(Part 2) Best products from r/Economics

I'd start from reading Economics Help blog. I find it fairly objective and Tevjan writes very clearly. Econlib has very useful library of articles, but overall that website is fairly libertarian in its views. (Not that I'm saying it's bad, but it's useful to know where they are coming from).

As for books, I'd recommend firstly some basic textbooks - you can buy them for cheap used. As for pop science books, I find Naked Economics the best one I've read. It covers the orthodox economics fairly well. As for heterodox Economics and criticism of neoclassical economics, I'd read first Economyths and then How Rich Countries Got Rich and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor. Of course you can read the classical literature of Economics, such as Keynes, Hayek and Friedman, but I wouldn't dwell on them too much as the research has progressed a lot since them. Nobel Prize website has all the nobel prize of economics lectures on their webpage and all of them are worth reading (though some of them are more about finance, than economics) - here are couple of them worth reading.

There are several academic articles (usually working papers) that you can find online easily as well. Best one I can think of currently is Behavioral Economics: Past, Present and Future which summarises the field of Behavioral Economics very well. Joseph Stiglitz keeps a lot of his academic papers on his website for free download as well, so they are worth reading. There is a free e-book online too, that's more so about politics than economics, but still a great read; Dean Baker's Conservative Nanny State.

I'll try add some more resources when I have time.

Edit: P.S. If you are interested, I have a bunch of papers and articles on my computer as well that I can send.
Edit2: IDEAS keeps a list of academic articles on their site, but that will require some effort from your part because you essentially have to use search.

Edit3: If you are into something more specific there are good books about Evolutionary Economics and Complexity Theory, Economics of Knowledge, Economics of Strategy, Economics of Information Age and Economic and Technological History. All of these are excellent books that I recommend and quite beginner-friendly.

I really agree, but I think that Robb in his paper when he says "neoclassical" isn't really referring to "modern neoclassical synthesis" in the sense Samuelson thought about, but rather "neoclassical" in the sense historians of economic thoughts talk about some early marginalists as a revival of some aspects of classical economic theory by Marshall, Jevons, and Walras. From my understanding of these thinkers, especially Jevons and Walras on rational choice theory (I am currently working on a paper on this issue), they certainly do not allow for any degree of Will to Power and Robb's critiques from Nietzschean psychology are certainly a part of it.

However, beginning with Pareto, rational choice in economics was no longer tethered to any degree of psychology. And after the insights of Samuelson, Hicks, and others Heckman sights, rationality in economics was viewed in far more complex light. (See this book especially for a detailed account of how these thoughts developed.) In particular, as Heckman correctly says, most of the psychological issues implicit in GQC that Jevons thought of as necessary to talk about rational choice theory were no longer relevant. As Heckman says,

>It (neoclassical economics after Samuelson and Hicks) is silent on the question of
whether the agent knows his/her preferences, and instead assumes that he/she acts
in a way described by stable preferences. In particular, θ need not be known by
the agent.

So neoclassical economics after around 1930 takes all the unconscious elements that Nietzsche wants to talk about and makes it exogenous for concerns in rational choice.

In other words, what Heckman is saying is correct, but that's not really responding to anything Robb is talking about because Robb is taking someone like Jevons, not someone like Samuelson or Hicks, as the paradigm for what he calls JQC.

So what's really relevant here is the question Heckman asks in his summary: why is Robb's paper important for economists? Why does this matter? I think, though technically what Robb says is consistent with many neoclassical assumptions, I think there are two clear benefits from Robb's work:

1. It explains what we currently already know in more helpful language for some circumstances.
   
   
2. It further unites the language spoke by economists with the language spoken by other disciplines.
   
   For 1., look at the entire range of "further explanations and predictions" in Robb's paper. The language he uses of Will to Power readily explains those in a way that is not obvious when it is articulated in the technical and mathematical sense that Heckman uses. They are complementary ways of talking about the same thing, however for some issues Robb's Nietzschan articulation is better.
   
