50 Classics Series: 50 Economics Classics

Editor/Author Butler-Bowdon, Tom
Publication Year: 2017
Publisher: Nicholas Brealey

Price: Core Collection Only
ISBN: 978-1-47-380312-1
Category: Business, Finance & Economics - Economics
Image Count: 2
Book Status: Available
Table of Contents

From Karl Marx to Naomi Klein, from The Wealth of Nations to Piketty's Capital, here are the 50 most important titles on finance and world economy distilled.

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Table of Contents

  • About the Author
  • Introduction
  • 1 Liaquat Ahamed – Lords of Finance (2009) - Fixed ideas in economics can have disastrous results
  • 2 William J. Baumol – The Microtheory of Innovative Entrepreneurship (2010) - Entrepreneurs are the engines of growth and must be valued
  • 3 Gary Becker – Human Capital (1964) - The most important investment we ever make is in ourselves
  • 4 John C. Bogle – The Little Book of Common Sense Investing (2007) - The most successful investing strategy is also the easiest
  • 5 Eric Brynjolfsson & Andrew McAfee – The Second Machine Age (2014) - Technological revolutions must allow for the advance of everyone
  • 6 Ha-Joon Chang – 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism (2011) - Many nations succeeded by bucking the rules of orthodox economics
  • 7 Ronald Coase – The Firm, the Market, and the Law (1988) - Why firms exist; the role of transaction costs in economic life
  • 8 Diane Coyle – GDP: A Brief But Affectionate History (2014) - How we measure economic output has consequences for people and nations
  • 9 Peter Drucker – Innovation and Entrepreneurship (1985) - Success comes from taking management and ideas seriously
  • 10 Niall Ferguson – The Ascent of Money (2008) - Finance is not evil, it built the modern world
  • 11 Milton Friedman – Capitalism and Freedom (1962) - Free markets, not government, protect the individual and ensure quality
  • 12 J. K. Galbraith – The Great Crash 1929 (1955) - It's government's job to stop speculative frenzies ruining the real economy
  • 13 Henry George – Progress and Poverty (1879) - The best and fairest way to ensure opportunity is a tax on land
  • 14 Robert J. Gordon – The Rise and Fall of American Growth (2016) - Living standards keep rising, but the greatest gains have already happened
  • 15 Benjamin Graham – The Intelligent Investor (1949) - We grow in wealth through long-term investing, not speculating
  • 16 Friedrich Hayek – The Use of Knowledge in Society (1945) - Societies prosper when they give up planning and control, and allow decentralization of knowledge
  • 17 Albert O. Hirschman – Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (1970) - Consumers have many options to get what they want
  • 18 Jane Jacobs – The Economy of Cities (1968) - Cities have always been, and always will be, the drivers of wealth
  • 19 John Maynard Keynes – The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936) - To achieve social goals like full employment, governments must actively manage the economy
  • 20 Naomi Klein – The Shock Doctrine (2007) - ‘Neoliberal’ economic programs have proved a disaster for many developing countries
  • 21 Paul Krugman – The Conscience of a Liberal (2007) - The postwar consensus on how to grow an economy has been hijacked by ideology
  • 22 Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner – Freakonomics (2005) - Economics is not a moral science, more an observation of how incentives work
  • 23 Michael Lewis – The Big Short (2010) - Modern finance was meant to minimize risk, but it has only increased dangers
  • 24 Deirdre McCloskey – Bourgeois Equality (2016) - The world became wealthy thanks to an idea: entrepreneurs and merchants are not so bad after all
  • 25 Thomas Malthus – An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) - The world's finite resources can't cope with an increasing population
  • 26 Alfred Marshall – Principles of Economics (1890) - To understand people, watch their habits of earning, saving and investing
  • 27 Karl Marx – Capital (1867) - The interests of labor and capital are perennially in conflict
  • 28 Hyman Minsky – Stabilizing an Unstable Economy (1986) - Rather than creating equilibrium, capitalism is inherently unstable
  • 29 Ludwig von Mises – Human Action (1949) - Economics has laws which no person, society or government can escape
  • 30 Dambisa Moyo – Dead Aid (2010) - Countries grow and get rich by creating industries, not by addiction to aid
  • 31 Elinor Ostrom – Governing the Commons (1990) - To stay healthy, common resources like air, water and forests need to be managed in novel ways
  • 32 Thomas Piketty – Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014) - The scales of wealth are tipping towards capital; if inequality widens there will be social upheaval
  • 33 Karl Polanyi – The Great Transformation (1944) - Markets must serve society, not the other way around
  • 34 Michael E. Porter – The Competitive Advantage of Nations (1990) - Competition and industry clusters make a rich nation
  • 35 Ayn Rand – Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966) - Capitalism is the most moral form of political economy
  • 36 David Ricardo – Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817) - A free-trading world will see each nation fulfil its potential
  • 37 Dani Rodrik – The Globalization Paradox (2011) - Globalization agendas are often floored by national politics
  • 38 Paul Samuelson & William Nordhaus – Economics (1948) - A combination of classical and Keynesian ideas creates the best-performing economies
  • 39 E. F. Schumacher – Small Is Beautiful (1973) - A new economics must arise which takes more account of people than output
  • 40 Joseph Schumpeter – Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1942) - No form of political economy matches the dynamism of capitalism and its process of ‘creative destruction’
  • 41 Thomas C. Schelling – Micromotives and Macrobehavior (1978) - Small behaviors and choices of individuals ultimately produce ‘tipping points’ with major effects
  • 42 Amartya Sen – Poverty and Famines (1981) - People starve not because there isn't enough food, but because economic circumstances suddenly change
  • 43 Robert J. Shiller – Irrational Exuberance (2000) - Psychology, not fundamental values, drives markets
  • 44 Julian Simon – The Ultimate Resource 2 (1996) - The world will never run out of resources, because it is the human mind that drives advance, not capital or materials
  • 45 Adam Smith – The Wealth of Nations (1776) - The wealth of a nation is that of its people, not its government
  • 46 Hernando de Soto – The Mystery of Capital (2000) - Clear property rights are the basis of stability and prosperity
  • 47 Joseph Stiglitz – The Euro (2016) - Europe's failed currency and its ideological underpinnings
  • 48 Richard Thaler – Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics (2015) - How psychology has transformed the economics discipline
  • 49 Thorstein Veblen – The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) - The great goal of capitalist life is not to have to work—or to take on the appearance of not needing to
  • 50 Max Weber – The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904) - Culture and religion are the most overlooked ingredients of economic success
  • 50 More Economics Classics
  • Chronological List
  • Credits
  • Acknowledgements