Good books on Economics

It's literally in the title.

Not him but Kenyes is shit though.

Keynes, while often wrong, is still miles better wha came after him. OP pic very much related.

The wealth of nations

Whatever Happened to Penny Candy

Start with economics in one lesson by Hazlitt. If you have trouble with it switch to Sowell's basic economics.

Ludwig von Mises

the Book of Mormon

get whatever microeconomics and macroeconomics text they use in universities in your country
that is if you really want to learn
if you just want to join in meaningless internet debates just read a wikiquote article about keynes or friedman

the raven of zurich by felix somary

some of Keynes theories have been incorporated into the mainstream and that's what's important
the internet is full of dumb economics discussion by average joes who are at least 30 years behind what's really going on in the academic debate

If you have the option then do a course, if you can't then get a textbook. Don't fall for the brainlet trap of reading Smith, Marx and maybe some Austrians and thinking you know all there is to know.

Listen I'm going to save you a lot of trouble, the issue is investment in a monetary economy. The more critically you think about the actual issues involved the smarter you'll be. Respectable academic economists provide a priori proofs markets create optimal outcomes. Of course there's no reason to believe this.

michaelperelman.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/road.pdf

vocaroo.com/i/s15O6vljoPJQ

100% Money - Irving Fisher
The Role of Money - Frederick Soddy
Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt - Frederick Soddy

Familiarize yourself with the big names and the different schools of thought. Read Schumpeter.

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>Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
>David Ricardo, On The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation
>Karl Marx, Comments on James Mill, "Éléments D’économie Politique"
>Karl Marx, Capital, Vols. I–III
>Karl Marx, Theories of Surplus Value
>Nikolai Bukharin, Imperialism and World Economy

Is this book a pro capitalist book?
I don’t want to read only one side of economics, they only teach one side these days

*dabs*

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99.99% of economists are pro capitalism these days and yes, wealth of nations could be considered "pro capitalist"

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The "capitalism x socialism" debate hasn't started yet. He makes arguments for free trade as opposed to mercantilism. Some parts can be understood as "pro capitalism", some parts can be understood as "anti capitalism".

His work is however crucial for understanding history of both classical and Marxian political economy.

Here's your reading glasses bro

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Marx contributed to sociology and phil, but nothing to econ.

Just because it's not kosher to teach it in the west, doesn't mean bulk of his work doesn't exist.

Keynes was often wrong but the interpretation and subsequent implementation of his ideas is what has lead to disaster. Kinda like Marx.

This is a reminder that Aquinas was a capitalist:

>Finally, and most charmingly and crucially, Aquinas, in his great Summa, raised a question that had been discussed by Cicero. A merchant is carrying grain to a famine-stricken area. He knows that soon other merchants are following him with many more supplies of grain. Is the merchant obliged to tell the starving citizenry of the supplies coming soon and thereby suffer a lower price, or is it all right for him to keep silent and reap the rewards of a high price? To Cicero, the merchant was duty-bound to disclose his information and sell at a lower price. But St. Thomas argued differently. Since the arrival of the later merchants was a future event and therefore uncertain, Aquinas declared justice did not require him to tell his customers about the impending arrival of his competitors. He could sell his own grain at the prevailing market price for that area, even though it was extremely high. Of course, Aquinas went on amiably, if the merchant wished to tell his customers anyway, that would be especially virtuous, but justice did not require him to do so. There is no starker example of Aquinas's opting for the just price as the current price, determined by demand and supply, rather than the cost of production (which of course did not change much from the area of abundance to the famine area).

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>get whatever physics text they use in universities in your country
>that is if you really want to learn
>if you want to join meaningless internet debates read Einstein or Hawking

No, its because Marx wasnt an economist. He tried to change how people value goods. His "econ" framework is only applicable in theory.

Adam Smith can be a proto-libertarian or a proto-marxist depending on who reads him.
Nevertheless, TWON is insanely important and it will get cited very frequently by other authors. Read him so other people don't misinterpret it and have it go over your head.

>He tried to change how people value goods.
He tried to change many things, this seems like a strange specification.
>His "econ" framework is only applicable in theory.
Theory is applicable as theory? How's that different from other theories?