   Heckman basically admits 2. when he says, "Robb’s insistence on deeper knowledge of human motives is admirable, but for what purposes do we need this greater realism and detail?" To answer this question, Robb's Neitzschean articulation helps put rational choice economists in dialogue with philosophers and psychologists who are aiming at a "deeper knowledge of human motives." In other words, it helps economists talk to non-economists in a new and interesting way. Though this isn't necessary to throw out the neoclassical articulation altogether, Nietzsche can help economists answer questions that non-economists can tackle in an interdisciplinary manner. And that can be help form a very fruitful research program.
   
   In other words, Robbs' Nietzschan perspective and Heckman's neoclassical points are complementary descriptions that can help economists answer different questions in different settings. Robbs could be read not as critiquing modern neoclassical economics post-Samuelson, but rather taking up the task as a historian of thought in critiquing Jevons' simple psychological underpinnings of his economic choice theory.

That book was published before they corrected their spreadsheet error--it applied some of the same theoretical lessons of the debt issue & therefore is somewhat poisoned.

For the record, this book discusses the exact same crisis set as a R&R but explicitly includes those stable countries (like Australia, NZ, CA) who haven't had financial crises, or debt-fueled growth slowing.

My point isn't to pitch for a particular book, but it seems that a certain Academic integrity requires that a 'panoramic' analysis of any issue, includes those aspects uncomfortable for or in opposition to one's own theories.

I've never seen Akerloff & Schiller, for example, shy away from confronting monetarist & other rebuttals. Even Larry Summers who, in other issues is pretty sleazy (namely Russia privatization & his misuse of research on women) has a good deal of integrity in Academics when it comes to being wrong. And a past generation of economists, such as JM Keynes, Nikolas Kaldor, Paul Samuelson & a young Milton Friedman & Robert Solow regularly delighted in admitting their errors publicly. (See Kaldor & Friedman's debate and also Samuleson's 'A Summing Up'--in addition, B. deLong's admitting that healthcare's positive externalities are low, Stiglitz' Mea Culpa on globalization, Summers on free trade & protectionism, Bruce Bartlett on fiscal stimulus, Steve Marglin's volte-face in one direction & Gintis & Bowles in the opposite direction--on the opposite issue, refusal to update beliefs, we have the trenchant obstinance of inflation hawks and deficit hawks )

Edit:

Here are some other panoramic sources on the same area of study as This Time is Different:

Manias, Panics & Crashes is a famous textbook on the issue.

Akerlof & Schiller's Animal Spirits is a smaller range but an interesting analysis

For the record, Schiller was one of the people who foresaw the housing crisis

Mark Blyth wrote a history of the concept of Austerity and its political causes & consequences as well as the economic data--while polemical, and coming squarely down against austerity, is nonetheless expansive and well written.

Peter Bernholz has written a massive study, but a short book, on inflation crises in world history, expanding from Rome to the modern day that, while chained to an outdated Austrian conception of money & finance, is sufficiently data rich.

Additionally, there's a neo-classical study of Trade & Growth I quite enjoy, written as an implicit neo classical answer to the new economic history & institutional theory. Here's a neo-malthusian perspective on the same issue.

Here is a post-Keynesian analysis of the same stuff, a neo-marxian/neo-ricardian one, an alternative B-of-P crisis theory, a geoist analysis by another person who foresaw the 2007 crisis and a radically alternative view of debt & money which is theoretically interesting but empirically sparser.

Charles' Geisst is a historian with a balanced analysis of both Wall Street & debt in history.

Not an economist, David Graeber has written an interest history of debt.


The point is there is a VAST, empirically & theoretically rich & sophisticated set of analyses, from diverse & contradictory perspectives, all of which are higher standard works than either the Debt & Growth paper or the This Time is Different book. I add these overkill, both for those who are interested in follow up & to emphasize the diversity & availability of good scholarship from other authors.

