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Ask HN: What are the must-read books about economics/finance?

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Re: Ask HN: What are the must-read books about economics/finance?

#161

Post by wodenokoto »

arjie wrote: post #107
blahi wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am very glad this is the top voted answer. Forget investing books and blogs and whatever. All worthless junk. Read the accounting textbooks and figure out valuations. Then you can figure out trading with your stats skills. A couple of good youtube channels though! Martin Shkreli's channel and Aswath Damodaran. Then some books might be beneficial to you but you yourself can be the judge of that. Everybody thinks the…

Wait, Martin Shkreli's channel? The guy who's been indicted on securities fraud?

He's really, really good, and he is millennial enough that he happily spends hours live streaming the minutia of how he assembles spreadsheets to evaluate a company.

He often does a phone in where you can call him and discuss basically anything you like. There are hours of him patiently and openly discussing drug pricing, racism and economics with random people on YouTube.

Re: Ask HN: What are the must-read books about economics/finance?

#164

Post by cryoshon »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #35

The following list will introduce you to Western Economic Philosophy as it relates to modern history specifically. This list is weighted heavily toward neo-classical economics and does not get into computational model based economics - specifically microeconomics, which comprises the bulk of economics education today: Schumpeter - History of economic analysis Adam Smith - Theory of Moral Sentiments Kaynes - The Gener…

Your list is very similar to my own. I think a philosophical approach will set the proper state of mind for thinking about the specifics of the more modern theories.

Re: Ask HN: What are the must-read books about economics/finance?

#165

Post by windowsworkstoo »

davidivadavid wrote: post #100

One approach is to go to the MIT OpenCourseWare website, look for the economics department, and look at their reading lists. Of course, that's going to be mostly academic reading (textbooks, etc.). But if you want to learn the basics, it's probably safer to start there than the pop econ books (and I would dispense with most heterodox reading before you're able to assess them within a larger framework). Two good books…

Definitely agree, esp with the textbooks part - a macro 101 and micro 101 book will do you well.

Re: Ask HN: What are the must-read books about economics/finance?

#168

Post by npongratz »

vegancap wrote: post #167

Henry Hazlitt - 'Economics in one lesson' Mises - 'Theory of Credit and Money' Adam Smith - 'Wealth of Nations' Milton Friedman - 'Capitalism and Freedom' Murray Rothbard - 'A New Liberty' Have been my personal, but somewhat one-sided favourites.

Legal ebooks and audiobooks of various formats provided gratis from some fine nonprofits:

Henry Hazlitt - 'Economics in One Lesson': https://fee.org/resources/economics-in-one-lesson-2/

Mises - 'Theory of Credit and Money': https://mises.org/library/theory-money-and-credit

Adam Smith - 'Wealth of Nations': http://www.ibiblio.org/ml/libri/s/SmithA_WealthNations_p.pdf

Murray Rothbard - 'For a New Liberty': https://mises.org/library/new-liberty-libertarian-manifesto

And for those who want to really go deep (some might say, far into the weeds!), I'll add Ludwig von Mises - Human Action: https://fee.org/resources/human-action-by-ludwig-von-mises/

Disclosure: I worked a very short stint at FEE almost a decade ago.

Re: Ask HN: What are the must-read books about economics/finance?

#169

Post by kejaed »

davidivadavid wrote: post #147
pfarnsworth wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In France, Statistics is considered part of engineering.

That's not quite correct. 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 de…

Thanks for the explanation.

Re: Ask HN: What are the must-read books about economics/finance?

#170

Post by conjectures »

vegancap wrote: post #167

Henry Hazlitt - 'Economics in one lesson' Mises - 'Theory of Credit and Money' Adam Smith - 'Wealth of Nations' Milton Friedman - 'Capitalism and Freedom' Murray Rothbard - 'A New Liberty' Have been my personal, but somewhat one-sided favourites.

You could justifiably argue that the better part of the modern economic syllabus is just a formalist footnote to Smith. So that's a great suggestion.
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