Krugman Mircoeconomics, Varian intermediate economics and then Das Kapital and Progress and Poverty.

What exactly are you claiming he was wrong about? Standard textbook Keynesianism was only really slightly dominant in the 40s-60s before the monetarist onslaught. Obviously lot of empirical developments make things more complex but it's interesting to know your criticism.

Name me another 19th century economist that wrote as extensively on issues surrounding depreciation.

Marx developed a dynamic model of capitalist development, there's notting normative in his economic writings. Anyone that presents a theory of economic development is an economist no matter the empirical validity.

I don't know if you know or not but you're citing Murray Rothbard. He is a libertarian political crank and his writings on history are so hilariously flawed even other lolberts don't take him serious
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Rothbard#Polemics_against_mainstream_economics

Aquinas believed in the standard just price theories of his day. Also capitalism isn't just mercantile activity, you can have all the trade you want without developing the complex institutional state backed law to enable long term investment in fixed-capital.

>another thread about economics where we discuss the same two writers from 100+ years ago and pretend that the field hasn't moved on since them

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The field has regressed! We have to go back.

They are still right and all of modern economics was trying to convince people to not listen but it didn't work for us.

you sound like jonah hill

Question for all of you economists... is comparative advantage total horseshit?

I get the concept that countries should specialize in what is most efficient for them in terms of inputs and then trade to maximize wealth for all, and it makes sense when you’re talking about differences in quantities of goods per resource input, but how do you talk about comparative advantages for entire economies that produce thousands upon thousands of goods and services? How do you *quantify* which country has a comparative advantage in real life?

It just seems like some bullshit that the financial elite uses to sell the idea of free trade as being far better than it actually is.

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Progress and Poverty.

This should interest you

michael-hudson.com/1997/05/theories-of-economic-obsolescence-revisited/

>How do you *quantify* which country has a comparative advantage in real life?

Why would you even need to? Cities will specialize. States will specialize. Countries will specialize. These specialties will change over time. It's the division of labor writ large.

>It just seems like some bullshit that the financial elite uses to sell the idea of free trade as being far better than it actually is.
I completely agree. It's the simple econ 101 justification for free trade. It's used in almost every basic economics book just like how they use basic supply and demand for the case against plenty of government interventions in the economy. Empirical reality, however, is much different than supply and demand graphs and comparative advantage.

this is probably the wrong place to ask, but what are some economics books with a mathematical backbone. i would be interested in the more "psychosocial" elements of economics (i.e. just plain text, like philosophy) as well as mathematical models and methods. any books that are a healthy mix of both? (just fyi, i have no economics experience)

>Why would you even need to?
Well, if you're trying to sell the benefits of trade with another country, you'd want to see if it's a two-way street, right? Besides, if an industry crucial for national security is undermined by a trade agreement, such as steel production, then wouldn't you want to create an exception in that area in case you go to war?

I'd have to disagree. Supply and demand models, at least at the microeconomic scale, make a lot of sense. They are probably a lot easier to quantify too. Consumers and producers are going to haggle over price and production, with one side winning over the other. Eventually, everybody will have enough access to information, which allow the market to stabilize at roughly around an equilibrium point where neither the consumer nor the producer has an advantage over the other.

Comparative advantage, however, just seems like wishful thinking. It makes sense in theory, but seems totally inapplicable in practice.

Cringe and bluepilled

can I get economics books on the guild system?
or detailed explanations of pre 20th century economic systems?

If you want just the right amount of both math [assuming you have the knowledge] and rhetoric look at Hyman Minsky's book on Keynes
gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=720347376756C95CDC957FEE718BDA10

Also A Critical Thinker's Guide to Microeconomics
gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=DF0AE2F33F9CA4ED14ECD777FE9A563A

>you'd want to see if it's a two-way street, right?
This sort of illusive parity isn't that important to be honest. That your region benefits from the imports is the primary matter. 'Trade-surpluses' or other mercantilist abstractions don't really matter.