>well, obviously you're always going to have some. but the gov't was too new at that time for business influences to infiltrate it deeply. Esp relative to the situation today.

Not true at all. The country was founded on the principle that the role of government should be to protect private property from the majority of people. Originally, you couldn't even vote if you weren't a landowner. Businesses didn't infiltrate it, they completely controlled it.

>how is that any different from having politician running things? who decides who gets to vote? doesn't direct democracy require that all citizens vote on all policy initiatives? what's to stop this small group of voters from colluding?

You honestly can't see the difference? If a factory (for instance) needs to make policy decisions, the workers all vote on what to do. They're all collective owners so they all get a say. It's not that difficult really.

>i don't give a fuck if i can survive on potatoes and a hut I grow and build myself. I want a plasma TV and to fly from New York to Seattle in 4 hours and a nice house and medical care. I think you're making a LOOOOT of assumptions about people's willingness to accept self-sufficiency for a horrible quality of life.

That's nice. I'm sure you also enjoy buying designer clothing that is drastically overpriced and made in sweatshops where the owners hire thugs to keep workers from organizing. I think you're also assuming that self sufficiency requires abandoning technology and living in a hut. It definitely doesn't. I can't tell if you're being deliberately ignorant or not.

>that's veeeery subjective opinion. i agree global warming is real, but it's a huge step to say it threatens life on Earth.

Then you must not know too much about global warming.

>this was not due to capitalism though, it was entirely the gov't bailouts, bank deposit insurance, and low interest rates.

According to Marx's social analysis, yes this is 100% capitalism. The bailouts and recession basically happened exactly how Marx predicted that the capitalist economy will function. According to Marx, it's not just about free competition, it's about the wealthiest companies using their wealth and power to stamp out competition and rig the system for their own interests. After all, they're only trying to make money so why wouldn't they? Money is such a strong incentive, isn't it?

>It seems our debate ends here. We seems to disagree on points that would take a lot of effort to explain to each other. And I'v got boards in a week. Take it easy. If you have time and interest to learn about Austrian Econ, I'd recommend http://www.amazon.com/How-Economy-Grows-Why-Crashes/dp/047052670X/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1370971957&sr=8-4&keywords=peter+schiff

Peter Schiff is an idiot and a pseudo conspiracy theorist. I've already taken time to learn about Austrian economics. It has some decent ideas but if you're getting your view of Marx from Austrian economists then you're not going to know what you're talking about. All in all, it's one school of economics but it's not the only school or even the most practical school.

I didn't read either of those two, but I did read Zero Sum Society and Zero Sum Solution when they were released. I know he gets a lot of flack for some of his ideas, but the issues he was popularizing at the time are still valid, IMO.

In fact, a recent Freakonomics episode featured Robert Gordon, author of The Rise and Fall of American Growth, which echoes some of the central themes of Thurow's.

Namely, that in a society with a low growth pattern, for one group in a society to prosper it inherently means another group must have their fortunes decline. Thurow predicted the growth in wealth inequality in the US, as the wealthiest would have their net worth increase at the expense of other stratifications of society.

Thurow is a very easy to read economist, which can be seen as both a strength and a weakness. I do hope you give some of his writings a chance. I have a great fondness for Thurow as a writer, even if I disagreed with some of his views.

I skipped your physics example, I hope you don't mind, but I don't think natural science analogies terribly relevant to social sciences (or social fields of study if you prefer). Personally, I think function is more important than labels, so the debate over whether econ is labeled as a science or not seems like a waste of time.

No doubt there is a lot of zombie economics around, but I don't think the blame lies entirely with the economics profession. Many of these discredited theories - e.g. trickle down - are convenient to the rich & powerful, so they stick around like any other convenient theory for the rich & powerful. And plenty of "economists" are happy to line their own pockets catering to the rich, which isn't a problem unique to econ.

