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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?

#241

Post by dirtyaura »

blahi wrote: post #103
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…

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…

I just checked Shkreli's channel and it is like a breath of fresh air (never imagined that I'd say something like that about Shkreli). The way he starts to talk about the finance and investing as a career choice - a skill that you sell to other people, instead of trying to money by investing your own money, is surprisingly rare angle in any popular take on investing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARrNYyJEnFI

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

#242

Post by justifier »

at the moment i'm uninterested in the arc of economic studies in acadamia so the opencourseware reading lists seem the wrong place to start for me

can anyone suggest reading to understand how contemporary banks function, where can i get an understanding of a bank or credit union from a software engineer's perspective: dependencies, steps to start, challenges of running, protections from common problems, interesting emerging disruptions;

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

#244

Post by dredmorbius »

hga wrote: post #138
dredmorbius wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did Samuelson get the USSR wrong specifically? I'm curious.

The successive editions of his books show a steady backing off of how wonderful their economy was as more and more facts about it couldn't be ignored. At the very least he believed their BS statistics; it's been so long since I looked at this in detail (like the '80s), I'd have to re-do the research, but you should be able to find something on the net about it. But it was utterly disqualifying, at least if you have a…

I'm starting to form a different model from the standard (gross managerial incompetence / systemic failures of the Communist model) for why the USSR failed, though I'm largely in the information-gathering stage.

On Samuelson, I'm increasingly less impressed with him over time. I studied with his book (~17th edition or so, mid/late 1980s), and have compared later editions with the first (1948 IIRC). I'm not sure how much the economics improves, if any, but the tone and style of the earlier edition is much higher than the later books, which read as very nearly childish.

That said: if you've any narratives on the fall of the USSR you'd like to suggest, I'm all ears.

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

#245

Post by hga »

tim333 wrote: post #226
hga wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_curve And the oil shock was sort of a one time thing, and can't be viewed in isolation of Nixon having to close the gold window, more specifically how the US took advantage of the previous fixing of the US dollar price of gold before that fell apart ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis#End_of_the_Bre... ). In other words, these were discontinuous a…

I still have a job seeing what Phillips proposing a relationship between inflation and unemployment in 1958 has to do with Keynes theories of insufficient aggregate demand causing deflation in the 1930s. Keynes's ideas seem pretty good and still relevant, and Phillips' ideas a bit dubious and largely unrelated. I get the impression much criticism of Keynes is better directed at his followers who called themselves Key…

Well, it's just a start, the most (in)famous policy adopted by people who called themselves Keynesian, even got it written into law if I remember correctly, that failed so badly no one can deny the failure. And let's be careful with No True Keynesian arguments....

Plus, unless I'm grossly misinformed, Keynes theories went a lot further than that claimed insight about aggregate demand and deflation, but I haven't studied him deeply, since when I last looked in the '80s it seemed to be garbage, and nothing I've heard since then changes the opinion I formed.

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

#246

Post by hga »

dredmorbius wrote: post #244
hga wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The successive editions of his books show a steady backing off of how wonderful their economy was as more and more facts about it couldn't be ignored. At the very least he believed their BS statistics; it's been so long since I looked at this in detail (like the '80s), I'd have to re-do the research, but you should be able to find something on the net about it. But it was utterly disqualifying, at least if you have a…

I'm starting to form a different model from the standard (gross managerial incompetence / systemic failures of the Communist model) for why the USSR failed, though I'm largely in the information-gathering stage. On Samuelson, I'm increasingly less impressed with him over time. I studied with his book (~17th edition or so, mid/late 1980s), and have compared later editions with the first (1948 IIRC). I'm not sure how m…

The most interesting narrative is from Jerry Pournelle, who points out that part of bankrupting of the USSR was their outfitting the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) with 3 complete armies of mechanized equipment, from trucks to tanks (this kind of army: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_army).

One was used up piecemeal. One was stomped flat by the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) and the air support provided by us (one of the first big uses of precision guided bombs), with 40,000 of it's 150,000 men counting themselves lucky to get back to the North sans equipment. And of course the third, using more armor than any WWII battle, finally succeeded when the Democrats used Nixon's Watergate infirmity to defund the South, not much a solider can do when he has less than a basic load of ammo and one grenade.