>Besides, if an industry crucial for national security is undermined by a trade agreement, such as steel production, then wouldn't you want to create an exception in that area in case you go to war?
Steel can be purchased from many sources. Should the threat of war impress itself on a nation, merchants and industrialists will shift to more certain sources of their own accord. We needn't worry about having to buy goods from enemies.

>Power And Profit: The Merchant in Medieval Europe by Peter Spufford
>The years between 1200 and 1500 saw the economy of Europe transformed from being rural, feudal and localized to being urban, capitalist and expansionist. Professor Spufford, who has made a lifelong study of these changes, here brings together a vast amount of material from archives all over the world - letters, account books, legal documents, civil records - to build up a comprehensive general picture. He has also personally travelled many of the roads, rivers and mountain passes that were the arteries of medieval trade, bringing the whole subject to vivid life. The eight chapters of the book cover the financial revolutions of the 13th century that led to the rise of modern banking, borrowing and insurance; the market in luxuries and the role of the great courts; international fairs; trade routes and the hazards of transport; raw materials; manufactured goods; the wealth of cities and nations; and the balance of trade between countries.

Hard to find, but worth reading.

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Rate Cato's business acumen.

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>That your region benefits from the imports is the primary matter.
I only included "two-way street" because obviously it takes two to tango when it comes to trade... unless you coerce the other nature to trade like the British did to China during the Opium Wars. But I digress.

You need to have proof that trade is beneficial, and comparative advantage is the concept that demonstrates this. Given that the well-being of your constituents is on the line, you would want to have some numbers to back it up, right?

>Should the threat of war impress itself on a nation, merchants and industrialists will shift to more certain sources of their own accord.
If you don't have any specialists, then you're starting from square one. It's also not nearly as easy to scale-up as you make it out to be. There are thousands of examples from history where important institutions that made empires strong were allowed to decline until they were no longer there when the empire needed them most.

Firstly, there is no perfect info, plus a slew of regulatory burdens effecting real production. Logistics is also a factor underweighted, as are externalities.
Add to this a fuzzy substitute model where goods of the same type are sometimes not like for like (e.g. Corn and organic corn, Cars and electric cars)

Mercantilism and savvy commercial real estate

good article, thanks for sharing

>A Critical Thinker's Guide to Microeconomics
The one called "the anti-texbook"?

Most of this are, though not invalid, not really useful advices. I started reading about economics in highschool and I did what most of the people here says: read Smith, Marx, etc. Sufficient to say that I didn't understand a shit about Marx, and Smith was often boring and outdated.

The point is, the classics are great but if you begin there, you'll be confused and eventually bored of dealing with issues that, you may think, have nothing to do with 2019's world. You can say something similar about Keynes: his book is incredibly dense. That's why I would recommend doing something different. I think that the path followed by econ. undergrads is better, as long as you actually read more after the textbooks, and not stay with neoclassical econ. like most economists wrongly do.

If you know zero about economics, begin with Economics by Samuelson. The book is still the best introduction to neoclassical economics: it has a micro and a macro part. If you understand markets clearing and equilibirum, I'd say you can skip it. Go on with: 1) Macroeconomics by Mankiw (or Blanchard, it's indifferent); 2) Microeconomics by Hal Varian. These two books are the bible for conventional macro and microeconomics respectively. Of course, there is more after them (in macro, for example, you still won't see Real Bussiness Cycle theory if you read Mankiw). But they should be enough for understanding daily news, policies enacted by the FED and the gov, and general macro. You'll learn about inflation, fiscal policy and it's inconvenients, etc. In sum, you'll be very well positioned for understanding actual economics.

But that's not all that there is to it. Neoclassical econ. is incredibly limited and it has some really serious flaws. This is the moment where you begin with heterodox schools: from austrians to postkeynesians to marxists. To me, they're the real deal. They treat subjects such as: development and growth, relations between politics and sociology and economics, endogenous money theory, why crisis happen, etc. The heterodox field is inmense and diverse. That's why I recommend that you do your own research and read what you like or feel more interested in. To me, it has always been marxism and postkeynesians, but austrians are really interesting as well.