Largely, I think the field is misunderstood by laypersons. People read Krugman or watch CNBC and think that's what economists do: the broad macro stuff. Economics has a lot more diversity of methods & interests than most people think. Personally, I think economics is more of a descriptive behavioral science than a prescriptive or prognosticating one.

The more broadly you try to predict - e.g. for the entire economy - the less accurate you're going to be, all else equal. Economists working in micro areas, say someone from visa predicting HD TV sales for Christmas, can be quite accurate. Even in macro areas economists have had some pretty remarkable successes, like the brazilians taming inflation with conversion to the real.

Ultimately I think economics is clearly useful, especially micro, so it is here to stay. It is really the only game in town trying to understand the economy. The constant arguing about whether we call it science or not is irrelevant, especially without an definition of what constitutes "a science" that everyone agrees with beforehand.

EDIT: Grammar.

> I just went to Mexico City, and restaurants did not charge "around 15 pesos," they charged an amount in pesos proportionate to a reasonable cost in dollars.

Pesos are not dollars, and as such not everything is the same units of currency. This is why I didn't use Mexico as an example but rather Canada, which both share a much closer cultural heritage than the US and Mexico. For one it has to deal with how the currency was designed.

In the US we use the Dollar, the vast majority of places that use the dollar has currency setup the same way. It is a currency where the unit (a dollar) is divided into 100 pieces (cents). This is the british system and it's used most places that were at one time colonies of the UK. Because of this if a country uses dollars it's very easy to make a comparison, a USD cent has the same purpose in society currency exchanges as a NZD cent, even though the country's currency values may be different.

Mexico operates on an entirely different system. They have the Peso, which comes not from the UK but from Spain, and is used extensively throughout latin american. The Peso was historically a coin based unit of payment based on weight. Early Pesos were entirely weight based with the minting process cutting off parts of the coin until they got to the proper weight. This stands in stark contrast to the dollar where it was always a paper note based system. Historically Pesos were not divide into 100 but were divided fractionally into a 16 piece set. E.g. 16 silver coins are equal to 1 gold coin, with the smallest denomination being equal to 1/8th of a silver coin. Mexico in particular went from pesos, to reals, to dollars, back to pesos that were basically dollars. While they are still using what is a 100 cent based system now the historical impact has left a mark on the pricing of things.

> No they don't. If you purchase something in US or CAD, the numbers will be different to reflect the different values.

Business set prices in the country based on what people can afford. A great example of this is online stores like Steam. Dark Souls 3 is selling for:

• $59.99 in the US
  
• 39.99 GBP in the UK ($53.53 USD)
  
• 59.99 EUR ($70.43 USD)
  
  If all prices were just based on the US price then they'd all be $60 across the board. This happens with other stores as well. This electronic meat thermometer is $18.99 USD on Amazon.com which is equal to $23.73 CAD based on exchange rate but is $25.49 on Amazon.ca which is $20.40 in USD.
  
  The point is that the price of an item in the country is not just a function of what it is in USD converted to the other countries currencies. Sometimes things are more or less expensive.
  
  > Some people charged me wonky (bad) conversion rates when I tried to spend US cash
  
  Well of course they did, because you're a traveler and it's a convenience thing to spend US dollars. There are banks and services that make a big profit off of exchanging currency. The rates that matter are the market rates, not what you pay a travelex or what have you. If you use a credit card or go to a bank beforehand you'll get currency exchanged at close to market rate. You can even get credit cards that don't charge fees for this.
  
  > some things were just cheaper, and other things weren't, because I was in a different place with different economic realities.
  
  Yes, and if you go to places catering towards tourists then you're not going to get local pricing. But this isn't just about tourism, it's about the entire economy including imports.
  