That, plus of course the general screwed up economy, lots of direct Reagan economic warfare and sabotage (e.g. those natural gas pumping turbines), supporting the Mujahideen (still cheap at the price), and the potential of our negating their entire $$$$$$ Strategic Rocket Force's inventory if we built out SDI, prompted their leadership to drastically change course. And in a way pretty much no one predicted, they failed but in a mostly peaceful way, no WWIII needed to end the Protracted Conflict.

Pournelle was a player in this in the '70s or so as a strategic "think tank" guy (worst thing the DoD asked him (and I assume his people) to evaluate was a proposal to flood the Midwest and hide subs in the resultant lake (I kid you not, and I've heard of this insane scheme independently)), then helping to get SDI launched in the Reagan administration.

Of course, the simplest narrative is that Reagan was the first US president who decided to end, rather than "contain", the USSR.

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

#247

Post by longsangstan »

3151 wrote: post #104
longsangstan wrote: post #88

If you know Chinese, there is a must read: Economic Explanation(經濟解釋） by Steven Cheung. If you don't, you can read: Economic Explanation: Selected Papers of Steven N.s. Cheung. (Same book name but different content - collection of essays vs a book on theories) Why Steven Cheung? As a close friend to Ronald Coase, he too focuses on empirical research (the real world) rather than blackboard economics (the imaginary wor…

Maybe i overread it but The Fable of the Bees is from Bernard Mandeville. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fable_of_the_Bees My two takes for a good historic understanding of economics are this Books: Economics of Good and Evil, Tomáš Sedláček https://www.amazon.com/Economics-Good-Evil-Economic-Gilgames... and Schwarzbuch Kapitalismus, Robert Kurz (could't find a English Version) https://www.amazon.com/Schwarzbuch-K…

If I remember correctly Steven Cheung' deliberately "steal" the name of the book you mentioned.

Here is link of his paper: https://www.jstor.org/stable/724823?seq=1#page_scan_tab_cont...

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

#248

Post by tomrod »

Dowwie wrote: post #153
tomrod wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economist here. I disagree that if someone wants a broad introduction that by picking up Samuelson or MWG will be able to figure out the field from first (mathematical) principles. New Ideas from Dead Economists is a fantastic, broad introduction into the philosophy of economics that you appears interested in. Works by Keynes, Smith, Marx, Robinson, Hayek, and Ricardo do a fantastic job laying the groundwork for mode…

I thought that Piketty released or references sources for the underlying data supporting his work from "Capital..." so why are you considering it not necessarily testable? I don't understand what you mean by that phrase.

For example, colonialism, which Picketty and Acemoglu base a lot of their work on, would be hard to reimplement for experimentation. Hence the debate. The data and conclusions are interesting and compelling, but not yet decisive.

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

#249

Post by soVeryTired »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #201
soVeryTired wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How well do the assumptions behindd modigliani-miller match what happens in the real world? I think 'invalidated' is a little strong. Do be aware that within economic models, the map is not the territory.

Well, it assumes no taxes (so it would only apply to Apple et al.), and also symmetric information and an efficient market (which are both debatable).

The assumptions are extremely strong, and the theory is not robust to changes in those assumptions. Agree?

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

#250

Post by seereadhack »

marmot777 wrote: post #228
youdontknowtho wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the neo-liberal cannon. Also Marx, Das Capital?

Nobody in their right mind would try to read Capital. It's a massive, unreadable tome that you could summarize in an article online somewhere. That's borderline sadistic to suggest someone try to get through that thing. :-)

I'm not going to claim that I am in my right mind all the time but I read Capital. Well, the main volume. In English. And I skimmed the others. I think it was worthwhile. I value the experience especially in light of how often the text is reinterpreted and cast off in the US without much attention to the text itself. If you dare try, this is site might be helpful. http://la.utexas.edu/users/hcleaver/357k/357k.html. Pro tip: don't start at the beginning of Capital. It's abstract and your eyes will glaze over. Start with Chapter 26, finish it out from there and then loop back.
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