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>He tried to change how people value goods. His "econ" framework is only applicable in theory
Uhmm, no. Actually his LTV is much more deeper than what people usually thinks. He isn't saying that labor is the substance of value because it's the only "common" thing to two different commodities. He is saying that in a society every individual is dependant on others. But in a capitalist world, the overall work of a society can not be coordinated and distributed, because it is done by private producers. So we live in a world that is composed by infinite isles of private producers, but individually, all of them have to get other producers commodities in order to reproduce their existence, i.e. survive. So labor emerges as the natural substance common to every exchange, but only because it is the social relation that enables us to interconnect our private labors.

>But they should be enough for understanding daily news, policies enacted by the FED and the gov, and general macro. You'll learn about inflation, fiscal policy and it's inconvenients, etc. In sum, you'll be very well positioned for understanding actual economics.

Well that's just wrong. If you've been paying attention for the past 10 years mainstream economists were predicting accelerating inflation, rising bond yields and government "insolvency" issues but we're at the point where there's relative high employment, low inflation and massive governmental deficits no prob... now you've got media lunacy over the "inverted yield curve". Thorstein Veblen had a phrase for this: "trained incapacity". You can only understand what's going on today from a heterodox perspective, notting makes sense otherwise.

Marx

I like Mises' Human Action. I'm sure people around here find him and his praxeology a meme, but to me it provides a simple enough framework that is useful to me understanding the world of economics (at least on the level I'm interested in).

I phrased that wrongly (english is not my native language). What I wanted to say, is that you'll understand the motivations of the policies enacted: why and how they do it. You won't understand why they don't work, that's true. But you got to start with the beginning. For example, if you read macro by Mankiw you'll understand why the FED thinks that as we approach our NAIRU because of this expansion, they have to raise the interest rate to prevent inflation from appearing. Maybe this is obvious to him, and in that case he sure can skip them. But most people don't even know what is a bond, let alone monetary policy and how the FED tries to control inflation, or what is QE.

You realize different people at the Fed think differently right? For example here's a 2001 quote from Greenspan:
>But continuing to run surpluses beyond the point at which we reach zero or near-zero federal debt brings to center stage the critical longer-term fiscal policy issue of whether the federal government should accumulate large quantities of private (more technically nonfederal) assets. … I believe, as I have noted in the past, that the federal government should eschew private asset accumulation because it would be exceptionally difficult to insulate the government's investment decisions from political pressures. Thus, over time, having the federal government hold significant amounts of private assets would risk sub-optimal performance by our capital markets, diminished economic efficiency, and lower overall standards of living than would be achieved otherwise.

Obviously understanding what the academic consensus is before you can go against it is ok but it makes things even harder to think differently.

>You realize different people at the Fed think differently right?
Sure, and 2019 policy issues are way more complicated than the typical textbooks which are outdated in many senses. As you mentioned earlier, they never thought inflation would be so low with so much monetary stimulus because they never conceived things as stocks buyback among many others. But as you also said, there are some "consensus" (of course, the heterodox claim that this consensus are usually really flawed, and they're probably right) and if you don't know what are these consensus, you won't be in a position to debate practically nothing.

>Obviously understanding what the academic consensus is before you can go against it is ok but it makes things even harder to think differently.
That is all I'm saying. I know it makes it harder, but you should remember that most of the heterodox authors spend half of their time debating with neoclassical economists, specially keynesians and postkeynesians. That's one main reason why I sustain that it's the best way to begin with econ.

Economics in Three Lessons and One Hundred Economics Laws

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Walrass is pure math tho

Ah, I misread his post.

Because that would require learning math, which Yea Forums posters generally can't do.

I don't think it's totally wrong but it's not in contact with political realities. If you had a country which was gifted with great land and could specialize in farming, should you do so at the expense of other technologies? Maybe, but how are you going to protect your territory or secure trade routes? It only really makes sense for people to act this way under a global government that would prevent conflict between States.

Looks like a bull market. Up, up, up. Money noises all day.

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This poster is a libertarian B-student pale pimply Sam Hyde fan teenager. Don't take their advice, they're a pseud.