  

> Centrally planned fiscal policy, such as investments in science and infrastructure, is vital for long term economic growth. - /u/Exoslovakia


> Evidence? Can you cite any empirical work concluding this? - /u/zzzzz94

Not my claim, but I'll jump in anyway. I may have some support for his argument. For example in the US, from roughly 1950 until the early 1970s there was a period of unprecedented economic growth and egalitarian economic growth. So much so, the lowest quintile did as well, in fact they even did a little bit better, than the highest quintile. It was also a period of some limited but real form of benefits for the population. And in fact social indicators, measurements of the health of society, they very closely tracked growth. As growth went up social indicators went up, as you'd expect. At it's core through was a significant amount of government spending driving that growth.

The sharpest period of economic growth in U.S. history was during the Second World War, which was basically a semi-command economy and industrial production more than tripled. That model pulled the US out of the depression, after which we became far and away the major economy in the world. After the Second World War, the substantial period of economic growth which I mentioned (1948-1971) was very largely based on the dynamic spending of the state.

In the 1950s and 1960s, look at large organizations who received the majority of their funding from the government. MIT was largely financed by the Pentagon. There were labs that did classified war work, but the campus itself wasn't doing war work. It was developing the basis of the modern electronic economy: computers, the Internet, microelectronics, and so on. It was all developed under state funding. IBM was learning how to shift from punch-cards to electronic computers. It did get to a point by the 1960s that IBM was able to produce its own computers, but they were so expensive that nobody could buy them so therefore the government bought them. In fact, procurement is a major form of government intervention in the economy to develop the fundamental structure that will ultimately lead to profit.

(Edit. References added upon request.)

There have been several publications and studies on this by Stephen a Marglin (Professor of Economics at Harvard University, a fellow of the Econometric Society, and a founding member of the World Economics Association), Andrew Glyn (English economist, University Lecturer in Economics at the University of Oxford and Fellow and Tutor in Economics in Corpus Christi College), Alan Hughes (Senior Research Associate & Director Emeritus at the University of Cambridge), Roger Middleton (Professor of the History of Political Economy at the University of Bristol.) & Robert Skidelsky (Emeritus Professor of Political Economy in the University of Warwick.)

• The Golden Age of Capitalism: Reinterpreting-Development - A solid foundation of information.
  
• Capitalism Since 1945 - Kind of iterative of their previous works.
  
• Capitalism Since World War II: The Making and Breakup of the Great Boom - Check your university library.
  
  Hope that is helpful in your discussion of the topic.
  
  
  

I understand what you're saying.

I think even if you think that every person should be able to hold other individuals in society hostage in order to extract health care from them (read: you think health care is a positive "right"), I would submit to you that socialized medicine (which is where we are heading) is incapable of giving everyone health care to a satisfactory degree.

One source that does an in-depth examination is the following book Lives at Risk:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lives_at_Risk
http://www.amazon.com/Lives-Risk-Single-Payer-National-Insurance/dp/0742541525

I predict that over the next 30 years or so, we will see the breakdown of certain single-payer systems for the same reasons as the Soviet Union fell apart (economic reasons: http://mises.org/story/3543). There is no functioning price mechanism, and eventually there aren't any more resources to be wasted.

Already, nations with government-run health care are liberalizing their medicine:

"The authors explain that most European countries with a national health care system have introduced market based reforms and relied on the private sector to reduce costs and increase the availability and effectiveness of health care. Some examples include the NHS has begun treating patients in private hospitals and contracting with private health care providers the Canadian health care system spends over a billion dollars annually on U.S. medical care Sweden has introduced reforms to allow more than forty percent of all heal care services to be delivered privately" - Lives at Risk

>Most people either don't realize or choose to ignore the fact that China's GDP as you described is driven by Gross Investment and Government Spending

Nobody ignores that -- that is the Tammany model.

>The United States (and other first world) Economy on the other hand is driven by Private Consumption (70%).

Yes, and unless the Chinese can transition to this, they have no chance of becoming a first-world nation.

Alas, transitioning to this requires the communist party to give up its monopoly over political and economic power, which so vastly benefits its members, and have China develop multitudes of politically independent organizations, free from party control -- businesses, unions, schools, civic organizations, local governments, media, etc ... to drive economic competition, and which themselves can unite to form political parties to compete politically with the communists.

