141–150 of 274 posts
This book changed my life, I highly recommend it.
Debt: the First 5,000 Years by David Graeber is a controversial but rather important recent publication. I haven't seen it mentioned yet, so I wanted to recommend it.
I also came to recommend this: it's possibly the most interesting book I've ever read. (Maybe save TCP/IP Illustrated Volume 1: The Protocols ) It cops a lot of flak from some conservative established economists though, probably because most of the book is dedicated to disassembling economic myth from the perspective of history and anthropology. Great case study of a fresh pair of eyes and an example of someone from…
Nah, I think it caught a lot of flack because a lot of the research it contains is sloppy at best.
Some is downright hilarious, though, as you can see with the story of Apple according to Graeber:
"Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Republican) computer engineers who broke from IBM in Silicon Valley in the 1980s, forming little democratic circles of twenty to forty people with their laptops in each other's garages..."
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2014/11/monday-smackdown-in-th...
https://www.amazon.co.uk/When-Principles-Pay-Responsibility-...
However, if you're hell bent on going into finance and you're going to read one economics book, read Thomas Piketty, "Capital for 21st Century".
These are the classic economics tomes that you'd read over a lifetime:
Karl Marx, "Capital" Adam Smith, "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" Adam Smith, "The Wealth of Nations" FA Hayek, "The Road to Serfdom"
I'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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a common misunderstanding. Buffett Partnership Ltd., Buffett's initial hedge fund, was very much was guided by the cigar butt style investment principles of Graham. When Buffett bought Berkshire Hathaway a few years after closing the partnership, his investment philosophy had changed. Your best bet to understand his investing is to simply read his letters. He may come across as a bit folksy or country bumpkin…
I mean, much of Graham's "investment philosophy" has been thoroughly invalidated by the Modigliani-Miller theorem published in the 1960s. But like Deepak Chopra, he's still around!
I'm curious, what exactly is an engineering degree in statistics?
In France, Statistics is considered part of engineering.
However, "engineering" in France is more of a title than a field. It corresponds to all degrees delivered by the écoles d'ingénieurs which, although they were intended to create engineers, have since evolved to meet the requirements of the job market, and have kept their name although their teachings aren't quite as strictly engineering-related as they used to be.
So yeah, you could get a degree from an engineering school that's mostly about statistics. But you could also learn about statistics while doing a math degree at the university. It's just some terminological oddity coming from our weird system.
I'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.
I second the suggestion of mankiw's book, covers a lot, it's well written and mixes both interesting anecdotes and actual "theory".
An academic reading list (i.e. university course texts) will provide you a good theoretical foundation as to how economists interpret and model real economic issues. It's important to grasp the plethora of important economic concepts like diminishing returns, comparative advantage and concepts of market efficiency (among many others things) and how they apply within micro or macro economic issues.
With some foundational knowledge in place, a good economist then goes on to relax the underlying assumptions and look for analogues in the real world. This is where the popular reading list come in, often they take a deep dive in specific areas i.e. where traditional economic assumptions break down.
In short, the academic reading list gives you a framework to understand economics. The best seller list tempers that framework with real world exceptions, paradoxes and open questions.
It's a bit disappointing to see a real academic reading list so far down this comment page (I strongly recommend looking at oli5679 suggestions). I doubt HNers would suggest reading up on javascript as a good foundation for a computer science education. Yes, you can become a well rounded computer scientist by starting on javascript. But it's more important to have a grasp on core computer science ideas like algorithm design & analysis and automata.