As far as economics is concerned, I recommend Mankiw's principle of economics. It's widely used as a textbook for economics undergraduates. It's very well written and entertaining. In my opinion, it's better than general public vulgarization books.
Ask HN: What are the must-read books about economics/finance?
111–120 of 274 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are the must-read books about economics/finance?
#112"Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century" by Jeffry Frieden is a masterpiece. It will give you a thorough, expansive view of the global financial world - the major events and trends - as they unfolded over the last century. This book is regularly assigned as a text book in Ivy League economic history classes, so even though it's short on math/ econometrics, it's a serious work.
Re: Ask HN: What are the must-read books about economics/finance?
#113"Economics in one lesson" is a classic worth reading and thinking about. While you don't necessary have to follow the libertarian way of thinking it guides you to, it still shapes your critical thinking about economic policies a lot.
Re: Ask HN: What are the must-read books about economics/finance?
#114I'd recommend textbooks or corsera rather than pop econ books.
Mostly Harmless Econometrics - Angrist and Krueger
Principles of microeconomics - Mankiw (beginner)
Intermediate microeconomics - Varian (intermediate)
You also want to cover finance and time series - I don't know what would be good there.
Re: Ask HN: What are the must-read books about economics/finance?
#115Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt Human Action by Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises. The master of market economics that never understood capitalism.
"This country, and with it most of the Western world, is presently going through a period of inflation and credit expansion. As the quantity of money in circulation and deposits subject to check increases, there prevails a general tendency for the prices of commodities and services to rise. Business is booming. Yet such a boom, artificially engineered by monetary and credit expansion, cannot last forever. It must come to an end sooner or later. For paper money and bank deposits are not a proper substitute for nonexisting capital goods. Economic theory has demonstrated in an irrefutable way that a prosperity created by an expansionist monetary and credit policy is illusory and must end in a slump, an economic crisis. It has happened again and again in the past, and it will happen in the future, too."
What he failed to understand, that in capitalism -basically give or take after 1750 in the western world - complex production has to be pre-financed and EVERY boom leads to a credit expansion. The bigger the boom, the bigger the expansion. It is tragic, that he had deep insights into market economy mechanism, but not into capitalism. He was still dreaming of a treasure box full of gold in the cellar of a company that the company uses to build things. The biggest driving force of capitalism is...debt. Debt that has to be serviced with new debt. More debt.
Re: Ask HN: What are the must-read books about economics/finance?
#116+1 Mostly Harmless Econometrics - Angrist and Krueger
Re: Ask HN: What are the must-read books about economics/finance?
#117Niederhoffer did his PhD in statistics. He is nuts but he basically invented quantitative trading. Maybe you read his book "Education of a trader" and the "New Yorker" article about him ("The Blow up artist").
Re: Ask HN: What are the must-read books about economics/finance?
#118This might sound unconventional but in terms of Economics I would recommend a comic book called "Economix" by Michael Goodwin. According to financial advisor David Bach:
"You could read 10 books on the subject and not glean as much information."
Personally I believe thats because the subject and history of economics is presented in such an accesible and fun way in this book without compromising the quality and historical accuracy.
Re: Ask HN: What are the must-read books about economics/finance?
#119"Economics in one lesson" is a classic worth reading and thinking about. While you don't necessary have to follow the libertarian way of thinking it guides you to, it still shapes your critical thinking about economic policies a lot.
Wikipedia entry on it, which skimming seems to be fair: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_in_One_Lesson and I note it was published in 1946, making it something of a classic. There a links to multiple versions of free on-line copies of it at the bottom.
Re: Ask HN: What are the must-read books about economics/finance?
#120Road to Serfdom, by F.A. Hayek?
Very much worth reading and not just to prove your right wing or libertarian bonafides. I think the essence of good economic thinking is understanding unintended consequences and reading the road to serfdom is a great way to really think about unintended consequences. Basically that well-meaning policies that have a side effect of centralizing power tend to do more harm than good.
The single most interesting thing for me was the information theoretic, at least in style, exposition on how trying to centralize all economic decision making at the top of society simply can not work.
Also points out how essential economic freedom is to all other freedoms, for if all jobs come from the state, to disagree with it ... well, at the extreme, as two roommates from the PRC in 1988 explained it to me, the biggest change in their lifetimes was how getting on the wrong side of the local political committee was no longer an automatic death sentence through their refusing to issue you food ration coupons, it just meant you had to spend more money buying food on the free market.
Wikipedia entry is here, haven't reviewed it except to note it has links to condensed versions (Hayek was amazed at how well the Readers Digest did it) and citations of the published editions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Serfdom