There is no way that a nation with a one-party government running every level of government and politics, the legal system, the state banking system, major state industries, the finance system, etc, for its own benefit, can develop a decentralized, efficient consumer driven economy as first-world status requires.

Try to find one that did.

Now the question becomes: why would the communists want to give up all their power and the root of their billions of dollars of wealth? "It would be good for the country", though true, is not an acceptable answer -- what they are concerned about is what is good for them.

>Inevitably The People's Bank of China will find lower yield and rate on savings at which its citizens are persuaded to spend rather than save...

You mean the bank will have to pay higher rates to savers, market rates. But then the huge subsidy the party is giving itself at the cost of the people ends, and all those "investments" depending on it collapse -- and not only does the party lose its gravy train of "honest graft", but it also suddenly it has a whole lot of 'splaining to do to many millions of angry people who are now unemployed and/or had their savings in those busted investments.

Why would it choose to got that route?

"Inevitably" is strong word. Time and time and time again, monopoly power one-party governments that have been in this situation before have chosen to keep their monopoly power to best benefit themselves, and screw the people.

For a lot of examples see Violence and Social Order by Nobelist Douglas North and co-authors; and Why Nations Fail by Acemoglu and Robinson.

In fact, pretty obviously, despite the fact that many, many nations have had "fast growth" for a generation, its continuing on to lead to "first world status" is a significant rarity. Just look at the long list of nations and see how few first-worlders there are.

There's nothing inevitable about it, it is very much the exception. And as of yet, there is no sign at all of the Chinese monopoly power political rulers choosing to give up their power as needed to develop such a decentralized first-world society.

You might find Karl Marx a fun read if you're curious. In Capital, vol 1 #3 plays a significant or even primary role in the development of capitalism, which I think is for the most part true.

Another good read is The Mystery of Capital (definitely not a Marxist book) which notes that part of the disparity between the 'developed' and 'developing' world is that there is all kinds of wealth in the developing world that is simply unaccounted for (property rights, for instance), and in a sense, the success of capitalism in the developing world depends on how well capitalism can be exported. You could argue Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace prize for finding a workable way to export capitalism.

Source:
Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman's 10 part PBS series on his book Free To Choose.

wiki link




tldr; volume 1:

America's freedom and prosperity derive from the combination of the idea of human liberty in America's Declaration of Independence with the idea of economic freedom in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. Friedman explains how markets and voluntary exchange organize activity and enable people to improve their lives. He also explains the price system. Friedman visits Hong Kong, U.S. and Scotland.

LegioXIV has covered the government dynamic. Let me say something about market dynamics.

The median salary in the United States is about $26k/year. The median household income is about $48k/year (nowadays often with 2 adults working).

Now let me direct you to this book, which provides much of the detail for my point. The greater the inequality, the more you will see "bubbles" (with a long-term tidal trend) driving up the prices of productive capital assets, or indeed of simply living near productive assets.

Because remember, sellers of capital assets aren't going to sell "Wal-Mart-grade" cheaper versions of stocks or bonds or index funds. We already had a housing bubble driven by the Wal-Martization of housing and the migration away from productive cities into cheap but unproductive hinterlands (see link). And even with the new crowd-funding law, you still need a lot of money and financial knowledge to do equity investment in early-stage start-up companies.

So the purchasing power of "the rich" (really: any given wealthy individual) on capital-asset markets rises with inequality (the degree to which this individual can outbid everyone else). With increased relative purchasing power will come increased prices and increased catering by the market towards that segment of buyers, as dictated by normal laws of supply and demand.

Thus, increasing inequality allows the rich to price everyone else out of access to productive capital. In layman's terms, increasing inequality means that starting an entry-level job at $80k/year in the Boston area only allows you to live in a one-bedroom apartment or with roommates, because housing prices have gotten so high that you need a six-figure (let's call that top-20%) income to afford your own house. This happened to me. Meanwhile, the folks across the state in Greenfield can't get jobs, and dream of how they would own the entire town if they made $80k/year.

