r/economics reading list revision

Integral's reading list v.2.0.0

## General intro to economics

1. Harford, *The Undercover Economist,* 2005. Basics of microeconomics, with
some big picture macro thrown in.

2. Harford, *The Undercover Economist Strikes Back,* 2014. This is an
introduction to business cycle macroeconomics.

3. Heilbroner, *The Worldly Philosophers,* 1999. This is an excellent
introduction to the history of economic thought from Adam Smith through
Keynes and Schumpeter.

4. Levitt and Dubner, *Freakonomics,* 2010. This book jump-started the
pop-economics trend of the past few years. Readable and enjoyable.



## Microeconomics

1. Dixit and Nalebuff, *Thinking Strategically,* 1993. This book covers
the economics of game theory: how individuals act and react when in
competition with each other.

2. Schelling, *Micromotives and Macrobehavior,* 1978, reprint 2006. This is a
lovely book that analyzes the various non-intuitive things that happen when
we try to aggregate up from individual behavior to societal aggregates.

3. Roth, *Who Gets What and Why,* 2016. Al Roth (Nobel Laureate 2012) teaches
you about the explicit and implicit rules that allow markets to function well,
and introduces the field of matching, which uses game theory to study markets
in kidneys, dating, and more.

4. Tirole, *Economics for the Common Good,* 2017. (Nobel Laureate 2014)

5. Akerlof and Shiller, *Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation
and Deception,* 2015. Two Nobel Laureates apply information and behavioral
economics to marketing, politics, and every area where profit-maximization
creates incentives for deception.

6. Becker and Posner, *Uncommon Sense: Economic Insights from Marriage to
Terrorism,* 2010 reprint. The original Freakonomics: Gary Becker pioneered
the application of economics to non-economic subject areas.

7. Becker and Becker, *The Economics of Life: From Baseball to Affirmative
Action to Immigration, How Real-World Issues Affect Our Everyday Life,* 1998.

8. Becker and Murphy, *Social Economics: Market Behavior in a Social
Environment,* 2003.



## Behavioral Economics

1. Kahneman, *Thinking, Fast and Slow,* 2013. This is a solid introduction to
behavioral economics, the field of microeconomics that explores the
boundaries between economics and psychology.

2. Thaler and Sunstein, *Nudge,* 2009. This is the second book in the
behavioral economics triad. It's useful for its broad swath of interesting
and sensible policy recommendations.

3. Ariely, *Predictably Irrational,* 2010. Third book in the behavioral
economics triad.

4. Akerlof and Shiller, *Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the
Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism,* 2009.

5. Thaler, *Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics,* 2016.



## Finance

1. Malkiel, *A Random Walk Down Wall Street,* 1973, revised 2012. This is a
classic book on finance and investing, and comparable to Landsburg in that
Malkiel lays out the "basic standard" for investing advice from research
in economics and finance. It's the only finance book the layman will ever
need, and the first one that an person interested in finance should pick up.

2.Rajan, *Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World
Economy,* 2011.

3. Mian and Sufi, *House of Debt: How They (and You) Caused the Great
Recession, and How We Can Prevent It from Happening Again,* 2015.

4. Shiller, *Finance and the Good Society,* 2013.

5. Shiller, *Irrational Exuberance,* revised 2015.

6. Desai, *The Wisdom of Finance,* 2017.




## Macroeconomics

1. Friedman, *Capitalism and Freedom,* 1962, revised 2002. The classic statement
of "market economics." This book was much more radical and necessary in the
1960s, when it was first published; many of its recommendations were taken
to heart in the 1980s and 1990s. It remains excellent reading.

2. Friedman, *Free to Choose,* 1980, revised 1990. This is a bit of a
companion volume to C&F: longer, more practical, less theoretical, and
applied to many institutional arraignments in the economy.

3. Galbraith, *The New Industrial State,* 1967. If you read Friedman, you owe
it to yourself to read Galbraith. Galbraith and Friedman were
standard-bearers for their respective economic philosophies and clashed for
nearly twenty years. Many of Galbraith's observations on the concentration of
industry and importance of union bargaining are outdated, but his message
remains important.

4. Galbraith, *The Affluent Society,* 1958, revised 1998. This work is the
intellectual foundation of 1990s-era moderate liberalism, and is an important
read for that reason alone. This book tackles the hard questions of economic
affluence, security, and income inequality.

5. Deaton, *The Great Escape,* 2013. This is a popular book on two important
long-run trends: growth in average income per person and the trends in
inequality of income across individuals. Deaton describes both the "trend"
and the "spread" of income and health outcomes with clarity and precision.

