complementarity as Causes of Monetary Non-Neutrality
Book cover of Parks and Recreation and Economics

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