Really, I should have used Manhattan as the example par excellence, but I didn't work or live in Manhattan.

> That's just not true.

well, obviously you're always going to have some. but the gov't was too new at that time for business influences to infiltrate it deeply. Esp relative to the situation today.

> It would tend to be professionals who are trained in that speciality voting on how to go about their tasks

how is that any different from having politician running things? who decides who gets to vote? doesn't direct democracy require that all citizens vote on all policy initiatives? what's to stop this small group of voters from colluding?

> No because it's a system designed for self-sufficiency.

i don't give a fuck if i can survive on potatoes and a hut I grow and build myself. I want a plasma TV and to fly from New York to Seattle in 4 hours and a nice house and medical care. I think you're making a LOOOOT of assumptions about people's willingness to accept self-sufficiency for a horrible quality of life.

> You could just as well say that we're currently sacrificing our planet for more wealth.

that's veeeery subjective opinion. i agree global warming is real, but it's a huge step to say it threatens life on Earth.

> For one, money isn't the only incentive.

true, but it's the strongest one.

> America didn't just become rich because people 'busted their asses'

we'll have to disagree on this.

> if you look at what happened after the crash, the biggest losers were actually people in the middle class

this was not due to capitalism though, it was entirely the gov't bailouts, bank deposit insurance, and low interest rates.

> Basically, you seem to have a very romanticized vision of capitalism in your head that simply doesn't reflect historical facts.

I would say the same of you and communism.

It seems our debate ends here. We seems to disagree on points that would take a lot of effort to explain to each other. And I'v got boards in a week. Take it easy. If you have time and interest to learn about Austrian Econ, I'd recommend http://www.amazon.com/How-Economy-Grows-Why-Crashes/dp/047052670X/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1370971957&sr=8-4&keywords=peter+schiff

It's short and explains things from scratch.

Agreed. After EIOL, I highly recommend Callahan's Economics for Real People. Dr. Block used it for his intro course. It's pretty much the best "intro" book to begin to think like an economist ... and the best part, written for beginners and laymen.

Free online as well, if the Amazon link is not to the OP's liking. PDF WARNING

If you're interested, Fragile By Design by Calomiris and Haber. It's controversial but made a lot of sense to me. From the Amazon recap:

"Analyzing the political and banking history of the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil through several centuries, Fragile by Design demonstrates that chronic banking crises and scarce credit are not accidents. Calomiris and Haber combine political history and economics to examine how coalitions of politicians, bankers, and other interest groups form, why they endure, and how they generate policies that determine who gets to be a banker, who has access to credit, and who pays for bank bailouts and rescues."

https://www.amazon.com/Fragile-Design-Political-Princeton-Economic/dp/0691155240

My favorites:

Introduction to Economic Analysis - Free textbook. Taught at a much higher level than your average college textbook, so it provides a better introduction if you think you might go on to study more economics.

Microeconomics: Behavior, Institutions and Evolution - "But of course those ideas are not part of the generally-accepted microfoundations of economics. This is why every graduate student in economics reads (something equivalent to) Varian's Microeconomic Analysis, but not Bowles's Microeconomics: Behavior, Institutions, and Evolution; would that they did. If you read Bowles, you will in fact learn a great deal about the ultimatum game, the rule of law, and so forth; in a standard microeconomics text you will not. I think the Hobbesian vision is wrong, but anyone who thinks that modern economics's micro-foundations aren't thoroughly Hobbesian is engaged in wishful thinking." _ I try an reread this once a year; seriously a fantastic book.

The Company of Strangers - An Economic History of Natural Life - The book that made me decide to be an economist.

Yes Definitely! Like: America's Great Depression

and The Great Contraction, 1929-1933

and Great Myths of the Great Depression

The Mystery of Capital by de Soto is one of the best books for understanding legal structures and their place in making capitalism work. He is great at writing so non economists can understand. I always recommend this book to all my non-econ friends.