6. Reinhart and Rogoff, *This Time is Different*, 2011.

7. Snowdon and Vane, *Modern Macroeconomics: Its Origins, Development, and
Current State,* 2005. An exposition of the various schools of macroeconomic
thought. Requires a year or two of economics training to appreciate, and
could easily be a companion book to an intermediate course in macro.




## Growth

This is a short list of books that tries to tackle the big questions of
economics: why are some countries rich and other countries poor? Is there
anything that poor countries can do to make themselves rich?  I'm not going
to try to summarize each of these books in one paragraph, but will give a
one-word hint as to the answers each provides. None is perfect; none has
found the One True Key to economic prosperity. However, taken together, they
provide a balanced view of many factors that affect economic growth.

1. Landes, *The Wealth and Poverty of Nations,* 1999. (Culture)

2. De Soto, *The Mystery of Capital,* 2003. (Economic institutions)

3. Acemoglu and Robinson, *Why Nations Fail,* 2012. (Political institutions)

4. Clark, *A Farewell to Alms,* 2008. (More technical. Focuses on
productivity, with an emphasis on the Industrial revolution)


## Economic History


1. Gordon, *The Rise and Fall of American Growth*, 2016. Historical and
skeptical view of long-run growth rates, focusing on the US from 1850
to the present.

2. Eichengreen, *Globalizing Capital,* reprint 2008. A historical overview of
the international financial system from 1850 to the present.

3. Frieden, *Global Capitalism,* 2007. Another look at the international
financial system from 1900 to the present.

4. Findlay and O'Rourke, *Power and Plenty,* 2009. A sweeping history of
global trade from 1000 CE to the present.




## Development

These books look specifically at the question, "what can poor countries today
do to become rich?" Again, I'm not going to summarize all of them. Many have
a special focus on the (in)effectiveness of foreign aid. These books, or part
of them, could easily form the core of a syllabus for a course in economic
development, pitched at the undergrad level. All of these are geared towards
a popular audience.

1. Sen, *Development as Freedom,* 2000.

2. Easterly, *The Elusive Quest for Growth,* 2002.

3. Easterly, *The White Man's Burden,* 2007.

4. Sachs, *The End of Poverty,* 2006.

5. Sachs, *Common Wealth,* 2009.

6. Collier, *The Bottom Billion,* 2008. Contains a useful overview of
the Easterly-Sachs debate.

7. Collier, *Wars, Guns and Votes,* 2010. Political development in Africa.

8. Cooter and Schafer, *Solomon's Knot,* 2013. Focuses on law and economics.

9. Banerjee  and Duflo, *Poor Economics,* 2012. Interesting report from the
trenches of micro-development, with a good empirical bent.

10. Karlan and Appel, *More than Good Intentions,* 2012. The pitfalls of aid.




# Housing, Urban, Labor, Trade


1. Krugman, *Pop Internationalism,* 1997.

2. Krugman, *The Accidental Theorist,* 1999.

3. Glaeser, Triumph of the City, 2012.

4. Moretti, *The New Geography of Jobs,* 2013.

5. Florida, *The Rise of the Creative Class,* 2012.

6. Piketty, *Capital in the 21st Century,* 2014.

7. Clark, *The Son Also Rises,* 2014.


# Grad school

Undergraduate economics majors have several paths available for further
education. Common are law school, business school, and graduate work
in economics. These books provide a look into each path.

1. Warsh, *Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations,* 2007.

2. Colander, *The Making of an Economist,* 2008. Required reading for anyone
thinking about going to graduate school, this book is a critical examination
of graduate training in economics. Worth the buy for the interviews alone.

3. Turow, *One L,* 2010 reprint. Law school.

4. Broughton, *Ahead of the Curve,* 2009. Business school.




# Biographies and Retrospectives

1. Rubin, *In an Uncertain World,* 2004. The Clinton economic team.

2. Taylor, *Global Financial Warriors,* 2007. The Bush economic team.

3. Greenspan, *The Age of Turbulence,* 2007. Great for a perspective on
advances in economic policymaking just before the financial crisis.

4. Wessel, *In Fed We Trust,* 2009. The Bernanke Fed during the crisis.

5. Meyer, *A Term at the Fed,* 2009. The Greenspan Fed during its Clinton-era
heyday.

6. Paulson, *On the Brink,* 2011. Inside the "panic days" of the financial
crisis.

7. Bernanke, *The Courage to Act*, 2015.  Another look inside the financial
crisis, from the perspective of the Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

8. Volcker, *Keeping At It,* 2018.


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