Nobody on this site knows what they're talking about. Don't bother arguing with them. These are the type of people that recommend Land in philosophy threads and DFW in lit threads. They're literally awkward dipshit outcast teenagers, of course they're into Rothbard.

>economic philosophy
The absolute state of the moderns...

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Thats the most based image I've ever seen

naked economics actually isn't a bad intro for a first timer. beware of centrism and status quo bootlicking though

basic economics by Thomas sowell is good and even though Thomas sowell is pretty partisan, this is a good book.

you're going to have to read multiple books

i want to tickle your toes so bad, you sound like such a cute twink.

This is the ricardian model, look it up

Yes it makes sense and it holds up empirically too. There exists a ricardian model for multiple goods which is an extension of the 2-good model.

There are many international trade models. for all economic models you try focus on some mechanisms. Models should be simple.

You should read international economics by Paul krugman

>basic economics by Thomas sowell is good and even though Thomas sowell is pretty partisan, this is a good book.
This is a rhetorical joke, he doesn't even introduce any economic methods and only even briefly mentions something as simple as marginal utility briefly towards the end historically.

>You should read international economics by Paul krugman
Hack.

Hack? What are you talking about? It's a good text book with arguments for and against free international trade.

It is literally a university/business school text book

Was this actually any good? Didn't all of his formulas get debunked

If you get a nobel prize in economics you're an establishment hack ;)

Marx? There's only basic arithmetic in his writings. I don't think any of the formulas are internally illogical or "debunkable" it's just no one is going to accept premises of ideas like "surplus value" and use marginalism to explain things instead

/thread

youtube.com/watch?v=emnYMfjYh1Q

>it's just no one is going to accept premises of ideas like "surplus value"
Surplus value is the stock, a concept that exist since the neolitic revolution.
Assholes managed to capture a large part of this stock (since the neolitic revolution). It's origin is private property of the means of production, and most human retards are acquiescent since then.

Well Kruger didn't make the fucking models in the book . Samuel stolper, heckshler, ohlin, Ricardo and so on...

BYU Econ is based.

bump

Adam Smith wanted to get rid of corporations. Don't trust reputation with economists. There's a lot of bad secondary info. You should read Wealth of Nations because it is the easiest and most cohesive way to understand all the abstract economic terms (pre-keynes, that is, then it gets weirder) so it's pretty hard to understand economics without Adam Smith.

Ayyy lmao sell me on this

If Smith was alive closer today, would he be a Georgist of a Maoist?

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>08 didn't set back the field

where's some fresh heterodox political economy

No, econ is not like literature. You don't need to start from the beginning because many of them were fundamentally wrong on too much. That being said don't only read contemporary neoclassical stuff. There were some things the old fellas got right that present economists have forgotten see Hayek.

The modern corporate structure didn't exactly fully exist in Smiths day. Separation of ownership and management and limited liability is necessary for modern industry beyond a pin factory.

"Georgism" is just Ricardianism which is just a more formalized version of Smiths ideas (with important differences). Smiths position on landlords isn't as radical as you want to believe.

>There should be a break in the railroad from Paris to Bayonne at Bordeaux; for, if goods and passengers are forced to stop at that city, this will be profitable for boatmen, porters, owners of hotels, etc.

>Here again we see clearly how the interests of those who perform services are given priority over the interests of the consumers.

>But if Bordeaux has a right to profit from a break in the tracks, and if this profit is consistent with the public interest, then Angoulême, Poitiers, Tours, Orléans, and, in fact, all the intermediate points, including Ruffec, Châtellerault, etc., etc., ought also to demand breaks in the tracks, on the ground of the general interest—in the interest, that is, of domestic industry—for the more there are of these breaks in the line, the greater will be the amount paid for storage, porters, and cartage at every point along the way. By this means, we shall end by having a railroad composed of a whole series of breaks in the tracks, i.e., a negative railroad.

>Whatever the protectionists may say, it is no less certain that the basic principle of restriction is the same as the basic principle of breaks in the tracks: the sacrifice of the consumer to the producer, of the end to the means.

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My diary desu

Peter Schiff.

Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell.

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