> Productivity growth is on the decline, forgot the word growth at the end, but you obviously knew what I meant.

I did not know what you meant. I find it dangerous to assume, especially on the Internet, so I asked.

Sources of slower productivity growth are a matter of some controversy. Here is some survey coverage. I wouldn't say anyone has a convincing explanation yet, but I wouldn't say that the data really support the conclusion that rising inequality is to blame. It's probably a factor, but a relatively small one.

The theory I am most partial to is Gordon's, from The Rise and Fall of American Growth. Summary: productivity growth above the 1% level we're experiencing now only occurs when you have a major technological shock that creates and destroys industries. The last one of those we had was the Internet, and we've captured the low-hanging productivity fruits from that already.

The good news on this front is that we have a pretty good idea what the next big thing is. The bad news is that it's AI, and the disruptions to labor from this technological shock are going to be huge.

> I dont include finance because finance is not the economy.

Disdain for finance is trendy these days, but I find it quite dubious to proclaim one kind of service work is productive and another is not. Is law the economy? Politics? Rather a lot of GDP is in those fields, and I don't know how you can draw the line in an unbiased way. Probably you'll find that some types of finance you like, and other types of finance you don't.

Ultimately, I think it's right and proper for the market to decide.

I think he wholeheartedly believes it was the contraction of the money supply that caused the Great Depression. I have The Great Contraction 1929-1933 by Friedman and Schwartz, and in the foreword, he praises the work done by Friedman and acknowledges that he wouldn't let something like that happen again.

Violence and Social Orders by North, Wallis, Weingast. It's more of an econ history book but it lays out ideas about how societies are structured using economic concepts. I took a course taught by John Wallis and it was by far one of the most interesting I had.

And When Things Fell Apart and Market and States in Tropical Africa both by Robert Bates and are good short reads. They focus on how the politics and economics both failed when trying to industrialize several African States.

Fucking christ, an issue effected by the voting habits of leftists (not using the term disparagingly) comes up and suddenly no one can figure out if they're to blame: http://www.amazon.com/The-Gated-City-Kindle-Single-ebook/dp/B005KGATLO

Here's an idea: Maybe people with a political ideology that favors more economic intervention are more likely to vote for policies of economic intervention that lead to housing shortages and costs rising.

Being liberal doesn't mean average voters are always going to make good decisions, as much as r/pol would like to believe otherwise. There's a wealth of data showing how far the average voter's and politician's views, including Democrats, tend to stray from the consensus of economists. Downvote away you fucktards, I'll be shocked if this isn't hidden by the time I get back.

Read Rothbard's "Man, Economy and State" if your really serious.

For a less thorough and rigorous introduction, but an easier read, I'd say Callahan's "Economics for Real People".

pdf

amazon

I think this is true only if you don't let people build enough housing, as is currently the case in SF, NYC, to a lesser extent Chicago. It's not true in Atlanta and Houston. Housing is affordable there even though they are big cities generating lots of money and jobs. (People do pay a high cost in terms of traffic congestion, but that's due to a different set of policy issues.)

We're so used to high housing prices in some of our cities because it just seems to "make sense" that housing is expensive in Manhattan or LA. But housing really doesn't need to cost much more than the cost of constructing it.

My thinking on this is influenced by two Kindle Singles on the topic. One is by the author of the article this thread is about. The other is by another economics blogger I like a lot.

Mmm... I have this but haven't gotten to it yet. Just started Sowell's Intellectuals and Society, but maybe I'll finally start this one next. But I also want to get through Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom and Free To Choose and F.A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom. Gah... so many books, so little time to read...

<sigh />

How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes- Peter Schiff

Currently reading Free to Choose by Milton Friedman

So far so good....

Choose Gene Callahan's

Econ intro for "real people"

Here at amazon

Here is the mobile version of your link